“Hell no,” Griffin roared when a man outfitted in all black grabbed Savanna’s arm, but Gray swiftly blocked Griffin’s attempt to stop the officer from taking the woman he loved. “Move, or I will fucking move you,” he hissed, hands planted firmly on Gray’s chest.
“You attack those men, and you’ll never see her,” Gray said in a low voice, quickly swinging his focus Jesse’s way as if sensing his control was also on the brink of snapping too.
Ella now stood with her arms pinned behind her back, being nudged forward by one of the officers, and it took every ounce of Jesse’s control to not do something stupid when she threw him a panicked look.
Jesse quickly maneuvered to the officer who appeared to be in charge. “Where she goes,” Jesse began in a low, raspy tone while angling his head, “I go.”
Chapter Sixteen
Undisclosed Location
Fourteen hours had passed since Jesse had been tasered that morning outside the plane on the tarmac. Fourteen fucking hours since the asshole-in-charge refused to let Jesse go with Ella. She’d tried to reach for him while agents pulled her away, eyes glassy with tears, and he’d lost control. He’d wound up on the ground next to Griffin, who’d been taken down moments before when the French ripped Savanna from his arms as well.
They’d both been incapacitated for what felt like for-fucking-ever, unable to move after the barbed darts ripped through the back of their shirts and punctured skin while delivering a high-voltage payload. He’d gritted his teeth and ridden out the painful sensations that traveled through his limbs at supersonic speed while he watched Ella, Savanna, and Sydney escorted into a blacked-out government SUV. That moment had been a special kind of torture, and it had nothing to do with the brain-scrambling taser.
“They’re with the DGSE. They’re fine,” Jack said as if reading Jesse’s thoughts, stopping his pacing long enough to peer over to where Jesse sat on the floor, back to the wall. “We’ll get to them soon.”
It was twenty hundred hours, and Jesse, Jack, Oliver, and Griffin were still stuck together in the tiny room they’d been shoved into immediately after being hustled from the vehicle used to transport them from the airport. There hadn’t been a lot of stop-and-go traffic during the journey that he estimated was a good forty-five minutes, which told Jesse they were outside the city limits. But the hoods yanked over their heads had made it impossible to know for sure. He wouldn’t be all that surprised if they were at a DGSE interrogation site instead of their headquarters.
“The women are somewhere in this house. I think it’s a house, at least,” Jack added.
“Feels house-like,” Oliver remarked, and Jesse peered around the room, having already memorized every square inch of the small space.
Boarded-up windows. Floral wallpaper yellowed with age and peeling in spots. Horizontal ticks next to one of the doors with what looked like dates next to them. All signs indicated this had once been a child’s room.
There was an attached bathroom with only a toilet to take a piss in and a freestanding sink to wash their hands.
No furniture, so the guys had spent most of the day sitting on the dirty shag carpet with their backs to the wall.
“Well, it’s house-like, aside from the steel door in here, of course,” Oliver said, his gaze cutting to the boards on the windows the guys had tried to remove at one point earlier in the day. “Would you stop pacing? And maybe stop bouncing the ball against the wall?” he asked Jack.
The only thing that’d been in the room was a ratty tennis ball, which Griffin had decided was there to fuck with them since Jack had bounced it against the wall all day.
As much as Jesse felt the need to pace right alongside Jack, he knew he’d wind up testing out how his fist would fare in a matchup with the wall if he did.
“I think better when I’m moving.” Jack threw the ball, but Griffin sprang to his feet and caught it in his hands before it could bounce against the ratty wallpaper. He let out an irritated growl, and Jack held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, Hulk. You can have it.”
Griffin held the ball tight in his fist and sat again, his shoulders sagging with relief that the bounce-bouncing had ceased. He was as on edge as Jesse with Savanna taken from him.
“We know why they’re holding Carter in a separate room.” With nothing to do now, Jack folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “The woman in red wants him.” He seemed to be the most level-headed of the four men at the moment. Maybe it was an act, or maybe he was really that confident that Gray’s connections would get them out of this mess.
But why would Thatcher put me here in the first place? They hadn’t done too much theorizing aloud, assuming they were being watched and listened to, though Jesse didn’t see a camera.
“They knew who we were before we landed. They seemed to be expecting the women to be on board with us too. And the way they whisked Gray away like he was a prince and deserved special treatment seemed intentional as well,” Oliver noted. “Defense Secretary for a dad with POTUS connections. Guess Gray ranks as royalty among our motley crew.”
Motley? Jesse couldn’t help but think back to Thatcher’s words in the workshop the other day. It was January second now, and how many days ago had that been? It was a blur, and the tasing wasn’t the reason for his muddled thoughts.
“We haven’t been questioned. They’re not telling us jack shit—no offense, Jack. Something doesn’t add up,” Oliver said, pulling Jesse’s focus back to the conversation.
“None taken, and that’s because they don’t give a shit about us. Carter’s probably the target,” Jack quickly replied. “Maybe another tit for tat went down without us knowing.”
“Like your old boss offering Carter to the hot MI6 officer in exchange for something?” Oliver suggested. “Something more important than our case?”
Jesse’s heart nearly trampled his rib cage at Oliver’s words. “You think Thatcher used my old case to draw me out just to get Carter overseas and offer him to MI6?” He’d forgotten they were probably being listened to, but he assumed at this point, the French were aware of Thatcher. How could they not be?
“Your unit at the Agency was the third option, right?” Jack looked at Jesse as Jesse slowly stood.
“You overheard me?” Jesse asked, forgetting the topic for a moment.
“We overheard the two of you both times,” Oliver tossed out, and Jesse heard the smile in his tone. “Seems like you guys are either fighting or f—” He cut himself off, wisely choosing not to finish that sentence.
Great, are Ella and I that readable? Jesse set his hands on his hips, realizing he’d lost sight of the issue at hand. “What were you saying again about the third option?”
“You were the pis aller—the last resort. Doing what others wouldn’t was pretty much your job description,” Jack said, pausing for a moment until Jesse met his gaze. “It’s not a stretch to think that your former boss would do whatever necessary, like dangling Ella as bait, to meet his endgame.”
“And we’re caught in the crosshairs,” Oliver said. “Or part of some bigger plan we have yet to be read in on.”