Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(98)

Agent Wilson threw his head back, laughing maniacally like some sort of vaudevillian villain. And she supposed that’s pretty much what he was. Almost cartoonish in his psychosis and narcissism. She did her best to ignore him.

“That’s not exactly true,” she admitted, biting her lip when Leo’s second eyebrow winged up his forehead to join his first. Now there was definitely suspicion flashing in his hazel eyes. Each glimmer was an ice pick to her gut. “The CIA knew months before that Al-Ambhi was double-dealing so they sent me in under the auspices of being an attaché to your team, but the real reason I was in Syria was to watch him and keep him nosing in the wrong direction about actual rebel advancements and…and…and…” She realized she was suffering another episode of verbal diarrhea, talking without punctuation, and stumbled to a stop.

A hard muscle was ticking in Leo’s jaw, a sure sign he was upset. Now she not only wanted to wrap her hands around Agent Wilson’s throat, but after she was finished with that, she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole, just drag her down into nothingness so she wouldn’t have to see the pain in Leo’s face. Since neither of those things was likely to happen, she sucked in a steadying breath and continued.

“The day of that meeting he tried to blackmail me. He’d discovered the identities of five of my assets inside IS, and he threatened to out them unless the U.S. agreed to pay him fifty million dollars. When I told him that was a nonstarter, he picked up his phone.” She screwed her eyes closed, not able to look at Leo when she admitted this next part. “I shot him before he could make the call.”

“Al-Ambhi was an idiot,” Agent Wilson snarled, and she opened her eyes to blink at him. “The whole reason I told him you were on to him was so that he could use you to forward the cause, not so he could try to extort money—”

“How could you?” she screamed, slamming her hands on the table and leaning down until they were nose to nose. The fury burning inside her was hotter than an H-bomb. How could he so blithely, so callously admit he’d been the one behind that awful day? “You traitorous motherf*cker! I swear to God I’ll—”

“Our ride is here!” Bran called after throwing open the door, his eyes narrowed as he took in the scene. “And Romeo says we have to bust ass. There’s barely enough fuel left in the floatplane to get us home, and he’s burning more with every second he’s sitting out there idling.”

*

7:59 p.m.…

Bran glanced over at LT and Olivia on the far side of the lower deck. They were deep in conversation, and clearly he was missing something. Whatever it was, it had been wallpapered all over Mason’s and Wolf’s faces when they shuffled out of the main cabin. But when he’d asked, “What’s doing?” Mason had done what Mason did best, which was grunt. And Wolf simply replied, “Later.”

But since he’d never been accused of having an overabundance of patience, and since he didn’t really enjoy mysteries, Bran took a step in LT and Olivia’s direction, ready to demand a goddamned explanation. He stumbled to a stop, however, when Maddy laid a hand on his arm.

Her palm was small and soft, the tips of her fingers cooled by the whisper of sea breeze blowing across the back of the yacht. He thought maybe he trembled under her touch and was surprised to discover he had an overwhelming urge to drag her against him and warm them both with a kiss.

“I reckon this is good-bye,” she said, wrinkling her cute button nose. “Mr. Navy SEAL.”

He lifted a brow, his lungs seizing.

“Olivia let the cat out of the bag when she was questionin’ Jonathan Wilson,” she explained.

He blew out the breath he was holding and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “We’re retired from the Navy,” he said, happy to be able to finally admit the truth to her. Why that should be, he didn’t know. But there you go. “We really are salvors now. Swear to God.”

She cocked her head, eyeing him. “Well, then I reckon this is good-bye, Mr. Salvor.”

“That’s…that’s usually the way these things work,” he told her, missing the feel of her hand when she lowered it to her side.

“I, um, I just wanted to thank you for today. For savin’ my life…twice.” Her twang turned the words “life” and “twice” into “lahf” and “twahss.”

“It was nothing,” he assured her. “Just doing my job. Uh…my old job I guess, huh?”

Her slate-gray eyes searched his face, and she pursed her lips. The upper one, the pouty one, did one hell of a number on him. He was no longer chilled. In fact, he felt a sheen of sweat break out all over his body. “I didn’t peg you for an overly modest man.”

He couldn’t stop the grin that split his face any more than he could stop the clock from ticking. The constant whir of the floatplane’s engine was a not-so-gentle reminder that he needed to wrap things up. Mason and Wolf had already hopped overboard, swimming out to the aircraft. They were in the process of pulling themselves onto one of the pontoons.

It’s now or never, shit-for-brains.

Reaching into the pocket of his shorts, he took out the piece of paper he’d scribbled on earlier. Then hesitated. Would she even want to hear from him after this? I mean, she’ll probably want to forget any of it ever happened. But just in case…