Guardian Agent (3 page)

“Now I have the upper hand.” She allowed a small smile.

He watched her for a second. “And you think that since I knew your brother at one point, and because I didn’t turn you over to the others on the roof, I am the weak link on the team.”

She stayed silent, apparently smart enough to know that insulting him wouldn’t gain her any favors.

“Does your brother always send you to fight his battles?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.” She hesitated for a moment before she went on. “He was set up. He knows something and people want to kill him for it.”

“Let me guess, he discovered a vast conspiracy.” He didn’t bother to keep the skepticism from his voice.

Annoyance tightened her kissable mouth again. “I don’t know what he discovered. All I know is that he discovered it in Lahedeh. He thinks the less I know the safer I am.”

“Maybe he’d tell me?” he suggested, ready to finish this mission and be back stateside to help his sister for a while with his nieces before the team was given their next assignment. They’d been tracking Tekla all over the continent for an eternity, but they should be done soon now that they had the man trapped in Venice.

“He’s not anywhere around here.”

“Right. Then why did you do your mama-bird-trying-to-draw-the-snake-from-the-nest imitation and lead us across town tonight?”

Her chin came up. She did have a cute chin. Also very kissable.

He forced his gaze up to her eyes. What in hell was wrong with him? “So what is it, exactly, that you want from me, Jasmine?”

“Distract those idiots you work with so I can get away from Venice and find a safer place.”

“You mean you and your brother?”

She held his gaze, her expression giving nothing away.

“He shouldn’t have dragged you into all this.” An unpardonable act of selfishness as far as he was concerned.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He gave her a smile to throw her off balance then flipped her, reversing their positions, surprised by the surge of need he couldn’t even acknowledge let alone act on. “I know you’re not going anywhere until you tell me where he is.”

Once Tekla was in custody, the pressure would be off her and she would be safe. Not that she showed any appreciation for him looking out for her.

She fought their change of position, stilling only when someone rapped on the door. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide with alarm, the tip of her tongue darting out in a nervous gesture to moisten her lips.

He stifled a groan.

“Brent wants to see everyone in his room,” Troy said outside.

Gabe watched a string of emotions flicker across Jasmine’s face. Here came a moment of decision for him, and she knew it. He could turn her over to the others, and they could use her as bait to draw Tekla here. If it weren’t for that kill order, he would have.

But Brent had pulled out all stops for this op, maybe because he was ready to go home, or because he was starting to lose face over Tekla’s ability to evade him this long. He seemed ready to end the op by whatever means necessary, a decision that didn’t sit well with Gabe. Whatever her brother had done, Jasmine wasn’t guilty.

“On my way,” he called out to Troy.

“Let me go.” Jasmine resumed her struggling as soon as the man’s footsteps had faded in the hallway.

Gabe only considered the request for a second. He wasn’t going to lose her again. He needed her to take him to Tekla. Bringing Tekla in seemed the only solution. A peaceful handover would ensure that the man lived long enough to stand trial for his crimes. Once he was in custody, the pressure would be off his family and they would be safe. And with their mission accomplished, Gabe’s team could go home to the U.S. and collect their payment.

The chase needed to end before someone innocent got injured. And for that, he needed Jasmine’s cooperation. But to get that, he needed more time with her. For now, restraining her without hurting her was the key.

Of course, she fought him every step of the way once she realized what he was trying to do. He could barely get his belt off to tie her right hand to the headboard. Then he grabbed a curtain tieback and secured her other hand with that.

She kicked at him, her shoe connecting with his solar plexus and knocking the air from his lungs.

He scowled at her. “I wouldn’t do that again.”

She kicked lower this time, her foot slamming into him way too close to a place it had no business being.

“That’s it.” Two more curtain ties and her feet were tied, too, each to a bedpost.

Fury burned in her eyes then desperation as she struggled against her restraints more and more violently. She didn’t seem to be aware that she was scraping her wrists raw.

“Stop that.” He bent to hold her still, to snap her out of her frenzy. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

But she didn’t seem able to stop. Panic had pushed her beyond reason. He swore under his breath. She wasn’t a trained soldier, conditioned to conquer her fear in a situation like this. But he couldn’t let her go. She would flee the second he left.

And if one of the others caught her…

They
would
catch her. Right here, in another minute, if she didn’t keep quiet.

“Just hang on for a second.” He grabbed for the duffle bag at the foot of the bed and rummaged through it for his emergency kit.

“This is going to help you calm down.” He pulled the syringe of sedative and popped the cap, pushed the drug into her arm in the same motion. He tried to control the dosage. The full phial was calibrated for a large-built man, a fighter who might be twice her weight. “Stay still.”

But she was beyond following orders. She swore at him violently and jerked forward, causing him to push in more of the drug than he’d intended.
Dammit.

Boots scuffed outside.

“You’ll be safe here. I’ll lock you in,” he told her as he headed for the door.

Her eyes flashed with fury. “My brother is going to kill you for this.”

Chapter Four

Ten of the twenty-person team were in Brent’s suite, battle-hardened soldiers perching on every available surface. The team leader had them divided from the beginning: Team A searching the islands, Team B guarding all avenues of exit, making sure Tekla didn’t slip through and sneak away to the mainland.

Gabe listened to Brent’s briefing, his mind only half on the meeting, the other half wondering if Jasmine was all right back in his room.

“Got a call from my local cop. They’ve been having a wave of unusual petty crime lately. Not the souvenir-filching tourists, which they’re used to.” Brent opened his laptop and read aloud the list of dates, locations and items. Food, water, a blanket from one balcony, shampoo stolen from an open bathroom window. The list kept going.

A couple of the men snorted when Brent got to
knitting needles.

He ignored them and went on. “I had my guy look at security camera footage. One woman seems to have been around most of these locations at about the right time. He sent me a headshot. Looks like the photo we have of Tekla’s older sister.” He didn’t sound the least surprised.

“Did you know she might be here?” Gabe asked with all the nonchalance he possessed.

“I had a suspicion.” Brent watched him carefully. “I sent some friends to that aunt’s house in Kansas. They found nobody there. Not even the aunt.”

And when was that, Gabe wanted to ask, but didn’t want to seem suspiciously interested.

Oh, hell.
A sudden chill ran down his spine. What if they were all here? Three women in the middle of all this. A sure recipe for disaster. He would have liked to grab Tekla by the shoulders and shake sense into the man. What was he thinking putting his family at risk like this?

“So how do we know Soremo is the right island?” Troy asked, not unreasonably. One hundred seventeen small islands made up the city of Venice.

“Got security camera footage of the woman hopping on the water busses when she’s done scavenging on the main island, but no pictures of her getting off anywhere.”

“Maybe she swims,” one of the guys suggested as a joke.

“She gets off at a station that doesn’t have a security camera,” Gabe said.

That earned him a look of approval from the boss. “Exactly. Away from the tourist center. She’s hiding somewhere in a residential district. We find her, we find her brother.”

“There are other residential islands besides Soremo.”

“The water buses she takes when she disappears all have their final stop here.” Brent stabbed his index finger at the map spread on the desk, at the red X he’d drawn earlier.

“We’ve been out all night. Nobody got more than a wink of sleep.” Gabe scrambled to think of an excuse to hold them back. If his suspicions were right and Tekla’s other sister and his aunt were with him… They didn’t deserve to become casualties.

To his relief, Brent nodded. “People are getting up and getting ready for work right now. We’ll wait an hour. By then, most of them will be gone and the houses will be empty.”

He looked at his men before he continued. “The B Team will be at the showdown with us. I don’t want to leave anything to chance on this one. Be ready at oh seven thirty. Better get some sleep until then. I want everyone ready for this.” He paused. “Tekla is considered armed and dangerous. You’re authorized to use whatever force necessary.”

Gabe shifted in his seat. “What about the sister?”

Brent shrugged. “She needs to stay out of the way if she knows what’s good for her. We’re facing a seasoned killer here.” He swept his gaze around the room. “If she tries to help him and gets caught in the crossfire, I don’t think we’ll be catching much flak over it.”

Brent’s need to catch Tekla seemed a little too over the top, he pulled out too many stops. If he had a personal agenda, Gabe sure would have liked to know what it was.

He stood aside and let the others pour out into the hallway, trying to figure out how he could convince Jasmine to trust him and take him back to Tekla, how to convince Tekla to give himself up so his family wouldn’t get hurt.

“We’ll have him today,” he told Brent, buying time until the others cleared out of the hallway. He didn’t want them to catch a glimpse of Jasmine on his bed when he opened his door. “We could be shipping out of here by tomorrow. Not that being in Venice is a hardship. I was expecting battlefield combat when I signed up.”

Brent gave him a dispassionate look. “We’ve seen plenty of battlefield action. I’m sure we’ll see more. We take each assignment as they come.”

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

Gabe had done three consecutive tours of duty in the Afghan mountains before he’d joined the FBI. Brent knew all of that. They’d done a comprehensive background check before they hired him. Gabe, on the other hand, had been told very little about the team’s previous missions.

“Both,” Brent said now.

“Army?”

“Started out as an army medic, but switched to private security pretty quickly. Pays a hell of a lot better than the government.”

Gabe understood only too well. When his brother-in-law had died in a crash, leaving his sister with three kids, he got out of the army and in with the FBI so he’d be close enough to help. Then Penny, his youngest niece, had been diagnosed with autism. Promising treatment was available, but cost the heavens. His sister had never stood a chance on her librarian’s salary.

All his money had been going to North Village already, and he couldn’t abandon that project. Brent had come around, wanting to recruit him, at the exact right time.

Gabe left the man and stepped out into the hallway.

Troy stood bent over in front of his door, wiggling the key in the lock. “Wonder if people here ever heard of WD-40.”

He was the only other ex-FBI guy on the team, a pretty decent man. Scars from an explosion crisscrossed his face.

“So how do you like it so far?” His voice sounded raspy, his vocal cords having been damaged in the same explosion.

“Not a big fan of making war on civilians. I think Brent should rethink a couple of things,” Gabe told him.

“This is the first op I’ve been on with the team where we have an American target. Given a choice, I prefer fighting foreign terrorists.”

Gabe nodded. “I’m looking forward to this op being over.” Hurry up, buddy. The man stood right in line with his door and would get a full view of Jasmine if Gabe opened it.

“Anyone waiting for you back home?”

He shook his head, pretty sure Troy meant a girlfriend and not his sister and nieces. He’d never done well with long term relationships. “How do you expect someone to put up with what we do? Right?”

“Takes a special woman,” Troy told him, sadness creeping into his voice. “One in a million.” His key turned at last and he disappeared into his room.

Gabe unlocked his own door and pushed inside, strode straight to the bed where Jasmine was sleeping like this was the last chance she was ever going to get. She had the thickest, longest lashes he’d ever seen, flawless skin and lips that were sure to come back in his dreams. But now was not the time to sit and appreciate her beauty.