Shock reverberated throughout Jagger’s chest, making it hard to take a breath. Because Lopez hadn’t fingered Sinclair as Sanchez’s go-to man. Instead, he’d pointed at a different dead man.
Talia’s friend…Julian Miller.
“Wakey, wakey, Tally Cat.”
Natalia screamed out in pain as excruciating pressure was applied to the exit wound in her shoulder. The pressure eased, but the burning inferno lingered with a steady, throbbing succession of beats.
She opened her eyes, blinking her vision clear to finally get a good look at her abductor.
Her lids fluttered again before she squeezed her eyes shut. The drugs she’d been given had clearly altered her mental state. Because the face she’d just seen couldn’t be real. It was impossible.
In every sense of the word.
“Go ahead, Tally Cat.” The eerily familiar voice used a nickname she hadn’t heard in years. “I’m not goin’ anywhere. Not yet, anyway. Open your eyes and look at me.”
She couldn’t do it. Only one person in her life had ever called her Tally Cat. And she’d spent the last three years blaming herself for his death.
“Look at me!”
The shouted order had her muscles tensing and her eyes flying open. Nothing could have shocked her more than finding a set of familiar eyes staring back at her. But it couldn’t be true.
Julian died in a massive explosion. And yet…
“Julian?” Natalia uttered the name as a question of disbelief.
“Hey, Natalia.” A man who was supposed to be dead smiled back at her. “It’s been a while, huh?”
Her breaths began sawing in and out and sweat covered every inch of her skin. Her shoulder hurt like a bitch, but it was nothing to the pain ripping her heart in two.
Julian was alive.Alive!He hadn’t died during her last CIA op, like she’d believed. Like he made themallbelieve. He was here, and now her former best friend was…
Dear, God!
Was he actually planning to become her murderer?
Natalia fought against the cuffs that had, once again, been placed tightly around her wrists. Only this time, her hands were secured behind her back, rather than in the front.
Julian was too smart to make the same mistake as the man she’d previously killed. A man whose lay dead a feet away from the corner where she found herself in once more.
“H-how is this possible?” Tears fell down her cheeks as she stared in the eyes of a ghost. “You were d-dead. I-I was at your funeral. I saw yourcasket!”
He chuckled, pushing himself up from a squatted position. Dressed in black tactical boots, cargo pants, and a black, fitted, long-sleeve tee, the man looked every bit the part of a cold-blooded killer.
“Yeah, I wasn’t in it,” he stated the obvious. “I was too busy being tortured by Ahmed al-Asiri’s men to make an appearance.”
“al-Asiri?” Natalia frowned, easily recalling the name of her last CIA target. “I don’t…” She cleared her throat when her voice cracked. “Julian, I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I.” Another humorless laugh shook a set of shoulders that appeared broader and more muscular than before.
Everything about him was bulkier now. His shoulders. Arms. Thighs.
But it wasn’t Julian’s impressive build or dangerous-looking scruff that caught Natalia off guard the most. Aside from the fact that this man had obviously fallen way off his rocker since she’d seen him last, Julian’s entire being had changed.
The man who’d always joked—and never, ever took anything serious—oozed a lethal confidence she didn’t recognize in the least. There was also an evil coldness present that wasn’t there before.
It sent a rush of chills down Natalia’s stiffened spine.
“What happened?” she demanded. “H-how did you make it out of there alive?”
