SLEEPER (Crossfire Series) (30 page)

She swerved the car down the exit ramp and came to a stop at a shopping center close by. She rubbed her eyes wearily. She needed to think this out.

Was everything a lie then? He’d been so tender these past few days…her hands fisted at the memory of him touching her, kissing…
stop it! The bastard is a lying son-of-a-bitch!

But you were lying too
, another voice in her head reasoned.
He also saved your life, remember? He’s like Hawk, a SEAL. You’ve seen how good Hawk was to Amber.

“Amber,” Lily muttered. She was really slow today. If Reed was part of Hawk’s outfit, then Amber would be in this too. She drummed her fingers on the car seat. Amber and Hawk probably viewed her as a traitor, but Amber and she had been partners for four years, moving the girls they’d helped to safe locations. One thing she was sure of: Amber would never hurt the girls.

She started the car again. She was tired of running. She wanted to look her old friends in the eye and tell them her side of the story. Maybe they would forgive her a little for what she’d done to them.

Then there was Mr. Mylos Vincenzio. She wondered what he was thinking right now. No doubt he would be upset. He’d taken a big chance taking her to that hotel. She wanted to ask him why he’d done that. She frowned. The more she thought about it, many of the decisions he’d made had been really risky. He could have taken her anywhere that first night, but he hadn’t. He’d let her drive off on her own. Well, not really…he’d followed her everywhere. But what had he been doing that for? It just didn’t make sense.

She wanted to hear his reasons. Most of all, she wanted to hear from his lips everything that had happened was just a lie. She was so tired of all the deception—her own, especially. Then she would clear everything up all at once.

After that, she would cut him up in tiny pieces, the lying bastard. Her lips twisted wryly. She hadn’t felt this “normal” in months. If nothing else, Reed had given her back herself for a while. Being with him had made her realize her sense of self-worth was almost nil, that she hadn’t been able to commit herself to anyone because she hadn’t been able to trust them.

Lily frowned. She’d trusted Reed. And she had felt so safe when she’d been in his arms. How could this man do all that when so many had failed?

* * *

It took forty-five minutes for Reed to calm his mother down and get Petr to call his father to pick her up. He knew he could follow Lily with the locator unit, but he didn’t want her to be too far ahead. It took another ten minutes to have someone sent up to sit with his mother while she waited for her ride.

He felt like hell for doing that to her. He hated to see his mother cry, always had, but she’d cried so damn much that it’d taken years before he’d realized it’d just been another way for her to manipulate the people around her. Everyone felt sorry for her and that was what she wanted.

He took his pack with him. From the unit, he could see Lily was on the freeway, meaning she was heading out of town. Probably running from him as fast as she could. He didn’t blame her.

He slammed the car door. It was strange how events had piled up to be against him lately. His parents always spent winter, especially near the Christmas season, at their Manhattan penthouse. They liked the holiday season there, with the usual social rounds of seasonal parties his mother adored. So why the hell were they over here?

He turned on the engine. SNAFU—situation normal all fucked up, as they said in the Navy. His teammates would joke and warn him he was getting too damn complacent in civilian clothes.

Anger wouldn’t solve anything right now. He’d to get to Lily and somehow make her listen to him. That was, if she would even let him near her. He flipped the locator open, then pressed on the GPS button to get a visual.

He frowned. Lily was heading the other way, back toward the city. Had she forgotten something? The woman was always doing the unexpected. Was she coming back to him after all?

Yeah right, back to you.

He ignored the dig at himself as he concentrated on the locator for a few more seconds. He could sit here and wait until she reached the closest exit and turned back into town.

“Gunther Galbert’s people have found Lily’s hideout,” Nikki told him. “The girls are being transported right now to another facility.”

Reed stilled. “Is this confirmed?”

“It’s reliable information. You’ve to get Lily before they get her.”

He looked at the unit in his lap. Lily was about ten minutes away from the hotel. “Where are we to meet you?” he asked quietly. “It might be difficult to convince Lily how I got this information. I think my cover’s been compromised.”

Lily was going to have questions and he didn’t have a lot of time to convince her to trust him. He especially hated the fact he’d to tug on her emotional strings to get her to do what he wanted. Everybody had been doing that, taking advantage of her. He didn’t want to do it too.

He got out of the car and waited where she would see him the moment her vehicle turned into the garage. He wondered why she’d turned back around.

The sound of a car entering echoed through the garage and he straightened from his stance. His blue vehicle came around the corner, its headlights turned off as it slowed down to stop nearby.

He stayed where he was as Lily climbed out. She came up to him, her face set, her dark eyes searching. He could see the anger and hurt, yet there was something else there. Without saying a word, he reached out, threading his fingers through her short dark tresses, holding her face still for his kiss.

Her mouth opened, giving him access. It reassured him somehow, knowing that part hadn’t changed, at least. She still wanted him.

“There’s nowhere to go, really,” she said simply.

He was part of the reason why she was being left with fewer and fewer options. It was what had to be done to make her come out in the open, to force her to make a move. Yet, he didn’t want her to feel that way. He wanted her to know she could always come to him, but this wasn’t the time or place to tell her that. He kissed her again and reluctantly let her go.

“I owe you an explanation, I know,” Reed said, “but we need to go now. I just got word those after you have gotten to Tatiana and the others.”

“What? But you said you talked to her just two days ago.” Her voice was a shocked whisper. “How…”

He would have done anything to take away the fear in her eyes. “They traced it from a call you made. That’s all I know. Right now we know where the girls are. We’re sending in an extraction team.”

“A call I made…” She frowned. “Oh no, the hotel manager…they must have gone to the hotel and questioned him. Who told you this information, Reed? How do we know it’s the truth?”

“Simple. Call Tatiana yourself. Here.” He pulled out his cell phone and handed it to her. “If she answers, ask her where she is.”

Lily stared at the phone for a long moment, not taking it. He frowned. Her face had turned chalky white. She reached for it, then snatched her hand back as if the phone were a snake. “I…can’t,” she finally said.

“Lily?” Something was definitely wrong. He suddenly remembered the calls he’d made to her and how she’d lied, saying she hadn’t heard the ringing. She had him call Tatiana for her. He cursed softly. “That’s how it works on you, isn’t it? Through the phone. We’ve thought it was just the phrase itself, but saying that didn’t get any reaction from you at all.”

His answer seemed important to her. “Enough to believe what you did wasn’t entirely your fault, Lily,” Reed said. “The only thing we were all unsure about was whether you knew you were stopped from following through with your orders and whether you were deactivated.”

“Deactivated,” Lily murmured bitterly. “So that was the word I’ve been trying to come up with for my condition. Like a damn computer program.”

He’d tried to imagine what it would be like, to know part of his mind was in someone else’s control. It was an impossible subject to grasp, much less explain to someone. Lily had somehow figured out how it’d been used on her and she’d sought to avoid being trapped that way again. What was astounding was the fact she’d had to resort to doing things in a roundabout way these last few months and hadn’t lost her focus one bit.

The phone, after all, was the easiest way to contact the people who would have helped her get the girls out of their dilemma. He was astonished at her resourcefulness, at her taking care of so many details without the one thing that seemed to be running the world these days.

Another person might have given up and told the girls to fend for themselves. Not Lily. He felt a fierce pride and admiration for her. The woman had a core of steel.

“Lily…”

She turned away, but not before he saw the frustration on her face. “Everything I’ve done has hurt somebody. I thought if I got the girls out, that’d be one thing I did right. Instead, I’ve endangered them even more. They want me so badly, they’ve taken my girls. How am I ever going to get them back, Reed? I don’t even know you…you’re some guy named Mylos…. I don’t know anyone in this stupid tangle I’m in.”

He took her by the shoulders, pulling her into his arms. She leaned back, a sigh escaping her lips.

“You do know me. I’m Reed,” he told her. “It’s my middle name and that’s what my friends call me. You’re not alone in this, Lily. There’s Amber Hutchens and Hawk McMillan.”

She stiffened in his arms. “Yeah, two people I’m sure love me to death,” she said sarcastically.

“We all have one goal and that’s to stop the weapon device from getting into the wrong hands.”

“So you guys came after me,” Lily said. She cocked her head, a stubborn expression forming, one which he was beginning to recognize. “You understand I can’t give it to you till I see my girls rescued.”

He’d expected as much. “Everything’s being arranged. We’ll talk more about this later, after we get the girls back. I’ll make the calls, get the logistics and get everyone on the same page. Is that okay with you?”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked bleakly.

He turned her around. She looked defeated, and he didn’t like it. He wanted to see some of the feistiness back. He shook her lightly. “Not for this one,” he told her. “They went after the girls because they knew they would get you through them. If you want to have the girls rescued, you have to trust me on this, Lily. But…you do have a choice about one thing.”

“What?”

“About us. About what you want to do with us when this is over.”

She stared at him as if he were out of his mind. “You’re Mylos Vincenzio, you know—wealthy heir to some huge fortune,” she said evenly. “I’m Llallana Noretski, someone with nothing, not even a future to look forward to.”

He shook her harder. “If I had time, I’d take you back upstairs right now and show you all the things you can expect to look forward to, but we’ve to be on our way right now. Come on, let’s go.”

“Aren’t you going to tie me up or something?” she asked. “After all, I have something you want.”

She was thinking about the weapon she’d stolen, but her words conjured up images that had nothing to do with the present emergency. He ran a possessive hand down the side of her arm, then cupped her breast. She jerked at his touch.

“Later,” he told her and knew from the look in her eyes she’d gotten the message.

* * *

Lily listened quietly as Reed discussed the situation over the cell phone. It was interesting to hear things from his perspective. She realized, for the first time, he was actually concerned about her. The first thing he brought up was how she didn’t use phones anymore.

She bit back her frustration.
It doesn’t matter now
, she wanted to shout. She would be going to use one soon enough. Reed confirmed her own suspicions.

“Galbert will be waiting for Lily to call up Tatiana. If he’s the one who activated her trigger, I’m going to say he’ll do it again and this time get her to bring him the device.”

Galbert. She now had a name. That voice had a name.

“Right. I second the idea.” Reed turned to Lily and gave Tatiana’s number. He then put the phone next to her mouth. His gray eyes looked intently into hers. “Say something in Croatian or Serbian into the phone, Lily.”

“Why?” she asked, frowning.

“Nikki wants to modulate the pitch of her voice to fit yours, so that when she calls Gunther, he won’t suspect anything.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” When Reed didn’t say anything, Lily said, in Croatian, “I would like the opportunity to kill this Gunther Galbert myself, please, before your agency locks me up. Please bring the girls back safely.”

“Why do you think you’re going to be locked up?” Reed asked.

“You don’t think they’re going to let someone like me walk around free, do you?” she asked. “Don’t think there’ll be much of a future, Mr. Vincenzio.”