CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You never struck me as cruel,” Liv said, “but I guess I’ve come to realize that I never really knew you at all.”
A roiling sickness moved through her and she rolled to her hands and knees. Self-loathing filled her. When would she learn? Just because a chemical reaction existed between them didn’t mean there was anything deeper. At least, not on his part. It was her stupidity that kept her emotions in flux. She’d wasted too much energy on her emotions the last two years. It was time to bury Dante Malcolm in the past. And leave him there.
She moved to stand, but he put a hand on her shoulder. The look she cast him must have given him pause, because he removed his hand slowly and straightened up.
“I’m not being cruel, and I’m not playing games,” Dante said. “What I will promise you from this point forward, no matter what happens between us, is that I will not lie to you.”
She snorted out a laugh and got to her feet, stretching her sore muscles and making her way toward the latrine. She examined the grates that led into the sewage tunnel, which would eventually lead to her freedom. And then she was going to fly back to London, ask Beck for her job back, and go through the proper channels to hunt down Raj Mittal, and hope to God she could get to the girls before they were sold.
“Liv, you need to listen to me,” he said.
She knelt by one of the grates and pulled at it, but she didn’t have the strength to lift it. He knelt beside her and added his strength to hers, but the grate was immovable from a century or two of disuse and things she didn’t even want to think about cementing it in place.
“Elizabeth is here in the palace, Liv. I saw her. I thought she was you.”
“Do not say her name again,” she said coldly.
“Fine, but you’ve spent almost your entire life looking for her, and I’m giving you the information you’ve never been able to find on your own. I would listen if I were you.”
“Funny how you didn’t mention all of this before we had sex. Just like you didn’t release us from those stupid manacles. Everything serves a purpose for you, doesn’t it, Dante?”
“The manacles, yes,” he said. “I’ll admit that I wanted the time with you. But sex was your choice, and you know it. I just presented the opportunity if it was what you wanted.”
“How fucking noble of you,” she said.
“But your sister is a different matter. Something isn’t adding up with her. There’s no record of her being a permanent resident here. There’s no information about Mittal having a longtime lover or long-term relationship. But that’s what they have.”
“Elizabeth would never willingly be with a monster like Raj Mittal,” Liv spat. She was so angry her hands were shaking.
“Not the father,” Dante said. “The son. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone but Shiv Mittal up there. But they were there, and believe me, they’re most definitely involved.”
“So now you can add ‘voyeur’ and ‘perv’ to ‘liar’ and ‘thief’.”
“My point is,” he said, exasperation in his voice, “that she wasn’t a one-night stand. The bedroom was theirs. And I guarantee you that, when Mittal was evacuated after we set off the alarm, she was evacuated with him.”
“Fine. But it’s been almost twenty-five years,” Liv said. “Maybe she just has a strong resemblance to me.”
“She recognized your name when I said it,” he told her.
The sob caught her by surprise, and Liv buried her head in her hands and tried to hold it together.
“I thought she was you,” Dante said. “I heard them making love in the bathroom, and when she came out and discovered me in the room, I was furious. And jealous. I thought she was you. But when I said your name, she went on the attack. She told me I wasn’t going to take her, and then she punched me in the face, in the exact spot you did, I might add, and then she kneed me in the stones so hard I saw stars.”
“Too bad she didn’t damage anything permanently.”
“I’m sure that’s what you were thinking ten minutes ago when you were creaming around my cock.”
“A lapse in judgment,” she said stiffly. “It won’t be repeated.”
“Whatever your feelings are for me—”
“Which would be murderous rage,” she interrupted.
“—you need to think about this logically,” he continued, ignoring her. “They’ve gone to a lot of effort to make sure Elizabeth hasn’t been tracked down all these years. They keep her hidden from the public eye, but those who live in the palace must be loyal enough to keep the secret for her and Mittal.”
“People tend to be loyal when they can be punished by death.”
“True,” he agreed. “She recognized your name, but she chose to stay.”
“So you say,” she said. “If what you say is true and Elizabeth is here, then I’ll find a way to talk to her without her being coerced in any way.”
“I can help you,” he said.
Liv snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I think you’ve done enough. I’m not even going to ask what you were doing in their bedroom listening to them have sex in the first place.”
“When you knew me before, I was British Intelligence,” Dante said. “That was never a lie. I was a good agent, and I was able to incorporate my background and the circles I ran in to my advantage. But I grew bored with it. The kind of work we do isn’t all James Bond–type missions, though there are moments of high danger and intensity. So when the chance to become Simon Locke was presented to me, I took it.”
“What do you mean, it was presented to you?” she asked, eyes narrowing. “Someone approached you?”
His mouth twitched and he said, “You read the file I gave you on my encounter with the real Simon Locke. That was the truth, and I won’t lie to you anymore. But there are also some things I can’t tell you. It’s not just about me, but others’ privacy.”
“An honor code among thieves,” she sneered.
“Of a sort,” he said. “I loved living a double life. It kept my mind sharp. Like a puzzle. Keeping the lies straight between both identities was a challenge. Staying ahead of the game was invigorating.
“And then I met you.” Dante smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You were unexpected. I’d never met a woman like you—intelligent and driven and stubborn, topped off with a smart mouth and a face that I couldn’t get out of my head. I had no use for a relationship in my life. Women were there for pleasure only. But you stimulated more than my body.
“That first night we slept together, I had every intention of sneaking out of your apartment in the middle of the night and cutting the ties between us. I’ve never entertained the same woman more than a time or two. Except for you. I kept coming back for more. And the risk kept getting higher.”
“And that drove you even more to stay with me,” Liv said, finishing for him. She understood him, though she wished she didn’t. Anyone in their line of work—the kind of work that put them right in the thick of danger—had those tendencies to seek out even higher-risk situations.
“You drove me to stay with you,” he said. “I wanted to be with you. And I’ve never wanted to be with anyone like that. I lied to everyone, but I also lied to myself. I told myself that I could keep juggling everything. That if I was smart enough, I could have everything I wanted.
“That night at Carmaux’s party, I had it planned to the last detail. It was the riskiest job I’d ever undertaken, and that’s saying something, as I’ve accomplished some incredible feats.”
“You’re proud of yourself,” Liv said, shaking her head. “Even now, with everything going on and the shitstorm you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Of course I’m proud of my accomplishments. I’m extremely skilled at the things I do. But taking a painting in front of a crowd of hundreds of people was something I’d never done before. And if my biggest obstacle—you—was in the same room at the same time, well, that upped the ante considerably.”
“I’m such an idiot,” she said. “I can see it now. But I was too blinded by lo—by lust to see anything before.”
“You never would’ve seen anything I didn’t want you to see,” Dante told her. “Just as you would never have seen me on the roof if I hadn’t wanted you to catch me. I would’ve parachuted off the cliffs as planned and dropped the painting in a secure location I’d scouted, then circled back in through all the chaos to meet up with you, having let Locke just slip through my fingers. But my plans didn’t go as expected that night.
“There was more than one way to get into that secret room where we met. There was also another entrance through Carmaux’s private office, so that’s the way that I took. She knew I’d go that way, of course.”
“Who knew?” she asked.
“The woman who’s now my boss,” he answered. “She came out of nowhere. And she knew everything. She knew about MI6 and Simon Locke. She knew about you. All of my secrets—I have yet to discover how she found out some of the things she knows. Though now that I’m working for her, I understand that she has access to sources that no other agency in the world has.
“She told me that I had two choices. If I continued as I was, I would eventually be found out. By the look on her face, I was certain that she’d make sure I was found out. Then I’d spend the rest of my life in prison.”
“What was the second choice?” Liv asked.
“I could make sure Dante Malcolm and Simon Locke were dead, and I could start over with a new agency and opportunities I’d never get elsewhere.”
“And you agreed?” Liv asked. “Just like that? She could’ve been a terrorist—anyone.”
“I work for an agency called Trident. It’s an off-the-books special-ops group based out of the United States, but the agents who comprise it are international. At the core, it’s an antiterrorism organization, although it’s not a government-sanctioned agency. Those who created us come from both the governmental and private sectors. We’re called The Gravediggers, because we’ve all had to die in our old lives so we could be reborn to do this job. We have no ties to anyone from our old lives. It’s policy.”
“So you jumped off that turret and ‘died,’ ” she said. Liv couldn’t even wrap her head around what he was telling her. There were so many deceptions and untruths between them that she didn’t know what she could believe anymore.
“I did,” he said. “She recruited me because of my skills as Simon Locke. I’m part of a team that is assigned certain missions. We live together, work together, do recon together, and would take a bullet for each other. But she didn’t recruit me to work with the team all of the time, so once again I’ve been living a double life. She sends me on jobs like this one, where she thinks it’s more effective for a single operative to go in.”
“And what do you get out of it?” Liv asked.
“Money, for one thing,” he said. “But part of my payment is being able to take a piece of my choosing as a commission. I was in Mittal’s bedroom because of a painting that hung over his bed. I get the launch codes, I get the painting, and everybody is happy.”
“Except you’re still stealing,” Liv said. “Just because you’re saving the world at the same time doesn’t give you a free pass to take people’s things.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve never just taken people’s things. Simon Locke worked on a case-by-case basis. He could be hired to retrieve stolen artifacts or family heirlooms that ended up in the wrong hands. He never stole anything that wasn’t already stolen. I took my commission piece only after I’d secured the piece I was being paid to go in for.”
Liv’s mouth dropped open in surprise. She certainly hadn’t expected that explanation. It didn’t change the fact that he was a liar, but it was good to know that he had some kind of moral compass and wasn’t a complete degenerate.
“What’s going to happen when you come back empty-handed?” she asked.
“Who says I’m going back empty-handed? As soon as we get back to the plane, Elaine can tell us what she’s found out about where Mittal is taking the girls and the launch codes. We just have to get one of these grates off to get out of here.”
“I think we can help you with that, mate,” a voice said from somewhere beneath them.
“Who the hell is that?” Liv asked.
Dante turned his head sharply, and frowned. “Axel? What the bloody hell are you doing here?”
“Well, mate, after listening to your story, I think we’re debating whether or not to spring you or to let Mittal’s soldiers take care of you. But there’s no reason for the lady to suffer, so I guess we’re getting you out.”
Liv watched a myriad of expressions cross Dante’s face until it finally went cold and blank. There was a soft hiss and a blue glow from below as a blowtorch was fired up, and she and Dante scooted back as the man below removed the grate.
She looked down into the hole and realized there was at least a twenty-foot drop to the ground; a man was hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel by some sort of harness, the blowtorch in one hand and the grate in the other. He handed the grate up to Dante, who set it aside, and then tossed the blowtorch down to whoever was waiting below.
“Stand back,” called the person standing at the bottom, his voice tinny.
Dante pulled her back from the hole, and a grappling hook shot up and connected with the ceiling above them. The rope was tugged on a couple of times to check for stability, and then the one Dante called Axel snapped a couple of carabiners to the rope and passed them to Dante.
“See you at the bottom, mate,” the man said, and then there was a whooshing sound as he slid down the rope.
Liv took one carabiner from Dante and wrapped her ankle around the rope, eager to be as far away from Dubai as she possibly could. Then she looked at Dante and saw the indecision on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m trying to decide if my chances are better with Mittal’s soldiers or with my brothers.” The corner of his mouth quirked and he shook his head. “I have to say that I’m not completely sure.”