Читать книгу Parallel Lies - Kate Donovan - Страница 9

When the cell phone on her nightstand began to ring, twenty-year-old Sabrina Sullivan went from soundly sleeping to fully alert in an instant. The fact that it was 2:00 a.m. only heightened her instinctive response. After all, this particular phone had one purpose and one purpose only—for her father to contact her in case of an emergency. And given “Sully” Sullivan’s dangerous lifestyle, an emergency seemed to lurk around every intrigue-laden corner.

Flipping open the phone, Sabrina said simply, “Dad?”

“Sweetheart, this is Uncle Theo. I’m standing outside the door to your apartment. I didn’t want to knock and scare you, but I need to talk to you.”

The daughter’s heart began to pound. “Is he hurt bad? Is he even alive? Uncle Theo—”

“Come to the door, Breezie.”

“Right.” She jumped to her feet and sprinted from her small bedroom into the study area of the dorm suite she shared with her sister Michelle. Then she yanked open the door, ready to demand a million details.

But the expression on Theo Howell’s face told her everything she needed to know, and it did so with the force of a well-aimed kick to her solar plexus. “Oh, no…”

“Breezie.” He pulled her into a bear hug. “I’m so sorry.”

Tears stung her eyes. “He was here just last week for a visit. He looked so h-healthy. What happened?”

“He was murdered, hon. By Adonis Zenner.”

Sabrina pulled free, shocked by the announcement, and perversely grateful for the rush of white-hot hatred that chased her tears away.

“Zenner?” She practically hissed the name. “How did he get into the country?”

“We don’t know. We don’t know anything yet.”

“This is the thanks Dad gets for tracking that psycho’s father down? We knew Adonis might try to get revenge for Pluto. Didn’t we take precautions?”

“Come and sit with me,” Theo advised, adding over his shoulder, “you men secure the premises.”

Sabrina winced as two middle-aged men dressed in black pants and black shirts strode past her. She hadn’t even noticed the burly pair of strangers. Her father would be so disappointed in her.

Except her father was dead.

“Is this the only window?” one man was asking. “What about in there?”

“My sister’s in there. Sleeping. And of course there’s no window,” she added, insulted at the implication that she’d let Michelle sleep alone in a room with exterior access. Then she bit her lip, realizing for the first time that this nightmare was about to invade her younger sister’s world, as well.

“I should wake her up,” she told her uncle. “Zenner’s trail is getting colder by the second.”

“There’s a decision to be made, Brie. Your father would want you to make it. You’re the oldest.”

“A decision?” She felt her temper flare. “You mean, like funeral stuff? Who cares! We have to go after Adonis before he gets out of the country.”

Theo’s gaze was steady and direct. “We think he’ll come after you and Michelle next.”

“What?”

“When your father killed Pluto, he wiped out Adonis’s whole family. He might want to return the favor.”

Sabrina turned to stare at the closed door to Michelle’s room. Then she sank down onto the sofa next to Theo. “We need to get her to someplace safe. Immediately.”

“We need to get you both someplace safe,” he corrected her. “There are two choices. My home in Monterey. Or a safe house here in Boston, which would be a stopover on your way into a protection program.”

“A protection program?”

“The government offered us two spots in RAP. That’s a relocation assistance program for compromised agents and their families, similar to witness protection.”

“Are you talking about new identities? Isn’t that a little drastic? Just take Shellie to your house while I go after Adonis.”

“Is that what your father would have wanted?”

Sabrina’s eyes stung with the return of her tears, but she wiped them with miserable determination. There would be plenty of time—the rest of her life, in fact—to cry. Right now, she had to concentrate on protecting her sister and avenging her father.

In that order.

Because she knew exactly what her father would want her to do. She could almost hear his voice instructing her, the same way he’d done just one week earlier at the end of his visit.

Take care of your sister. I’m entrusting her safety to you. I know you won’t let me down.

He had charged her with this responsibility since early in their childhood, and she had always taken it as a compliment. Now she knew it for what it was—a curse.

“What’s going on?” a sleepy voice demanded from across the room, and eighteen-year-old Michelle stepped into view, her feet stuffed into fuzzy pink slippers, her lightweight robe belted haphazardly and her arms cradling their new kitten, a black-and-white fur ball known as Zorro. “Uncle Theo? Is everything okay?”

Theo crossed to her, clearly intending to hug her with the same unrestrained affection and sympathy he had bestowed on Sabrina. But Michelle sidestepped him and walked over to her big sister.

“Brie?”

“It’s Dad, Shell. Adonis Zenner killed him.”

The girl’s blue eyes widened. “With a gun? Or a bomb?”

It was another blow to Sabrina’s equilibrium, and she grabbed her sister into an embrace while demanding over her head, “Uncle Theo? It wasn’t a bomb, was it?”

When his gaze fell, she wailed in disbelief. “I’ll strangle him with my bare hands!”

“Me, too,” Michelle insisted, but her voice was hushed and broken by sobs.

“Shh…” Sabrina patted her sister’s blond curls. “There’ll be time to cry later, Shell. We have to get moving. Uncle Theo thinks Zenner might come here next.”

“Bring it on,” Michelle retorted, raising her tear-filled eyes to stare straight into Sabrina’s. “I want him to come here. Then we can kill him for Dad.”

“No. We’re going away. Someplace safe. The CIA will go after Zenner. That’s what Dad would have wanted.”

Michelle took a step backward, then folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not going anywhere but after Zenner. I can’t believe you want to run away.”

“Listen to your sister,” Theo murmured. “The CIA will catch Zenner. And in the meantime, you’re in danger. He’s a ruthless assassin. You’re no match for him. I know, I know, your father trained you to shoot and fight and take care of yourselves. But not against men like Zenner. If you don’t cooperate with our efforts to protect you—to give you a new life where you can be safe—one or both of you could die. Is that what you want?”

“Brie?”

Sabrina banished her own misgivings and said in as authoritative a voice as she could manage, “We’re going into some kind of witness protection program. Once they catch Zenner, we can be ourselves again. Go and pack.”

“No packing,” Theo corrected her. “Just put on jeans and a sweatshirt. Leave everything else behind. We’ll supply what you need at the safe house. But we have to move now.”

Michelle seemed about to argue, then she leaned down and scooped up the kitten instead. “Come on, Zorro. Let’s get dressed.”

“The cat can’t come,” Theo began, but Sabrina waved her hand at him in cool dismissal.

“The cat was a gift from Dad. He comes with us. That’s not negotiable. We’ll leave everything else behind though.”

Theo hesitated, then nodded. “We can bend the rules a little.”

“What about you, Uncle Theo?” Michelle demanded. “Aren’t you worried Zenner will come after you, too?”

“Your father killed Pluto as part of a CIA operation. It wasn’t directly related to his job at Perimeter. In fact, as you know, I disapproved of—Well, none of that matters now.” He touched Michelle’s cheek, then turned to Sabrina. “I won’t see you again after tonight. I hope you’ll always remember that I loved you like daughters.”

“We’ll see you soon,” Sabrina reminded him. “As soon as Dad’s crew and the CIA catch Adonis.”

“Right.” His red-rimmed gaze faltered, but he recovered and agreed more heartily, “Shouldn’t take them too long. Then you’ll come to live with me in Monterey.”

“And we’ll work for Perimeter, just like Dad promised we could,” Michelle said. Then her hands flew to her face and she began to cry again. “He can’t be gone. He was just here.”

Sabrina and Theo hurried to her, murmuring words of comfort mixed with gentle reminders that they had to get moving. Quickly. Before Adonis Zenner had a chance to kill another Sullivan.