“I say we go take his ass out,” Braden said. “Let’s bring the fight to him.”
Ian nodded. “I’m certainly for some payback.”
Gabe grunted. “And what if he can help us?”
Heads turned in his direction.
“What are you suggesting, Gabe?” Eli asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know that I’m suggesting anything. I just wonder if killing him does more than remove a threat to us. What if he does have the means to help Ian and Braden?” He glanced over at Tyana. “And Damiano.”
“Well, our first order of business has to be getting the hell out of here,” Eli said. “We’ve got to move out and regroup then figure out what we do next.”
The others nodded. Tyana met his gaze, her eyes questioning.
“You in, sugar?” he asked softly.
She looked at the others then back at Eli. “Yeah. I’m in.”
Chapter Eighteen
They packed up, did a massive weapons check, got their technology in order and headed out, Gabe driving Ian and Braden in one four-wheel drive vehicle and Eli and Tyana in the other.
They set their rendezvous point at a hole-in-the-wall airstrip where they’d take a chopper, courtesy of Manuel Diego who ran a dubious charter service. They’d land in Puerto Santa Cruz and hop a boat to the Falkland Islands. Once there, they’d hole up in a safe house, plot their next move and wait for the jet.
Eli looked over at Tyana as they bounced and swayed along the shitty, narrow roads leading beyond the village at the base of the mountain.
“You go rogue on Falcon?”
She frowned and looked down. Her fingers curled into tight balls, and she avoided making eye contact with him.
“Jonah and I didn’t see eye to eye on what needed to be done to help Damiano.”
“So in other words, when he finds you, he’s going to be one pissed-off man. With you and with me. Only he won’t kill you. He won’t have any compunction about killing me.”
“Probably not,” she admitted.
“I love how you show me affection, sugar. Glad I don’t mind walking on the wild side, because f**king you is a serious risk to my health.”
She turned then, her eyes flashing as she glared holes through him.
He chuckled. “Now that’s what I prefer to see. All spit and vinegar. I prefer you pissed off to this meek and docile chick who’s been posing as you for the last twenty-four hours.”
“Asshole,” she muttered.
“So what was your back-up plan?” he asked. He was genuinely curious, because she seemed too smart to put all her eggs in one basket.
“Back up to what?”
“Back up to me not providing the answers you needed for Damiano. You risk pissing off Esteban by double-crossing him. So if you get here and find I can’t help you, what then?”
“I go after him,” she said simply.
“Just like that?”
She nodded. “Just like that. He’s made threats against D. As long as he lives and has the agenda of getting rid of the shifters, he’s a danger to Damiano.”
Eli shook his head. She was dead serious. No false bravado. Just calm and matter-of-fact, like she was talking about the weather or getting her nails done. The bad thing was, he totally believed her.
It made him damn uneasy. He didn’t like the idea of her going after Esteban by herself. Hell, the thought of her going in with him and the others made him uneasy enough.
“I think I have a pretty good idea of how Jonah feels,” Eli muttered.
She cocked an eyebrow and pinned him with a probing stare. “Tell me you’re not getting soft on me, Eli. I gave you more credit than for you to get all manly-man on me and bust out with the protect the poor girly-girl mantra.”
“You’re hell on a man’s ego, girl. Don’t you understand us Neanderthal types love to swoop in and save the day? Carry the damsel in distress off and f**k her senseless while she swoons in gratitude?”
She cracked a grin. “You don’t want them swooning because of your sexual prowess?”
“Well, that too.”
“Sorry, but I’ve had to learn the hard way that the only person I can rely on is me. It saves a lot of grief.”
She meant that as well. So serious. So young. Hell, she couldn’t be much more than twenty-four? Maybe twenty-five?
“Someone sure did a number on you, sugar.”
Her face darkened, and her lips pressed tightly together. Then she thrust her chin upward and stared challengingly at him. “I don’t see you relying on other people. You’re the typical loner. You have leader written all over you. Capable. Driven. Look out for your team, but you don’t really rely on them. You expect them to rely on you. Am I right?”
Her assessment made him squirm. He glared back at her. “How about we stop with the armchair psychology.”
She grinned innocently. “I will if you will.”
“Deal.”
He reached over, an unconscious gesture that he gave no prior thought to, and took her hand in his. She seemed as surprised as he felt by the tender action. He almost drew away, but she curled her fingers around his and relaxed.
“Eli, you there?”
The radio crackled as Gabe’s voice echoed through the receiver.
Eli was forced to release her hand as he picked up the radio and held it to his mouth. “Yeah, go ahead.”
“Problem, man. We need to reroute. The chopper is out.”
“What the f**k is wrong with the chopper?”
There was a long pause. “Nothing’s wrong with the chopper. It’s Manuel. He’s dead. Or at least I assume that’s who I saw being toted out in a body bag. The place is swarming with the authorities.”
Shit. “Okay then, Plan B. Haul your ass out of there and be careful. When all fails, do the one stupid thing your enemy wouldn’t expect.”
“Buenos Aires?”
“Yeah, we’ll take the jet out of there.”
“All right. I’ll see you there in a few days, then. You and Tyana be careful.”
He tossed the radio down and looked over at Tyana. “You up for a road trip, sugar?”
Chapter Nineteen
Their trip through rural Argentina was actually quite beautiful. It was country Tyana hadn’t seen before despite how many times she’d trotted across the globe.
They’d stopped for petrol twice, small dingy little places that most people who weren’t intimately familiar with the villages wouldn’t dare to slow down for. It didn’t seem to bother Eli, though. He even chatted amicably with one of the owners, an older man with sun-weathered skin and dusty, faded clothing. Eli’s Spanish was impeccable.
When Eli climbed into the SUV and they started down the winding back roads, Tyana looked curiously over at him.
“Why here?”
“Why not?”
“I figured you and your team for true blue. Red, white and blue, that is. Solid patriots. All formerly employed by Uncle Sam. Yet as far as I can tell, none of you have set foot back in the States since the deal went down in Adharji.”
He stared straight ahead, darkness falling over his face.
“We still don’t know who set us up in Adharji. You say it was Esteban. First I’ve heard of that. And interestingly enough, after that incident, all our channels were cut off. All our contacts fizzled. No one was interested in giving us the time of day. A network we’d built for over five years was gone. We were forgotten. We no longer existed. According to the U.S. government, we all died in action.”
“Ouch.”
“So maybe you’ll see why we’re not exactly knocking ourselves out to get back to the good ole U.S. of A. It’s my guess Uncle Sam will continue to ignore us as long as we stay dead. As much as we believed in what we did, I don’t think any of us are kidding ourselves that we have a future.”
“So you’ll no longer recover hostages?”
He glanced sideways at her. “We’re in a bit of a holding pattern, you know? It’s hard to think about reorganizing our business when we have two guys who turn into pissed-off kitties at a moment’s notice. Not to mention we have no resources, no contacts, no way to advertise when we’re technically supposed to be dead. Right now our priority has to be finding a way to help Ian and Braden.”
She nodded. She understood that motivation well. Falcon hadn’t taken more than a handful of assignments since Damiano’s condition deteriorated. They only accepted smaller ones that required two members of the Falcon team and any of their secondary network. Someone always stayed behind with D.
As though reading her mind, Eli reached over and took her hand again.
“I’m sorry about Damiano, Tyana. I wouldn’t have left him behind. Things went to shit fast where we were being held, and we barely escaped with our lives. But if I had known he was still alive, I wouldn’t have left without him.”
She locked gazes with him and could see the sincerity reflected in his dark eyes.
“I believe you,” she said softly.
“And,” he added as he turned his attention back to the road, “If I had the means to help him—you—I would. But I don’t have answers for you.”
Disappointment made her chest ache. She’d been so sure Eli’s stability was a sign that something could be done to help Damiano. That it was just another unexplained occurrence in a line of them heightened her despair.
She turned her gaze out her window, determined not to allow Eli to see the tears stinging her eyelids. His grip on her hand tightened as he squeezed comfortingly. But he didn’t say anything further, and for that she was grateful.
“So what do we know about Esteban?” he asked several minutes later. “Apart from the fact that we were all his little experiment.”
“He said he owns the largest pharmaceutical company in Europe and that for the last few years he’s branched into other projects, namely human experimentation. He wanted warriors. My guess is he wanted an army of shifters. The instability was an unfortunate side effect. Which also explains why he wants you so badly.”
He frowned and loosened his hold on her hand before slipping it away to grip the steering wheel. White showed around his knuckles as he navigated down the bumpy road.
“So he wants to know why I work, and the others are just collateral damage,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, exactly. He offered to be benevolent and leave Damiano off his hit list, but again, I don’t trust the piece of shit as far as I can throw him. It’s obvious he doesn’t want his failures floating around. Think of what it could do to him were it to get out that A. he was experimenting on humans, and B. that he unleashed a bunch of unstable shifters on the general populace.”
Eli nodded. “We can’t kill him. Not yet.”
“What do you suggest then?”
He glanced over at her before returning his gaze to the road. “We hunt him down and extract information from him using any means necessary. If he created this bullshit, then he might well have an idea of how to fix it. If nothing else we might get the original formula of whatever the f**k chemical agent he used on us so we can break it down and have it analyzed.”
Anticipation and, for the first time, a sense of hope crept over Tyana. She’d feel better if they had the resources of Falcon to back them, but Jonah wouldn’t be doing her any special favors for a while. Tits on the other hand…
“I have a guy who can help us,” she said.
“Thought you said Falcon was pissed at you.”
She made a face then sighed. “My position with Falcon is probably tenuous at best. Jonah…well, he runs things and he gave me a direct order not to go after you. Besides, the guy who can help us lives to annoy the piss out of Jonah. He’s the one who helped me get off the island and to Paris to my meeting with Esteban.”
“I’m listening.”
“His name is Tits. He does his own thing. Works for no one. Provides a lot of intel, backup, support, technology, you name it. Solo mercenary. Falcon’s used him a lot.”
“And what do you propose he do for us?”
She thought for a minute as she braced herself over a particularly rough patch of road. “He could gather intel on Esteban, monitor his movements so we know exactly where and what we’re looking at. Do you and your team have passports? Alternate identities?”
Eli nodded. “Yeah, got all that covered.”
“Okay then Tits could get us info on Esteban, and he could set us up a safe house somewhere close to Esteban so we can hit him when he least expects it.”
“You’re asking a lot, Tyana,” Eli said softly. He turned to glance quickly at her, his eyes dark with indecision. “You’re asking me to put not only my life but the lives of my team in your hands. You’ve made it quite clear you don’t trust me, but you’re asking me to trust you.”
She understood his reluctance, even admired it. “When it comes to saving Damiano, I’ve done some stupid things. I’ve made bad decisions. I’ve taken responsibility for them all. There isn’t a person I wouldn’t lie to, step on, or kill to help him. The way I see it, if you can help me help him, then that loyalty extends to you. Once I give my word, I don’t break it. And once you have my loyalty, that doesn’t go away.”
“And is that what you’re doing Tyana? Including me in your loyalty? Giving me your word that you’re not going to knife me in the back when you no longer feel you need me?”
“What are you really asking, Eli? I’m sensing one hell of a loaded question here.”