He disconnected, and a sharp, icy hush lanced through the room. Tomas didn’t breathe. No one did as Cole stood frozen, staring at nothing.
Then he turned toward the table, slowly, too calmly, and slammed the phone down on the surface, smashing it into pieces. A collective flinch rippled the air.
“Thurney Bridge.” Cole raised his eyes, divisive and chilling. “It’s where I lost my life.”
A thousand questions piled up as Tomas put together everything he knew about Cole Hartman. It wasn’t much. The man had more secrets than friends.
One question was answered, though. Thurney Bridge, wherever that was, wasn’t Rylee’s bridge.
As that detail clicked into place, her lips parted, her gorgeous silver eyes round and glassy. She had nothing to do with this. At least, not at the foundation.
Someone had connected her to Cole and put a hit on her.
Why? Who was Cole Hartman?
Tomas had learned some things about the man over the past two weeks, but nothing about losing his life on Thurney Bridge. Except he remembered a conversation they’d had in the desert.
I was sent out in the field for a while. Mistakes were made, and I was forced to fake my death to protect her. By the time I cleaned up the mess, quit the job, and returned home to her, she’d fallen in love with my best friend.
Whatever Cole was mixed up in—then and now—put Rylee and the entire team at risk.
“Are we safe?” Tomas met Cole’s eyes. “Right now, in your house, are we safe?”
“Yes.” Cole straightened and ran his hands down his face. “This is the safest place in the world.” He surveyed the room, taking in the disbelieving expressions around the table, and sighed. “The man I just called was my handler. He was also my best friend until he married my fiancée.”
“That sounds deliciously nasty.” Van didn’t smile.
“The point is, while Danni is no longer my…” Cole’s hand clenched. “While she’s no longer mine, I still protect her. She was a target during my last mission. A mission that ended with me taking a bullet on Thurney Bridge. Now she’s in danger again, and there’s nowhere I’d rather her be than in this house.”
Tomas was surprised to finally hear the name of the mysterious woman who’d leveled Cole’s world.
“Is she coming here?” Rylee tilted her pretty head, concern softening her eyes. “Did your best friend agree to bring her?”
“No.” One word and Cole’s face clouded over.
“Let’s go back to the bullet,” Tomas said. “Is that when you faked your death?”
“Yeah. I was wearing bullet-resistant clothing. High-tech stuff.” Cole tapped his sternum. “The bullet broke skin, fractured ribs, but didn’t enter my body. I fell into the river below and swam out of sight. If I hadn’t faked my death, the perpetrator would’ve killed Danni.”
“Where’s the perpetrator now?” Rylee asked.
“She’s in prison. That is a fact I can one-hundred-percent guarantee. I monitor her status. She’ll never see daylight again.”
“You were shot by a woman?” She arched a brow.
“She was my partner,” he growled, his eyes dark and murky. “A traitor to the agency.”
“Which agency?” Tomas leaned over the table. “No more secrets, Cole.”
“Those aren’t my secrets. It’s classified, and sharing classified information is punishable by law.”
Tiago’s dark laugh turned all heads toward the corner of the kitchen, which was darkened merely by his presence and the deadly look in his eyes. “You can’t scare this group with threats of your law.”
“It’s not my law.”
“Who the fuck cares? The only law we follow is our own. You’re one of us. Now tell us what you were involved in.”
“Espionage.”
“We need more than that,” Liv sang in an eerily melodic voice that crashed into a spine-tingling command. “Trust us, Cole.”
Cole paced to the windows and laced his fingers behind his neck. The entire room seemed to strain toward him, tense with anticipation.
He made them wait, building the silence into a volatile, rumbling thunderstorm. Fingers drummed. Shoes tapped. Molars sawed. Patience thinned.
At last, Cole turned and faced them, decision made.
“I retired from a special unit, a clandestine group, that goes by many names.” He folded his hands behind him, feet braced apart, voice monotone. “OGA, ISA, Optimized Talent, Gray Fox… Whenever there’s a classified spill, the designator changes. But those inside refer to it as the activity. I was a deep undercover operative, deployed to foreign nations to collect information. Crucial information. The kind that changes the outcome of wars. Or prevents them, as it were.” He rolled his neck, cracking it. “I was the eyes and ears in the shadows, and I was fucking good at it. Until Thurney.”
Tomas’ head pounded as he came to terms with what they were dealing with. The Freedom Fighters had taken down some scary motherfuckers, solidified a trusted relationship with the Restrepo Cartel, and learned the ins and outs of the criminal underground. But top-secret espionage and government corruption? This was way out of their league.
“What happened on Thurney Bridge?” he asked.
“I was embedded deep within the enemy’s ranks. But the enemy, as it turned out, was my partner. She was ambitious and power-hungry and turned her back on her country to make some money.” He gripped his neck. “Everyone connected to her was apprehended. No stone left unturned. The activity was thorough in this.”
“Not thorough enough,” Van drawled. “Someone knows about Thurney and put a hit on Rylee, who happens to know everything there is to know about us.”
“I can’t even begin to guess who it is or what they want.” Cole’s gaze swept over the laptops and gear that littered the long table. “I need to sit down, pore through the findings, and make decisions on how to proceed.”
“We need to do that.” Tomas pointed a finger around the room. “We’re not from your world, and we don’t know shit about your tech. But we’re your team now. Train us. Put us to work.”
“All right.” Cole nodded, his expression thoughtful, maybe even relieved. A split-second later, he snapped into full-on work mode. “We need to scrape through every detail of my last mission. Identify the actors—enemies, allies, informants, and everyone in between—and run a cross-connection between those actors and Mason Sutton, Paul Kissinger, and Daniel Millstreet.”
“Daniel Millstreet?” Rylee asked.
“The cunt you killed in the motel room. I received confirmation on his identity an hour ago.” He strode toward the mess of food he’d dropped on the floor.
“I’ll get it.” Tomas held out his hand, itching for something to do. “You’ll tell us how you found his name?”
“I’ll show you everything.”
Over the next two weeks, Tomas sat side by side with his team, absorbed in congressional documents, private phone records, and handwritten reports of Cole’s undercover missions. Handwritten by Cole. Godawful penmanship. The scrawl was so terrible it made Tomas’ eyes cross. It was also really goddamn impressive.