One corner of his mouth turned up. "There you're wrong."
"How you figure?"
Wallace reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small digital camera. Steele frowned as he took a picture of him, then set the camera aside and checked his watch.
"Haven't you ever wondered how someone such as myself 'interviews' an independent contractor?"
Steele toyed with the arm of his chair. "The thought did cross my mind."
"Well, it's simple, really. That photograph I just took of you will be e-mailed to one of my contractors in twenty minutes and counting. My contractor will then have twenty-four hours to complete training."
"What training is this?"
He smiled snidely. "It's the game of life, Mr. Steele. Survival of the fittest and all that. Whoever makes it back to this office tomorrow at three-thirty will get a bonus and will have a job. Whoever doesn't...well, that contractor won't need a job, since he'll be permanently dead. May the best contractor win."
Steele sat there in complete shock. "You've got to be shitting me."
"Do I look like I'm 'shitting' you, Mr. Steele?"
No, he looked serious as all get-out. "I don't even have a weapon."
Wallace shrugged. "Resourcefulness is ninety percent of the trade." He checked his watch. "Fifteen minutes and counting."
Steele glanced over his shoulder at Bruce. He could easily take both men out and stop this here and now. But then the Uhbukistanis would only hire someone else, and Syd would kill him for screwing this up.
Damn. Here was one scenario BAD hadn't seen coming.
He stood up slowly and eyed Wallace with malice. "Your bonus better be worth it. If it's not, I'm going to add your head to the collection on my wall."
The bastard actually laughed at him. "Run, Bambi, run."
"Fuck you." His blood boiling, Steele made his way out of the room with Bruce trailing three steps behind him.
So much for all the stories Syd and Andre had prepped him on. Wallace didn't care if he'd really escaped from jail or not. Most likely, that was because he thought Steele would be dead in the next few hours.
Part of him wanted to drive straight back to Nashville and choke Joe for this. The other part just hoped he lived long enough to make it off M Street.
"Y'all have a good day now," the receptionist called after him.
What? Was the woman high? He raised his hand up in mock friendliness.
"You, too," he said in a high-pitched voice. No doubt she had no idea what had just happened. Or maybe she did. For all he knew, she was the one assigned to check him out.
You're paranoid.
Duh to that. He didn't like the thought of a hired killer knowing what he looked like while he was completely in the dark. What's more, he wouldn't be able to go near Andre or anyone else, since he'd be under surveillance.
"This is getting better and better."
Just think, two days ago his worst fear was Frank in the next cell getting frisky. Now it was getting a bullet in his skull.
With a nonchalance he didn't feel, he headed to the lot where he'd left Syd and got into the car.
She looked up at him expectantly. "Well?"
He curled his lip at her. "You people suck."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
She looked appalled by his rancor. "Why would say that?"
"Because by this time tomorrow I will most likely be dead...and all thanks to you."
She pressed her earpiece into her ear. "Andre? What is he talking about?"
Before Steele could answer, the hair on the back of his neck rose. It was something that seldom happened, and he wasn't sure what was setting off his instincts.
Before he could look around, he heard an odd snap. It was followed by an unmistakable sting.
"Get us out of here!" he snarled.
"What? What's--"
"I'm shot, Syd! And if you don't get us out of here, we're both going to be dead."
Nine
S yd punched the gas as more glass shattered around them, spraying her and cutting her cheek and arm. "What did you do, Steele?"
He hissed in pain. "Nothing."
She found that hard to believe. "Nothing? Then why are we being shot at?"
"'Cause the sonofabitch can't tell time."
Andre gave her very sketchy details of why they were under fire. Syd went careening through traffic and traffic lights at a breakneck speed as Andre directed her through the D.C. streets to where there were fewer civilians.
At first she thought it would be easy to escape their pursuer, but a glance in the rearview mirror showed her a large black Escalade swerving and accelerating.
She could see the gun an instant before they opened fire again.
She cursed under her breath.
This was a lot harder in real life than it appeared in movies, especially in such heavy traffic. One wrong move, and not only they but some innocent bystander could die.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Steele brace himself as she took a corner so fast, the car slid sideways. She cringed as they sideswiped a brown sedan an instant later. Still, she kept going. She had no choice.
Syd cursed as they fired again. She leaned forward to expose her back to Steele. "Take my weapon."
His hand was warm as he grabbed it and pulled it free, then he turned and hesitated.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Too many civilians. I can't shoot and chance a stray bullet hitting some mom in her minivan full of kids. Unlike Dickhead, I can't live with the knowledge that I killed someone's kid."
Respect for him welled up inside her.
"All right, Andre," she said loudly over the sound of her car braking to miss a slow-moving work van. She swerved around it, narrowly missing two men who had stepped onto the street. They hopped back to the curb just before she ran them over. "We need some assistance. There's a 2005 black Escalade bearing down on us. It's armed and loaded for agents. Steele has already been wounded."
Steele cursed at her words. "What's Andre going to do? Clap?"
She glared at Steele as the Escalade came closer.
"I hate rental cars," she said between clenched teeth. "This is why I love my little four-hundred-horsepower engine." If she were in her Honda, her pursuers would already be lost.
As it was, she could barely stay ahead of them.
"Well, you've got about one-forty in this go-cart, so I hope you can outmaneuver them."
Another bullet went through the back window.
Syd swerved into oncoming traffic as Steele started a string of colorful expletives that said, yes, he'd been in the Army a long time.
"Calm down," she snapped as she deftly dodged cars.
Horns blared as oncoming cars swerved out of her way.
"I'll calm down when I have a clear shot and this bastard in front of me so that I can kill him."
"Well, why didn't you say that?" Syd swerved back into her lane and slammed on the brakes. The Escalade went speeding past.
Steele fired two shots that shattered the back window of the Escalade.
She whipped the car left onto another street as the Escalade did a J-turn to head back for them.
"Andre! Mayday. Mayday. We need help!"
No sooner had she spoken than a string of police cars went streaming past her, toward the Escalade.
"Relax, Syd," Andre said in her ear. "I've got our police contact on a secure line. He's dispatching the police to chase the assassin. They'll pretend to follow you, then drop off so you two can flee."
As she made another turn, two police cars fell in behind them.
Steele's curses picked up in volume. "Ah, hell, this is beautiful."
"Relax."
"How? I'm shot, and once they stop us, my ass is headed back to Kansas. Thanks, Syd."
"They're not going to arrest you."
"Yeah, right. Then how do you propose that we explain my absence from jail, huh?"
"We don't. The polic
e are going to pretend to chase us, and we're going to outrun them."
She gunned the engine and headed out of the Georgetown with the police in hot pursuit. As soon as she was clear and the other police cars had the Escalade headed in the opposite direction, the police cars tailing them fell back--just as Andre had predicted.
Satisfied that the Escalade was off them, at least for the time being, she took the first exit and headed for their rendezvous.
"Don't do it."
She frowned at Steele. "Don't do what?"
"Head for Andre. They'll be watching us."
"There's no way they can be watching us." She glanced at him and felt her heart sink as she saw how badly he was bleeding. He had one hand pressing against his shoulder, but it was doing very little to staunch the blood.
They had to get him help quickly, or he was going to die.
"They'll be watching us," he said through clenched teeth. "How many satellites do you think bear down on D.C. every minute of every day? I assure you, they have us on their radar and are tracking our every movement. If they weren't, the Escalade would still be behind us, police be damned. In fact, Andre needs to cut the communication before they pick up on the wire and use it against us too."
"You're so--"
"I was in the Army, Syd. I know what we can do to track a target and that was two years ago. God only knows what they got now."
"He's right," Andre said in her ear. "Swap out transport and meet up at the hole in two hours. All communication is cut in...three...two...one."
Her earpiece went dead.
Damn.
"Okay," she said, looking over at Steele as they headed west. "We need to get you a doctor."
"Since someone told the authorities that I'm an escaped felon, that's not a wise move, now, is it?"
She ignored his sarcasm. "We can get you--"
"No," he snapped. "Find us a hotel, and I can field-dress it."
She rolled her eyes at his stupidity. "What are you going to do? Dig the bullet out yourself?" she asked, echoing his own sarcasm.
"It won't be the first time."
Syd did a double take sideways at his words. But more than that was the sincerity she heard in his tone. He wasn't kidding. The thought of him lying out in the field someplace with a gaping wound he was dressing by himself brought a peculiar pain to her chest. For some reason she didn't understand, it actually made her hurt for him.
He sat beside her, still holding his shoulder as even more blood covered his hand. A light sheen of perspiration covered his handsome face, which now had a grayish cast.
Unwilling to argue more, since time was critical, she decided to heed his advice. "You still need a doctor."
"Then you and your friends had better sneak one in, otherwise this mission is totally fubarred."
"Fubarred?"
"Fucked up beyond all recognition."
She headed toward what she hoped would be a safe hotel. "We're not fubarred."
"Yeah, we are. Our friend back there in the Escalade has twenty-four hours to kill me, so I have a strong feeling we haven't seen the last of him." He placed her gun on the seat next to him. It was completely covered by blood. "We also need to get me my own weapon of some sort so that I can give him a dose of his own medicine. Let him bring it on when we're on equal footing."
"Wait, wait, wait. Go back to the first thing. What's this twenty-four-hour thing? Andre didn't tell me anything about that."
Steele gave her a mean glare. "You wanted me to get a job. Well, lady, that's their job-screening. I kill him, or he kills me. Winner gets the job."
"You're kidding."
"Absolutely. I'm not the least bit serious. All of this is one big hallucination. And I'm not sitting over here bleeding to death. But hey, since it's a hallucination, could you please make my arm stop throbbing because right now it hurts like hell." He practically snarled the last bit at her.
"You don't have to be so nasty."
He growled at her like a wounded bear--which she supposed he was. That growling only increased as she pulled up to the Henley Park Hotel and parked off to the side so that their beat-up car wouldn't be quite so obvious.
"What the hell are we doing here?"
She gave him a menacing glare as she put the car in park. "Getting a room."
"In a swanky hotel? Sure. Why not?"
"The assassin won't be looking for us here."
He rolled his eyes at her. "You can't outrun the satellites, Syd. Not to mention the fact that I'm just a little hard to hide right now. How do you propose we get me in there? I think they might get upset if I bleed all over their polished floors."
"Don't worry, Steele. This is one hotel where they have plenty of security. If someone comes into this place who isn't a registered guest, they will be stopped. A French politician and his family are here on vacation, and they have elevated their procedures to accomodate him. It's the safest place I know of."
She balanced her weapon on his thigh. "Here. Protect yourself while I sign us in." She hesitated as she saw the agony of his expression. "Hang in there for me, okay?"
He took her weapon grudgingly. "What? You going soft, Syd Vicious?"
She gave him her own growl before she got out and rushed across the sidewalk, toward the entrance.
Steele forced himself not to say anything while she left him out in the open like a neon sign begging the independent contractor to come finish him off.
As he looked around the car, with its obvious bullet holes and shattered glass, he started laughing at the thought of what it must look like outside with the fender damage too. Yeah. They looked like they belonged at a fine hotel, huh? It was a wonder management wasn't calling the police to escort the riffraff off the premises.
He didn't know what would be worse.
Steele's eyes narrowed as an unmarked black sedan entered the lot, then slowed down as it came into view of his car. It crept along, slowing even more as it came alongside him.
He gripped the weapon, ready to fire.
It parked two spaces down. Grinding his teeth against the pain, he pulled the slide back to look a bullet in the chamber as he held his breath and prepared to shoot.
Until he saw two young women get out of the car. They were chatting together as they put their designer purses on their shoulders and grabbed several shopping bags from the backseat. Completely oblivious to him, they chatted away as they headed for the hotel.
Steele drew a long breath as he switched the safety on and relaxed even though the pain of his shoulder was a throbbing nightmare. He'd learned a long time ago to deal with physical discomfort. The wound would either stop throbbing eventually or kill him.
At the moment, he had no preference. Just make the damn pain stop.
Grinding his teeth, he tilted his head back and took long, deep breaths. He wasn't sure how much time had passed before he saw Sydney headed back toward the car.
She ran to his side.
"Stay there a second," she mouthed through the only piece of glass that wasn't shattered.
"You know, I can hear you just fine, since most of the windows are gone," Steele said sarcastically, frowning as he watched her go to the trunk. A few seconds later, she returned with a long coat. She opened the door and made a face of sympathetic pain as she saw the blood that had soaked the faux leather interior of the car.
"Sorry, hon," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I made a mess."
She didn't look amused. "Are you okay?"
"For a guy who's bleeding to death, I'm doing pretty good. You?"
She shook her head at him as she wiped her hand over his face. He closed his eyes at the tenderness of her unexpected actions. He didn't know how her touch could make him feel anything other than the pain of his injury, but it did. Hell, it even made him hard again.
She brushed his hair back from his brow. "We need to get you inside."
"What about the car?"
"It'll be taken care of."
Deciding
not to argue, Steele got out slowly and pulled the coat on. He let out a groan as his shoulder flamed even more. He heard Syd hiss in sympathy. She helped him put it on gently, then buttoned it.
It was a bit warm for a coat, and no doubt it would gain them too much attention, but Steele went with it anyway. The coat would be less conspicuous than the blood.
"We need to get to the room before I bleed through this," he mumbled.
She nodded as she tried to help him away from the car.
"I got it, Syd. It'll be too obvious if you help me."
"Okay," she said as she led him toward the hotel.
"I still think it's a mistake to stay here."
"Don't worry. This place is crawling with security."
Was that supposed to make him feel better? The last thing he needed was for any of them to be TV watchers who'd seen his supposed jailbreak.
"We're on the third floor," she said as they entered the lobby and she led him toward the elevators.
He would have put the sunglasses back on, but seeing how dark the lobby was, that would make him look even more suspicious than he already did. So Steele kept his head down, but he was well aware of everyone in the place. Luckily the two desk clerks were busy chatting, and the only man who was obvious in the lobby was sitting with his laptop, working.
Syd pulled out her cell phone and pressed a button. She started speaking in spook talk, which meant she was saying nothing while updating someone on their situation. Steele had no idea who she was talking to, and frankly he didn't care. His head was starting to buzz, and the last thing he could afford was to pass out.
He leaned against the back wall of the elevator car while she pressed the button for their floor. It seemed to take forever before the doors opened onto an elegant hallway. Syd led him out to a room that was halfway down, between the elevator and the stairwell.
"Let me guess," he said as she fumbled with the lock. "Not a coincidence?"
She shook her head as she hung up the phone. "We need an escape route."
"Good woman."
As soon as she had the door open, Steele headed for the bed so that he could finally lie down. But what he really wanted to do was pass out.
If only...
Syd bit her lip as she headed for Steele and helped him remove the coat, which was now completely soaked with blood. She sucked her breath in sharply at the sight of his wound. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize how bad it was."
"It's just a flesh wound," he said in a bad rendition from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
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