Chapter 12

Jude wanted to rip Horace Dresden into tiny pieces, rebuild him, and do it all over again. The right side of Ella’s face was bruised. Once he’d cleaned her up, he realized nothing was broken. He’d checked her over completely, not sure she hadn’t been tortured. The rest of her body appeared untouched. She’d taken a punch from a man around Jude’s size. Dresden. Jude knew it, and he wanted to kill that motherfucker.

Once the laundry truck Georgia had used to spirit Ella away from Dresden’s had arrived at the airfield, Jude had loaded Ella onto the small charter plane they’d then taken to Moldova. From there, he loaded her onto another larger charter, and they’d flown to the States. Each charter had owed Jude a favor, and he’d called them in with zero hesitation. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know his plans, so he’d not involved Vivi or his other Endgame teammates.

Had they been there, Jude could have taken his shot at Dresden. Without their involvement, he couldn’t risk busting in there like a one-man army. That could result in damage to Ella. So he’d made the decision to sneak her out, knowing she wouldn’t go without being disabled. Georgia had signed on with Jude. She’d also owed him a favor or two. When she dropped Ella off, she’d complained about his woman’s right hook and even had a shiner to match the one coloring Ella’s face. Georgia had assured him she hadn’t harmed Ella too much, that the mark on Ella’s face wasn’t from her.

He didn’t know if Dresden would be able to track them, but he knew once the bastard realized Ella was gone, he’d guess Jude had her and was taking her to the United States.

She’d roused once on the flight from outside Atlanta to the abandoned airstrip in Texas. Jude had knocked her back out, feeling only fleeting remorse when her confused gaze had met his and then gone blank as she fell back into the arms of Morpheus. Then he’d driven eight hours through Texas to the mountains of New Mexico.

He pushed off the doorjamb and entered the massive bedroom, moving to the side of the bed she lay on—the bed he’d had handcrafted when he’d had this cabin built almost two years ago. This had been designed to be his escape. He’d brought her here because no one but his tia Rosa knew about this place. They were as safe as he could make them because the only other person who knew about his home away from home was dead.

He’d purchased the land under a shell corporation Micah had helped him set up for them both. Micah had built in Alaska. Jude had built in the Cimarron Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico. He’d hunted these woods with his great-uncle as a child. Some of Jude’s happiest memories had been created in these mountains.

And now she was here.

It had snowed last night—not the light, fluffy stuff, but the heavy, wet snow of a fall storm—and Jude had had a bitch of a time getting the dilapidated Range Rover up the pass to his home. Once he’d gotten them there safely, he’d taken Ella inside, removed everything but her bra and panties, and placed her in the huge California king-size bed made entirely of the cottonwoods that dominated the landscape outside his windows.

She’d wake soon, and then he’d deal with what he’d done and what had been done to her. But until then…

He allowed his gaze to roam over her features. Even with the black-and-blue marks covering her face, she was hands down the most beautiful woman Jude had ever seen. He knew that under the bruising, her ivory skin was tinted with freckles across the bridge of her aquiline nose. Her almond-shaped eyes were closed, and he missed the cold frost of her gray eyes. Eyes that could turn to molten silver when she was in the throes of passion. Long, black lashes lay like fans on her pale cheeks, and her dark-brown eyebrows were gently curved over her eyes.

His gaze traveled south, over her thinner upper lip and deliciously full lower lip. Those lips could flatten in anger, lift in a soul-destroying smile, or open in ecstasy. He stopped when he came to the dent in her chin and licked his lips. She would always tempt him. Jude wondered if he’d ever be able to purge her. The need that had simmered under his skin from the moment he’d seen her almost two years ago continued to beat at him, heating him from the inside out, making him fist his hands.

Then his gaze traveled over the scar at her temple, and rage lit him. He pulled on a single thread of his control, finding other threads and winding them together until he could breathe without the fury.

Still he stood there and watched her breathe, ironically realizing that’s all he’d wanted for over a year—nothing more than to be able to watch her breathe.

Of course, that had been when he’d thought her dead. And she wasn’t dead. Not physically anyway.

He pulled his gaze from her, assured she was resting easily, and walked to the chair beside the wide bank of windows facing the southeast ridges of Baldy Mountain. Snow blanketed the top of the mountain, and the trees swayed in the wind of the continuing storm overhead. A pale-gray sky taunted him. It would weep snow again soon.

Could he survive in her presence for as long as he knew it would take to force her to give him information? Could he save her from herself?

He ran a hand down his face and tensed. She shifted on the bed, and everything in Jude went on alert. He heard her rise to a sitting position before she stilled. How would she play it?

Her breathing didn’t change from slow and even. But Jude was a hunter by nature, and he recognized the fear she was giving off in waves. He turned and simply watched her. He stood beside the window in the shadows of the intentionally darkened room, and unless she turned her head, she wouldn’t see him.

Could she feel him?

He wanted to know, but he waited.

“You have to let me go,” she said, her voice rough and low.

Jude didn’t respond.

She turned her head, finding him unerringly, her gaze narrowed and dark. “You don’t know what you’re doing here, Dagan.”

Anger rose again. Always, it was the anger now. He stepped from the shadows and turned the chair around, sitting down and crossing one leg over the opposite knee. “Why don’t you tell me then, Ella?”

“Let me go,” she demanded, her voice rising, the notes of the fear she was obviously feeling ringing strident in her tone.

“I’ve tried.” He answered her demand with the truth. He had. Once he’d found out she was alive, he’d gotten rip-roaring drunk and tried to drown his pain. Then he’d woken up with a bitch of a headache and a resolution. He would find her and force her to make him understand why she’d done what she’d done.

“Try harder,” she whispered. “For both of us, try harder.”

He rubbed his chest before he could check the action. She was scared. And not of Jude. What did she know? What the hell was she doing for the Piper? “Do you need some water?”

She shook her head, the nearly black strands of her hair falling to curtain her face from his view. “I need you to let me go, Dagan.”

“My name,” he said in a gruff voice.

“I can’t,” she returned, voice breaking at the end.

He sat up, both feet on the floor, fisted hands on his knees. “Use. My. Name.”

“Please…” If it was possible, her head hung lower.

This was the beginning. If he was going to break her, he’d have to start now. “Please…who?” He kept his voice low, almost a whisper.

She straightened then, giving another half-hearted tug on the soft leather cuffs attached to her wrists. “I won’t beg. Never again.”

He stood at that. He’d never made her. “Who made you beg, El?”

Jude winced as he automatically switched to the shortened version of her name. It was intimate and something he’d fallen back into far too easily.

She turned away from him, staring at the opposite wall and refusing to answer.

The fury that had been his best friend since the night she’d died rose again, swift and supernova hot. “Who made you beg, Ella?”

She took a deep breath and met his gaze. “Let me go.”

He shook his head and stood, walking to stand right beside the bed. She shrank from him, and that also enraged him. “When you tell me what’s going on, then I’ll let you go…maybe.”

He turned and walked to the door.

“I can’t give you what you want. Not anymore,” she said softly.

Bullshit. He didn’t turn around when he spoke. “You’ll give me everything you’ve got, intel, spec ops. You’ll give it all to me, and then I’ll decide what to do with you.”

Then he left, hearing her breath break and a strangled sob escape her. He almost, almost, turned around and went back to her.

Instead, he put one foot in front of the other, descending the stairs quickly lest he do what his heart demanded.

* * *

Ella lay back down gingerly on the bed. She was in so much shit. Once the maid-in-disguise had switched her from the laundry cart to the laundry chute, she’d known Jude was in control of this round. She’d have no choice but to ride it out and see what was going on.

She couldn’t have fought anyway. Her head had been muddled from Dresden’s blow, and once the woman Jude had sent dumped her in the laundry chute, Ella had passed out for good, not waking until a few minutes ago. She’d dreamed she’d woken on a plane, meeting the gaze of her lover and seeing him smile at her the way he used to. But that’s all it had been…a dream.

Because the resolution that had masked his face moments ago told her just how deep in the shit she was. Jude Dagan wasn’t a man to play with, and she knew that’s what he thought she’d been doing.

Ella stared at the gorgeous cedar wood that comprised the ceiling and closed her eyes against the pain of her circumstance. He wanted the truth, and that she couldn’t give him. Not yet. It had nothing to do with trust and everything to do with her mission. The Piper had made it very clear she was to tell no one her mission objective because, he’d said, all of Endgame Ops would try to stop her. King and his men wanted to kill Dresden. The Piper wanted Dresden so he could interrogate and dismantle him.

And the Piper had another huge reason for wanting Ella’s mission kept quiet…his daughter, Anna Beth. The thought of the other woman sent fear tripping through Ella. No one knew better what it was like to be at the horrible tender mercy of Horace Dresden. Ella needed to contact Brody as soon as possible. The woman needed extraction the moment they could discern that Dresden was away from his mansion.

She sat back up and glanced around for a clock. The one on the bedside table said it was five in the afternoon. Darkness was falling outside, and the clouds above them were beginning to drop their load of snow. She had no idea where they were, but if she had to venture a guess, she’d say New Mexico. The Cimarron subrange of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to be specific.

Jude had told her stories about him and his great-uncle hunting these mountains and their passes. He’d always spoken of New Mexico as home, even though his mother had left the state when he was a baby. Jude hadn’t returned until he was a young teenager. His mother, sadly, had not returned with him. Too eager to become Mexico’s next soap opera star, she’d let Jude return to his father’s people in New Mexico and never looked back.

He hadn’t told Ella much else, but his mother’s desertion had hurt him. Hell, she’d hurt him so much that he denied her existence to most people. Ella had heard their teammates ribbing him about his beautiful mother. Jude tried to ignore it, shrug it off, but sometimes it got to him.

The sound of his footfalls coming back up the stairs tightened her muscles. She didn’t know how to breathe with him so close to her. All she wanted was to sink inside him and never come back out. Would he let her?

The answer rang through her mind unequivocally… No, he wouldn’t. Not until he had the truth. And that she couldn’t give him. Hell, she didn’t even know it now.

“I brought you some soup,” he said as he walked in and placed a heavy-looking ceramic bowl on the bedside table.

“I’m not hungry,” she responded, a part of her just wanting to be contrary. She was frustrated at getting caught. But how could she have anticipated that Jude would come for her inside Dresden’s house?

“Yeah, you are.” He laughed, and the sound rolled through her tummy. “I can hear your stomach growling.”

“That’s anger you’re hearing,” she sniped back.

He laughed again and sat down in the chair he’d taken earlier. “Eat, Ella. It looks like you haven’t been doing much of that lately.”

The smell of potato soup wafted through the air, and her stomach growled loudly, again. She sighed and reached for the bowl, coming close to grabbing it before Jude grunted and beat her to it.

“It’s hot,” he warned her, placing the oven mitt that lay beside the bowl in her hand.

She put the mitt on and grabbed the bowl. He towered over her, and her gaze rose, roving over his strong features until she met his look head-on. Something flared in the depths of his ebony orbs, warming Ella in a way the soup in her hands never could. Then he veiled his eyes, long, dark lashes falling as he made sure to brush her fingers before releasing the bowl into her hands.

Electricity arced between them. She wanted to touch him, to feel that lightning zing between them and settle between her legs before spreading throughout her body. It had been this way between them from the first moment she’d seen him. He’d had his back to her when King had introduced her to the team. Gray Broemig had warned her that King didn’t play well with the CIA but that he’d be fair. Broemig had just wanted someone inside Endgame who could report to him. Vivi had defected and wasn’t forthcoming with intel on Endgame anymore. He’d needed a new patsy. What he hadn’t anticipated was that Ella would become Endgame in her bones. Broemig had lost Ella the moment Jude Dagan had turned around and looked her up and down, his gaze finally centering on her own. Ella had never experienced that type of connection before—had never even known she wanted it.

He had owned her in that moment, and the men he called brothers had become hers as well. She took a delicate bite of the soup and nearly moaned. She’d forgotten how well Jude cooked. His great-aunt had taught him everything she knew, and he’d kept practicing long after he’d grown up.

He said cooking kept him close to his roots. Right now, Ella and her stomach were glad for it.

It took her less than five minutes to empty the bowl. The heat initially stung her bruised tongue, but nothing could stop her from shoveling in the food. The whole time she ate, Jude’s perusal was a tactile caress. When she finished, she turned and found him holding a glass of water and three small white pills in his hand. Aspirin. He wouldn’t drug her again. He’d get no information out of her that way.

She took the glass and the pills, drinking them down before she handed the glass back.

He took it and placed it on the nightstand. Then he sat back down and waited.

She realized then that she was nearly naked under the covers. She tucked them tighter around her body, using her arms to hold them close.

Ella heard him chuckle, and then he said, “I’ve seen everything you’ve got, Ella.”

But he hadn’t. Her body was nothing like he’d known it. She’d been marked irrevocably by Vasily Savidge—had the scars on her back and thighs to prove it. Jude had obviously stripped her, leaving her some coverage with her bra and panties. Had he seen her scars?

She guessed not. His first question upon her waking would have been about them, if he’d seen them.

Instead of responding, she lay back on the pillows she’d stacked behind her. Fatigue was threatening to pull her under, much like the drugs had. How long had it been since she’d slept deeply? Safely?

Since the last night she’d spent with Jude at the beach—and even that had been short because she’d preferred to spend the time loving him.

“You’re going to have to talk to me, El,” she heard him murmur. Her heart stuttered.

His voice when he called her El made her want to weep. He could destroy her…weaken her resolve to finish this thing with Dresden, make her want to just stay holed up here with him and forget the world.

But she didn’t have that luxury. She had Anna Beth Caine to save and a name to glean from Dresden. Didn’t look like rest was coming anytime soon.

“Sleep now, baby. We’ve got all the time in the world,” Jude said as he tucked the plaid duvet around her. His smell—cedar and nothing but man—sank into her pores. She licked her lips, wishing she was licking his.

She heard his declaration and allowed herself the pain of hope for a few precious seconds. Warmth stole over her, combining with her exhaustion to pull her under. She wanted to believe his words but knew the truth.

Ella’s clock had been ticking down for two years. She had hardly any time left. But Jude? Jude was a different story.

She’d make sure he had plenty left. Or she’d die trying.