He understood her concern. An already-powerful man who believed in genocide getting more power wouldn’t be good for anyone other than Wei and his cronies.

  Still, he was at a loss why she was telling him this. To frustrate him? Make him feel powerless? He felt both. He also knew that the moment he started his kung fu workout, all those feelings would fade away. And that was exactly why he was there.

  But before he could get to practice, he had to get off this call.

  “That’s all very unfortunate, but again, what can I do?” he asked.

  “Wei’s planning to attend the Beijing Olympics. He has a seat in the VIP section of the Opening Ceremonies as well as an invitation to the banquet Xi Jinping is hosting for the world leaders attending the games. Leaders from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, just to name a few.”

  “Great. They can all talk world domination together.” He rolled his eyes at this show of good behavior for the press.

  Meanwhile even he knew while living at a monastery that things were not all sunshine and roses when it came to international relations. Not on the Russian/Ukraine border. Not between China and Taiwan. Or China and Hong Kong. Just to name a few…

  “If Wei were to not make it back from Beijing…” Charley let the sentence trail off.

  What she wanted became clear and the implications of what she was saying, while not saying it, hit him hard and fast.

  “You want me to kill him en route?” He realized how loudly he’d spoken and glanced up at the door.

  It was open but he had a clear view of the empty hall beyond. He also had a clear view of Alexis’s wide-eyed expression.

  “What I want—what I think you also want—is to stop the atrocities. How and when you choose to do that is up to you.”

  Somehow his choices sounded as if they had already been made for him. “I’m not an assassin.”

  “Aren’t you?” she asked, sounding perfectly sincere.

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m simply referring to well known events from recent history. The elimination of Bin Laden, for instance.”

  He saw what she was doing. Heard clearly the word assassination silently spoken as she substituted the word elimination. Osama bin Laden was taken out by a team of Navy SEALs while in a country they weren’t supposed to be in. But not by him.

  “I wasn’t one of them,” he told her.

  “I know.”

  Of course, she did.

  She continued, “You were there, however, for the elimination of the head of the Warner Group.”

  His nostrils flared at her mention of the cluster fuck that had cost him his career. “This conversation is over.”

  He reached for the cell to disconnect the call when she said, “I know what happened, Kane. I know you were set up. And I can clear you. Get you your old life back.”

  His hand stopped, but only long enough to say, “I don’t want it back.”

  He hit the button to disconnect and glanced up at Alexis.

  Secrecy was ingrained in him from years of watching what he said around family and friends, hiding what his team did because so much was classified.

  And although he didn’t give a fuck about the Navy or their rules anymore, the Warner Group op had been so highly classified that his discussing it with Charley in front of Alexis, even here, could probably get him court martialed—again—if the Navy ever found out.

  “The Warner Group…” she whispered.

  Shit. “You need to forget you ever heard that name. And never, ever repeat it—”

  “I worked on that case,” Alexis continued as she raised her agony-filled gaze to meet his.

  He stared at her. “Excuse me?”

  What did she mean, she worked that case?

  “At the CIA, I was on the Warner Group team.”

  It still didn’t make sense to him. “Wait. Stop. You need to back up and explain.”

  “I worked on a team beneath the chief of staff for the Directorate of Analysis. She supervises teams that put together intelligence sent in by CIA officers around the world. While I was there, I was assigned to compile information on the Warner Group.”

  His head spun from that information.

  She went on, “The Warner Group is basically Moscow’s personal team of mercenaries. It’s so secret no one ever even heard the name until a tablet was discovered with info—”

  “I know what the Warner Group is,” he cut her off.

  He had so many questions, he didn’t know where to start. That seemed to be happening to him a lot since his reunion with Alexis. He chose one, for now.

  “How the hell did you end up working for the CIA?”

  “I saw an ad on Twitter. First year college students are invited to apply to the Directorate of Operations clandestine internship program. Plan and guide challenging foreign intelligence collection operations, counter-intelligence activities and covert action programs. I applied just for fun.”

  The CIA was recruiting college kids on Twitter? Jesus Christ. No wonder they’d fucked up the Warner op. Worse, Alexis had responded and gotten the damn job. For fun.

  He shook his head and stared at her. “Fun?” he repeated.

  She shrugged. “What did I know? I was nineteen at the time. I got into the internship. Then dropped out of college after my junior year, trained and started working full time.”

  He started to pace, traversing the small space between the walls caging him in while trying to wrap his head around little Alexis in the CIA. And more, that she’d worked on the very project that had ruined his career.

  “While I was compiling all the information, I started to suspect we’d marked the wrong man as leader of the group,” she continued.

  He stopped moving. He stopped breathing. He barely had air to say, “You what?”

  “Things just weren’t adding up for me for the guy they had targeted as the leader. I reported what I suspected to my superiors, but I don’t know if I was right or not—”

  “You were right,” he said, the taste of bile in his throat.

  He knew she was right because he’d killed the wrong man.

  He’d taken down the target he had been ordered to. The man in the photo he’d been given. The man in the place where the target—the leader of the Warner Group—was supposed to be.

  And then he’d been brought up on charges for killing the wrong man. They’d pinned the mistake on him. Made it look like he’d gone rogue.

  “I don’t know if I was right or not,” she said. “I was fired right after.”

  He spun to frown at her. “Explain.”

  “I was stupid. I was running late. I forgot my cell phone was in my bag. We were in a meeting. It was supposed to be powered down and left outside of the meeting room, but I forgot. I got a text and everyone heard the notification. My team leader wrote me up for it. I thought that was it. But a week later, I was terminated. I broke the rules, so…” She shrugged.

  He shook his head. “No. They used that as an excuse to get rid of you because you were right, Lexi. The CIA did screw up. They had pegged the wrong guy as the leader. My SEAL team was sent to kill the wrong man. I killed the wrong man. And that’s why you were fired. To cover up their mistake.”

  “Do you think?”

  “I don’t think. I know.” He’d been singled out as the team fuck up.

  Her mouth dropped open. “I guess you could be right. I was written up and then almost a week passed and no one said another word about it. Then I brought what I found to my boss. And when I arrived at work the next day, security was there to escort me to clean out my desk.”

  He threw up his hands. “See.”

  Her mouth opened as her eyes seemed to lose focus. “You have to be right. That’s why they fired me.”

  “Yes.” Just like how when he refused to roll over, refused to accept the black mark on his record and admit, falsely, that he’d made a mistake and hit the wrong target, they’d gotten rid of him too.

  “Is that why you left the SEALs?” she asked. “Because you were ordered to kill the wrong guy?”

  “Oh, I didn’t leave. I was kicked out. Dishonorable discharge.”

  “Because the CIA made a mistake?” she asked.

  “They’ll never admit that. The CIA doesn’t make mistakes. Everyone else does. They said I made the mistake.”

  Superior officers didn’t like when you had evidence proving they were lying. And they really didn’t like when you ran it up the chain of command.

  In the end it was his word against theirs when what little proof he had—namely the photo he’d been given of the target—conveniently went missing from evidence.

  “Oh, Kane. I’m so sorry.” She stepped around the table and grabbed his hands. “A dishonorable discharge. That must have killed you. And your parents—”

  “I didn’t tell my parents. I said it was my decision to get out of the Navy.”

  Her lids closed briefly as she shook her head. He didn’t want her pity. He hated fucking being pitied.

  Finally, she opened her eyes and focused back on him. “I didn’t tell my parents either. They think I graduated college and went off to get a great job with a fake company I made up. They don’t know about the agency. They don’t know I was fired. And they don’t know I never got my degree and can’t find another decent job to save my life without a degree, references and an explanation for where I’ve been working for the past four years. I was washing floors at the bar where I work when Charley called.”

  Now it was his turn to feel bad for her.

  “I’m sorry.” He squeezed her hands and then let them drop.

  Getting closer with her now was only going to make saying goodbye harder. He’d had enough hard. He didn’t need to go looking for more.

  He let out a laugh. “Quite the pair we make. A couple of losers and liars.”

  She frowned. “No. We were both abused by the institutions we were dedicated to. The people we lived for. Were willing to die for. People we trusted. And this is the thanks we get. When they fuck up, we get punished.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, sorry.” She must have realized she’d just cussed again and didn’t trust herself anymore. She slapped both hands over her mouth and just stared at him.

  “It’s okay. Really. I accidentally let out a few choice words during training when I first arrived. It’s a tough habit to break.” He drew in a breath and let it out, missing his watch again. “And speaking of training...”

  “You don’t have to go yet, do you?” she asked.

  “Not yet, but soon.”

  “Kane, what if Charley can expunge your record? Mine too?” She looked so hopeful, even after all that had happened, he felt sorry for her.

  She’d learn. If life hadn’t completely knocked her down yet, it soon would.

  He shook his head. “She can’t.”

  “What if she can?” she breathed out.

  They were still on this? She was still trying to get him to take this Charley person’s job? “Alexis, I’m not a SEAL anymore. I don’t have to kill people because I’m ordered to.”

  “She’s right though. How is this different than Osama?”

  “It’s different because I have no intention of killing a man for some nameless woman or organization. Jesus, Alexis. I’m not a hitman.”

  “But—"

  He shook his head and cut off her protest with a single word. “No.”

  “But Kane, he’s a bad man.”

  “He might be the wrong man,” he said more loudly than he’d meant to. “Alexis, how do we know? Your boss sure thought the guy who I put two bullets in was the right guy until you told her different.”

  “Oh, my God.” Her eyes flew to his. “Kane, it’s my fault. I’m the one who got you in trouble. If I hadn’t found those inconsistencies. If I hadn’t brought it to the director’s attention, everyone would have thought you took out the right guy. You’d still be a SEAL.”

  “Lexi, stop. It’s not your fault.”

  “It is—”

  “It’s not. It’s the fault of the bastards in both your organization and mine who don’t have the balls to own up to their mistakes and would rather save their own skin and pass the blame. Even if it means setting someone up for something they didn’t do. And if that’s who’s in charge, we’re both better off out of those jobs.”

  She seemed to think of something. Her eyes narrowed and she reached for the cell.

  “Let me show you something.” She powered off the phone, then powered it back on, turning it to face him. “Watch.”

  He did watch and saw what looked like the Navy SEAL trident dissolve and morph into almost the same logo but featuring a phoenix rising from flames instead of the standard eagle.

  “What is this?” He shook his head.

  “The phone Charley gave me. Kane, what if she was burned by the government too? What if she now works for—or hell, maybe is in charge of—an organization that works outside of official agencies?”

  “And what if she’s just CIA, or whatever, and wants to use you and me as scapegoats—again—because she knows we have nothing left to lose and might actually accept her crazy assignment?” he countered.

  Alexis shook her head. “I don’t know. This doesn’t feel like agency. It’s not how they do business.”

  “Well, you should know,” he said, sharpness in his tone.

  “Hey, I was just as burned by this Warner Group thing as you were.”

  “Yes, you were. So let’s forget about it and get on with our lives, shall we?” he said.

  “Can you? Because I can’t.”

  “I can.” He could and he had.

  “How?” she asked, looking truly perplexed.

  “How?” He let out a short laugh. “I eat. I sleep. I fight.”

  Just like the animals in the wild. They had no regrets. No conscience.

  That was what he aspired to now. What he wanted to do. Be like the beasts who lived in the mountains surrounding the monastery. It was all he could hope for.

  “We can fix things,” she said.

  “It’s not our job to fix things.”

  “But if we can—” The gong disrupted her speech. She glanced at him.

  “Warning gong. Practice is starting in ten minutes. Which is my cue to go.”

  He realized this was going to be goodbye for good. Now that she’d gotten him to talk to Charley, she’d completed what she’d been sent to do and she’d be leaving China.

  That saddened him. They’d shared more than memories and small talk. He’d shared things he hadn’t uttered to another living soul since he’d been ousted.

  But the sharing was over now.

  “Goodbye, Lexi. It was really good seeing you.” He hesitated for a second then pulled her into a hug.

  The connection was as comforting as it was painful as it reminded him of all he’d left behind him.

  He released his hold and stepped away. “Home safe. Say hi to your parents and your sister for me.”

  Then he left, before it got any harder to do so.

  Chapter Nine

  Alexis watched Kane walk out of the room—and out of her life—after what he probably had meant to be a final goodbye.

  She didn’t feel sadness. She felt determination. She wasn’t leaving the monastery. At least not quite yet. Instead, she reached for the phone.

  Her brain spun with all she wanted to say to Charley. To ask her.

  She’d just navigated to the recent calls on the cell in her hand when the monk who’d met her out front and installed her in this office for the second day in a row arrived in the room.

  He made a slight bow to her, then swept his arm toward the doorway. His silent way of showing her the door.

  The problem was, she didn’t want to leave. Not yet.

  “Can you—do you talk?” She touched two fingers to her lips for visual reinforcement. Why she’d done that, she wasn’t sure.

  Even if he had taken a vow of silence, he’d still be able to hear her. She hoped he hadn’t taken that vow. She had a question and could use an answer that didn’t involve an impromptu game of charades.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can I—am I allowed to stay and watch? The kung fu practice, I mean.” She gestured toward the window that looked out on a courtyard where monks were beginning to assemble.

  “Yes.” Another small bow preceded him sweeping his arm again as he moved through the doorway.

  Figuring that meant she should follow him, she rushed to catch up. These guys moved fast. Of course, six hours of hard physical workouts a day would have them in pristine condition.

  Kane probably worked out as hard here as he had with the SEALs. Charley was right. It wasn’t such a big surprise that Kane had ended up here.

  And speaking of working out… by the time she and her escort had reached a stone terrace that overlooked the courtyard below, the exercise had begun. Row upon row of men moved in sync. Like a dance.

  Peaceful and serene. Yet powerful. She noticed her personal escort remained beside her. Did he have to stay with her? Was he missing practice because of her?

  “Does everyone join in the practice? Do you need to join them?” she asked, feeling bad if her intrusion was costing him his practice time.

  “No.” He shook his head. “The older brothers do not. And today, I cannot.”

  He lifted the hem of his robe and stuck out his foot.

  She saw it was wrapped. “You’re hurt.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  A small smile bowed his lips. “Me too. I will miss the performance.”

  “Performance?” She frowned and turned her full attention to him. “What performance? Where? For whom?”

  “For the abbot first. If he approves, the Shaolin will perform for Xi Jinping in Beijing.”

  Her eyes widened. “During the Olympics?”

  He nodded again.

  Did Charley know about this performance?

  Another theory hit Alexis. One that made more sense.

  Had Charley somehow arranged for it once she’d found out Kane was here?