She didn’t even give him a chance to answer before she closed the door behind her. He was left standing there, alone, feeling equal parts exasperated and relieved that Sadie was back in his life.

  Bear was staring intently at a burner phone, hands steepled in front of his chest, when Sadie emerged from the shower. A cloud of steam followed her out. She’d been in there for at least an hour, which had given him ample time to check out every detail inside the house. The only thing he’d found was the cell, but there were no names saved. A group of four different numbers in the history called every few hours.

  Sadie had ditched her mud-stained button-up shirt in favor of her slightly cleaner tank top, but there was clearly no alternative for her dirty jeans. She was toweling her hair dry as she made her way over to him.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  “Tons.” She looked down at her arms, which were covered in tiny scratches like she’d been dragged through a bramble patch. “Shower hurt like lemon juice on an open wound, but it was worth it.”

  Bear held up the phone. “This is the only thing useful in the house. No names though. Gotta figure out who keeps calling and why.”

  “Nothing else on there?” She tossed the towel over the back of the sofa and took the phone from Bear. Tiny drops of water pelted him as she flung her hair to the opposite side.

  “Couple text messages. Can’t read them though.” Bear made his way back over to the couch and waited for Sadie to follow. “So you gonna tell me how you got wrapped up in all this?”

  Sadie laughed and took another sip of water. “Believe it or not, it was a pretty straightforward mission.”

  “I thought you weren’t doing those anymore?”

  “I said I wasn’t going deep undercover for some time. I never said I wasn’t going on any missions.”

  Bear chuckled. “And here I thought you might’ve gotten a cozy desk job.”

  Sadie furrowed her brow. “You don’t know me as well as I thought you did then. Can’t keep me chained to a desk.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  Sadie’s face sobered. “I shoulda known this mission was trouble. It seemed like a last-minute deal and I didn’t have a whole lot of information to go on. Not that that’s stopped me before.”

  “What was the mission?”

  “Head to Hong Kong. Stake out a sex trafficking ring. Get kidnapped. Take out a Korean General. Come home.”

  “Did you know why you needed to take out the general?”

  Sadie ran her fingers through her wet hair, detangling it as she went. “I wasn’t told details. He was a threat. He was planning a coup of some sort.”

  “In North Korea? That doesn’t sound like it’d be a bad thing.”

  “Yeah, well, the enemy you know and all that. He was a wild card. Better safe than sorry. Insert any cliché you want.”

  “General Pyeong.” Bear clocked the surprise on Sadie’s face. “I’ll tell you my side of the story in a minute. What happened when you finally reached Hong Kong?”

  “Everything went according to plan. Wasn’t hard to find the ring. What little intelligence we knew told us I would be a good candidate. A little older than the others, perhaps, but General Pyeong wasn’t looking for what most other people were.”

  “What was he looking for?”

  “That I don’t know.” Sadie brushed her hair back off her shoulders and tied it up in a ponytail. “Either way, I knew they were watching me for a couple days. Saw that I was a tourist, I was alone, and I wasn’t making phone calls back home all the time. If they snatched me, chances are no one would notice.”

  He couldn’t imagine how terrifying that must’ve been, even if she had been prepared for it.

  “Long story short,” she said, “they didn’t see me as much of a threat. I snooped around, trying to figure out when the general was going to show up and how I was going to take him out. Stole a weapon. Some other girl got the blame instead of me.”

  “Maria.” When Sadie looked confused, he continued. “I stumbled across her back in Hong Kong. She was there for another target.”

  “One of ours?”

  “Kinda. She was there on Thorne’s orders.”

  The muscles on her jaw rippled and she spoke through clenched teeth. “Thorne?”

  “And I think you were, too.”

  “This came directly from my superior,” Sadie said. “I haven’t heard anyone breathe the name Thorne since Costa Rica.”

  “He’s alive and well. In fact, he’s the one who sent me after you. Came to me saying you were taken.”

  Again her eyes widened and mouth dropped open as she searched for meaning behind his statement. “And why the hell would he do that?”

  He leaned back into the couch and wrapped his hands around the back of his head, tugging on his hair as though he could coax the answer from his brain.

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Bear spent the next twenty minutes filling Sadie in on everything, from his time on St. Lucia and Derek and Sophia’s deaths, to his imprisonment and Thorne’s visit.

  He told her about Hong Kong and the flight over. About stumbling across Maria. About calling up Neumann and running into the Korean men at sea.

  She soaked it all up like a solid field operative would.

  “Right now, Neumann is back at Falcon’s place with Maria and Kwang.” He waved the satellite phone in the air between them. “I’m going to call him and see if we can’t get a ride out of here sooner rather than later.”

  “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere until this is done.”

  Bear took a moment before responding. “My mission was to get you. I did that. We’re not involved in this mess. We don’t owe Thorne anything.”

  “But my mission isn’t over,” she said. “I didn’t get to do what I came here to do.”

  “And you know Thorne was behind that. Do you really want to play right into his hands?”

  She shrugged. “You don’t know that the order came from him. And even if it did, don’t you want to know what he’s up to?”

  “I already know what he’s up to. He’s waiting for me to do his dirty work. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.”

  Sadie held her hands up in surrender. “I understand what you’re saying, but how long were you and Jack looking for Thorne before he finally cornered you in New York?”

  “I wouldn’t say cornered us. But it was at least a couple months.”

  “And nothing from him until he showed up at the prison.” She ran her fingers through her hair again. “My point is that he’s always one step ahead of you. Now’s your chance to be one step ahead of him. We don’t have to do his dirty work for him, but let’s at least find out what his dirty work entails.”

  Bear tipped his head back and looked up at the cigarette-smoke stained ceiling for a moment. “How did you even know about New York anyway?”

  “Jack told me.” Her gaze flitted away from his for a second and then came back. “He calls me every once in a while.”

  Bear didn’t think it was right to pry. Instead, he asked, “You got a plan?”

  “Not exactly.” she looked back down at the phone they found in the house. “But if we can figure out where to find General Pyeong, maybe we can play the two sides against each other.”

  “Have Thorne and Pyeong incriminate themselves,” he said.

  She smiled. “Two birds with one stone.”

  A chime sounded from the burner phone. Both of them looked down at it. After a second’s hesitation, Sadie opened the text and showed it to him. Just like the others, it was in Korean and he couldn’t read a single word of it.

  He was wondering how accurate an internet translation would be when they heard the crunch of gravel outside. He and Sadie froze and made eye contact for a split second before they both jumped up and pressed themselves against the front wall, each trying not to disturb the curtains too much as they moved them to the side to get a better view of their visitor.

  “I spot two of them,” she said.

  “Same here.” He waited until the second man exited the car. The guy lit a cigarette and looked back over his shoulder at the deserted street. “I don’t think they know what happened here. Look at ‘em. They’re too relaxed.”

  “Two of us, two of them.” Sadie was looking around presumably for a weapon. “We could take them. Especially if we have the element of surprise.”

  “That element is only going to last until they realize their guys aren’t breathing anymore.” Bear glanced over at Sadie to see if she’d chastise him for not cleaning up after himself. “You sure you’d be up for a fight anyway?”

  “Their friends tied me up and beat me nearly every day for a week.” She grabbed a decapitated table leg off the ground. She tested the heft, and then looked up at him with a glint in her eye. “I could use a fight.”

  He peeked behind the curtain again and noticed the guy smoking the cigarette turn to his left and peer into the darkness. He said something to his partner, then headed in that direction. The other guy raised his fist to knock on the door.

  “Guess we’re doing this,” Bear said, and then whipped open the door.

  The man on the other side froze. He had just enough time to drop his mouth open in surprise before Bear punched him in the throat. A stifled scream escaped no more audible than a cricket’s fart. Bear kicked out the man’s right knee and sent him to the ground.

  Meanwhile, Sadie leapt over the guy on the stoop and took off after the man who’d been smoking the cigarette. Bear saw him reach for the gun on his hip, but he barely got it clear of his holster before Sadie knocked it from his hand with the table leg. She followed up with a kick to the groin and a knee to the face, and he went down just as quickly as his friend.

  Bear should’ve been watching his own man, but Sadie was a sight to behold when she was kicking ass. He felt the guy at his feet shift and looked up just in time to see the glint of a knife. The man attempted to thrust it straight into Bear’s thigh, but he managed to grab the guy’s arm, twist it around, and plunge it into his neck. If that didn’t do it, then the weight of Bear’s knee into the man’s chest would. Blood exploded from an artery and the man bled out in a matter of seconds.

  The sound of struggling made Bear turn back to Sadie, who had pulled her guy’s arm behind his back and pinned him to the ground with her knee.

  She looked up at him with a little bit of a manic glint in her eye. “You were supposed to keep him alive.”

  Bear wiped his hands on the other man’s shirt and then stood up. “We only need one of them.”

  Sadie’s prisoner started to struggle, so she jacked his arm up even higher. He immediately stopped moving. “Does that mean we’ve got a plan?”

  “Part of one anyway.”

  “Works for me.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The plan was straightforward. Bear and Sadie tied up their prisoner, and after about ten minutes of threats and a couple of right hooks, forced him to divulge the information in the most recent text message.

  It was an address of a nearby military facility. It didn’t take long for Sadie and Bear to decide it was their next logical move. If the general wasn’t there himself, they would at least be one step closer to finding someone who could summon him.

  Bear and Sadie left the man tied to a chair inside the house, and then commandeered his car to make the drive over to the base.

  Sadie stared out the window for a solid ten minutes before turning back to him. “I don’t think this is the smart play.”

  “It’s definitely not the smart play.” Bear checked his rearview. The deserted street offered little comfort. It wasn’t hard to remember that he was in rural North Korea, but he still expected to see headlights barreling toward him. “But I’m tired of waiting around for Thorne to get another leg up on us, and General Pyeong is our best chance at finally taking him down.”

  “They’re gonna spot us a mile away.” She looked down at the map she had open on her lap. “Take your next right.”

  He took the corner a little sharp and Sadie had to right herself. “They’ll be expecting one of these cars. Might give us a few seconds to get the jump on them.”

  “A few seconds isn’t that much time.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.” He felt reckless and tried to rein it in. He didn’t mind putting his own life on the line, but he didn’t want to do that to Sadie. Especially not after everything she’d been through the last couple of months. “Besides, if we can convince them we’re not a threat, we might get a face-to-face with the general. And if that happens, we have a shot at getting him to work with us against Thorne.”

  “Those are a couple of big ifs. Christ, we’re walking into the lion’s den holding a slab of steak. What are the chances they don’t look at us as a threat?” Sadie paused and traced her finger along their route on the map. “Take that left up there and then stay straight. We’ve got another ten miles before we get to the base. It looks like it’s all pretty open except for a patch of trees to the west. We can try driving into that if it’s not too dense.”

  He nodded his head but didn’t say anything. He knew she was right. Best case scenario, they get into the base and find General Pyeong without getting caught. But even then, they’d be vastly outnumbered. If Pyeong managed to raise the alarm, he and Sadie wouldn’t even hear the bullets fire before they landed.

  He pushed the worst-case scenario out of his thoughts.

  They rode in silence for the rest of the drive. Sadie leaned her head on the window, and when he looked over a few miles later, she had her eyes closed. He wasn’t sure if she was asleep, but he wasn’t about to disturb her unless he absolutely had to. She’d been through enough.

  Unfortunately for them, the worst-case scenario became a reality as soon as they were a mile out from the military base. Bear gently shook Sadie awake. When she turned toward him with sleep still in her eyes, he pointed out the windshield.

  Between their car and the entrance to the military base was a line of soldiers aiming automatic weapons at them. Behind the miniature army was a row of vehicles of all shapes and sizes.

  “Jesus.” Sadie gripped the car door. “The only thing they’re missing is a tank.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if one rolled up in the next couple minutes.”

  “We got an escape route?”

  Bear checked his rearview mirror. For a second he thought they might get away with slamming on the brakes, whipping the car around, and heading back the way they came. But right as he opened his mouth to suggest the idea, two pairs of headlights burst to life, nearly blinding him in the process.

  “That’s a negative.” He gripped the wheel and turned his attention back to what was in front of them. He started to let off the gas. “Got any ideas?”

  She looked down at her map and then back up and out her passenger window. “We’re surrounded by trees. And by the looks of it, they’re fairly dense. Don’t think we’d make it too far.”

  “Think we can talk our way out of this one?”

  She laughed high and tight.

  “Right.” He pushed down a little harder on the gas. “Won’t know until we try.”

  Bear rolled to a stop about a hundred feet from the line of soldiers. He could hear someone shouting but couldn’t make out the words.

  Sadie looked over at him. “What are the chances they’re just offering us dinner and a movie?”

  “Fifty-fifty?” He scratched his chin and then thought better at the sudden movement. “Bet they got snipers on us. We should take this nice and slow.”

  “Together?” She asked.

  He nodded and the two of them slowly opened their doors in tandem. He pulled himself out of the car and stood with his hands raised above his head. Sadie did the same.

  The hair rose on the back of his neck. He felt vulnerable. Couldn’t stand it. But he reminded himself that if they really wanted to take them out, they would’ve done it as soon as they had spotted the car. They had enough ammunition to bury the vehicle in a crater.

  Bear’s ears perked up at the sound of the two cars behind them coming to a screeching halt. Four doors opened and then closed. Guns were racked. Footsteps landed on the asphalt in rhythm. It wasn’t until Bear felt the man breathing down his neck that he bothered turning his head to the side.

  The man behind him said something in Korean.

  “Sorry, buddy. Didn’t catch that.”

  A heavily accented voice came from the other side of the car. “Move forward.”

  Bear looked over at Sadie, who had two men at her back as well. He nodded his head, and as a unit they moved forward.

  He heard the four men following them, their soles scratching against the road. He kept his eyes forward, his brain still scrambling for a way to get out of the situation they were in. But it was hopeless. The only way was through. And they’d be lucky to even get that chance.

  The man who spoke in English told them to stop when they were just a few feet from the line. Bear could see the tension in everyone’s eyes.

  “That’s a lot of firepower for just two people,” he said.

  This time it wasn’t the man behind him that spoke, but a figure that emerged from the back of the crowd. Bear wasn’t familiar with North Korean uniforms, but it didn’t take a native to realize this guy was important. He carried himself like he was untouchable. The general?

  “We know of the destruction you and your men left in their wake. In Hong Kong and here in Korea. We want the rest of the team. Where are they?”

  Bear threw his head back and laughed so hard he had to wipe the tears from his eyes. When he looked back at the line of soldiers, he noticed the young one in front of him looked spooked.

  “There’s no team, man. It was just me.” He hooked his thumb in Sadie’s direction. “She’s just a hitchhiker I picked up along the way.”

  “Hell with you, Bear.” Sadie’s voice was harsh.

 

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