Scandal Never Sleeps, Page 42

  against him.

  “I’ve got the SD card,” Everly said. She was also holding a laptop. “Oh, poor Dax.”

  “Hey, have you got a sister, sweetheart?” Dax asked, his voice slightly slurred.

  Only Dax could be bleeding out and trying to find a date.

  They made it to the elevators and when he looked back, Connor was surrounded by bodies, covered in blood, and utterly alone. A sliver of unease passed through him.

  As the doors closed, Everly touched his shoulder and smiled. Gabe smiled back. He’d worry about Connor later. He had to focus on her now.

  He looked down at the small SD card in her hand. “It’s not over.”

  When she noticed Dax leaning against the wall, she offered her help as well. Together, they managed to keep him upright. “Nope. But we’ll be okay because we’re in this together, Gabriel Bond. You and me.”

  Something settled deep inside him, something he hadn’t even known had been out of place. “Yes, baby. You and me.”

  EPILOGUE

  Everly walked into the room, excitement bubbling up. She’d done it. Her father would have been proud. It was time to let her new family know how smart she was. Considering her new family included a CIA agent and the leader of the free world, she had to make a place for herself somehow.

  She walked to the door of the guest suite and stopped. A seriously large man in a dark suit and sunglasses stood, standing guard. A couple more lurked outside the front door, along with two more in the kitchen.

  She liked Zack, but she was kind of ready to have the place to herself.

  And her fiancé.

  “Hi, Thomas. Can I sneak past you?”

  The big dude stared at her. “No.”

  He was also very literal. “I need to see my fiancé. May I be allowed into a room in my own house?”

  Thomas finally cracked a smile. “Of course.”

  She started to open the door. “Do you have a name besides Thomas?”

  “No.”

  She would figure it out in the end. Just like she’d figured out the why of Maddox’s mysterious death . . . although that seemed to have led to another mystery.

  Gabriel smiled as she walked into the guest suite. “Hey, baby.” He’d been sitting beside the bed, but he sprang up and crossed the space between them quickly. Whenever she walked into a room, her handsome man made sure she couldn’t doubt his affection. He leaned over and brushed his lips against hers. “Has your hard work paid off?”

  Dax sat up with only the smallest of groans. “Did you actually manage it?”

  “Of course she did.” The president of the United States sat across from Dax, a chessboard between them. Despite the fact that Dax still had an IV in his arm, he was sipping on that damn Scotch they all seemed to love so much.

  “Maybe we should call Connor,” Roman suggested, staring out the window at the street below.

  Connor had been to see Dax at the hospital, but he’d slipped in and out without saying much to the rest of them.

  “He didn’t even bother to call the police when I asked him to.” Gabriel was still a little mad.

  “No, he managed to get his ass up forty flights of stairs and take out all the bad guys singlehandedly without making a sound.” Dax hadn’t stopped defending his best friend.

  “You could have died,” Gabriel shot back. “And so could we. Did he think about what could have happened if he failed?”

  “Connor doesn’t fail,” Zack said quietly. “And if you’re going to be angry with someone, Gabe, be mad at me.”

  Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I didn’t say I wasn’t.”

  She was willing to cut Connor and Zack some slack. Connor had a job to do and he’d been forced to choose between doing it and saving his friends. There was more at stake here than any of them really understood. “He chose us, you know.”

  Suddenly, all four pairs of intelligent eyes focused on her.

  “What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.

  She’d thought about this a lot in the week since that terrible night. Gabriel had been so angry that Connor had kept the cops out of it. He’d played his part and told the police that Dax had been shot in an attempted carjacking and they’d been so close to the hospital, it had been faster to deliver him there. But he’d silently fumed for days. She had to mend those fences because she intended for everyone to be at her wedding.

  “If he’d called the cops, they would have taken the SD card. They would have asked a whole bunch of questions none of us are ready to answer. You do realize what his best play would have been?”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  Roman frowned. “He would never have done that.”

  She’d talked this scenario through with Roman the night before as they’d moved Dax into his current room. “If he’d been playing this like a pure agent, he would have. Gabriel, he needs to know why the Russians are so interested in Natalia and he needs to know who Deep Throat is. It’s obvious the president is at risk. He gave up answers to both when he chose to save us. His best play would have been to let them take me. He could have easily followed us. Hell, I still had my cell phone on me. He could have tracked us and then planted a couple of bugs and the Russians would never have known someone was spying on them. He would have had his answers, but he chose to save you, me, and Dax.”

  “And do you understand that the press would have been all over us?” Roman asked. “As it is, there’s still a scandal.”

  Connor had come up with a cover story for the deaths of Tavia and Scott. He used the skimming and Tavia’s cocaine problem to pin her death, along with the security guards and the janitor, on a drug deal gone wrong. Scott, in Connor’s story, had been unlucky enough to be with her when the dealer came for his cash. Apparently the CIA’s cleaning crew also knew how to dummy up a crime scene. Yuri and his henchmen had simply vanished.

  “And he promised me that the Agency would do what they can to find the missing girls, and he’s already brought one home,” Everly added. She’d been talking to Connor via e-mail, but she hadn’t gotten him to come to dinner. She’d invited him to drinks this afternoon, and this time, she’d had something to hold over his head, though he still hadn’t shown up.

  “We’ll find the others, too. I promise. We’ll work until we find them all. Connor is already looking through the foundation records to locate them.” Zack looked at Gabriel. “Come on. He basically committed career suicide. If anyone finds out he lied about what happened . . .”

  “And in his line of work, career suicide can become real suicide,” Roman admitted. “Well, really well faked suicide to take the place of assassination.”

  Gabriel seemed to go a little pale. “Fine. Let’s not talk about more people dying. When Connor shows up, I’ll be civil.”

  “I’ll hold you to that, brother.” Connor slipped into the room. He stood there as though utterly unsure of his welcome. It was the only time she’d ever seen him looking vulnerable, but in that moment, she had to wonder what it had been like for him to be the scholarship kid, the only one without money among the incredibly wealthy.

  He’d come. She couldn’t help but smile. She’d known he couldn’t resist finding out what was really on that SD card. She walked right up to him and gave him a hug.

  Connor stood there for a moment. “I am unsure how to handle this.”

  Gabriel finally laughed. “Give in. She wants you in the family, and Everly gets what she wants.”

  Dax smiled brightly. “My man. It is good to see you.”

  Slowly, Connor hugged her back.

  After a moment, she stepped away, and some of the tension had left the room. She hated the fact that she was about to amp it up again. “I decoded the diary.”

  She’d discovered that the diary had been written in code and in Russian code at that. When she’d pieced together all the information, she’d found a single item—a handwritten book that had been scanned in. She’d worked for a full week to decode the thing, then given it
to a confidential Russian translator.

  “I’m sending you all a copy of the translation. The diary begins almost a year into her tenure with the Hayes family. She talks about being happy and how much she loves Zack.” The next part was the one she didn’t want to get into. She wished she could leave it there.

  “And?” Zack had one eyebrow raised as though he knew what was coming.

  “She mentions at one point how scared she was when the head of her school had come to her and told her she was being placed. She talks about a mistake she’d made, some sort of shame she brought on the school. Apparently the headmistress told her that by working for the ambassador, she could make everything right again. It’s a little cryptic but she writes about work being the only way she could protect something we can’t quite decipher. The translator thinks she’s talking about protecting her own life. I think someone threatened her.”

  “Shit,” Roman said, his head shaking. “Her school? Tell me it wasn’t a foundation school.”

  “I can’t.” That was where the real scandal began. It all went back to that day when a poor Russian girl had been told it was time for her to work.

  “Damn. Zack, you were raised by a girl who had been trafficked,” Dax said, his voice hoarse.

  “The question is, did your parents know?” Gabriel asked.

  “I wouldn’t put it past them. So this was all about embarrassing me?” Zack questioned tightly. “Is this about the next election cycle?”

  “I intend to find out,” Connor replied with grim resignation. “I think Natalia is alive.”

  That stopped the room.

  “Is she in Russia?” Roman asked.

  Connor shook his head. “She came to the States fifteen years ago on a Visa and disappeared. I think she’s still here and I think Lara Armstrong knows where to find her. I’m going to figure this out, Zack. I’m not going to let her be used to bring you down.”

  Connor sat with Zack, Dax, and Roman. They started to plan.

  Which was Everly’s cue to leave.

  She’d made it to the door when Gabriel caught up with her.

  “Hey, you don’t leave without a kiss,” he said, brushing his mouth against hers. “You don’t have to leave at all. You have a stake in this, baby.”

  But some things were meant for the boys. She’d done her part and was happy to put her mind to other things.

  She twisted the big engagement ring on her finger. “Nope. Your sister should be here any minute and we’re going over arrangements for the engagement party. Hint, I hope you like Asian because Sara’s got some crazy cravings going on.”

  He stared down at her. “I love you.”

  She didn’t hesitate anymore. He was her guy. “I love you, too.”

  Everly stepped out because sometimes the Perfect Gentlemen needed a little time together.

  • • •

  Deep in the night, Connor Sparks sat in front of his computer, his head buzzing.

  He’d almost lost them all. That night haunted his dreams. When he did manage to sleep, he kept seeing Dax dead on the floor, Gabe and Everly riddled with bullet holes.

  He hated this. He needed to pull away from them all.

  It had been right there, the impulse to let the Russians take Everly so he could follow them and play the game he’d been born to play.

  If his superiors ever figured out what he’d done, he would likely find himself in a cell somewhere. He would definitely find himself burned, disavowed, and all the other things that happened to an agent who chose his friends over his country.

  They made him feel. Dax, Gabe, Roman, and Zack. They were the only ones left who could.

  He kept a grainy old picture of the six of them on his desk. He settled in, poured himself a shot of bourbon, and studied it for a moment. Six kids, five of whom hadn’t figured out how shitty the world could be yet. For a long time, it had been Connor’s job to keep it that way.

  Just like it had been his job to make sure Gabe Bond got to keep the woman he loved.

  “Fuck you, Mad.” There it was, that wellspring of hated grief that seemed so close to the surface these days. He drank the amber liquid down. “You weren’t supposed to die. I was supposed to go first.”

  He’d always thought he’d die in some stinking hellhole, and the five of them would be left wondering what had happened.

  Surviving was worse than dying. But then he’d figured that out a long time ago.

  His computer beeped and he turned with a sigh.

  Skype. His heart rate ticked up in an oddly pleasant way because only one person instant messaged him at that particular address. Niall Smith had one friend in the world, though if she looked him up online, she would find a diverse selection of leftie friends on his completely fake Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. Of course she would also see a picture of some intern at the Agency they’d used to set up Niall Smith’s life so Lara Armstrong wouldn’t question him when he wrote to her.

  Niall? Niall, are you there?

  Her picture popped up beside the words. There she was. Cute, sweet little thing with dark hair and blue pixie eyes. A little rich girl who thought she could change the world through tabloid reporting. Oh, he knew how she justified it. She’d told him she used the scandalous headlines to bring in readers and then hit them with real stories, but he knew the truth. She was a spoiled rich princess with daddy issues. So why did he get hard every time he saw her picture?

  Yeah, he needed to get laid.

  I’m here. What’s up, sweetness?

  He wasn’t sure why he’d started calling her that, but it was all part of his cover, right? Lara Armstrong had something to do with Deep Throat, and he was going to find out what. She might know where to find Natalia Kuilikov. If she did, he would find out. He would protect his friends and his country. If he got a little blood on his hands, that was all right, too.

  Niall, I’m scared. I’ve gotten involved in something and I think someone is trying to kill me.

  A slow smile crossed Connor’s lips. Now he had her. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, sweetness. Tell me everything.

  He sat back and let the game begin.

  Connor and all the Perfect Gentlemen will return in

  SEDUCTION IN SESSION

  Privileged, wealthy, and wild: they are the Perfect Gentlemen of Creighton Academy. But the threat of a scandal has one of them employing his most deceptive—and seductive—talents . . .

  Recruited into the CIA at a young age, Connor Sparks knows how dirty the world can be. Only when he’s with his friends can he find some peace. So when an anonymous journalist threatens one of the Perfect Gentlemen, Connor vows to take down the person behind the computer, by whatever means necessary—even if it means posing as his target’s bodyguard.

  Publishing a tabloid revealing Washington’s most subversive scandals has earned Lara Armstrong the ire of the political scene—and a slew of death threats. To keep herself from ending up a headline, Lara hires a bodyguard, a man as handsome as he is lethal.

  When the bullets start to fly, Lara is surprised to find herself in Connor’s arms. But as they begin to unravel a mystery that just might bring down the White House, Lara is devastated when she discovers Connor’s true identity—and finds herself at the mercy of forces who will stop at nothing to advance their deadly agenda.