Defender (16 page)

She sagged back into the leather seat in defeat as they reached the main road, the driver’s cigar smoke already swelling throughout the vehicle. What the hell had she gotten into? Could Livia really be saving some drunk, lovesick idiot?

Or was her friend less trustworthy than Chloe had assumed?

SIXTEEN

Tonight was make or break.

Tension and anticipation kinking his muscles, Jimmy watched the man calling himself Miguel Carvalho weave around Oasis patrons toward him. One of two things would happen once Nunez reached the table. He would offer to buy more drinks, which meant the kidnapping was a go, or he would offer to pick up their tab, a signal that something had gone wrong, so it was time to
bail out, bail out, bail out
.

Carvalho stopped by their table. “Good evening, gentlemen. May I buy you all a round of drinks as thanks for your service?”

A green light.

He’d hoped for prior warning and a briefing at the base before they made contact with the abductors, but he sure as shit wouldn’t argue with finishing this sooner rather than later. He squeezed the living hell out of the lime twist in his latest gin and tonic and knocked back the drink.

“Why yes, you may.” Jimmy hooked an arm over his new drinking buddy’s shoulder: Agent Mike Nunez.

Miguel, damn it.
Jimmy shook his head as if that might somehow clear his brain. He had to remember the guy went by Miguel Carvalho.

He half-listened as Carvalho introduced himself to the table full of his own CIA paramilitary. Jimmy pulled a packet of mints from his back pocket and thumbed free two from the slots marked with a nearly indiscernible black dot. He popped the pills into his mouth and let them dissolve, preparing himself with additional drugs designed to counteract truth serums administered later.

“Breath mint?” He offered the packet to everyone else at the table, his cue indicating he understood Miguel’s “message.” The remaining white tablets were, in fact, simply breath mints.

By the time their drinks arrived, a mild burn tingled along his skin as the drugs grew roots. His stomach kicked over like a bubbling cesspool drawing him under. He could hold onto his secrets if he could stay awake with the mix of drugs and alcohol pumping through his system.

Thoughts of his crew flying without him proved plenty sobering. What if something happened to them? Survivor’s guilt already crippled him.

He had to think positively, damn it.

This could all be over by daybreak, thanks to the radar lock on the microchip’s signal. He would know if Chuck had survived. That possibility offered hope, as did this sting operation. Even if he wouldn’t have the chance to fly with his crew and rescue Chuck, at least he could take a swipe at infiltrating the crime ring from another angle before more service members were snatched. Before national security could be seriously compromised.

Miguel Carvalho took the mint packet from the last of the agents and turned to Jimmy. “The waitresses seem to be overwhelmed. Come with me, and we can place an order for another round at the bar.”

Jimmy went along with the charade and waved to his CIA rent-a-buddies at the window table. “Be right back, dudes.”

He followed Nunez across the bar, threading through the press of bodies, weaving on his feet just enough to broadcast intoxication. Nunez nodded slightly toward a graying dark-haired man puffing away on a cigar, the same man Jimmy had seen the agent drinking with earlier.

He smacked the back of an empty chair on his way past, which did nothing to vent the pressure cooker expanding inside him. Tension, he could understand, but he hadn’t expected dread and didn’t understand why. He wasn’t afraid, and he had experience.

Except what a time to realize that any dark ops he’d done involved action, aggression even. This passive role, waiting to be taken, chafed.

What had he been thinking signing on to voluntarily be held captive? Had he really been arrogant enough to believe his time in Afghanistan wouldn’t roar up and bite him on the ass?

Focus on finding and vindicating Chuck. Afghanistan belonged in his past. Jimmy lounged against a barstool mounted into the hardwood floor while Nunez placed his order at the bar.

“What’s your best Greek wine?”

The male bartender squeaked a white rag along a damp glass. “We have a fine selection in our wine cellar. We have a steward on hand if you would like to step in back and sample a couple to make your decision.”

Nunez swept a hand to include Jimmy. “Well, my American friend? Would you like to make the choice for your companions?”

Jimmy swayed on his feet and plastered a goofy-ass-drunk smile on his face. “Lead the way.”

Ever aware of the Greek’s eyes on their progress toward the back of the bar, Jimmy eyed the four steps leading down into a dimly lit corridor. Sconces with low-wattage bulbs illuminated his descent, the air cooling with a cryptlike aura. The setting couldn’t be any more obvious.

Nunez’s hand fell on his shoulder where it met his neck. “Sorry, my friend.”

The agent pinched, his fingers clamping on a major artery. Dots swam in front of Jimmy’s eyes. He battled the urge to fight back, elbow or kick, even resort to the rudimentary moves he’d shown Chloe.

Chloe.
Unconsciousness narrowed into a pinpoint until his mind’s eye could only see her.

Then nothing.

Expect nothing, and never be disappointed.

Anya knew that but had allowed herself to dream optimistically for a brief weak moment. She hitched her purse higher onto her shoulder on her way to work. In the dark. By herself.

Hunger twisted her stomach. She had waited like a lovelorn idiot for Miguel to show up. Which he never did. Which left her with no time to eat before work. She blinked back tears, hating the weakness. Anya scraped her wrist over her eyes. No man should have that much sway over her emotions.

But ah, hope was bittersweet.

In relocating here, she’d yearned to discover a fresh breed of males from the ones her aunt attracted. Instead, for the past seven months in and out of the bar, she’d endured having her ass slapped, her breasts groped, and her optimism crushed.

Her flickering positive thinking these past few days had been flamed to life by Miguel Carvalho too quickly, too easily. She’d seen all the warning signs of a duplicitous male—the spending, the heavy drinking. She had allowed herself to believe he only did so because he was on vacation and wished to be near her. She must face the truth. She had given too much credence to one kiss.

Anya paused at a corner across the road from the Oasis. She waited for a Mercedes to swoosh past, then started across.

Brakes squealed in the sultry night. She jolted, searching the dark lit only by sputtering shop signs and streetlamps with dirty globes. The black sedan now idled in a narrow side street beside the Oasis. No one exited the vehicle. A wooden door along the stone wall creaked open, and a dark-suited man stepped out of the tapestry shop behind the nightclub.

Someone waiting for a ride. Nothing unusual. How paranoid she had become. Just because a man let her down didn’t mean she should see the world as bleak.

A honking horn snapped her attention back to her own path. A tiny Fiat inches away beeped twice more. She raised a hand in apology and finished crossing.

Perhaps she needed to find another job, even if it paid less. She could make a true fresh start with people who didn’t lie on a regular basis.

“Help!”

A woman’s scream split the night. Anya’s hand snaked into her purse, and she gripped her switchblade. Without hesitation, she looked first at the Mercedes.

The dark-suited man leaned half-in, half-out of one back door on the Mercedes, while the burly bearded driver rushed to the other. The slick fellow backed out quickly, his arm looped around the waist of a tiny young woman with black hair. On the other side of the car, the driver leapt away from the vehicle to dodge a pair of dainty feet pedaling straight for his crotch. Two women?

Anya eased into the shadows, out of sight. She knew better than to interfere. They would only take her, too. She searched for help but found local pedestrians scurried in every direction except the one that would lead to a rescue.

Where was the Oasis’s doorman, Omar? Not at his post.

Would he have even bothered to assist? The haughty employee always seemed more concerned with what went on inside the Oasis, rather than outside. She looked back at the unfolding nightmare, not sure what she could or should do but unable to abandon these poor women.

“Release me, you
bastardo
,” the small woman shouted with an Italian accent.

God, she felt like a child again, watching from under the bar as her father barked at a waitress. She hadn’t known the root of the fight then, only that evil and fear tainted the air. Years later she had learned her father pimped out his waitresses, even his waiters.

The jagged stone wall bit into her back much the way splinters had snagged her skin long ago. The past and present merged in her mind as she watched the two women fight back against unbelievable odds while their captors dragged them toward a door labeled as a drop-off point for a tapestry store. Snippets of the conversation mingled with the sound of honking horns and rumbling trucks.

“No.” The skinny woman twisted and jerked in her captor’s hold. “No, no, no, you do not understand. I have a friend in trouble. He needs my help.”

The other woman shouted in outrage, her wild, curly hair bouncing free from a loose bun. “Don’t you realize Steven freaking set you up?”

“
Dio
, no! Steven would never do that.”

The larger man backhanded the Italian woman. “Shut up. Both of you.”

“Livia?” the woman with a mass of hair said.

“What, Chloe?”

“Run.” Her hand snapped behind her to grip the inside of the man’s thigh.

Skinny Livia kicked off her strapless heels and bolted toward the alley. The other woman—Chloe—pinched her captor. Hard. Her fingers all but disappeared into his fleshy leg.

He doubled over, screamed in agony, releasing Chloe. She sprinted after her friend.

Anya’s grip on her knife eased. It seemed this Livia and Chloe could protect themselves even without weapons.

Chloe raced down the side street. Her hair streamed behind her as she tried to catch up with Livia disappearing around a corner. The dark-suited man leapt over his incapacitated friend and made tracks after the women racing away, taking them farther from Anya.

His arm darted out and he snagged a fistful of blond curls and yanked. “You made a mistake angering us.”

Her scream gurgled with outrage and tears. She fell backward. Her hip slammed into the cobblestones, her legs pumping as she struggled for balance that would release the pressure on her hair. An empathetic burn echoed along Anya’s scalp.

Chloe shrieked, thrashing in an attempt to free herself. “Help! Help!”

Anya sure could use some of her aunt’s street smarts right about now. Marta feared nobody.

“You will find no help here.” He tugged Chloe again, looping a length of her hair around his wrist mercilessly as he hauled her up. “Baris?” he called. “Get the hell off the ground and take her while I catch the other one.”

Anya’s heart pulsed up to her ears. Those poor women could be black market sex slaves by morning if no one interceded. Why hadn’t anybody other than her tried to help? Not that she had stepped forward with any great aggression.

Scratching her still-aching scalp, she realized she could not hide in the shadows any longer. Moving away from her family’s legacy of crime meant nothing if she passively let malevolence thrive around her.

“No!” Anya started forward, whipping out her knife, flicking the blade free.

Before she could take more than a trio of steps, the bearded man limped forward and threw the woman toward a door, ignoring Anya. They disappeared inside the tapestry store.

Her eyes stung. She had acted too late.

“Oh, God, oh God, oh God,” she prayed to a deity she’d rarely had the chance to meet while growing up in the moral void that made up her family heritage. Something she had to rectify now.

She raced into the Oasis and straight to a telephone. She punched in the numbers of the people she’d been trained from birth were the enemy.

Anya’s hands trembled as she called the police.

Ohmigod. After surviving two kidney transplants, an exploding boat, and a terrorist attack, she’d reached the end trying to save someone else.

Chloe forced herself to go limp in the brutally tight grip of her captor, Baris, a bearded bastard who now had a serious grudge against her for pinching his thigh. If he wanted her at the bottom of the cellar stairs, he could carry her every damn step of the way. Not that she was sure she could have walked anyway on her shaky legs.

Please, please, please she hoped Livia managed to escape the other man racing after her and could call for help. The dank stench of mold growing up the walls gagged her. As much as she wanted to lay blame at Livia’s pedicured feet, the reasons for staying on base had been clear. She should have dragged Livia away from that car back at Incirlik.

Was this another terrorist incident? If so, there went Livia’s lightning theory.

Baris limped to a stop outside a thick metal door. He booted a knock twice fast, three times slow, his steel-toed shit kickers at odds with his sleek suit, hinting at the darker underbelly he obviously possessed. The door creaked open like something out of a B-grade horror flick.

Real-life monsters scared her more than Freddy Krueger.

A smoothly handsome Latino filled the portal. “What is going on here?”

“A special gift for the boss.” The driver-turned-villain shouldered past.

She stole a peek back at the guy sporting what looked a lot like a Savile Row suit. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen him before. He spoke with a Spanish accent, but that didn’t do anything to stir her memory.

Desperately she searched for some sign of hope as the guy with arms as thick as her legs carried her deeper into the bowels of this underground maze. Sconces lit the way. They passed racks of wine at an odd angle. The wall of bottles had been pivoted open like a secret door connecting this basement to another chamber. Could it be a possible path to escape?