Out of Control (Black Dragons Inc. Book 1), page 14
He thought back. “I was careful to keep everything ops normal. I was communicating by secure text so the agency didn’t do any voice analysis that might have given away any stress from me.”
Spencer said soberly, “Then I’ll ask again. Do you have an enemy inside the agency? Somebody looking to take you down?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he answered slowly, his thoughts revving at light speed. He’d had his doubts before, but Spencer’s suspicion confirmed all his worst thoughts. He had been set up. Who could have possibly known—and how—that Khoury was about to die and arranged to have him walk in on the murder scene?
A cold chill crept up the back of his neck.
Grimly, he looked up at Spencer. “So. Are you going to help me or not?”
Chapter Ten
SPENCER STUDIED Drago’s face, which had horror and alarm written all over it. Nope. The guy was not pretending. Regardless of his ability to lie, he knew Drago too well. The man thought his own agency had framed him.
Now what was he supposed to do? It was clear to him that Drago hadn’t killed Fayez Khoury. And furthermore, it was clear that someone at the CIA had it in for Dray. If Spencer renditioned Drago now, he would be playing right into the hands of that anonymous manipulator.
“What are we missing?” Drago asked thoughtfully.
The question sounded rhetorical, so Spencer didn’t offer an answer. A powerful sense of here-we-go-again rolled over him. Jabril Hamza’s cell had been so quiet, so low-key, that it had lulled him and Drago into a false sense of security too. Hamza and his guys hadn’t given even the slightest indication that they were in the final stages of planning a massive attack that would kill a thousand or more people.
Or maybe they had. Maybe he and Drago had been so intent on each other they’d failed to catch the signs. Had they missed something back then? Something they were missing again now? He had to keep his head in the game this time—not make another massive, fatal mistake.
Yes, Drago was distracting as hell. Yes, Spencer thought about taking Drago to bed pretty much every waking minute. Yes, he would love to pick up where they’d left off ten years ago. But no way could he give in.
One thing was clear: he couldn’t take Drago back to Langley. Not until they’d figured out what was going on inside the agency and not until they had more proof than the word of a young prostitute to prove Drago was innocent of Khoury’s death. Spencer had been there in person to hear the girl, Lena, speak. He’d seen her body language. He had no doubt she’d been telling the truth. But the powers-that-be in Langley would want more than that before they reversed a rendition order.
And as much as he would love to fuck Drago on every surface this apartment offered, they couldn’t go there again. At a minimum, they had to work together to clear Dray’s name. And while they were at it, if they happened to find Jabril Hamza and take him out, all the better—
Drago pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and passed one to Spencer before sitting down. “Shall we see what Fayez’s phone and wallet yield?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He sat down heavily at the table as well. This was a mistake. Drago’s enthusiasm was infectious. The guy would suck him into this whatever-this-was, and he would go along to spend a little more time with Dray. And other people would end up getting hurt, as sure as he’d just planted his ass in a chair.
Drago swore under his breath, and Spencer’s gaze snapped up alertly.
“Phone is password protected,” Dray announced in disgust.
“Obviously. Have you got someone local who can break into this phone? The only hacker I trust is somewhere in Afghanistan at the moment.”
“I’ve got a couple of guys I can call. But it’ll take time we don’t have. We have to move fast if I’m gonna stay out of spy jail.”
Not to mention, if Spencer didn’t bring in Drago in the next few days, somebody else would be sent to rendition them both.
Spencer reached for the wallet and emptied the contents onto the table in a pile. He picked up the first plastic card. “Driver’s license. France. Debit card from a French bank. I’m gonna go ahead and say Fayez lived in France.”
Drago rifled through the money and receipts. “Check this. It’s a dry-cleaning receipt. This must come from near where he lived.”
“There’s a phone number on it,” Spencer commented. “Prefixes are 33 and 1. That’s the country code for France and the Paris area code.”
“You think the driver’s license is real, then? Has his actual address on it?”
Spencer grinned. “It’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a terrorist do.”
Drago snorted. “It’s right up there, though.”
“Maybe he was so cocky he didn’t think he would ever get caught.”
“Dumbass. Paris makes sense as a home base, though,” Drago commented. “Big Middle Eastern community there. Easy place for Khoury to blend in.”
“Okay. So somebody he knew walks in on him and kills him moments before you walk in. It sounded from Lena like the killer was only in the room a minute or so tops. How big was the pool of blood on the floor when you walked in?”
Drago frowned, thinking back. “Not big. Maybe a one-foot radius outward from his head.”
“So he was only dead a matter of seconds before you walked in, then. Head wounds bleed massively. That would put you already inside the brothel when he was shot.”
Drago stared. “Jesus. I never made that connection.”
“My dude. You were a patsy. Any idea who would’ve set you up like that?”
“Eva. She had to be in on it,” Drago declared. “Let’s go back there—”
“She’s long gone. I’ll bet she was out of the building before the door closed behind us in Talia’s room. Maybe she recognized you, or she heard us ask Talia for information on Khoury. Either way, she would’ve taken off. Which would also explain why we were able to walk two of her girls out the back door.”
“Sonofabitch,” Drago said quietly. “You’d be a natural at the spy game, Spence.”
“No, thanks. I can’t handle all the lies.”
Drago stared earnestly at him. “I’m not lying when I say this—I need your help. I’m too close to this thing. I’m not seeing it clearly.”
Duty or honor? Friendship or country? To follow orders or not? It went against everything in his heart and his gut to disobey a direct rendition order. But he’d heard the truth in Lena’s description of the killing. Nobody would think to make up a second person running through her room and bolting through the window out of the blue. Somebody had definitely barged in right after Khoury died, and Dray insisted that someone was him.
He believed Drago.
But the timing of the whole killing was sketchy as hell.
And Drago was definitely caught in the middle of it.
He’d finally found Dray again. He couldn’t lose him. Not again—
Stop.
His personal feelings had no place in this decision.
But how the hell could they not, when Drago was sitting there looking so kissable, it was all Spencer could do not to lean across the table and lay a big wet one on him?
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut to avoid the temptation. Think. He knew the man. Drago might not be loud and proud about it, but he was a patriot all the way to the soles of his size-twelve feet. He would serve his country with honor if it killed him.
If Drago was being set up, then something very bad was going on at the CIA. A mole, maybe. Or an ugly power struggle. Perhaps internal or external politics. Regardless, it was bad, and it needed to be rooted out and exposed.
He met Drago’s dark, worried gaze. “Yeah. I’ll help you.”
Drago sagged in his chair. Wow. He had been a lot more tense about what Spencer was going to decide than he’d let on. Note to self: never gamble against Dray. The guy had a hell of a poker face.
“Thank you, Spencer.”
“You’re welcome.” He leaned forward. “Small problem. If I’m not going to bring you in, particularly since I already reported having you in custody, you and I both are going to have to go dark.”
“Agreed.”
“Have you got a tracker in you? They put SEALs’ trackers under their shoulder blades. You’re gonna have to dig mine out.”
Drago winced. “Yeah. Same for me.”
“Have you got a decent first aid kit around here?”
Dray stood up. “Of course. I’ve got a full crash kit.”
“Any chance there’s a topical numbing agent in it?”
“You don’t get off on pain?” Drago ribbed.
He side-eyed Dray. “Keep making cracks. I’m keeping a tally of the snark for when you’re facedown beneath me getting the ever-loving hell pounded out of your ass.”
Drago grinned. “Don’t tease me. You’re making me hot.”
Spencer arched an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m teasing?”
Drago’s throat muscles flexed as he swallowed, and his eyes blazed with black fire.
Dammit. If they were going to do this, if he was going to work with Drago again, he must not give in to temptation. Not again.
“Let’s get the trackers out of our backs and sanitize our electronics,” Spencer said past the sudden tightness in his own throat.
It didn’t take long for him to don surgical gloves, sterilize and numb a spot under Drago’s shoulder blade, and make a small incision. He pulled out the tracker, the size and shape of a pill capsule. He applied pressure until the bleeding mostly stopped and then butterflied the cut shut. He put heavy-duty adhesive tape over the whole thing in case they had to fight or run in the next few days… or have vigorous sex—
Stop that!
He sat still as Drago repeated the procedure on his back. In a few minutes, his tracker clanked into a saucer beside Dray’s. “Should we destroy them?” he asked.
Drago shook his head. “I’m thinking we should put them on a moving vehicle of some kind. Use them as a misdirect. Besides, if my tracker goes black, that’s a signal to my handlers to send in an emergency extraction team.”
Drago went into the other room, and from his angle at the kitchen table, Spencer saw him open a small wall safe. He emerged from the bedroom carrying a handful of plastic packages.
“New SIM cards for our phones,” Drago announced.
Spencer popped open his work and personal cell phones, removed and replaced the SIM cards, and deactivated the built-in tracking software. Taking apart their laptops to get to the chips in the motherboards took longer, but eventually those were added to the pile of old SIM cards.
“Got any tinfoil?” he asked.
“Coming up.” They wrapped the chips and SIM cards in the foil, and Spencer stowed them in a flat compartment hidden in the back of his utility belt.
“I’m regretting your ditching the Land Rover right about now,” Spencer said.
Drago grinned. “You abandoned my Jeep in the desert. It was the least I could do to repay the favor.”
“Maybe we can buy wheels from someone local?”
Drago nodded. “I know just the person. An older lady down the block has a flower shop. If I offer to buy her crappy VW bus for enough cash to buy a better van, she’ll jump on it.”
They spent the remainder of the evening trimming down their equipment into two duffel bags. They kept most of the surveillance gear, small and large weapons for each of them, and plenty of ammo. Given that they were going to Paris, they left behind the desert survival gear.
It turned out the flower shop took its deliveries of fresh flowers well before dawn, and the owner was beyond delighted to sell her piece-of-shit van for triple its market value. They ditched the trackers in the upholstery of a cab, and by 6:00 a.m., they were well clear of Berlin. They headed southwest on the A2.
The minibus was uncomfortable and smelled of leaking oil, but it surely wouldn’t draw the attention of anyone who might happen to go looking for them. Like any good spy, Drago had a significant stash of cash, and their road trip was well-funded. From here on out, they would operate strictly off the grid.
It didn’t help that Spencer was still plenty creaky from his beating in Tel Aviv. Sure, he could work through any amount of pain. But that didn’t have to mean he liked doing it.
Across the border into Belgium, they got off the Autobahn and took a smaller highway to Reims, a couple of hours east of Paris, to stop for the night. Spencer asked for two rooms when they checked into a middling hotel. Dray’s right eyebrow sailed up, but thankfully he didn’t make a stink about it.
Spencer’s bed was lumpy and lonely. He would much rather have slept beside Dray, but he already felt the old addiction calling to him, a sweet siren song of desire.
No surprise, he slept for shit and woke up aching from head to foot.
Later that morning, as the urban sprawl of Paris spread around them, he asked Dray, “I don’t suppose you own an apartment building in Paris, do you?”
“Too expensive a city for that. But I do have a modest flat. Real estate in this town is a bitch.”
Spencer shook his head. Never in a million years would he have guessed Drago would one day turn into a landlord, let alone a businessman.
They reached central Paris, and the Eiffel Tower loomed over the skyline at the west end of downtown, while the white domes of Sacré-Coeur loomed in the east. Spencer’s head was on a swivel, taking in the iconic sights—the bridges over the River Seine, the Egyptian Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde near where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their heads, the Paris Opera, the Louvre, and of course, mighty Notre Dame Cathedral, cloaked in scaffolding as repairs proceeded after its terrible fire.
Thankfully, Drago spent most of the time watching his rearview mirror. At least one of them was doing his due diligence to take a circuitous route to their destination and check their tails. As for him, he was too busy sightseeing.
Drago drove west along the Champs-Élysées, and Spencer gaped like a tourist at the designer fashion houses lined up one after another on the broad boulevard that rose gently toward the Arc de Triomphe. They reached the madhouse that was the massive traffic circle around the monument where twelve boulevards met and merged, and Spencer gripped the dashboard with white knuckles.
“The trick,” Drago commented dryly, “is to attack the traffic circle like a lunatic. Scare the other lunatics into staying the hell away from you. It doesn’t hurt that I’m in a vehicle I clearly wouldn’t give a damn about totaling.” He flashed his lights furiously at other drivers and shook his fist out his side window a few times for emphasis before they finally popped out of the whirling insanity and into a posh, and blessedly calmer, neighborhood.
Drago’s “modest” flat turned out to be a spacious two-bedroom apartment decorated to the hilt with gorgeous Louis XV antiques, only one block off the Boulevard St. Germain in the 6th arrondissement. Even Spencer knew it was the most expensive and prestigious district in all of Paris.
Spencer asked incredulously, “Why do you bother with some lousy government job if you own this? Federal employees aren’t paid any better than soldiers.”
Another shrug. “Same reason you’re not pulling down $400K a year working for some private security contractor. I believe in what I do.”
There was that.
“It has crossed my mind to leave the military, actually.”
Drago turned to stare at him. “Get out. You? Bail on your precious career? Damn. You really do need to get laid more often, don’t you?”
Ignoring the question, Spencer asked, “Where do you want me to put my gear? I don’t want to break anything.”
Drago’s brows twitched into a frown. “Beautiful things are meant to be enjoyed. Put your bag in one of the bedrooms, and I’ll see what my property manager has stocked in the kitchen. I asked her yesterday to make a grocery run for us.”
“Dear God, how terribly bourgeois it all is. I’m not sure I can handle it,” Spencer commented dryly.
“You soldiers live to slog around in the mud. We CIA officers know how to live.”
“I’ll bet you’ve had more than a few lousy missions to muddy places.”
Drago grinned. “Indeed. Which is why when I can live like this on a mission, I do.”
Spencer emerged from the second bedroom in time to hear Drago speaking quick French on the phone to someone.
As he came into the kitchen, Drago hung up. “I have the address of the dry cleaner from the receipt in Khoury’s wallet. Shall we go have a chat with the employees there? See if they recognize our guy? Maybe they’ll tell us if the address on his driver’s license is real.”
“Let’s go.” The faster they got this mission over with, the better. Although he didn’t know if he was antsy to get away from Drago or to be with him more. Maybe both.
They rode the Metro across the city to a very different neighborhood. As they emerged from the subway, it looked as if they’d entered a Middle Eastern slum.
“How in the hell does this kind of poverty exist so close to where you live?” he murmured.
“Not easily or peacefully,” Drago replied. “Stick close by me. You’re clearly an outsider in this place. On the other end of Paris, I’ll be the one getting suspicious looks, while your Northern European beauty will have women throwing themselves at you.”
“Thanks. And no, thanks.”
“Take it for the compliment it is, bro. Parisian women have high standards.”
They walked into an increasingly poor and increasingly less French and more crowded neighborhood with crumbling buildings, more trash, and a vibe of frustration and despair. In spite of his lingering bruises from the beating on the beach, Spencer did his best to move loosely, his body relaxed and ready to react at a moment’s notice to a threatening move by anyone.
“Here’s the dry cleaner’s,” Drago announced.
They stepped into a narrow space with a counter across its width. A bored-looking woman glanced up as they stepped inside. She did a hard double take, and a glint of appreciation entered her gaze. Spencer allowed that he and Drago together probably made for a rather striking pair.
