The Business of Strangers

by Kylie Brant

  First she determined that the rest of the upstairs was unoccupied. Her quick scan of the office showed her that not only was it empty, but her briefcase was gone. Her mouth abruptly dried out. The last thread of hope that her security system had somehow malfunctioned withered and died.

  From her bedroom she took a long body pillow off the bed, and then crept to the stairs. There was no way to avoid the squeak of floorboards as she descended. She didn’t even try. Gun steady, she crept down the steps, watching both sides at its base for signs of movement. There was nothing.

  She drew closer. Her heart was jackhammering in her chest, deafening her to any slight sounds the intruder might make. Still she watched, knowing a killer lay in wait at the bottom. She just needed one hint of the direction the attack would come from.

  She was four steps up now. Pausing, she scanned the darkness. There. A shadow had moved just a bit, as if readying to pounce. One more step. A breath caught and held.

  She leaped, throwing the pillow ahead of her. A dark figure jumped out, hands outstretched. It was only an instant before he realized his mistake, but it was time Ria used to her advantage. She hit the floor of the hallway, spun, catching him in the kidneys with a kick that had the force of her weight behind it.

  He stumbled but didn’t go down. He raised his arm and there was a slight thud as something lodged in the plaster beside her head. His gun had a silencer. She squeezed off two shots in quick succession, dived to the floor, rolling for cover in the next room.

  Emboldened, he ducked out from the corner he’d taken refuge in and fired again. A lamp above her head shattered.

  Raising the gun in her left hand, she shot two more times, hearing his grunt of pain when a bullet caught him in the arm, spinning him back against the wall. She heard something hit the floor. Pain exploded in her hand, and her nerveless fingers had opened, almost dropping the weapon before she scooped it up with her other hand.

  She sprang at the intruder, swiping viciously at his head with the butt of her gun. He dodged that blow, but wasn’t quick enough to evade the next one, which slammed into the bridge of his nose. Her knee drew up with savage intent, but missed its mark when the man lunged at her, grabbing her throat and swiveling a hip to bring them both crashing to the floor. They rolled, each battling for control of her gun. The man’s mask came off in the struggle, and they were locked close enough for Ria to recognize the man who had hired Jake to kill her.

  She landed on top of him, using her knee to ram him in the crotch. But despite her position she could feel herself losing ground. Her right hand was useless, and although he, too, was wounded, he had far more strength in his good arm than she did. Little by little, the gun was being wrested away from her.

  A voice split the darkness, interrupting the deadly battle. “Colton, I’m disappointed. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to screw me out of the job you hired me for.” A figure stepped into the room, too shadowy to make out at this distance.

  But his voice was instantly familiar. Jake stepped over to the combatants on the floor and pointed his Glock at her temple. “Drop the gun, Ria,” he advised. “Very carefully.”

  Fragments of ice splintered through her, along with a shattering sense of disbelief. How had Jake gotten in here?

  But on the heels of that thought came a feeling of betrayal so intense it clutched at her heart. Self-condemnation scorched a path through her as she searched his eyes, saw no mercy in their depths. It should come as no surprise that a man who’d sneaked beneath her defenses was shrewd enough to use that to his advantage.

  But he couldn’t betray a trust that hadn’t been given. The thought carved a cruel furrow through her chest. In the end, then, it wasn’t Jake who was to blame here, but Ria herself for giving him the weapon to use against her.

  His finger squeezed the trigger slightly. “Don’t make me say it again.”

  “Tarrance, what the hell are you doing here?” Hendricks seemed to finally find his voice.

  “The job I was hired for, remember? I had a week, Colton.” His tone was silky. “And I don’t appreciate you changing the rules without telling me.”

  “Then what the hell are you waiting for? Shoot her!”

  “Now?”

  As Jake seemed about to comply, Hendricks said hurriedly, “Wait, you idiot. Let me get up.”

  Jake reached down to grab the gun that was still clutched between them, jamming it in his waistband. Ria climbed slowly to her feet, backing away, her gaze going from one of them to the other. It would be the height of bitterness to die here like this, on the verge of discovering every answer she’d sought for six long years.

  But even more bitter would be dying at the hand of the one man who had filled a bit of the emptiness inside her and made her feel, at least for a little while, almost whole.

  “What are you waiting for?” Hendricks used the sleeve of his black turtleneck to swipe at the blood still coursing down his face. He sent a murderous look at Ria. “Kill her now.”

  “I’d prefer to be paid first.” Jake’s smile was lethal. “Finding you here, you can understand why I wouldn’t be too trusting.”

  The man hesitated. “I can have the money wired to your account right away. You’re mere hours away from your deadline. You can’t blame me for figuring you’d changed your mind.”

  “You figured a lot of things wrong.” With a sense of confusion, Ria saw him swing the gun in Hendricks’s direction. “Ria, come and get the other gun.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Hendricks lunged forward, stopped abruptly by Jake’s Glock.

  Jake smiled grimly. “Let’s leave my mother’s morals out of it. Why don’t you give me a reason to shoot? After what you’ve done to Ria, I wouldn’t be hard to convince.”

  Pain was fogging comprehension, but she stepped forward, took the extra gun he’d stuck in his waistband. Hendricks’s lip curled at her action. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. If you kill me there isn’t a corner of the earth far enough away to hide you.”

  “Actually, I do know,” Ria corrected him, still keeping a wary distance from Jake. A dizzying welter of relief mingled with a baffling sense of joy. Hendricks hadn’t been the only one convinced by Jake’s act a moment ago. “Colonel C. Albert Hendricks. But as a civilian you go by Chad Hendricks, don’t you? Special aide to Secretary of Defense Samson.”

  She stared into the face of the man who had cost her so much, and wondered at the lack of passion she felt. “If he’s the one you’ve been blackmailing for the last four years, something tells me he won’t be sorry to hear of your death.”

  Deputy Ralston pulled alongside the SUV at the side of the road, craned his neck to look inside. There was no one in the front seat, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was empty. He cruised on by, a tuneless whistle escaping his lips. He’d radioed in the plate number on his last pass along the road, and couldn’t say he was too surprised to find the Georgia license was listed to one Jake Tarrance.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d discovered one of Tarrance’s vehicles parked nearby. And he knew exactly how far it was from here to the Kingsley property. The bitch could come up with any excuse she wanted. No way was there a legitimate reason for her to keep meeting with the Columbus crime boss.

  And after tonight, no one would believe it even if she did have one.

  With a little chuckle, Ralston patted the digital camera on the seat next to him. A picture was worth a thousand words. And the shots he was going to get tonight would tell a helluva story.

  Hendricks’s eyes flickered, but he kept his attention focused on Ria. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?” The emotion she’d thought lacking a moment ago returned with jet force, churning and bubbling inside her. “You put together your own little team, didn’t you? Was it at Samson’s request, or was it your own idea? Each of us had to have been handpicked by you, because you’re the one linking us all together. What was our mission?
Who did we answer to?”

  “You still don’t know? That drug was almost as good as a bullet, then, wasn’t it?”

  One moment Jake was standing beside her, silent, and the next he’d holstered his gun and grabbed Hendricks by the shirt, slamming a fist into his face. The man fell to the floor, then sprang to his feet, only to be knocked down again. “Reminding us of what you did to her isn’t a good way to stay alive,” Jake advised, his tone deadly, as he stood over the man. With expert movements he patted him down, took a set of car keys from one pocket, and a slim dark plastic case from the other. A green light winked from the corner of it.

  “What’s this?”

  When the man remained silent, Jake went to the wall, flipped on a light switch. When Ria saw what he held in his hand, her blood turned glacial.

  “It’s a detonator.”

  “So you do remember some things from your past.” Hendricks smiled unpleasantly. One hand was clapped over his upper arm to staunch the flow of blood from the bullet wound there. “Perhaps you’ll also remember what the green light means. If the two of you want to stay alive, we’ll need to leave in the next ten minutes or so.”

  “He’s bluffing.” Jake’s eyes were narrowed. “He wouldn’t set up an explosive that he could get caught in, too.”

  “Maybe he’ll be more willing to supply some answers as the minutes count down.” Ria looked at the man. “How about it, Colonel? There’s nothing stopping Jake and me from walking out to safety and leaving you here.”

  “If you want answers, we’re all leaving.” The tone of command still came easily to the man’s voice. “I’ve documents that will explain everything, all put away someplace safe. Come on.” His tone dropped persuasively, his gaze on Ria. “Don’t you want to know what your real name is? Don’t you want to finally discover if you have family waiting somewhere?”

  He was not only a traitorous son of a bitch, he was a masterful psychological manipulator.

  “I already know my name.” She was aware of Jake’s head swiveling toward her in surprise. But she didn’t look at him. She didn’t take her eyes off Hendricks. “Karen Starkey. You’re the one who recommended me for military intelligence.” She saw the shock on his face. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you had a hand in my assignment to the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well.”

  Hendricks took a step toward her, his face twisted in a mask of hate. “Yes, I recommended you. Dammit, everything you became you owed to me. And what did you do? You betrayed your country and your team.”

  Adrenaline mixed with dread in her stomach. Here, then, would be the truth behind what she was. If this man could be believed. “Tell me what happened.”

  Headlights flickered up the lane, approaching her house. Hendrick’s attention was diverted as Jake walked to the window, pushed aside the curtain. “Someone from your department.”

  But her patience was at an end. “Tell me now, Hendricks.”

  “He’s getting out of the car,” Jake reported from the window.

  It was as if Jake’s words were the only catalyst needed to spur Hendricks into action. “The men were SOCOM, Special Operations Command. They were a specialized unit put together by Samson, upon my recommendation, answering only to him. The team was designed to carry out missions that were too politically risky to advocate for publicity. Unfortunately for all of us, the second mission required a woman.” His glare speared through her. “I thought of you.”

  “You’ve got a deputy coming up to the house,” Jake advised.

  Panic showed on Hendrick’s face. “Come with me and I’ll show you every bit of evidence you could want!” He got up off the floor despite the gun she still held on him. “You want money? I’ve got millions. Just leave now so we have a chance to spend it.”

  The sound of a boot on the front walk had the man leaping toward the doorway. Jake punched him, sent him sprawling.

  Comprehension slammed into Ria as she heard the first porch step creak. “He’s got the secondary device wired to the front door.” She ran toward Jake, shoved at him to get him moving. “The dining room window. Go!”

  They raced to the next room, where Jake grabbed a chair and shattered the glass. He all but threw Ria through the opening before diving after her. The fall knocked the air from her lungs, but he was dragging her up, pulling her after him.

  “Get away from the door,” she yelled at the deputy on the porch as they raced to put distance between them and the house. “Get away from the door. Don’t touch it—”

  The explosion ripped through the night, the force of the blast lifting her off her feet and sending her sailing through the air. There was an instant of terror before everything went black.

  Chapter 11

  Three months later

  The foamy waves eddied and swirled around Ria’s ankles as she walked barefoot down the sparsely populated stretch of white sand beach. Most of the tourists who’d chosen Costa Verde over Rio de Janeiro for its beauty and solitude would be dining now, or enjoying the resort’s nightly entertainment. On her rare time off, this was always her favorite part of the day, when the sun was bleeding into the pink and gold sky, preparing for its rapid descent beyond the horizon.

  With the cluster of hotels at her back, and her gaze turned toward the seam where ocean met sky, it was easy to forget that she’d be back on the job, handling hotel security, in a few short hours. Instead, her mind was filled with the latest news from the States.

  The American media was still filled with reports about former Secretary of Defense Samson. The beleaguered ex-secretary hadn’t stood a chance of withstanding the firestorm of speculation and criticism that had arisen in recent weeks. The death of his aide had drawn little national attention, but Hendricks’s passing hadn’t come without a steep cost to his boss.

  Ria had imagined the man had acquired a pretty thick cover-your-ass file in order to blackmail Samson about the Pegasus missions. So it hadn’t come as a real surprise to find that he’d left the proof with his lawyer, with orders to make it public upon his death. The first news report had aired just days after the explosion that had destroyed her home.

  For the first few weeks she’d haunted the newscasts, buying a TV and VCR so she could tape the twenty-four hour news channels. Most of the answers she’d still been missing had been gleaned from that coverage. But she’d never been able to shed the feeling that she was listening and reading about someone else.

  With her toe she traced a line in the sand, watched the water wash in and erase it in the next moment. Karen Starkey, she realized, had been like that line for much too long—all but eradicated by events beyond her control. The moment she’d refused to carry out that last assignment as ordered, she’d signed her own death warrant.

  The details had all been contained in Hendricks’s files. How for their sixth mission, Samson had sent them to Puerto de Ponce to assassinate the embattled prime minister, helping the guerillas affect a change in government that would then owe allegiance to the United States. But when they’d approached the island, she’d challenged the need for blowing up the prime minister’s home and killing his whole family. According to the documents, Starkey—she—had wanted to take Prime Minister LeLaue the next day, when he would be alone.

  There had been no place for dissension in the Pegasus ranks.

  One of her former teammates had injected her with the drug designed specifically for their unit, intending to spare her life, if to commit her to one without a past. But the team leader had insisted on following the protocol demanded by Samson: dissension meant death.

  And so Karen Starkey had died that day, the moment the needle had pricked her skin, the instant she’d dived into the waters of the deep Atlantic to escape her fate. The act had merely selected another fate, as unavoidable as the first.

  A few remaining gulls wheeled slowly against the eye-shattering sky, their raucous cries quieted for the day. But there was no quieting the questions that still lingered, despite the research she’d don
e into her life, and the conclusions she’d drawn.

  She thought Hendricks had most likely been the sniper who’d nearly killed her at her house. He would have had to have done some surveillance on her to realize she never entered the place through the front door. When he’d failed in his attempt, he’d searched for someone else to do the job.

  Because thoughts of Jake were too painful, she focused instead on what she’d discovered about her past.

  The orphan Karen Starkey had been as alone as had the real Rianna Kingsley. Her father had been an army general who had raised her by himself once her mother had died. Her childhood had been a checkerboard of military bases across Europe and Southeast Asia. General Arnold Starkey had died of a stroke a year after Karen had joined the army. Two years before she’d been tapped by Colonel Hendricks for military intelligence.

  She imagined she’d been proud to be requested to be part of Samson’s elite team. A team charged with carrying out top-secret assignments designed to make the world safer, while dodging international politics. Missions ordered by Samson himself, and even now being decried by the current president.

  In a strange way, the more she learned about the Pegasus team and its task of delivering Samson’s perception of justice and honor, the more grateful she became for her blank memory. She could still recall every feature of the men who’d come to kill her. How much more haunted would she be if she also remembered being trained by them; going into danger with them; trusting them at her back; being trusted to cover theirs?

  She’d once naively thought that the simple act of knowing would put to rest the gnawing questions that had driven her life for the last six years. Would begin to fill the void she’d carried within her for as long. And there was closure, of sorts, to discovering many of the answers. According to the files Hendricks kept, Samson had ordered the deaths of the rest of the team after two of them had come after her and failed. Even then he’d attempted to shield himself from any consequences. Now Hendricks himself was dead, along with Ralston, in the explosion. Samson was left to watch his career crumble, along with his presidential ambitions.