Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,5

prank or some idiot kid’s idea of a joke. It could be a text sent to her by mistake.

Or it could be something else. Something worse, that he didn’t want to consider when the prospect of something worse involved Lisa.

“If you haven’t heard from him in so long, why do you think this is from him?”

“It came from Kyle’s phone number. A number he gave me the last time I saw him. He told me it was a secret number, one only the two of us would know about.”

Fuck. Some of Duarte’s skepticism faded as Lisa spoke.

He didn’t like where this was heading. Every covert operative in the Phoenix program had received explicit instructions to cut all ties to the people in their former lives should the highly classified program ever be compromised. Kyle knew the importance of those orders as well as Duarte did. Kyle knew it as well as the others in the program who’d all learned three years ago that its founder, Henry Sheppard, was dead and Phoenix itself betrayed by lethal, unknown enemies who intended to see the rest of the operatives terminated, too.

What the hell was Lisa’s brother thinking, putting her at risk by giving her an active connection to him—even a secret one?

Duarte never would have taken that chance. Then again, he’d never had family worth worrying about, so he was the last person to try to understand that kind of bond.

“Do you know where Kyle is now?”

“No.” Lisa stared at Duarte, worry filling her gaze. “I texted him back right after I got his message, but he didn’t respond. When I called the number a minute later, it was out of service. It’s as if he sent the message, then vanished into thin air. I’m scared for him, Johnny.”

Duarte steeled himself to the sound of his name on her lips like that. No one called him Johnny. No one else would dare.

But Lisa... she’d christened him with the diminutive nickname the first day they were introduced by Kyle on the base at Camp Lejeune. He, the big badass Marine just out of boot camp, and she the bubbly, freckle-faced sixteen-year-old sister of the second-toughest son of a bitch Duarte would ever know.

“Any idea where your brother’s been these past few years?”

She shook her head. “I was hoping maybe you could tell me that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t have that answer.”

“Would you tell me if you did?” She studied him for a moment, as though weighing her words. Torment and thinly held fear clouded her light hazel gaze. It killed him to see her so distressed, looking for answers she would be better off not knowing. “If you feel like you have to protect me from the truth, don’t. I know Kyle got involved in something classified while he was in the Marines. Something covert.” When Duarte neither confirmed nor denied it, she exhaled a short sigh. “How dangerous was it for him, John?”

He held his careful expression in check. “I can’t tell you anything about that either, Lisa. I’m sorry.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?” When he didn’t respond, she glanced away from him. “What about Alec? Would he know how to find my brother?”

Duarte reflected on the third member of his former posse. The trifecta. The three musketeers. The bond that cemented their friendship and went beyond their service to their country. “It’s been longer than three years since any of us have been in contact. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you where Alec or Kyle is now, or what they might be doing.”

So much had happened during that time—and before—when the three of them had been recruited into Phoenix because of their unusual, shared ability.

Shit, in light of everything that had gone down in the time since, the odds were good that Duarte would never see either of his best friends again.

Worse than that, after the program they’d served had been betrayed, Duarte wasn’t certain he could trust any of his former teammates, including the two who had been like brothers to him.

And there was the distinct possibility that Kyle Becker was already dead. If that was true, and if Kyle had tried to warn his sister away from the danger following him, then she was likely in too deep already.

“Did you tell anyone about this text?”

She shook her head. “No. After I received it, I only took time enough to throw a few things in my bag, then I got in my car and left. I kept