Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (2 page)

Another voice from across the room hissed. “No, she’s not to be touched. It’s only for show. That was a condition.”

“Who’s to know?” The hand continued to skate along her ribs and rub the front of her shirt. Fingers brushed across her chest once more rather brusquely. “She’ll not tell.”

The overhead light went out causing her to feel even more disoriented.

“Vega would find out. We don’t want to risk it.”

Jennifer looked up, but the man speaking was cloaked in shadow. Two silhouettes were outlined by a light from the microwave clock in the kitchen.

“Hosea, you take her. Tie her hands and feet, then strip her from the waist up. Snap the picture and get her out of here. We don’t know when the rest of the family will be home.”

The man Jennifer assumed was Hosea came and took her by the shoulders. He didn’t smell as horrific as the other man, not that it meant anything. Criminals could shower like anyone else. She started to struggle before she remembered the knife and slipped a little in the spilled wine. Hosea just held on tighter and steered her through the kitchen toward the living room and fireplace.

She viewed the surreal scene and felt herself slip away. The Christmas tree was lit. Angela, Drew, and the children’s stockings were all hanging in front of the cheerily decorated mantel.

“Sit here, Mrs. Donovan.”

The courtesy was so out of place with what was happening that it took Jennifer a moment to realize the man was talking to her.
They think I’m Angela?

Hosea pushed her into a chair in front of the tree and began tying her feet as the hygiene-challenged man who’d been touching her earlier stepped back to watch. Jennifer could feel his malevolent gaze on her, even in the dim light.

“Excuse me.” Hosea bound her hands behind her back and stepped in front of her. Before she knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed the sides of her blouse and ripped.

Pearl buttons bounced on the carpet, and she heard one ping off the brick hearth behind her. She was so shocked she couldn’t speak, not even to protest. She tried to suck in air as she sat in her torn silk shirt and Victoria’s Secret bra. It was the sexy red-and-black one she’d bought last spring in an effort to rekindle Collin’s interest in sex, in her, and in their marriage—like that had turned out so well.

Full-blown panic welled up inside, and her detachment was gone. It was impossible to breathe. Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes, and Jennifer fought to keep them in check, knowing she’d be lost if she started to cry.

Oh, God.
She wanted to cover herself, but with her hands tied there was nothing she could do. The men viewed her dispassionately.

“It’s not enough,” said the third voice from the shadows.

“I agree,” said Hosea. “She needs marks.”

“Just one though. No more,” said the shadow voice.

“Yes.” Hosea put his hand on onion man’s chest to stop him from coming forward. “No, I’ll do it,” Hosea insisted and without warning lifted his hand, striking her with his open palm.

Her head flew back with the force of the blow, and she bit her lip. Tears of shock and pain burst their dam as she began to weep in earnest. She hung her head, and blood ran down the corner of her mouth.

The man who’d copped a feel stepped forward, grabbed her chin, and tilted it up to study her face for a moment. His foul breath wafted over her, and bile rose in the back of her throat. He nodded and smiled cruelly. “Good.”

The other man hidden in the darkness said, “She’s ready.”

Hosea propped a newspaper in front of her stomach, balancing it just under her satin-and-lace-clad breasts. “Hold your head up and look into the camera,” he instructed. He never looked at her body but stared only into her eyes. “It’s not personal, Mrs. Donovan.”

The third man in the shadows began snapping pictures with the flash going off like a strobe light. But Jennifer knew Hosea was lying. Everything about this was as personal as it got.

J
ENNIFER WOKE SLOWLY
with a pressing need for a bathroom. Her mouth felt like it had a wad of cotton dipped in sawdust stuffed inside. There was a gag tied loosely across her lips. She couldn’t work up any kind of moisture on her tongue. At first she couldn’t remember where she was or why her arms were aching so. When she realized her hands were tied behind her, everything rushed back with stunning clarity.

She’d been at Angela and Drew’s, men had grabbed her, tied her up, stripped and hit her, then photographed her. When they were done with the pictures, Hosea had tied her shirt together in the front and stuck a needle in her arm. She’d known nothing else until now.

She tried moving her shoulders to work some of the circulation back into her throbbing arms and hands, but the effort made her whimper. She lay on a bed in what looked like a fairly nice hotel room.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

“Ah, you’re awake. I am glad.”

She recognized the voice from Angela and Drew’s house. It was Hosea, the man who’d been so oddly polite before slapping her across the face. She shut her eyes. “I know you’re awake, Mrs. Donovan. There’s no use pretending.”

They still thought she was Angela. She wouldn’t have told them otherwise, even if they’d taken the gag off.

“Your family would like to have you back in one piece, no?”

Drew would pay lots of money to get Angela back. But Jennifer’s only family, her aunt, had died the year before she married. Jennifer had no one to speak of other than a philandering ex-husband. She doubted Collin would pay anything to get her back. In fact, he’d be glad not to ever see Jennifer again.

She opened one eye. Hosea was standing over her.

“If you promise not to scream, I will take the gag off and untie you so you may use the bathroom. If you scream, I will simply cut your tongue out.”

Jennifer felt her eyes widen, but she nodded.

Hosea came forward and cut the ties on her wrists and ankles. As blood rushed back to her extremities, she found it difficult not to cry all over again. The pain in her fingers was excruciating.

She moved to the bathroom where she dealt with the most immediate need first, then washed her face and hands, taking an extra moment to slurp cool water from the faucet.

What was going to happen? If they thought she was Angela, she’d better not disabuse them of that notion. Who knew what this man would do when he found they’d made a mistake? Kill her and dump the body? She’d prefer to wait and find out, rather than tell him now.

She spied a tube of unopened toothpaste and gave her teeth a cursory brushing with her finger. Feeling remarkably better, considering her circumstances, she walked out of the bathroom.

They were taking fairly good care of her, she supposed, for a kidnap victim. She hated that word,
victim
. She didn’t want to think of herself that way.

For now, she was Angela Donovan. Until someone told her differently.

Chapter Two

Friday afternoon

Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman

N
ICK
D
ONOVAN LAY
back on the lounge chair and tried to ignore the vacationing beachgoers around him. He should be relaxing, dammit. He’d earned this. Hell, he’d almost died getting here.

He glanced at his flat belly and rubbed his aching shoulder. Both places had had multiple stitches removed yesterday. His doctor would pitch a fit if he knew his patient had boarded a plane and flown six hours after the appointment, but Nick was sitting on the beach and couldn’t have cared less. He’d been stuck at home for weeks.

Two days ago he was so bored, he’d been reduced to going through a box of old papers in the bottom of his closet—documents from his parents’ estate and his father’s law firm he hadn’t touched in ten years, other than to move them from place to place. After that depressingly low point, he’d gone online and bought a ticket to the islands. Following the surgeon’s appointment, he’d boarded a plane last night for the Caribbean. His one concession to his recovery was that he was sitting under an umbrella instead of in the full sun.

He could have argued with the doctor that watching waves crash endlessly against the shore was good for his soul. That is, if he still had one. The work Nick had done for the government didn’t allow you to retain your scruples or your conscience. Still, the Caymans were gorgeous as always with taut, tanned, uncovered bodies as far as the eye could see and water so blue it would make your head hurt—if it wasn’t aching already from viewing those taut, tanned bodies.

But Nick didn’t see any of that. His mind’s eye was playing an endless video loop of a small room filled with leaping flames. The noises became louder with each repeated playback, and the flames grew hotter, but he wasn’t bothered by nightmares over the incident. You didn’t do the kind of work he had done and not give up some parts of yourself, the parts you could afford to lose—or chose to. He’d grown used to his own cold-bloodedness and lack of empathy that were both necessary for his job. Nick was ancient compared to other thirty-three-year-olds.

It was the unanswered question about what had gone wrong that disturbed him. How had Cesar known where to find him? What had really happened inside that clinic?

And it was what had come later that was making this all so damn hard to turn off—what Cesar Vega had whispered as he lay dying. Nick didn’t even have to close his eyes anymore to see Cesar’s blood-stained lips moving.

They’re coming after yours, and you can’t stop them.

As it was, those words had galvanized Nick to crawl out of the clinic and drag himself to safety before the place was blown to hell, along with a man who was on the DEA’s “most wanted” list. People living in that poor Mexican neighborhood had found Nick in the rubble. He’d almost bled to death before they’d gotten him to a hospital, but his boss had shown up and saved his ass.

So here he sat on vacation until his doctor said he could go back to work and back to his family, what there was of it. His brother Drew was out of town, thank God, on a three-week cruise in the Mediterranean with his wife Angela and their preschool-aged children. Nick had had to do some fast-talking, but he’d convinced Drew to take everyone and just go. They’d discussed this possibility once before—half in jest, half in dead seriousness. Nick’s work for the government made his brother’s family vulnerable.

That had been the larger part of Nick’s reservations about taking the CIA’s National Clandestine Service position: his family’s exposure and the nature of what he was going to be doing himself—paramilitary operations, the ultimate in black ops.

The work had been extraordinarily exciting and soul-sucking at the same time. While the adrenaline was amazing, the things he’d had to do—the methods required, the lives affected—had ultimately driven Nick to quit.

Still, someone had to do the job. He knew men who loved the business and who thrived on it. Nick had not been one of those men, even though he was seemingly the perfect candidate: single, SEAL-trained, parents deceased, with only a brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew to know he existed.

He’d struggled with that because, yes, the world was a precarious place, and the work was necessary. But the job, the lifestyle, had changed him dramatically on the inside and not for the better.

He’d become hardened to others’ feelings—hardened to their pain, to their happiness, and to their fears. It had been necessary for his work to be an iceman, but with his family, he didn’t want that.

Sitting with his brother and the kids on a rare visit home last year, he’d realized how bad it was when his niece fell out of a tree and broke her arm. It had been chaotic—as that kind of scene usually is—with a hysterical child in pain and hysterical parents in panic mode, but Nick had felt nothing. The lack of emotion he’d experienced had frightened him more than anything had in a while because he no longer recognized himself.

Realizing he was on the verge of a serious burnout, he’d quit and gone to work at a specialized security agency for Gavin Bartholomew. He and Gavin had worked together on a corruption case several years before, when Gavin had still been with the DEA. Nick had taken the job with AEGIS, Armored Extraction Guards and Investigative Security, because he was so damn tired of that desolation inside: of not feeling anything anymore, of constantly looking over his shoulder, of terminating targets he wasn’t sure deserved it.

The relief of quitting the NCS had been surprisingly underwhelming. He’d expected to feel better, to feel . . . something. But he hadn’t. That desolate emptiness continued, and—if anything—it had grown deeper.

Nick still worried about Drew, Angela, and the kids being at risk because of choices he’d made. That thought kept him up nights, as much as questioning if he was like his father and capable of living the lie Reese Donovan had.

Just before he’d quit working for the government, Nick had started wondering if someone would put a bullet in the back of his head while he was out for a morning run or having a cup of coffee in a café. By the end of his tenure with the CIA, that possibility hadn’t bothered him nearly as much as it should have.

Working for AEGIS was better for him, even if he’d had no idea when he took the job that it would be a threat to his family as well. But for now, Nick’s family was safe. He was safe, and he’d join them soon for Christmas in Venice.

The Vegas and Riveras wouldn’t be able to do anything to them on a Mediterranean cruise line, not on this short notice. Ernesto or Tomas would have to find them first. Nick lay back and gazed out across the tanned bodies once more. Things could be looking up.

“Mr. Taylor?” A waiter stood over him, his face shadowed by the sun. “This was left for you at the front desk with instructions that it be delivered immediately.” He handed Nick a manila envelope with the words
For Nick Donovan
written in block letters on the front.

Nick felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as he took the envelope. No one here was supposed to know his real name. He was registered at the resort as “Matthew Taylor.” He never left the country as Nick Donovan anymore. Old habits died hard.