Kitabı oku: «Her Assassin For Hire», sayfa 2
“Why did you want me to stay, Zoey?” He wasn’t about to stand there and continue to be her whipping boy. “Is it just so you can tell me all the reasons we don’t work anymore?”
Some of her antagonism seemed to seep out as she dropped her shoulders and sighed. “I...” she began. “Actually, I was hoping you would give me the slug. You know. For marketing and such.” She stuck out her hand like a child asking for a quarter.
“Yeah, right.” He reached into his pocket where he had dropped the spent bullet. With it came his business card.
He stared at the card in his fingers, but before he could think about tucking it back into his pocket, Zoey reached out and took them both.
“I... Uh...” She paused, collecting herself. She pulled out her phone. “I guess I should thank you properly for what you did back there.”
She opened up her phone and punched in his number, then moved to her calendar like she was thinking about finding a time that would work for them to go out. On her schedule he could make out the words Therapy appointment set for tomorrow, and beneath was an address.
He looked up at her as she tapped through her schedule.
Was she really interested in going out with him? And was she really going to a therapist?
Did it have something to do with what had happened to them?
He was glad she was seeing someone, but Zoey had never been the kind to open up. Maybe she had changed since she had left him.
“Hey,” he said. “By the way, I’m sorry to hear about your sister. She was always wonderful to me. If I had it to do all over again, I would happily work by her side.”
Zoey stopped with her phone and looked up at him, staring at him like she was looking for some kind of meaning to what he’d just said. “Are you saying you want to come back to STEALTH?” Her voice was choked.
“No. It’s just... I meant...” Now, he was the one stammering. It wasn’t that he hadn’t missed his old job and the STEALTH family, but she didn’t want him there and they both knew it.
Why was any interaction between them so awkward?
“I meant that I just wish nothing had happened to Trish. We lost a good one with her.”
She nodded, but her gaze stayed locked on his face.
A blonde woman wove through the chairs over toward them, and Zoey finally looked away.
“I have to go, Eli.” She handed him back his card. “But maybe...someday, we could catch up.”
Catching up? Was she for real? They both knew after this moment it was unlikely they would ever see one another again.
And the thought, just like the woman who was walking away from him, threatened to rip out his heart.
Chapter Three
The ride back to the Widow Maker Ranch seemed even longer than she had remembered. She had driven through entire countries faster than she had driven across the state of Montana. The conference had gone well, and she was getting texts and alerts about new orders that were coming through the doors, but her mind kept circling back to Eli. Maybe it was his fault that the drive had seemed to take so long.
He had a way of making everything in her life more complicated. It was a good thing that she was putting hundreds of miles between them.
But it had been stupid of her to take his phone number. She had excised him ever so precisely from her life already, and now she had allowed him to slip back in. What was wrong with her?
She’d always stuck to the Band-Aid breakup model—one quick rip and throw it away. She was too old to make such a stupid mistake and let him reappear. His coming back would only open up all those old wounds. Not that everything had been bad between them. Some days had been incredible, while others—especially at the end—had been pure hell.
One time, when they had been in the belly of Italy, they had taken a contract on a set of twins. The brothers they had been hired to kill had been members of a notorious terrorist organization, in so deep that they had helped establish the group’s core documents and constitution. Thanks to their work, the group had grown to over five thousand international members and was responsible for the deaths of over two hundred civilians—men, women and one child.
During the strike, she and Eli had been forced to camp out under the stars while they waited for the brothers to return to their compound. While she had tracked the brothers’ phones, she and Eli had started out talking about throwaway things—the weather, locations and food preferences. After a few hours, however, something changed and they began talking about those things in life that make a person unique—family, beliefs, culture. He had even told her about growing up in rural Idaho, near Boise, where he had learned to shoot a BB gun and take care of his family’s bevy of animals.
The number one rule of their occupation as hit men was that everything was a secret. To open up, even the tiniest bit meant death.
But as they had talked, she forgot that rule. She was surprised to learn that he was such a sucker for animals. Maybe it was the thought of him holding a puppy, but whatever reservations she had about their growing intimacy quickly disappeared.
Everything between them changed. They became a team. And then that team mentality had taken another turn, and taking aim at killers and thieves had turned into taking aim at each other’s hearts.
She had been a fool to get involved with him. When she kissed him she had stripped her life of one of her best friends and one of just a select few that she had trusted.
The only other person she had trusted in the same way had been her sister. When Trish had been alive, Zoey had been able to turn to her, to talk to her a bit about the things that were going on in her life. Their lives were so unique and challenging that it took someone who had the same lifestyle—one of long nights in bunkers and days spent in the mud—to completely understand what it meant to fall in love.
As she pulled down the road that led to the ranch, her headlights bounced as she hit the obstacle course that had been carved into the dirt by the summer winds and fall freezes. The rhythmic back and forth motion of the car comforted her, knowing that the Widow Maker Ranch was protected by the grounds around it. With potholes and ruts this deep, few would venture down their road; the fewer the people, the better.
After Jarrod and Mindy’s run-in with the Gray Wolves’s—and their leader Bayural’s—hit man, they had been trying to stay out of the public eye. That was, until her reentry into society at the trade show. When it came to protecting the innocent, even if it meant coming out of hiding and putting herself in danger, Zoey had been willing to personally take the risk. Their clothing line would make the world a better, safer place. Women like Trish could use their tac line every day and just maybe Zoey could keep someone else from losing a sister.
She checked her rearview mirror one more time. There was a set of headlights behind her, and in the rural Montana countryside they made her nervous. Though she was sure she was overreacting, she pulled her car to the side of the road and let the person behind her pass by. The sedan was blue and had local plates, but she didn’t get a good look at the driver.
Not for the first time during the drive, she wished she hadn’t gone alone. Mindy had offered to come with her by flying over from Sweden, but Anya—Mindy and Jarrod’s adopted daughter—had come down with a cold and it hadn’t seemed right for her to leave the girl’s side.
Zoey picked up her phone, checking it one more time before she started driving again. As she clicked around her emails and screens, her contacts popped up and front and center was Eli’s information.
Was it a sign that she should call him?
It would be nice to hear his voice one more time—maybe it could provide even more closure and she could put her memories back in the past. She stared at the number and her finger trembled over the green phone icon.
If she called him, for a few moments, it could seem like she wasn’t completely alone. For those few precious minutes, it would be like she could go back in time and fall into the sweet world of flirty banter and the flutter of excitement that always came with hearing his voice.
No. There was no going back in time, no making things right, and no amount of forgiveness that could right her wrongs.
She clicked off her phone and turned back onto the road. She had to be careful not to lead an attacker back to their hideout.
As she slowed down to avoid another rut in the road, a deer careened out of the darkness, sprinting through her headlights and forcing her to slam on her brakes. The phone went flying in the darkness, flipping to the passenger’s side floorboard with a crunching sound. The screen flashed a rainbow shard of colors from the broken screen and died.
The deer stopped on the other side of the road and looked back at her, like it was some messenger of the fates. Bambi killing her phone was one hell of a sign that she was never supposed to get in touch with Eli.
About a half mile from the ranch, the car that had passed her was parked on the side of the road. It looked to be last year’s Chevy sedan. As she slowed down to look inside, she noticed that the driver was gone.
There wasn’t anything near the car, just pastures that led up to the ranch house. Beyond that was public forest. So why would they have pulled over here and gotten out of their car? She glanced around, but the light of her headlights illuminated only a few yards of grass peeking out from under their blanket of heavy snow.
Maybe the driver had to relieve themselves, or it was possible that they were getting high.
No one knew where her family was hiding. Her paranoia was nothing more than her guilt rearing its ugly head. It had been a risk by coming out of hiding for the trade show, but it wasn’t like she had announced to the world that she was going to be there. It had been quick, and she had tried to fly under the radar before the unveiling.
She couldn’t let her anxiety get out of control.
The car was just a car. Besides, her enemies wouldn’t be stupid enough to even give her a clue that they were coming.
She took one more look at the Chevy. Her brother’s favorite joke came to mind. “How do you find a Chevy owner? They’re always sitting in the repair shop.”
It was stupid and not really true, but it made her chuckle. More importantly, it relaxed her nerves.
Jarrod and Trevor were already at the main house, but Chad had gone to Sweden to iron things out with the members of the parliament who had finally come around and allowed them to start work at their manufacturing plants. Only a handful of people knew about Chad’s whereabouts. She hoped that their being split up would make it harder for any one of them to be located by the people who wanted them all dead. They had been smart and prudent.
We are safe, she told herself.
She peeked back at the car. Still empty.
It’s okay. It’s human nature to feed into fear-based paranoia, she thought, trying to put a name to her feelings in an attempt to get them under control.
There was a long-standing conversation that circulated throughout law enforcement and military personnel about the differences between paranoia and preparedness. It wasn’t crazy or over-the-top to think about the “what ifs” and to take steps to mitigate any dangers. What was crazy was believing that all the “what ifs” were real and out to destroy her.
She considered pulling over and running a scan for any unusual cell phone signals that could be found nearby. But she shrugged off the paranoia and just kept driving.
She sighed, finding more comfort in the vast control that was at her fingertips thanks to technology—her bread and butter.
When it came to tech, she was a badass.
Sitting up a little bit in her seat, she blew off the last bits of fear that wafted through her. The car was nothing.
As she pulled through the gates of the ranch, their newest acquisition, Sir Galahad of Lucktown also known as Sarge, their black gelding, stuck his head over the front fence. He whinnied in greeting as she got out of her car. He threw his head has he pranced around near the fence line.
“Heya, Sarge. Hoping for a cookie, are we?” she said to the horse.
He threw his head again and picked up his pace like he knew exactly what she had said.
“You are spoiled rotten.” She chuckled as she walked over to him and ran her hand down the blaze on his forehead. He relaxed under her hand, moving into her touch.
For a new horse, she and the animal had a surprisingly instant bond. It was as if the horse could pick up on the sadness of her losses and the pressure she felt in keeping the family safe.
The house seemed buttoned up and quiet, with the front curtains drawn and the living room light showing through. Everything seemed fine.
It was good to be back at the ranch.
She paused in front of the barn doors and stared up at the chipping white paint of the doorjambs and the hayloft door. The Widow Maker brand was emblazoned above the hayloft door, a broken heart and crooked slash. Oh, the irony. She had come here to move forward, to find safety and to be with the people she loved, but she was constantly reminded of the heartbreak she had suffered with Eli Wayne.
Sarge huffed from the pasture, reminding her that there was no time to waste when it came to getting him his nightly treats.
The barn door squeaked as she slid it partially open and stepped inside. The place smelled of earth, horse manure and hay. And, as odd at it may have seemed, she loved the scent. It was the aroma of a life well spent, but she wasn’t sure if it or the smell of gunpowder brought her more satisfaction.
When they had been young, she and her brothers had come to the Widow Maker to visit their cousin and her family until Gwen’s father had died in a haying accident. After that, everything at the ranch and in her cousin’s family had seemed to fall into disrepair until Gwen and her mother had finally decided to sell the ranch to Zoey and her brothers. The sale had been somewhat fortuitous. The opportunity had fallen into their laps at the right moment, just when they needed to get their heads down.
Though she had spent time there, it still felt like they were guests. She had hoped that by getting Sarge, it would help with some of that. If nothing else, she could have something that concretely tied her to the place by needing her almost as much as she needed it.
The lights were off in the barn, and she searched around in the dark for the light switch, wishing she had her cell phone to light it up.
It was childish, but one of the things she feared the most was darkness. Perhaps it reminded her too much of death, or perhaps it was just that illogical, primal instinct that evil hid there. There was no way that she would have been out here in the middle of the night looking for food if she hadn’t loved Sarge with all of her heart. Evil probably wasn’t lurking in the dark, but bears certainly could be.
The horse called to her from the pasture, making her chuckle. “I’m coming, I’m coming... Jeez, you’re such a typical dude, always wanting what you want when you want it.”
As she groped for the light switch one more time and missed, she gave up hopes of finding it. With the days getting shorter she was going to have to figure out a better system if she was going to be spending any amount of time out here in the barn.
Making her way to the corner of the bench by feel, she came to the end and reached down into what she knew was a bag of horse biscuits. She rolled a few around in her hands and stood up.
Her skin crawled as she stared out into the darkness. “So dark that you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face” wasn’t just an adage.
It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’m fine.
When was she ever going to get over this fear?
As she moved in the direction of the door, a draft brushed against her cheek.
It’s just the wind. Don’t be a chicken.
She clenched her eyes shut as her fingers trailed along the rough, splintered edge of the plywood top of the tool bench. She could feel every crack and split in the wood, every sense heightened by her blindness.
Unfortunately, they weren’t heightened enough.
A hand wrapped around her mouth from behind. Before she could even realize what was happening, her body hit the ground. She opened her mouth to speak, but only tasted oats and mud as her assailant pressed her face into the dirt floor.
The Gray Wolves had found them.
They were all going to die.
Grabbing her hands, they wrapped them behind her back high and tight, and drove their knee into her back, pinning her in place. She writhed, hoping to break their grip on her hands, but their grip only tightened—the human equivalent of quicksand.
“Where’s Chad?” The voice was tinny and robotic, as though the sound was being emitted from some type of voice-changing tech.
“Get off me,” she said, spitting out the debris from her mouth as she spoke.
The knee in her back drove deeper, making pain shoot down her legs. But her assailant said nothing.
She tried to look over her shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of something that could help her identify the person on top of her. However, as she moved, a hand grabbed and rolled her face downward. Their touch was rough, likely a man’s hand. But from his clean takedown, she doubted that he actually wanted to hurt her.
In this barn, without anyone knowing that she was home, this person could kill her and no one would be the wiser until tomorrow morning. But they were choosing to keep her alive. There was some hope to be found there, but minimal.
Perhaps they were only keeping her alive to question her.
“Where’s Chad?” the same robotic voice asked—definitely a phone app.
Why hadn’t she run her detection device? She was so stupid sometimes.
Why was it when it came to protecting the ones around her that she was so much more on the ball?
When was she going to learn that the trap of “it won’t happen to me” would get her every freaking time?
She squirmed under the person pinning her to the ground. They drove down their knee, making it hard for her to breathe. As she struggled, her body fought for sweet, sweet air. Her squirming turned to thrashing.
She had to fight. There was no way she could surrender. Not just her life was at stake. Her brothers, their fiancées and Anya...they all depended on her.
For a split second, her thoughts moved to Trish’s last moments. Had this been what she had been feeling? Incapacitated? Unable to save her own life?
The person holding her down grumbled, and the sound was deep and heavy...that of a man.
“Stop moving,” the man said, using the robotic voice app.
It was soul-wrenching that he had taken enough time to type his words out when she had been putting all of her strength into an attempt to break free. It was like she was a grasshopper in the hands of a sadistic boy, a boy holding her down and just watching in sick glee until he was ready to rip off her legs.
She was nothing to this person.
She was powerless.
Chapter Four
Tracking a phone wasn’t as hard as a person thought. Zoey knew that just as well as he did, which was probably why she’d turned off her phone. Eli parked his car in the last spot he had gotten her signal. Just down the road was an abandoned car. Had someone picked her up? Was this the car she had been riding in? Had the car been dropped here in a nearly abandoned location in Nowhere, Montana, to mask her real location?
She was smart. No doubt about it.
With the hit out on Chad, it was no wonder that she was taking extreme measures to protect herself and her family.
At the same time, though, did she even know about the hit? It had only come down from the top a matter of hours earlier. He had refused to take the contract, but that didn’t mean that other independent operatives hadn’t taken on the job.
He should have told her about the contract. He should have gone out of his way to help her. But at the same time, their relationship had been the reason he had been forced to leave his last posting. He couldn’t get wrapped up with her again.
Yet, here he was...parked on a nearly deserted country road trying to jump headfirst back into her life.
The mind and the heart were truly different beasts.
If he did find her, he would tell her. He had to tell her about the hit on Chad. He didn’t know who had taken out the contract on her brother, but from the word on the street, it sounded like they were at odds with a Turkish crime syndicate called the Gray Wolves. The Gray Wolves were responsible for the death of Trish, but why they had continued to come after the Martins was something only Zoey could answer for him.
He looked around for any obvious place she might have gone, but aside from the abandoned car, there was little to go on. He’d made a series of phone calls to friends of his in the FBI and CIA. No one had any knowledge about where Zoey or the rest of the Martins were. One of his friends said that the last known location for Chad had been somewhere in Cairo. However, that had been nearly three months ago and made that information about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane. He’d thanked them, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was wasting time.
He found himself drawn to her. It was inexplicable, but from the moment they had met, they had had this intrinsic bond. Sometimes it was almost as if they were twin flames, one being able to read the mind of the other, and often that meant that they could also feel for what the other was feeling... And right now, that was terror.
He had to find her. He had to get to her. Even if she never knew that he was there, he had to make sure that she was okay.
Parking his truck, he made his way over to the abandoned car and peered into the window. Inside, mounted on the dashboard, was a detection device. Over the last decade, these devices had become more and more accurate, even to the point where they could pick up exact locations, and pretty much anything tech based. They were a hit man’s best friend.
It was odd how many people felt safe behind the anonymity provided by their cell phones. The general public didn’t realize how easy it was to hack into any phone call, any phone, any tablet or computer. Anything that put off a signal could be used against them. In many ways, this new generation of tech defense was part of the reason that crimes had started to go down on a national level. For most criminals, technology was above them. Now, it was only highly educated, highly trained tech wizards who could get away with high-level crimes.
Gone were the days of the old-time bank robberies that involved nothing more than a gun and a face mask. Sure, a person could still do it, but the chances were that by the time the perpetrators made it back to their house, the police would already be there waiting for them.
That wasn’t to say there weren’t petty crimes that went unprosecuted. Hardly, but it wasn’t because of law enforcement’s inability to get information, rather, it was often that the local officers couldn’t afford to handle crimes that didn’t warrant it. For example, why spend work hours on a car break-in if an insurance company would pay out for the damage and loss, especially when there was someone else being stabbed three blocks away? Life was irreplaceable, and insurance was there for a reason.
It was part of the reason that, in most large cities, officers didn’t even bother responding to misdemeanors. As it stood, the last figure he had heard was that eighty-six percent of robberies went unsolved—and that figure was of those that were reported. He shook his head.
It was no wonder that he had a job. People needed men like him, men who would take a stand against the worst of the worst...a man who was sworn to protect, albeit privately funded by those willing to hire him.
Then again, it wasn’t all about the money or he wouldn’t have been standing out here in the dark looking for a woman he had sworn to write off again and again.
He stepped back and took a look over the Chevy Malibu. It appeared to be a new car, maybe last year’s model. He didn’t really track cars; he was more of a truck kind of guy. That was, all except the new Charger Hellcats. Damn, he could really go for one of those. Zero to sixty in 3.4 seconds. In all the right ways, it reminded him of Zoey. Power and strength under the hood, and a body to match, but danger and mayhem was quick on its heels.
He patted his stomach. If he wanted to have even half a chance with her, now or ever, he was going to have to do even more sit-ups.
For her, he wanted to be perfect. Everything she could possibly want and need in a man—at least the man she had said she wanted in the days and nights they had spent together in the field.
He thought about the last time he had seen her. It had been the night everything between them changed... A night from which there may well be no coming back, but damn it...after seeing her in Billings, and seeing her face every time he closed his damn eyes, maybe he had to try. Perhaps they couldn’t or wouldn’t end up together. His life hadn’t been anything like some well-scripted romance, but maybe he could set things right and make sure that everything in her life was okay and she had started to heal—especially since she’d once again lost someone she loved when Trish had died.
He knew how close she had been with Trish. She was the only person that Zoey had ever seemed herself with—besides him. With her sister, she opened up and laughed...really laughed...the kind that made stars dance in her eyes and her cheeks redden.
Zoey was always beautiful, but when she really let herself go and laughed...damn, she was like a sunbeam that could burn away the clouds of anger and loneliness that settled into the valley of his soul.
He found himself staring at the red flickering bar on the Protection 1207i device mounted on the dashboard.
It was possible that she had been tracking him as he was tracking her. He certainly wouldn’t have put it outside the range of possibility. And maybe once he had gotten close, she had called “No joy” and bugged out. She was and had always been clever like that, capable of keeping him just close enough and yet just far enough away to keep herself safe.
He peered into the back seat, hoping to see anything that would definitely tie the car to her. There was no hot pink bulletproof dress, no luggage or bags of freebies from a weekend spent at a conference. Hell, there wasn’t even a stray straw wrapper.
He pulled the plate number on his phone. It was registered to a shell company out of the Caymans.
Just as he thought. This was the car of someone who knew it was going to be dumped—someone who didn’t want the car to be tied to them in any way.
But when he’d worked for STEALTH, they didn’t use the Caymans—or Chevys. Either things were changing, or this wasn’t actually Zoey’s drop car.
His stomach clenched. If it wasn’t Zoey’s car, then it had to be someone else’s...someone who was also tracking her...and it wasn’t a wet-behind-the-ears mercenary. They weren’t great, leaving the car here and all, but they at least knew the right end of the gun. Which meant that his longtime friends were being hunted, and they were in trouble.
He had heard word of their comings and goings with the Gray Wolves in Turkey, and Trish, but he didn’t know the ins and outs of what exactly had happened. Operations like theirs were always kept pretty close to the vest. But, given the fallout, they had to have known that hell was coming in a wave of highly paid killers. Killers without honor—killers that were nothing like him.
He shone his flashlight at the tracks on the dirt road. There were only tire tracks heading down the road and away from the highway. If he acted fast, maybe he could still find whoever had dumped the car.
Hopefully Zoey’s phone going black had nothing to do with whoever had left this car.
His mind raced with all the things that could be happening to Zoey right now, ranging from kicking the merc’s ass all the way to her tied up and moments away from death somewhere.
He ran back to his truck and, with a spray of gravel, raced off in the direction the tracks were going. Though he had no idea where the road led, or who it would lead to, he had to move. He had to save Zoey. He had to keep her safe.
Using Google Maps, he pulled up a street image of the area around him as he tried, and failed, to weave around the ruts and potholes that littered the dirt road. As he drove, a thin dusting of white snow skittered down from the sky, forcing him to slow down. It was almost as if there were some higher power that wanted to stand in his way, making what he hoped wasn’t a life and death situation that much more perilous.
The maps showed a private ranch less than a mile up on his left. Beyond was US Forest Service—public lands.
Crap.
If someone had kidnapped her, or taken her hostage, they very well may have taken her up into the mountains that hugged the valley. If they were up there, and it was starting to snow, it was more than possible he would lose track of them. A matter of a few minutes and a hard snowfall could cover any evidence of her location.
He tried to talk himself down off the ledge of panic. She always complained that he had a way of blowing things out of proportion and being overly dramatic. He could have almost sworn that her favorite thing to say to him had been, “The sky isn’t always falling, Eli.”
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