If I were willing to sacrifice him to save myself.
Elijah lifts his hands. “What now?”
“Now we talk,” the lieutenant colonel says. “I did warn the girl what would happen if you found her again. I thought it wasn’t likely, though. I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Nope,” Elijah says. “Dumb as a rock. Makes me wonder why you want me to work for you. Seems like you have enough dumb fuckers under your command already.”
“Elijah, Elijah. You always were the best. Much better than Adam.”
“Adam?” I ask before I can stop myself. He’s been inextricably linked to Elijah for the entire time I’ve known him, but I know there’s more to the story.
“Yes,” the lieutenant colonel says. “Though he always took after his bitch of a mother more than me. She was a spy, you see. I thought I was getting a nice, obedient mail-order bride. Instead I got one of Russia’s finest.”
Shock leaves me rooted to the floor. “He’s your son?”
“My one and only. I would have preferred if our Elijah here were my child.” He grants him a fond look that feels more creepy than paternal. “We have much more in common.”
“No, you don’t,” I say.
“Of course we do. Both of us are coldhearted sons of bitches with a talent for killing people. Neither of us care much what flag we do it under.” His expression turns cold. “And both of us have a weakness when it comes to sweet pussy.”
I shiver at the crude description. And the way it does seem to apply to Elijah. Only the dark side of him. There is another side, one that’s held me, cradled me. Protected me. “You’re wrong.”
“Don’t bother,” Elijah murmurs. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks. The only thing that matters is that we make a deal with him.”
“Deals require leverage,” the lieutenant colonel says. “You don’t have any.”
“No? I think some members of the US government would be very interested to know about some of the shadow operations you’ve conducted. Some against its own citizens.”
“Those operations would implicate you as much as me.” The lieutenant colonel breathes harder, and his eyes take on a harsh beady gleam. Certainty washes over me; he’ll never leave Elijah North alone. He’ll never stop following him. Never stop hounding him. Elijah had more freedom trapped in that French church than he does anywhere else. He’ll never be free.
“Mutually assured destruction.”
“I could blame you completely. Nothing was ever in writing.”
“Mostly because you can’t write a form with complete fucking sentences. The good news is that I recorded some of our conversations. Senators who conveniently disappeared. Judges who were blackmailed. It would destroy you.”
He turns purple in the face.
I have the faint worry that he might collapse—a heart attack, a stroke. Whatever happens to old people when they completely overload with stress. Then he nods to one of the men, and somehow, through my small experience, I recognize the kill order when it comes.
He’s going to kill us here in this loft in the middle of Manhattan, because it’s safer than letting the world find out about his crimes. No matter how valuable Elijah is to him, he’s more dangerous alive right now. Which means we’re dead.
Time slows down, and I look to my right, where the guns sit on the foyer table. White calla lilies and a black titanium gun. Point and shoot, he told me. It can’t be that simple, but I also have to try. My pulse thumps in my brain like the bass in a club.
I grab the gun. It’s lighter than I remember. Or maybe I’m stronger.
Thump. I point and shoot.
Thump. Thump. Red blooms on the lieutenant colonel’s uniform.
That’s the last thing I see before the world turns upside down…
Elijah flattens me to the ground.
The gun is in his hand instead of mine.
The vase with the calla lilies explodes.
Shards of crystal rain down on us. Elijah pushes me out of the room and down the hall. The world has become eerie and quiet. I can’t hear anything, not even my feet pounding down the fire escape.
We make it back to Elijah’s car. He buckles me into the passenger seat. Then he’s in the driver’s seat, and the SUV steers roughly onto the street.
He’s shouting something at me, but I can’t hear him. His lips are moving. I watch them to see what he’s saying. Stay with me. Stay awake.
Why would I fall asleep at a time like this? I look down at my body.
Blood spreading across white fabric. Black text stark across my chest. I don’t feel any pain. I don’t feel anything at all.
SILVER LINING
Skye Warren
CHAPTER ONE
Elijah
My father was the first man I killed.
He wasn’t the last. Combat means seeing death up close and personal. I know the smell of death. The taste. The feel of it weighing down the air. It’s heavy as hell.
Death turns the SUV I’m driving into a pressure cooker with me and Holly inside. Every bump on the road threatens to set us aflame. “You’re going to be okay,” I say, and my voice doesn’t crack. I sound confident and sure. It’s a fucking lie. “You’re going to make it.”
Plenty of times in my life, I’ve wished for death to slip a silent knife into my back.
Quicker that way. Cleaner. Easier.
Not now. Not when Holly is blinking in the passenger seat, her pretty brow furrowed as she looks down at the heart-colored stain spreading across her shirt. She doesn’t know yet. Not on a conscious level. Adrenaline is flooding her body, shutting down higher thinking. She doesn’t know one of the colonel’s men shot her.
She doesn’t know the bullet tore through soft flesh.
She doesn’t know she’s dying.
“Stay awake. Just stay the fuck awake. That’s all you have to do.” Stay alive.
The sound of the tires on pavement, the roar of the engine, they barely register as sound. Not after gunshots in the small, enclosed space of her apartment. I led her there from my abandoned-church-turned safehouse like a lamb to the slaughter. No, not exactly—I taught her how to shoot a gun before that. I left out the lesson about knowing the odds. Three armed enemies. One Holly. The math doesn’t work.
She makes a sound that could be a question—awake? Then her head lolls onto her shoulder. She’s passed out from the pain or the shock. Or sleeping. That’s a nice thought. I can imagine her resting in the passenger seat instead of bleeding out.
The air gets heavier. Thicker.
I want to get out from under it. I want to breathe. But my lungs can’t expand against the pressure and anyway there are things to do. We’re two blocks from the church safehouse, where we should have stayed after I kidnapped her. Maybe forever.
Instead I have a limited amount of time to make a phone call.
None of my brothers will do any good right now. None of them can talk to me. That would only put them in danger. Yes, they’re tough sons of bitches. Our father would have killed us if we weren’t, but even they can’t fight the whole of the United States government.