Deadly Games by Jaycee Clark

out.
    “Who’s your target?” John asked, his arms crossed over his chest, his ankles crossed as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
    Dimitri knew better. John could sit for hours seemingly carefree and at ease and all the while devising ways to eliminate a target, carryout a mission or simply coming up with an idea for a new lure. John Brasher was a man of many talents.
    “We need to talk,” he said, walking past John and pulling his pack of cigarettes out.
    “Fuck.”
    “My sentiments exactly.”
    Once inside, he locked the door and ran a quick bug check. Switching on a portable jammer, he looked at his friend, and said, “I’m so sick of this game, Johnno.”
    John’s brown eyes narrowed. “We all are.”

    33
    Dimitri shook off the thoughts and took a deep drag.

    “Those will eventually kill you.”
    “If I die of lung cancer later in life, I’ll count my blessings that it wasn’t a bullet in some God forsaken jungle, desert, prison, or brothel.”
    “You left out back street alley.”
    “That too.”
    “Quit buggering around, and just say it straight, Ian.” John walked to the window and looked out.
    Ian--Dimitri--who the hell was he anymore? He watched his friend and couldn’t imagine the hell John had gone through. Actually, he could. He’d seen it. Had picked John up and beat the shit out of him when he’d threatened suicide. But then, Ian couldn’t really blame the man either.
    Watching the man he loved as much as his brothers, he said, “Elianya Hellinski.”
    John, dressed in jeans and a dark blue sweater, barely nodded. Neither spoke for a long while. Dimitri finished his cigarette and stabbed the butt out in the ashtray. He sat in his chair, his temple on his fist as he rested his elbow on the arm of the chair.
    John’s shoulders were tight, the muscle in his jaw jumping and the pulse in his temple pounding. Sighing, Dimitri said, “I won’t take this from you.”
    Slowly, John turned to him, his dark eyes black with memories. “No, you won’t.”
    He remembered three years ago when he and John had worked together for Hellinski. They’d worked together before and their bosses apparently liked the way things went between them They managed to keep things smooth without causing too much undo problems between their governments over petty issues of agents not working together when they were effectively on the same team. It wasn’t a surprise to either of them when they learned they were assigned this operation. John had been higher up in the ranks, Ian coming in later from a stint in arm trafficking in Canada. John, straight as they came, also rejected Elianya, but she’d turned on him. When John returned to London on business--

    which was technically a leave so he could see his family--Elianya had somehow followed.
    They never knew since she’d been in Prague the whole time and no passports had her name or aliases on them sighted at any checkpoints. But then she could easily hire anyone she wanted, and apparently had. Two weeks later John’s pregnant wife had climbed into his car with their three year old daughter, Bella, and John’s world had ended in an explosion of mangled steel, burnt bodies and shattered dreams.
    The powers that be removed John, then Jacob, off the case and reported Mr. Jacob Angelovsky dead. He changed his last name and moved around after that. Hitting one bottom after another. The first year, Ian had worried John would do something stupid and once he almost had. Ian reminded John that at the rate he was going, Elianya Hellinski would win. If John wanted vengeance then he’d better the hell stay alive long enough to see it through instead of fucking wimping out.
    So John had gone back to work behind the scenes. The contact man for many of them. It kept him in the loop where they could watch him, where he still knew what the hell was going on. And when Ian needed him too, John was there to help set things in motion so that when they were both of out this