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“Ah, yes. Carter’s use of cutlery is impressive. I thought he was good with a knife, but you should see what he can do with a fork.” Jack and his fucking timing.
Diana had just been trying to walk me off the cliff of being a psychopath, and there was Jack telling her what a great killer I was. I mean, he wasn’t wrong. Fuck. Yeah, I was as married to that word as I was to my sins.
Diana narrowed her eyes on me, her cheeks becoming as pink as her ass would’ve been had I spanked her like I’d wanted to.
The fact I hadn’t been able to do it, worried even a small sting might hurt her, was . . . unexpected, to say the least. After years of believing I could only take a woman one way, all my rules went out the window when it came to Diana. I was at her mercy, not the other way around. Al-fucking-ready. How many hours had even gone by since I’d rescued her?
Maybe I could just continue to be the selfish bastard I was. Keep her. Go ahead and taint her with my filth and darkness. Then her words came back to me. “What if that guy was just a temporary placeholder while you found your way back to being who you really are?” Could she do the impossible and bring me back into the light?
Lost to my thoughts again, staring so deeply into Diana’s eyes I was pretty sure I saw my own reflection, I barely heard Oliver when he commented, “You weren’t even up there when he forked that dude to death. What do you know?”
“No, but I was.” Gray was off to my side in the aisle, using the remote to drop the screen back down. Hopefully that meant Gwen would be calling with news. “And stop bullshitting around with stories that don’t help us. We need real plans.”
“Roger that,” Jack snapped back at his best friend, earning him a scowl from Gray.
Yeah, we all needed rack time before we killed each other.
Reminding myself this sweet woman across from me didn’t want more blood on my hands, I reached into my pocket for one of my disposable phones and did a quick search to ping a contact of mine in Lithuania. I needed to let them know to save those two traffickers from becoming victims of the wild boars roaming the area. Not a pretty way to go. I added one last quick message.
Me: Make sure they’re behind bars, though. With a forever kind of sentence.
I didn’t need to tack on the words, “or else.” They already knew what would happen if those traffickers were ever to make it to the streets again.
“Who was that?” Diana asked, drawing my eyes as I powered off and pocketed the phone.
“Preventing those animals in that shed from being eaten,” I grumbled, and she couldn’t hide her smile at that. A small victory in her desire to help me find my way back to that guy I’d once been. The operator in the Unit who followed rules of engagement to a T.
“Maybe Bravo will turn something up while on the ground in Norway.” Sydney’s comment to Mya from the other side of the aisle briefly stole my attention.
“Don’t forget, you’re still a wanted man with your face all over the news. That puts a bit of a target on our heads.”
I cracked my neck as I stared at Mya, silently cursing her equally for-shit-timing reminder. Wanted or not, there’d always be a bullseye on my head. And that right there was a perfectly justifiable reason to stay away from Diana when this ended. Her safety would trump my wants and my needs. Always.
“Oh God, I forgot about that.” Diana’s eyes widened. “Can’t they pull that news story? Take you off the list?”
“The line’s connecting with Gwen,” Gray shared, saving me from having to tell Diana I was a threat to her safety regardless of the news or the wanted list. “Hey, what do you have for us?” he cut to it as Gwen’s face filled the screen.
“I have news,” Gwen opened up with. “I decrypted the text you pulled from the phone in Poland. It’s a location for Port Leith. That’s it.”
“Edinburgh?” Griffin asked, standing alongside Gray, but not blocking the view of the screen.
I reached for the crucifix, nearly forgetting it was there, as I thought back to the day I’d nearly tripped over Dallas. Looking over at him brought me back to the night I’d seen a priest for the first time.
“My assumption is those men were supposed to bring Diana there if they were successful in taking her from you all,” Gwen shared. “It’s possible the other hostages from Amsterdam are there as well.”
“But?” Gray prompted, and damn that pause from her.
“Whoever’s handiwork is behind this encryption is a match to the person who emailed Alyona from Georgetown, but it’s not a match to whoever encrypted those files sent to the traffickers with information to take Diana to Oslo.” And there was that “but” loud and clear.
“Two different hackers working for the same group?” Gray spoke before I could. “Or two different groups targeting Diana?”
“Definitely two different hackers,” Gwen said with confidence. “The one coordinating with the Serbians was good, but the other hacker is better-than-me good.”
“If you have one of the most skilled hackers on your team, you don’t bench your quarterback and put in your backup.” I smirked at Gray’s analogy. Once an athlete, always an athlete. That West Point ball player was alive and well in some capacity in Gray. “Maybe we’re dealing with two groups, then?”
“Isn’t it always two?” Jack said under his breath while rising alongside where Jesse was already standing, hanging off to the side of Mya’s seat.
“If the group responsible for the hit at the safe house in Poland is also the one who sent the blackmail to Alyona, then I’m thinking,” Mya began, tapping the closed lid of her laptop, “the blackmail was a distraction from their plans to hit us in Poland. Or a secondary backup if they failed in Poland in hopes they could get Alyona to turn on you.”
