She hated conflict. How the hell she’d ever migrated to the CIA and military service was beyond Jude.
King opened his eyes and stared hard at Jude. Jude grinned and pointed to Ella, trying to get the other man to understand why he messing with him. King flipped on his communication unit. “Jude, you’re a pain in my ass.”
“Sir, if it’s—” Ella began.
King held up a hand and shot Jude a look. Jude was unperturbed.
Already the brackets of stress around her mouth had disappeared. “It was fifteen men, Your Highness. You were pinned down behind a building in the middle of the country, and you fought with nothing but a—”
“I know the damn story, Jude,” King said firmly.
“I’m just saying,” Jude began. “It’s a damn good story.”
A beep sounded over their comm devices. “Five minutes until touchdown, boys and girls,” Vivi informed them.
Olivia Granger, a.k.a. Vivi, was a CIA analyst who’d joined Endgame when she’d refused to let her man, Rook, leave her. Jude smiled at that. Vivi was a tiny bit of nothing, but she had badass Rook Granger wrapped around her little finger—and he loved it.
Jude understood it. He hadn’t when he’d been told Vivi was joining them in Port Royal, their home base. But damn did he understand now.
King’s gaze touched on them all, and Jude watched the other man’s face transform to warrior. Every person on this bird was a warrior. And just like every other mission they took, this mission—under the cover of darkness in the middle of a desert outside Beirut, Lebanon—could very well become a war.
Jude let his gaze settle on Ella. Her eyes were closed, her nostrils flaring as she drew in deep breaths, preparing. He knew why King had chosen her to go when Nina came up sick. Ella spoke Lebanese.
Hopefully, they’d be in and out so fast nobody would need to use her translating skills.
“Two minutes until insertion,” the pilot relayed.
“What the hell is that?” the copilot asked suddenly.
Jude’s neck tightened. That didn’t sound good.
“Bogeys in the air! Repeat, bogeys in the air!” the pilot yelled over the comm links.
Jude immediately glanced at Ella, warning her with his eyes to brace herself. Fear raced up his spine. It left an acrid taste in his mouth and a burning in his gut. He pulled his helmet on and watched as she did the same.
Antiaircraft fire peppered the fuselage of the bird as it tipped into an evasive maneuver. Jude grabbed his oh-shit handle and saw his teammates do the same. His gaze snagged on Ella.
“Safe,” he mouthed.
She nodded and held up six fingers.
“In, out, protect yourselves. Remember the alternate extraction point,” King ordered. “Ella, you’re behind me at all times, you understand?”
Jude’s gaze narrowed on his team leader.
He knew if he looked at Ella, he’d see the terror clouding her bright-gray eyes.
Everything in Jude screamed for him to cover Ella’s body with his own. This insertion had just gone straight into clusterfuck territory. He needed to protect her.
“You got something to say, Jude?” King asked harshly.
Instead of moving toward her, Jude shook his head at King and pulled his visor down as he breathed in deep. King would shield her with his own body, give his own life for any of them. Jude knew that and wouldn’t disobey him, even if it went against every instinct he possessed.
“We’re hit! We’re hit!” the copilot yelled over the comm units.
The bird swayed, dipping sharply to the right and turning in a gut-swirling three-sixty. They were going down hard.
Please let her live, Jude pleaded to the God he rarely acknowledged. Please, if anyone needs to die, let it be me.
“We’re going down, Your Highness!”
Chase’s voice was panicked in Jude’s ear mic. There was nothing he could do. He was impotent here—at the mercy of the wind and the same God he’d just lifted up a prayer to. The dying whine of the bird’s rotors blew through his mind. This was it.
“Brace for impact!”
The helo fell rapidly. Jude couldn’t get his bearings. He needed to see Ella. And then the helo slammed into the ground, and Jude’s world snapped to black.
Chapter 1
Jude adjusted his scope’s sight and settled down in the slight depression between two trees. Pine straw, dying leaves, and branches covered him. He’d made the blind to blend into the landscape seamlessly. The sun was behind him now, its heat nothing more than a fading promise. The wind had picked up an hour ago, and he allowed its bitter cold to seep into his soul. It was soothing to a degree, though Jude doubted anything could ever completely cool his rage. He’d been here for two days, following intel that would hopefully lead him to…her. He’d stopped even thinking her name months ago. The sound of it reverberating through his mind caused unbearable pain that spread from his heart through every limb. It was debilitating, that pain. And unending. Instead, he remembered her face, the way her body had once moved beneath him, and the promises she’d made that had inevitably been nothing more than lies.
Movement in the compound below had him tightening his grip on his rifle. He’d been trained to take down targets a mile away, but today was simply reconnaissance. When he’d seen her in Beirut six weeks ago, after a year of believing her dead and gone, his mind had denied what his heart had immediately recognized.
El—her.
Then she’d disappeared in the smoke and confusion, and he’d had no choice but to leave her again.
In the hell that was Lebanon.
He tightened his grip on his weapon, tamping down his dangerous emotions. Below him, four white Range Rovers pulled up to the concrete warehouse that had once been a chemical engineering facility. Unsubstantiated rumors had it that the facility’s purpose was to conceal Horace Dresden’s biochemical weapons stash. Whatever the case, those rumors had hit Jude’s ears and his skin had prickled.
For two years, Endgame’s mission had been the elimination of Horace Dresden. For Jude, the mission had morphed. Oh,
