Page 1

Bucharest, Romania

* * *

The wrong guy was in her bed.

Again.

Tommy Mendoza slept peacefully on his stomach, his brown curls in a messy array around his head, one arm thrown out toward her pillow, the other hanging off the edge of the mattress.

Tessa leaned against the door jamb, sipping her morning coffee, and enjoyed the view. Moments like this, where she could watch him without him realizing it, were rare. Since he’d unexpectedly shown up at her door, he'd created more than a few problems for her. Several criminal organizations were after him. Assassins were hunting him. Along with that, the CIA’s Black Swan Division, a highly classified group of trained “fixers,”

wanted him brought in for questioning.

Why do I keep doing this to myself?

The devil on her shoulder, who sounded like her high school best friend, Sarah, replied, “Because you like tempting fate.”

Fair enough. She tempted fate daily, but she’d left the CIA and wasn’t keen on returning. The only reason she’d helped the swans on their last mission to recover a USB from the Romanian embassy was out of honor for her dead friend—and Tommy's sister—Jessie.

Being in the precarious position of having a crush on the younger man while feeling like a traitor to Meg, Declan, and Spence by not telling them that Tommy was in her apartment, she had to reconsider where her loyalties lay.

Taking one more long look at Tommy’s muscled back and tousled hair that she itched to run her fingers through, she pushed off the jam and silently closed the door.

She refilled her cup in the kitchen and sat at the center island, where her Sig Sauer waited for her. Earbuds in, she dialed Meg Carson’s number and began dismantling the gun to clean it.

The other end rang three times before the leader of the black swans answered. “You do realize it's midnight here, right?”

Meg asked with a yawn.

“In bed already?”

She heard the sounds of Meg rising from the mattress and moving into another room, leaving Declan Reid, her lover and second in command, behind. “I ran seven miles today and then did an hour of shooting practice. On top of that, I got to spend three hours this afternoon in meetings with Flynn, Stone, and a bunch of analysts. The best part? Flynn made me keep my mouth shut.”

Tessa chuckled. Of all those tasks, the last one had to have been the hardest for the team leader. Meg was never one to hold back her thoughts. She was opinionated, highly intelligent, and could probably outthink most of the attendees at the meeting. “And you wonder why I don't want to return to the fold.”

“Any leads on Tommy?”

Straight to it, then. The first part of the swans’ assignment had been recovering the USB. The second was to find Jessie's brother, who had uncovered an impending EMP attack at multiple military facilities worldwide.

Tessa glanced toward the bedroom as she used her cloth to wipe down the face of the chamber. “He's keeping a low profile. Tell me again what happened when Mosai Hagar captured you and Jessie.”

“Why?”

Because something didn't make sense to her about all of it. “Humor me. You were in Vienna, rounding up ex-pats on Scepter’s hit list.”

The sounds of Meg getting a glass of water filtered through the phone. “There were a few who refused to leave, like Captain Ulee. He was too high profile for the US to risk him being taken alive and tortured by Scepter for information, so we were instructed to encourage his evacuation, along with a few others. Declan and Spence handled him, and Jessie and I stayed behind to keep eyes on Urich Scepter and his group.”

That was when Hagar and his death squad had snatched her and Jessie. “How did Hagar know who you were and your whereabouts? Why did he want you and Jessie?”

“The only people who were supposed to know about our mission were Flynn, Stone, Del, and a few state department plants in Vienna. All CIA. All were questioned and above suspicion. As stated in Flynn’s report to the Director and Deputy Director, we believe someone picked up one of our secure communications, figured out what was going on, and forwarded that information to Hagar. He’d had a vendetta against the US since the Iraq invasion. Eliminating CIA operatives was his favorite sport.”

And still… “You and Jessie were no ordinary operatives. The swans are ghosts. Only a handful of people in the entire world know about you.”

“Supposedly,”

Meg said with derision. “Hagar probably informed every one of his buddies and potentially the Russian investors who are backing the EMP attacks about our true identities.”

Tessa checked the clip and laid it on the towel, eyeing the separate pieces that would once more form a weapon when she put them back together. Every part had a purpose, and without even one of them, the gun would not fire properly, if at all.

Her nickname within CIA circles was The Architect. She had never taken to undercover work like she had to inserting deception into buildings. Hidden rooms, secret tunnels, invisible back doors—these were her craft.

Every building needed a strong and balanced foundation to support its framework. Every piece of wood, section of concrete, and piece of pipe played a role in creating a whole, solid structure.

This was how she looked at everything, from the weapon lying in front of her and the buildings she helped the CIA design with hidden entries and exits to missions and operations. The design needed to be flawless in order to avoid weaknesses, and each component had to work well with the others.

Meg, Dec, and Spence were like her Sig—they formed a cohesive and deadly weapon. Jessie had been part of that, and with her gone, they were looking at Tessa to replace her.

Hiding Tommy from them was a dangerous game, but she owed him more than she cared to. Jessie had been one of her closest friends. Tessa had taken her under her wing when Jessie and Meg showed up at The Farm seven years ago, seeing the potential each brought to the table.

Tessa and Meg had both been close to Jessie, but Meg’s guilt over Jessie’s death was as much about responsibility as it was about friendship. Tessa didn't carry that guilt, but she wanted revenge for Jessie's death equally as much.

Which was why she was tempting fate by helping Tommy while lying to Meg. “Why did Hagar pick Jessie to execute first? He knew you were the team leader—why wouldn't he put you on camera for his public execution?”

Meg sighed, and Tessa imagined her leaning against her kitchen counter. “I've asked myself that a thousand times. I don't know. He kept us in these tiny cages, like dog kennels. He tortured us and sent a video of the torture sessions to the CIA. He treated me as horrifically as he did her. Maybe something she said to him that day pushed him over the edge. She was constantly taunting him, angering him.”

The bastard had made swift work of the execution, using his machete on Jessie with the cameras rolling live to several social media sites before it could be shut down.

Although the CIA had managed to remove any recorded section within minutes of the live broadcast, plenty of copies were still out there. Tessa had watched one multiple times, barely able to distinguish that it was even Jessie that Hagar killed with one mighty swing. She and Meg had only been with him and his death squad a week, but the damage he’d done to them physically had left them nearly unrecognizable.

She hated to imagine what Meg still wrestled with mentally and emotionally, even now that the bastard was dead.

“He was too calculating for that,”

Tessa mused, more to herself than to Meg. “And you were already under his control. More torture would have been a normal response to her provocations.”

“Killing operatives was personal. Revenge for the US taking out his family during one of the raids in Iraq. I don’t think strategy won against his rage that day.”

He’d been the lone survivor. “Why would Jessie taunt him?”

“Because she wouldn’t be cowed. Ever.”

True. “Did she not hope for rescue?”

Meg’s pause was long and weighted. “No.”

“But you did?”

“I worked on an escape plan. I failed.”

Tessa understood the burden of that. She’d failed plenty in her lifetime, too. Never with a teammate’s life, though.

Her fingers moved with ease as she finished putting the Sig to rights. “You’re sure Jessie had no prior connection to Hagar?”

Another pause, this one more inquisitive. “What are you suggesting?”

Tessa sipped coffee. What she was about to say might cause Meg to hate her. “I’m suggesting that Jessie knew Hagar before the kidnapping. She potentially leaked your whereabouts to him for reasons we may never know, but she had information on him that he didn’t want to get out. Something or someone alerted him that Declan and Spence were about to swoop in and rescue the two of you, so he killed her first because he needed to silence her.”

And then he’d escaped.

Tessa heard the bedroom door open.

“You can’t be serious,”

Meg hissed in her ears.

She was.

Glancing toward the bedroom, she found Tommy staring at her with his dark, damaged eyes.

All of it led back to him.

The man wanted by so many and who’d been sleeping in her bed.