But as they sank in, a cold fury spread within him. “What’s happening?” As if he didn’t already suspect—Mercer. The director was happening. His schemes and plans.
“A transfer team is waiting outside. Since her location in D.C. has been compromised—” serious understatement “—Mercer wants her taken out of the city. When she wakes up, Cassidy will be far away.”
He shook his head in denial. “Mercer didn’t tell me about any transfer. He didn’t—”
“That’s because you’re not going with her.” Tina didn’t look him in the eye as she revealed this information.
The hell he wasn’t.
Tina stared at his neck. “He says the threat to this asset is too strong. That she has to be relocated before her position can be compromised again.”
This wasn’t happening. “You’re just going to take her while she’s unconscious? While she can’t say or do anything to stop you?”
“It’s not me.” Her gaze flew back up to hold his. “You have to understand, Mercer is—”
“Screw Mercer!”
She flinched.
No, he couldn’t take his fury out on Tina. He brushed by her and went back to the bed. “Get the IV out of her.”
Tina didn’t move.
“Get it out, Tina!” Because that IV was pumping the drugs into her body. Not to stabilize her, as he’d been told, but to keep her unconscious so that Mercer could whisk her away again.
Cassidy’s weak voice whispered through his mind. Get me out of here. Had she made that plea because she knew what Mercer would do? Had he done that to her before?
Probably.
But he wasn’t doing it again.
Cale heard the light shuffle of her footsteps as Tina inched closer to him. “If you go against Mercer, you know what will happen.”
He could kiss his career in the EOD goodbye. Fine. Whatever. “It should be her choice.” That was exactly what it would be. She would be awake. Aware. Cassidy would be able to choose—the path Mercer wanted for her, or...
Me.
Because he could protect her. If she needed to get away from D.C., then he could make that happen. He already knew exactly where he wanted to take her.
Home. Whiskey Ridge, Texas. The only home he’d ever known.
“I—I—” Tina’s halting steps stopped. “He said she was in danger. That we had to move her.”
And Tina was following orders, trying to protect a civilian.
“Get the IV out of her.” Or he would. He just didn’t want to hurt Cassidy. But one way or another, that IV was coming out.
He looked over his shoulder and leveled his stare on Tina. Waited. “It should be her choice. You know it, and I know it.”
Tina gave a small nod.
Then she reached for the IV.
* * *
GUNNER APPROACHED THE VAN slowly, his weapon up, two other EOD agents at his back. They’d kept regular law enforcement personnel in the background as much as possible—not like it had been easy to cover up the explosion in the park.
The van’s back doors hung open, its cavernous interior dark.