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He’d given his family up for the job. Well, no more. He was done doing favors. He had Lulu back now. He wasn’t getting dragged back into some undercover gig.
Right about now, he was in the zero-fucks-to-give category. Besides, it would be next to impossible to make undercover work for him. And he wasn’t leaving Lulu vulnerable again. It had been an overly interesting year already. It wasn’t like Noah wasn’t strong enough or deadly enough to protect his sister. But they’d just gotten their lives started, and he didn’t want to bring trouble to their door. Not that trouble didn’t seem to find them.
Or at least that was how he rationalized it. “You’ve got my full attention.”
“Glad to hear it. Right now we’ve got problems from an old friend of yours.”
His inner killer, the part of himself he kept chained up in the dungeon of his brain, started to stretch out. Easy. We don’t do that anymore.
“What now?” He rolled onto the balls of his feet. Ready, poised for action. And that was the underlying problem. He was always ready. Always poised for action.
Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he could do normal. What kind of woman wanted a guy who was always ready for a fight… or worse? He knew from his sister’s experience that the kind of physical security required for a relationship with someone like him was stifling.
“Do you remember the Vandergraffs?”
Oh hell. Did he ever remember them. As much as he tried to forget, there was no shoving them out of his mind. Those dark eyes looking up at him. “Yes, of course I remember them.”
Dieter Vandergraff had been a sanctioned hit. The CIA had farmed out the job to ORUS. It had been part of a joint task force effort to see which organization could get the closest. Of course, his former employer had been the one to get it done. He’d been the one to get it done.
“What about them?”
There was a knock at the door and Alan called out, “Come in.”
“Alan, sorry I’m late.” She turned her attention to Rafe. “Agent DeMarco? Long time no see.”
Oh shit. Emilie. How long had it been since he’d seen her?
The woman standing on the other side of the room had long hair in such a deep red color that he’d always doubted it could be real. She was pale and statuesque, with the kind of curvy figure and impossibly small waist that usually had men’s tongues hanging out. Her eyes were dark, and she blinked at him from behind delicate, fluttery lashes. She was beautiful. Rafe acknowledged the fact in a distant fashion, but when their eyes met, he felt nothing but wariness.
Emilie Durand was the type of woman who could cut your throat and have you smiling throughout the entire thing. Dangerous.
“Rafe, you remember Interpol Agent Emilie Durand?”
There was nothing in Alan
’s voice to indicate hostility, but Rafe got the distinct impression that his handler wasn’t too fond of the woman in question. And he understood why.
“Agent Durand.”
“Nice to see you again, Agent DeMarco.” Emilie held out her hand, and Rafe shook it quickly, pulling back when she held on a moment too long. Ah, that is going to be a problem, he thought when he registered the look of interest in her eyes. She wasn’t even bothering to hide the fact that she was ogling him. Some things never change.
“Can you bring me up to speed?” He directed the question at Alan, but Agent Durand was the one who answered.
“Since Dieter Vandergraff’s death, the family has mostly been quiet. Small-time gigs. We primarily allowed the Austrian authorities to deal with them in whatever manner they saw fit. But it looks like they’ve gotten into bed with the Russian mob. And they’ve ramped up their father’s old business pursuits and have started making a nuisance of themselves in a major way.”
Rafe scowled as he thought of Dieter Vandergraff’s sons. At the time he’d taken out their father, they’d been younger, small-time thugs. They certainly hadn’t been strong enough or powerful enough to take over their father’s empire. Their organization should have withered away, but they’d apparently proved more resilient than he’d thought.
“What do you want from me?” He prayed the answer would be nothing. It was the only job that still haunted him after all these years. Those dark eyes.
He’d left one crucial fact off his original report. Dieter’s daughter. Their intel had said she wasn’t supposed to be at the house. Before she’d had a chance to scream, he had his hand over her mouth. He knew what was in the ORUS playbook for such events. And he knew that as an FBI agent on a joint task force team with the CIA and Interpol, he should have put her in the report. But he hadn’t.
His omission might be coming back to bite him in the ass now.
He had taken her to a closet and told her to stay quiet. And she’d been so terrified she did exactly as he asked. He wasn’t sure why he’d left her off the report. The Feds and Interpol would’ve hardly expected him to harm a civilian.
The CIA was a different game. They were almost as brutal as ORUS. So he’d stayed silent about her presence there.
“Interpol has issued a red notice for the Vandergraffs. They’re implicated in a massive human trafficking operation that covers most of Western Europe. Of course, they’ve been on several countries’ radar for decades now, as I’m sure you’re aware, but they were always very careful to keep their tracks clear.”
