Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (24 page)

He felt her body convulse beneath his as he drove her over the edge into ecstasy. As her body quieted, his began to peak. He jammed himself deep inside her, holding her hip still as he banged out his release.
 

When the last wave left him, he leaned his head on the pillow, against hers, waiting for his breath to even out. She was stroking his back, trying to soothe him. He lifted his head and looked at her. Her eyes mirrored the trouble in his heart.
 

He got up and removed the condom, then left it in the bathroom trash. He went over to her window and drew the light darkening drapes over the sheers. Then he went back to her bed and slipped between the covers, pulling her close.
 

“Sleep now. When we wake up, we’ll figure out what’s next. I’ve got you. You’ve got me. We’re safe. So sleep.”
My love.
The last were words he thought but didn’t say. He couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to clip her wings by limiting her choices.

She nestled into him. He felt her body relax as her breathing evened out. When she slept, he allowed himself to shut his eyes and drift away.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bright light slashed across Remi’s face. She scrunched her eyes up, then cracked one open. Greer was standing next to the bed with a tray of food. Whatever was on it smelled divine. Remi was starving.

“Morning. Well, afternoon. Kathy made a big meal for lunch since so many of us missed breakfast.”

Remi held the sheet to her bare chest and sat up. Her hair was dry, but since it was wet when she went to sleep, it now looked like a rat’s nest. She pushed some of it out of her face.

“That was my fault,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t. Shit happens.” He set the tray on the dresser, then lifted the steel cover and snagged a fry.

“What’s in there?”

“Cheeseburger, fries, and side salad. With iced tea. Couldn’t remember if you liked your tea sweet or used mustard or mayo on the burger, so I brought some of it all.” He plopped himself down on the armchair near the window and grinned at her.

She smiled back. For no reason other than it felt right.

“What happens now? What’s next?” she asked.

“Next, you get up, dress, eat, wrangle your hair into some kind of order”—he looked at her and cocked his head to the side—“or not. It’s kinda sexy like that.”
 

Remi shoved the covers aside and walked into her closet.

“No one would know if we went back to bed for a while,” Greer suggested. “We’ll just tell them you’re a slow eater.”
 

Hearing the grin in his voice, she laughed. She pulled on some underwear and clothes—jeans and a white cotton blouse. “We could,” she said as she came out of the closet. “But your self-satisfied smile would give us away.”

She lifted the tray and brought it over to the bed. “Did you eat?”

“I did. I wanted to put off waking you until I couldn’t delay any longer.”

“Last night, you said you knew what was happening.” She fixed her burger and took a big bite. After swallowing, she said. “So tell me what it is.”

“We’ll talk about it with the team in a few. You’ve been a big help, let’s just say that.”

“I have?”

“Huge. It’s actually a big breakthrough.”

She smiled as she chewed another bite. That was a relief. Maybe they were close to the end of this fiasco after all.

* * *

“Stairs or elevator? You have a preference?” Greer asked when they went down the south staircase to the main floor.

“No.” She looked down the hall where she’d seen the guys take her stuff. “My boxes went this way.”

Greer nodded. “Then let’s go that way.”
 

He led her into the bedroom with the secret elevator. They went into the empty closet. She looked at him warily. He smiled at her and popped a compartment open in the paneling. There was a single button, which he hit.
 

“I always feel like 007 when I do this.” He opened a sliding panel in the back of the closet, revealing an elevator gate. She gasped. That was the very last thing she’d expected to see. He pushed that open when the elevator arrived. Stepping inside, he held the doors open for her, then shut the hidden panel, then the gate.

The ride was short. When the doors opened, they stepped out into a state-of-the-art weapons room. Each wall had lighted glass and steel cases with row upon row of long guns, pistols, knives, accessories. There was a steel island in the center of the room that looked like a work surface. Below the weapon cases were more locked steel cabinets. The room had the acridly sweet scent of gun cleaner and oil.
 

Greer sniffed the air and smiled at her. “That smell always gives me a flash boner.”

Remi blushed. He laughed.
 

She followed him out of the weapons room into a dim room lit by a dozen computer screens with a couple walls of floor-to-ceiling servers. Cool air moved up from vents in the floor. Max got up as they came in. He looked too rangy to be a computer geek, but he also looked at home in the ops area.
 

“Glad you’re here. Was gonna go look for you. Kit’s ready to start. Doc.” He nodded toward her, then led the way out of the ops room.
 

They passed a bunkroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, then went into a long, wide room. Greer’s team was seated around a huge conference table. Two smart screens the size of blackboards were suspended on one wall.

Owen was standing at the back wall. His arms were folded over his chest. His eyes were as chilling as the steel weapon cases. Remi looked away as soon as she could. Greer led her over to two open seats next to Selena. Remi sent a glance around the table. None of them were looking particularly welcoming. Course, none of them had gotten much rest over the past few days, either.

“Soon, Professor, you’ll be able to return to your regular life,” Owen said.

Remi’s mind replayed a slice of her life before her world imploded. As much as she missed the routine of daily life in academia, the sociologist in her was intrigued with the alternate realities Greer and his team had shown her. She realized her work so far had only scratched the surface of hidden human societies.

Owen nodded toward Kit, who began his explanation. “There are terrorist cells lying dormant in our country. Recently, some of those have been activated for various purposes that include taking revenge against our warriors and introducing chaos to undermine our country. Some of those cells have connected with the criminal elements in our country to traffic drugs, making money to fund their activities in hot spots here and abroad. It’s an effective network we’re in the process of discovering. They’re working with the WKB, and the WKB are hiding in some of these utopian or cult societies. Hence the intersection of our interests.”
 

Remi got up and started pacing around the conference room. She walked past stacks of her boxes, organized by the symbols she’d marked on them. “You’ve got my files, all my data, but you don’t have my eyes. I’ve been studying these groups for years, looking for their similarities and differences. Let me help you find the patterns you’re looking for.”

“Agreed,” Kit said. “Sounds like a good place to begin. But first, Max, put up the senator’s picture.”

Remi looked up at the big smart screen. The image she saw was the stuff of her nightmares. Her hands covered her mouth, but didn’t block her gasp. She recognized the picture—and the man. Oh, sweet Mother Mary. Was he behind all that had been happening to her? She was twelve when that picture was taken.

She realized the room had gone silent. She ripped her gaze from the big screen to the table full of people who had turned and were now staring at her.

“Remi—do you know this man?” Greer asked.

Her heart was pounding in her ears. She felt cold and terrified and numb. She nodded.
 

“Who is he to you?” Greer asked.

Oh, God. She needed to vomit. Not a good reaction here, in front of these mercenaries who probably ate crybabies like her for breakfast.
 

She pulled a long draw of air in through her nose, then another, fighting back the bile. These people knew her secrets, knew her shame. Her eyes watered, but she didn’t blink.
 

“He was one of the prophets in the community where I grew up.” Her voice was a whisper. She wasn’t even certain she’d spoken aloud. No one spoke. No one moved.

Greer exchanged glances with Kit. “Motherfucking sonofabitch,” he growled, and got up from the table. She was afraid for a second that he was going to pull her into his arms. If he did, she would break.
 

Instead, he came to stand in front of her, blocking her from the team—and from the picture of Prophet Josiah.
“I’m tainted,”
he’d said. He wasn’t nearly as soiled as she.

“Baby, breathe,” he whispered as he hunched his shoulders, cupping her inside their wide span. She lifted her terrified gaze up to him, latching on to his calm eyes. “Breathe, baby.” He took his hands from his pockets and peeled hers from her face. The heat in his hands made her realize how cold she’d gone. He kissed her fingertips, then looked at her and said something that sounded like, “I will end him.”

She couldn’t have heard that right.
 

“Remi,” Kit said, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it, “was the WKB involved with your community?”

She pulled a long breath at last, then leaned her forehead against Greer’s chest. Two more slow breaths, and she was ready to talk. Greer stepped aside but stayed near.

“No,” she answered Kit. “But I left when I was fourteen. Maybe they are now.”

Kit turned back to Max. “Bring up the fingerprints,” he ordered.

Max added images to the screen—two fingerprints and an image of the burned-out shell of a car.
 

“You sent us scans of three fingerprints,” Kit said, glancing at Greer.

“You did?” Remi asked him.

“Yeah. Remember when I was ‘videoing’ the table? I used an app we have on our phones to scan fingerprints from the Dunbars’ and Mr. Haskel’s glasses.” He shrugged. “Just out of curiosity.”

“We had two hits from those scans,” Max told them, “for crimes that have been unsolved for decades.” Over the top of the burned car, he showed a pic of a gangbanger whose lifeless body was slumped over his steering wheel.

“Two different fingerprints, two different unsolved crimes from thirty, almost forty years ago. The car bomb was in Los Angeles and the gangbanger in San Diego.”

“There must be some mistake,” Remi said. “The Dunbars and the Haskels are natives of the community. They’ve never left it.”

“Except…during their tithes,” Greer said.

Remi stared at him, then shook her head. “No. They don’t travel anywhere except by horse or horse and buggy. It’s a two week round-trip to go to the market in their buggies.”

Greer shrugged. “Someone’s helping them. Sally had to have help getting down to Wolf Creek Bend the night she came to kill Kit. Not to mention, how did her ‘parents’ come after her so quickly when we took her to the clinic? No way could they have come that far that fast. And who contacted them anyway? They don’t have phones. No, the Friends aren’t as isolated as they would have us think.”

“You saying that was her tithe? Killing me?” Kit asked.

“Yeah. The woodcutter wasn’t surprised that she’d been assigned that task. He said he even had her practice by slaughtering some pigs. She said that that night, too. Remember?” Greer reminded Kit. “The Friends aren’t supposed to ever talk about their tithes—”

“Because they’re committing crimes,” Remi finished for him.

“Yeah. And both Dr. Robinson—the village doctor,” he explained for the others, “and the woodcutter knew Sally was her fake name for her tithe service.”

Remi walked over to her chair and sat down. Greer followed. “I don’t understand why they would do that,” she said. The Friends are a pacifist society. They don’t have any designs on taking over the world. They just want to be left alone. Why go out into the world to do a crime? How is that a service to their community?”

The group silently considered that.

“So what’s happening with the teenagers who’ve gone off to do their tithes and aren’t returning?” Blade asked.

“Have Lobo look into adolescent John and Jane Does who’re showing up in morgues,” Kit told him. “It isn’t a large number we’re looking for, is it?” He looked at Remi and Greer. “Maybe twenty? Twenty-five? Fifteen?”

“True. But from a community of five hundred, that’s sizable. What are they up to in the outside world?” Greer asked. “Kids slip under the radar so easily.”

 
Kit nodded. “You need to get out there and get more fingerprints. Let’s see what washes out. But first”—he jerked his head toward the stacks of boxes—“let’s get a handle on what we know and what we don’t.”

“I don’t know if we can go back,” Remi said, glancing from Kit to Greer.

“Why not?” Kit asked.

“Because of what happened to the woodcutter.”

“Unless the WKB told someone, the Friends don’t know anything more than that he disappeared.”
 

Chapter Twenty-Three

After supper, Remi carried a couple of boxes up from the bunker. She wanted to spend the evening reading through the files, but didn’t want to stay in the cavernous meeting room down below.
 

Hope was coming down the stairs as she was going up. “Hey, Remi—I’ve ordered replacement parts for your car. They should be here tomorrow. The shop in town will let me use their paint booth. I’ll have you back on the road in no time. If you have to go somewhere, use one of the guys’ cars or grab mine.”

“Thanks, Hope. That’s awesome.”

“Yeah. Val’s SUV can’t be as easily fixed. They’re going to have to trade it out for a new one while it goes back to the armor shop.”

“Why? What happened to it?”

“It was peppered with bullets the night Greer fought the woodcutter.”

Remi’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. They got an earful from me.” They smiled at each other. “By the way, I’m new here, too. I know how overwhelming it can be. These are good people. They’ll help you. If you let them.”