But the doctor just smiled at her. “Some mild cramping early in pregnancy can be perfectly normal. The baby is fine.” He nodded once, then said, “From the looks of things, they both are.” Then he backed up and pointed to the screen.
As he moved his fingers and started talking, showing them the two tiny lives that were their babies, Sydney couldn’t even hear his words. A dull roar had filled her ears.
Not one baby. Two?
She glanced back over at Gunner. She’d never seen a smile so wide.
And he’d asked to marry her, before he even knew about the baby’s fate. He’d wanted her.
“Now, you’re going to need to be careful. Carrying twins will mean that your body is doing twice the work.”
Careful—not exactly part of life for the EOD.
“She’ll stay safe,” Gunner vowed, and she knew he meant the words.
Good, because she wasn’t going to play the killer’s game anymore. In that instant when she’d seen Gunner’s headlights coming at her, she’d known that her chances for survival were running out.
No more games.
No more attacks.
The doctor finished up. Sydney dressed and Gunner went to stand guard outside her room. Even though she was afraid and had death stalking her, a bubble of happiness kept growing inside her.
Twins. Gunner. Marriage.
If she could just get the killer off her back, she’d have everything she’d ever wanted.
She pushed open the door.
“I’m sorry, Gunner, but you have to come with me.”
Logan’s words froze her.
“The hell I am!” Gunner snapped. He jerked away from Logan. “I’m not leaving Sydney’s side. I’m not—”
“A witness saw you tampering with her brakes.”
The words filled Sydney’s ears.
She stilled. That bubble of happiness wasn’t feeling so light anymore.
“And Sydney’s neighbor had sent a lady out to house-sit while she and her husband were out of town. The house sitter was there that night, and she reported seeing your truck, just sitting out in the street, waiting, right before the fire started at Sydney’s home.”
Sydney shook her head. That bubble burst. “Gunner?”
He spun toward her. “It’s not true. It’s a setup!”
The nearby hospital staff started to ease back.
Sydney searched Gunner’s face. Then looked at Logan. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because your life matters. I don’t know what kind of game he’s playing...” His jaw locked. “But it’s ending.”
Cale and Slade waited behind them, both watching with tense faces.
Sydney could only shake her head. “Gunner isn’t the one playing this game. He’s been saving me.”
Slade stepped forward. “That’s what he wanted you to think! He’s not a hero. He never was.”
Gunner’s face seemed to have turned to stone.
“I won’t believe this!” No, she wouldn’t. “I trust Gunner.” More than she trusted anyone else.
“Mercer wants him back at the office. Now.” Logan’s voice was grim. “I’m sorry, but I have no choice here. Gunner’s been termed a threat, and I have to take him in.”
“Then I’m coming, too.”
But Slade stepped in her path. “Why won’t you see him for what he is? He’s playing you.”
Someone was playing her, all right.
“You can’t have this much blind trust in him!” Slade’s voice rose. “You’re smarter than this!”
Yes, she was. The rest of the EOD should be, too.
She caught Logan’s gaze. Read the message that her shock had almost blinded her to before.
Then she gave a quick nod. “I—I’m coming.” But she let the faintest quiver slide into the words.
Gunner’s eyes widened.
Slade’s lips curved.
She realized that she’d just used the same quiver in her voice that Slade had used in his words a few times.
Maybe they were both good actors.
They were about to see who was better.
She wasn’t letting Gunner go down for these attacks. No way.
“I think...I remembered hearing my captors talk about the American,” Slade whispered as he rubbed his chin. “I told Cale on the way here.”
He’d just remembered? Wasn’t that convenient?
And bull.
“I think Gunner’s been working with them all along, using his ties to the EOD to bring the drugs into the country.”
“Enough.” Logan’s fierce voice. “We say nothing else until we’re back in the office.”
But Slade thought he’d said plenty. Enough to have her turning her back on Gunner?
The man didn’t know her at all.
Only fair, since she’d just realized that she never knew him, either.
* * *
“SYDNEY CAN’T KEEP being in the line of fire.” Gunner leveled his stare at Mercer. “She needs to be taken out of the equation now.”
“Sydney’s a woman with a very strong mind. Is that what she wants?” Mercer demanded.
Gunner flattened his hands on Mercer’s desk and leaned toward him. “Sydney’s not being risked anymore. Someone is using her to get at me.” And he knew just who that person was.
Did Slade really think he was so smart? That no one saw through his lies?
Even being blood wasn’t going to protect him.
“Haul his butt in here,” Gunner demanded. “Lock him up. Keep him away from her.” And me. Before I tear him apart.
“The house sitter did see you at Sydney’s—”
“Really? Then where the hell was this person when the house was burning? Because no one came running out—no one tried to do a damn thing.”
“She said she was scared. That she kept the doors bolted. She was just a kid, barely over sixteen.” Mercer assessed him. “Why were you waiting outside Sydney’s house?”
“Because I was getting up the damn courage to go and talk to her!”
Mercer raised a doubting eyebrow.
“And the witness who saw you tampering with her brakes?”
“I think the witness is already dead.” Brutal, but true. “After he told you what he saw, he was dead. Because his words were a flat lie, and the real killer here isn’t going to let him keep breathing.”
Frowning now, Mercer reached for his phone. Gunner’s teeth ground together as he listened to Mercer on the call. The big boss was demanding that the witness to the tampering be brought in, only...
Mercer glanced back at him. “He convulsed in holding, just a few moments ago. Tina’s on scene. Says it looks like the guy overdosed.”
“Get Tina to do the blood work,” Gunner said as his mind whirled. “Because I’m betting you’ll find muerte in his system.”
Mercer gave the order, then hung up the phone.
“That’s why he was making all those charter flights,” Gunner muttered as he rose to his full height. “They were drug runs. He was making connections down there. Setting everything up.” He raked a hand through his hair. “His accounts were cleaned out because he didn’t plan on coming back to the U.S. He was leaving everyone—”
Leaving Sydney.
“Then he got into trouble down there.” As if there wouldn’t be enemies in the drug cartels. “He wanted us to bail him out.” Only he and Sydney had almost died in the process.
Somehow Slade had survived. Thrived.
“He wasn’t their captive.” No, Gunner didn’t think that had been the case at all.
The door opened behind him. A quick glance showed Logan coming into the room.
Logan, whose whisper-thin voice had ordered him to “Play along” at the hospital because he wasn’t turning his back on him. The EOD stuck together.
Always.
“He was working us, the whole time. Slade wanted us down there so he could have an in at the EOD.” So he could search their files. Make contacts to distribute
the muerte. They’d thought he was an addict.
When he was the drug lord.
“Are you sure about all of this?” Logan shook his head. “We don’t have proof, man. Every piece of evidence is pointing to you. We can’t even bring in the FBI because they’d want to lock you up, not him.”
“Because he’s smarter than we realized. He’s been working us all along.”
“We need more evidence.” Mercer stood behind his desk. “If Slade is behind the muerte spread, we have to bring him down and stop his whole cartel.”
“Let him come at me,” Gunner demanded. “Give him a straight shot at me. He hates me.” That had to be obvious to them all. Otherwise, why plant all the evidence against him? “I can get you what you need.”
But Mercer shook his head. “No, you can’t.” Definite. “You don’t share with a man you hate. You share your secrets with those you love.”
Sydney.
“He’s tried to kill her,” Gunner said, gritting his teeth. “I’m not risking her—”
“It’s Sydney’s life. She gets to decide the risk. Not anyone else.”
“And she’s carrying my babies,” Gunner snapped right back. “So that means I get to—”
“Uh, babies?” Logan murmured, and coughed. “As in more than one?”
Gunner gave a grim nod.
“Hot damn,” Logan said.
“So you see why I’m not risking the woman I love.”
“You just—” Logan sputtered. “You just admitted to loving her? Who are you? Where’s the real Gunner?”
Gunner ignored him. “She won’t come in the line of fire. Use me. Set me up as bait, but not her. Not...her.”
“I think that’s my call.” Sydney’s voice. Sydney—pushing back a side door in Mercer’s office.
Gunner shook his head. “Where the hell does that door even lead?” he muttered. Every time he’d been in there, that room had been blocked.
“In case any of our other staff members have been compromised,” Mercer said as his gaze cut to Sydney, “I took the liberty of having Sydney come in the...uh...private entrance. I didn’t want to advertise her presence with us.”
He knew that Sydney had worked closely with Mercer on a few other cases. It appeared she was privy to more than a few of the man’s secrets, too.
“You heard it all?” Mercer asked her.
Sydney nodded. Her gaze stayed on Gunner. “Slade isn’t going to come clean with you.”
“And he’s been trying to kill you!” All while wearing that fake mask of concern. He’d been playing them from the first.
Gunner had known for sure when he spun around in the hospital and met his brother’s gaze. The tragic concern there... Slade had worn that same expression at Sarah Bell’s funeral. But an hour after the funeral, Gunner had caught the guy making out with another girl.
So much for his grief.
“Am I supposed to die, too?” Those had been Slade’s words, and the memory of them had stabbed into Gunner, sharp like a knife, as he stood in that hospital corridor.
“Slade didn’t withdraw his application to the EOD,” Sydney said.
Gunner shook his head, trying to banish that memory.
“I found his original file—”
“And I remember rejecting him,” Mercer added, voice like a bear’s growl. “I never forget men I think can be a threat.”
Sydney moved closer to Gunner. “He was turned away from the EOD. I found his drug test. He didn’t pass it then. He was on an unknown drug at the time, one that our labs couldn’t identify, but it raised red flags.”
“That’s why we rejected him and stopped using him on freelance work,” Mercer added.
Sydney’s hand touched lightly against Gunner’s arm. “I got Tina to compare his old drug test with the result that we had on the muerte...he was on muerte back then.”
“Bring him in here,” Gunner said, his heart feeling as if it were encased in ice. How had this happened? His brother. “We can show him the tests, make him talk—”
Mercer shook his head. “You don’t think I’ve already run at him, again and again? This guy isn’t going to break for me.” Before Gunner could speak, Mercer added, “Or for you.”
“That’s where I come in.” Sydney’s smile was a little sad. “If he thinks that I believe him, if he thinks that I’ve lost faith in you, then he will come to me.”
“More likely, he’ll kill you!”
“Not with you, Cale and Logan watching my back.” She seemed so calm. How did she seem so calm? He was about to go crazy. “I know you’ll keep me safe.” So certain.
“This won’t work.” He wasn’t talking to the others. They didn’t matter. Just her. “He’ll kill you. He won’t talk.”
“He asked me to run away with him before that last trip to Peru two years ago. Before his plane crashed.”
Gunner was too conscious of the pounding of his heart. Too loud.
“I didn’t go with him because...things were getting difficult between us, so I told him that I needed more time. He told me that he wanted to offer me a brand-new life. One that I wouldn’t be able to imagine.” Her shoulders rolled. “He wanted to bring me into the new world that he was creating. Into the new life that he was starting for himself.”
A life as a drug cartel leader?
“Do you know why they call the drug muerte?” Logan asked.
Gunner shook his head.
“I did some digging with a contact at the DEA. The drug is named after the guy who’s spreading it through South America...a man who reportedly rose from the dead to take over one of the biggest cartels in Peru.”
Slade. Rising from the dead...
“If Slade truly wanted to kill me,” Sydney said, “all he had to do was walk up to me and put a bullet in my heart.”
Gunner’s hands fisted.
“Instead, he’s been playing with me. Punishing me. Punishing you. Hell, maybe he’s even been testing us, to see how far we’ll go in order to survive.” Her lips thinned. “I won’t be tested again. Mercer is setting up my house in Baton Rouge. We’re getting out of D.C. Making him think that I’m turning my back on you and on the EOD. Making him think that I only want—”
“—him,” Gunner finished for her.
“And if I’m right on this, he’ll come after me. He’ll think we’re alone, and I will get him to tell me the truth.”
“Or what—die trying?”
Her hand lifted. Her fingers feathered over his cheek. “That’s where you come in, Gunner. It’s your job to keep me alive. To keep all of us alive.”
He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. “There’s another way....”
“No, there isn’t. I’m the only one who he might trust here. I’m the one who can get to him. I’m the one who can end this.” Her hand dropped, and he immediately missed the warmth of her touch. “You can have me in your sights every moment,” she whispered. “If you think I’m threatened, if you think I’m in danger—”
“Then I will end him.”
Her breath expelled in a relieved rush. “Then you’re in?”
“You aren’t giving me a choice.” He glared at them all. Promised Mercer and Logan all kinds of hell if this turned south. “And there’s no way I’m letting you leave town without me.”
She threw her arms around him and squeezed the breath right out of him. “I love you, Gunner.” A whispered confession that he knew no one else heard.
But it was a confession that he’d never forget.
Chapter Eleven
Sydney had tears trekking down her cheeks as Gunner was loaded into the back of the black SUV. Men in suits were on either side of him. His hands were cuffed.
“Sydney?” Slade’s voice.
She turned and saw him walking up, with Cale by his side. Slade’s steps were slow as he approached her, the limp seeming to give him more trouble today.
She knew that Slade had been in the interrogation room.
She’d been in
hell.
It was easy to keep the tears coming. Maybe it was the hormones or maybe she’d always been a better actress than she’d thought. Either way... “Gunner’s being taken in by the feds. They have so much evidence on him...” Her voice trailed away. “I thought I knew him.”
Slade came to her and wrapped his arms around her.
She shoved him back. “Don’t touch me!” Now, that part wasn’t acting. “I can’t stand— I can’t trust anyone. I—I thought I could...”
Pain flashed across Slade’s face. “You can trust me, sweetheart. You always could. I’ve never stopped loving you.”
She blinked up at him, trying to get the tears off her lashes. “After what I did to you?”
What she’d done? Nothing. Lived her life, tried to help him.
He’d been lying to her for years.
“Always,” he whispered as he lifted his hand and wiped away her tears.
She’d just told him not to touch her.
Her jaw ached, and she tried to ease the clenching of her teeth. “I have to get out of here.” She let her gaze cut to Cale. She shuddered, and glanced back at Slade. “I need to get away, to think.”
“Where will you go?” he whispered.
A sad smile curved her lips. “To the only home I have left.”
Now he knew just where she’d be.
Would he follow her?
She turned away from him, but not before she caught the curling of his lips.
Yes, he’d follow.
Then come and get me.
* * *
SLADE WATCHED THE black SUV pull away from the curb, triumph filling him. His brother had been taken into custody. The agents had followed all the bread crumbs that he’d left behind, and everyone there had turned on Gunner.
His brother was alone.
Sydney was sliding into a cab now. She looked so pale. So lost. So...perfect.
“It is safe for her to be alone?” Slade asked, keeping his voice raspy. He’d also done a pretty good job of keeping up his limp, as if that injury really bothered him anymore.
Cale stepped to the edge of the sidewalk. “Now that we have Gunner, she’ll be safe. She...she turned in her resignation when she found out the truth. Sydney doesn’t want to be part of the EOD anymore.”
The cab eased into the flow of traffic.