Page 22 of Russian Rescue

“Yeah? What’d you buy?”

“New weapons and stuff.”

He snorted. “New weapons? For what? We’re retired now. Unless you’re working on the side or something.”

I didn’t answer, not wanting to lie.

Wes noted the long silence. “Are you?” The chair creaked as he shifted. “Are you still working?”

“Just doing a little stuff for fun.”

“What kind of stuff?”

I sucked my lip between my teeth and thought hard about what I wanted to tell him... or not tell him. But my phone beeped and saved me from having to lie to my friend.

My brow furrowed when I saw Brooks’s name flashing across the screen. After pressing the button, I held it up to my ear. “Hey, Brooks. I thought you were heading off on an op.”

“I am,” he answered, and I immediately noted the serious tenor of his voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was just finishing up flipping off all my screens that I’d been monitoring for you guys, and I caught a feed from the office building they’d been holding Wes at that concerned me.”

“What concerned you?”

I glanced over at Wes, and he sat up and furrowed his brow as he watched me.

“They had a woman bound up, and they were leading her out of the office building to a car.”

“What? There was a woman there? Who was she? Any idea?”

Brooks let out a sigh. “She wasn’t there when you were there. After playing back the feed, it looks like she arrived today just after you guys broke Wes out. And I ran facial recognition on her.”

His darkening tone made my heart thump harder.

“Who is she?”

A long pause seemed to go on forever, then he answered, “It’s Amanda Williams.”

I rubbed my chin, trying to put a face to the name that sounded so familiar.

Then Brooks gave me the answer. “It’s Wes’s sister.”

“What?” I sat up straight. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I went back and ran the feeds. You busted Wes out, and while I was watching the cameras for you as you went through the Metro, they brought her to the place they’d been keeping him. I missed it because I was eyes on you guys. So, I went back and watched all the footage of them there with her, and they were arguing that she was supposed to be an incentive to get Wes working for them. Since he was holding out even under torture, their plan was to threaten to torture her to force Wes to do their bidding. That’s why they took her. Now that Wes is gone, they’re trying to figure out what to do with her.”

“Holy fuck.”

My mind nearly exploded. When Wes wouldn’t cooperate, they must have gone and snatched his sister. There was no way he would have let them torture her, and it would have been a guarantee that he’d do everything they asked.

And it was exactly the reason no member of an Elite Stealth Force team could have any family or serious connections.

No family, no roots, no dating. We were all hand-picked for just that reason. Every operative of an Elite Stealth Force team was an orphan or from a broken family, which helped us completely disappear. That requirement for recruitment ensured situations like this one couldn’t happen. They could never find someone valuable to us and use it to their advantage.

And then there was Wes. The only exception.

His computer skills had been too powerful for the Elite Stealth Force to dismiss despite having a family still living and breathing that he cared about. Since he’d operated safely at home with no chance of being captured on a mission, the powers that be had decided he was worth the risk.