The Rook, page 19
“Maybe I can help you.”
“How?”
“I’m not just a bodyguard. I’m pretty handy with a computer. I can poke around.”
That little flutter in heart was back again at his words. “You would do that?”
He narrowed his gaze at me as if I had asked something stupid. “Of course. After all, we’re mates now, and you’re not going to kill me in my sleep.”
I chuckled under my breath. “The jury is still out.”
When we reached the flat, he took the keys from me to open the door. "You don't have to do that,” I said.
“Part of the gig. But also, let me be a gentleman, would you? After the last few weeks being a complete twat, a part of me wants to show you that I'm not and make up for it."
He turned the lock and then stepped forward, hitting the light switch. I was right behind him, but as I attempted to step inside, I bumped into a brick wall of muscle. He immediately backed me up. "No, get out."
I frowned and shoved against his solid muscle. "What the hell are you doing? I'm exhausted, Westin. Come on, let me in."
I tried to move around him, but he stopped me, trying to shove me out of the flat. I ducked under his arm. "I don't know what the hell you're—"
I stopped short.
Someone had tossed my flat. Completely ransacked it. Several of my snow globes were broken.
"F-fuck me."
He tugged me back. "Let's go. We need to call the police. We can't stay here."
A few weeks ago, my life was neat and orderly. It made sense. But now, fucking hell, now my life was a wreck. In pieces. I had been cascading downward ever since he’d walked through my door.
Turning with tears of anger pouring down my face, I swung hard against Westin’s chest and shouted, "This is all my father’s fault. He did this."
“Nissa, stop. Listen to me. I'm here to protect you. We are leaving right now, and you can comply or I can toss you over my shoulder. Your choice sweetheart, but either way, we're leaving. So what will it be?”
24
Westin
“I’m in no mood for another one of your I fucked up phone calls Westin, especially at this hour.” Gabe growled through the phone at me. For someone who was in charge of a whole division of spies, he could be a downright son of a bitch when woken up.
"That was damn out of order, especially when your guys made a mess of my knicker drawer. I thought you trusted me to get you information, not come in on the backside and try to find it yourself."
I could hear the fatigue in Gabe's voice and could almost picture him pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just what the fuck are you talking about?"
"Your team. I told you I would get you what you needed. There's no reason to take that route. I have to tell you, you're losing your touch, mate. The fuckers left a mess.”
The phone went silent.
“Gabe, are you going to fucking pretend you don’t know what the team did?"
Suddenly, Gabe's voice was more alert. "It wasn’t Rouges, Rook. Intel report, now. How compromised are you?"
"Fuck. As far as I can tell, nothing was tripped in my room. I played it straight, and we went directly to a station to make a police report. Sorry Gabe, I really thought this was coming from you, so I punted back to the normal mission plan. Currently we are at the Mayfair safe house.”
* * *
My gaze flickered to the closed door of the loft bedroom where I'd put Nissa. When Lachlan and Saffron had gotten engaged, he'd bought her a house in Notting Hill, which made his loft in Mayfair empty and available. Rogues repurposed it for a safe house, and it was the first place I thought to bring Nissa.
All the progress we had made was shot to hell when Nissa hadn't said much on the drive over here. She just stared out the window. I'd put her straight to bed before coming down to raise hell in quiet whispers on the phone. Regardless of the secrets I was keeping, I needed this to at least appear on the up-and-up, so when we closed the door on the flat, we went right to the police to report the break-in. I had thought it was Gabe and a report was the best way to cover my arse to both Nissa and Julian.
I watched as Nissa spoke to the officers, giving them a basic inventory of anything valuable that was in her place and what we quickly had seen was broken. She hadn't been thrilled about me hauling her out so quickly, but the police had insisted that we did the right thing by leaving. Not that it cleared any of my guilt by having a break-in happen at all on my watch.
“Gabe, I need someone to collect my gear. I had a couple of sensors rigged, but nothing tripped. They were looking for something of hers and were really careful entering the flat. They tossed my room, but not in any real kind of way. It was the girl they were after.” Even as I relayed the information, my brain tried to sift through Nissa’s explanation for why she'd been in her father's room the other night. There had been truth in it, but there had been something else she was leaving out. Was that why she'd been targeted?
"Could it have been her father?"
"He's my next call. I assumed it was us because you couldn't be patient."
"You said you would get what we needed."
"But I hadn’t yet. That's why I thought you did this."
"No, it's not us. I'll assign you an extra man. Saint just came off mission."
"No, I don't think that's necessary, and Nissa is being really cagey. It's almost like she's aware she's being watched. That will just make it worse."
"Do you think it's her father? Or worse, Igno?"
"I don't know what to think right now. I need to figure out who broke in and what they wanted, or if it was random, which is very unlikely."
"What about your security tapes?"
"They upload to my cloud, accessible only through my laptop, which I cannot access right now, thanks to the police."
He cursed low under his breath. "If anyone finds out who you really are…"
"I know, Gabe, I know. They won't be able to. Even if they take the laptop to their tech team, they'll have a difficult time getting through my firewalls. Rogues are protected."
"They better be. Maybe you might get your wish after all and you'll have to come in."
"If I came in, that would leave her in the wind on her own. Or worse, she'd be brought in and would hate me when she knew everything."
"That might not be necessary yet."
“I'm just trying to keep the girl safe."
"And I told you, sometimes we have split objectives, and when that happens, what comes first?"
"Yeah, I hear you. Rogues. Rogues always comes first."
"Good. Then don't make it seem like you need a refresher."
"I don't. I just wanted to ask if you were the fucker who did this."
"I'm a twat and an arsehole. Occasionally, I've been called a dick. But I trust my agents. Despite what you think, I'm not actually the villain."
"Maybe, but you are controlling, and you do have a tendency to play both sides against the middle."
"I have one side. Rogues. It's all I ever care about. That is my sole focus. Besides, if I had sent a team there, you would never have known."
Deep down, I knew he was right. He would have found a different way to get what he wanted. And I never would have known.
"Where are we with the girl?" Gabe asked.
"She doesn't seem to know much. It's going to take more time to work her."
For the last year or so, I'd heard Saff call her brother an arse. Lock had called him a dick on several occasions. I'd heard Saint threaten to kill him once. But while Gabe was tough, I'd never experienced any of his finer points for myself until he said, "Maybe you don't get it, Rook. Your job is to get information. You know you're not actually her bodyguard, right?"
I frowned at that. "She still needs protection, though. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, but you do that as a means to get some fucking answers as to what Montgomery is doing with Igno. Did you get anything at the house?"
I knew I should tell him about Nissa's little adventure, but I held back. After all, who knew what the hell she was really looking for?
You know he's right. You do need to question her more.
She'd only just begun to trust me. There was no way I was pushing that hard.
"I didn’t have much opportunity to dig around much more. Have we picked up anything from the bugs?”
“A little, but we need more."
"Yes, I know what my job is. I can do it."
"Let me be clear, Rook, you're not to get too close to her. That's not the gig. If you can't do the job, I'll have to bring her in forcibly."
My blood quickened at that. I was not having him bring her in. She'd had enough of being dragged around and controlled, given who her father was. Knowing now who he was in bed with, and his penchant for exposing her to the bastards, she would be terrified if she was dragged into Rogues. She already felt alone all the time as if she had no one in her corner. That would devastate her.
"Not bloody necessary. Give it a few more days. She'll talk to me."
"And if she doesn't, we'll need to accelerate. Don’t make me take this over from you."
"I'll get the information you need. Just leave Nissa out of it."
Gabe chuckled low. "Already getting too close, I see. Maybe this was a mistake." He took a deep breath. "Rook, it seems I'm the one who has to tell you the truth of the way things are. We're not playing games here. You might look at Lock and Saff and Saint and Kaya and think we're running some sort of Tinder setup on these grounds. We're not. This mission is fucking life and death. You are a Rogues Agent. Do your job."
I bit my tongue. He had a point. Nissa was part of the job, and I was getting distracted.
You are beyond distracted. You want her just like you've always wanted her. And now that's getting in the way of you doing what you're supposed to do.
"I know, Gabe. I've got this."
"See that you do, or you'll be unhappy."
"There’s no fucking need for all the bullshit threats. I told you. I fucking know what to do."
"All right. In that case, do it. And Rook?"
"Yeah?"
"Bring me the fucking ledger."
"I'll do my best."
I hung up with him then scrubbed a hand down my face. Fucking hell. I always knew that what we did at Rogues was important. The whys might not always be clear to me, and I might not agree with all the missions. But this shit with Nissa in the crosshairs made me start to wonder if I’d just jumped out of the frying pan into the fucking fire.
Then I took a deep breath and called Montgomery.
He answered on the second ring. "Why are you calling me?"
"You tell me. Someone tossed Nissa’s place."
He was silent for a beat. “What the fuck are you on about?”
"Somebody tossed her flat."
"Where the fuck were you?"
"Doing my job. I was with Nissa. And that was a good thing because who knows what would have happened if she had been there."
He cursed under his breath. "You see, this is why you're needed. Where are you now? Bring her home right this minute."
Like hell I was doing that. “I have her somewhere safe. Bringing her home is only going to put more of a target on her. If she's in the crosshairs because of you, the last place she needs to be is standing right next to you.”
He was silent for a breath and then asked, “Did they take anything?”
“Not to my knowledge. Is there something specific you need to know about?"
"Never mind, you just keep doing your job. I want you on her like glue. She never leaves your sight. I don't care what you have to do.”
"What's going on, Montgomery?"
"What's going on is that I made a deal with the devil, and he's looking to collect. I thought you'd make a decent deterrent. But right now, it seems that Antonio Igno doesn't follow the rules of engagement. He wants something he thinks I have, or Nissa has, and if I don't hand it over, he's going to scare Nissa until I get it for him."
"What have you done, Julian?"
"You don't worry about what I've done. You worry about the job I hired you for, protecting my daughter."
After hanging up with him, I lightly knocked on the bedroom door, and Nissa answered with a soft, “Yeah.” I poked my head in the doorway and saw her sitting up against the pillows at the headboard. She just seemed broken. So frail and fragile, but I knew she wasn't. Her brown skin looked sallow, her curls less shiny, like all the exuberance that normally glowed around her had dimmed to a dull hue. "Nissa, why don't we get you in the bath.”
She shook her head. "I don't know what to do. All my stuff. They just destroyed everything."
I licked my bottom lip, hoping I didn't have to make her leave. "Just get in the bath. I'll take care of cleaning up when we go back in the morning to pack up a few things."
Shoulders slumped in defeat, she walked toward the ensuite bathroom. I watched her close the door and my heart just shattered, even though I knew it wasn’t supposed to feel anything for Nissa.
Someone had stolen a bit of her shine today. And I wasn't going to stop until I made them pay for taking that away from her.
25
Nissa
I was frozen. Honestly, just frozen. All I could do was hold myself together from crying. Someone had done this to me. Rifled through my things, broken the snow globes, and the worst thing, they rummaged through all my notes on my sister. I couldn't even tell anyone what was gone. They'd been looking for something, and I didn't know what.
My mind flashed back to the mess of my flat as I sank into the tub, trying to ascertain what to do next. Was it even safe to return home in the morning? I didn't want someone to chase me away; it was my home. It was the only place I'd had since my parents died that felt entirely mine.
After my bath, I went downstairs in the loft. Westin was organizing a cleaning crew to go through my place. “You don't have to do that. I would have done it in the morning.”
His gaze flickered up at me. " You need help. Let me help."
"I appreciate it, but you've done a lot for me tonight."
"Not nearly enough. I can however take care of at least the big stuff. You know what you're going to do? You’re going to stay here and take the day off. Sleep it off or do whatever you want. Anything, but don’t go to Jamila's. It's better if no one goes looking for you there, too."
My heart twisted then. That was the first place I’d thought of going.
I eased down onto the couch, allowing myself to be sucked into the comfort. “I guess I've made your job a little difficult tonight. I wasn't much use.”
"You don't have to apologize. Someone broke into your flat."
"I know, I'm just used to being independent."
"I said it's okay." He hung up the phone and crossed something off his list.
When I angled my body, I saw that it was a little to-do list of items to take care of me. Shopping, sending someone to pick up my clothes. Sending a cleaning crew. He was almost done. "Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"I can't figure you out. It's like you're my fairy godfather or something."
Westin laughed then. "Well, consider me an enigma then."
"An enigma, great. But truly, thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm sorry, very sorry, I brought this to your doorstep. All part of the charm of working for Julian. Do you know why my father brought you back in on this babysitting gig?”
“No, just that it was dire enough for him to put me on the job.”
“Julian doesn't exactly have the cleanest track record. This isn't your average babysitting gig. You need to watch me because he fucked up and got in bed with the wrong people."
He frowned and crossed his arms as he watched me.
"He's been really pressuring me for ages to join the family business."
"You have no interest?"
I nodded. "Exactly. And now with this thing with the letters, I’ve done something potentially dangerous that you should probably know about.”
He lifted a brow. “What?”
“Interpol approached me and I’ve agreed to give them information on my father.
His eyes went wide. "What? When?"
"At the café when you went to the loo."
He stared at me blankly for a long moment before he ran his hands through his hair. "Fucking hell. Nissa, this is dangerous."
"I know. I know, and I just… My father is at the very least a manipulative narcissist. And while I don't think he would hurt me, he does hurt other people. The kind of people he wants to do business with are terrifying and scary, and I don't want any part of it. And he lied to me for years so he could control me. I’m not sitting back and taking it anymore.”
“Bloody Interpol? You know they just have their own agenda.”
“I had no choice. It's not exactly like I have anyone else to trust.”
Westin cursed under his breath. "Bloody Christ. You have me. You have to stop, Nissa. This is a dangerous game you're playing. You cannot get any more involved. You have to let Interpol handle this."
"You think I don't know that? Especially now. This just got way more fucked up than I ever imagined. I never thought anyone would come into my home. And now… now… shit."
He scrubbed both hands over his face and then marched over to me, hands back on my shoulders again like I was a touchstone he needed in this moment of crisis, even though I was the one on the verge of angry tears.
Leaning forward, touching my forehead with his, he spoke so calmly to me. Not the yelling I was used to from Julian, but like I mattered, and he didn’t want my tears to fall. "It's okay. You're okay. I'll help you. It's going to be all right. We will figure this out. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. I have some friends I can call in for favors. We will get your freedom."
“Is that really even possible? You got away once, but now you’re back.”
He tilted my chin up to meet my gaze. “I’m back by choice, Nissa. Julian didn’t find me and drag me back. He only thinks he did. I’m exactly where I want to be. And you and I are going to make him pay.”
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