Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (11 page)

“What do you want?”

“I want you to do the job you’re trained to do.”

“I can’t,” Aidan said, feeling lower than cow shit.

“Why?”

“I told Prescott I’d come back once I killed Bartek.” It was the only resolution he could give his parents, himself. Aidan knew if he knocked out enough lunkheads, he’d eventually make it to Moscow and Bartek—as long as he kept his real identity under wraps.

“You’re putting me at risk by coming here,” said Aidan.

“The world is at risk,” said Oliver. “I need someone trained who can assist some of my men on a mission.”

“Find someone else.”

“There is no one else. Listen to the offer. If you don’t like it, then I’ll go away and you won’t see me again.”

Aidan nodded shortly and Oliver started talking. He guaranteed that Aidan would have operational freedom, that when he wasn’t needed, he could step back in the ring as Rage. “I’ll give you all the freedom I can, and you’ll be using your training to do some good.”

“Who are you with?”

“We’re financed with shadow funds from the State Department. Our operation is outside the bounds of a single government in theory, but most of the money is from the USA. If you work with us, you’ll find operatives from most friendly nations.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You’re free to walk at any time if you don’t like what I have to offer. At least come take a look around. This was your last fight for the
summer.”

Aidan promised to contact him and Oliver left him with a slip of paper on which was written only a phone number. That was the beginning.

For four years, he’d run missions for Oliver as Aidan and continued fighting his way to Bartek as Rage. True to his word, Oliver had never stood in the way of his fights until Dima had made contact about the Synthesis Agenda in Moscow.

Aidan sighed. So many people were going to die, but Oliver wouldn’t point him in a direction. He thought of the people at the test site they’d been too late to stop, remembered the blood the leaked into the whites of their eyes and the way their coughing had sounded before they drowned in their own blood. It chilled him.

What had Oliver signed him on for, if not to prevent this?

Even if Aidan gave up on his duty and took Sophie out of the country, there was no where they could go where Oliver wouldn’t follow. Caleb would no doubt be sent after him, and that was a fight he wasn’t eager to have. No, taking her away would just be lighting a fuse that would eventually blow both of them straight to hell, compliments of
Second Division. Nothing was more dangerous than a rogue agent with operational knowledge.

“I have a question,” Sophie said, breaking into his thoughts.

“What is it?”

“What are you trying to stop?” Before he could refuse to answer, she raised a hand to forestall his protests. “I don’t care about the specifics, and I understand that you can’t tell me. But I can’t sleep at night without feeling like I’m drowning in terror for the people I love.”

Her face flushed as she gained momentum and her hands whirled through the air. Aidan felt his heart clench.

“It’s just that maybe I should tell
Adele to leave Rome or Lyle to pack up and get out of DC. I have friends all over Europe, Aidan, and I’m scared to death. Every minute I spent with you is a minute they don’t have to get out of danger. If I can save someone I love…I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

He didn’t respond, couldn’t even look at her, but that didn’t make the rush of words stop.

“I wouldn’t even have to say why they had to leave. Not that it was something bad. I’d come up with something else, I swear. I would. Just tell me. I can invite them to Rome. Say something bad happened to me. But please, Aidan. A clue. A city. Anything.”

“Aren’t you scared for yourself?”

“You’ll protect me,” she said simply, as if it wasn’t even a question. He stood, turned his back to her and stalked to the window. His own screw-up in Dubai put the one person in the world naïve enough to trust him in his hands, and damn him for a fool, but he wanted to offer her the same faith.

It was such a foreign concept, he thought, standing at a window in the middle of London, completely taken over by a girl whose head barely brushed his chin when they stood chest to chest. The situation was so bizarre that Aidan actually felt laughter bubble in his throat, thought he could have laughed until his sides split.

Sophie just watched him from the bed. She trusted him, he thought again. Trusted him to protect her.

Still, doubts prodded his mind. She was Lyle’s daughter in her heart if not by blood.

But damn it, he wanted to tell her. Wanted to lay his troubles on the table and share them with someone for the first time in a decade. She was too small to shoulder them, but they’d never be hers. Two days from now, she’d be on her way home.

He’d be trying desperately to find the key to stopping Synthesis before the endgame began.

He’s beautiful
. Sophie studied Aidan while he stood close enough to the glass that his breath left a fog behind. She had always known he was sexy, but she hadn’t realized just how truly beautiful he was until now. The strong line of his jaw gave way to a corded neck that she wanted to press her lips against.

She didn’t want to talk about ugly things. It was their last night together. But she had to know now. It was her last chance. So she waited, barely breathing, until he turned around and sat in one of the stiff fabric chairs that sat near the windows.

“It’s called Synthesis,” he said. “I’d tell you that your adoptive father is the one who sponsored, engineered and supported the virus, but you won’t believe me. So believe this: its original purpose was biological warfare, but the researchers found something more nefarious in their creations.”

“What?”

“They found a way to make it airborne and heat resistant.”

“So?”

“Synthesis was the project. Like I said, it started in a government lab and was designed for biological warfare. But then The Hellenic Agency got ahold of it.”

“
The Hellenic Agency?”

“A terrorist organization that Lyle works for,” Aidan explained with a harsh sigh. “They took the properties of the virus and built it into a harsher weapon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sophie, he
put it into a bomb. When it explodes, it’ll take out everyone in a five mile radius—but that’s just the beginning. The virus will spread like wildfire. By the time proper containment is in place, it’s estimated that more than 100 miles in any direction will be infected—and that’s if the wind is in our favor, not Synthesis’s. Everything in its path will die.”

“Oh my god.” Sophie felt terror arch through her body. She’d known it was bad, but what he was describing would kill more people than a nuclear bomb.

“I can’t stop it until I find the container, and even then it’s going to be a fucking challenge if I can’t get my hands on the package.”

“What’s in the package?”

“One of the labs in Moscow had notes on a cure. We could have stopped it. Now only Lyle can, but he won’t. He’s the architect of this whole thing.”

“He didn’t,” Sophie insisted, straightening in her seat. “He would never do that.”

“I don’t want to argue with you.”

“I don’t either.” She sighed. “How do you find the bomb?”

“I don’t know. I thought Veronica would lead me to it, but that was a dead end.”

He didn’t say anything else for a few minutes, just strode across the room, took a pen from his suitcase, and sat back down with it clenched in his fist. Across the napkin he’d painstakingly laid flat, he began to draw a series of lines.

“This is what the Synthesis virus looks like. Second Division has a small sample of it in the lab. Oliver has some of the best doctors and scientists in the world working on a cure but, damn it Sophie, they can’t even fucking get close to it. The thing is lethal and it spreads fast through fluid without the weaponization that Lyle designed. The people who stole it, who discovered it, are already dead.”

“How?”

“They took the petrie dish from the lab where it originated and transferred a small sample to another. But the couple who brought it to us, they died within hours of their arrival. They must have come into contact with it. After twelve hours in the presence of the contained sample.”

“Then how do you have people working on it?” Sophie pictured a lab filled with dead scientists.

“We have it contained now. If we didn’t have the finest technology in the world, we still wouldn’t even be able to get anyone near it. As it is, three more people have died. If this shit hit the world, you’re looking at mass extinction. And it was made. On purpose.”

She knew Aidan was thinking of Lyle and wanted to grab him, to shake him and insist that her foster father had nothing to do with the creation of any designer disease. He’d spent his whole life fighting to make things better for other people. Still, she knew that while she could yell, scream, insist, he wouldn’t believe her. It didn’t matter.

“What if you’re wrong about Lyle?”

“I’m not.”

“But what if you are?”

“Nothing in the world would convince me of it.” Sophie nodded and took a deep breath, accepting the truth of his words and what that meant for them.

“Where does Veronica fit into all this?”

“She met with a man in Moscow and killed him. He had the cure notes—the only thing that might have lessened the fallout. It’s gone now, to wherever she’s hol
ed up with Lyle.”

“I can’t believe this. I can’t hear this.” She stood up and backed away from him, hitting the wall. He sprang to his feet, walked toward her.

“I know it’s a lot to take in.”

“How do you know he wasn’t a bad man?”

“What?

“Your contact. I don’t think reputable labs deal in cures for secret viruses.”

“Dima worked for Lyle, in one of his underground labs. The man left and he stole the notes, the only things that could help us and this woman left him bleeding in the gutter. This woman who works for your stepfather.”

“Adopted,” she said, listless.

Aidan grabbed her upper arms, shook her twice and lowered his face to look into her eyes. “Why can’t you see what he is? Why do you protect him?”

Lyle wasn’t a bad man. The words kept repeating in her mind, driving her crazy and Aidan was so close, too close and she couldn’t think. The room spun once, righted, and she pushed past him.

“I’m going out.”

“Not alone.”

“What, the rules change between Iran and London? I’m not going to leave you, Aidan. We’re going to meet Oliver tomorrow. But I need air.” He started to follow her toward the door.

“And space,” she almost sobbed. “Just leave me for an hour. Just an hour.”

He took off his watch, tightened it on her wrist. “An hour. If you don’t come back, I’m coming to find you.”

Sophie looked at him, shook her head sadly. “Of course I’m coming back. Where else do I have to go?”

She shut the door with a soft click and he couldn’t do anything but let her go.

Chapter Fifteen

She pushed through the doors of the hotel and waded out onto the sidewalk. Water soaked through her clothes, and Sophie damned herself for forgetting her jacket in the hotel room. But she couldn’t have stayed another second, not with him large and hot in front of her.

Not when she couldn’t breathe without picturing people dying in the streets.

In school, she’d watched videos on the plague and the death carts wheeled around to carry bodies to mass graves or burnings. To think of it in modern terms was madness—but people were going to be dying all around her and she couldn’t stop it.

Nor could Lyle, she comforted herself. He was innocent.

She needed to tell Aidan that. To tell him everything about Lyle and about her. If he wanted to stop Synthesis, he was looking in the wrong place. No matter her own vendettas, stopping the project had to be more important.

Immediately she wiped that thought from her mind. Aidan said it himself; there was nothing she could say or do to convince him. Sophie knew that when he realized she’d lied to him, he wouldn’t trust her anyway.

Besides, the light in his eyes—a place of fire and madness that only glowed when he spoke about Lyle—made it clear that she couldn’t get through to him. Even if she was willing to try, she’d only get burned.

But he’d told her the truth.

That stopped her in her tracks, abruptly enough that a man with a newspaper tented over his head slammed into her, then circled around with an angry glare. Sophie ignored him and took refuge in a nearby department store.

She glanced at the watch Aidan latched on her arm and saw that she had forty minutes left. Sophie gave up on dresses when nothing distracted her from her whirling thoughts, and moved to the perfume counter. The shop girl sprayed one that smelled like crisp apples on her skin and she bought a bottle, enjoying the light fragrance even while she glanced around the store anxiously and checked her watch again.

He’d almost gone after Sophie a dozen times, but restrained himself. Instead he’d pulled out the laptop that he’d had Sarah messenger over to him and logged into the site where he could follow
the tracker implanted in the watch he’d put on her. He watched her walk aimlessly through the street, go into a shop, and then continue walking. A pause. More walking.

It wasn’t that he thought she’d run out to tell half of London about what could happen. Aidan just didn’t want her to be scared and alone.

She had a right to know, he told himself. Lyle would destroy her for his own gain if she gave him the chance, and Aidan couldn’t let that happen. Not now that she had him to protect her.

The walls of the room seemed to press in on him, and soon he couldn’t stop himself from pacing. Deciding that she had ten minutes before he went after her, Aidan put on his coat, folded hers over his arm, and then let it fall to the floor when she marched back into the room.

Her hair was dark, swollen with rain. He’d never seen a person look so lost.

“You need to get dry,” he said, taking off his own jacket and grabbing a towel from the bathroom. He ran it through her hair and down her torso until it was damp.

Sophie couldn’t speak. It was all coming to an end soon and she wanted Aidan so much, no matter what it cost her. So she raised her eyes to his, full of promise, and then lunged for him.

It hit hard. The hunger. She pressed her wet, lithe body to his, devoured his mouth before his brain could catch up with his body. Sophie knew he could feel her breasts pressing damp circles through his shirt and still she wasn’t close enough.

Unable to remain passive, Aidan closed his arms around her and touched his lips to hers. Their tongues explored each other as she pushed her hands restlessly at his coat, wanting it off him.

He wanted to ask if she was sure, wanted to see if she was okay, but she moved his arms apart with surprising strength,
yanked off his jacket, and pushed him again, away from the door. She smiled. Smiled. It was as if someone had hit the on switch in his brain and, though she was soaked and lost with what she’d learned, he couldn’t stop himself any more than he could stop a typhoon.

While she tried to undo the buttons on his shirt without taking her lips from his, he simply pulled the two halves of her shirt apart, letting buttons rain to the floor. Her skin was already warming and when he had the shirt on the floor, he roamed his hands over her back to heat her further.

She mewled deep in her throat, and he moved his lips from hers, traced them down her pale cheek, her neck, then licked a light path across her collarbone.

Sophie’s breasts felt heavy, abraded behind the lace. When he slipped his fingers between the fabric and her skin, she gloried in the heat. The press. Then he pushed down the fabric,
moved his hands at the back to unhook it, and followed his fingers with his mouth.

With one hand covering
her breast and his lips wrapped around her nipple, Sophie’s knees buckled on a long moan. He guided her back onto the bed and rested between her bent knees, lapping his tongue over one breast, then the other. He sucked hard. She squirmed under him, already desperate to feel him inside her.

“You want this,” Aidan said, his breath hot on her ear while his fingers gently squeezed her nipples.

“I want
you
,” she said. “God, Aidan.”

He laughed and ground his erection against her. She moved her hips up to him until he pulled away, reaching down to unzip her pants. The soft, black fabric opened up but he didn’t move it down her hips. Instead he lowered his body to rest next to hers and, taking her mouth with his again, ran his palm down her bare stomach and into her panties.

She was wet against his hand. Almost mindless to be inside her, he had to be sure she was ready for him. He circled her moisture around her clit, felt his cock harden to the point of pain when she moaned, started begging against his mouth for release. But he wanted to watch, wanted to see her go over the precipice.

He pushed two fingers inside her, slowly, stretching the velvet softness of her. Then, when she felt like fireworks were going off inside of her, he used them to stroke. And pushed his thumb against her clit again.

She erupted against his hand, panting and almost crying with the joy of it. He rubbed and petted, used his fingers inside her to mimic his cock and watched her until the tremors passed. Then he pulled back, pushed her pants down, then her panties and stood, drinking in her naked form reclining on the bed.

He was beautiful. So tall and broad above h
er. Her body still shook where he’d used his hands on her. Her nipples felt raw and aching. More than anything in the world, she wanted him in her, wanted him to push inside her and thrust over and over until she came.

Once he was rid of his pants, Aidan knelt between her legs again. He touched her, where she was wet and soft, then lowered his head and licked her belly, sucked a trail down her torso until he reached her cunt.

Lapping at the wetness, at where he’d made her hot and sweet, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. His erection was straining, she was pulling at him, making those noises in her throat again.

He rose up, she met him with her mouth, and then
Aidan pushed inside her. She came again on a long, slow scream. Then he started to move.

Her skin felt tight. Too tight. He was so hot. So big. Pumping in and out of her and she couldn’t focus.
He was panting, telling her how beautiful she was, so sexy, how he was going to make her come again, how he wouldn’t stop until she came on his cock.

She did, crying, curling her fingers into his back. He let himself come, shaking on top of her, then rolled to the side and just held her, one hand languidly stroking her
spine.

While Aidan slept, Sophie slipped from his arms—which was not as difficult as he’d told her in Iran—and went into the bathroom. The harsh lights dulled the afterglow, and made her feel a little more grounded. Leaning over the faux-marble counter, she traced her collarbone and saw the faint smudges where his mouth had been.

She hadn’t thought it would be like that. Sex with Aidan was explosive, disarming and ultimately painful, though she could tell that he was being careful with her body. The slight bruises didn’t bother her. Her mind was the
thing courting disaster.

In the space of an hour, he’d changed her. Sophie had one lover in high school, and never got the chance to do it again after what had happened. She’d loved that boy with his angel mouth, or so she thought—but he hadn’t brought her pleasure the way Aidan did.

Aidan’s stormy lovemaking—and she couldn’t call it fucking, because she felt it so much deeper—made Sophie understand for the first time just what she was missing. Even if she survived the next day, it was hard to imagine a future where it ever happened again.

“So much for waiting until things are calm,” Aidan said, walking up behind her without making a sound and wrapping his arms around her waist. His five o’clock shadow scratched her shoulder as she leaned into his broad chest.

“When I left tonight, I—.”

“It was a lot to take in. I know that. Just wasn’t sure you’d be back.”

“I knew I wanted you,” Sophie said, turning in his embrace and laying a soft kiss on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” He was serious now, searching her face for lingering doubts or regrets.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She grinned, hoping to dispel his worries. “I mean, you made me come three times, so I’m a little tired but…”

“I meant are you okay after what I told you?” Aidan’s brain was obviously still fogged from being inside her. Mind-numbingly good sex had a way of doing that to a man, even when he was the one bringing her pleasure.

“I’m completely fine,” she lied. “Take me back to bed.”

Aidan gave Sophie her space the next morning, letting her dress and put on her makeup in the quiet of the bathroom while he watched the news from the hotel bed. She’d greeted the morning and afternoon in his arms, making love again in the quiet light. It had been slow, intimate and felt too much like goodbye for him.

After, she’d seemed melancholy. Considering everything she’d gone through in the last few weeks, he couldn’t blame her for it.

Still, it was difficult to stop himself from barging in and asking what she was thinking about. So he occupied himself with thoughts of the immediate future.

More than anything, Aidan wanted to tell Sophie that Oliver was a non-issue. He was completely off the table. But he couldn’t say that with any amount of honesty. Before he was anything else, Aidan was a soldier.

So instead he tried to convince himself that he wasn’t lying to either of them. While Oliver wasn’t a particularly kind or forgiving man, he was logical. He’d see easily that the soft, sunny woman in the bathroom wasn’t Veronica, who was all hard edges with sunken skin from years of chain-smoking.

He would ask Oliver, Aidan decided, if there was a way for Sophie to be in his life now. If it seemed like it wouldn’t hurt her chances with Oliver, maybe Aidan would even admit that she knew about Synthesis. Even if Lyle had never let anything slip over the damn Easter ham, she might be able to tell Oliver something useful. Maybe she could promise to quit teaching, come work for them. Second Division always needed secretaries.

Immediately, he hated himself. Rather than change for her, Sophie had to change for him. Was that always how he’d think? Aidan wasn’t sure if he could live with himself in a world where she was slowly eaten up by a life she wasn’t meant to be part of.

Sophie came out of the bathroom wearing a simple white sundress.

“It’s
kind of warm again today,” she explained when she caught him looking at her.

“You look beautiful,” he said, and she blushed.

They had two hours before they had to meet Oliver and it would take an hour to get across town. Aidan walked over to the refrigerator and took out two pieces of pizza, set them on one of the china plates, and then warmed them in the microwave. He watched them spin around and around.

“Can I have one?” Sophie was looking at him from the mirror, where she’d stopped to adjust a flaw he couldn’t see in her dress.

“They’re both for you. I’m not hungry.” He was still watching the revolving plate. She walked over and put her arm around his waist, leaning against him.

“It’s all going to be okay, Aidan.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one telling you that?”

“Things might change after today but it won’t be your fault.”

“Don’t. Just don’t.” He pulled away from her, though her shoulders stiffened, and took a seat at the table. “This is all because of me. Because I fucked up.”

“Because you’re trying to do what’s right,” she insisted. “I hope that, no matter how tonight goes, you won’t blame yourself later.”

“I’m scared for you,” he said when she sat across from him and immediately began cutting up her slices of pizza.

“Yeah,” she laughed. “Me too.”

She chewed her way through the first piece in silence, watching him
watch her. More tense than she could remember being with him—tension is not what she’d call being tied to a bed and interrogated—her stomach turned over. She wasn’t scared for herself. She was scared of losing him.