Page 126 of Until the End

After Sanborn’s lunatic tirade on the boat, Ashley was willing to take help wherever possible. Regardless of how slim the prospect that Castle would escape. Or the added problem that once Sanborn activated his jammer on the boat, it’d block the signal emitted from Kit’s GPS tracker. Seemed Castle was resourceful.

Good. It was going to take some extraordinary act to stop Sanborn, and Castle was her only plan.

Sanborn was the worst kind of devil. One who believed he was right, called by a higher purpose to be merciless.

Being one of Sanborn’s operatives had been a coveted status, and she’d gone from that—being protected by him—to expendable in a blink. The price for defiance.

Ashley pressed the badge to the scanner to open the door and crept outside. The credentials were the real deal, but she didn’t want to know who Sanborn had sent Bravo to strangle in order to procure them.

Castle had stalked around the bend, out of view.

She glanced at her watch. Two minutes to chase after him and convince him they should be allies.

The soft grass made no sound under her feet as she hurried across the lawn, moving close to the side of the building. She had no intel on Castle and not a clue how to enlist him as an ally in mere minutes. What she did have was a determined mind-set and the conviction that this course of action was right.

She quickened her pace, drawing to the corner.

As she whipped around, her gun at the ready, a large figure stepped in front of her, blocking the sunlight.

Ashley found herself face-to-face with Castle. She drew a long breath, stringing her thoughts together. Everything depended on the success of this conversation.

“Don’t shoot,” she said, raising one palm in a gesture of peace.

His gaze flickered down, past his gun’s front sight to the Glock pointed at his chest, and then to her eyes. “Give me one reason not to.”

She scanned his face. They were roughly the same age and he appeared equally battle-tested, though his features were more chiseled. “I mean you no harm.”

His hard eyes narrowed, assessing her. “Says the woman who came into my home, helped subdue me, kidnapped the woman I love, and has a gun pointed at me.”

She lowered her 9mm, slowly. “You and I would make far better friends than enemies.”

“Forgive my skepticism.”

“This may be hard to believe, but I’m not your problem.” If this man was one of Sanborn’s most prized warriors, then they were alike. Sanborn had a soft spot for him, had spared him. A position she’d once been in herself years ago. She could use that to her benefit. “You and I have plenty in common. I’ve known Sanborn a long time too. Longer than you. Almost a decade. We both admired him, trusted him. You probably even worshipped him the way I did. Until today. He finally pulled back the mask he’s been wearing, and I don’t think either of us recognized the face we saw.”

Castle scanned the surrounding area as if expecting an ambush while keeping his gun squarely trained on her.

“If you don’t believe me, get out of range of the jammers and call Knox. My name is Ashley Agnello-Silva. He knows me, trained me. Hell, tell him to get his ass down here to help stop Sanborn.”

It was unsettling that Knox Cody, one of the best operatives alive who knew Sanborn better than anyone else, hadn’t already pieced this all together and intervened before letting things spiral this far out of control. If anyone could’ve figured this out, it was Knox, and there was no way he would’ve allowed this to happen.

“Knox is deployed,” Castle said. “Has been for months.”

Convenient. No, carefully planned. Well-played, Sanborn. Always five steps ahead.

“Why would you turn on Sanborn if you once worshipped him?” Castle asked.

“Right now, your Gray Box team is at a water treatment facility in Potomac, Maryland, recovering anthrax.”

“How do you know that?”

“My team—not the men who came into your home, but my husband and two others—set up the fake device at the water plant and ensured your people found it.”

His steely eyes narrowed. “What do you mean fake? We know for a fact that anthrax, some modified super bioweapon, was stolen.”

“It was. My team hijacked the shipment from a company called Nexcellogen while they were en route to Fort Detrick. On Sanborn’s orders.”

“No.” The tortured whisper of the word was carried off on the wind. Castle shook his head as if that revelation was even harder to accept than what he’d already been through.