He hustled back into the house and found King tending to Rook. The man had a goose egg on his forehead. “What the hell, dude?”
Rook glanced up at him, and what Jude saw there had him frozen. “She’s not the same Ella. She took me like I was a babe in the manger. Quick, effective, and deadly accurate.”
No way that tiny slip of a woman had overcome Rook Granger. “She was tied up, man.”
“She had a knife. Nobody checked her,” Rook said as he pushed King away. “I’m good.”
Still Jude didn’t believe it.
“She wanted me to tell you something, Jude,” Rook told him.
Jude didn’t want to hear it. “What?”
“She said she’s let you go. Now it’s time for you to do the same. But then she gave me something else…said you’ve got a tail, and they’re watching every move you make.”
King bit out a curse. “She’ll head back to Moscow. If Dresden is selling rights to that oil to Russia, there’ll be a meeting. Rook, talk to Vivi. Have her tap every resource she has to find out where that meeting is and when. Jude? Get Knight and Black here ASAP.”
“On it,” Rook and Jude replied at the same time. “What about the tail?”
“I’ll handle it.” Jude pulled out his satellite phone. “How are we getting back to Moscow?”
King sighed. “Rook, get Vivi to find us transpo too.”
Rook grumbled something, and Jude dialed up headquarters. Once he’d talked to Jonah Knight and gotten assurance that he and Harrison Black were headed their way, Jude disconnected and turned to King.
“They’re on their way,” he told him.
“Do you still have that contact in the FBI… What’s her name? Greta? Gerta?” King asked.
Jude rubbed his jaw. “You mean Georgia?”
King waved a hand in the air. “Whatever, but yeah, her.”
“I haven’t talked to her in a couple of years, but I’m sure she’ll answer my call,” Jude replied. He’d dated Georgia on and off two years ago. Once he’d seen Ella Banning, he’d never had another thought about Georgia until King had just mentioned her.
“Call her. I need to know everything she can get me on Noah Caine,” King ordered. “Oh, and I’m going to contact Chase. Have him be on the lookout for Abrafo Nadege in Burundi. He’s in Dresden’s pocket, and I want to know why. What does he have or supply Dresden with that makes him valuable?”
“Who is that?” Jude questioned.
“Nadege? He’s an African warlord who hit the radar last month. Chase mentioned in his last report that he’d discovered intel while questioning a local mercenary. The merc mentioned a link between Nadege and Dresden. Don’t know if Nadege is working for or with Dresden.”
“And he just gave up that info out of the goodness of his heart, huh?”
“Chase did mention he had the merc spread-eagle in a wooden chair and a ball-peen hammer in his hand,” King shrugged as he answered with a dry tone.
Jude nodded. “Now tell me why we’re researching the Piper.”
“He’s withholding information from us. If he won’t give it, we’ll take it. I’m not losing her again, Jude. I’m not losing any more of my men because he’s playing games with my team.”
“Give me more than that, King,” Jude requested.
“Like you gave me on Ella?”
Ouch. Point to his team leader. “He’s pulling her strings, and it’s torturing her.”
King’s head swiveled to Jude. “Where did you see him?”
“In Sarajevo.”
King’s brows lowered. “And you’re just now telling me this?”
“Ride’s here,” Rook said, jogging back up to them from the road. His arrival saved Jude from having to answer.
“You’ll tell me about Sarajevo, Jude,” King ordered.
Jude nodded and watched as a dilapidated truck made its way down the dirt road toward the farmhouse.
“House is clean?” King asked Rook.
“Yep. Let’s go.”
Jude, Rook, and King all loaded up. The arrival of the truck had saved Jude that time. Before the night was out, he’d told King everything—how his last months before they’d rescued Allie from Savidge in Beirut had been spent doing everything he could to discover the woman with eyes of frost and a bullet scar at her temple.
King nodded a lot, grunted some, and in the end he clapped Jude on the back and said seven words that let Jude know they were okay.
“I would have done the same thing.”
Jude lay down on the cot in the apartment they’d rented on the outskirts of Moscow. But he didn’t sleep. Ella kept running through his mind. Until they could draw a better picture of what was going on, they were simply going to do recon. Vivi was working on getting them a location of the meeting taking place tomorrow.
During the course of their situation report, Jude had silently come to a conclusion: he loved Ella, but he had to let her go.
Before that happened though, he’d make sure she was safe and out of this game the Piper had embroiled her in. Because Jude might have lost her, but if she wasn’t somewhere in the world, alive and well, it would destroy him completely.
He’d lost her once. He wouldn’t do it again.
Chapter 8
There! Movement on the roof of the building across from them. Jude put his night-vision monocular against his right eye and waited. He’d moved to the upper level of the warehouse, picking a window that had been shattered before Endgame ever appropriated the building for this op.
He’d gotten a few hours’ rest and risen prepared to eliminate whoever thought they could follow him. He’d become sloppy over the last months, ignoring the prickle of the tiny hairs at the back of his neck. He’d been so focused on Ella that he hadn’t taken care of the threat.
He must have done something right in a past life or God was feeling favorable, because the fact that he was still alive was either luck or providence. How long had the tail been on him?
Why had Ella
