“Give me a sec. Just need to get my laptop.”
As she waited for Sean to return, she tried not to think about Henry lying there in his hospital bed. Pale. Weak. Alone.
He didn’t want you there.
She bit the inside of her cheek, knowing the gentle voice in her head was right, but at the same time wishing she’d stayed with her brother. Nobody should die alone.
We all die alone.
Now that voice was scornful, and she forced herself not to dwell on the depressing point it raised. She considered calling the hospital for an update on Henry’s condition, but Sasha Petrova had promised to contact her if there was any change. Besides, Henry had been adamant about what he wanted her to do, and sitting vigil at his bedside was not it.
He wanted vengeance.
Luckily, Juliet knew all about vengeance. And revenge. The two concepts tended to get so tangled up that sometimes she wasn’t sure which one motivated her.
“All right, luv,” Sean said a minute later, “we’ve got three known addresses for the Siberian Wolf. One is in Russia, way up north and a bitch to get to, according to our files. The second is in Belarus, about three hours east of the capital, close to the Russian border. The third is in Budapest, an apartment in the west end of the city.”
The news didn’t please her in the slightest. Three known residences? She wasn’t in the mood to traipse around checking out three different sites. She wanted him now, damn it.
“I’d try the Belarus one first,” Sean said helpfully. “Your brother was hit, what, twenty-four hours ago?”
“About that.”
“Then chances are Grechko would want to lie low for a couple of days. He won’t want to hop a plane to Hungary or make the trek to Buttfuck, Russia. Not until he knows it’s safe.”
“Thanks. I’ll get right on it.”
She was about to hang up when he spoke again. “Jules . . .”
“What?” she said irritably.
“Be careful.”
“I always am.”
She disconnected the call and rose from the bed, already making plans in her head. She’d need a new disguise. A car. Better weapons than the shit she carried in her go bag.
With Noelle out of touch it would be harder to procure the necessary supplies, but her boss possessed a vast network of contacts that Juliet could tap into.
Deep in thought, she changed out of her preppy outfit and into her own clothes, then spent the next hour and a half on the phone, making arrangements.
She was just leaving the suite when the nurse from St. Anne’s called to inform her that her brother had died.
Chapter 3
Present day
Her body was on fire. Hot, relentless flames licked at every square inch of skin, and as she lay there in a pile of fiery flesh, her head pounded and the room spun before her eyes. Her lower abdomen throbbed with dull, pulsing pain that seemed to vibrate in time to the erratic beating of her heart.
Even in her feverish state, Juliet was capable of chastising herself for not packing more than a basic first-aid kit in her go bag. She’d gotten cocky. Hadn’t thought she’d need more than the essentials.
Antibiotics. She needed antibiotics, damn it. But she was too weak and too dizzy to move.
How much time had passed since she’d returned to the hotel?
Hours?
Days?
She couldn’t remember. Couldn’t seem to make her brain function.
She remembered the drive east. She remembered the six hours she’d spent staked out in the snowy woods behind Victor Grechko’s remote farmhouse. She remembered making her move, disabling the alarms, breaking into the house.
She remembered getting shot.
She remembered shooting back.
And she remembered every grisly moment that followed once she’d gained the upper hand on Grechko.
Everything after that was a blur.
An anguished moan escaped her dry lips. God, she was thirsty, but the water bottle on the nightstand was so far away. Miles and miles away. She shifted on the bed, attempted to sit up, but that only resulted in another wave of crippling agony, followed by a round of shivers that made no sense because her body was on fire.
She gave up and sank back on the firm mattress. Images from the past forty-eight hours circled her tired brain like a school of sharks. Henry in the hospital. Henry pale and dying. That bastard Grechko and his empty black eyes as he’d sat there tied to the chair, refusing to talk.
But she’d made him talk.
She’d broken the Siberian Wolf. Broken him. He might’ve taken the first shot, but she’d had the last laugh. The final victory.
No, not final. Because it wasn’t over. It wasn’t goddamn over.
“Orlov,” she mumbled. Just saying the name out loud took a physical toll on her, made her abdomen throb with pain.
She hated this. Hated feeling weak. Hated being powerless.
God, where was Isabel?
Had she even called Isabel?
She had no idea what was real anymore.
Tired. So fucking tired.
And hot. She’d been stuck in this sauna for hours and hours and hours.
Juliet whimpered and began clawing at her clothes, but her hands felt like two lead pipes and she couldn’t seem to lift up her shirt. Eventually she stopped trying and lay there, soaked in a pool of sweat, her eyes unable to focus and her body devoured by flames.
She must have passed out, because the room was dark when her eyes opened again. No light seeped through the crack in the drawn burgundy drapes. Her mouth was so parched, she felt like someone had stuffed a bag of sand inside it. Water. She needed water.
It took every ounce of strength she possessed to grab the bottle on the night table. Her fingers trembled as she twisted off the cap. She managed to bring the plastic bottle to her lips, managed to take one sip, two, before her lead-pipe hands failed her and the bottle slipped from her grasp.
The cold sensation that washed over her chest was welcome. She nearly moaned in delight, but before she could appreciate the respite from the flames, the shivers came in full force.
When she blacked out the second time, it was not because of the fire, but the ice.
Minutes, hours, or years later, a voice lured her back from the darkness.
“. . . uliet . . .”
Had she turned on the television? She didn’t know where the voices were coming from.
“Juliet.”
Panic spiraled through her, briefly overshadowing the blistering agony. The voice knew her name.
And big warm hands were grabbing at her.
Her instincts kicked in, years of training taking over and giving her a burst of strength she hadn’t thought possible. Her fist shot out, connecting with something hard.
A muttered expletive filled the air.
“Settle down . . . It’s . . . here to help . . . name is Val . . . Ethan sent me . . .”
The voice kept fading in and out. Her head hurt so bad, she wanted to tell her attacker to shut up. Just kill her and get it over with.
“. . . let’s take a look at . . .”
He was muttering in Russian now, but she couldn’t make out the words, and suddenly she was being rolled over, an action that brought a streak of excruciating pain to her side.
“. . . infection . . . giving you a shot of . . .”
Something pricked her arm, but she was too tired to strike out again.
“. . . really got yourself in a bind, didn’t you? That’s it. Lie still . . . All right . . . just going to take out these stitches and clean you up . . . Then I’ll stitch you up agai—”
When those male hands touched her wound, she passed out like a light.
• • •
“What do you mean, you left her?” Et
han demanded as he slid into the backseat of the airport taxi.
“It’s past midnight, Hayes, and I have a wife and kid at home. I had no choice.” Val Markin didn’t sound the least bit contrite. If anything, he seemed annoyed as he continued in a slight Russian accent. “It will be hard enough to explain the black eye to my wife, let alone why I had to drive to Minsk in the middle of the night.”
“What black eye?”
“Your lovely friend is a wildcat. The second I got near her, she unleashed a right hook.”
Ethan had to grin. Yeah, it figured that even an injured Juliet would start a fight. It was actually rather impressive that she’d managed to gain the upper hand on Val. Not many people did. Markin was as deadly as they came, a former soldier and medic in the army who’d been discharged the prior year due to a shoulder injury. But Val wasn’t out of the game completely. He still took on the occasional contract job for Morgan, and he was the only person Ethan knew in Belarus, which was why he’d dispatched the soldier to tend to Juliet until he arrived.
“Other than a solid right hook, how is she?” Ethan asked.
“She’s in bad shape, brother. Single gunshot to her left side, but it’s the infection that did a number on her. She must have stitched herself up in the field—did a decent job, all things considered.”
He couldn’t help but feel a spark of admiration. The woman was a true warrior. He’d known from the moment they’d met that Juliet Mason was tough as nails, so it didn’t surprise him in the slightest that she hadn’t let a measly bullet wound keep her down. Unfortunately, not even warriors were immune to infection.
Ethan didn’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if he’d decided not to answer Isabel’s phone.
“I was with her for six hours,” Val went on. “I gave her two rounds of antibiotics, but the fever was still high when I left. The bullet itself didn’t do much damage, and the wound will heal fast. Once you contain the infection, she should be fine. Give her another shot when you get there and change the dressing every few hours.”
“Got it. Thanks for taking care of her, Val.”
“No problemo, rookie. Tell your boss to give me a call one of these days. I’m itching for some adventure.”
“Will do.”
As Ethan hung up, he felt the cabbie’s eyes on him in the rearview mirror. “You here visiting your girlfriend?” the older man asked. “Is she sick?”
It figured that he’d get the one cabdriver in Belarus who spoke perfect English.
“Yeah, she has pneumonia,” he said absently, before shifting his gaze out the window.
The city was covered with a blanket of light snow, but the roads had been plowed and the driving conditions weren’t bad. Only a few brave souls roamed the streets, most likely heading home from a pub or a party, their breath coming out in visible white puffs. The temperature hovered just below zero degrees Celsius, and Ethan suddenly noted the irony of him sitting in this cab wearing a parka, wool hat, and gloves, while Juliet was burning up in some hotel room.
It took only ten minutes to reach the Grenadier Hotel from the airport. It was a low-rise brick building with frost-covered ivy strands clinging to its walls and an arched entrance featuring a pair of enormous oak doors.
Ethan didn’t enter from the front. Instead, he waited for the cabbie to speed off, then ducked around the side of the building.
Getting in through the service entrance was no trouble at all. He didn’t encounter a single employee or locked door, which made him want to find the manager and tell the dude how shoddy his security protocol was. Then again, that’s probably why Juliet had chosen the place. Easy access, easy escape.
Her room was on the second floor, another strategic move on Juliet’s part—a former thief like her would have no problem scaling the second-floor balcony—and the suite she’d booked happened to be situated next to the stairwell door, serving as yet another escape route.
He climbed the stairs with energy he certainly didn’t feel, not after enduring an eleven-hour flight sandwiched between two loudmouthed businessmen. He hated flying commercial, but he’d had no choice. Morgan’s jet was in Bolivia with the team, and he would’ve had to wait too long for a charter at the airfield in Denver, which meant sucking it up and hopping on a regular flight like a normal person. He’d become spoiled these past five years, what with the private charters and endless network of contacts that allowed Morgan’s team to go undetected anywhere they wanted.
Val had left Juliet’s door unlocked, but it didn’t really matter because the lock was so cheap, a third-grader could’ve picked it. Ethan strode inside, doing a cursory sweep of his surroundings before heading for the queen-size bed in the center of the room.
His breath caught when he laid eyes on the unconscious woman on the bed. Shit, she didn’t look good at all. Her dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, but several loose strands were matted to her sweaty forehead. Black leggings and a long-sleeved shirt were damp and plastered to her willowy body, and her face was flushed a deep crimson from the fever.
She didn’t stir at his approach, which was a bad sign. Any operative worth her salt possessed highly honed instincts, and the fact that she hadn’t sensed his presence told him she was out cold.
Ethan couldn’t control the worry swimming inside him as he leaned down to examine Juliet’s injury. Judging by the reddish brown puddle soaking the sheets, she’d bled quite a bit, but at least she hadn’t bled out, thank God. According to Val’s initial update, the bullet had missed any vital organs. It was through and through, and if you were going to survive a shot in the gut, the bullet had connected with the absolute best place for it.
He carefully lifted the corner of the bandage covering the entry wound and found the puckered hole in her side oozing blood, the area around it red and swollen. Same went for the exit wound. And her skin felt like molten lava.
“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled.
Without delay, he grabbed the med kit Val had left on the bedside table and fished out a syringe and a vial of clear liquid. It took a second to administer the dose of antibiotics, but the waves of heat radiating from Juliet’s body concerned him. Christ, he needed to lower her core temperature before she self-combusted on the bed.
Exhaling slowly, he swept his gaze over Juliet’s features. With her eyes closed and her skin flushed, she looked young and vulnerable, a drastic contradiction to the smirking, sassy smart-ass he’d met last year.
Okay, now was definitely not the time to notice the tiny mole above her lush top lip. He marched purposefully toward the small bathroom across the room and filled the tub with lukewarm water—anything colder could potentially shock her system—and then he hurried back to the bed.
She’d probably murder him if she knew what he was doing, but Ethan didn’t dwell on the fact that she could probably pull it off. As he peeled off her leggings and averted his eyes, it occurred to him that this was not the way he’d envisioned this ever going down. He’d figured that if for some miraculous reason he was ever lucky enough to see Juliet Mason naked, it would be in an entirely different context.
Like maybe they’d cross paths on another job and fall into bed.
Or maybe she’d infiltrate Morgan’s compound late one night and seduce him.
Or maybe he’d be the one doing the seducing. Maybe he’d track her down and rock her ever-loving world, proving to the infuriating woman once and for all that he was not the kid she believed him to be.
All right, fine. So clearly he’d put way too much thought into all the tantalizing possibilities, but truth was, Juliet had been on his mind ever since they’d parted ways last year. He hated to admit it, but she’d affected him way more than he’d expected.
A throaty moan jerked him back to the present, to the woman who was now moving restlessly on the blood-and-sweat-soaked mattress, batting at his hands as he tried to remo
ve her shirt.
“Hey,” he said gruffly, “hey, it’s me. It’s Ethan.”
She didn’t respond. Just kept fighting him, even as her eyes stayed closed and her fists were too weak to connect with anything solid.
Pinning her arms down took no effort at all, but made it difficult to get her out of the shirt. A minute later, he finally succeeded in ridding her of the garment, only to discover that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
His stint in the Marines made it easy to act like a soldier rather than a red-blooded man. Ignoring her nude state, Ethan effortlessly lifted Juliet into his arms. She’d stopped struggling, her slender body limp and motionless as he carried her to the bathroom and lowered her into the tub. Once her body was submerged, he soaked a hand towel in the water and ran it over her forehead to cool her face.
He kept her in the bathtub for almost a half hour, his knees digging into the uncomfortable linoleum floor as he stayed at her side, running the cloth over her face. The water and antibiotics must have done the trick, because he could see the flush leaving her olive-colored cheeks, feel her skin getting cooler beneath his touch.
When he was satisfied that the fever had lowered, albeit slightly, he left her in the tub and went to the closet by the door, where he grabbed a fresh set of linens and proceeded to strip the bed of the bloody sheets and bedspread.
A few minutes later, he deposited Juliet between the clean sheets and covered her with the thin blanket he found in the bottom drawer of the pine dresser.
She didn’t rouse the entire time, but he wasn’t worried about her state of unconsciousness. She needed rest, first and foremost, while her immune system battled the infection.
Fuck, he needed rest too, he realized when he felt his eyelids drooping. Sighing, he unzipped his parka and tossed it on one of the two armchairs by the curtained window. He removed the shoulder holster that housed his twin Sig Sauer pistols, but held on to the Glock that had been tucked in the waistband of his cargo pants. As he sank into the second armchair, he caught sight of a black duffel bag sticking out from beneath the bed. Juliet’s gear. Val had already checked it out, commenting that the woman traveled with a shit ton of firepower.