Aegis Security 03 - Extreme Measures (2 page)

Nausea rolled through his stomach. He dropped onto his back again, stared up at the Huey’s ceiling, and worked not to lose his dinner. Somehow, he clawed himself free of his helmet, dropped it on the floor, and focused simply on sucking air into his suddenly too-small lungs. It took several seconds before he realized someone was screaming his name over the whir of the blades. His gaze shifted to the side where Ryder held a sat phone out to him.

“Says they want to talk to you!”

Zane took the phone and pressed it to his ear while Stone cut through his fatigues and started work on his leg.

“I need a tourniquet!” Stone yelled.

Hands moved in unison. Blood spurted. Someone tied a strip of cloth or rubber—or, holy
fuck
, that felt like metal—across his thigh. Pain returned with the force of a Mack truck moving at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Zane gritted his teeth to keep from screaming just as the familiar voice said, “Sawyer? You survived?”

He knew that voice. He recognized the breathy cadence and the use of his CIA alias. But more than anything he understood the sound of victory.

Juliet.

In that second, he knew. He knew just who’d fucked their mission and why.

“How—?”

“How is not important.” Her voice hardened. “It’s the why you should really be concerned with. But then, you know the why, don’t you?”

He pushed up to sitting, even though Stone pressed against his shoulder with one bloody hand and hollered at him to lie down. The pain in his leg morphed to a blinding red, which erupted behind his eyes. “When I find you—”

“You won’t. I trained with the best, and I never lose.” He could almost see those amber eyes of hers when she was in black ops mode, hard and cold and as soulless as any terrorist’s. No wonder she’d made such a good operative. She was just like them. A venomous black widow, waiting to strike.

The phone went dead in his ear before he could respond. As dead as Humbolt on the floor beside him. Zane dropped back to the ground with a groan. The phone fell from his fingers to roll across the floor. And as they flew over the jungle and Stone packed his leg wound, Zane vaguely heard their medic tell the pilot to haul ass or they were gonna run out of time.

But he didn’t care. As his vision blurred and darkness threatened, only one thing revolved in Zane’s mind. Only one goal remained.

No matter what it took, no matter how long, he’d find her. He’d find her, and he’d make her pay.

E
velyn Wolfe appreciated good music. Though she couldn’t play an instrument to save her life, that didn’t stop her from recognizing talent when she heard it. The guy with the violin two tables over, though, staring at her on the warm Seattle street as he played a medley that literally hurt her ears? He wasn’t one of those talents. Not even close.

She avoided eye contact like she’d been doing since he came over twenty minutes ago and bugged her to request a song. She might look like a tourist enjoying the summer sunshine, but looks could be deceiving. She knew that better than anyone.

With her back to the café windows, she scanned the busy street again, her gaze shielded by dark sunglasses as it skipped past trendy boutiques, cars whizzing by, and multicolored flower baskets hanging from light posts to give the area an upscale feel. The salty scent of the Sound drifted on the breeze along with that of fried foods from street vendors, but she blocked it all out, instead focusing on the contact she was about to meet. She didn’t have a picture of the man, but she remembered how he’d depicted himself: tall, dark, blue eyes, dimples.

That could describe anyone, she knew, as four different men, all matching that tall, dark description, walked by the outdoor café at various intervals. Each time one would pass, anticipation curled in her stomach and then dropped like a stone when he moved away.

Come on already. I don’t have all damn day.

Eve’s frustration grew to exponential levels. A quick glance at her watch told her Smith—which wasn’t his real name by a long shot—was now twenty minutes late. Scenarios and options for what the holdup could be raced through her mind.

She brushed a strand of shoulder-length blonde hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She missed her long, dark locks already. But the change, like everything else she’d done to prepare for this meeting, was important. In a few weeks—hopefully, if all went as planned—she’d hit her stylist in Monterey and dye it back.

If all goes as planned . . .

She nearly snorted. She’d learned long ago that things in this business never went as planned. But that didn’t stop her. Or make her think of leaving. She’d considered leaving once, a long time ago, but that seemed like a different world now. And it was probably a good thing her plans hadn’t panned out then. She could barely remember what life was like in the real world.

Her rambling mind froze when she caught sight of a man across the street heading her direction. She narrowed her eyes to see him better. He wore jeans, a gray T-shirt, fancy boots, and a baseball cap to cover his head so she couldn’t decipher his hair color. But he was definitely tall. And dark, judging by the stubble on his jaw. And his gaze was locked solidly on her.

Her adrenaline shot up as she watched him cross the street a block down. As he maneuvered around tourists and locals. But she calmed herself, just as she’d been trained, when she realized his gaze hadn’t once wavered from her face.

The fingers of her left hand tightened around the napkin in her lap. The Glock pressing against her lower spine reminded her just what was at stake.

The man slowed as he approached. She caught his eye color. Blue, definitely blue.

He stopped in front of her. Smiled. Two deep dents creased his youthful face.

He was her guy.

“Juliet?”

Eve smiled. Using an alias came as easy as breathing. And this one . . . well, she’d been using it for years. “You’re late.”

He slid into the seat opposite her. “Couldn’t be helped. You brought it?”

American. Definitely. But Eve couldn’t tell which part of the country he hailed from. Not that it mattered. Though there was something . . . familiar about him.

She scanned his face but was sure she’d never met him before. However, that tickle in the back of her throat told her she knew him from somewhere, and she needed to be careful.

“First I’ll need proof you have my”—she paused for a moment, just to show him he didn’t hold all the cards—“package.”

Smith shot her a devastatingly handsome grin, leaned back in his chair, and stretched his long legs in front of him. Anyone walking by would think they were old friends. But she knew different. “And what if I said no?”

For some reason, at that second, a long-ago conversation with Sawyer ran through her mind.

“Bluffing is 90 percent of the game,”
she’d said.
“You know that. If they believe you, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s different for a woman, though,”
he’d countered.
“Are you ever scared?”

“Always. But that’s part of the risk we take.”

It’d been one of those quiet nights in Lebanon when they’d both been on duty, monitoring the run-down drugstore across the dusty road through their apartment’s crappy windows while Carter had been snoring in the next room. Why the conversation popped into her head now, she didn’t know. But she definitely didn’t need it. Or thoughts of the man who now hated her with every fiber of his being.

She pushed aside the memory and reached for the bag at her feet. Her chair scraped the sidewalk as she stood. “Then I guess our meeting’s over.”

She turned to leave.

“Juliet?”

She glanced back over her shoulder and followed Smith’s gaze as it shifted across the street to a white van now parked against the curb. A burly man dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt climbed out to stand in the road. He folded his arms over his massive chest and stared right at her.

“That move is not advised.” Smith nodded toward her chair. “Sit.”

Eve scanned the street for other threats, for something she might have missed earlier. Didn’t see anything other than the van that had appeared during their conversation. But the hair on her nape was suddenly standing straight, telling her the power of this meeting had shifted. And not in her favor.

Slowly, she eased back down into her chair. Smith smiled and signaled the waiter. A server darted over and listened as he ordered.

He was gloating. This most definitely wasn’t going as planned. Eve’s adrenaline ratcheted up.

When the waiter left, Smith pulled a cell phone from his pocket, pressed a button, and slid it across the table toward her. “Take a look.”

Eve expected to see a photo of the file she’d been tracking, but what flashed on the screen was an image of a woman, lying on her side, hands bound behind her, ankles tied together, feet bare, and a black sack covering her face. Eve lifted the phone, watched as the woman struggled against the bonds, trying to free herself. When she rolled toward the camera, a purple butterfly on her right ankle came into view. The same tattoo her sister Olivia had gotten during her freshman year of college.

No.

Eve’s gaze shot to the man across from her, and any pretense of bluffing disappeared. “Where?”

He nodded toward the van across the street. The burly driver was now gone.

Her heartbeat shot up into the triple digits. “How do I know for sure she’s in there?”

“Look closer.”

In the background, Eve could just make out the floor of the van and the rear cargo doors with a smattering of daylight illuminating the black sack over her sister’s face.

Fear pushed in from every side. Risking her own life was one thing, but her sister . . . Olivia was a schoolteacher. She didn’t know the first thing about espionage or terrorist factions or traitors.

“What do you want?”

His smile widened. “I think we both know what I want.”

She set the phone down, pulled the envelope from her bag, and slid it across the table. Smith looked inside, smiled at the currency he saw, and then tucked the envelope into the back pocket of his jeans. “Sometimes even the best laid plans go awry. Very nice doing business with you, Ms. Wolfe. I wish you and your sister all the best.”

Smith rose and tipped his hat. He moved around her and headed away from the outdoor café, his whistling slowly disappearing on the breeze. The waiter appeared and set a mimosa on her table. “Enjoy, ma’am.”

The noise of the café rose up around Eve. People chatting, silverware and glasses clinking, all melded with the traffic on the street to signal normal. Peaceful. A regular day in a beautiful city. Not a thing out of the ordinary.

Except this wasn’t ordinary.

Olivia.

She hadn’t talked to Olivia in months. Not since their father’s funeral. And then they’d argued over Eve’s gypsy ways and the fact that Eve was never around for the important things, like their father’s last days. Eve already felt guilty enough over that, and Olivia’s rant had only deepened that guilt, which resulted in Eve leaving early and Olivia not returning any of Eve’s calls when Eve had contacted her days later and tried to apologize. But as frustrated as Eve was with her little sister, a tiny place inside knew Olivia deserved an explanation—about all the missed holidays, the months of no contact, and, most important, what she really did for a living. To repair the rift between them, to salvage the last blood relationship she had left, Eve had been ready to confess all to Olivia. Only now it was too late. Olivia’s life was in danger all because of her, and her sister might never even know why.

Ignoring the drink in front of her, Eve eyed the van, then the bustling four-lane traffic. She’d get herself killed if she rushed right out there. Plus, if anyone was watching, she didn’t want to draw extra attention. Pushing back from her chair, the legs scraping cement with a sound that echoed in her ears, she tossed the cell in her purse and then swung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and walked slowly but intently through the outdoor tables toward the streetlight half a block down.

She stopped at the corner with a handful of people waiting to cross and worked to keep her expression neutral. Tried to keep her nerves from giving her away. A child—no more than four, holding his mother’s hand—looked up at her with big hazel eyes.

Eyes, Eve thought briefly, that seemed to look through her, all the way to her soul. Eyes that reminded her of Sawyer.

She glanced quickly away.

Come on, come on, come on . . .

Just when Eve thought the light was never going to change, it signaled Walk, and she stepped off the curb onto the street with the child and his mother and the rest of the pedestrians.

The van exploded in a fireball that shot flames thirty feet into the air.

Eve’s body went sailing. Screams echoed around her. She hit something hard, registered a sharp stab in her skull, knew consciousness was leaving her. But before she blacked out, she saw the shops lining the street, the van, even the umbrellas outside the café she’d just been sitting in, all engulfed in flames. Flames that looked like they signaled the end of the world.

And in the middle of it all, the body of the child, lying still as stone in the rubble around her.

Zane Archer could pick Juliet—
correction
, Evelyn Wolfe—out of a crowd with barely a look. Didn’t matter that she’d cut and dyed her hair. He knew her walk, recognized those sexy legs in the slim black skirt that hit just below her knees, and, thanks to three months he now wished had never happened, was more than familiar with every inch of that toned body.

He’d watched her interactions from the shadows of an outdoor table at Starbucks a block down. After six months of searching, he’d finally found her. Meeting with a contact, in the United States, in broad daylight.

Man, the woman had balls of steel.

The throb in his thigh kicked up, a result, the doctors said, of the scar tissue and nerve damage he’d sustained from that bullet he’d taken in Guatemala, but he wasn’t popping another pain pill. Not yet. He watched as Juliet handed the man an envelope, as the man rose and left, as Juliet looked around cautiously and then swung her bag over her shoulder and hoofed it for the crosswalk in those ice-pick heels that drew his gaze toward her legs. Long, slender, muscular legs he remembered wrapping around his hips, drawing him in, shutting out all other thoughts.