He never did, and the silence was deafening.
I hiccupped and sat up from where I’d collapsed over Veseli’s chest. My hand shook as I reached up to brush the messy locks of hair away from his forehead, knowing full well that they’d just spring back into place.
A watery laugh escaped me when they did. It morphed into broken sobs once more.
“Andrea?” I called out brokenly. There was no response. His labored breathing had stilled. “Andrea?”
The earbud remained silent.
Both Veseli and Andrea had died tonight, and it was all my fault.
Chapter 1
“Dušo, dušo, watch out!” Brock’s voice boomed across the headset, rattling my teeth at its volume and deep timbre.
I jolted.
Had they gotten back to the cars? Did CJ have eyes on us way out here in the woods?
I whirled with the warning, knowing it would be too late, and it was my own damned fault. I’d taken my gaze off of Tarasovich, and that mistake would cost me dearly.
Pain tore through my stomach when a bullet hit me once, twice—three times. The handgun slipped from my grip and clattered to the floor. My free hands scrambled to clutch at the wounds. I gasped in a deep breath as I welcomed the hurt. My back hit the floor, knocking the breath out of me.
The physical discomfort detracted from the mental anguish drowning me, even if it was temporary.
Liquid saturated my fingerless gloves.
I held them up and frowned.
What?
Neon pink gel coated the pads of my fingers. Blinking rapidly at the cement ceiling, I processed what had happened.
“Fuck, Bernard! You French bitch, did you have to shoot her so many times?”
A cacophony of voices rang out from the earbud before Emerson called a halt to it. “Yes, Karl. We’re ending the mission. Yolo took Callie out. In our books, that’s a complete failure on our parts, mate. No point dragging it out.”
“Roger that,” Karl responded with a heavy sigh.
Wait, cement ceiling? I frowned, moving to sit up and look around at my surroundings.
The cement pillars and concrete walls of an industrial space replaced the open air and forest. For a second, I wondered if I’d been in one of CJ’s virtual reality rooms. The rooms took realism to the extreme, with their thousands of magnetics and sensors to help enforce the laws of physics in any digital landscape.
However, as good of a computer programmer as CJ was, even he couldn’t create something out of nothing. And the pink paint that soaked my midsection told me the truth.
Memories of climbing the stairs to the top story of Delta for training filled my mind, drowning out awful memories. I focused on reality.
We were on the eighth floor of the Delta building, the multipurpose level. I could tell because—despite the hastily erected plywood and obstacles meant to mimic a city or battleground—both my motorcycle classes and VR trainings had been here. Likewise, I recalled gasping for breath after climbing the requisite four flights of stairs to get here.
Thankfully, it was only four instead of the full eight, but Delta was clandestine like that. Floor One was the fourth floor and so on. The organization got that secrecy from their founding agency, the CIA.
On the outside, the building appeared abandoned as any vagrant wanderer might discover if they broke into the real first floor, only to discover broken elevators and a decrepit interior. To get to Delta, a member had to scan their Delta ID in the elevator of the neighboring building. That only worked on the fourth floor, so in essence, that level served as the reception area where all members passed through.
I took a deep breath, feeling more grounded.
“Dušo, you scared me.” Brock kneeled his considerable height down next to me. He ran an enormous hand through his thick black hair, making it stand on end. His gray eyes thundered in anger, as powerful in their intensity as any decent rainstorm. He swore in Serbian, ranting about what I could only guess at. Serbian wasn’t one of my nine most fluent languages. It wasn’t even one of my less fluent languages.
In fact, none of us could understand what he raved about because Bryce was the only other person at Delta that spoke the language, and he hadn’t made it over here after Emerson’s announcement to end the training.
Brock’s angry tirade certainly went over the recipient of his ire because as far as I knew, Yolo spoke French, German, Italian, Danish, and English. A quick peek at the petite French woman confirmed my suspicions. She shared a look with me. I’d known her long enough to supply the mental question she directed toward me. “What ze hell is up with one of your boy toys?” Again, those were her implied words, not mine, though I did mentally add her sultry French accent in my mind.
When I just shrugged in response, she rolled her eyes at me. But the sting of judgment that normally followed didn’t this time. I knew her too well now. Her standoffish exterior, much like Natasia’s icy one, didn’t fool me anymore. She’d nearly died trying to protect me. In fact, every one of the Cardinals had, considering they’d opened their house to me and been repaid with a bomb blowing it to smithereens.
A light rose color flushed Yolo’s cheeks in a pretty natural blush compared to the violent shades of red I could achieve when embarrassed. Her sandy brown hair tousled around her face, ending halfway between her chin and shoulders. She’d be at home on the cover of a Vogue magazine.
She gave Brock a haughty, unamused look. “If you are going to act like an overgrown Neanderthal, Brock Johnson, then maybe you should not be paired with Callie during these exercises.”
The smoke pouring out of his ears was one-hundred-percent imaginary, but I couldn’t make up my mind either way about the vein popping out on his forehead. I was inclined to lean toward “real” for that sign of anger.
He clenched his fists and opened his mouth to speak, but a hand even larger than his lay flat against his chest.
I turned to the newcomer.
At over six and a half feet tall, Aleks gave even Andrea a run for his money. I didn’t know for sure which one was taller or bigger. I thought maybe Andrea might be, but that could have been because I knew him as a slightly younger, shorter me. I’d topped out at around five feet tall, so the “slightly” part was a necessity rather than an accessory. I’d only grown about four inches since I was eleven.
Aleks’s ombre waves had lengthened past his shoulders though he kept his beard close to his face. He had the lightest blue irises of anyone I’d met before, including Natasia. His eyes resembled that white, aqua blue of icebergs bobbing in frigid waters.
Aleks gave a broad grin when he caught my eye, a flash of white teeth popping out from his scruff as an eyebrow inched its way toward his hairline after his assessment of me. I was a hundred and ten percent positive that his look lingered longer than what was considered polite. “Medvezhonok, pink is good color, da?” he teased.
One of his teammates—well, I guess one of his old teammates, CJ, told me that Aleks had been using an app on his phone to help improve his English. I hadn’t noticed much improvement but was rooting for the program’s success. The last time I’d corrected his English, he’d propositioned me, claiming that people learned language better in bed through their lovers.
After that, I’d left any further corrections up to Jace.