by Cherry Adair
“Shit,” he snarled, after listening to something transmitted into his earpiece.
A dead end, Hannah thought with black humor. Until today, she’d never seen a dead body, now she was getting frighteningly used to seeing a lot of them.
“Considering the timing, I think the man on the stairs was one of the men you overheard,” Gray turned his attention back to her. Under normal circumstances it would be difficult to keep track of who he was talking to, but right now, Hannah was having difficulty navigating her way around a normal conversation. Her mental focus and her vision were both getting fuzzy.
“The other guy’s a crewmember. He’s here. None of them were KIA.”
Trying to corral her wandering thoughts, she gave him a blank look.
“Killed in action. I shot a bodyguard on the stairs, he could be our boss man. He was with a crewman, who’ll be able to ID him, for us.” He wrapped his hand around her upper arm and steadied her. Hannah didn’t even realize she’d been swaying slightly. “Would you recognize the man’s voice if you heard it again?”
Frowning hurt her head. “Who? The dead guy?” Hannah impatiently rubbed the annoying headache pulsing at her temples. “Of course.” God she was cranky and confused. The nervousness, and desire to pick a fight could be attributed to the circumstances, but she knew her body, and was familiar with the symptoms. Cold and clammy, she was freaking starving, and her heart pounded with anxiety. Hypoglycemia, probably exacerbated by her present circumstances.
“How long until the plane gets here?” If it was big enough to make the long flight, and there were dozens of people expected on board, there’d be food. Something to drink.
He glanced over her shoulder. “It arrived a few minutes ago. Thanks,” he said to a woman dressed as he was, as she handed him a can of Coke. He gave it to Hannah.
She frowned at it. “Where did this materialize from?”
“Hensley went to get it from the plane. Here,” he said gently, taking the can back. “Let me open that for you.”
She was pretty sure she could open her own damned drink, but right now she couldn’t quite figure out how.
He wrapped his large, warm hand around hers, lifted it to her mouth. “Drink.”
Opening her mouth, Hannah let the fizzy, overly sweet soda slide down her throat. He tangled the fingers of his other hand in her hair, holding the back of her head to assist her. She needed all the help she could get. Her brain was going in slo-mo.
“Drink it all, honey, the sugar will help you feel better.”
She did so, her fingers curled around his wrist as she drank. She couldn’t fight low blood sugar and Grayson at the same time. Hells-bells, she could barely keep one thought in her head at a time at the moment.
“You scare the shit out of me, you know that, Tink? Not your fault. But fuckit, you need a keeper.”
“I really don’t,” she said tartly, moving away so his hand dropped. Drinking the soda helped. A lot. And she felt more lucid by the minute as the sugar hit her system. “I was only supposed to be here a couple of days at the most. I came prepared with enough insulin for two weeks, and a whole bag of snacks and candy for emergencies. I didn’t know I was going to be kidnapped and forced to leave all my belongings on a doomed ship.”
He brushed her cheek, gray eyes searching her face. “There’s that.”
Self-conscious, she combed her fingers through the tangled stands of her hair. Her makeup must have sweated off hours ago, and she probably had raccoon eyes.
Putting her palm on the hard wall of his chest, she gave a pathetically light shove, feeling the tingle of contact all the way up her arm. “You’re in my personal space, and all your spylettes are watching us.”
“Are you up to IDing the guy?”
He spoke into his communications device, as he watched her. His eyes made a whole slew of promises of their own. “Bring Deeks to me.” He turned back to her, his eyes focused intently on hers. “What do you want him to say?”
She thought about the conversation she’d overhead. “‘As you instructed. Exactly thirty minutes from now.’” Which, as it happened, had turned out to be a lot less.
“You’ll recognize the voice just from that?”
“Perfect pitch, remember?”
“There isn’t a damn thing about you I’ve forgotten.” Unflinching, he held her gaze.
“Then it must be that your sense of direction is out of whack. One would think a guy like you, leading a tough-ass team like this, could find his way home. But then…one would be wrong.”
“Don’t doubt that I’d find you blindfolded, in the dark, on another planet,” Gray murmured, voice tight.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I guess finding me in my own condo was just too damn easy. Next time I’ll remember to blindfold the groom and have the chapel on a sunless frigging planet.”
Gray shifted his jaw. “I can tell you’re feeling better.” His voice was bone dry.
“Getting there.”
A tall, grim-looking man, with salt and pepper hair and a craggy face, came up to Grayson. “Everyone’s ready, and Deeks is hobbling his ass over here”
“Good,” Hannah said, grateful for the interruption. “Let’s get this over with so I can go home.”
“This isn’t over, Tink.”
“You’re a promise and three years too late, Grayson.” Hannah said tartly. “Just have him say the lines so I can get the hell out of here.”
#
Perfect pitch had fuck-all to do with recognizing a voice. Especially when Hannah had been afraid for her life at the time. But she was all he had right now. “Bring over Deeks.”
The three terrified and loudly protesting ‘investors’, his baby brother included, were demanding their rights. As if they fucking had rights in a foreign country consorting with terrorists on the watch list for fucksake.
“Keep ‘em on ice,” Gray instructed the teams.
“What do you want to do with the crew? Take them with us, dispose of them or leave them here?” Kyatta asked in his ear as he prodded an unhealthy looking guy, with too much body fat, and a small, bald head to the lineup with the rest of the bodyguards, taking baby steps because of his ankle ties. While Gray had ordered them kept alive, their quality of life wasn’t a consideration. Many of the bad guys sported bloody lips, assorted gashes, and an array of colorful bruises. A crying shame.
The crewmembers hadn’t been interrogated yet. They’d know little to nothing other than they’d been minding their own business off the coast of South Africa, been hijacked, kidnapped, and forced to stay on board for the long trip to South America. They didn’t know any of the people on board, other than each other, and this was the first time they’d been ashore in months. It was clear by their body language that they didn’t even like one another, and wanted to get the hell away ASAP. They were lowest priority, and would be processed last.
“Yeah,” Gray told Charlie. “We’ll get the crew back home. Wherever that is. Keep them secured for now.”
“Hang tight,” he told Hannah off comm. She looked remarkably better since drinking the Coke. Her color was back, and the shaking had stopped. She’d scared the bejesus out of him when they’d gotten into the hangar and he’d seen how weak and vague she was.
Lifting her chin, Hannah gave him a cool look. “Don’t you have terrorists to terrorize?”
“I have a few minutes to spare and competent people to do the terrorizing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please, don’t waste your spare few minutes on me. Go to your spy stuff. I’m a big girl. I can stay out of your way and. . . observe your manly prowess.”
He smiled. “You’re cranky.”
“Ya think?” She gave him an annoyed look. “Run along and do your spy stuff, so I can get over it.”
The aftermath of a blast of adrenaline affected most people that way- cranky was mild. He’d seen people go into manic rages, and go ape-shit after going through half of what Hannah had just experienced. In her cas
e he suspected her irritability had a lot to do with low blood sugar as well.
Thank God the plane had arrived, because Gray was pretty sure if her hypoglycemia had gotten worse, she’d be in a fucking coma, and not giving him sass, right now. The knowledge that he should’ve taken into account her illness made him sick to his stomach. And so fucking furious at his brother, that he wanted to pummel Colton into the ground. Twice. Once for himself. Once for her.
Shifting so he could keep an eye on Hannah, he filled his team leaders in on what she’d overheard in the corridor earlier.
Around them people were moved and realigned to form a line. “Not the crew. Not if her interpretation of the convo’s correct. One of the men was clearly in charge. I killed one guy in the corridor outside the cabin she was in. Bodyguard type. Armed. He was with a crewmember. Not sure if they were the ones she overheard or not. A crewmember wouldn’t have been entrusted to blow up the ship, or to make sure the diamonds were secure. So the man who gave the order must’ve been one of the three known principals on board. The other, a high-up associate. He glanced across at the lineup. “Anyone missing?”
“Just Mauro, remember?”
“Yeah. Double fuck.” Sorenson or Deeks better give up Stonefish, otherwise this fucking mission was a bust. And they still hadn’t found the diamonds. Gray hoped they were at the bottom of the ocean.
“Can you hang on a few more minutes to listen to some of these guys before you go?”
“Sure.”
“One at a time, starting with you.” Gray motioned to William Deeks, a forty-two year old Kenyan, dressed in a scuffed and smudged thousand dollar dark suit, open necked white shirt, and three thousand dollar shoes. The man had who’d been with Stonefish for more than twenty-two years. No known address. Sister; single-mother, small daughter. Both residing in Nairobi. The man’s mahogany skin shone in overhead lights. He didn’t look nervous or even fucking concerned.
“You won’t make it out of Esmeraldas alive,” Deeks said in a well-modulated voice, Africa tinged with British prep school as he was urgently shoved forward by Bren Edde, “let alone out of Ecuador. Stonefish is aware of T-FLAC’s actions, and reprisals will be severe and swift.”
“We have Adimu and Dafina,” Gray responded, not missing a beat. “Where do we find your boss, and which of you has the diamonds?”
Hearing his sister and niece’s names made the Kenyan jerk in response. He reined himself in pretty fast, giving Gray an inscrutable look. “You would not harm a woman and a small child.” “To get my hands on Stonefish? Fuck yes, I most certainly would. Answer the question.”
“No one knows where he is. We never know. As for the diamonds, the answer is clear. At the bottom of the South Pacific.” “Is that your final answer?”
“It’s the truth.”
Not even fucking close. But there was time and the appropriate location to interrogate him elsewhere. Right now he wanted Hannah to recognize the voice, so she could leave. “Repeat this phrase. ‘As you instructed. Exactly thirty minutes from now.’”
Deeks repeated the words. Hannah shook her head, and the man was returned to his corner of the hangar.
“Let’s have Sorenson.”
Sorenson, a white-haired man in his late fifties, sporting a tan and a soul-patch, gave him a dead-eyed-snake look. Like Deeks he wore a tailored suit and expensive shoes. He was a filthy mess, with a long rip in his pant leg, and the side of his face caked with dried blood from the nasty gash over his eye,. His tie had been removed by Gray’s people. But he looked like the kind of guy who’d have the top button of his shirt done up, and a Winsor knot in some expensive neckwear.
Grayson repeated the request about Stonefish and the diamonds, threatened the man with the withholding of his medication, and was met with calm.
“Answer the damn question.” Gray said coldly when the man just stood there.
“Did you miss the ship exploding?”
“Since your people initialized the blast, dickhead, we know someone ensured the rocks were safe before she blew. Isn’t it time for your medication?”
“I don’t know what happened to the diamonds. If I die, you will have nothing.”
“If you live I have nothing.” Gray said. “So what do I have to lose by letting your heart fail as I watch?” Well-trained, and loyal to a fault, Sorenson remained mute.
“Say this-“
“Fuck yo-“ Suddenly the older man clutched his chest and dropped to his knees. Eyes white and wild, he gasped, “Medication.”
“Sure. Repeat this first. ‘As you instructed. Exactly thirty minutes from now.’”
Sorensen keeled over, gasping for breath, his face a rictus of pain.
“Fuck me.” Gray crouched beside him to feel the pulse at his throat. Felt fine to him, but what did he know about heart transplants? “Anything you’d like to say to atone for your sins before you croak?”
“Grayson!” Hannah sounded horrified.
“Help. Me.”
“Help me first, dickwad. Where’s Stonefish?”
“Sir?” A crewman, close enough to witness what was happening, raised his voice to get their attention. Fortyish, bald, British. Like most of the other captives, his clothes were speckled with dried blood splatter, grease marks and smudges from the oily smoke during the explosion. A red mark that looked like a burn cut across his left cheek.
“If I may?” he said deferentially. “I, too have a heart complaint. I have medication. If I may have that returned-?” He glanced over at Kyatta.
Hannah grabbed his hand. “That’s-“
“Just a minute, honey.” Charlie looked at him for action. Grayson nodded. “Sure. Bring it over.” It would either work, or it wouldn’t. At another nod from Gray, Charlie Kyatta stooped to give Sorenson the medication.
“That’s him!” Hannah grabbed his forearm with both hands. “That’s the man!”
Gray observed Charlie trying to get Sorenson to open his mouth to take the damned pill. Well hell, now the guy couldn’t die. “It was Sorenson?” No surprise. Sorenson was Stonefish’s number one lieutenant. Sprawled on the floor, he looked like he was recovering just fine from his ‘heart attack’ as he aggressively forced Charlie Kyatta’s hand away from his mouth.
“No. For God’s sake, Grayson! Not him! The guy over there who offered to help! The crewman! He’s putting on a fake English accent, but he’s American. He’s the man I heard outside the cabin.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN - RICOCHET
“The bald guy on my nine is Stonefish,” he said into his communications thingy.
Since this was the very man Grayson was trying to find, she was shocked at how cool, and emotionless, his voice was. Until she caught a glimpse of his eyes. Then the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
She had no idea how Gray had made the leap. But he had. She swiveled her attention to Stonefish, seeing in the bald guy’s face the realization that he’d just been identified at the same time Gray did. Gun raised, he shifted slightly in front of her, blocking Hannah’s view. “Get Hannah the fuck out of here. Now! Go. Go. Go.”
The bald guy grabbed Colton, pressed a small knife to his throat. Tilting her friend off balance tight against him, he backed away. “Stay back! Stay back! I’ll kill him!”
Colton’s face drained of color, as he staggered backwards, the man’s arm around his throat, the knife poised dangerously over his jugular.
Terrified for Colton’s safety, Hannah turned back to Gray. His gun was raised, but he didn’t shoot.
“Hold your fire,” he said, barely above a whisper. “We need him alive. Hensley? Where the f-“
Ponytail bouncing, the female operative who’d brought Hannah the soda, raced over, grabbed her arm, and propelled her back toward the door at a run. “Hop to it, Girlfriend,” Hensley yelled, gun in hand. “The shit’s about to hit the fan.”
Hannah didn’t argue. She ran.
They burst through the door into a night filled with lights and more running, blac
k-clad people. A small, white jet gleamed in the floods, and nearby a large helicopter’s rotors spun slowly with an ear throbbing whop, whop, whop. Behind them, from the hangar she heard the chatter of gunfire, screams, shouts and raised voices.
The fear of being so close to this much danger was somewhat overshadowed by her fear for Colton and Gray. No matter how many times they’d had their problems, they were also two of the closest people in her life. She knew she had to get to safety, but still feared for their lives.
“This her?” A man yelled, pulling Hannah back to her surroundings. He grabbed her arm from Hensley in a grip that almost dislocated her shoulder.
“Grayson says not to let her get any holes in her! Copy?”
The man, dressed in black pants and t-shirt, touched his ear. “He’s giving me instructions as we speak,” he told Hensley dryly. “I’ve got her. Go do your thing.”
Hensley gave a mock salute. “Hang with Blinston. He’s one of the good guys. Nice meeting you, Girlfriend.”
The man had a firm, implacable hold on her upper arm. “This way.”
Hannah flinched as the pop, pop, pop of gunfire sounded closer than inside the hangar. She tried to pause, to turn, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was happening-to make sure that Gray was okay. The man she’d been introduced to as Blinston kept her moving quickly up the metal stairs to the open door of the plane. “Almost there.”
As soon as they were inside, he shut the door, and activated the locking mechanism, then shot her a cheerful smile. “Safe as a bug in a rug. Grab a seat and I’ll check you out.”
A little shell shocked, Hannah repeated, “Check me out?”
“Over here, I think.”
Pointing to a wide leather seat, he indicated she sit. Hannah planted her butt. The jet was luxuriously appointed, modern, lots of tan leather and polished burl tables. The soft leather seat was as comfortable as her sofa at home. And it was quiet inside the plane. For the first time in hours she let the tightness seep out of her shoulders and neck.