Betrayed (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 9) (13 page)

“I’m okay. Way better than I was. A good night’s sleep and I’ll be almost back to normal.”

He hoped so. God, she was beautiful.

Standing here alone with her, the urge to step into the room, shut the door behind him and find out everything he wanted to know was almost overwhelming. It was killing him not to know, but Rycroft was waiting downstairs with questions of his own, and since he was the boss, his questions took precedence. He’d just have to wait until tonight.

She broke eye contact for a second then looked at him again. “Is there any dinner left?”

He blinked. She and Briar must not have spoken at all after she woke up. “From last night?”

She frowned. “What? What time is it?” She swung around to look behind her, probably checking for a clock on the nightstand.

“You slept almost twelve hours. But I put on some chicken noodle soup for you a bit ago, in case you were hungry.”

She stared at him a moment, as though she couldn’t imagine why he’d do such a thing. The truth was, he didn’t want to examine his reasons too closely.

He’d been going stir-crazy, prowling the house waiting for her to come downstairs. And she’d been too long without food, so she’d need something bland like broth to settle her stomach. Rycroft had watched him in amusement but hadn’t said anything and Bautista didn’t care what he thought. His only concern right now was Georgia.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

He shrugged. “It’s from a package, but it’s what my
abuelita
always gave me when I was sick. She swore it cured everything.”

At the mention of his grandmother, a sharp current of tension flowed between them.

He watched Georgia’s face closely for reaction, her body language. How had she ever found out about his grandmother in the first place?

It was the only thing he could think of that would explain how she’d managed to track him down at all. After that, she’d used the guise of volunteering at his grandmother’s facility as an excuse to get close to him.

And he’d fallen for the charade completely.

Georgia lowered her gaze, but not before he swore he caught a flash of guilt on her face. Probably wishful thinking. He had no idea if she had enough of a conscience left to feel guilt at all. Of course, people could say the same about him.

But they’d be wrong.

“How is she?” she asked.

“The same.” In a vegetative state being kept alive by machines in her care home in Miami, same as she had for the past twenty-two years. Her big heart simply refused to quit. “They let me talk to her after I signed the contract.”

It had been one of his conditions. She couldn’t respond, of course, but he knew she could hear and understand him. Over the years he’d made it a point to visit her regularly and whenever he did her heart rate had calmed and leveled out. He owed her everything.

“You’re very loyal to her. She’s lucky to have you.” The hint of bitterness in her tone told him she hadn’t experienced that kind of loyalty in her life. At least not often.

“I was luckier to have her, believe me.” She’d stepped up and taken him in, shown him what true unconditional love was when he’d needed it most. And then he’d lost her to a senseless act of violence that had caved his entire world in again, and changed him forever.

Although he suspected that Georgia knew far more about that story and the rest of his background than he had previously realized. If she’d been good enough to figure out who his grandmother was and where she was kept in order to get close to him, then she’d no doubt know all about his early life. He hated being at that kind of disadvantage.

“Better come down and eat,” he said gruffly, turning so she could pass him and head down the stairs first.

She stepped past him, giving him another whiff of that clean, feminine scent that threatened to tangle up his brain. “Are the Wallaces still here?”

“No, they left last night, about an hour after you went upstairs.”

Gage was working on something for Rycroft right now pertaining to this job, and Claire was on call if Rycroft needed anything from her. Apparently Gage was former SF and a good operator, and his wife had been an NSA analyst working for Rycroft up until the op that had injured her husband and pushed him into early retirement.

Georgia descended the stairs easily, moving at a brisk pace, showing none of her earlier unsteadiness. Bautista couldn’t help but stare at the way her tight, shapely ass moved in the jeans she’d changed into.

Tearing his eyes off her rear end, he went to the stove and ladled some soup into a bowl for her.

“You look better,” Rycroft commented as Georgia headed for the table.

“Feeling better,” she answered, her tone giving nothing away, even though she was still running a slight fever and likely felt like shit.

Chairs scraped on the hardwood floor behind Bautista. When he turned around he saw that Georgia was seated on the far side of the table across from Briar and Rycroft. She was watching them warily, her expression closed as though she was bracing for an interrogation.

Bautista almost felt sorry for her. But this conversation was long overdue and with other hunters out there looking for her they couldn’t wait any longer. Their “team”, such as it was, needed answers.

Her blue eyes flashed up to his when he brought the soup over, and she forced a small smile. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.” He took the seat at the head of the table, ignoring his instinct to sit next to her.

The immediate reaction to protect her annoyed him. He wasn’t her ally. Wasn’t her friend. Wasn’t her
anything
, and he had to remember that.

Avoiding eye contact with them all, Georgia picked up her spoon and began stirring it through the soup. The quiet clink of the metal against the bowl in the silent room began to grate on Bautista’s nerves.

Bautista shot Rycroft a sharp look, noticed Briar was looking at him too.
We going to do this, or what?

Cool as ever, Rycroft leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table, watching Georgia. “So the doc called with the lab results.”

She looked up at him. “And?”

“Botulism.”

Hell
. It made Bautista furious to think of someone trying to kill her that way. Far more humane to put a bullet through her heart than to let her suffer and die such a slow, painful death.

Unless that’s what they’d wanted.

“Oh,” was all she said. “That explains a lot.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t give us a way to track whoever it was, because it’s so common.” Rycroft cocked his head, regarding her. “Wasn’t easy to find you. Took my people weeks to get a decent lead on you. I was impressed you stayed off the radar for so long, and I don’t impress easily.”

She didn’t answer, just kept stirring the soup while the steam curled from its surface in wisps.

Rycroft finally cut through the bullshit. “You might not believe it yet, but we really are here to help you. But we can’t do that unless you tell us what we need to know.”

Georgia looked up then, nailing him with a cold stare that told Bautista just how much she resented being put in this situation. Right now she was cornered and powerless. And he couldn’t blame her for hating it. “You can ask whatever you want, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you a damn thing.”

Georgia held that steel gray stare and refused to be the first to look away no matter how thick the tension in the room grew.

The corner of Rycroft’s mouth tipped upward, sending a fresh rush of anger through her. He found her amusing, did he? “We’re on the same side here,” he said quietly.

She didn’t respond to that. There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t make things worse and she had no intention of digging the hole she was in any deeper.

At the moment she was acutely aware of the three pairs of eyes fixed on her. Bad enough that he was basically interrogating her. It was unbearable that Briar and Miguel were witnessing her humiliation.

“We want the same things,” Rycroft continued in a tone that was so reasonable-sounding it set her teeth on edge. “I don’t know exactly who you were after, but I’ve got a pretty good idea. And I’ve also got a pretty good idea why you’re targeting them.”

Folding her arms, she gave him a cold smile. “Enlighten me.”

“The people you’re after, you know something about them. Something big, and they want you dead before you can expose them. That’s where we come in. To keep you alive,” he clarified, glancing to the others and back to her.

Georgia’s heart beat faster despite her every effort to remain calm, the chaotic mix of emotions churning inside her becoming harder and harder to contain. In the ultra-secret Valkyrie Program the trainers had begun breaking her down and reprogramming her when she was nothing more than a kid.

They’d purged her of her impulsivity and penchant for emotional outbursts. Now that she’d begun to allow her emotions to seep back to the surface, they were building inside her with the explosive force of a bomb.

The increasing lack of control frightened her.

Something in her expression must have given her away because Rycroft leaned forward, the sense of urgency radiating from him palpable. “Who is it?” He waited a beat. “Jamie Rossland?”

Just the mention of the name tested the limits of her control.
Don’t react. Don’t give him anything else. You’ve screwed up enough already
.

Rycroft watched her the way a hungry eagle eyed a juicy salmon. “That shooter Bautista took care of for us in the forest last night? No longer with The Company, yet after some magic, my people were able to ping a series of phone calls between him and Rossland, dating back to just after the incident with Bautista in Miami. I’m thinking that’s a very interesting coincidence.”

It was no surprise to her that Rossland would dispatch a hitter to kill her before she could leak the evidence she had against him. And the NSA must have worked for weeks to trace those calls back to them, because Rossland and the hitter must have used either encrypted or burner phones for those conversations.

She set her jaw, forced herself to take a slow, calming breath before responding. Rycroft was acting like he knew about the evidence she had. “You can’t keep me here against my will.”

He acknowledged her point with a dip of his head. “True. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll
want
to stay and help us.”

She mentally laughed at the idea but then he continued, his posture and expression radiating earnestness. “If there are dirty CIA officers and politicians out there with blood on their hands, I want to take them down. Tell me who it is and give me what you’ve got on them, and I’ll make sure they go down. I might even let you help us do it.”

She frowned at the last bit. “What do you mean?”

“You’re every bit as good as she is.” He nodded at Briar before meeting her gaze again. “I need motivated people with your skill set on my team. Everything I know about you says you’re what I’m looking for. The NSA needs more people like you.”

She flicked a questioning glance at Briar, then stared at him in disbelief. “You want to recruit me?” It instantly upped her suspicion level. Why her? He knew damn well she’d killed Garcia back in Miami, maybe he suspected her of other hits as well, only he couldn’t prove any of it. He already had two highly skilled contract killers on this team. Did he really need a third?

He nodded, a spark of wry humor warming his eyes. “Big time.”

“It’s one of the reasons we started looking for you in the first place,” Briar added. “I identified you off video footage taken in Miami and alerted Alex. After putting the pieces together it wasn’t too hard to figure out what you were doing, or why you disappeared. That upped the timeline for finding you, but we still didn’t have a strong enough message to get your attention.”

She shot a meaningful look at Miguel before turning her attention back to Georgia. “So when we discovered he’d come out of the medically-induced coma, much to everyone’s surprise by the way, we recruited him too.”

To sweeten the deal, she meant. Make the offer so irresistible that Georgia would abandon her private vendetta and sign on to be part of their team.

She didn’t dare look at Miguel right now, knowing she’d never be able to mask her emotions completely. Did he think she’d merely manipulated and used him in Miami? He must. She would, in his shoes.

Worse would be if he assumed
everything
they’d done together was all for show. Because taking him to her bed had been anything but fake, and she’d done it for the purely selfish reason that she simply couldn’t walk away from him.

Stop thinking about it. You have more important things to worry about right now.

No one said anything as she absorbed the new details. She had to admit Rycroft’s offer was damn tempting. Too tempting.

Living off the grid was exhausting. Having professional assassins on her tail made it even more so.

Teaming up with Rycroft and the others would be a huge relief in so many ways. She knew he was basically a good guy, a straight shooter, and that Briar would never work for anyone she didn’t respect. But joining with them would mean Georgia wouldn’t be able to kill her targets when they found them.

Unless…she could use this to her advantage.

Let Rycroft and the others help her get close enough to her targets that she could take them out. At least one of them, anyway.

“Just think about it,” Rycroft said, taking her by surprise when he pushed to his feet.

Georgia blinked. That was it? Interrogation over? She’d expected him to continue pushing, force her into a tighter and tighter corner until she had no choice but to capitulate.

“We’ve likely got one more day here before we have to move. Take some time to rest and mull things over. Talk with the other two about it if you want.” He paused, his gray eyes searching hers, his stare penetrating. “Like I said, we’re all on the same team here. Whoever’s behind Janaia and Frank’s murders, I want them to pay.”

She wanted that too, but by different means. Rycroft wanted them to face justice and serve jail time for what they’d done. She wanted them
dead
. Big difference. But Rycroft had resources she didn’t, and he could prove highly useful to her goal.