against him.
“I’ve got the SD card,” Everly said. She was also holding a laptop. “Oh, poor Dax.”
“Hey, have you got a sister, sweetheart?” Dax asked, his voice slightly slurred.
Only Dax could be bleeding out and trying to find a date.
They made it to the elevators and when he looked back, Connor was surrounded by bodies, covered in blood, and utterly alone. A sliver of unease passed through him.
As the doors closed, Everly touched his shoulder and smiled. Gabe smiled back. He’d worry about Connor later. He had to focus on her now.
He looked down at the small SD card in her hand. “It’s not over.”
When she noticed Dax leaning against the wall, she offered her help as well. Together, they managed to keep him upright. “Nope. But we’ll be okay because we’re in this together, Gabriel Bond. You and me.”
Something settled deep inside him, something he hadn’t even known had been out of place. “Yes, baby. You and me.”
EPILOGUE
Everly walked into the room, excitement bubbling up. She’d done it. Her father would have been proud. It was time to let her new family know how smart she was. Considering her new family included a CIA agent and the leader of the free world, she had to make a place for herself somehow.
She walked to the door of the guest suite and stopped. A seriously large man in a dark suit and sunglasses stood, standing guard. A couple more lurked outside the front door, along with two more in the kitchen.
She liked Zack, but she was kind of ready to have the place to herself.
And her fiancé.
“Hi, Thomas. Can I sneak past you?”
The big dude stared at her. “No.”
He was also very literal. “I need to see my fiancé. May I be allowed into a room in my own house?”
Thomas finally cracked a smile. “Of course.”
She started to open the door. “Do you have a name besides Thomas?”
“No.”
She would figure it out in the end. Just like she’d figured out the why of Maddox’s mysterious death . . . although that seemed to have led to another mystery.
Gabriel smiled as she walked into the guest suite. “Hey, baby.” He’d been sitting beside the bed, but he sprang up and crossed the space between them quickly. Whenever she walked into a room, her handsome man made sure she couldn’t doubt his affection. He leaned over and brushed his lips against hers. “Has your hard work paid off?”
Dax sat up with only the smallest of groans. “Did you actually manage it?”
“Of course she did.” The president of the United States sat across from Dax, a chessboard between them. Despite the fact that Dax still had an IV in his arm, he was sipping on that damn Scotch they all seemed to love so much.
“Maybe we should call Connor,” Roman suggested, staring out the window at the street below.
Connor had been to see Dax at the hospital, but he’d slipped in and out without saying much to the rest of them.
“He didn’t even bother to call the police when I asked him to.” Gabriel was still a little mad.
“No, he managed to get his ass up forty flights of stairs and take out all the bad guys singlehandedly without making a sound.” Dax hadn’t stopped defending his best friend.
“You could have died,” Gabriel shot back. “And so could we. Did he think about what could have happened if he failed?”
“Connor doesn’t fail,” Zack said quietly. “And if you’re going to be angry with someone, Gabe, be mad at me.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I didn’t say I wasn’t.”
She was willing to cut Connor and Zack some slack. Connor had a job to do and he’d been forced to choose between doing it and saving his friends. There was more at stake here than any of them really understood. “He chose us, you know.”
Suddenly, all four pairs of intelligent eyes focused on her.
“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.
She’d thought about this a lot in the week since that terrible night. Gabriel had been so angry that Connor had kept the cops out of it. He’d played his part and told the police that Dax had been shot in an attempted carjacking and they’d been so close to the hospital, it had been faster to deliver him there. But he’d silently fumed for days. She had to mend those fences because she intended for everyone to be at her wedding.
“If he’d called the cops, they would have taken the SD card. They would have asked a whole bunch of questions none of us are ready to answer. You do realize what his best play would have been?”
Gabriel shook his head.
Roman frowned. “He would never have done that.”
She’d talked this scenario through with Roman the night before as they’d moved Dax into his current room. “If he’d been playing this like a pure agent, he would have. Gabriel, he needs to know why the Russians are so interested in Natalia and he needs to know who Deep Throat is. It’s obvious the president is at risk. He gave up answers to both when he chose to save us. His best play would have been to let them take me. He could have easily followed us. Hell, I still had my cell phone on me. He could have tracked us and then planted a couple of bugs and the Russians would never have known someone was spying on them. He would have had his answers, but he chose to save you, me, and Dax.”
“And do you understand that the press would have been all over us?” Roman asked. “As it is, there’s still a scandal.”
Connor had come up with a cover story for the deaths of Tavia and Scott. He used the skimming and Tavia’s cocaine problem to pin her death, along with the security guards and the janitor, on a drug deal gone wrong. Scott, in Connor’s story, had been unlucky enough to be with her when the dealer came for his cash. Apparently the CIA’s cleaning crew also knew how to dummy up a crime scene. Yuri and his henchmen had simply vanished.
“And he promised me that the Agency would do what they can to find the missing girls, and he’s already brought one home,” Everly added. She’d been talking to Connor via e-mail, but she hadn’t gotten him to come to dinner. She’d invited him to drinks this afternoon, and this time, she’d had something to hold over his head, though he still hadn’t shown up.
“We’ll find the others, too. I promise. We’ll work until we find them all. Connor is already looking through the foundation records to locate them.” Zack looked at Gabriel. “Come on. He basically committed career suicide. If anyone finds out he lied about what happened . . .”
“And in his line of work, career suicide can become real suicide,” Roman admitted. “Well, really well faked suicide to take the place of assassination.”
Gabriel seemed to go a little pale. “Fine. Let’s not talk about more people dying. When Connor shows up, I’ll be civil.”
“I’ll hold you to that, brother.” Connor slipped into the room. He stood there as though utterly unsure of his welcome. It was the only time she’d ever seen him looking vulnerable, but in that moment, she had to wonder what it had been like for him to be the scholarship kid, the only one without money among the incredibly wealthy.
He’d come. She couldn’t help but smile. She’d known he couldn’t resist finding out what was really on that SD card. She walked right up to him and gave him a hug.
Connor stood there for a moment. “I am unsure how to handle this.”
Gabriel finally laughed. “Give in. She wants you in the family, and Everly gets what she wants.”
Dax smiled brightly. “My man. It is good to see you.”
Slowly, Connor hugged her back.
After a moment, she stepped away, and some of the tension had left the room. She hated the fact that she was about to amp it up again. “I decoded the diary.”
She’d discovered that the diary had been written in code and in Russian code at that. When she’d pieced together all the information, she’d found a single item—a handwritten book that had been scanned in. She’d worked for a full week to decode the thing, then given it
to a confidential Russian translator.