Marked for Death (A Gray Ghost Novel Book 6)

by Amy McKinley

  “We must go back,” Andrea pleaded, her breath labored.

  “No,” Kara snapped. “You don’t have to go, but I do. There’s nothing here for me anymore.”

  “Lily!” Andrea cried.

  “I’m going to her.” Kara’s voice gentled. “Are you in?”

  Determination settled over Andrea’s overexerted features. “Yes.”

  Christ. This is the worst timing for them to have a heart-to-heart. Kara led, and I covered our backs. We turned right at the first block, heading back toward the town and away from the ocean. Shouts rang out behind us, then the screech of tires.

  “We need a vehicle!” I shouted over the sound of rubber squealing around the corner.

  “This way!” Kara veered left. We raced across the street and between two homes.

  Andrea stopped, and Kara half turned. When Andrea pulled a phone from her pocket, Kara’s eyes went wide. Guilt flashed over Andrea’s features, and she thumbed her screen to the left, pulling up an app. As she depressed something on the screen, I lunged to grab the phone. Kara screamed and went down. What the hell happened?

  My fingers curled around the phone. Wrenching it from her hand, I moved to Kara and dropped to the ground. Her eyes were half-mast. She moaned. My heart thudded against my ribs as I scanned every inch of her. Where is she hit?

  That’s when I saw the app on Andrea’s phone. Whatever it was had triggered something for Kara, maybe a drug. “What did you do to her?!” My hand wrapped around Andrea’s neck, and I slammed her against the side of the building.

  “I followed orders.” The corners of her mouth rose into a sneer. “You shouldn’t have tried to leave,” she said to Kara.

  “What the fuck was injected into her?” There had to be a capsule under her skin somewhere that had been triggered by the app. I dropped the phone and smashed it with my heel. With my gun against Andrea’s temple, I pressed my forearm against her throat, not enough to cut off her air supply but to cause her to panic. Kara lay still on the ground, and I wanted to cut Andrea.

  “Don’t know.” Her hands gripped my arm, nails digging in.

  “How long until it kills her?” It couldn’t have been harmless. Jamal wouldn’t mess around, and this had him and Ahmed written all over it.

  “Not sure. Where’s Lily?”

  “I don’t know.” Fuck her. I clipped her with the butt of my gun, and she fell in a crumpled heap to the ground.

  Thankfully, the guards hadn’t seen us go between the houses. I had a few more seconds. I had to get Kara somewhere safe and figure out what was in her system.

  Making quick work of disabling Andrea’s phone, I peered around the corner of the house we were squatting against to see what was happening in the streets. Three soldiers had their backs to us, moving slowly, checking the area. We didn’t have much time before more came. We needed to find somewhere to lie low.

  Kara lay there, her body deadly still. A fine sheen of sweat covered her face. I pulled the pack off her and slipped it on my back. “Where’s the car?”

  “Motorcycle.” Slurring, she fought to get the words out. “Two blocks over, small blue shed.”

  That’s all I needed. Lifting Andrea over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, I pulled Kara to her feet and banded my arm around her waist. I took off as fast as I could, essentially dragging Kara along. She had some control but very little, and it was fading fast.

  At the end of the row, she murmured a weak, “right.” We were close, and as I rounded the next bend, the blue structure came into sight.

  In the shed, I could at least search for the capsule under Kara’s skin. If I could see, taste, or smell the chemical, we had a chance to survive. I couldn’t take her back to Ahmed’s. Either way, I wouldn’t let her die.

  24

  Keegan

  The heat rose to uncomfortable levels as the minutes ticked by in the small shed. Andrea moaned on the floor, where I’d dropped her after smacking her with my gun. After securing her hands, I searched her. There wasn’t another phone, just the one used to activate the poison. I found nothing else of importance.

  I withdrew my med pack from my bag while my fury boiled and mixed with the oppressive heat inside. She was the woman Kara had trusted with our child. I wanted to make her pay. Not only that, but if a similar capsule was in our daughter…

  I had Kara’s tight cargo pants pulled down around her knees, the pads of my fingers feeling along her thighs, searching for anything under her skin. Just enough light to see trickled in from the vents near the roof. The ground where she lay was dusty but not filthy, and I was grateful. I trailed my hand along her leg. There were a few hairline scars from old wounds. That’s where I focused first. It would have been easy to reopen one and insert the delivery agent.

  “Hurry,” Kara whispered, her coloring having taken on an alarming gray cast. The drug was fast acting, and I had no doubt it would seize her vocal cords soon.

  Andrea’s eyelids blinked open in the dim light, and I let my voice carry the full force of what I wanted to do to her. “Where is it?”

  Andrea jerked as if I’d struck her.

  “Stop, Keegan.” Kara caught my gaze. She barely had control of her neck and voice. The rest of her body was limp and would not obey her command. “Why are you accusing Andrea?”

  I’d found the application on Andrea’s phone, and before that, noticed her fumbling with it before Kara fell. She had not. It was time to awaken Kara to who her nanny truly served. Brushing the damp hairs from Kara’s forehead, I braced for the illusion I’d have to shatter. “Because she’s the one who triggered the poison. The app was open on her phone.”

  “What?” Her voice shook, and she gagged as her gaze jerked to Andrea. “Why—oh, God… Did you do something to Lily?”

  Andrea’s face softened slightly. “No, never. And I wasn’t the one who implanted it. Ahmed told me that if you attempted to escape, I should press that button. I did it for your safety.”

  “Ahmed? You’re on a first-name basis?” She coughed, and her eyes rolled back.

  “Stay with me, Ankara.” She was a fighter. My fingers skimmed over a long scar under her hip bone. That’s when I felt it. Not more than a half inch in length, it was beneath the middle portion of the mark, easily mistaken for scar tissue. But there wasn’t any damage under the rest of the silvery line.

  I could guess how close Andrea and Ahmed were by the way her voice softened when she said his name. I would let Kara put the pieces together. The betrayal would be painful. We both had a hard time with trust, and she’d let Andrea in. What to do with her would be a problem. We couldn’t leave her there, and we weren’t going to bring her with us, either.

  Riffling through my pack, I found the small knife and wiped it down with an alcohol pad then did the same to Kara’s skin. “Small cut,” I warned her, not that it would bother her. We’d had so much worse done to us that it would barely register.

  Kara’s breathing slowed, each inhalation more difficult than the last. Dammit—I needed answers. “What the hell is poisoning her?” I growled at Andrea as Kara slipped into unconsciousness.

  “I-I don’t know. Ahmed said it would stop her. He wouldn’t kill her. I was to call him when she went down, and he’d handle her from there.” Her dark eyes flashed with determination. “I did it to find Lily. Where is she?”

  I ignored her. But I didn’t relish listening to her, either. After binding her mouth so she would stay silent, I turned my focus back to Kara.

  Blood welled as the knife separated Kara’s skin on her hip. I clenched a penlight between my teeth and shone it on the incision, pulling her skin to spread it wider. There. A tiny tube was visible. With tweezers, I gently clamped on to the capsule and slowly drew it from her.

  A small section gaped on one side where the vessel had released its contents. Bringing it to my nose, I ignored the coppery smell of Kara’s blood and inhaled to try to isolate the elements. There had to be something that would clue me into how to save
her.

  Fuck. It was odorless but induced paralysis. If it was what I thought, she would be okay. I washed the incision then butterfly bandaged it before covering it with gauze and tape. Yanking the medical bag from my pack, I made a makeshift IV to flood her system with saline and flush the drug from her body, I hoped. After checking her vitals, I prepared to wait it out and get answers from Andrea.

  The chances were high it wasn’t a lethal chemical, but one we’d experienced in our youth with the Dark Wings. I recognized the way the paralyzing drug spread from her limbs up to her neck. She was sluggish and not without the possibility of movement, but she would have felt weighted down, and movement was very difficult to execute. The vulnerability while under the drug was horrifying, but she was safe with me. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. I’d run my hands over every inch of her body after butterflying the incision on the off chance there were other booby traps Ahmed had subjected her to without her awareness.

  I readjusted her clothes then slipped one of my T-shirts under her head to act as a pillow. We had to wait it out. There was no way I could keep her safe on the motorcycle. Another hour notched by, and the heat inside the shed climbed even higher, the small vents below the roofline doing little to cool the interior.

  Now and then, hurried footsteps caused Andrea to tense, to appear hopeful. I trained my gun on her. She didn’t make a sound, although I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t, even though I’d gagged her.

  25

  Keegan

  With slow movements, I unbound Andrea’s mouth. I’d positioned her against the side of the shed, and her legs stretched out in front of her. Crowding her, I rested a knife at her throat and let her see my dark intent.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  A tremor ran through her, but she answered, “Yes.”

  “Then you know what I’m capable of.”

  Immobile, Kara watched from her position on the ground. I needed to make sure there wasn’t anything else lacing the drug. I had my suspicions. My guess was that Ahmed had inserted Andrea into the household as the nanny, rather than Kara having chosen and hired her.

  We couldn’t stay there, but I had no idea how I would get both women out in the shape they were in. For now, it would have to do. A bruise formed on the side of Andrea’s head. The gag was gone, but the zip ties remained.

  I glanced between the two women. It was time to rip the Band-Aid off of Kara’s perception of Andrea.

  The tip of my knife swept up Andrea’s cheek, scraping but not drawing blood. Her eyes widened, and terror shone there in the dim light. I kept my voice low and even. “You’re going to answer truthfully.”

  I pressed the blade against her forehead, where her hairline began, stopping shy of piercing her. She’d had the app on her phone to activate the drug, so it was obvious she was working for Ahmed. What I needed to do was kill any sympathy or misplaced loyalty that Kara had for her.

  “You don’t work for Kara, do you? You’re loyal to Ahmed.”

  Her gaze darted to Kara, and I added pressure to the blade. Blood welled then fell in a fast stream from the shallow wound. That’s why I chose to cut there first. Head wounds bled a lot, and psychologically, that would frighten her. “Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “I work for Ahmed, not Kara.”

  There was more. I could practically smell it. “What’s the other reason why you’re in Ahmed’s home?”

  Andrea pressed her mouth tightly together, leaching the color from her lips. I placed another slice along her forehead, and she cried out. I had zero patience for her. Blood dripped into her left eye.

  “I’m his mistress,” she gasped. Shadows swirled in her right eye, and her features hardened. “And when Kara isn’t there, I’ll remain to raise Lily as my own daughter.”

  “My mother?” Kara’s voice gained strength.

  I glanced at her over my shoulder. Her finger twitched—the saline was doing its job and flushing out the chemical.

  “It was always me he wanted.” Andrea’s dark eyes gleamed in satisfaction.

  I was done listening and clipped her with the butt of my gun again. She crumpled at my feet. Kara didn’t need to listen to any more of her betrayal. That was more than enough for her to leave Andrea behind.

  “I have a Jeep that’s not too far.” I brushed a few strands of Kara’s hair behind her ear. “I won’t be long.”

  There hadn’t been noise outside the shed for some time. Although there were men with machine guns crawling all over the place, I hoped that most had left that particular area. Once I retrieved the Jeep, we should be able to leave without being spotted.

  After scanning the area outside the shed’s door, I raced through the alley and to a location several blocks away. The Jeep was exactly where I’d left it. Our luck was holding, which continued to shock me. With a ball cap pulled low on my head, I twisted the key, and the engine sparked to life. I drove at a slow pace toward the shed, careful not to raise any suspicion. My heart steadied when the blue structure came into sight without machine-gun-toting soldiers surrounding it.

  Back inside, I bent and lifted Andrea over my shoulder, not wanting to leave her behind to give away anything about our escape. The Jeep had a hollowed-out back seat, perfect for stashing the unconscious woman. They were expecting three people, I hoped. After she was secure, I helped Kara. Some mobility was returning to her limbs.

  “The bike.” Kara notched her head in the direction of the sweet Ducati. I wanted to ride it, but we couldn’t fit Andrea onto it with us.

  “We’ll come back for it.” And we would. There was no doubt in my mind that someone would take note of us in the Jeep. We would have to ditch it eventually. Then the bike would come in handy.

  “Wait.” She raised a hand. “I have weapons in the tool chest inside and more in the saddlebags.”

  I paused then opened the storage. Amidst several guns and knives, there were two helmets, hers and a tiny one for Lily. Seeing that gutted me. She’d planned for a fast exit. I cleared out the weapons as well as her leather jacket and a few items of clothing. Enough time had passed that she’d gained more strength and was sitting when I turned back. The makeshift IV was empty, and she pulled the needle from her arm.

  I took the bag from her before securing a bandage over where the needle had pierced her skin. After packing up the medical supplies and putting on my pack, I helped her with her coat and left the helmet for the time being. The dark Plexiglas visor would have hidden her. I hoped the jacket and scarf I tied on her head would be enough to divert attention.

  Wrapping my arm around her waist, we cleared the door, and I secured it behind us. Later, I would come back for that bike.

  I lifted her into the Jeep and secured her seat belt. Before rounding the vehicle, I handed her a gun and extra clips. We took off through the alley at a moderately fast pace. The sound of a vehicle would alert some of the men, and they would investigate.

  We didn’t have long to wait before that happened. The cry went up. Shots were fired. Some guards jumped in cars and quickly were in pursuit of us. Kara swiveled to the side and returned fire. I wove along the street, making us a harder target. I took a turn hard, careening around the corner. She clung to the roll bar while shooting. We had to shake them before leading them to where I was staying.

  On the main road, I opened up the engine, and we flew. Shouts faded behind us. More would pursue us when they got their cars. Hopefully, by then, we’d have enough distance between us.

  I pushed the Jeep to go faster. Her hand shot out and plastered against my leg as we swerved. After another few miles, we would circle back toward town, far enough from where they should be traveling.

  Adrenaline pumped through my veins as the wind tangled my hair around my head. I wished we could keep going with no need to return. There was freedom in the speed and the countryside flying by. I wanted so much more for us.

  Even though we were in a high-sp
eed chase, our lives hanging in the balance, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were together, and that’s more than I had ever hoped would happen. She fit in more ways than one. Connected by our past and bound by Lily, we finally stood a chance—if we could escape.

  I estimated another few minutes before I would turn us around and go back to my team’s most recent safe house. We would stash the Jeep in the empty garage. There could be no visible trail, no threat to those who sheltered us.

  And before we left the country, we would have to deal with Andrea.

  26

  Kara

  I paced the small room where Keegan was staying. My hip stung from the incision Keegan had made. I should have been shocked that the capsule had been there, but I wasn’t. The scar tissue had done a pretty good job of hiding it, and I knew when it had to have happened—during a botched job when I’d been ambushed and outnumbered.

  An hour had already passed, and despite some weakness and a lingering headache, I wasn’t in bad shape, but I was so very angry. Andrea’s presence in the room with us ate at my soul. How could she betray us? I trusted her with my daughter!

  The sound of a pan banging shifted my focus away from Andrea, and I was relieved. Janie and José’s son had died fighting to keep the few dollars and bag of food he’d had on him. I knew the homeowners and ached for them because of the loss of their son. Our government wasn’t doing anything to improve the lives of the people, and the streets weren’t safe at night.

  When we went inside, Janie had broken down. After hugs, I’d filled them in and made sure they wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone. Their safety was paramount to me.

  The heady smell of empanadas stuffed with salty white cheese and ground beef wafted from the other room. Janie and José were moving around in the kitchen, preparing the meal. We would sit and eat with them despite Keegan’s trepidation. It would be rude not to, and we could spare an hour since we hadn’t planned to move around until nightfall.