The Spy in 3B Read online

  Curtis cursed. ”Do you want to abort?”

  I glanced up the stairs as I waited for Rhodes to return. Fuck. “No, continue. I’m keeping all teams on alert though.”

  I switched back to open comms and gave everyone their instructions. “Proceed with extreme caution. Use live rounds carefully. The girl is still on location, be advised.”

  The footsteps up the stairs had me tucking into my hideout around the corner. But Rhodes’s sharp whistle told me it was him. I put my hand out, and sure enough, he whispered, “Did I scare you, princess?”

  “Shut up.”

  I hand-signaled him up the stairs. He would take the corner, I would provide cover, and then I would take the lead.

  Once we were up the third flight of stairs, step after careful step led us to the landing, and we moved quickly. Then I heard something.

  I gave Rhodes the signal for stop, and he lifted a brow. What’s wrong? he mouthed.

  I frowned back toward the stairs. None of the other teams were supposed to be up here.

  I stood at the end of the corridor. Using my hand, I signaled for him to get the girl while I covered the stairs.

  He frowned at me, motioning that we should stick together.

  I shook my head and tapped my nose, letting him know that I smelled trouble.

  He sighed and nodded, taking the command.

  Once I saw that he was already halfway down the hall, I headed to the right and eased toward that corner. Something wasn’t right. Something felt off. What was behind door number one right here?

  Quickly, I rounded to the far side of the door, so that when I opened it, I wouldn’t be giving whoever was behind the door a wide-open target.

  I dragged in three long breaths to steady my heart rate. I reached for the knob, turned it, then shoved it open. The person inside wasted no time. They came flying out, stun gun first. It was interesting that they weren’t using live rounds. Why?

  Was this The Firm? And had they come for the girl or for us?

  Our rival agencies had been battling for jobs for years. Occasionally, we crossed paths, though it had been happening more and more often of late. Usually, we tended to take different jobs. What was their interest here?

  You can think about that when you’re not getting your ass kicked.

  My attacker was small. Slight. About five foot seven. They were padded with tactical gear, but the fighter was likely a woman. When the Taser hit nothing, the fighter whirled around to my spot, stun gun ready to aim, but I blocked it. I threw a punch to the face, but they dodged it easily with a hand slide along my arm and then dropped to a knee.

  Fuck.

  My opponent disarmed me with a quick flick of the wrist, then a sneaky elbow to the face had me seeing stars.

  This was a woman. No doubt about it. And that scent… I smelled coconuts.

  No. No, I did not smell coconuts. Lyra had managed to even contaminate my thoughts now… of all times.

  The woman wasn’t going to let me go, though. She stood between me and the target at the end of the hall. I knew Rhodes could do his job. I didn’t like leaving him open though. Because how many of her friends were here?

  Yeah, it was definitely a woman. She blocked another hit, but instead of doing the obvious and aiming another knee, she flipped around and delivered a hammer fist to my temple which had me seeing stars. Again.

  Fuck. Okay, enough bullshit. If she was aiming to kill, so could I.

  The way she moved was familiar, as if I’d fought her before. Maybe all too familiar?

  She telegraphed the next kick that came for me, but she still got me right in the ribs. I managed to offset my weight and grabbed her thigh, then I turned my body and tilted my hip out, which sent her careening down.

  When I dove for her, she rolled away easily, attacking back with a hammer kick. One that I had to rapidly roll away from. Christ.

  She dove for me then with her fists and elbows. We ended up rolling around, and I thought again about how familiar this felt. I caught her arms in my grip and said, “Stop fucking moving.”

  Under her mask, her brows furrowed and then lifted. She blinked twice, and then dropped her head away from me.

  “Be still. I’m not going to—” I didn’t get to finish my sentence because she brought her head back then snapped it forward with a head butt. “Bugger.”

  She did it again, and then she managed to wiggle out of my arms and tried to deliver another cracking elbow, which I blocked. But blocking her, unfortunately, forced me to let her go. She sprung back to her feet in a lithe movement. Like a jack rabbit.

  Why was she so familiar?

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  She cocked her head as we danced around. From the end of the hall, I heard gunshots, and my heart seized. “Fucking Rhodes.”

  While my attention was split, my assailant reached behind my neck and hit me with a fucking taser, and the electrical charge shot up my arm. “Motherfucker.”

  As electrical shocks crawled through my skin, I ground my teeth as it took me to my knees.

  But what was interesting was that even as the edges of my vision started to gray, she didn’t shoot me. Instead, she turned and headed down the hallway toward Rhodes and those gunshots we’d both heard.

  I refused to go down. I couldn’t.

  Instead, I pushed to my feet. I had to stop her.

  I watched as she ran, and I knew I’d seen that gait before. Oh God. There was no way. There was no fucking way.

  I reached for her and then dove at her feet, taking her down.

  She struggled to get free, body flailing, trying to break out of my hold. Jesus Christ, she was a good fighter.

  Lyra. She smelled like Lyra.

  My conscious brain fought it. There was no way. This was not who I thought it was.

  When I was on top of her, I grasped an arm, even as she tried to punch me with the other one and I dodged it. “Hold still, I’m not going to hurt—”

  And before I knew it, she planted her feet, lifted her hips, and rolled us both over with her on top. With her free arm, she punched me straight in the trachea.

  As I wheezed and coughed, she aimed at it again, but this time I blocked it, even as I was fighting for air.

  I was forced to let her go as I scrambled to breathe, and she was up on her feet like lightning, trying to get around me. I snapped one arm around her ankle and tugged her back down.

  She let out a wail. “Ahh.”

  It couldn’t be her. Please, God, no. But I had to find out for sure.

  I tugged her back even as she whipped around with another kick. She missed her mark though. She’d been aiming for the groin, I could tell, but instead, she got my gut. It wasn’t a picnic, but it wasn’t debilitating either.

  I dragged her under my body. “Hold bloody still, or I will hurt you.”

  She still struggled.

  “I’m going to take this mask off of you.” She shook her head back and forth, fighting, clawing, and I knew. I knew what I was going to find, but I still had to know for sure. I reached for her mask, pulled it up, and lifted it partway off her face. It revealed lips that I was very well acquainted with.

  Chapter 17

  Lyra

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  He’d started to pull off my mask as I fought his hold. The mask only made it up to my nose before I reached my arm up straight over my head and smashed it down on his hand, right at the wrist, forcing him to loosen his grip. I raised my hips, rolled him over, and landed a punch that was hard enough to stun him as I reached for the weapon he’d dropped.

  With my finger on the trigger, I pressed my comm unit hard. “I have an assailant. Third floor hallway. Status check.”

  Addie’s voice was sharp. “What happened to your goddamn comms? We have the girl. I repeat, we have the girl. All teams, exit now.”

  My team had her.

  And Marcus is Exodus.

  I had my gun pointed at his chest, and deep down I knew I
just hadn’t wanted to see it. And Christ, I didn’t know what to do or what to say. We just froze in position there in the hallway, staring at each other.

  On channel B, I called out, “Addie?”

  “Yeah, are you getting out of there? Your exit is south exit. Proceed there ASAP. We still have Exodus agents in there.”

  “Addie,” my voice wheezed out.

  “What? What is it, Lyra? Are you injured?”

  “No. I have an Exodus agent in front of me.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. He’s alive.”

  I’d thought it was just us on B channel, but Roz’s voice came in loud and clear.

  “What’s the problem, Lyra?”

  I forced myself to repeat the words that slashed at my heart. “I—I have an Exodus agent.”

  He peered at me from where he knelt, hands by his side. I’d dragged my mask back down, but he knew. He absolutely knew. So what was the point? Finally, I reached up and pulled it over my head so I could fucking breathe.

  My heart pumped so hard, flooding my blood with adrenaline. I didn’t know what to do.

  On the ground, Marcus scowled at me as he reached for his own mask.

  I shook my head at him. “No, you don’t. No suicide pills.”

  “Easy does it, love. I’m just taking off my mask.”

  I cocked my gun, but he was telling the truth. All he did was remove his mask. His handsome jawline came into view first. And even in this situation, my pussy clenched.

  Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  All the pieces fell together, finally making sense. All of them. As I watched the man whom I’d started to care about take his mask off, I could see so clearly all those moments. The way he’d stood between me and Prochenko, his insistent demand on self-defense training, and him teaching me skills I already had. Skills all Firm and Exodus agents had.

  Two sides of the same coin.

  “Lyra, you know what to do here. We’ll both walk away and we both stay alive.”

  “Are you kidding me? You’re a dead man.”

  “I’m not if you don’t tell anyone.”

  It suddenly occurred to me what was going to happen to my life. I couldn’t go home because he would tell everyone who I was. Once again, I was that girl with no home, no family, nowhere to go. No safety.

  I wanted to cry. “Why did it have to be you?”

  “Me? Why did it have to be you? At any point, you could have told me, and I would have helped you.”

  “Helped me what? Stop doing my job? I’m not an assassin. Is that what you think? That I’m an assassin? I’m a government agent, just like you.”

  He gave me a dismissive laugh. “Oh, right. Firm agents are assassins for hire. Everyone knows that.”

  “Is that what they told you? We’re two sides of the same coin, Marcus. I’m not an assassin. We’re field operators, that’s all.”

  “So you say. How many hits have you performed?”

  “What? Is that something to brag about?”

  “How many, Agent Wilkinson?”

  I frowned at that. “How many have you done? You are Exodus, after all. Let me guess, from the looks of you, you’re ex-military, plucked out at your peak for the most top-secret missions.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t I? We work for two sides of what was once the same organization, but they’re in competition now. Whatever you’ve been told about me, don’t believe it. Just like I don’t believe you’re an assassin. But I do believe you’re a good little soldier, and that given the opportunity, you would kill me.”

  He winced. “You think I could do that? Kill you? After everything?”

  “I think you’re capable of it.” My gun didn’t waver. I switched back to B channel and said, “Control, advise.”

  Roz’s voice was stern. “We don’t need him. Eliminate him.”

  The bottom fell out of my stomach. “Repeat? Bad copy. Repeat.”

  My mentor, my friend, the only mother figure I’d had in the last six years through my training and then my time as a field agent had just told me to kill the man that I—

  What? You love?

  “I—”

  “Agent Wilkinson? Lyra, am I clear?”

  “Clear.”

  I switched channels and turned off the comms. “Marcus, I’m sorry.”

  He frowned at me as he pushed to his feet, and I backed up one step. “You can’t shoot me anymore than I could shoot you. We can both walk away. Put the gun down, Lyra.”

  “What, I put the gun down and you take that knife at the small of your back and slice my jugular?”

  “No. I won’t do that. I never even reported to my Command that you’d seen Prochenko’s face.”

  My voice was small. “You didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “Let me guess, you didn’t report that I had either?”

  I shook my head. “I have my orders.”

  “Fuck your orders. Think for yourself. You know me. I’ve held you in my arms.” He slapped his palm on his chest. “You. Know. Me.”

  Tears fell from my eyes. “Fuck. Marcus, stop.”

  “Lyra, I—”

  I fired.

  I had been aiming for his shoulder, right below the clavicle where the musculature was fleshy.

  But what if that’s not what you hit?

  I didn’t have time to check. The look on his face as I fired and turned to go… the shock, the horror, the betrayal… It was not a look I would soon forget.

  Next in Series

  * * *

  It was the right call…wasn’t it? Her job comes before anything else, but it’s not so simple when Lyra’s heart keeps getting in the way. Is this the one mission she can’t accomplish? Find out in the second half of the Covert Affairs Duet, The Assassin in 5F, available only on Kobo!

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  * * *

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