Chapter 26

Jude placed Ella in a chair and took the seat beside her. Rook and Vivi were already in their seats. Black and Brody were across the war table from him and Ella. He’d asked Brody a few minutes ago for a moment after the meeting. He had some words to say to the man who’d saved Ella in that cell.

Because Jude had no doubt that had Brody not screamed, Savidge would have devastated Ella and she might have died that night. He owed Brody his life. Without Ella, Jude didn’t have one.

Vivi stood as King walked in and began to set up her boards. Allie Redding followed King, and behind her came Anna Beth Caine. Jude had only seen her once they’d returned to the States. She stayed holed up in her room and didn’t say much to anyone. Jude had no idea why Anna Beth was there. Normally, war room meetings were reserved for the team.

King, Rook, Knight, Chase, Black, and Madoc settled in their normal places. Jude reached for Ella’s hand and felt the sun shine in his soul. She was still so pale, but her gray eyes were clearing of the clouds she’d carried with her, and she was alive. It was more than he’d dared hope for. She had news she needed to impart at this meeting, and he worried about the single name she’d given him earlier.

“We ready?” King asked, pulling Jude from his thoughts.

Vivi nodded. “Let’s do this.” Rook’s wife cleared her throat and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Nina Lassiter is very much alive, according to my facial recognition software.”

“Lots of people we thought were dead are showing up alive,” Rook mused, tossing Ella a look.

“There are a lot of threads here, Rook. It’s why we’re meeting. We need to work up an angle, figure it all out, and determine what our next move is,” King reminded him, motioning for Vivi to continue.

Chase tapped the table. “Not to overstate the obvious or repeat what Rook said, but we’ve got Ella and Madoc, both of whom we suspected were dead. And now we’ve got Nina?”

“Best way to hide is to die,” Knight said from his point at the end of the table. He’d know, Jude mused, because he’d hidden his presence after the failed mission in the Hindu Kush with Dresden and Rook.

“Truth,” Harrison Black chimed in. “It’s why MI6 demands irrefutable proof through a body and matching DNA before they’ll accept the death of one of their agents.”

There’s a story there, Jude knew. Black had left MI6 amid scandal. He had fit right into Endgame.

“I can only speculate as to her reasoning. I’ve done everything I can to determine how she’s hidden from us and what happened when she disappeared, supposedly dying of poisoning. I’m working on it, but I’m only one person. Allie is doing what she can, tapping some of her resources, but it’s hard because King has put an information blackout on Endgame. He doesn’t want anyone knowing what we have and where we’re heading.” Vivi pulled up a video feed on the screen that hung from the ceiling. “Here’s Nina buying the ticket in Provo, and here she is disembarking in Anchorage. I have no idea where she went from there. Surveillance video shows her leaving the airport on foot, and I’ve lost her trail.”

“Why Alaska?” Jude asked suddenly, something scraping at his memory.

“She’s changed,” Ella said softly. “Thinner, leaner, and her hair is longer. Nina hated long hair.”

“Wig?” Vivi asked.

“No, I think it’s hers,” Ella answered, running her index finger along her lower lip.

Jude noticed that the bruises from Dresden’s blows were gone. Ella glanced over at him, seeming to read his mind because she licked her lower lip. Jude’s heart turned over in his chest.

This woman. She’d changed him.

King cleared his throat and gave Jude a look. Jude smiled and engaged in the conversation again. “I gotta ask again, why Alaska?”

“Nina had no family. She was like me when she joined the Agency…from the foster system. I think she was originally from Vermont. She graduated from MIT, went to school with you, right, Vivi?” Ella asked.

Vivi nodded. “She was a year behind me.”

“She never mentioned Alaska to me, and when we talked about her past, it was pretty cut and dried. She had no one,” Ella told the team.

“Did she have a man?” King asked.

Jude felt something click in his mind.

“She was a loner. If she had dates, I never knew about them. When we weren’t on ops, she was at the condo we shared in DC. You know what though? The last few weeks before Beirut, Nina had been dressing up, using makeup and such. I just remembered that. I was going to ask her if she’d met someone but, well…Beirut,” Ella finished in a near-whisper.

Jude reached for her hand again and squeezed. He remembered Nina as a behind-the-scenes analyst who backed up her team from base. She was almost as good as Vivi and Ella with information analysis and computer programming. The difference between Vivi, Ella, and Nina was that Nina had trained with Rangers at Fort Benning in Georgia. She’d gone through Ranger training and graduated top of her class. She’d been a soldier through and through. Jude didn’t remember ever thinking of Nina as anything other than one of them. He’d never seen her as a woman.

“She’s either in Alaska, or she used that as a jumping point. Thing is, she used the card, and that just smells to me,” King murmured. “Why would she use a card that she had to know would ping with us?”

“Maybe she thought we would have shut that card down?” Rook offered.

Vivi shook her head. “No, she knows how we operate. She knows we never close cards unless we have proof they’re compromised. It’s how I was trained to keep track of rogues for the Agency. Someone gets burned, they go to ground, but they are trained to have three cards memorized. The Agency refuses to leave one of their agents, even a burned one, without resources to survive. They always hope they can retract the agent and determine what happened. Anyway, once an agent goes rogue or gets burned, those cards are put into a special system that monitors activity so that when they ping, we can track the agent. Nina knew this.”

“That means she did it on purpose,” Allie said, confirming what Jude had been thinking.

King nodded. “Why? She didn’t look hurried or scared on those videos.”

“Desperate people don’t always look desperate,” Ella reminded them. “And Nina was really good at hiding what she was feeling. We were friends—I think out of necessity and convenience rather than because we were so much alike—but I didn’t know much about her. Hell, I’m just now realizing I hardly knew her at all. Just basics.”

“She was good,” Vivi said. “And now she’s in play. I’ve heard talk about a rogue agent with information for sale.”

“No way,” Ella said, slapping her hand on the wooden table in front of them. “She’s not a traitor.”

Jude winced. He’d once called Ella that. Hell, they all had when they thought she’d been the one to betray their spec ops for that Beirut mission. “There’s something we’re missing.”

Black snorted. “Lately, that’s the name of the game.”

Brody nodded.

“Alaska though…” Jude trailed off. Something about that niggled at him and wouldn’t leave him alone.

Then it hit him. Micah had set up property in Alaska. Between the western edge of the Denali National Park and Preserve and a tiny village called Nikolai.

Jude had thought Micah had met someone. Micah had mentioned it before that Beirut mission, had said Jude wouldn’t believe who it was when he told him.

“I think I know where she went.” Jude breathed out.

King narrowed his gaze on him.

“Micah and I both purchased property about three years ago under shell corporations Micah set up for us. We wanted off-grid homes where we could bury ourselves so deep nobody could find us,” Jude began. “I purchased in New Mexico. Micah bought property in Alaska.”

“I’ll start a search there. Can you give me coordinates like those you gave King for your property?” Vivi asked, making notes on her iPad.

“I don’t have them, only a general location,” Jude explained. “Look, Micah was my best friend, but when it comes to someone’s personal safety, or that of any family they planned on having, they don’t trust anyone with that information. It can be pulled out of even the strongest ally by the right person, by the right torture.”

King grimaced. “True. Can you give us the approximate location and let Vivi begin searching?”

“I’ll give it to her, but it’s a long shot. There are hundreds of thousands of acres out in that wilderness. I’m just throwing it out there, hoping it sticks. Micah had started dating someone, said I wouldn’t believe who it was, but we never got to talk before Beirut. He was always busy, and I was too,” Jude said, glancing at Ella.

She smiled, and her lips curved in that secret way she had. She’d told him earlier that she remembered every time they’d ever been together, and he thought she was thinking of one now.

“But he was preoccupied before Beirut.”

“None of that matters,” Brody tossed out. “Micah died in Beirut. I have no idea why, but they buried him in one of the only Christian cemeteries in Lebanon. He’s dead. Why would Nina head to his property? How would she even know about it?”

Ella shrugged. “Maybe they were closer than we can imagine.”

Brody’s gaze went dark. “I don’t buy it.”

“Me either,” Chase said. “Micah loved women. I seriously doubt he’d ever settle down, much less with a mouse like Nina.”

“Damn, Chase,” Knight grumbled. “Did you ever really look at Nina?”

Chase shrugged.

Black smiled. “She was actually beautiful underneath that faded-brown, dyed-from-a-bottle hair.”

“I never really looked, I guess,” Chase said, his tone clearly indicating his angst at the oversight.

“Let me run a search, and we’ll revisit this. I just wanted you all to know she’s alive, from what I can tell, and she’s in play again,” Vivi murmured. “Next thing up for discussion…Anna Beth Caine.”

The woman in question kept her gaze on the table, her hands twisting in front of her. Jude felt sorry for her. He wasn’t thrilled with her parental unit, but he felt bad for the daughter. He wanted a few moments alone with the Piper. Just a few.

“Anna Beth has been helping me crack the code for the thumb drive Ella retrieved in Russia. She tells me her sister had secrets upon secrets, and that she doesn’t know what those were because she was locked up in an institution the last four years,” Vivi recited softly.

“There’s a story there,” Brody murmured. “You’ll tell us eventually.”

No question. Brody punctuated his statement with a quick tap of his fist on the table.

Anna Beth Caine jumped and then glared at the big soldier. Well, that’s interesting, Jude thought.

“Anna Beth,” King began. “We need all the information you can give us about your sister, your father, and your brother.”

The woman’s head snapped up at that. “I—”

Ella glanced at Jude, brows raised, a question in her gaze.

“Don’t lie to me,” King said, his voice low with just a hint of a growl. “We know about Drake.”

“How?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter. We figured it out. And I want everything you have on your brother. I know he’s dead. I want to know how he plays into this, and you’re going to give us that information.” King’s tone left no other alternative.

Brody glared at King.

Jude rolled his eyes. So much drama. “Brody, chill out. King, there’s no reason to threaten her.”

King speared Jude with a glare of his own. “It’s not a threat. We are all in play because we’ve been used as the chess pieces in her father’s personal vendetta.” He turned the full force of his gaze on Anna Beth. “I want everything you have, and you’ll give it to me, or I will make the creator of this team suffer. I want to know your relationship to Horace Dresden. I want your sister, I want your brother, and I want you. Soon. I’m giving you another twenty-four hours before we meet again, and, Ms. Caine, if I have to pull it out of you, I will.”

Anna Beth hissed in a breath. “You threaten me and talk crap about my father. But here’s a truth for you. He’s saved all of your asses. None of you would be here without him.”

“You’ll have to expand on that for any believability,” Knight muttered. “Because right now, the picture doesn’t match the sound.”

King glanced at Ella. “Don’t,” he warned her. “Anna Beth, I’m not threatening you. Stand down, Brody.”

Ella went red in the face. Brody’s fists were clenching and unclenching.

Jude thought shit was about to go nuclear, and then Anna Beth Caine defused the situation.

“He’s right, Ella. I know the truth, but you guys don’t. I’ll give it all to you, but I need to get it together in my head. I’ve been…” She trailed off and then seemed to snap back. “Look, just give me another day or two, and I’ll give it to you,” she said clearly.

King nodded. Ella blew out a breath. Brody sat back.

Vivi cleared her throat. She did this for the sole purpose of drawing their notice. It was one of her patented moves. Like Rook grunting, Vivi cleared her throat.

“Tomorrow then,” she said and made a note on her tablet. “Dresden is dead. Gabrielle Moeller is in a safe house outside DC, and now we’ve got Nina on deck.”

“Has there been any significant troop movement along the Russian-Crimean border?” Ella asked.

Vivi gave a negative shake of her head. “Not yet, but there are murmurs.”

“But you can bet your sweet ass Russia will begin making military moves to protect that oil. Dresden never got his money, but someone wants it. Which brings me to some information I need to share,” Ella stated.

She took a deep breath. Jude rubbed her leg under the table. Any comfort he could give her, he would. “I was with Dresden for a year, trying to gather information on the group he worked for or with. I still don’t know the specifics. I did things I can’t take back. Saw things that will haunt me for eternity. But it wasn’t until right before he shot me that I got a name I’d been seeking for a year.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Anna Beth Caine interrupted Ella, fear a tattoo on her face. “Not yet. That name is too dangerous.”

Ella looked at Anna Beth, clearly not surprised the other woman knew the name she was about impart. “It’s okay, AB. We’re team. We’ll protect you.”

Silence reigned as everyone waited.

“William Ricker,” Ella said in the quiet.

Anna Beth shook her head. King hung his. The other men and women around the table frowned.

“Okay, this seems a little melodramatic, but who’s William Ricker?” Black asked.

“I don’t know,” Ella said.

“I don’t either,” Vivi stated. “But I will soon.” She gave Anna Beth a pointed look.

“How do you know Dresden wasn’t lying?” Knight asked.

“Because he gloated. He knew he was going to shoot me. The dead don’t tell tales,” Ella reminded him.

“Unless they’re not dead,” Chase said. When everyone looked at him, he threw up his hands. “Look, I’m just saying.” He pointed at Knight, Ella, Madoc, and the board that held Nina’s picture. “Dead, then not dead. Seems to me Dresden made a horrible miscalculation.”

“True that,” Jude bit out. “And I’ll thank God every day for it.”

Ella grabbed his hand, interlocking their fingers and holding on.

“The Alliance,” Anna Beth whispered. “William Ricker has ties to the Alliance. Ricker owns a global conglomerate that contains everything from the largest pharmaceutical company in the world to an automaker. And I can’t tell you more, because I don’t have it. I can help you crack the fail-safe, but I don’t have any more than that. Please don’t ask.”

“Vivi, get on it,” King ordered.

“That’s the group,” Ella said aloud, reaching for Jude’s leg and squeezing, her worry and fear communicated clearly in the gesture. “The Alliance. That’s the group the Piper is hunting. It feels right.”

“Or he’s running from it,” Black threw in. “I’ve heard of them before, a splinter group, real Illuminati-type stuff, that’s been talked about for years now. Just hints and rumors, nothing concrete. Let me tap some of my resources in London. I’ll get back to Vivi with what I find.”

King nodded. “Okay, so everybody knows the balls we’re juggling—Nina Lassiter, the Piper’s location and story, and now William Ricker and his Alliance. We all need to be ready to move. Black, I need you on Dr. Moeller. Can you bring her to base so we can pick her brain as well? I think Anna Beth would like to see her friend too.”

Black nodded but not before glancing at Chase, a question in his gaze, almost as if he was asking permission. Chase just shook his head; his face hard, his eyes even harder. Anna Beth didn’t say anything, and Jude thought that unusual. Jesus, there were too many secrets. They’d spend eternity digging out from under them.

“I say a couple of us head to Alaska, see if we can’t find Nina Lassiter. Who’s in?” King asked.

“Me,” Jude offered immediately.

“I’m in,” Black said right after Jude. “I’ll grab Dr. Moeller and be back tomorrow.”

“Get on it. Brody, you and Rook are here. Chase, I need you and Knight back on Nadege. Take him out. It’s what you do; handle it. No capture. Straight kill order.”

Chase and Knight nodded. Brody looked pissed. Rook looked bored.

“We good?” King asked.

Everyone affirmed.

“Don’t be brave,” King said into the sudden silence.

“Be accurate,” the team responded automatically.

Jude helped Ella up the stairs and to their room. He helped her shower, making sure her wound was covered so she could get in the water. He stood behind her, washing her body slowly and thoroughly. He was as clinical as he could be, considering she was his woman and he loved her body.

She quirked a lip at his hard cock, and he shrugged, completely unrepentant. Ella laughed, and Jude smiled at the sound. He dried them off, dried her hair, and got them both dressed.

He settled her in their bed and climbed in behind her, her body curving into his as effortlessly as always. Her cat, Chica, jumped lightly on the bed, walking in a circle before she curled into a ball at Ella’s feet. Jude shook his head. Only Ella could find a goddamn cat in the middle of a snowstorm.

“Will we rebuild in New Mexico?” she asked softly, twining her fingers with his.

“Maybe,” he murmured at her neck.

“Have you talked to Tia Rosa?”

“She’s fine. She knows the house is gone, and she knows you’re alive. Says she can’t wait to see you again,” Jude told his lady.

“She wasn’t shocked?” Ella asked, worry in her tone.

“Nah. She’s the one who taught me that not everything is as it seems,” Jude said into her hair.

“Hmmm,” Ella mumbled as she turned over in his arms and rested her head on his chest.

Long moments of silence passed, while Jude soaked up the fact that she was with him, alive. He listened to her breathe and drank in her scent, running his fingers through the silken strands of her hair, basking in her presence.

“You’ll be careful.” She wasn’t asking; she was telling him. He, King, and Black were heading out late tomorrow to Alaska. Nina Lassiter had to be brought in.

“Only way I can be when I know I have you to come home to,” he assured her.

Ella yawned as she settled into his body.

“My heart never gave up on you, El,” he whispered.

She kissed him right over the organ that had never let her go. “I know,” she replied sleepily.

He felt her breathing even out and her body settle into the pattern of sleep. But he had one more promise to make before sleep took him.

“Safe, baby,” he said so softly it was barely a breath. She was already out, and he didn’t want to wake her.

But Ella smiled, her lips curving against his skin, and he realized she wasn’t as asleep as he’d thought. She raised her hands from under the covers and rested six fingers on his chest. “I’ve got your six, Jude.”

Joy lit the last dark corner of his heart. She’d come back to him. Or maybe he’d chased her down. Either way, she was his, heart and body—and Jude would never take that for granted again.

“Always,” he said.