Mission: Impossible to Deny (The Impossible Mission Romantic Suspense Series Book 7) - Jacki Delecki (great novels of all time txt) 📗

Darcy waited at the door to the twelfth floor. She raised her hand to pause before pulling out her new Sig.

Right behind her, he reached for his Glock. They had both worn jackets to conceal their weapons, which made for a hot run up the stairs.

Sweat glistened on her forehead from the sprint in a suit jacket. Her focus and intensity were centered on him. Her eyes searched his, her pretty wheels spinning options of how to accomplish their mission and keep him safe.

“Don’t consider it. I’m not staying in the stairwell.”

 “Fine. But you stick to me like white on rice. And nothing heroic to defend me.”

“Got it. Be adhesive and do nothing stupid.” He was willing to abide by her lead. He wasn’t an idiot, but she was his woman, and he would protect her. Best not to put words to the thought right now.

She rolled her eyes. “He’s desperate and unpredictable. Our goal is to take him in. Not kill him.”

She was good. She had read his intention not to follow the team’s plans but do a little revenge-hunting.

“Roger that.”

“Make sure you do, or this could go sideways.”

She slowly opened the door, peering both ways, and entered the empty hallway. Reeves was next. His thumping heart was the only sound he could hear in the eerie silence.

Darcy crept along the hallway toward Wainwright’s office. She never stopped scanning the walls, ceilings, the floors, or looking for booby traps. Paranoid was good, really good at this moment.

The burst of adrenaline had pumped his muscles and laser-focused his brain. He was rearranging the game pieces, trying to anticipate Wainwright’s next moves. Reeves had thought he’d have the satisfaction of outwitting him, but Wainwright was always two steps ahead of them because of his inside knowledge. It ended today.

Wainwright couldn’t have anticipated that they hadn’t taken the elevator, so their visit would be unexpected. If he hadn’t already taken his computer and made a run for it. Reeves wouldn’t allow the possibility that Wainwright had escaped.

No more from this maniac. Reeves planned to see to it personally.

He kept watch on their backs, wanting to ensure no surprises from the rear.

In front of Wainwright’s office door, Darcy raised her gun hand for him to halt. Would they storm the office or wait for Nick and the team? He wanted to burst into the office and stop the maniac, but he didn’t like the idea of Darcy directly in the line of the fire.

Darcy whispered. “You open the door. Then I’ll go right, and you’ll go left.” Since Darcy was one-handed and right-handed, the plan was perfect. And at that moment, he had absolute clarity. He and Darcy were totally in sync, just as they had been in the Snakes Ahead game. They had worked as a team and had beat all odds against the bad guys. Today would be no different. He and Darcy were formidable and would vanquish the enemy. His breathing and his racing heart settled. He was in his battle zone, ready for anything and everything.

Reeves went left into the spacious area. Wainwright was bent over his PC open on its separate desk, close to the window, likely wiping it clean.

“Stop! Step away from the computer. Nice and slowly,” Darcy commanded in a voice Reeves had never heard before.

The bastard smiled. “Reeves’s girlfriend. It was a clever ploy to present a Fed as your girlfriend, but not clever enough.”

Wainwright looked the same in a crumpled Oxford shirt, half-tucked into his wrinkled pants, a pair of glasses on the top of his head. His distinguished voice, with his clear dictation, was the same. Everything was the same. But everything had changed. This man had murdered his friends and was still trying to murder him and Darcy.

“Why?” Reeves was as shocked by his question as Darcy, who stopped in her move to get closer to Wainwright. “You have everything—full professor, chair of the department, international recognition.”

Reeves had to understand. He had labeled Wainwright as evil and a sociopath to explain and distance himself. But now, standing in the familiar office with someone he had thought he had known and cared about, he had to understand … to solve the problem. To make sense of this twisted world that was now upside down and inside out. It was what he excelled at.

Wainwright took a step toward Reeves.

Darcy leveled her Sig at Wainwright. “Don’t move.”

“Darcy, you must be CIA or deep undercover in the FBI. None of my contacts could find anything on you, which made you an intriguing problem.”

Reeves bristled at Wainwright’s use of Darcy’s name. One good thing—Darcy’s cover wasn’t blown.

“Darcy has nothing to do with this.”

Wainwright shrugged. “You were the best of the three. I’m not surprised that you’d be the hardest to outwit. Poor Charlie with all of his childhood baggage, and poor Theodore, too shy and awkward to make a life for himself. But you—always a shining star and then the ultimate reward, working for Richard Dean, the billionaire who is royally treated when he deems to make an appearance on campus.”

The bile rose in Reeves’s gullet. He might be sick after listening to Wainwright’s indifferent account of his dead friends and his jealousy of Richard.

“It was Richard who put the bug in my ear. You know that he often speaks here. Richard is quite a curious man with a breadth of interests. He was expounding on your success. How grateful he was to me for my tutelage. He was impressed that you made your first million before he had. And that was the moment I hatched my plan. Years of dedicating my life to students for what? Lucky to receive a bottle of scotch at Christmastime, to have the ‘honor’ of introducing Dean when he spoke on campus. It was a brilliant plan except that Charlie was an erratic partner. After he overdosed, I discovered in the last weeks that I excel at being a criminal. And it was easy until you