4-Bound By Danger (25 page)

“I won’t disappear.”

“You’re either stubborn or stupid.”

“I’m not going to stand here and justify what I’ve done to you. I don’t know what your fucking problem really is—”

“You weren’t honest.”

“Don’t even fucking go there,” Jace shouted. “I had my reasons.”

“Not to trust me?”

“It’s not about that.”

Clint wasn’t really sure what made him angrier, the fact that Jace was in danger or the Fed thing, but he was in no state of mind to untangle it now.

“I didn’t tell anyone, not even Sawyer, and he and I almost goddamned died together, okay?”

“That’s supposed to make it all right?”

“If I knew how to do that, I would’ve.” Jace was breathing hard—emotion, not exertion, and Clint wanted to go to him and kiss the hurt away.

But, like always, and now more than ever, there was too much between them. A mountain to climb, and Clint was standing at the bottom looking up, and it was too damned high this time.

“You made your choice,” Clint said.

“I made several choices, all of them to keep the people I love safe,” Jace countered.

“Don’t you dare bring love into this,” Clint told him, wasn’t surprised when Jace threw the first punch.

It was a physical fight in which there would be no winner. And although both knew that they’d lose, no matter what, they couldn’t stop, not until they were both panting and angrier than they were when they started.

Finally, they stumbled away from each other, pissed and stunned and hurt. Jace’s lip was bleeding, and Clint wanted to reach out and cradle him, tell him he was sorry, but he couldn’t. The walls had gone back up hard, and the trust that had built up was smashed.

Jace shook his head, spat blood on the floor. “Fuck you for not trusting me.”

“Right back at you.”

“I couldn’t risk Kenny’s life.”

“But you could risk mine?”

“I would never have let anything happen to you.”

“Yeah, right.” Clint’s laugh was harsh. “You made your choice before we got together. I don’t blame you for choosing family over me, but I do blame you for not trusting me enough to tell me.”

“If you believe that, we never had anything at all.” Jace’s face looked like stone, his voice hollow.

“My ass is on the line—literally!” Clint roared. “And if you fucked up what I spent years doing—”

“I would never do that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Jace seemed to sag a little at his words, like he’d been hit with a physical blow. But he regained his composure quickly. “The intel I gave the Feds about the warehouse and the Colombians—”

“Was exactly what I was dealing with—what I had the CIA take care of. Exactly what I told you,” Clint finished.

“After the fact, Clint—you told me after you rose from the goddamned dead, okay? And I knew it months before you told me—before we slept together. I told you—I knew about the warehouse before you did. I figured out later on that it was part of your plan—the reason Tomcat died. I assumed you had undercovers in place—new ones—and I haven’t said a goddamned word to the Feds about the new warehouse. That could’ve gotten Kenny into WITSEC and me off the hook months ago. But I said nothing.”

Dammit, Clint wanted to believe him, but the boy said he would’ve done anything to keep his cousin safe.

He kept you safe, too.

And he just might be the reason you lose your entire career.

He didn’t know what to believe, but he did realize that he didn’t want to do any more damage. Instead, he grabbed as much of his gear as he could manage and got into his car and drove to the nearest hotel.

Jace called but he ignored the message. Didn’t ignore the one from his supervisor that came in around three in the morning.

“Got a job and a jet waiting.”

“I’ll be on it,” Clint assured him.

Before Clint boarded, he erased Jace’s message without listening to it. And he wasn’t sure which one of them was being more stubborn.

Chapter Thirty

Several weeks passed with no word from Clint, but when his phone rang in the middle of the night, Jace dove for it. But instead of Clint finally answering a call, it was Kenny—and Jace was his one phone call.

Now, Jace’s hands shook on the wheel as he drove to the station, the phone on speaker and ringing endlessly.

“This better be good,” he said when he picked up his old Fed handler’s call.

“Heard Kenny’s been arrested.”

“You heard right. It’s not your problem anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jace. Someone else got involved and tipped the MC off—the whole deal was almost blown.”

Jace immediately suspected the CIA or the DEA, wondered if his handler did as well. “Like I said, it’s not my problem.”

“But it will be. If the MC thinks Kenny’s selling them out, they’ll kill him.”

Jace knew that. Whenever the FBI or DEA used informants, they protected them as much as possible, arrested them when they did sweeps so as to stave off suspicion. So the fact that Kenny was arrested didn’t take him off the MC’s shit list. It might’ve put him right at the top of the list.

Jace hung up on him and drove at top speed to the police station. He didn’t think Clint would do anything purposely to fuck up things with Kenny, but now Kenny was left hanging in the wind, and Jace was left with nothing. Literally, since Clint had walked out and refused to talk to him.

Clint watched Jace and Kenny leave the police station together. Kenny was the last of the Killers bailed out—the cops considered him a weak link and so they’d kept him and interrogated him for twenty-four hours straight. Jace was there for half of it—Clint watched him walk outside sometimes, pacing in the cold air, hands in his pockets, and he could see the frustration and worry in Jace’s shoulders.

In the past, he’d have been the one to smooth that away, to take care of the rough edges. Hell, if Jace had admitted everything, Clint would’ve taken care of every goddamned thing for him, including the Kenny debacle.

And still, he couldn’t let Jace take all the blame, because Jack had gotten involved where he shouldn’t have and fucked all of this up. Throwing away a brilliant CIA career because what—he thought he loved Clint?

It was pure fucking jealousy, and there was nothing to do with love involved.

“I think they need protection,” Clint said as Jace and Kenny wove through the parking lot.

“We’ve had someone on Jace’s car the whole night,” Pete pointed out.

Clint turned his binoculars on the several members of the MC who were waiting for them, to ensure Kenny hadn’t said anything. Or maybe to take both men away where they’d never be heard from again.

Clint’s gut tightened as he watched Jace approach the men.

“We’re in position, Clint—nothing will happen.”

Clint didn’t believe it entirely, but he was relieved when Jace shook Cools’s hand, and then he and Kenny got into a waiting, already-running car. Jace had obviously been worried about a car bomb, and he’d called a friend to pick them up. With the binoculars again, he noted it was Sawyer—along with Rex—and he heaved a small sigh of relief as it sped away into the night.

The MC cars and bikes went in the other direction.

“Are you going to tell him you saved his ass by letting the MC know that Kenny’s not the rat?” Pete asked.

Clint shook his head. “Jace would never forgive me—he might not even believe me.”

“Like he was going to do either one anyway?”

Clint shot Pete a look. “I don’t expect you to get it.”

“And I never expected you to have a relationship in the middle of an op.”

“I’ve asked for one favor in all these damned years—”

“And I’m never going to let you forget it,” Pete told him without rancor. “You’re really not going to talk to him again?”

“Not now, anyway.” Clint checked his ringing phone, which was surely another mission. “I’m going to be busy for a while.”

“I’ll get you to the airstrip,” Pete told him, and Clint nodded and pretended he wasn’t breaking apart inside.

Chapter Thirty-One

A month passed with no word from Clint. Jace waited as long as he could before dialing the special service Clint set up for them.

Two days and still nothing.

I’ll never ignore this number, no matter what the hell is happening between us.

“You ever going to tell me what’s wrong?” Sawyer asked him now. Jace had been so deep in his reverie, he hadn’t noticed the company, which wasn’t exactly the best thing to happen to a special forces operator.

“Clint.”

“I figured that,” Sawyer said. “He’s been gone a while?”

“We had a fight,” Jace told Sawyer. “And now he’s not answering the number he gave me. He said he always would. I know he’s pissed but—”

“Maybe he can’t answer,” Sawyer said bluntly, voicing the very thing Jace had refused to let himself think about.

Now he knew he couldn’t ignore it any longer, not when his gut was screaming. “Fuck, I think you’re right.”

“What now? You can’t exactly call the CIA.”

“No, but I can do the next best thing.” Jace scrolled through his phone, looking for the number for Clint’s former CIA partner, given to him in case Jace ran into an emergency.

Jace dialed it, figured it must’ve been a flagged line because the guy he assumed to be Styx answered before the second ring.

“Who the hell is this?”

“Is this Styx?”

A long pause that oozed suspicion. “Who the fuck is this?”

“It’s Jace. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Styx said, the suspicion gone. “Are you in trouble?”

“Not me. I think Clint might be.”

“Tell me what you know.”

Shit, and this was where it would get embarrassing, but he could survive a little humiliation if he knew Clint was all right. “I, ah, he’s not answering his phone. Not returning my calls.”

Styx didn’t say a word, and Jace squeezed his eyes closed and realized how goddamned desperately worried he actually was. Sawyer’s hand clamped on his shoulder, like his friend was giving over his strength to Jace, which he appreciated.

“He’s missing,” Jace said.

“This has happened before,” Styx said.

“And he told me it would never happen again,” Jace said as if he was talking to a small, slow child. “Which is why I’m telling you that he’s in danger. I’ll call in my resources if I have to, but I’m hoping you can be of some goddamned assistance.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that if I’m supposed to start an all-out manhunt for an undercover CIA operative on a top-secret mission, hear?” Styx told him.

Put up or shut up time. “Look, he gave me this special number—a service—and he told me he would always get back to me if I called it. And it’s been a month since we talked and we had a fight, but I know something’s wrong. And if you can’t help me, I’ll fucking find him myself.”

“Calm down, Jace. I trust your instincts—and Clint told me about the number. I just needed you to tell me about it,” Styx said. “Let me make some calls. Tell me your number, because it’s blocked.”

Jace rattled it off. “Thanks, Styx.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

He hung up the phone and sat with Sawyer until the sun set along the beach. And still, the phone didn’t ring.

The news wasn’t good. Styx hung the phone up as Law stared at him from across the table, waiting for him to share.

Paulo stood in the doorway, semipatiently waiting as well.

“He’s MIA,” Styx said finally.

Law cursed and Paulo asked, “Where was he?”

“Afghanistan.”

“I hope you’ve got a specific location,” Law said.

“Is the CIA going to do anything?” Paulo demanded almost at the same time.

“Not yet,” Styx said. “I’m going to have to go in after him and try not to fuck anything up.”

“Not without us,” Law told him. “And you’re going to have a hell of a time holding Jace back too.”

“I’m not taking that kid,” Styx said.

“He’ll go on his own and get hurt. Clint will never forgive you,” Paulo said quietly, and Styx wondered yet again how the youngest member of their family always had the most goddamned wisdom.

Maybe it came from living and dealing with two hotheads, or maybe he was just born to smooth out their rough edges, but no matter what, Styx was eternally grateful.

The threesome thing certainly wasn’t conventional and wouldn’t work for everyone, but for the past year, it had run like they’d always been together. Styx never did get his memory back fully, and he’d stopped worrying about it. Not having to look over his shoulder all the time did that to a man.

“Fine—we’ll bring Jace.” Law snorted at Styx’s backtracking and mouthed
whipped
, and Styx bristled but pulled out his phone. He owed Clint everything—his life, the two men who shared his heart and his bed. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Clint. Nothing.