by Dana Marton
There was a theory in law enforcement that people who went to jail early in life didn’t grow up the same as those on the outside over the years. For the most, they didn’t get married and have kids, get a house and a mortgage, a job, work for their next promotion. Stuff that in a way played big-time into someone becoming an adult, forging character, making a person who could handle responsibility. When inmates got out, they had a lot of catching up to do.
Last night, it seemed Carly had done all that in a matter of hours.
When the idea of the mission had first formed, months and months ago, he had known that she would sign on to the deal because it would get her out of prison, because she wouldn’t be able to walk away from a challenge. He hadn’t been sure what she would do after that. She was extremely intelligent, enough so as not to be completely predictable—a wild card. She wasn’t overly fond of the government. He knew she would be out for herself, that they would be lucky if she agreed to the mission as a means to serve her own needs. But at one point last night, she had moved beyond that—by miles.
He’d left her as a reluctant trainee. He’d come back to find a partner. She wasn’t bad to work with. He felt more connected to her than to the other women, probably because she’d spent two more weeks at Quantico with him than the others, and she’d gone through the beginning of her training alone with him, just the two of them. Plus he’d known her from before, from her trial.
“I’ll be right there,” he said and hung up, then started the engine.
A delivery truck pulled up beside him just as he was about to pull away from the curb, blocking him in as it waited for the red light to change.
His phone vibrated again, differently this time, to indicate that he had e-mail. He flipped it open while he waited on the truck.
Julie said yes. Will you be stateside in April? We’d love to have you at the wedding. Up front. How about best man? Hank.
How the mighty have fallen. He typed his response, grinning. Wouldn’t miss it for anything.
Hank had been the king of playboys until he’d met his match in a fiery bartender during a forced leave due to a nasty leg injury. So they were getting married, finally. Good. He was happy for them.
But underlying the happiness hid that familiar twinge of unease.
Those who were part of the Special Designation Defense Unit lived lives far outside the norm. Since they got the most dangerous assignments, the injury and death rate was much higher than in any other special ops group, way higher than for those in one of the regular branches of the U.S. military.
If there was a job that deserved to be called “widow maker” it was the SDDU.
He didn’t expect everyone who got on the team to take a vow of celibacy, but he didn’t think making promises about the future was good for any of them. What right did a man have to pledge his life to a woman when his life could very well end with his next assignment?
He’d seen what grief had done to his mother. He could never do that to anyone.
The guy in the passenger seat of the truck next to him rolled down the window and yelled out to a couple of college girls who were strolling down the sidewalk and gave them a wolf whistle.
The girls giggled.
Healthy lust. Now that he could understand. But a serious relationship wasn’t in his future.
He looked toward the office building, watched as Carly came to the revolving doors, but stopped just inside them as agreed.
The light changed and the truck moved. Nick cut in behind it. Carly spotted him crossing the intersection. She stepped into the revolving doors, came out, peeled her sweater off. A couple of businessmen slowed as they walked by.
She had looked good enough six years ago to be on a coed pinup calendar. She’d grown up and filled out since then. Now she was all woman. Talk about healthy lust….
The gawking men irritated him. And yet, hadn’t he put her in a position where she would be bait for a man a lot more dangerous?
He watched as she stepped off the sidewalk.
Not yet. Damn it, she was supposed to stay inside until he pulled up. Instead, she was heading straight at him, waving.
A red, four-door sedan tore down the street and screeched to a halt by her side. The back door opened and a man jumped out and grabbed for her. Nick could make out the look of shock on her face a split second before she sprinted into action, flawlessly executing a self-defense move he’d taught her at Quantico.
He had a clean shot, traffic being light this time of the evening, and took it. With the silencer on, most of the people who strolled the street would never hear a thing. He aimed at the driver and missed him by an inch or two. It was difficult to keep his aim true while his own car was moving.
The man did, however, notice the bullet that drilled a hole in the dashboard in front of him and on reflex stepped on the gas. Nick took a follow-up shot. Might have hit the guy in the shoulder. He never looked back for his buddy, but got the hell out of there.
The man who’d tried to grab Carly looked after his transportation with a bewildered expression on his face, realized the attempted kidnapping for the lost cause it was and took off running on foot.
Nick pulled up next to Carly, yelled, “Get in!” through the open window and aimed at the man’s retreating back. He was in the process of pulling the trigger when Carly slammed into the passenger seat and knocked his arm aside.
The man disappeared down a side street the next second.
“What the hell was that?” What was she thinking?
She snapped on her seatbelt, breathing hard from the struggle, her hair disheveled, but when she spoke she was all business. “Let’s see where he goes.”
Since taking the guy down was no longer an option, Nick stepped on the gas and cut into traffic, all jumbled now. A few people had witnessed the shooting and made a mess of the road. He deftly maneuvered around them and turned down the street where he’d seen the guy disappear, just as the first of the police sirens sounded in the distance.
“Don’t ever do that again.” He didn’t trust himself to say more, so angry he couldn’t see straight. He’d had a perfectly good, clean shot. Maybe he’d misread her the night before. Maybe she was outsmarting him. Maybe she was sabotaging the mission on purpose. “Where is he?”
“There.” She pointed.
He saw the man just as he turned off another street, and followed at a distance so he wouldn’t be spotted. Was he going to meet up with his buddy in the car?
Nick swerved around traffic. Why couldn’t people get out of his way? It seemed every gawking tourist and slowpoke bicyclist was bent on getting in front of him.
He turned after the man into a quiet, narrow street with barely another car or two on the road. Where was the guy going? He looked over his shoulder. Nick tried to look as if he was paying him no attention whatsoever, and pulled over to park.
“What are you doing?” Carly asked.
“I don’t think the men had planned for the eventuality of being separated. I think he’ll be on foot for a while. It’ll be easier to follow him unobserved if we do the same.”
“Okay.” She got out, looking not the least bit guilty, as if she hadn’t just messed up everything big-time.
He glared at her. “What are you, opposed to violence for some moral reason? Because I thought you understood that this mission is going to be full of it.”
She tossed him a don’t-be-stupid look.
That pissed him off even more. “Don’t you—”
“Want me to drive home and stay inside?” she asked.
“No.” He didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone. He was mad, wouldn’t have minded a little distance for a while, but was professional enough to draw the line at putting her at risk.
“Do you have any idea—” His cell vibrated. He glanced at the display and took the call. “Somebody just tried to grab Carly. We’re following on foot,” he told Law.
“Any idea who the guy is?”
“None.”
>
“You think he’s connected to T.?”
“I hope not. Savall hasn’t done a thing yet to draw attention. He can’t possibly be aware of their existence.”
“I hope you’re right. Because if you’re not, the operation is busted before it ever got off the ground. You need backup?” Law asked with some hesitation.
They’d agreed at the beginning to involve the absolute minimum number of people. Each extra person brought in on the operation was a possibility for a leak.
“Not yet. Somebody is obviously watching the women, or at least Carly. You don’t want him to notice the undercover bodyguards and get suspicious about what’s going on.”
“What about you? Did he see you again? Whoever they are, they won’t buy that the same passerby happened to come to her rescue twice in a row.”
“I don’t think either man saw me.” He sure as hell hoped he was right about that. The driver couldn’t have known where the bullet had come from. And the guy who’d tried to grab Carly probably hadn’t known what was going on, just that his partner was pulling out. He’d taken off without wasting much time looking around.
“How are the women doing?”
“Okay.”
“Have any of them tried to approach you?” Law was speaking carefully.
It took Nick a second to figure out what he was talking about. Had any of them tried to seduce him in an attempt to get away? It had been one of Law’s initial objections to the mission at the beginning. The guy must have had some interesting cases in the past.
“No,” he told him and glanced at Carly. Even as mad at her as he was, he couldn’t not appreciate those mile-long legs and those curves. If she ever did try, he wouldn’t mind playing along for a while. Not that he thought that was her style.
He didn’t want to examine why his mind would jump straight to Carly and not one of the other women—they were all lookers, one of the reasons why they’d been chosen. Only because she was right here in front of him, he told himself.
“I’d appreciate an update as soon as you find out anything,” Law said.
“Will do.”
He closed the phone, kept following the man. They walked four blocks before the guy slipped into Banca Internationale through a side door.
After hours. When the bank should have been closed.
“Do we go in?” she asked.
“We stay.” If he’d been alone, he would have followed the guy in there. As it was, he didn’t want to take her blindly into a potentially dangerous situation.
“Are we just going to sit around?”
He drew a slow breath. “Let’s walk around the place.”
They did so, keeping to the shadows. A number of lights were on in offices. He had no way of telling where the man had gone. They looped around to the front entrance of the bank, all locked up for the day.
The large square the bank faced had timed fountains that shot streams of water high up in the air, dancing to complicated patterns. There were still people milling about, unlike the back streets, which were deserted at night. A couple of kids were trying to run through without getting wet. They didn’t make it. Nick looked after them as they ran off squealing.
Carly watched the water for a few minutes then stepped in, meandered across among the hundred or so pumps, came out dry on the other end. She was good at pattern recognition.
“Your turn.” Her grin came with a fair dose of challenge. She raised an eyebrow, cocky as anything.
He was here to train and protect her, not to test himself. “I don’t think so.” After the little stunt she had just pulled, he was definitely not in the mood to play.
“Come on. You’ve been making me jump through hoops for how long now? Fair is fair. Think of it as an obstacle course.”
He shook his head, but then thought, what the hell. He watched the streams of water. Left row first, then second row on the right, then the middle streams, then…When he figured he got it, he stepped in and moved forward.
“Go! Go! Go! Faster!” Carly mocked him, imitating his drill-sergeant voice.
He glanced at her. Although she had escaped the fountain, the breeze was blowing enough spray toward her to make the front of her T-shirt damp. She didn’t notice. She was too busy grinning at him with glee.
A stream of water hit him in the back and she laughed. He had hesitated too long. And, damn, if he didn’t lose his rhythm. Another stream of water hit him square in the chest, soaking him to the skin. He ran through the spray, sent her a dark scowl but couldn’t keep it up long before he allowed a reluctant grin. “You win.”
Shouldn’t have said that. Now she was looking decidedly smug.
“What are we doing next?”
“Go back to the door where he went in and wait for a while.” He suspected the effort would be futile. The building was huge with several exits. They couldn’t monitor all of them. The man could have left already.
He headed down the side street that gave him a good view of the door the guy had entered. Nick settled into the shadow of a doorway. Carly came in and leaned on the wall next to him in their close quarters.
He thought of Law and his question. If Carly did want to seduce him to cloud his judgment, now would be a good time to start. They were alone in the dark, the tension of the attack and his anger at her for knocking his arm away still between them—tension that could easily be turned into sexual tension if one of them tried.
He waited, aware of the scent of her skin, of her nearness as she shifted from one foot to the other. Maybe this was what she wanted. Maybe she was waiting for him to become aware, to wonder and anticipate.
A few minutes of silence passed. His clothes dripped. It was only slightly annoying. The night was balmy. He’d be dry before long.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked. “For interfering with shooting him?” Her voice held not a trace of huskiness or planned seduction.
Mad? He had been, then he’d focused on the task ahead and let it go. “Anger is not a productive emotion on a mission.”
“At least we have a clue.” She nodded toward the bank. “We wouldn’t have that if you’d killed him.”
“So you thought before you acted. Good to know.” Of course, with Carly, he should have realized that. She had her own logic that she seemed to follow most of the time. “I wasn’t shooting to kill. I wanted him disabled enough so I could take him somewhere and ask a couple of questions.”
“And if he didn’t talk?”
What did she know about it? “He would have.”
She fell silent for a second, then said, “We did gain a clue.”
Two clues, he corrected her silently. Whoever wanted her was connected to Banca Internationale. And he wanted her badly enough to try over and over again.
Uploaded by Coral
Chapter Six
Who the hell had done the shooting?
Why wasn’t Carly Jones dead yet? His employer had asked these questions, too, and it made him furious that he hadn’t known the answers.
He was good at what he did. It wasn’t like him to mess up two hits in a row.
He poured some red wine and tossed it back, pushed his plate away, his seafood dinner half-eaten. He wasn’t in the mood for it.
Maybe Carly Jones was more than she seemed. They already knew she was a conniving bitch. She’d fought him off. That rankled.
Next time, she wasn’t going to get the chance.
She knew self-defense. He hadn’t expected that.
What was wrong with him? Since when had he made a practice of underestimating his targets? He couldn’t afford to get a reputation for making mistakes. Not now when he might have to look for new employment soon.
But this woman had a face and body that made a man forget all kinds of precautions. Not anymore. He was onto her now. There’d be no more mistakes, no more near misses.
The next time they met, she was going down for good. Going down, staying down. He lit another cigarette and filled up his glass again.
In this business, you had the wrong guy watching your back, you ended up dead in a hurry.
He needed the money this job would bring. He needed Carly Jones dead.
Her first, then the others. The old man had been clear on that, given the exact order for the hits.
He hated being micromanaged like that, drove him crazy. And the boss was getting worse the older he got. In the good old days, he would give a name and hand over a nice bonus when the job was done. Then he got into the whole “I want him to suffer,” or, “He’s family, make it quick,” thing, and that was fine, too. But it seemed these days the man was trying to tell him how to do everything. And the pay was getting worse, too.
Bad enough so that he’d had to take on a regular job part-time to make ends meet. His father was probably rolling in his grave. He’d come from a long, respectable line of hitmen.
One more reason why he wasn’t going to let someone like Carly Jones make a fool of him. Not only was she messing with his livelihood, she was messing with his heritage. He wasn’t going to let her. He’d been raised with better family values than that, damn it.
CARLY’S FINGERS FLEW over the keyboard, her focus complete. She was in the zone where ideas flowed effortlessly and problems resolved, knots untangled. Out of the ten original companies the FBI thought had the best chance of having clients from the circle of Tsernyakov’s acquaintances, she’d cracked server security of seven and gained a decent list of names. Three more to go. But first, she wanted to get the employee and client lists from Banca Internationale to cross-reference with the list of names she had so far, a task that kept her up even later than usual. She stifled a yawn. Man, it had been a mad day. She’d nearly been kidnapped. That was sobering.