Codename: Nightshade (Deadly Seven Strike Force) (42 page)

Secretary Williams shoves his way through a group of American soldiers and commands them again to put down their weapons. He turns a worried glance on me and pleads for me to do the same.

I do as I’m told.

Secretary Williams isn’t young, but he’s not slowed by his advanced years. He rushes over, glancing between the three of us. “What’s going on here?”

Ace opens his mouth to explain, but I can’t let him.

No one else here understands what Nikolai has gone through but me. “Sir, you can’t take him in as a fugitive.”

Ace sighs.

Secretary Williams frowns. “Who are you talking about, Penelope?”

I feel odd standing between the Secretary and Hassan, but I focus on how Nikolai has to be feeling right now. “General Zolkov, sir.”

His eyebrows practically touch his hairline. “General… Nick is
alive
?”

I know in the spy game we’re taught that anyone can fool you. Everyone lies about something, and those with the biggest secrets are the best at hiding them.

But the look on the Secretary’s face is genuine to me. He didn’t know Nikolai was the assassin.

He looks to Ace, and I note that Ace’s reaction isn’t as sincere.

He knew before today.

How did he know?

“Yes,” Ace says. “It seems the former General was the DMG assassin we’ve been hunting, sir.”

Secretary Williams turns and walks off without another word. I stare after him in shock.

“Suck it up, Pineapple,” Ace says, slapping my arm. “Bad guys pay for their crimes.”

He saunters away, and the room starts to spin around me. This can’t be how this plays out. I couldn’t have been destined to find Nikolai only to lose him to a lifetime in prison for war crimes he didn’t want to commit.

Hassan wraps his arm around me. “Come,” he says, steering us away from where I stand.

He eases me down on to the tail end of the ambulance and calls for one of the medics to check me out.

“Are you feeling alright?” the young man asks, and I nod. He shines a light in my eyes, checks my vitals and tells Hassan that I’m fine.

I’m staring at the ground when I hear a low whistle.

“In all the remote locations of this country, I never thought I’d run into you here.”

I look up.
Marko.
Somehow, I still have the ability to be surprised. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

He smiles as he stares down at me. He’s dressed in a three-piece dark blue suit. His hair’s slicked back, and he’s the only one wearing a jacket that’s actually meant to withstand the weather outside.

“Ask your dad,” Marko says nodding to Hassan.

He’s not my dad.
I bite down on the comeback and turn to Hassan.

“We needed a distraction to gain access. When Roman decided he was done with risking his neck—”

“He’s alive? Roman made it out of New York alive?”

“He did, yes,” Hassan says. “I asked for his help once we learned where you were taken. He refused. So I approached the younger Veltriv for his assistance.”

Marko beams when I turn back to him. “I helped bust you out.”

“I saw you. Before,” I say, remembering a hazy walk through the hall. “You were here before.”

He nods. “Yeah. I went in twice before today. Once to see if you were really here and then again to case the place. It was pretty easy. Kulzkoff’s been wanting me to replace my father for a few years now. He was happy to let me tag along.”

That’s the stupidest, most reckless thing I’ve ever heard. Marko can barely tie his shoes without assistance. He should’ve never been put in this position.

I want to slap both of them over the head for risking so much to get me out.

But instead, I just say, “Thanks.”

Marko’s attention keeps sneaking to the right of the ambulance, and I lean around to see what he’s seeing. A group of medics are stationed around a gurney, working together to help whoever is strapped to the bed.

“Bloody fucking hell!”

“MacNeal,” I say, hopping to my feet.

“I told you to sedate him,” one of the medics says as I step closer.

“You put me under while I’m still in the middle of the ass end, and I’ll strangle you with this IV tube, doc,” Claymore warns.

“Mr. MacNeal, I need you to calm down,” the medic says. “We’re only trying to stitch this wound in place. I need you to lie still.”

“You’ll be lying still if you don’t let me up, you little punk.”

“Hey,” I say, pushing my way through the group around him. “Hey… what’s with the threats?”

He’s pale and shaking. I can tell he lost a lot blood. “Shade, you’re alright?”

I nod, making eye contact with the lady holding the syringe with his happy juice. She nods, and I lean in to distract him. “I’m good. You got me out.”

He sighs with a weak smile. “Aye. Good. Now where is it?”

Where is it?
Of all the things I expected him to say in this moment, that wasn’t on the list. “Where’s what?”

He looks like I just stabbed him again, only this time through the heart. “My knife, Shade. The blade I’ve carried with me since I was a wee lad.”

Oh crap. I might as well stab him again. “Uhhh…”

“Uhhh,” he echoes. He tries to sit up, but several sets of hands force him back down. “Uhhh… what the bloody hell do you mean with uhhh, Shade?”

I left it back in the facility, and by now it’s been bagged and tagged with all the other evidence in the place. It’s as good as gone.

I don’t tell him that. I don’t have a chance. In the next breath, the needle goes in, and he sags from the weight of the drugs.

I back away, feeling like complete shit. The guy just showed up to save me, and I nearly killed him and lost his most prized possession in the process.

“Thanks for the help,” the medic says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Why are you guys doing this out here and not in a hospital?”

“He wouldn’t make the trip in this state,” she says. “And this bunker is sovereign land for the moment. If we take him to a hospital, there would be lots of red tape. Here, he’s under the jurisdiction of the United States Government.”

Those types of technicalities always confuse me. Who walks around with the map of all the special bunkers that are exempt from local governments?

Marko leans against the side of the ambulance, watching every pair of hands working on Claymore.

“He’ll be okay,” I say. I hope it’s true.

“I didn’t know,” he says. Emotions are blatant on his face, emotions I never saw in all of our times together. I wonder if I should feel sad or jealous about that. I’m pretty numb right now.

“He said he kept the truth of his job a secret from you.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I knew he was a soldier. I know that’s dangerous.” He looks to me, and I see it—
fear
. It’s something a lot of people have once they’ve seen me wield a gun or they learn about my missions.

It’s ironic. This man used to beg me to handcuff him to a bed and beat him senseless. But
now
he’s afraid of me.

“Is it always like that for you guys?”

I’d be lying to say yes, and I’d be lying to say no. We kill people. We often get hurt ourselves. It’s dangerous.

I don’t say anything. I just stand there and let him vent.

He shakes his head, pressing his hand to his shoulder—where he was shot back in New York. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“Do what?” I ask.

He stares at Claymore like he’s wishing something away. “I can’t. This was fun… until it wasn’t.”

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Marko is how light he makes the world feel. I’m weighed down by pressure to perform, expectations of perfection, and questions of moral rightness every minute of my day. But he makes that all float away.

I can see the slump in his shoulders now. He feels the heaviness of this all.

Reality’s a bitch.

I lean up, brushing my fingers through his hair, and tug him down so I can kiss his forehead. “Decisions are for tomorrow, yeah?”

He keeps his eyes trained on Claymore. “Yeah.”

I want to say more. I want to fix this, but it’s not my place. My chapter with Marko has ended. I don’t know what the story of him and Claymore still holds.

Hassan calls to me, and I gladly take the invitation to step away.

“It is time for me to leave, daughter.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, holding my hand out. “Thanks.”

He smirks as he looks down at my hand. “Please consider coming with me.”

I’m not in the mood for this argument again. I’m so exhausted that I could fall flat on my face right here and pass out. Can’t he just let this go once? “Hassan, please… don’t do this. Not today.”

“I am not asking because I wish my daughter would live with me.” I make a face and he amends. “I am not
just
asking for that reason. I am simply saying my home is well protected. I can keep you… and those you bring with you… safe and shielded for as long as you wish.”

Hassan never offers me anything without a motive. I’m not sure what to make of this one. “And what profit can you make from me and my friends turning as allies to you?”

“When will you admit we’re not that different, you and I?”

“Never. I’m nothing like you. You do business with thugs just to get a buck. A buck you don’t need.”

“I do what I must to survive,” he says. “As do you.”

“I don’t make deals with murderers.”

“No, but you
do
kill people. People you’ve never met. People you don’t directly have a purpose for killing. So I ask you… which of us has more blood on their hands?”

You do
, I want to say, but I don’t. I hate when he makes sense. He’s been doing that too much lately. “What I do, I do for a reason.”

“As do I.” His voice is low, hard with feeling.

“What’s your reason?”

He debates what to tell me. I can see concession in his eyes as he explains, “When your mother told me she had given birth to a daughter, I decided to do what I do to make the world a safer place for her to live in.”

I laugh without humor. “How does selling bombs to radicals make anything safer?”

“Because I know who buys them. I know who they are fighting. I can decide whether or not to inform someone to stop them. You cannot win the game if you do not hold all the cards, daughter.”

My stomach feels heavy. “You can spin this however you want, but at the end of the day, I don’t need you to keep me safe.”

His chin lifts up and a look of pride fills his face. “I know. I wish I could say you get that from me, but it is all your doing, Penelope. I wanted to safeguard the world around you so you could never be harmed, and instead, I pushed you further away. It angered me for a long time until I realized you never needed me in that way.”

“I don’t need anything,” I say. My defiance is melting into the consuming exhaustion. That’s the only reason I’m not fighting harder right now. At least that’s what I tell myself is the reason.

“You are wrong, my love.”

My stomach knots when he calls me that.

“You need an adversary, a challenge, a threat. It is what drives you to live. It is why I continue to do what I do. And why he is the perfect man for you.”

He nods to where Nikolai is standing.

I didn’t even realize he was visible.

Son of a bitch
. How did Hassan know about Nikolai and me? I can’t process this moment. I don’t know how to live in a world where Hassan knows me better than I know myself.

“You do not have to say yes or no. Just know that my doors are yours. My home is yours. And it always has been.”

He kisses my cheek.

I don’t fight him on it. I don’t have an answer or even a clear thought about anything he just said.

Secretary Williams is talking to some official looking people as I walk over to the guards surrounding Nikolai.

“Can I talk to him?” I ask the head guard.

Nikolai looks up at the sound of my voice. He’s chained from his neck to his wrists, around his waist, and then down to his ankles. They damn near Hannibal Lecter'ed him.

He looks worn out but not beat down. He even smiles a little when he sees me.

“He’s on lock down, Agent Vincent,” the guard informs me.

I look the kid in the eye, realizing there’s something familiar about him. “Holt?” I ask, recalling him from a long, hot drive in the middle of the desert.

Goddamn, that was a lifetime ago.

His eyes widened a little as he nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Penelope, is there something I can help you with?” Secretary Williams asks as he joins us.

“Let him go,” I say. I’m not naïve, and I’m not trying to be a brat about this, but he’s not a criminal.

“I can’t do that,” Secretary Williams says.

“Sir, what he’s done… it’s not his fault.”

The man holds up his hands to stop my rant. “I know, and he’s not being taken to prison for any of it. I’m having him taken to a facility to help… undo whatever has been done to him.”

A facility
. I never thought I could hate the thought of a building as much as I do now. Nick doesn’t need more doctors poking and prodding him. He needs detox. He needs rest. He needs to get back to feeling like a human being and not some weapon to be used. A new place, or the one we just escaped… either way, he’ll just be told what to think and forced into a box again.

“Can I fly with him?” I ask.

Secretary Williams considers it for a moment and agrees. He tells the guards to prepare the plane for takeoff.

I stand in front of Nikolai, feeling like I’m a seventeen-year-old kid again. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I, uh… you know what they’re going to do?”

He nods. “It’s for the best.”

I don’t think he believes that, but it’s sort of an only option at the moment. I hear engines ignite and turn to see Hassan’s plane gearing up for takeoff. He’s still standing near the stairs, shaking hands with some of the officials who were talking to Secretary Williams a few minutes ago.

“What are you going to do?” Nikolai asks.

I hadn’t thought about that. I have no doubt that once all of Heinrich’s files are evaluated, I’ll land in the hospital room right next to Nikolai. If Justice has anything to do with it, I’ll never get out of the hospital, too.