He closed his eyes. He knew Niki was more than capable of taking care of herself, but that didn’t stop the male instinct to protect from rearing its head. He wanted to keep her safe, protected.
There was the team, though, and the job.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, keeping his voice low with an effort.
“Garcia is here. I just saw him,” she said.
Ty went cold.
“In Austin. Where are you?”
The sound of Ty’s deep voice sent a wave of relief through her so intense Niki leaned her forehead against the cool glass. Her knees felt weak.
The unease in his voice was reassuring…and worrying. She didn’t want him leaving, coming to her, she didn’t want him out in the open with Garcia on the loose. Ty, too, could be a target. Garcia might be watching, waiting for just that.
“I’m safe,” she said, “or as safe as I can be. I’m at the State Building, surrounded by cops, and on my way up to the AG’s office to make arrangements to get back to the conference center. Garcia was outside. I called Buck, warned him and Jake. They’re on their way to you.”
“Niki…” he said.
“I’m all right, Ty. If he’s still watching I don’t want to give him another target.” Please don’t come, she wanted to say. She didn’t know what Garcia did or didn’t already know about her, the team. “I just wanted to give you a heads up.”
There were words she wanted to say, but this wasn’t the time to say them. Not now.
It might never be the time.
“We’ll meet you back at the center,” he said.
“All right,” Niki said, blowing out a breath..
He paused. “Be careful,” he said.
“I will.”
Keeping an eye on her surroundings, her throat tight, Niki requested that the officer on duty contact Bill Graham to ask if he could see her.
Surprisingly it was Graham himself who met her at the elevator, holding out his hand for her to shake as she stepped out.
With a thin apologetic smile, she shook it and then fell in beside him as they walked to his office.
“Thank you for seeing me, although I’m afraid I have bad news. You’re very likely Daniel Garcia’s target.”
It was too much of a coincidence that Garcia was there, that this was where he’d chosen to make his statement. And he hadn’t denied Graham was the target.
Graham’s smile faltered.
“I’m sorry, so very sorry,” Niki said. “Do you have a computer where I can download some images? It’s important.”
Grimly, he said, “This way.”
He led the way to his office.
She downloaded the images from her phone, cropped and sharpened them as much as was possible with the software available.
“Mr. Graham meet Daniel Garcia,” she said, gesturing at the screen.
Bill Graham studied the images. “Good-looking in a bland kind of way. Not ugly. No distinguishing features, nothing that would draw attention. No moles, scars, tattoos.”
He went silent a moment, and Niki knew he’d suddenly become aware of the background.
“Where did you take these?”
“On the street below,” Niki said. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
Looking at the face in the pictures, Graham commented, “He doesn’t look so dangerous.”
“Behind you with a concealed knife? A block away with a high-powered rifle? Or just outside the parking garage with a Glock as you pull out? He’s a crack shot. Two bullets, a double tap, and…” She gestured, the age-old two-fingered gesture at his temple. Pow pow.
Her words clearly disturbed him. He was a target. It just wouldn’t seem real to him, and Niki understood that.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he’s ready to move yet, but he’s close enough to take the risk of showing himself to me. Mr. Graham, it might be a good idea to send your wife and children away on vacation for a few weeks.”
There were pictures on his desk of his elegant wife with a college age girl and a youngish man only a few years younger than herself.
He nodded. “I’ll have copies of these made, distributed.”
Niki nodded, then hesitated a moment.
“You might want to distribute them to your staff and the staff in the building, to see if anyone has seen him.”
Bill Graham looked at her.
Niki could see that everything in him wanted to reject the whole idea, but he couldn’t and they both knew it.
She met his gaze. “It’s possible. He’d want to see how close he could get. It would have appeared legitimate.”
Wheelieing before the cops. Yes, he would have done it. She could almost see him walking through the building, a boyish looking man, attractive, but not threatening.
“I’d like to go back to the conference center,” Niki said, “get together with our people, but I don’t want to lead him there. Would it be possible to arrange a covert way out of the building and could you have someone go over the car I used for tracking devices and explosives? Here are the keys.”
“You think he might have rigged your car?”
Niki sighed. “I don’t know. He came after me in Prague when he had no reason to do so. Maybe it was punishment for interfering, costing him the contract. Maybe it was ego or spite, or maybe it was something else, but it made no sense for him to take the risk. So it was personal. I just don’t want to take any chances, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt. No one can cover all the possibilities, but I have to try to cover as many as I can.”
Buck and Jake Aragon waited for Ty outside the conference room when the meeting ended, Jake tipping his head respectfully to Tom Blanchard as he went by.
“Did you hear from Niki?” Buck asked as Ty walked out in Blanchard’s wake.
Ty nodded as they strode down the hall. “Have you heard anything else?”
“Nothing since Niki warned us, asked us to cover your back,” Buck said.
For a moment, Ty just stared at him. “Cover my back? What about hers?”
Buck shook his head.
All three were silent on the ride back to the conference center, taking evasive maneuvers even as Ty willed a phone to ring, his, or Buck’s…willing Niki to call. The trip seemed interminable, but it really wasn’t that long. Time still seemed to crawl.
Left to their own devices in the absence of the others, Alpha team had ordered Chinese. The smell of it filled the common room, but a glance at Buck and Jake confirmed that neither of them was hungry.
A baseball game was on the television and a heated discussion was going on about the last play.
“Where’s Niki?” Mitch asked, shoveling lo mein into his mouth from a carton with chopsticks as they entered.
“Good question,” Ty said, grimly.
Seeing his expression, Mitch put down the chopsticks. He turned in his chair to face them.
“What’s going on?”
“Garcia is here. Niki saw him downtown. Where the hell is she?” Ty said.
It was an effort not to pace. He didn’t want to show, didn’t want to admit how worried he was as it grew later and later. Why hadn’t she called? What had happened?
The relief when the door opened and Niki walked in was short-lived.
Laughing, Mitch turned and said, “Well, it’s about time you showed up. We’d have ordered you something…”
His voice trailed off as he saw her expression.
“Where have you been?” Ty demanded.
Then he took another, closer, look at her face, too pale and set, too controlled, her eyes behind the glasses were watchful and wary. They met his, closed briefly with relief. That was all it took.
The first thing Niki saw was him. She heard the concern in his voice, as well as the fear, hidden beneath the anger.
“I took the long way around,” she said. “In case of a tail. I would have called, but I was too busy being certain I wasn’t followed.”
“Are you all right?” Ty asked.<
br />
Taking a breath, she let out in a gusty sigh, looked at him and nodded.
“I’ve got something to show you,” she said quietly and tossed a series of pictures across the table.
Ty stayed close. She glanced back over her shoulder at him and a small tight smile curved her mouth.
“This,” Niki said, “is Daniel Garcia.”
Her heart ached although she didn’t know why.
A dozen eyes looked at her.
“The assassin?” Jake said. “I thought you said there weren’t any pictures of him.”
Niki took a breath. “There are now.”
Studying the pictures, gauging distances, Ty’s chest grew tight. Garcia had been close. That she’d had the presence of mind to take pictures, knowing Garcia, knowing what Garcia was… What he’d done to her once before. That he’d nearly killed her…
“How close was he?”
The thought chilled him.
Looking up at him over her shoulder, Niki heard a strange note in Ty’s voice. She looked at him and all the breath went out of her. She’d known he cared, but not how much.
“Fifty feet, less… This time I was prepared, Ty, this time I saw him coming.”
That close. Close enough to kill. If Garcia had wanted her to be dead, she would have been and they both knew it. Ty’s breath caught. Niki. His hand tightened around her waist. He hadn’t even realized it was there.
“He doesn’t look like much,” Brad said, drawing one of the pictures toward him.
“It’s an easy mistake to make. He doesn’t, and it’s his best camouflage. Most people make that same mistake, and pay for it with their lives,” Niki said. “You have to remember he survived the cartels, survived and surpassed them. Even so, that’s not how he works. Machismo isn’t a problem for him. He’s an assassin. He has no problem stabbing you in the back. In fact, he prefers it. You never see it coming. And that’s what makes him so dangerous.”
She looked at each of them and then finally, Ty.
“The A.G. is the target,” she added. “I’m certain of it. He’s already been informed.”
“You’re sure?” Ty asked, meeting her gaze.
“I think I’ve finally got a sense of him, of Garcia. Wasn’t it you, Mitch, who said don’t wheelie in front of the crowd? Garcia is cocky, confident, maybe too confident. Showing himself to me, the one person who can identify him. He’s doing a wheelie in front of the crowd, right outside his target’s office, in front of all the unknowing cops doing their jobs screening people inside. Showing off, despite the risk.”
Her stomach churned at the thought of Garcia’s final words. His threat. He would do it, she knew it. And it couldn’t matter. Not now.
It was catching up with her, though, the fear, the memories. She locked it down, desperately.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice sounding calm to her own ears, and, she hoped, to theirs. “I’ll be back.”
She walked down the hall steadily, calmly, even as bile gathered in the back of her throat.
Memories battered her, of trying to breathe, the feel of her breath bubbling in her chest. The taste of blood in her mouth. Her blood. He’d been so close. The fear she’d kept at bay suddenly rose up to nearly overwhelm her. She made it to the bathroom, safely behind closed doors, and then lost it. Bracing herself on the toilet tank and the sink, she clung to the cool porcelain as her stomach emptied.
Most of it was bile, she’d forgotten to eat lunch again, but she’d been a bit distracted.
She fought back the tears as she rinsed her mouth, once, then again, trembling so badly she spilled half the mouthwash each time, too weak to do anything but hold herself in place as the fear took her. She just needed to get the taste of the sickness out of her mouth. Her own face in the mirror looked hollow-eyed, too pale.
Ty saw something in Niki’s face, something in the eyes behind the glasses, something barely held in check as she turned away and walked down the hall. Something that hurt. Her expression had been stark, tightly controlled.
“Buck, get a copy of that picture out to everyone, Byron, DEA, CIA, everyone. Mitch, you and the team take a walk around the perimeter. Set guards. From now on we take no chances. No one goes anywhere alone.”
Jake said, “I’ll give them a hand with that.”
“You do that,” Ty said and went after Niki.
He found her in the bathroom, braced against the sink. She’d clearly been ill.
“Niki,” he said.
All Niki could do was turn her head, to find Ty standing in the doorway. She looked away, tried to rein in her emotions.
“Talk to me,” Ty said.
She couldn’t meet his eyes, she was shaking, panting, as she wrestled with the fear.
“I didn’t even feel the first one,” Niki said, finally looking at him. She swallowed hard. “I didn’t even know he’d done it until it was too late. He put his arm around me as if he was an old friend. It was a good act. No one knew anything was wrong. He looked into my eyes to watch, to see the moment when I knew…” Her breath came short. “When I felt the blade pierce me again… He watched my eyes to see the moment when I knew I was dying.”
She remembered trying to breathe and then coughing as her lungs filled. The blood on Garcia’s face. Her blood, spattered there. Garcia had smiled as he reached into a pocket for a handkerchief to wipe it away. He’d tucked the handkerchief back into the same pocket.
“He watched as the blade retracted… I tried to fight him, but I couldn’t breathe.”
The horror of it was in her eyes. She wasn’t alone in that. Ty felt sick. He knew nightmares like that as well.
In two steps, he had her, pulled her into his arms. He held her, just held her, his hand curled around her head to cradle it against his chest.
A long shuddering sigh escaped her as Niki laid her head against Ty’s strong chest, taking long calming breaths. Beneath her ear she could hear the steady beat of his heart. It was a comforting sound. Just the scent of him eased her, soothed her. She didn’t know how to act, how to react, to comfort. All she wanted to do was to lean into him, feel his arms around her and take refuge there. She’d never known she wanted that, had thought it had been drilled out of her.
“He kissed me, Ty,” she said, softly, her forehead against his chest. “Looking into my eyes, watching me die, he kissed me. Then he just walked away. Left me standing there in the square, dying.”
She remembered her knees going weak, trying to breathe…little sparkles in her vision as she’d watched him go, gasping for air…the sound of her breath bubbling in her chest.
Her eyes met his and what Niki saw there nearly shattered her.
It was too easy for Ty to picture. He closed his eyes as his jaw went tight. Rage darkened his vision. If he got the chance, he was going to kill the sonovabitch.
Cupping his hand around her cheek, he tipped her head back with his thumb beneath her chin so she would have to look up at him again. Look into his eyes.
He looked down at her.
So beautiful. He brushed that same thumb across her lower lip, across the scar there where at some time someone had split it.
Slowly, he lowered his mouth to hers, taking it gently, sweetly, to chase away the memory of that other kiss. Her breath caught as she reached up to touch his face, to trace his cheekbone with trembling fingers.
Ty held her tightly, his cheek pressed against her soft hair, her body warm in his arms.
A quiver went through her.
Her cell phone rang.
Ty wanted to tell her to let it go, but it was her NIO issued cell. The call was important, and they both knew it.
With an effort, Niki took a breath, pulled herself together, and straightened a little, looking at Ty. He kept his arm around her.
She managed a smile.
Her voice sounded remarkably steady when she answered.
“Tallent,” she said, turning on the speakerphone.
“Agent Tallent?” the voi
ce on the other end said. “The Attorney General asked me to give you the results of the inspection of your vehicle…”
Both she and Ty went still. Niki lifted her eyes to his, her mouth thinned.
“We found a tracking device on it and enough C4 to have wiped out half a city block in the gas tank and under parts of the car.”
Swearing under his breath, Ty tightened his arms around her.
“Thank you for calling.” Niki said.
“No problem.”
“He wanted to be sure of you,” Ty said.
Niki shook her head. “He took a chance, just in case, but he didn’t really think I would panic. What he did want was for me, for us, to know what he could do. I don’t know how much he knows, but he knows I never would have let him get close to you, to any of you.”
If she’d studied him, it was likely he’d studied her as well, of that she was certain.
Ty heard a fierce protectiveness in her voice, a determination to keep the people that mattered to her safe.
Including him. She’d made sure Buck and Jake were okay and then sent them to cover his back, not her own.
She looked up at him, her eyes behind the yellow lenses resolute.
Beautiful.
Ty stroked the back of his fingers down one smooth cheek.
Someone knocked at the bedroom door.
“Ty,” Buck said, “Niki. Byron got the pictures, he wants to talk to us, conference call.”
Closing his eyes, Ty nodded. “We’re coming.”
He looked at Niki.
She smiled a little. “I’m all right.” Reaching up, she touched his cheek. “Thank you,” she said.
Looking down, he lowered his mouth to hers again, just for a moment, when there was no one to see, to question. What they would do next, where this was going, he didn’t know, but he’d take what time he could.
Everyone was sitting where they’d been except Brad and Andy. The boxes of Chinese were still sitting out and the air was redolent with General Tzo’s chicken.
“Perimeter’s clear,” Mitch said. “Brad and Andy took guard duty.”
As they walked into center of the room Ty said, “We’re all here, Byron.”
“Fill me in,” Byron said, over the speakerphone.
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