The only thing Eli could do was what he had planned in the first place.
The prime minister’s daughter was about a half block from him as he started to jog after her. As she approached the end of the street, he spotted Zoey as she came out and jabbed the woman with the tip of a pen.
Clever girl.
Though they had often talked about the best methods to drug an enemy, they had never used the old Russian Cold War trick in practice—until now.
He slowed to a walk as Shaye said something to Zoey, no doubt chastising her. Undoubtedly, no one on the street had noticed what Zoey had done, except him. Zoey looked back at him as the woman crossed the street ahead of them. They likely had only minutes before the prime minister’s daughter would feel any ill effects from the drug. After that, they would have to swiftly remove her from prying eyes.
As he caught up to Zoey, he couldn’t help but wonder why the bureaucrat’s daughter in a foreign land had not only agreed to have lunch with him, but also been devoid of any security personnel. Either she was impetuous and stupid, or her father had wanted her to disappear. Was it possible that this young girl had a contract out on her head, as well?
One thing was certain, in coming to Spain and allowing them access, the woman had made a mistake—a mistake that was to their advantage.
Chapter Seventeen
Sometimes being bad felt so good. Zoey wrapped her arm under Shaye’s as the prime minister’s daughter began to list forward. “Come now, Shaye, I’ll take you back to your apartment. I bet my brother’s waiting.”
The woman looked at her through cloudy eyes, like she was trying to make sense of the words that were coming out of Zoey’s mouth. “What?” Shaye asked, her speech slurred.
Eli took the woman by the other arm, and as he grabbed her, it was as if she were suddenly weightless.
“You couldn’t drug her a little bit closer to her apartment?” Eli asked, sending her an approving grin.
“Well, if your Prince Charming act had worked, I wouldn’t have had to drug her at all. This is really on you.” Zoey glanced down the street—they were only a few buildings from the apartments.
“Look in her purse,” Eli said, motioning toward the expensive bag on her arm. “We are going to need her keys to get into the building.”
Careful not to let the princess fall, she rifled around in her bag until she found a key ring, complete with a small mink fur ball.
She lifted the keys with a jingle for Eli to see. “We’re in like Flynn.”
He cringed. “You just jinxed us. Why did you just jinx us?”
She rolled her eyes, the gesture suddenly making her feel more like the girl at Victoria’s Secret. “Don’t be so superstitious.”
They stopped in front of the apartment building where they had last traced the GPS device. She lifted the keys, hoping it would be easy to pick which one belonged in the lock, before anyone would suspect their being there. However, as she moved closer to the glass doors, there was no area for a key, rather there was only an electronic keypad.
Crap.
Maybe she really had jinxed them. What were they going to do now?
She turned to the nearly unconscious woman. “What’s your access pin?”
Shaye mumbled and her chin dropped down to her chest.
“Can you do some super tech genius thing and get us in?” Eli asked, taking hold of Shaye so Zoey could work.
She was capable of doing many things when it came to tech and breaking into tech-based security systems, but she didn’t have any of her supplies. “If I had a paperclip, a contact lens and a wad of chewing gum I might be able to do something.”
Eli reached into his pocket and shuffled around. “I think I have a piece of gum in my pocket somewhere.” He sounded excited, and it only made her feel bad.
“I was kidding, Eli.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Knowing this lady, though, the number is probably something stupid. It’s probably a number that’s always right there in her life, like a birthday or—”
“How many people she’s killed,” Eli said, finishing her sentence.
“If that’s the case, then I hope the number is zero.” She gave him a warning look, but she could tell from the look on his face what he really meant was that they could be walking into a situation where she would find her brother deceased in the girl’s apartment.
Zoey didn’t need a reminder.
“Do you know anything about this building?” Eli asked. “Maybe if we can pull something about the owners...” He stopped talking, like he realized he was grasping at straws.
Think, Zoey, think.
She nibbled on her lip, wishing she had brought a larger kit with her, but she hadn’t anticipated breaking and entering. “Seriously, though, if we had a rare earth magnet and a sock, we could break the keypad and get in.” She could hear herself sounding more and more like Eli as the nervous excitement started to swell within her. She glanced at him, but he shrugged like he didn’t even know what a rare earth magnet was. “If there’s a hardware store around here...” She paused. “Actually, I think I saw one near the bank.”
This was doable. They could get in. They would just have to be creative.
They couldn’t leave Shaye here by herself, and there was no way they could drag her through town and to the hardware store in the state she was in. If they got an Uber or a taxi, they’d have to explain their drunk friend and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that, either.
Their best bet was for her to head to the hardware store to get what she needed. And Eli could wait for her to return; or, if they got lucky, for another person who lived in the building to show up and then they could copy their access code. But there was no telling when another person would come to the building, and time was slipping by.
“Dude,” Eli said, moving to the door. “I have an idea. What was the amount of that wire transfer?”
“$500,226.23. Why?”
He pressed 2-2-6-2 into the keypad. The red light flashed. He huffed. Then pressed 2-6-2-3. The green light flashed and the door’s lock clicked open.
With a beaming smile, he settled Shaye against him and opened the door. “After you, my lady.”
“Nicely done, MacGyver.” She giggled.
Making her way inside, she glanced around the lobby of the building, making sure there were no active cameras. Luckily, it appeared this building was managed by people who honored the privacy of their renters. The door clicked shut behind them and their footfalls echoed against the stone floors. Inside the lobby was a seating area set around a crackling fire. It was cool, making her wonder if it was nothing more than show.
She pressed the only button on the elevator bank, going up. “And what about what floor to find Chad on? Did he tell you that in his mysterious wire transfer numbers, as well?” She quirked her brow playfully, thankful that Eli had gotten them the break they so desperately needed.
He made a show of pressing the button for the second floor as they got into the elevator with the unconscious Shaye. He laughed as he turned to her. “I think that’s it, but honestly I have no idea if that’s the right floor or not.”
“Here’s hoping your good luck lasts,” Zoey said, crossing her fingers. The doors to the elevator bank closed, and as they ascended, Zoey’s nerves began to rise, as well. She couldn’t stand the thought of what would happen if she got into that room and found herself in a situation like the one they had with Trish. If there was a firefight, Zoey wasn’t sure she could pull the trigger.
If she couldn’t, and if one of them or Chad was hurt or killed, she would be the one who would have to tell the rest of the family. She was already on thin ice with her brothers, who were dealing with Trish’s death in their own stoic ways. In fact, Chad had seemed like the only one who had been doing relatively well—at least until Trevor and Jarrod had met their fiancées.
There was the click and slide as the door unlocked. She wasn’t sure she had ever been more grateful. All they had to do now was grab Chad, deal with Shaye and get the hell out of there.
As she touched the doorknob, moving to open it, Eli cleared his throat. She looked at him and realized that he was silently chastising her. He motioned toward the gun he knew she carried in her purse. She cringed.
They couldn’t walk in there unprepared and unarmed. He was right. There was no telling who, or what they would find, and the last thing she wanted was to walk into the middle of a trap. But the thought of getting close to someone, looking them in the eye and pulling the trigger, made her stomach churn. And that reaction made her a liability. And Eli had to have known it, too.
Zoey quietly drew the gun from her bag. She jacked the round in the chamber and drew her weapon, readying herself. Eli gave her a stiff nod. She opened the door only slightly, scanning the room for any visible threat before opening it wider so that Eli and Shaye could move through.
Inside, she could see a long hallway, and at the end of it was a set of double doors that led into what looked like a living room with books adorning the walls. There were several doors on each side of the hall that must have led to the rest of the enormous apartment. Though she didn’t see anyone here, there may well have been an entire crew of people hiding throughout the complex. However, for now it appeared that they were alone.
The door was silent as she closed it behind them. Making their way deeper into the apartment, she heard the sound of a TV from inside one of the many rooms. Their footfalls sounded only slightly as they made their way down the marble hall. The apartment was sparsely decorated, as though Shaye had only just moved in or was almost done moving out. There was nothing on the walls, and there were boxes stacked here and there outside of the doors. The place must have been newly renovated as it still carried the smell of fresh paint and wood.
They crept down the hallway toward the sound of the television. Maybe Shaye had left Chad in the care of a bodyguard and they had been keeping him entertained. The fact that there was a TV on had to be a good sign—at least there weren’t the subtle sounds of someone being tortured or the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. Things could’ve been so much worse.
On the other hand, it was almost a little too quiet. If her brother was here, and still alive, he would be fighting or making a plan to escape.
Martins weren’t quitters. They weren’t the kind of family who let others tromp all over them. And they certainly weren’t the kind of people to act as quiet hostages. Her stomach tied into knots and her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that it almost sounded as if someone were beating on the closed door to her right.
Chad was going to be okay. He had to be okay. And if he wasn’t okay—she glanced over at their newest acquisition and stared at her closed eyes—Shaye was going to die.
She opened her mouth, considering calling out. But she stopped herself. If there were other people in this apartment, she couldn’t alert them to her presence. For now, they had the element of surprise.
She concentrated on her breathing as her body tightened, readying itself for a fight. The gun in her hands trembled ever so slightly. She had spent many hours at the range firing her Glock, but she would never get over the nerves that came with facing an adversary. She should’ve been the one trudging Shaye around so Eli could take point.
She turned to him. His body brushed against her as he moved to her side. Shaye’s cheek was pressed against Eli’s chest, just where Zoey had curled against him on the plane. That familiar sensation of jealousy crept up on her. If she closed her eyes and thought back, she could still hear the beating of his heart and could feel the hard muscles of his core as she traced her fingers over his skin.
They should have slept together. If they had, and this went all kinds of haywire, at least she could have been with him one more time.
But she couldn’t focus on him right now or the way she felt. She had to leave the past in the past and focus on the hunt for her brother and hope it wouldn’t end in a bloodbath.
As for Shaye, Eli could keep carrying her. As much as Zoey hated the thought of killing someone, if she needed the impetus for pulling the trigger, all she had to do was take one look at the woman in Eli’s arms—she had to protect those she cared for.
“It’s going to be okay,” Eli whispered, almost imperceptibly, as they neared the living room.
He stopped and gently set Shaye down on the floor, her head bowing to one side as she settled against the wainscoting. As Eli stood, he pulled his gun from his holster. He didn’t jack a round in the chamber, which made her wonder if he had been walking around with a live round the entire time. He was always the tough one, but he was a stickler when it came to safety. If he was strapped and loaded, then he was definitely feeling more antsy than he had let on.
There was a dating game on the television. And as they pressed against the wall near the door, a woman was chatting in English, talking about how she hated men who wore their socks to bed. She giggled as she spoke, as if drunk on the audience’s attention.
Zoey smirked. If that was all the woman had to worry about, she’d clearly never been four seconds from a likely gun battle. That woman needed some perspective in her life.
Eli placed his back against the wall and pivoted into the living room. He cleared the room, covering the left side of the room as she cleared the right. There was a couch at the center of the room, facing the television.
“Get down!” Eli called, aiming his gun at the couch.
The back of the couch flexed as a man sat up and looked over the top at them. “What in the hell?” he said with a faint Spanish accent.
“Get on the ground,” Eli commanded, his tone deep and threatening.
The man dropped to the ground in front of the leather couch and put his hands on the back of his head.
She side-stepped around the couch, aiming at the man’s back. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, sweatpants, and had on a black knit hat—even though it was warm in the house. There was a half-eaten bag of chips and a can of Coke on the table beside him.
“Who in the hell are you?” the guy asked, looking up from the ground. “I didn’t do anything. How did you get in here?”
Zoey had been prepared for a variety of situations, but not barging in on an innocent man hanging out in his pajamas and watching TV. Had they just invaded a blameless guy’s apartment? Was their assumption about Chad’s location wrong? If it was, that meant they were back to square one.
“Where’s Chad?” Eli asked, his voice the human equivalent of a German shepherd.
The guy looked up at them with a confused expression on his face. “Chad’s back there.” He nudged his chin in the direction from which they had come.
Feeling returned to Zoey’s body as relief flooded through her. Chad was here. They had been right. She was going to save him. Everything was okay—or so she hoped.
“If you bastards hurt one freaking hair on his head...” Zoey started.
“You can take it up with him,” the guy said, gesturing in the direction he had said her brother was being kept.
Was Chad even a hostage? The guy in his pajamas wasn’t carrying a weapon. And if he was a bodyguard, he was doing a crappy job. And yet Chad had gone completely silent, which had to mean something was wrong. It was against every protocol in STEALTH to go missing and cut off all communication—silence always meant their operative was in trouble or dead.
As mad as s
he was at the thought of Chad being here on his own accord, she hoped that was the case, and Chad had just made a mistake in keeping quiet.
On the other hand, if that was what had happened, she was going to kill Chad herself. Really, it would be a justifiable homicide.
“Stay here with this guy. I’ll go get Chad.” Zoey started to move away. “Find out what this guy knows about Sleeping Beauty out there, and why she was packing one of our black market weapons.”
Eli nodded, but she could tell from the pinched look on his face that he didn’t like the idea.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” she said, lifting her Glock a little higher so he knew she meant business. Though she had tried to comfort him, the look on his face remained. No matter what he thought, she was going to be okay. Even if she didn’t pull the trigger, she could kick some ass.
Then again, perhaps he had seen her hands trembling when she had pulled her weapon on the attacker at the Widow Maker. He knew her demons just as well as she had once known his.
Before he could stop her, she made her way out into the hall. She stepped over Shaye’s sprawled legs and around a stack of boxes.
Though she was almost certain they were nearly alone in the apartment with Chad, and her only concern was Sir Pajamas out in the living room, she was careful to be quiet as she crept to the next room. They should’ve cleared this whole place when they had come in, but just like the rest of this, nothing was going as planned. They were flying this operation by the seat of their pants.
She quietly clicked open the door on her right. Inside was a large chef’s kitchen with stainless steel appliances and quartz countertops. Atop the stove was a single pot and spoon, and a stack of plates sat on the island. Aside from the meager assembly of dishes, the place was empty.
She stepped out and made her way to the next room, a deserted library. The empty bookshelves made the room feel gloomy. If she owned this place, they would have been filled to the brim.
Closing the door to the barren library, she wondered if Chad was even in the apartment. What if the guy had lied to get Eli alone so he could have a fighting chance instead of standing two against one? She glanced down toward the living room, but it was quiet. Hopefully Eli had everything under control.
Her Assassin For Hire Page 14