Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel

by Stephanie Tyler

  Now she simply looked terrified … of him. And she damned well should be, so why the hell did it bother him so much?

  He closed the distance between them with two long strides and took the gun from her hand. “Sorry, darling, you didn’t get your wish tonight.” The Jeep and his life remained intact and she took a step back, away from him. He grabbed her, pulling her body close to his. “Are you in witness protection?”

  She didn’t respond—wasn’t supposed to, he knew, and he loosened his grip on her just a little. “I’m going to assume you are, especially because of the nature of the shooting. You should call your handler.”

  She didn’t answer that either, her big brown eyes boring into his, like she was trying to read his mind and figure out what he’d do to her now.

  “Is there any other family you need to contact?” he asked, and she shook her head slowly without breaking their gaze.

  “No family left,” she said quietly.

  He tore his eyes from hers, glanced toward Reid, whom he knew was standing in the doorway of the house.

  Kell had asked the same question of Reid many years earlier, when Reid was recovering from his concussion after the car accident and Kell stayed up with him.

  Where’s your family?

  Reid had just shaken his head in a decidedly I don’t want to talk about it fashion, but that didn’t mean Kell gave up. No, he’d gone through the foster mother’s cabinet, gleaned what information he could and then did his research at the local library.

  Some days Kell wished he hadn’t, because discovering Reid had lost his entire family in a house fire caused by a careless cigarette his mother had fallen asleep with—and that it had been a happy family—was heartbreaking. But it was better that he knew, because his friend’s tendency to self-destruct was then something Kell could pull him back from most of the time.

  Self-destruction had given way to survivor’s guilt. What happened last year with four of their Delta team getting captured—Reid included—had nearly sent all of them over the edge. But Reid, who had missed being massacred for the second time in his life because he was unconscious … well, you could look at it as irony, or wonder if Reid had his very own guardian angel.

  “If I do, that guardian angel is one sick motherfucker,” Reid would mutter when Kell talked about his theories.

  Kell had been on another mission, but still had to live with the fact that it had ultimately been his fault the team had gotten captured—the captors had been looking to take their revenge on him, and when they couldn’t, they did the next best thing.

  Maybe Reid was right about the sick motherfucker of a guardian angel.

  “Why tell me all this?” he asked her finally.

  She swallowed, hard, looked like she wanted to pull away from his grip, but she didn’t. “You’re an American mercenary too—I figure, if you were going to kill me, you already would have. The worst you can do is turn me over to the other men … and I’ll find a way to kill you or myself before I let that happen.”

  Teddie listened to the low voices, unable to make out more than a few words here and there. Frustrated, she stared at the fan overhead that pushed the air lazily around the room in warm swirls that brushed the hair lightly from her face.

  Kell had led her into the small house—clean, sparsely furnished—and into the sole bedroom. He’d handcuffed her to the bed with a long enough chain so she could move from side to side, sit up even, but she couldn’t go farther than that. The bed was old, low to the ground, little more than a mattress attached to a wood board that would no doubt crack if she applied the right pressure. That would bring the men in the other room running, so no point in that.

  Her stomach rumbled, and she wondered what they’d do to her. Turn her in to the marshals, maybe, if they believed the marshals weren’t compromised.

  Did they believe anything she’d said?

  She turned on her side and curled up in the fetal position, stared at the wall, which was a faded lime color. Heard Kell’s voice raise a little and then lower again.

  Kell.

  She was unable to shake the feeling of his body against hers. The fact that she could feel, that her belly actually tightened in a good way in response to his cock, hard against her, thrilled her in a way she never thought possible.

  Whether he was turned on by the fact that she would’ve killed him had the gun been loaded or that he remained very much alive, she didn’t know or care.

  She rubbed her palms together, could still feel the weight of the gun in them, could hear the click as she pulled the trigger like she’d been taught to—shoot to kill and don’t hesitate—her second shot of the night.

  You would’ve killed him. And that realization made the tears form although she refused to let them fall. What she’d been forced to become … she didn’t recognize herself when she looked in the mirror and that scared her.

  But she’d shot at those men who’d taken her family, and for that, there was no guilt at all.

  Kell and Reid had stopped talking—apart from the whoosh of the fan, there was only silence.

  She would always remember the silence. It shouldn’t have been so silent … because silence meant peace, and this was a long stretch of nothing but pure black despair. If she closed her eyes, she would see the images from that night playing out before her like a movie. She saw them, knives on their belts. Stealth and danger, sent to murder the diplomat and his family, and she’d been the lucky one, hidden away in the loft, reading, as she liked to do late at night, the light from outside enough for her to see without turning on lights and disturbing anyone.

  The massacre that happened below her would never be fully erased from her mind. When she’d come out of hiding, pulled from the loft by the local police, she’d seen her family, their throats slit, lifeless eyes. They were all gone … and she was alone.

  She’d been told that mercenaries killed her family, dogs of war who killed for cash, working for the highest bidder. American mercs killing American diplomats for reasons yet unknown, although she’d known the reasons. She’d just kept them to herself, because to reveal what she knew then would’ve put her in even more danger.

  Her father had always taken the jobs in high-risk areas. Even after he married and had her, he hadn’t seen a reason to stop, felt she needed to grow up knowing what a life of service was.

  Her mother died of breast cancer when Teddie was seventeen; she’d stayed with her father for a month, then left to start college in the States. When she reluctantly returned to Jakarta for summer break, she discovered her father had met someone … and that she made him happy.

  Teddie had been glad she had three more years of school left, and after that, she didn’t move back in with her father, just returned for vacations every now and again when she could grab some time away from work.

  Her work as a photographer and videographer, capturing images of children in poverty in order to draw attention to their plight and working with UN goodwill ambassadors tied closely into her father’s idea of service, which was deeply ingrained in her.

  Her work that was now over for the foreseeable future.

  For the past year, there was nothing but sadness and fear, although she preferred that to the numbness that overtook her in the beginning. That all-pervasive feeling of nothingness was like falling into a deep pit with no way out except to crawl upward through the dark, clawing and scratching.

  She’d put her cameras away, but still, she packed them up and took them with her every time she moved. She hadn’t brought herself to use the equipment again, for fear of capturing something bad on film that would ultimately end her life.

  As scared as she was of living, she was far more scared of dying.

  You couldn’t have known.

  But she had. She hadn’t snapped photos of those men in the marketplace for any other reason except she’d had a feeling about them, nestled deep in her gut. And she’d ignored it.

  The afternoon of the murders, her father had
told her he suspected he was being set up, and that night the men from the market had broken into their home and killed her father, her stepmother and her two young half sisters.

  The local police figured the staff was in on it. They almost didn’t believe her when she insisted that Americans had committed the crime. After she showed them the photos she’d taken, the investigation—and her life—came to a standstill.

  The marshals wouldn’t answer her questions. They offered her sanctuary, which she accepted after a car bomb exploded at the funeral, another attempt on her life.

  She hadn’t seen the mercenaries again until last night, when they’d come into the restaurant where she was meeting Samuel, who’d been her father’s best friend, a man retired from the diplomatic community who claimed he had some answers. She’d knowingly put her life at risk for the meeting, had been the one to set it up, not telling her handler and sneaking out of Texas and across the border.

  What she hadn’t told Kell earlier was that she’d shot two men tonight. After the mercenaries tried to corner her, she knew she’d been set up by Samuel and so she’d grabbed him and held her gun to his neck, ignoring the screams of the restaurant patrons. She’d tried to back out of the place, got close to an exit, pushed Samuel forward and shot at his arm for a distraction. Then she’d fired a round at a man she recognized from the marketplace, the murders, and he’d gone down. During the ensuing chaos, she ran out the door and into an alley, leaving behind the sounds of yelling and the sirens.

  She could’ve waited for the police, except she still didn’t know whom to trust. She just needed to get to the border, and then maybe she could look into contacting some of her father’s old contacts, the ones the marshals had cut her off from, for her safety and theirs.

  She’d run for miles and miles. Had grabbed an old bicycle for part of the journey but she’d blown out a tire and had to abandon it.

  “Teddie.”

  Kell’s voice. She hadn’t heard footsteps or even the door open, but when she turned he was standing in the doorway, holding a first-aid kit, a soda and what looked like a sandwich.

  She sat up and he came forward and put everything down on the bed. Took one of her wrists and released it from its cuff so she had more freedom. He’d showered recently—his hair was damp and he smelled like soap. The black T-shirt he wore stretched across his chest, and although he wasn’t broad, he was in shape—she’d known as much when he carried her like she weighed nothing.

  At least he was staring back at her, so she didn’t feel like such a damned fool. “What is it?”

  “I need to clean that wound better. Then you can eat and get some sleep.”

  She didn’t say anything, just turned her back to him and tugged the denim shirt off her shoulder and Kell pushed aside the tank top strap gently.

  “This will burn some.”

  “Good, let it.” Because it couldn’t be any worse than the pain of constantly being alone in witness protection.

  He put the cold cotton soaked in peroxide on the wound and she grit her teeth and let him do what he needed to. She hadn’t even felt the shot at first—it wasn’t until the sticky blood ran hot down her back that she realized the men had grazed her with one of their many shots.

  She’d been lucky—and fast.

  “It could’ve been a lot worse,” he told her now, his breath warm against the back of her neck, his hands skilled as they worked.

  After about five minutes, he put a bandage on the wound, pulled the tank top strap back up and she tugged her shirt over her shoulder.

  “That should hold for now. I’ll give you a shot of antibiotics later. I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”

  She turned to face him where he sat on the bed behind her. “You’re a doctor now?”

  “No.” His dark eyes bore into hers. “You would’ve killed me without a second thought.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who taught you to do that?”

  “To shoot—or to have no feelings?”

  “Both.”

  How could she answer that when she didn’t know herself? “I just need to get to the border.” She sounded like a broken record and she didn’t care.

  “I know.”

  “Why won’t you take me?”

  “Because the men who are after you will be looking for you at the border. When they don’t find you there, they’ll backtrack until they do.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ll take care of them.”

  “And that makes you a good man?”

  “I never said I was a good man, Teddie.”

  No, he hadn’t. But the look in his eyes when he spoke, she noted regret there … and something else she couldn’t quite place. And since she didn’t know what to say, she didn’t say anything at all.

  At some point while Kell had been in the other room with Teddie, Reid had gone through her bag more thoroughly and if Kell hadn’t been a hundred percent sure about the men in the truck being mercs, he was now.

  The picture Reid handed him had been taken in a crowded marketplace—Khartoum was written on the back of the photo—and he recognized the man who’d been driving the truck and looking for Teddie, although he wasn’t facing the camera straight-on, plus two other men who were clearly trying to blend into the crowd and not doing so successfully enough to fool the photographer.

  “She’s good,” Kell noted.

  Reid nodded in agreement, because it took a lot to finger operatives in a crowd. “They were watching her. Seems odd that they’d follow her back to the diplomat’s house and kill everyone but her. Where was she hiding?”

  “I didn’t get that far with her.”

  Normally, that would be an easy opening for Reid, but he didn’t take the bait. Instead, he told Kell, “I called Vivi—she’s running intel on Teddie’s family,” his own voice tight and Kell didn’t have time to ask if he was all right because that sixth sense that had saved his ass more times than he cared to count was screaming at him.

  At Reid too, because when Kell said, “Hit the lights,” Reid was already in the process of doing so, even in Teddie’s room, telling her to sit tight and not make a sound.

  Kell swore he heard a low whimper from her and made a note to get the remaining cuff off her fast. Nothing worse than being scared and in the dark and tied down.

  No reason for her to feel that helpless ever again.

  Even if she had tried to kill him.

  He stood by the window, Reid on the other side of the room, checking the back—the road ran both ways. No one was there. Not yet anyway, but their instincts were both sharp and never to be ignored.

  Delta didn’t need to teach either man disguises, deception and diversions, but they sure helped to hone the skills.

  While Kell had never grown more than an appreciation for running cons himself, he could spot them a mile away. Remaining silent was the most important part of any con, because listening and watching told you everything you needed to know about any target. And Reid had bounced around the foster care system enough to pick up his own tricks of pickpocketing, safecracking and more.

  “It’s not Cruz’s or Rivera’s men—they’re not that organized,” Reid said. “Which can only mean one thing.”

  “If it’s the guys who are after Teddie, they could’ve tailed us to Rivera’s. And seen what we did.”

  “I didn’t feel anyone watching,” Kell said.

  “We weren’t exactly focused on that.”

  “I’ll send the picture to Vivi—maybe she can do some face recognition and see if these guys are former military. I’d bet my life at least one of them is.”

  And if that was true, they’d also been trained in the art of stealth and tracking. Kell and Reid had been covert in their comings and goings, but that didn’t mean neighbors didn’t spot them—and turn them in for cash or drugs. “Reid, we’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” he said as the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on edge.

  “I was think
ing the same thing,” Reid muttered, and he’d been gathering their things even as Kell had been looking at the photo, which he now pocketed. “I’ll get us a better car once we disappear into the city.”

  Going back into the heart of Juarez was their best bet for the moment—crowded as hell, it would be hard for the mercs to pull their shit there without causing a major ruckus. Hard, but not impossible—for right now, those were the best odds they could get.

  He went back into Teddie’s room and didn’t need to feel the breeze from the easily opened and somehow goddamned noiseless window to know she’d gotten out. He’d left one of Teddie’s wrists cuffed so she could eat, and at first he thought she’d escaped by working it down from the headboard and taking the entire chain with her.

  Then he saw the chain and the cuffs on the floor. “She’s gone.”

  “How’d she get the key?” Reid asked even as Kell checked his cargoes.

  “She pickpocketed me,” he said in disbelief.

  “I knew I liked her. But man, she is throwing you off your game.”

  “And what, you’re not a part of this?”

  “Not the way you two look at each other. Come on.” Reid had both their bags and they headed out the back to the Jeep, Kell stopping by the outside of the open window.

  He saw her footsteps—they led toward the back road and she couldn’t have gotten all that far. With their bags thrown into the rear seat, rifles across their laps, Reid moved the car in near silence, lights off, he and Kell both using NVs to search for both her and any unwanted followers.

  Half a mile down the road, he saw her. She was running at top speed and he suspected she’d do so for as long as she needed to. Part of him wanted to let her go—she wasn’t truly his problem and she brought so fucking many with her.

  But if mercs were really after her to finish what they’d started with her family … fuck, he couldn’t let that happen.

  “Slow down—I’ll grab her.” Kell was out of the Jeep before Reid stopped completely, his feet moving silently along the dirt as he tailed her without the aid of his NVs, just smelling for her shampoo and listening for the slap of her sneakers and the heaviness of her breathing.