Reed tried to remember who they could be talking about, but the name didn’t stand out to him.
“I’m meeting with him tomorrow in Germany. I’ll let you come, but I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“What does that mean?”
Reed rushed out of the van, sprinting toward the restaurant. He could still hear the conversation through the Bluetooth in his ear.
“It means you come with me. We exit the building with my men right now.”
Elena let out a light laugh. “I don’t think so.”
“I need you.”
Reed was nearing the doors of the restaurant. One of Vince’s men saw him and opened the door.
“Yes, you do, but that’s not how this is going to end.”
“You’re right,” Webb said. “You’re coming with me.”
The next thing Reed heard was Elena screaming.
Then she came into view.
Webb’s hand was in her hair, yanking her to a standing position.
CHAPTER 19
Everything slowed.
Webb’s fingers were tangled in Elena’s hair, yanking her head back at an angle that sent white-hot pain shooting down her neck. His breath was hot against her cheek, carrying the sharp scent of whiskey and desperation.
Her hand swept beneath her dress in one fluid motion, fingers closing around the grip of her weapon with the familiarity of an old friend. In the space of a heartbeat, she had the barrel pressed firmly against the soft flesh beneath Webb’s chin, the cold metal dimpling his skin.
“Let. Me. Go.”
Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was ice and steel, the voice of a woman who had nothing left to lose.
Webb’s grip on her hair loosened slightly, and Elena could feel the surprise rippling through him. She risked a glance at his face and saw something she hadn’t expected—amusement. The man was actually smiling.
“Well, well,” Webb said, his voice carrying that infuriating calm that had always made her want to scream. “There she is. There’s the Elena I remember. The one who had fire in her belly before she let sentiment make her soft.”
“I said let me go.”
Webb’s fingers uncurled from her hair, his hands rising slowly to shoulder height in a mock gesture of surrender. But he didn’t step back. Didn’t create the distance that every instinct in Elena’s body screamed for.
Instead, he laughed.
The sound was low and genuine. It echoed off the restaurant’s exposed brick walls, drawing the attention of the few patrons who hadn’t already fled toward the exits.
“You won’t do it,” Webb said, his pale eyes meeting hers with absolute certainty. “You’ve had five years to kill me, Elena. Five years of running and hiding and watching me from the shadows. If you were capable of pulling that trigger, you would have done it long ago.”
Elena’s finger tightened against the trigger. Her hand was steady—years of training had seen to that—but her heart hammered so hard she could feel her pulse in her throat.
He’s right, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind.You’ve never killed anyone. Not directly. Not like this.
She thought about her mother, dying alone in a hospital room because her daughter had been too afraid to come home. She thought about all the people WATCHDOG had helped destroy—the journalists silenced, the activists disappeared, the innocent lives ruined by technology she had created.
She thought about Reed.
