He picked her up, pulling her body to his before he sat down and arranging her in his lap. She laid her head on her chest and listened to his heartbeat.
“Listen to me, Ella,” he ordered. He raised her head until her gaze met his. “We watched you all fall. We thought you were all lost. Then hell broke open, and we had to fight for our lives. By the time the secondary helicopter made it to us, Dresden, Savidge, and all of your bodies were gone, as if they’d never been there. We never left you. We didn’t know you were alive.”
“But when you found out? Why didn’t you come then?” She hated that she sounded like a little child begging for an answer.
“We didn’t know anything for sure until Loretta Bernstein showed King a video that Dresden had made of the entire thing. That was two months ago, Ella. I had heard rumors of a dark-haired woman with eyes of frost and a scar at her temple, but I thought I was chasing a ghost, baby. I had no idea you were really alive.” His voice was terrible. His pain giving it a deep, rough, mournful quality.
“When I found out you were searching for information on me, I got scared. Brody did everything he could to throw you off the scent,” Ella said with a teary smile. “God, I had forgotten what a pit bull you can be when you catch a scent.”
“It ripped me to pieces when I saw that video. I saw with my own eyes that you’d left breathing, and I finally had verification that the rumors I’d been chasing were true. I hated you when I watched it. How could you have not come to me as soon as Dresden let you leave?” he asked.
She stood off his lap. It was her turn to pace. “I told you that Dresden used you as a tool, Jude. A tool to hone me. Keep me compliant. The Piper hit the nail on the head when he said Dresden was coming for you. He still is. He’ll do whatever is necessary to keep me in line, and he thinks you’re the only way to do that.”
Jude shook his head. “Why does he want you so badly?”
She looked at him then. “Dresden is twisted that way. He wants me because he knows that using me hurts Endgame because it hurts you. His ultimate goal is to watch each of us fall by his hand or his machinations. He’s driven, and he’s motivated by a hatred so deep it can only be personal, Jude.”
“And now it’s personal for me,” Jude replied. “That bastard is wily, and he has information he should never have. Someone in the White House is supplying him with information.”
A chill skated down Ella’s spine. “You know that he was on the team with Rook and Knight that went belly-up in the Hindu Kush four years ago. And at some point he’s had dealings with King. I haven’t been able to ferret that out yet.”
Jude nodded.
“My gut tells me Dresden’s hard-on for Endgame begins in the Kush. But he despises those three men with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns. His objective, as unattainable as it sounds, is world domination. But along the way, his driving force is to end Endgame Ops.”
A ring sounded from another room.
“Hold on, Ella,” Jude urged as he exited the den, returning a minute later with a sat phone to his ear. “Yeah. I get it.” Then, “I’ll ask her and call you back later.”
He disconnected and glanced at Ella before placing the phone on the table between them.
“That was King,” he told her. “Chase has radioed in. He’s got a doctor who was working with Doctors Without Borders in his possession.”
“Possession?” she asked carefully.
“Apparently, she was his objective per the Piper. Another mission within a mission, it would seem. Her name is Gabrielle Moeller. Name ring any bells?” Jude asked her, a note of betrayal in his tone.
“No. I have no idea who that is.”
“You don’t have any idea why the Piper wants her brought home?”
“None. Wait, what was Chase’s original mission for the team?” she queried quickly.
“Recon on the warlord Abrafo Nadege.”
“Oh damn. That’s not good at all. Nadege is a killer, and he’s in bed with Dresden.”
Jude glanced at her. “We knew he was an associate of Dresden’s. What is the relationship between the woman Chase is getting to safety and Nadege?”
Ella shook her head, her mind whirring. “Maybe the association isn’t with Nadege, but with Dresden? Give me your laptop. Hurry, Jude!”
He left and returned with his laptop. She opened it and got busy. Twenty minutes later, she’d managed to amass only minimal information on Gabrielle Moeller. A plastic surgeon turned trauma physician, Moeller seemed a nonentity.
And then Ella saw a picture that added another piece to the puzzle.
“Look at this picture,” she said to Jude.
“Just two women in graduation caps and gowns,” he replied with a shrug.
“This,” she said, pointing to Moeller, “is Gabrielle.”
His brows lowered. “And?”
“The other woman… Read her name for me so I don’t think I’m imagining it.”
“Anna Beth Caine,” he read from the old newspaper clipping.
“Damn,” Ella whispered. “That’s not good.”
“What is it, Ella?”
“That woman? Anna Beth Caine? She’s Horace Dresden’s former fiancée.”
“I hate to keep repeating myself here…and?”
“She’s also related to a man named Noah Caine,” Ella said softly.
“The Piper,” Jude stated and hung his head.
“When your operative took me from Dresden’s house, I left Anna Beth behind. Dresden has Anna Beth Caine, Jude. She’s locked in the same cell I was locked in, and though she wasn’t in as bad a shape as I was, her fortune could turn any minute…possibly already has.”
Jude’s face went hard and cold. “Dresden has the Piper’s daughter.”
Though he’d not asked a question, she still responded. “Yes.”
“There’s something else I need to tell you, Ella. Harrison Black tracked Anton Segorski to a flat in Russia. He’s bugged down and
