by Lexi Blake
“You should do as she says. I don’t know who you are, mate, but you’ve gotten yourself involved in something nasty. You need to walk away. This is far bigger than you can imagine.” There was the sound of his shoes against the concrete. Two more steps. Three more.
How far away had he been? How much longer did they have before he was on top of them?
She watched as Nick’s fist curled around the broken board. Any minute now he would attack the man and he was such a big target. He was already hit and he would only get one real shot with that board of his.
Her brain raced through all the possible scenarios and they led to one conclusion. The man coming after them had the advantage. They had no weapons. He had the high ground. Nick likely wasn’t thinking about taking this man out. He was probably giving her a chance to run while this asshole killed him. That was the most likely scenario.
She couldn’t allow that to happen. All the fear and horror of the last few days morphed into pure will. She eased out of her backpack, maneuvering her arms and catching the straps in one hand. “I’m coming out. Don’t hurt him. I’ll go with you if you won’t hurt him.”
“Let’s see you with your hands up. Come out easy and if I see a hint of metal, you should know I’m going to shoot,” he explained.
But this time she heard the slight tremor in his voice. He wasn’t unaffected. He might be a professional, but he apparently understood how dangerous all of this was.
“Don’t you dare,” Nick started.
She ignored him, concentrating on listening to her opponent. This man wasn’t the police or he would have identified himself as such. Despite the fact that they were off the main street, they were still in public and he wouldn’t want to involve civilians.
It was all about the bluff. Her father had made a living at the poker table. He’d taken her around the world when he had custody. He would teach her to listen to the other players.
Never play the cards in your hand, sweetheart. Play the men and women around the table. They will follow your lead.
She needed to lead him. He was in a heightened state of awareness, the same way she and Nick were. That was something she could use against him. He would be so focused on any movement coming from their direction that she might be able to distract him and give Nick a slim but fighting chance.
So still. She was still, every cell of her body focused on her moment. One chance. That would be all she had and if she missed it, Nick would be dead. She felt Nick begin to move and that was when she tossed her backpack across the alley with enough force that it hit the other side.
She heard the ping of the man’s gun going off, but Nick was on his feet.
Hayley rushed to get up in time to see Nick bring the board down on their attacker. The other man managed to move so Nick missed his head but got his arm. The gun clattered to the ground.
Nick punched out, but the other man was smaller and obviously well trained. He kicked up, catching Nick in the gut. She could see the ragged place on his jacket where the bullet had ruined the material. There was blood clinging there, but he moved like he hadn’t been hit at all.
Her heart was somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, but she had to stay calm, had to wait until she could help him again. This wasn’t over. Two against one was pretty good odds, even if one of them was hurt and the other hadn’t been to the gym in a while.
Nick groaned as the assailant managed to kick him again. He punched out with his good hand, this time connecting with the man’s chin. There were only the sounds of grunts and groans, the majority of the fight taking place in utter silence, as though neither of the combatants wanted the attention.
She caught sight of the gun. It was across the alley, near her backpack. She had to get that damn gun. She wasn’t sure Nick was going to win this particular fight. She couldn’t take the chance.
Hayley ran for the other side, glancing over.
Her attacker pushed Nick away. Nick went down, his body slamming against the metal of the trash bin. The man in the suit started for her. He grabbed her arm, easily shoving her toward the brick wall. Pain slammed through her as she hit the wall and heard Nick’s low growl behind her.
Hayley tried to kick back but couldn’t connect. Stupid short legs. Where was Nick? The last time she’d seen him, his head was slamming into that bin. Was he still conscious? Panic started to rise inside her. She started to throw her head back only to have him push her again.
“Stay there, you slag. I swear the money better be worth it,” he growled in her ear. “No one mentioned a man. It was supposed to be one lone and desperate girl. I’m getting double for you.”
She went still. She couldn’t hear Nick. “He’s just some guy who was helping me find a hotel.”
“I doubt that,” the man said. He was shifting behind her, likely trying to figure out how to get that gun back in his hand without letting go of her. “He fought like a professional. I thought I was the only one who’d figured out you were in London. I guess I had some competition.”
She heard the slight sound of shoes against the concrete and braced herself.
Nick attacked, throwing his big body into the man holding her. Hayley dropped to her knees as Nick and the other man slammed against the wall.
The gun. It was still out there. She had to get the gun and then she could stop all of this.
She scrambled, her knees bruised and aching as she reached for the gun. Cool metal filled her hands and she managed to turn. Her hands shook as she held the gun up.
Nick sat with his back to the wall, his skin pale. “Don’t bother with that. He’s dead. Damn it. I hit him too hard.”
He was dead? They were safe? Well, except for the police, who would come and then make a report and then everyone on the planet would know where she was.
Although apparently someone already did know.
“I’m glad he’s dead.” She knew she shouldn’t be, but the man had tried his best to kill her. Her mother would be shocked at Hayley’s first impulse, which was to kick the shit out of that body to make damn sure he was dead. Her sweet, granola, hippie momma who had died when she was seventeen. She was looking down from heaven with that stern frown she’d gotten whenever Hayley had come home from spending time with her dad and found a hidden stash of junk food in her backpack. Nope, she couldn’t follow her momma’s path now. Nonviolent protest would have gotten her killed. It might be time to saddle up and do things her father’s way.
“Well, I’m not. Dead man can’t explain why he was hunting you,” Nick shot back. “Also, dead man can’t be tortured, and I’m feeling like torturing someone, Hayley. None of this happens if you are not such a stubborn girl.”
Well, that was putting it baldly. “I didn’t ask to have my home explode. I didn’t ask to apparently have international assassins put on my ass. That’s so not fair.”
“Now you sound like surly teen girl.” He stopped and took a deep breath after muttering something in Russian. Nick pulled his phone out of his pocket, pressing a single button. It wasn’t more than two seconds before he began to speak. When he opened his mouth this time, he barely had a hint of his accent. “It’s Nick. I need a cleanup crew.”
A cleanup crew? For the body? She glanced down at the man who had attacked them, trying to see anything at all familiar in his face. Her stomach turned. The man’s dark eyes stared up at her, no animation behind them at all.
“I know. I know I’ve been gone for five minutes and now I have a dead body. Yes, I work fast. Damn it, Kayla. It was not sexual frust…she’s alive. Yes. No. I don’t know. Please get Owen and Brody and get them quickly or I’ll have the police on my ass.”
He got to his feet and brushed off his slacks as he hung up the phone. He reached down and pulled the man’s body behind the bin where they’d hidden.
Nick turned to her, his eyes narrowing. “You will stay at the club.”
She simply nodded because no amount of heartache was worth getting murdered. She’d been stupi
dly stubborn and she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. “The club sounds great.”
Nick frowned and guarded the body.
And Hayley finally took a deep breath. “Do you think we could…”
“Shhh,” Nick shushed her. “I have to listen for people coming down the alley or we’ll have the police called on us.”
Her tummy grumbled. Damn. Not even a murder attempt and a dead body mattered to her empty gut. She was standing in an alley with a pissed-off Russian bear and a nasty old dead body, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t insulted Teresa because apparently Teresa was like Gandalf standing in front of the kitchens telling Hayley that she shall not pass.
“Maybe you could talk to…”
Nick sent her a glare that shut her down.
Her stomach made an audible sound.
Nick sighed. “You are pain in my ass.”
Like she’d never heard that before. What a freaking day.
Chapter Four
“Are you fucking kidding me? Is this like when a cat tosses a dead mouse at his master’s feet? Nick, I told you. I don’t need gifts, but this one is pretty cool. Look, baby, we just got back to the real world and we already have a dead body to deal with.”
Nick stopped, his eyes closing, and he nearly did it. He nearly prayed. It was right there on the tip of his tongue to ask God that Ian Taggart not be standing in the middle of the conference room.
“I thought I would at least have time to unpack and perhaps take a shower before we had our debrief, Nikolai. Honestly, I thought it could wait until the morning since we recently got off a nine-hour flight. It looks like cleaning up and sleeping will have to wait.” Damon Knight stood beside Taggart, the two men staring down at him.
And then he felt it. Hayley moved beside him, one hand on his back as though he would provide safety and security from the predators in the room. Smart girl since these two men were far more dangerous than the one they’d met in that alley. If these two lions had been the ones who wanted to take her apart, they would be picking their teeth with her bones by now.
“Well, paradise was fun but we were getting pretty bored there at the end. I’m afraid I can only stand about a week or so of peace and quiet.” Charlotte Taggart joined her husband. She was a stunning woman with strawberry blonde hair and ties to the Russian mob. Luckily not the syndicate that had killed his sister. Her cousin ran the Denisovitch syndicate, one Nick had found fairly friendly, as murdering thieves went. Her eyes softened as she looked at him and began speaking in his native tongue. Though she sounded perfectly American when she spoke English, her Russian proved she’d spent much of her childhood in Moscow. “Ty vyglyadish ustavshym, Nikolay. Yesli khochesh otdokhnut, ya pozabochus ob etikh dvukh. E skazhi dyevochke, chto boyatsya ne nuzhno.”
Sometimes he missed hearing his own language, but now was not the time to go soft. He replied to her, but stuck to English. “I don’t know that she’s afraid enough. Hayley, meet my bosses. The Englishman is Damon Knight. He runs the London office. The American is a man named Ian Taggart and this is his wife, Charlotte. They were supposed to get in late this evening.”
“We left Loa Mali a bit early,” Damon explained. “The wedding was wonderful. It was nice to get away, but it was time to come home. Now I see that I should have gotten us home a bit earlier. Would you like to explain why there’s a dead body in the small conference room?”
He’d had Owen and the boys move it in there because the lighting was best for what he needed to do. “I have someone cleaning out the freezer as we speak, but I thought it would be easier to get the photographs we’ll need if we properly laid him out.”
Damon frowned fiercely. “Are you planning on having an autopsy? Because that might best be done, I don’t know, perhaps at the bloody medical examiner’s office. What were you thinking?”
“We can skip the autopsy,” Taggart slid in. “I got this one. Dude got his head bashed in. I saw brains and everything. I don’t get why we need to open him up and measure his organs and shit. Head met something harder. Something harder totally won.”
This was the joy of dealing with Taggart. He needed to calm down. His heart was still thudding in his chest half an hour after the attack. He needed a drink, but first he had to stay calm and handle Taggart. He focused on his English, on sounding as calm as he wanted to feel. “The man attacked me and my client as I was taking her to a secure hotel. I did not bring the London police or Scotland Yard in because of the sensitivity of her situation.”
“Your client?” Knight asked. “I wasn’t aware we were taking on clients while I was gone. Have you decided on new protocol in my absence? Clients will be vetted, their cases presented to a majority of the group, and the group will decide on whether or not we take a case. Madam, I don’t know what my employee told you, but I haven’t taken your case so until such time as we do reach a verdict on your status as a client, I have to ask you to leave the conference room. I need to speak to Nick alone.”
Her hand slipped into his, her small palm practically pleading with him for safety.
Damn it. He could walk away from her when she was playing the brat, but he’d never once been able to toss aside a woman who needed him. It was like he had a damn switch and she’d flicked it on. He squeezed her hand and drew her up to his side. “She’s Desiree’s cousin. If you won’t take her case, then I will put in for leave and take it on myself. If this isn’t acceptable to you, then you’ll have my resignation in the morning. I ask that she be allowed to stay here until I make arrangements for us.”
Damon cursed under his breath and ran a hand over his head. “All right, then. I still want to talk to you privately. I’ll expect a full briefing on her case first thing in the morning in whichever conference room doesn’t contain a dead body. I suspect we’re going to have to get rid of him.”
“Acid,” Taggart began.
“No acid,” Charlotte said at exactly the same time as her husband, as though she’d known exactly what he was going to say.
“Baby, come on. I’m still on vacation. Why do you take this away from me?” Taggart was grinning at his wife like he was begging for the best Christmas present of all time.
She simply shook her head. “Absolutely not. I don’t trust you with acid. You would go overboard and get it all over, and I like your skin the way it is. You’re not careful enough when it comes to bodies. I blame it on your time in the Agency. You always had someone to back you up so you treated getting rid of bodies like playtime. That’s not the way it is in the mob. We had to be super careful or we got shipped to Siberia. You know what they don’t have in Siberia? Harrod’s. Or anything nice and beautiful and glamorous. So I wasn’t going. I learned. We’ve gotta burn the sucker. We go in undercover at a suburban funeral home and have our dear cousin John cremated. I can have the paperwork in a few hours. No funeral. He was pretty mean. Once we’ve spread his ashes all over the ocean there’s no way the cops can pin it on Nick.”
“God, I love your mind,” Taggart said, his arm sliding around his wife’s waist. “It’s almost as sexy as your boobs.”
“I promise I will dispose of the body once I have what I need for identification,” Nick replied quickly because the Taggarts had been known to lose sight of the mission when they started in on the romantic stuff. And their version of romance could include some odd, rather violent things. “I’ll have the situation as I know it ready for a meeting with the group in the morning. I’m going to settle Hayley into the empty room and then try to run the photographs through facial recognition.”
“Send the pictures to the Dallas office,” Taggart offered. “It’s morning there and Adam’s software is better than anything you have here. We’re still negotiating terms of use since that bastard son of a bitch is leaving to start up another company, but he’ll get the job done for now.”
“Because he’s a nice man and he’s not trying to screw you.” Charlotte’s eyes rolled as though this was a conversation they’d had more than once.
He’d heard that two of the Dallas operatives were leaving the company. Adam Miles and Jacob Dean were starting their own firm, one that specialized in missing persons. It wouldn’t exactly compete with McKay-Taggart, but rather complement the company. “I would be grateful for his help. I’m trying to keep her off the radar until I can figure out what’s happening.”
Knight nodded. “Get her settled in and then come to my office. I do want to talk to you privately. Now more than ever. I’m going up to make sure Penelope and Ollie don’t need anything.”
Charlotte sighed. “I suppose I’ll go check on our kiddos, too. Kayla stole them the minute we walked in. I should have helped her but it’s been a long time since we had an office full of dead bodies. The younger employees need to step up their game. I think I’ll get a snack on the way up. Do we know if the kitchen is open?”
It wasn’t a play night, but the kitchen would be open to anyone who wanted to cook. They tended to take turns, though they’d always given Owen an out since he could ruin toast. But supper wasn’t for another hour and they’d been planning on ordering in.
Hayley stepped up, letting her hand drop from his. “I will kiss your feet if you show me how to get to the kitchen. I haven’t had a thing but airplane food in days.”
Charlotte gave her a ready smile. “Of course. We’ll go see what we can find. Nick, you get the key to her room and I’ll find something to feed her. You actually look a bit like Des. Right around the eyes.”
Ian stepped up behind his wife. “I’ll go take care of our demons. You help out the girl. I think we’re going to hang out here for a few days. We owe Des a lot. Don’t worry about this. We’ll take care of you…do you have a name or are we calling you Des’s cousin? Think about it. Names can be meaningful. If you’ve got one of those crazy names, you might go with Des’s cousin. This is your shot.”
He was about to tell Tag to leave her alone when Hayley gave him a brilliant smile.