Greer sat, a helplessness she despised overtaking her.
No, I’m not some little girl who needs to be looked after. I’ve killed two men, for Chrissakes! I can’t walk down the street for two blocks? And it’d be nice to surprise Sean with a few hamburgers or something, a fried chicken breast and a salad. Show him I’m resourceful, capable. He’s the one who keeps saying it, so why don’t I believe it?
She stood up, nervous as she crossed the little hotel room. But the tense silence around her was shattered by the sudden blast of a high-pitched siren wailing. It was loud in the hallway, and Greer knew immediately that it was the fire alarm.
Her instincts were to run for the door, but her training stopped her. It was too easy to recall Sean using a fire alarm as a ruse to clear that building.
Could he be doing the same thing? Is he trying to tell me something? I wish I had my phone!
But the siren kept blaring. She crossed to the window and looked out, not seeing any smoke. But she knew that wasn’t completely reliable. The old building around her would burn quickly. Visions of a fiery death, agonizing, flashed before her eyes. She could almost feel her hair burning, her skin bubbling, the white-hot sensations that would be slow but certain to consume her.
Greer crossed to the door, unlocked it, and took a deep breath before pulling it open.
Spencer Lange lunged at her from the other side. She tried to jam the door closed, but Spencer’s foot stopped it, and his greater strength and size allowed him to push it open. He charged her into the room, jamming a white handkerchief over her mouth and nose. The acrid chemical smell, hot and burning, was pungent. She swatted it away with one hand, grabbing his wrist with the other to hold it at bay.
He grabbed her hair and yanked hard, pressing that handkerchief over her face. The fumes were noxious and toxic, and Greer coughed and sputtered to reject them. She pulled her right arm back and smashed her elbow into Spencer’s gut. He let go of her and lurched forward, and she tried to scream out for help.
But with the fire alarm blasting and her lungs wheezing, all she could do was try to fight her way past him. She was already weakened, and Spencer was recovering fast, readying himself for another charge. Greer grabbed the lamp on the dresser, not bolted down as she might have expected. She brought it crashing down on the back of Spencer’s head, landing him face down on the floor.
She stepped over him and to the door, his hand clamping down around her ankle. Still slightly dizzy and weakened from the chloroform, Greer fell forward to join him on the floor, her arms reaching out for the door just a few feet away.
She turned and kicked at him, one good strike hitting his head, another his shoulder. But despite her struggle, Spencer managed to pull her in closer, hands grabbing her calves, her thighs, her hips, slowly climbing over her.
Her legs were pinned beneath him, and she bucked her hips to try to throw him as he made his way to her upper body. She clenched her fists and started pounding at him, but his own arms blocked, intercepted. That rank white rag came closer, Greer turning her head from one side to the other to avoid it.
But her luck ran out, and Spencer pressed the handkerchief over her face. The fumes streamed up her nose, hot and burning, instantly inspiring a vomitous nausea. She coughed and sputtered, trying to scream through the cloud of poison racing into her system.
Her arms grew numb, increasingly unable to pull his hand away as her lungs seemed increasingly unable to function. Her eyesight blurred, her ears rang dully, her body shook as the chemical did its work.
Spencer removed the handkerchief from Greer’s face. She was awake, able to sense what was happening around her without being able to act, arms and legs too numb, brain too scrambled, tongue rubbery and useless in her dry mouth.
Spencer stood up and slung her over his shoulder. She felt pressure against her belly, and the blood rushed to her head. Her arms fell idle at her sides. He walked with her out of the room, pausing to look around. Unable to stop him, Greer could only go along for the ride as he carried her down the hallway to a stairwell. The door closed, and his heels clacked in the stairwell as he walked her down to the first floor and then out to the lobby.
Even in her dazed state, Greer could sense the hustle and scurry of everybody exiting the little lobby. In that harried and confused circumstance, carrying a woman to safety would hardly stand out.
Once on the street, Greer told herself to flail and struggle and scream, to marshal the strength attract some attention that might rescue her. She knew even then that it could get her killed, but that seemed to be a certainty no matter what.
Spencer slipped her into the passenger seat of a car, then slammed the door and locked it. She tried to reach up to unlock and open the door, but he was already in the driver’s seat and closing his own door before she had the chance.
“Forget about it,” he said. “Just sit back and relax. You’re not going anywhere.” He turned the engine over, peeled out into the street, and disappeared into the traffic. “Funny thing about chloroform, it doesn’t really knock you out the way everybody thinks. Imagine those poor bastards in the civil war having to endure their amputations only half-out. I mean, I guess it was something, but … Jesus, right?”
Greer tried to swallow, tried to fashion an answer, but she just couldn’t do it. The simplest action seemed beyond her.
“Anyway, I got a nice hotel room in the plaza, great shot at El Presidente. We’ll be more than comfortable there until tomorrow.” Greer tried to say something, anything, but her head felt as if it was made of lead, her arms no longer attached to her body. “Don’t bother, really. It’ll wear off in a few hours. We’ll have plenty of time to have a little chat.”
They drove a while longer, down the long, narrow streets of the historic Old Towne district. The colonial-style row houses featured brightly painted shutters and pig-iron balcony rails and shops on every corner. The place was packed with pedestrians, but all were beyond her reach.
Spencer drove further, into the historic Quito Old Town. Greer could barely make out the stately buildings or the statues in the plaza between them. When Spencer parked, she tried to unlock the door and make a break for it, but she was nearly immobile.
Spencer pulled her out of the passenger seat and walked her into the hotel, one of her rubbery arms slung over his shoulder.
“I told you not to drink so much at lunch, honey,” he said as they passed two backpackers walking in the other direction. “We’ll get you a little disco nap and a shower, and you’ll be fine.” He walked her up the stairs, her feet slipping beneath her, legs incapable of supporting her drugged weight.
Once in the hotel room, Spencer dropped Greer onto the bed. She tried to get up, fearful of what he was going to do next, but it was impossible to resist him as he climbed onto the bed with her.
He pulled her arms back, the screech of duct tape instantly familiar before the equally familiar tear. He wrapped the stretch of tape around her wrist, the adhesive and strong plastic tape ensuring her compliance. He tore off another piece and wrapped it around her ankles, pinning her legs together. Even in her drugged stupor, she tried to pull free. Another piece of tape over her mouth sealed her lips.
“All right,” Spencer said, “it’s been a big day. You should try to get some rest.”
Greer didn’t want to rest. She wanted to break through that tape and throw Spencer out the window. But she couldn’t. Tied up and drugged out, all she could do was sleep, and finally, she found that impossible to resist as well. Exhaustion and chloroform conspired to put her into a deep, dark sleep, one she wasn’t sure she’d ever come out of—or even should.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sean had been trying to push through the crowd to get back to their hotel. As the crowd became thicker and more oppressive, his worry did the same. Something was telling him that things had gone wrong, and it wasn’t just a hunch. He followed his tracks back to the hotel, and as he did, the alarm got louder. That was a bad sign, and it
got worse.
The closer he got, the denser the crowd was, though that was no clear indication of anything. It hardly mattered. He had to get back to the hotel, back to Greer, make sure she was okay. After that, everything would be good.
But the fact that he’d used the same ruse just a day earlier worried him. It was a common trick among criminals and deviants, the kind of person he was forced to deal with every day. But would Greer understand that? Would she be drawn into a trap, if there was a trap?
There was only so much speculating Sean could do, and he had to work harder to push through that frenzied crowd. Something had them in a state, he knew that. But with events in Quito at a political fever pitch, it was hardly surprising. He wouldn’t be surprised that anybody coming after him and Greer—the mob or the Ecuadorian cops or whomever—would know that and use it to their advantage.
Sean ran up the block toward the hotel, the fire alarm finally going silent. But a crowd of gawkers was gathered around their hotel, and Sean knew that was a bad sign. His heart started beating a little faster, but he calmed himself and ran straight into the hotel even as everyone else was standing around, murmuring and dumbfounded.
He ran up the stairs, one flight and then the other, and then down the hall. The rooms were all closed, but when he saw his own room at the end of the hall, his heart skipped.
“Greer? Greer!”
He got to the room. The door was ajar just a bit, a chunk of brown porcelain having jammed it open. Other pieces lay strewn on the floor, and the fragmented lampshade and exposed electrical guts told the tale. It was the unmistakable sign of a struggle, with the shattered lamp proof of a good fight lost. With Greer not there, there was only one place she could be—in enemy hands.
Sean dropped the box with the shears onto the bed and looked around, his mind racing. He ducked back out into the lobby and down the hall to the staircase on the off chance that they were still close. No activity, utter stillness. But Greer’s subtle, familiar scent told Sean that she’d been taken and that he’d made it back too late.
Sean felt something close to fear, something he hadn’t felt since his earliest days in the US Marines. She was gone, the love of his life, and she was in the hands of men who would relish her slow death and his own. She’d be used as a tool against him in the coming assassination attempt.
Must have been the other goon, Sean reasoned, while his partner was out looking for me. Are they that close? Are they surveilling us that closely?
It was a bad sign, but not one he had long to reflect on.
Must be Spencer Lange behind it, and I know where he’ll be tomorrow at noon. Just stick to the plan, find him before he pulls the trigger, and kill that son of a bitch.
Sean pulled out the shears, plugged them in, and went straight to work. The buzz was low on his head as his black locks fell away. They revealed his skull, round and high, much as it was when he joined the Marines just out of high school. He felt young now as he had before. He felt restored to his status as part of one of the greatest fighting forces the world had ever seen or ever would see. Instead of crawling among gutter rats and junkies, hoodlums and assassins and kidnappers, Sean felt as if he was rejoining a noble breed, the very best of the very best.
And he would have to conjure the very best of himself. He was facing the fight of his life, for the love of his life. This would be his last mission—he felt certain of that. He would prevail or die trying. And should he survive, he would marry Greer and retire to Colorado for a life of peaceful travel and heartfelt philanthropy.
But that paradise was suddenly a good way away, and there was only one road to follow. Sean looked at himself in the mirror, hardened, aging, but still in the strong prime of his manhood. He was a combination of instinct, training, experience, discipline, and honor. He was what the corps had made him, what his father and mother had raised him to be, and what Greer inspired him to be.
With one last look at the face he knew he might never see again, on what was likely to be the last day of his life, Sean saw a man fully committed, a soldier marching out onto the battlefield with everything at stake and nothing left to lose.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Greer woke with a start, arms aching, hands numb. She flinched, unable to move. She coughed into the tape that sealed her lips, sputtering through her nose as she strained to breathe. Focusing quickly, she looked around the ornate hotel room, at the bed beneath her. She tried to lift herself, falling back as Spencer turned to her.
“Wakey, wakey,” he said with a smile. He came over to the bed and sat down next to her. “Comfortable? No? Well, I guess I understand that.” He reached over and picked up a pillow from the two at the head of the bed. Greer’s brain was still slow to function, and she had a throbbing headache like she’d never known that made her ears ring.
Spencer reached for the tape over her mouth, holding his index finger up in front of her. “I’ll take the tape off, and you’re not going to scream, are you?” She shook her head. “Okay, but really … I will kill you.” She nodded, and he slowly peeled the tape from her lips. Without hesitation, he pinned the pillow over her face. Greer’s breath was suddenly stopped up, and her world dark again. She tried to pull her hands free, but they stung with the effort.
“Listen to me, Greer, listen to me!” His voice was muffled under the pillow, but she could make it out enough to follow. “Listen to me! I’ll take the pillow off. I just want you to know … one squeak out of line, and this is how it ends. Understand? Understand?”
Greer nodded under that pillow, lying calm before he took the pillow away. She gasped for breath, lungs straining to pull in that life-giving air. Spencer’s head hovered above her, looking down from his position next to her on the mattress.
“Good?” he said. “Good?”
Greer nodded and tried to push herself up into a seated position next to him, looking around the room.
“This is where you’re going to do it,” Greer said.
After a silence, he said only, “Yeah.”
Greer looked through the window. It had been late afternoon when she finally passed out, but the sky was still blue as before. Spencer noticed her attention to the window and said, “Yeah, you were out a long time. Of course, you’ve had a busy couple of days.”
“Spencer … I … you … you were a hired assassin all that time?”
“I was, actually. When we met, but I hadn’t worked in a long time. But y’know, obviously I couldn’t tell you about it. And I thought it was over. Then they called me for a job, and I had to go.”
Greer tried to concentrate, her arms cramping with pain. “Can you undo the tape? Please?” Spencer seemed to give it some thought, and Greer whined, “Please, I feel like my hands are going to fall off!”
Spencer crossed to a leather satchel and pulled out a jackknife. Flipping it open, he crossed back to the bed and cut the tape free. Blood rushed through the tingling tissues of her wrists and numb fingers, and she tried to rub the circulation back into her limbs.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
Greer looked down at her ankles. “Please?”
But Spencer shook his head. “No. Keep pushing it and I’ll gag you again.”
“Okay, okay, it’s … it’s fine.” Greer went on rubbing her hand and wrists and arms, her muscles slow to release their steely tension.
“Anyway,” Spencer went on, “I want you to know that … that I didn’t like having to leave you the way I did.”
“Then why did you?”
“They made me! Greer, these people, you … you can’t just quit, y’understand? At first, they wanted me to kill you outright. But I convinced them that I could fake my own death and you’d let it go. But boy, that was one thing you couldn’t do.”
“What did you expect? You were my husband, and I saw you murdered in front of my own eyes! I had to … I had to make that right.”
Spencer nodded. “Yeah, and I guess I should thank you for that. I have to say, I’m
impressed. You … the hair, shooting two of my guys! I mean, wow, I thought you’d go down a lot easier than that. But even just coming out here, sticking it out all these years. You really are an amazing person, more than I ever realized.”
Greer shrugged, disinterested in his flattery. She pulled her calves up and back to loosen them up from the misery of a long night in bondage. “Why does the mafia want you to kill the president of Ecuador?”
“The—” Spencer stopped and then said, “That’s a reasonable assumption, but … no, it’s not the mafia.” He chuckled, but she did not. “No, I work for a … a specialized service company. Ever hear of Murder, Incorporated?”
“Kind of.”
“Well, it’s kind of like that. We don’t involve ourselves in all that gambling and prostitution and drugs. None of that. It’s a good system. It works.”
“They provide operatives.”
“Exactly. They send people where they’re needed, as needed, and everyone gets paid. Really, it’s the internet that makes it possible. Hell, I don’t even know who it is that wants to bump off the big chief around here, but honestly, I don’t care.”
Greer judged it to be morning by the daylight, perhaps late morning. The crowd in the plaza was already thick with tourists and locals alike.
Spencer raised the pillow. “Don’t even think about it.”
She nodded. “Look, Spencer, you … don’t you see how crazy this is? They’re going to be everywhere—the police, the army. This is the country’s president.”
“Oh, believe me, it can be done.”
“Okay, but … but should it be? I mean, don’t you want to have control of your own destiny? You really want to be shepherded around by this organization your whole life? You let them tell you what to do, where and when and why. That’s not the man I fell in love with.”
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