Defender (17 page)

Voices drifted down the lengthy corridor, becoming clearer as she neared to find a man looming over another man tied to a chair, his back to her. Even from behind, those shoulders looked heartbreakingly familiar.

“What do you know about tracking devices implanted under the skin?” asked a man with a Greek accent.

The man in the chair laughed. “Sounds pretty Star Treky to me.”

Her skin prickled, her insides colder than the rapidly dropping temperature in this cave grave. Those shoulders, that voice . . .

Her captor advanced toward the open door and eased her to her feet, while keeping a death grip on her arms.

The Greek even smiled. “A smart-ass. We’ve seen many of your kind, and your mouth costs you far more than it costs us. I will ask you again.”

Diamond pinky ring glinting, the man fisted a handful of hair and yanked back his captive’s head.

She bit off a cry. Even with the bruises staining his face, Chloe recognized Jimmy.

SEVENTEEN

Of all the gin joints . . .

Bogey’s words bounced around in Jimmy’s battered head as he took in Chloe standing in the doorway. For a second he’d hoped the “breath mint” drugs were making him hallucinate. Or perhaps it was a reaction to the truth serum they’d injected him with minutes after he’d come to in this cellar jail. He blinked again, and still Chloe stood in the dank room.

How had she landed here? Something must have gone wrong. Way the hell wrong.

Jimmy risked a look at Nunez for an answer. The agent backed deeper into the shadows by the small video camera on a tripod, his eyes narrowed. Nunez seemed to be as clueless as he was about this latest kick in the
cajones
development.

Even with his limited view of Chloe, he could see the fear she tried to hold in check. He could have kept his head together while they beat him into the ground, but he couldn’t stomach the sight of that bastard’s hands on her, and far worse would be in store for them if Nunez didn’t get them out of this cluster fuck soon.

The hold on Jimmy’s hair eased, and he restrained the urge to crank around in his chair for a better look at Chloe.

The pugilist with garlic breath and a Greek accent temporarily abandoned his pummeling to address the bearded goon in the doorway. “Damn it, Baris, you said you would bring the famous one.”

“I tried, but this one came along, too.” Hairy Barry shoved Chloe deeper into the room. “We lost the Italian babe, and this one fought like hell. Careful. She’s an unpredictable bitch.”

And Barry was a dead man once Jimmy got free.

The Greek—Spiros, Nunez had called him one night in the bar as they’d walked past—eased around the chair. “You expect me to believe two women overpowered you and my bodyguard? Are you weak or just an idiot?”

Barry’s chest heaved, but his tight lips showed some restraint. He limped into the room. “Livia Cicero slipped away while we were restraining this woman. The rock star must have a lot of practice in escaping fans, but your bodyguard is tracking her down.”

They’d set up an international celebrity to be snatched? What did that have to do with kidnapping military personnel and trying to beat him into spilling his guts for the camera? Jimmy struggled to put the pieces together in his messed-up mind. Maybe he should have offered Chloe a crash course in ditching the paparazzi rather than his halfassed self-defense course.

Spiros assessed Chloe with a leer. “This one is useless to us.” He waved an unlit cigar through the air, his knuckles raw and red. “Have your way with her quickly, then kill her.”

Chloe’s brave face faltered before resolution set her chin. Her bravado vise-locked pressure against his temples.

“Wait,” Nunez stepped out of the shadows. “She may have an unexpected value. I do believe our guest here likes her.”

The screws tightened.

“You screwed up.” Marta gripped the disposable cell phone, pacing around the kitchen of the small safe house. She’d given Baris a mission and help on the ground. She had not given him permission to run rogue. “I won’t even ask what you and Kutros were thinking kidnapping such high-profile targets. We’re supposed to stay under the radar.”

If she understood human nature—and she liked to think she did—Baris had made use of their USO security leak to impress her, and Kutros used Baris in an attempt to generate extra money on the side. She should have assessed their weaknesses better. Kutros would do anything for money, and Baris would do anything for power to feed his feeble ego. It was her fault as the boss for not foreseeing this, a mistake she intended to address.

Baris cleared his throat on the other end of the line. “We’re already moving both the man and woman in case anyone comes looking for them.”

Poor consolation when they’d already botched and possibly ruined her lucrative business. “Find Cicero before she makes her way back to base.” Marta paced, her brain racing with ways to salvage something from this leaking dam of stupidity. “Kill them all and dump their bodies where no one can find them. I do not want to risk anyone finding evidence on their bodies. Burn them if you have to, but do not fail me again.”

“Of course,” Baris agreed from the other end of the airwaves, a slight huskiness to his tone the only sign he realized his balls were in a vise.

“The singer will
not
make it back to the air base.”

“I understand.”

“So you say.”

Marta thumbed off her cell phone. Her fingers fisted around the cool metal. Incompetent ass. Baris had thought to impress her with his brilliant plan. He’d lured the singer off base with a cry for help from one of the backstage hands, their inside connection, who would be compromised if the Cicero woman made her way back to base and relayed her story.

Why had she trusted Baris with such a sensitive mission before testing him over time as was her standard procedure? Marta flung the phone across the room, chest heaving. She knew why. Her business acumen had been blinded by a surprising lust, which made her every bit as disgusting as Uncle Radko. She resisted the urge to shove away the memory of killing her uncle. Instead, she embraced it and the memory of warm blood between her fingers.

At least Erol would lead the military astray up north, and perhaps Baris might even manage to salvage some valuable information from their new military guest. She eyed the cellar door and thought of her captive. He still lived.

Perhaps she would do well to resurrect some of her old interrogation skills.

Hands and feet tied with disposable cuffs, Jimmy blinked to adjust his eyes to the cavernous darkness inside the van. Steel flooring offered no relief to his aching body.

He thought he heard someone breathing to his left. “Chloe?”

No response.

The van doors slammed, and the engine rumbled to life. The dashboard lights illuminated two men up front in profile, Spiros behind the wheel and Nunez in the passenger seat. The rice-sized earpiece linked to the one in Nunez’s ear stayed silent. Either the two men weren’t talking, or the thing had malfunctioned.

Something back in that cellar jail had set the agent and the goons packing fast. Just when Jimmy had thought they were making a breakthrough—if they were asking about a special tracking device, they could well have Chuck—then Chloe showed up, and Baris’s phone had rung. Minutes later, Jimmy and Chloe were tossed in the back of a van. It seemed their captors had some other mission to complete before they beat the crap out of them.

At least the relocation provided more time for Nunez to turn this operation back around. Something he’d better do soon, or Jimmy would be taking matters into his own hands.

His vision cleared to a murky gray, just enough for him to discern Chloe lying on her side an arm’s stretch away—if he had use of his arms. The steady rise and fall of her chest reassured him, even while countless potential land mines exploded in his head.

What if Kutros pumped Chloe full of the same drug he’d injected into Jimmy right before the interrogation started? With her transplant and regular prescriptions, her body chemistry could catapult out of whack. How long could she last without her medication? Nunez would need to know soon, even if it meant alerting their captors as well.

Jimmy rolled to his back, searching the too-empty van for something to free his hands. Then he could pummel Barry into finding Chuck while Nunez scratched his ass. Thoughts of those bastards aiming their fists at Chloe’s vulnerable kidney area dumped acid in his gut.

The driver ground the gears, popped the clutch, and the van lurched forward. Jimmy used the momentum to propel him across the floor toward Chloe. His roll landed him nose to nose with her, and ah hell, but they’d bound her hands and feet, too.

“Chloe?” he kept his voice low, but loud enough to hear over the whoosh of cars zipping past. “Chloe? Are you with me?”

Her lashes fluttered open, confusion darkening her eyes. Her nose scrunched as the smell of reeking oil and rotting food swelled through the close space. “Jimmy?”

He inched closer until his leg pressed against her with as much reassurance as he could offer with his hands bound. “Are you all right?”

The van rattled along the road, jostled in a pothole and slammed them both against the unforgiving floor. Chloe’s head thunked against metal. She moaned. He bit back a curse.

When would Nunez make his move? Jimmy needed to keep Chloe as calm as possible until that moment. If the listening devices in their ears were working, then at least Nunez would get a status check on Chloe.

He nudged her feet with his and asked again, “Are you okay? Did any of those punches injure your kidneys? Do you need your transplant meds?” That should provide Nunez with the heads-up he needed—as long as their listening devices still worked.

“Aside from being scared to freaking death?” She shrugged, almost managing to stifle a wince. “Yeah, I’m good.”

No amount of truth serums or ham fists could have made him talk. Would he be able to hold as strong if they put the screws to Chloe? What choice did he have if spilling his guts would only ensure their deaths? “How did you and Livia end up outside the base?”

Chloe huffed a curl off her forehead, revealing a bruise just starting to purple up. “I shouldn’t have left under any circumstances. You can say I told you so anytime now.”

“Pointless.” He searched her face as best he could with the dim lighting streaking through as they passed streetlamps. “Why
did
you come chasing after me?”

“The ego roars.” Her laugh turned sniffly. “Sorry. Bad joke. I wasn’t looking for you. I was trying to keep Livia from leaving the base, and she all but kidnapped me.”

Now, that was odd, but hadn’t Nunez been concerned enough about Livia to have the commander guard her?

The Greek
had
mentioned the Circero woman while he was twisting a fistful of Jimmy’s hair out by the roots. He’d been busy gluing his jaws together so he didn’t let a groan slip free in front of Chloe and freak her out. Well, any more than an average woman would be freaked after being kidnapped and then seeing someone pulverized.

But back to the Cicero comment—good God, his mind wandered thanks to all this crap in his system. “Why was Livia trying to leave the base?”

“Something about helping a pal with girlfriend troubles and a sick mother to support. I’m so mad right now, I could kick Livia’s tail.”

Spunk in the middle of a nightmare. Her take-no-prisoners grit that had so irritated him before struck him as a handy trait right now.

“Jimmy, if you have an escape plan, now would be the time to spill it.”

“Sorry, maestra.” He couldn’t risk telling her about Miguel Carvalho, not when she could be next on the rack.

“What are
you
doing here? What’s going on?”

He jerked his head toward the driver, then pinned her with a hard look he hoped she would realize meant he couldn’t discuss his presence here. She searched his face through two grinding gearshifts before she gave a small nod of understanding.

“Talk to me, please?” She inched closer, her full lips close enough to kiss. “The dark isn’t as heavy when I can hear your voice. Tell me more about your family.”

He stole a look at the two men up front. The driver stared straight forward into the dark night. Nunez dropped his arm, palm flattened in an unmistakable “hold your position” signal. Since Nunez had use of his hands and weapons, he called the shots.

Jimmy returned to keeping Chloe calm so she didn’t draw undue attention to herself. “I have two brothers.”

A crack of thunder sounded just as raindrops tinked along the van roof. A plus or minus for them? Slippery bodies would be tougher to hold on to. Maybe he and Chloe could make their break for it when the van stopped.

She chewed her bottom lip, the plumpness freshly split and swollen in one corner. “And your sister, the one who had leukemia?”

The windshield wipers slapped away rain while he gathered his resolve to wade into a part of his past he rarely revisited, even in his thoughts.

“Jenny was two years older than me. For a while, we thought she would beat the odds. God, she was so fearless, a real fighter.”

“Like her brother.”

But he hadn’t been strong enough. “I was a bone marrow match, and we went the transplant route.” He worked his jaws to create saliva in a mouth gone dry from more than lack of water. “She stayed in remission for a full year and a half. Long enough to go to her junior prom.”

He didn’t want his emotional garbage out there for Nunez to overhear, but keeping Chloe preoccupied was his top priority.

“We were set to try another transplant. The week before the procedure, there was this scouting camp. I wanted to go, really wanted it, especially since I knew I would feel like crap after the surgery.”

“Any normal boy would want that trip.”

“We didn’t have a lot of money for vacations anymore, so sleeping in a tent in the woods with my buddies sounded like nirvana.” He looked away from her sympathetic face to the rain streaking down the van window. “I fell into a stream, kind of a waterfall actually.”

“What?”

Her question pulled his gaze back to her. “It was the middle of the winter, and I took this dare to walk across stepping-stones in a stream. I got caught up in the current and went over the waterfall. It wasn’t all that big.”

“Yeah, right.” She crinkled her nose. “The thing was probably freaking ginormous.”

He shrugged, stifling a wince at the pull to his battered bones. “The pool at the base was deep enough I didn’t break any bones.”

“You were very lucky.”

“Boys think they’re indestructible.” Except he’d been wrong. “I caught a cold that turned into pneumonia.”

Chloe gasped. “The week before your sister’s procedure.”

“Exactly. I couldn’t donate while sick.” Her warm green eyes had a way of soothing him, urging him to keep talking, even when the words rasped like crushed glass coming up his throat. “We had to wait a full month before my marrow was safe. We went ahead with the second transplant, but she didn’t last long.” He clenched and unclenched his fists to restore circulation in his tingling bound hands. “I hate heights to this day. Take me to a rooftop and I’ll probably puke like a wimp.”