Oxblood (20 page)

You have to know who the imposter is. We take months, sometimes years, and embed ourselves into the enemy's family just so we can find out even the smallest detail about their organization. We become one with them . . . so much a part of who they are that they don't pay attention to the tiny details. You have to pay attention to the details, Victoria.

“Claudia, can you get into the account used to communicate with Command? Check if there's any recent emails,” I asked. My gut was doing flips, and I could almost feel the pieces of the puzzle floating around my head snapping into place.

“Of course,” she answered as she tapped away at the keyboard. “That's weird. There are no recent emails from Damon to Command.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. There's nothing.”

“Is there any other way he would have reached out to Command?”

“No, but Ian could have.”

“He left a message for Director Thatcher, but as of last night he still hadn't heard back from her.”

I thought for a minute before I spoke again. I let out an exasperated sigh. “I can't believe I ignored such blaring red flags! Damon was the only one who ever asked about what Ian and I had found in the journal. Command was mysteriously taking forever to respond to him. The only lead Ian and I had for Gil's whereabouts was conveniently murdered. And Damon lied to us about his story in order to lull us into a false trust. Claudia, Damon is the mole.”

“What mole? What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Ian and I found something in the journal. Gil was telling us that there's a mole in Rogue. We thought it was Bianca. But it's not. It's Damon! We have to warn Ian and the others before it's too late.” Fear made my voice tremble and my heart pounded inside my chest.

“Okay.” Claudia's voice had an edge to it. “Everyone is already in place so we're about to become an army of two.” She pulled two guns from where they had been strapped underneath the counter and handed one to me. “This is a .22 caliber pistol. Do you remember Adam's training?”

“Yes,” I said confidently. I already had two unplanned experiences with a gun and handled myself pretty well. However misplaced the feelings may have been, I felt in control.

“If you're not sure, you can stay here if you want, Vic. I'll go in and—”

“No. I'm going with you. Gil may be in there, and now is not the time to sit back and see what happens. We are Rogue-14 and we stick together,” I said resolutely.

“Okay. Take a deep breath and follow me.”

She opened the back of the van quietly, slid out, and I shut the door behind us. The click of the latch seemed so loud, like an announcement for our enemy that we were on the move. We stepped onto the sidewalk. Five paces into our rescue mission and we were stopped cold in our tracks.

“Going somewhere, ladies?” the voice said, inches behind me.

Chapter 20

Bianca stepped around in front of us, the cold steel of her gun pressed to my temple.

Where the hell was Adam and his expert aim?

Rage boiled up inside me at the sight of the woman who had led the ambush at the hotel. The woman who was surely responsible for the thugs who had used Ian as a punching bag. The woman who had turned on her own.

“You're early, Victoria,” she said in an Eastern European accent. The sun glinted off the gun's barrel. In one quick move, she grabbed me with her left hand and held the gun to my back with the right. “But since you are here now, we might as well go in—after you empty your weapons, that is.”

“What the hell, Bianca? I thought you were one of us?” Claudia said through gritted teeth.

“I was, once. But I received a proposal that was much more lucrative than anything INTERPOL could ever offer,” she hissed. “Now, the guns, ladies? Please don't make this any more difficult for me than it already is.” She smiled at us, showing two rows of perfect teeth.

Claudia hesitantly released the clip from her gun. I did the same and Bianca snatched them, stowing them in the bag slung over her shoulder.

“Thank you, darlings. Now, Claudia, be a dear and walk ahead a few paces so I can get to know Victoria a little better.” She grabbed my elbow, her fingers cutting into the flesh on my arm.

“Let Vic go, Bianca. She's not even a real Rogue agent,” Claudia pleaded as we walked.

“Are you kidding me? Victoria is our ticket. No one on your pathetic little team is going to let anything happen to her. She stays,” she replied harshly.

She directed us to an alley behind the pastry shop, then through the back door. We maneuvered around giant electric mixers and massive bags of flour until we entered the front of the empty store. It smelled sweet and sugary, just the way a pastry shop should. The glass case was filled with colorful treats, and the wooden shelves behind the counter displayed confections of every shape and size.

Bianca pointed to a small table with chairs against the front window of the shop. “Sit,” she commanded, like we were dogs.

“Where are the others?” Claudia asked bitingly.

“They'll be here soon enough,” Bianca replied, turning on her heels and leaving. Two armed men entered through the kitchen and stood guard when Bianca left. One of them had a bandage over his nose, and I recognized him as Thug One, the guy who I'd fought in the factory home base. He winked at me and I knew he was itching to settle the score.

I looked around the shop, taking note of any other escape routes, but couldn't find anything besides the front and back doors. Besides, making a run for it would be impossible with the goons standing over us. We had no weapons, no backup plan, and no support from Command. When Ian, Carter, and Eva arrived, they'd be stripped of their weapons, too.

I put my face in my hands and tried not to cry out of frustration. Ian kept me on the team because I was supposed to be observant and intuitive. Instead, I let my guard—and Ian and the team—down.

“What happened to Adam?” I whispered to Claudia.

“Adam is an expert marksman. He would have taken Bianca out if he saw her holding a gun on you. Damon must have gotten to him already.” Claudia dropped her eyes sadly. “Adam is gone.”

“Shut it. Don't make me use this before it's time.” Thug One shifted his gun menacingly.

I was defeated. I had flown halfway around the world to find my brother only to be trapped in a pastry shop that was surely going to be my deathbed. I wouldn't let myself cry, though. If Paolo were going to kill me, so be it. And if Damon were the one who pulled the trigger, I'd never give him the satisfaction of seeing just how scared I was.

Voices echoed from the back room. The tone was casual. I heard Carter's voice ring out a too-loud guffaw as he pretended to find someone's joke funny. Despite knowing they were about to walk into the same trap Claudia and I had, my body flooded with relief.

Eva emerged first. Her eyes widened when she saw that Claudia and I were not only there, but that we were being guarded by two men with guns. We got the same response from Ian and Carter as they followed her in. But the biggest eyes came from Gil as he walked through the door and saw his little sister being guarded by a trained gunman. It took everything in me not to respond.

Poker face
,
Vic.
Poker face.

I took Gil in from head to toe. He was thinner than he was when he left home, and he had dark rings around his eyes like he hadn't slept in weeks. He was in desperate need of a haircut, but he was still my handsome brother. And most importantly, he was alive.

“Who is this?” Ian asked. “I thought this was a closed-door deal, Paolo?” Ian faced the last man to enter the room. “What's with the girls and gunmen?”

So that was the infamous Paolo. He was tall like Ian and Carter, but his short, graying black hair made it difficult to guess his age. He wore a khaki suit with a white shirt halfway unbuttoned. He didn't even try to hide the smug look on his face as he drew his gun.

“It is a closed-door deal,” he answered. “The deal is that you're all going to die so we can continue our business without your interference.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Carter interjected as he held Eva close to his side. “My wife and I just want a child. You said you could give us a child!” He was good. If I didn't already know what a smart-ass he was, I would have been tempted to believe he was just another pretentious businessman used to getting whatever he wanted.

“Please. You said you could help us,” Eva added, looking distraught.

“My goodness, Carter. That is one of your best performances yet!” Damon said as he sauntered through the doorway, gun in hand, three more henchmen fanned out beside him. As Ian, Carter, and Eva pulled their weapons, the armed men pointed their guns at Claudia and me. Damon trained his barrel on Gil. “You can put those on the floor and slide them over now, thank you.”

“You're out of your goddamn mind if you think I'm going to hand over my weapon,” Ian said harshly. His right arm flexed as he tightened his grip on the handle of his gun.

Damon motioned to the henchman guarding me, and I felt the firm grip of his hand on my bicep. In response, Ian took a step toward me while keeping his gun pointed at Damon. Carter and Eva alternated their aim between Paolo and the henchmen.

“I don't want to, but I'll kill her if I have to,” Damon said flatly.

Ian looked at me as he, Carter, and Eva laid their guns down and kicked them away, but not without Carter using every Italian curse word he knew.

“You're working with Paolo, Damon? How could you?” Eva demanded.

“I'm not working with him,” Damon replied. “He works for me.”

Ian's nostrils flared and his face flushed with anger. Damon was the mysterious figure Ian had been chasing. All this time, he had been right under his nose.

“You should go say hello to your sister, Gil. She's traveled a very long way to find you,” Damon said, his voice dripping with false sincerity.

“What the hell is she doing here, Ian?” Gil barked as he rushed across the room to me.

“Trust me, I tried to send her home,” Ian told him. There was a bite to his tone, angry that he hadn't been more forceful or I hadn't been more agreeable.

Gil threw his arms around me. He stroked my hair and held me tightly to him. “Why didn't you listen to him? This wasn't how this was supposed to play out. You were supposed to tell him about Maria and he was supposed to send you home!”

“I wasn't going to just leave you—” The thug who had my arm let it go when I yanked it from him to hug my brother. I had missed Gil so much. I studied his face and brushed his messy hair to the side. He looked the same, but there was a hardness in his eyes that I didn't remember.

“When did you know Damon was part of this?” I asked.

“The Cappolas had me forging immigration documents for Paolo,” Gil began. “When Damon showed up, I thought Ian had sent him to get me. He made it clear that was not his intent when he took his gun and cracked me on the head. I escaped a few days later and sent you the journal.”

“I hated to be so aggressive with you, but I thought it best to establish what our relationship was going to be like going forward,” Damon said plainly, his lips curling up slightly at the corners.

“
Going forward
?” I questioned.

“Yes,” Damon answered. “I trusted Paolo to keep a hold on Gil, but apparently that was a difficult task. Now that both Paolo and Gil have learned their lessons, I do not anticipate any more trouble.” I looked at Paolo and noticed that a bandage on his left hand covered the place where his pinky finger should have been. “It took us some time to find him. Fortunately for us, he never made it to the US Embassy in Rome.”

“But you were part of this team—this family,” Ian said with a glance at me. He finally got it. “I trusted you.”

“And that was your mistake.” Damon's stone-cold face matched his icy tone. “I did what was necessary to find out how close INTERPOL was to finding me. Being on your incredibly boring team gave me the access to everything I needed. Although I will say that things got much more exciting when Victoria showed up.” The snakelike grin crossing Damon's face made me want to throw up.

“So what now? You're going to take Gil and just kill the rest of us?” Claudia challenged. “That's not very creative of you, Damon.”

He let out an annoyed sigh. “You're right. It's not.” He grazed his eyes creepily along the length of my body. “I'm taking Victoria with me, too. I showed her picture to a few clients, and I've got a buyer lined up already.”

“Like hell you're taking my sister anywhere!” Gil shouted as he stepped protectively in front of me.

“Take them,” Damon said flatly to his henchmen. Within seconds, the thugs had Gil and me by the arms and were dragging us toward the front windows. The others made moves to save us, but their efforts were futile. Without guns, there was nothing they could do.

“It's going to be okay, Victoria,” Ian said as reassuringly as he could, his eyes catching mine from across the room.

“I know,” I lied.

“What do you want, Damon? You want to run? Run. Just leave Gil and Victoria. They're not part of this team,” Ian argued.

“Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt them. Gil is far too valuable to my business. As for Victoria, if you come after her, I'll kill her. You've all come to love her too much to risk her life. Isn't that right, Ian?

Ian looked at me with soft eyes. Did he regret meeting me? Everything he told me—that you couldn't have friends in this business, that feelings just got in the way—was proving to be true. But we had found something in each other we didn't know we had been looking for. That was worth it, right?

And Gil. I had finally gotten him back, only to lose him again.

I wondered if Damon was right. Would they all stand down just because they didn't want to risk me getting hurt? Or was I simply collateral damage, something not worth risking their entire operation for? Suddenly, I felt terrible, like I had compromised the integrity of the team. I worked to break down Ian's emotional wall, but I should have left him alone. I was the key, as Bianca told me. I was the weakest link.

“He wasn't there,” Bianca said, storming in from the back room.

“What do you mean he wasn't there? Adam never breaks protocol. You must have been on the wrong roof,” Damon chastised.

“I wasn't on the wrong roof. He wasn't there,” she reiterated aggressively.

Claudia and I assumed they had already taken Adam out when he didn't save us from Bianca. If he was safe, we actually had a chance of escaping.

Damon thought for a moment. “Okay. Let's move.” He motioned to the men holding Gil and me, and they pushed us forward. There was no way in hell I was going with Damon. I'd rather die than be treated and sold like property. More than that, I wasn't going to make the team compromise the mission. They had a job to do, which was to take Damon down and end his human-trafficking ring. I was just one person. The lives of countless children and their families were worth saving.

I looked down at the gun pointed at my side.
Someone forgot the second rule of gun safety.
I gave Ian a determined look and took a deep breath. He must have seen me evaluate the gun because the last thing I heard was Ian yelling for me to stop.

I grabbed the gunman's hand and jammed my finger on top of his in the trigger guard and pulled. I fell to the ground, the pain exploding in my body like a bomb going off. I gripped my side and saw warm blood seeping through my fingers. My vision blurred. I didn't know what damage I had done, but it didn't matter. With me down, Damon's card was out of play for the moment, and Ian and the others could act without hesitation.

I lay in a heap on top of the gunman for only a moment before Eva kicked him in the face. His blood spattered across my neck. He got up as fast as he could, rolling my body off of him. He was barely on his knees when the sole of someone's shoe connected with his chest and he went flying through one of the windows. He tried to come back through, but suddenly he fell, his lifeless body folded over the window frame, blood dripping down the shards of broken glass.

The door shattered around me like it had been broken from the outside. Wood from tables and chairs ricocheted around the room as they were hit by bullets meant for human targets. Bodies slammed against the display cases, splattering glass and pastry remnants everywhere. Then the gunfire stopped. All I could hear were the sounds of punches and kicks making contact.

Blood flowed from Paolo's face as Ian held him by the collar and punched him repeatedly. Paolo grabbed Ian's shirt and head-butted him, knocking Ian off balance for only a split second before Ian's retaliatory blow sent Paolo crashing into the already destroyed dessert case. Pastry bits exploded into the air, sweetening the iron smell of blood and gunpowder. When I licked my lips, I was taken back to my birthday dinner with Tiffany when we indulged on huge slices of cheesecake.