You owe me.
The rest of the message involved how to find her. A single mention—credit card. They’d used a similar tactic when she had to go into deep cover while infiltrating the Argentinian ministry. After the Falkland Islands, they kept a close eye on Argentina. Not that they expected them to act up again, but the British government wouldn’t tolerate any further embarrassment on the part of their ambassadors or Argentina’s.
Coffee and ice water did the trick, sobering him enough to understand what she needed from him. Dialing up the warmer water, he washed. His pores practically leaked whiskey at this point, having pickled himself fairly solid for the last three years.
Three years. Fuck me.
The last time Addison Leeds walked into his life had been pure happenstance. She’d walked into a bar in Thailand, of all places. He’d gone to the ends of the earth, and who should walk in but a goddess with a grudge.
Their gazes met across the crowded room. A host of memories swamped him at first sight. Memories of long nights wrapped in her arms, of training missions spent in the freezing cold, of her warm smile and sweet laugh, which disguised her clever and dangerous mind.
She’d been nineteen the first time he met her. Sweet, enthusiastic, and eager to please—a babe in the woods to a shark like him. Recruited out of Uni specifically for her appearance and family history with the agency, she was perfect for background security. Many of the young royals were preparing to head off to school. It was best to have security around them they wouldn’t notice… nor would anyone else.
Addison had been ideal. He wasn’t supposed to get involved with the recruits. It not only flew in the face of all the rules, but she’d been an innocent. A baby. A lady. She possessed station, class, and blood so blue, it put azure to shame. In every way, he didn’t have any right to pursue his interest, and he managed to keep his distance until her twenty-first birthday.
The memories of their early years together had sacked him as he stared at her. His heart had thumped like the tail of a hunting hound ready to run. Setting his whiskey glass down, he’d stood. After everything that had happened, he hadn’t ever believed he would see her again. Frankly, she wouldn’t want to see him. His actions had been dictated by his care for her, because she didn’t deserve to lose another family member to politics or bad decisions.
His only great regret had been his inability to tell her before he went after her brother.
Yet, there she’d been, appearing as if to taunt him with a future he’d sacrificed. A blessed dream for a swine like him. Even as he stepped out of the shower in the present, his memories of that night charged out of their drunken sealed vault to take center stage.
After wrapping a towel around his waist, he wiped off the steamed mirror and stared at the two bullet wound scars just to the left of his heart. He liked to think she’d missed on purpose. After all, she put two in his chest, then left him bleeding on the floor before walking away without saying a word.
Still, she cared enough not to put a bullet in my head.It was what he’d trained her to do. Never leave a survivor.
Efficient. Ruthless. Effective.
She needed his help. Sam looked at himself in the mirror, then shook his head. Of course, he would help. He’d cut off his bloody arm, if she asked it of him. Maybe she figured out he was alive and decided to finish the job. Though, if that were the case, she’d have shown up in his bar downstairs and repeated their Thailand experience.
She didn’t play games. If she sent a message in a code only he knew, then she neededhim.
MI6 burned her. What the hell was she into that she needed his help, of all people? Turning the water on in the sink, he picked up his razor. Whatever it was she needed, he would give it to her, but first, he needed a shave and a haircut. Then he needed to track her credit card.
Half a day later, he stared at the screen, which listed her credit card stay in Florida. She used it twice, at a hotel, then a restaurant. Then nothing. Rising, he paced back and forth in front of the computer. The point of the card was it was untraceable by anyone at the agency—a gambit they had run under the table as a back up, and an easy way to track her without betraying her allegiances. If she was searched, they would only turn up a credit card with nothing particularly special about it. Not even the microchip inside of it. Chip cards were all the rage now, so it would draw even less attention.
Twelve hours since she’d last used the card. She wanted him to follow? Did that mean Florida?
Returning to the computer, he used his backdoor access to his old administration codes at MI6.How do you know you’re really a spy? When you spy on your own agency. Of course, he was less of a spy and more of a hammer. When they wanted something done skillfully and quietly, they sent Addison. She was a scalpel. When they wanted it removed and eradicated from existence, they sent Sam.
He pulled up the satellite footage for the region and studied it, backtracking to the last timestamp of her credit card use.
There she was, exiting a little bistro wearing a killer dress and a pair of heels. He couldn’t really see her face, thanks to bad resolution, but he’d know those legs anywhere.
She walked across a cobblestone lot, then climbed onto the back of a motorcycle with a man Sam didn’t recognize and already wanted to kill. Her transportation required changing the input and access so he could track the motorcycle. It took longer, the better part of an hour, for the computer to spit out the traffic cameras along their route. The US wasn’t helpful, in that they didn’t use CCTV everywhere, not like in Britain. But what they did use was enough, if one was clever enough and could access that such footage.
The walking dead man had taken her to an airport. They boarded a private plane. Sam managed to increase the resolution enough to pull up the tail number of the Gulfstream. Then he began a search on it.
The planes registry was out of the Cayman Islands. Very useful, as Britain still had sway there. The last filed log had the plane landing on one of the private isles, one registered to a member of the peerage.
A quick search identified the peerage as false, since the last member had died in the 70s. Which meant someone had usurped that family’s name and put it to their own use.
Sam scowled as he stood. After tracking her as far as the island, he found his hands tied. There was no satellite footage or public access to the island’s security. Either he waited for her next contact or card use, or he went ahead to the island and extracted her from whatever nonsense she had become involved in.
She could probably take another shot at him, or he could paddle her ass.
Both possibilities had potential. Stone cold sober and nursing a vicious headache, he paced and ran the possibilities. She wouldn’t have sent that message if she didn’t want him to come. She wouldn’t have sent the message if she hadn’t thought she’dneedhim to come. After grabbing his phone, he called Henry. He needed transportation, including a helicopter, weapons, and a map.
His girl needed a ride.