Page 77 of Enemy of the Heart

Mercer holds up his hand. “There’s not a single person in this dacha who needs to know anything else about your bed, Vik.”

“Actually,” Jace interjects, stretching out his legs in front of him. The gleam in my best friend’s eyes indicates that he knows precisely what he’s doing. “I’d like to know where you sleep.”

“In my office, mostly. I don’t sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, so there’s not much point in crawling into an actual bed when I can get more done by sleeping in my desk chair.”

There’s a twinge in my shoulder as I scoop Lou into my arms and drag her onto my lap sideways. I want the contact.

“Digs?” Mercer offers me the bottle of vodka, but I shake my head. He shrugs. “More for me, then.”

“Hey,” Lou protests with a giggle, swiping the bottle from him.

He frowns. “I figured you’d want wine.”

“I’m making an exception tonight.” She tosses back the bottle, and I cringe as I watch her throat work. You’d never even notice that she drank liquor rather than water as she returns the bottle to her brother.

“I hate to be the one to point this out, but when this unit doesn’t check in, they’re going to send another squad to retrieve the dead,” Jace asserts.

“How long do we have?” Mercer pipes up, snatching the vodka bottle from my best friend.

“Eight, maybe ten hours,” I supply. Really, I can’t be entirely sure, but they won’t send anyone here until they’re sure they won’t lose more men. So long as we’re long gone before they get here, they won’t.

“That gives us a few hours for some sleep, which we all need. I’ll have my chopper get us in the morning. I’ll take first watch, and Mercer can switch with me at three.” Viktor lays out a plan for us.

“Mercer, if you get tired, just wake me up, and I can relieve you,” Jace offers, and Louhi’s brother nods.

“Will you come with us, Mercer?” my girl asks her brother, once again in possession of the vodka. There’s so much hope in her voice that I grip her tighter as though I can physically protect her from the inevitable letdown. “Or do you want me to send the plane for your revenge crusade?”

He pulls the bottle from Lou’s grasp and winces slightly as he throws back a heavy swig. “I’m coming with you. I’ll spend the next two weeks healing with you, then go back to Boston and kill Conall McQuaid.”

Lou’s lips spread in a striking grin that could send every man and woman in an eighty-mile radius to their knees. She flings her arms around her brother, who grunts, but the soft smile on his lips says he doesn’t mind her display of excited affection. I have no doubt that she’s going to try to talk him out of embarking on that suicide mission. “It’ll be like old times when we lived together.”

Mercer snorts, the corner of his lips lifting. “I don’t remember there being roommates at our flat.”

Lou giggles as she continues to hug her brother.

“What’s going to happen to this place now that it’s obviously compromised as a safe house?” Jace stretches his arms behind his head.

Lou sighs as she sinks back into my arms. “I’ll sell it and buy a new safe house. Maybe I’ll burn it to the ground and turn it into a gun range. Sky’s the limit.”

“In that case,” Viktor remarks, the bottle finally making it back to him. “Would anyone care for a smoke?”

I hold out my hand immediately. The vodka holds no appeal, but the cigarette? Yeah, that’s ideal.

I pluck a cancer stick from the offered box and catch the Zippo Viktor tosses in my direction. Once I light it up, Jace and Viktor follow suit. It calms my jittering nerves better than alcohol.

The exhaled smoke snakes through the air as I sink farther into my seat. It reminds me of sitting on the rooftop, stealing moments of solitude with my best friend at Exile Island, except somehow better.

As I glance around the room, taking in Viktor and Louhi, laughing as they pass the vodka back and forth, I get the sense that we’re going to be alright. Maybe even better than okay. Thank fuck, it’s all over. Now, we can start to try to create a new life.

Aiden

Five sets of eyes land on me, and I give a short, decisive nod. The other members of my Delta Force squadron fan out according to plan, moving soundlessly through the wooded area. I don’t know who this target is, other than the fact that they’re a direct threat to national security. When Alastair Kendrick, the director of the CIA, and Vincent Dalton, the Secretary of Defense, send us somewhere, we complete the op. It’s not our job to know why; simply to execute without a single casualty in my squad. I’ve never lost an operator. That won’t change tonight. This has jackpot written all over it. All six of us will be back in our own beds in North Carolina by tomorrow night.

The helmet doesn’t do much to warm my shaved head, but I hardly notice the frigid temperature. If we do our jobs well, we won’t be here long enough to even feel the cold.

The six of us move more silently than the snow falling around us as we approach the dark-painted home. The moon is bright tonight, which makes for great conditions for our night vision goggles. It makes it easy to spot the bodies lying motionless in the snow. While collecting these soldiers is part of this operation, it’s our secondary objective.

Like we planned, Powers, Johnson, and Greer fan out around the house, securing the perimeter. With our HK416 carbine rifles clutched tightly in our hands, we slip effortlessly into place like a well-greased timing chain. Wellington and Miller mutely access the front, while I gain entry through the rear. The house is silent, which is what I expected at ten past four in the morning. According to the intelligence, there are other people asleep in this house, but they won’t know we’re here.