Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (9 page)

She shook her head. Of course she didn’t. The old battle-axe who’d forced her to strip had taken the dress, leaving Jennifer in only the beautiful lingerie. She pointed to the stiletto heels and gave him a grim smile.

“Can you run in those?” he asked.

“We’ll see.”

He nodded as she slid into his button-down. “The shirt’ll do for now. Let’s go.”

She pulled the shirt on but didn’t bother with the buttons. Grabbing her shoes, she followed him to the door and slipped the high heels on. He grabbed her hand in preparation to pull her along. She forced herself not to clutch at his fingers.

“Do what I tell you. No questions, and you’ll be fine. We’re getting out of here and going straight for my Jeep. No one will think running out of here is odd when the building is on fire. It’s just that we’re not stopping once we’re out. Got it?” he asked.

“Yes.” She didn’t trust herself to say anything else.

So many times she’d planned what she would say if she ever saw him again: carefully prepared words and explanations. In the current situation, it wasn’t surprising that none of those planned speeches came to mind. This was surreal.

He was the same, down to the dimple in his chin and the electric blue eyes that had haunted her dreams for ten years. His hair had a couple of gray streaks shot through at the sideburns, but it didn’t seem possible that he hadn’t changed when she felt so completely different.

Nick gave her one more searching glance before he opened the door, looked both ways, and crept forward. She followed him, feeling slightly ridiculous in stilettos and a white button-down. But it was better than being naked and barefoot.

Nick didn’t seem too worried about the house fire or in any great rush to get out. Still, he kept a tight grip on her hand as they hurried down the long staircase. Smoke rose from the bottom floor and appeared to be coming from the back of the house. The foyer was empty, but shouts drifted up the stairs from outside, punctuated by the popping sound of gunfire.

From out of nowhere, Mia dashed toward the front door as Jennifer hit the bottom step. The girl was wearing a man’s collared golf shirt that came past her knees.

“Mia!” Jennifer called. “Wait. Come with us.”

The girl stopped and looked back at them over her shoulder. Her eyes filled with fear when she saw Nick. She shook her head, making for the front door again.

“It’s okay. He’ll get us out of here,” Jennifer called.

“He’s one of the bad men,” she argued.

“No, Mia, he’s not. He’ll help us.”

The girl hesitated a moment longer in the doorway.

Another shot rang out, sounding like a lone firecracker in the cacophony around them. Mia crumpled to the floor. Jennifer stood in shock for a beat before she dropped Nick’s hand to run toward the girl.

Nick called out, but she ignored him. Mia was so still. Her eyes stared, unseeing, with only a small red mark on her forehead to indicate what had happened.

Was she alive? Jennifer didn’t want to admit the obvious to herself.
Mia had never had a chance
.

She dropped to her knees beside the body and immediately felt the sticky warmth on the tops of her feet and shins. Blood was pooling around the base of Mia’s head at an alarming rate. Jennifer stared in horror. The back of the child’s skull was gone.

A bitter taste rose in her throat. Despite the terror coursing through her body, Jennifer stayed and gripped Mia’s hand. No one should die alone. More smoke drifted in from the back of the house. Christmas music from the decorations outside blared through the entrance like something from a nightmare.

“Mia. Mia, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Nick was there, bending down at Mia’s shoulder and pulling Jennifer out of the doorway as another shot whizzed through the entrance and hit the wall above her head.

“Move! You can’t help her.” His voice was sharp, and he tugged at Jennifer’s wrist with a vice grip.

She stood, looking down at her hands. The blood on her palms was warm and black in the strange light of the fire, just like on her legs. The coppery scent wafted through the air along with smoke. A combination of nausea and terror still paralyzed her.

“She’s dead, Jenny. We’ve got to go. Now.” The words were harsh, but his voice sounded so different. Finally, she looked up. His eyes were dark and haunted as he drew her away from the doorway toward the back of the house and into the haze.

She focused on his voice and on the inconsequential fact that he’d called her Jenny. Nick was the only person who called her that.

She let him haul her away, unable to fully comprehend the horror of what had just happened. Yet the blood covering her hands, legs, and the bottom of Nick’s shirt testified to it. She glanced back toward the entry hall and saw Monique’s body on the front porch and another sprawled on the steps leading to the lawn. The white holiday lights blinked on and off as if highlighting the bodies. She stumbled and would have gone down if Nick hadn’t been holding on to her. Another bullet flew past her head.

“Damn. It’s the shoes,” Nick muttered, bending to pick her up.

Both stilettos fell off as he slung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, but he didn’t stoop to grab them. Instead, he moved through the entrance toward the dining room where Jennifer and Mia had met earlier. The dreamlike quality of the scene increased exponentially from her upside down vantage point with the curtains fully engulfed in flames, smoke pouring from the room, and Nick’s bare skin beneath her.

Unbelievably, they ran toward the back of the house where the smoke thickened by the second.

Chapter Eight

N
ICK SPED THROUGH
the back hallway, searching for another way out while more gunshots echoed from the front of the house.

What the fuck?
Who was shooting? Where was Bryan?

He’d assumed Hollywood had set the fire as a distraction, but now he wasn’t so sure.

His lungs burned from the acrid haze that had thickened to the point where he was running with one palm along the wall, feeling his way down the hall. He hadn’t been taken this far back into the house when he and Bryan were shown to Monique’s sitting room earlier.

His hand brushed along the stucco surface, across what he assumed were large pictures. He heard a loud thud when something fell to the floor in his wake. His eyes watered, and he coughed like a three-pack-a-day smoker. Jenny wasn’t heavy, but he wasn’t operating at full capacity after his injuries last month. He could hear his own labored breathing as he raced down the corridor.

Finally, there was a break in the seemingly endless hallway with what felt like a doorframe. He had to make a split-second decision: keep going into the smoke toward the back of the house or turn here and search for a quicker way out.

He turned and pushed the door open. Smoke cleared marginally. Closing the door behind him, he saw the vague outline of furniture as he moved into what appeared to be a small office. He ran his hand along the wall, making a circuit of the room, and prayed for a window, a door, anything that led out of what he feared had become a death trap.

At last, his fingers touched smooth glass. He took a quick measure of the opening and searched for something to throw through it. A chair sat just to the side of the window. He settled Jennifer on her feet. He couldn’t see her face clearly in the haze but made sure she was steady before he picked up the sturdy wooden chair and hammered at the floor-length window.

It took three whacks and a surge of adrenaline to break the double panes. Smoke streamed through the opening as he pulled Jenny along with him. He carried her several feet from the window to avoid broken glass. Coughing and hacking, neither spoke for a moment.

They’d exited along the side of the house into darkness beyond the holiday decorations and now stood in a flowerbed. Fire devoured the roof along the front of the building, but here there was only smoke. Nick grasped Jenny’s hand and pulled her with him as he peered up the side yard. There was probably no way to spy the sniper in the dark, but he didn’t want to walk straight into the line of fire either.

No curious neighbors gathered to watch the house burn. That was unusual in an area where the houses were fairly close together and the neighbors most likely knew one another, even if they didn’t know the occupants of the bordello. Unusual, until one thought about a sniper running loose.

Nick studied the street and surrounding area for any further sign of the gunman. He focused on the front yard and froze. At least five bodies lay at odd angles across the lawn.

Even without being told, he knew none of those people had been dragged from the house. There was no one there to do it.

He tried to shield Jenny’s line of vision as his mind reeled. She’d already seen enough tonight. He had, too, for that matter.

His stomach tightened. Those poor souls had been shot as they exited the burning building.

God, why?

He moved farther into the shelter of darkness and gripped Jenny’s hand. A shadow stood up before them. Nick braced, pushing Jenny behind him.

G
OD, WERE THOSE
bodies in the front yard?

Jennifer woke from the fog when Nick placed the hand she’d been gripping on her hip and shoved her firmly behind his back. She felt every muscle in his body go on alert. A man rose out of the shadows.

If possible, Nick tensed even more.

“It’s Hollywood,” said a deep voice. “You okay?”

Just as quickly, Jennifer felt Nick relax.

“I couldn’t find you,” continued the shadow man.

Nick nodded. “We had to go out the back. What happened? Did you start the fire?”

“No. I’ve no idea what happened. Everyone who ran out the front door of that building was shot.” The shadow man, aka Hollywood, stood in front of them. He was dressed the same as Nick, in jeans with no shirt. A big man, he was built like a tank but taller than Nick, at least six foot five, with short hair almost military in its severity. He had the bulky build of a bodyguard, but even in the shadows Jennifer could see that he wasn’t fat, just large and extremely ripped. She couldn’t see his face, but his voice was deep and soothing with no noticeable accent.

“What happened to the little girl? I sent her out the back when the screaming started. Did you see her?” asked Hollywood.

Jennifer stopped short. The collared shirt Mia had been wearing was this man’s. The shock of everything made her feel blessedly numb as she digested all that was happening—the bodies, the fire, the blood.

“Yeah, we saw her.” Nick put his hand on Jennifer’s elbow. “She ended up trying to go out the front door.”

Jennifer watched the newcomer’s shoulders droop and thought she heard him curse under his breath. “She was so scared. I thought she was behind me and . . .” He trailed off. “It was a massacre.”

Nick nodded again. “That’s exactly what it looks like. Let’s get out of here before anything else happens. Where’s the Jeep?”

“Around back. I moved it before the shooting started.”

They turned and Nick slid his hand from her elbow to her palm, grasping her fingers as they hurried toward the rear of the house and the alley. In the darkness, she stepped on something sharp with her bare foot and winced. Nick stopped and, without a word, scooped her into his arms.

People were shooting at them, and others were dying all around her. But being held like this, she felt surprisingly sheltered. She was just coherent enough to realize it was most likely an illusion, but she was going with it for now.

Nick and Hollywood crept farther into the gloom. Smoke rose from the roof in the back. An open-air Jeep with its engine running was parked twenty yards down the alley.

Jennifer’s mind raced as she clasped her arms around Nick’s neck. The shock was starting to wear off, or more likely she was beginning to think through it.

What is going on? Who is that other shirtless guy? What is Nick doing here?

Nick squeezed her shoulder as they reached the vehicle. “I know you have questions. We’re getting out of here to a safer place, and I’ll answer what I can.” He opened the back door and put her gently on the seat before climbing in beside her.

Hollywood drove. “Back to the hotel or straight to the airstrip?” he asked.

Nick stared at her a moment, and the safety she’d felt moments before in his arms melted away. There was a calculating look in his eyes she didn’t recognize. Despite the heat of the night, she was freezing—covered in blood, wearing a man’s dress shirt and little else. Her exotic underwear hardly counted as clothing.

Nick turned to face the front of the Jeep and answered Hollywood’s question. “Airstrip. This place is going to be crawling with local law enforcement, such as it is, in the next hour. The sooner we get off the ground, the better.”

He turned back to her, his gaze softer. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to get cleaned up at the airstrip outside of town. I have some other clothes for you in my bag.”

She nodded. More than anything she just wanted to go home, wrap up in her grandmother’s afghan, and sit in the overstuffed chair in her living room. She’d welcome the ordinariness of her busted water heater with open arms. The shock and horror of the past half hour and of the past few days—she still wasn’t clear on how long it had been—won out over any questions. As tired as she was, explanations of anything were completely beyond her.

She felt Nick’s stare as lights from the few buildings they passed flashed sporadically across her face. She wasn’t sure what he was searching for, but once they’d left the town and the lights behind, he pulled her closer in the darkness, tucking his arm around her.

At that moment it didn’t matter how long it had been since they’d seen each other. She didn’t ask herself why he was holding her or what it meant. She didn’t care that she’d sworn never to do this again. She just moved into his body, relishing the comfort there and the feel of his chest under her cheek, the tangy scent of sweat, and the man she remembered from her past. They’d talk later.

Maybe this was all a nightmare, and she’d wake up any moment in her own bed with her flooded living room carpet. She closed her eyes in an attempt to block out everything.