Defender (18 page)

He’d only meant to distract her from fear, and somehow he’d fallen into some kind of confessional. “My folks swore they understood that it wasn’t my fault, but things were never the same in our house after Jenny died.” His parents had stopped coming to his and his brothers’ sports functions, too afraid of running into friends of their daughter. “Holidays sucked most, missing Jenny and watching our mother try to hide her tears.”

“Family tragedies have a way of tearing people apart at the very time they should be sticking together.” Chloe’s voice went husky in the darkening van, the streetlamps farther apart as they seemed to plunge deeper into the countryside.

“How do you understand this so well when my own brothers can barely look me in the eye?”

The rain hammered harder outside, leeching the sparse light, casting shadows over her face. “Before my mom died, she and Dad fought all the time, and I was certain it was because of my health issues. I don’t have to explain to you how the bills pile up with a chronically ill child, then add my music lessons on top of everything else. I guess I’m trying to say that I’m certain your sister didn’t blame you. Most likely she blamed herself for the problems she thought she brought to the rest of the family.”

He hadn’t seen the sickness through his sister’s eyes that way. Mostly, though, he hated that Chloe had gone through a childhood so packed with heartaches that she could see his hurts so fucking clearly. “When did you lose your mother?”

“In a car crash when I was twelve. She fell asleep at the wheel on her way back from visiting me in the hospital.”

He wanted his arms free to scoop her up and comfort this woman who’d already experienced enough pain for three lifetimes. How could her mother put her kid through that?

Her brow puckered a second before her eyes widened. “You jumped out of the back of an airplane into an ocean full of sharks, even though you’re scared of heights, to save me.”

“I said I was afraid. I never said that would stop me. I had a first-rate example in bravery watching what my sister went through.”

Her eyes fell to his mouth, stroking with her gaze as effectively as if she’d kissed him in reality. “That’s why you say fear is for the weak. You’re honoring your sister.”

He eye-stroked her right back. “You got it, maestra.”

She understood him too well. A scary prospect. So why had he, a man who prided himself on facing his fears, been running from her?

The van lurched forward faster, jarring him against Chloe. He only hoped they lived long enough for him to explore the rest of that thought.

EIGHTEEN

“Want to take it easy there, Kutros?” Nunez braced his hand against the cracked vinyl dashboard on the cheapo foreign model, determined to control something in a mission going downhill more rapidly than the van. With Chloe Nelson’s surprise appearance, he would have to cut his losses once they reached the farm and pray that enough info could be gleaned there. He couldn’t afford the luxury of spending time there in hopes of gathering more intel.

“Damn it all, someone is following us.” Kutros careened the utility vehicle around a corner on the unlit country road about ten miles north of Adana.

A tail?

Had his operatives come out of their unobtrusive stance? Nunez checked the rearview mirror, and even with the piss-poor visibility of a stormy night, he could see enough. They were being followed, but not by his people.

Two Turkish police cars barreled behind, accelerating at breakneck speed through the sheeting rain. Then sirens blared, lights strobing through the haze. The authorities weren’t supposed to make their move until the van reached Kutros’s destination.

And the authorities weren’t supposed to be Turks.

Forcing his heart rate to stay even, his pulse steady, Nunez organized all the players in his mind, moving them about mentally like chess pieces. Cops with sirens blaring would screech everything to a halt and could very well shut down the investigation, cutting off all hope of getting Chuck Tanaka back. Sure, the safeguards he’d put into place became problematic with the Nelson woman along, but at least the people listening in understood the potentially explosive dynamics.

Unlike local cops looking to issue a speeding ticket.

Kutros ground the gears, downshifting up a rolling hill. “Would you like to weigh in with a suggestion?”

End this now in a standoff with the Turkish police who knew nothing about the situation? Or ditch the cops so his agents could continue following the GPS tracker he’d slipped under the seat?

He didn’t even have to wonder. “Floor it.”

Kutros nailed the accelerator and fishtailed along the muddy road before gaining traction. Twin geysers spewed from the back tires, flinging up a wall of water the Turkish police would be hard-pressed to see through.

The Greek spun the steering wheel in his hand. “Roll down the window and shoot.”

Uh, not a good idea.
“Can’t see them. I’m not wasting my ammo on a blind shoot. And I am definitely not sticking my head out there for them to plug a bullet into my skull.”

Kutros mumbled something under his breath, no doubt insulting Nunez’s masculinity.

Jimmy’s whisper piped through Nunez’s earpiece. “I’m getting antsy. Something’s gotta give soon. Not gonna stand by if they touch Chloe.”

“Hold,” Nunez mumbled, windshield wipers slapping double time. He’d heard Jimmy’s warning about her kidney transplant and would do his best to keep her safe. Although so far, the Nelson woman appeared quite capable of taking care of herself.

Kutros’s unibrow pinched tighter together. “What was that you said?”

“I’m going to hold on to the woman when we get out of the van.”

“Nunez,” Jimmy muttered, “why not let the cops help?”

He didn’t want to risk whispering another word to Gage, not with Kutros already on edge, so Nunez settled for, “How much longer until we get to that farm? You are going to have to trust me sometime, partner.”

“You’ll hear soon enough. I cannot risk going there until our police ‘friends’ are taken care of.” Kutros rolled down his window and whipped out a semiautomatic handgun.

Nunez lunged across and chopped Kutros’s wrist, sending the gun rattling in the floorboards. “Drive, damn it, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“You are beginning to irritate me, Senor Carvalho.” His thick, dark brows lowered until his evil eyes almost disappeared. “Perhaps you brought the authorities.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” He scooped the weapon off the floor. “Look in the mirror. You lost the police.”

“I intend to make sure they stay lost.” Kutros continued silently for another two kilometers before pulling the van off the road alongside a field of fig trees. He left the engine on idle. “Unbuckle your seat belt.

Something was off. Nunez had the distinct impression he’d better grab his sunscreen, because this operation most definitely was about to take a rapid southerly turn.

He kept the gun loose in his grip, preparing to press it to Kutros’s temple if necessary. So many lives in the balance depended on which choice he made. “Where’s the farm?”

“We are stopping here until a few things are settled.” Kutros pulled another gun from beneath the dash.

Definitely south. He’d waited too long.

He hated second-guessing and couldn’t waste the time on any thoughts but getting the two people in back out alive. Nunez slid his hand under the seat, pressing the alert button on the GPS that would call his people in ASAP. They would covertly swarm the van in minutes.

“All right then.” He needed to keep Kutros talking. “Bring me up to date on what we need to discuss before you trust me with the farm’s location.” Even if he was too late to save Chuck Tanaka, Nunez would damn well bring a body back with him Stateside.

“Oh, we will not be talking.” He leveled the long barrel dead aimed at Nunez’s chest. “It is time for you to prove you are with us.”

Us. More people in the chain. Marta Surac, most likely. He stuffed aside thoughts of Anya and her possible—hell, probable—involvement. He would deal with her when and if necessary.

“Be reasonable, Kutros.” He patted the air in the universal
calm down
signal. “If anything, you owe me an apology for mucking things up with our extra passenger. I have proven myself by giving you the airman.”

“In my business, we have many levels of tests. The more you pass, the more you will be compensated.”

He didn’t need to hear the price for failure.

His semiautomatic steady, Kutros nodded to the weapon in Nunez’s hand. “Kill them both. Now.”

Chloe searched around her frantically as the man with a Spanish accent—Miguel—opened the back doors of the van, an ugly black gun in his hand. The torrential rain had already saturated him, plastering his clothes and hair into an even darker shade of doom.

She set her chin and her resolve for the fight ahead. She hadn’t gotten this far in life to waste the precious gift that unnamed kidney donor had blessed her with. If this Miguel thought he could simply pull the trigger and make her disappear, he had another think coming. Not that she had a clue how she would stop him, but she would make damn sure the guy felt the brunt of her inner Captain Kirk before he fired that big ass scary weapon.

Her throat closed, and she swallowed gulps of cold fear and damp air.

“Jimmy?” she hissed. “What should we—”

“Stay calm, quiet, and don’t piss off the Greek guy.”

She wanted to ask more, like what had Jimmy been whispering about earlier to some guy named Nunez? Did he have a bug wired somewhere? Because if he had reinforcements tucked away, now would be a really good time for them to jump out of the trees in their weedy looking ghillie suits or whatever it was those military sorts did when they were trying to be covert.

Her inner Captain Kirk might be willing, but her lessons with Jimmy hadn’t progressed to fighting with her hands bound. She seriously doubted she would inflict much damage on these guys before the bullets flew.

Miguel called over his shoulder. “Kutros, free their feet so they can get out of the van. I don’t want to risk any bullets ricocheting around inside that metal cave.”

The Greek man—Kutros—pitched the keys to the other man. “Do it yourself.”

Miguel leaned inside, something flickering in his eyes that she could have sworn was reassurance, then gone. He mumbled to Jimmy, but she couldn’t hear over the pounding percussion in her ears and drumming rain.

“Out,” Miguel ordered.

Chloe scrambled across the van floor toward the gaping back doors. Between the storm and the clouds covering the moon, the night waited like a hungry void.

Jimmy moved quietly next to her as she stumbled out of the vehicle onto the small patch of ground near a line of trees. Rain poured over her in pounding pellets, her clothes soaked in seconds. What a way to get the shower she’d been longing for.

The humidity smelled of thickly pungent cigar smoke even as she gave Kutros a wide berth. Why couldn’t those police have caught them earlier? They were probably too far away now to hear any shots.

At least she and Jimmy had their feet free. She wasn’t sure how much good that would do them against two armed men with full use of their hands, but she’d seen Jimmy in action before. At least they had a chance. She couldn’t even let herself think he would die because he was hamstrung protecting her.

Miguel strode over to Jimmy, gun held loosely in one hand. Thunder clapped overhead, followed by the snap of lightning.

Panic ramped up inside her. She’d prepared herself to die more times than she could count. She hadn’t wanted to go, yet she’d been resigned to the seeming inevitable.

But she couldn’t wrap her mind around even the possibility of something happening to Jimmy. Damn it, she refused to resign herself to that. She would do
something
, no matter how small, bite, kick, spit in someone’s eye, throw herself at them like a berserker.

She launched forward just as Miguel slid one hand behind Jimmy’s back. To brace him from falling over at the impact of a bullet to the brain?
No, no, no.
She swallowed bile, too far away to make it in time.

The intense eyed Miguel took his time bringing the gun up, his finger on the trigger. His mouth moved with low pitched words apparently meant only for Jimmy.

An apology?

Gloating?

The gun popped. Jimmy fell.

His hands now free from the moment when Nunez had leaned in to warn him, Jimmy slapped the muddy ground to break the momentum of his fall. Kutros clutched his shoulder, blood pumping between his fingers as he stumbled back against a fig tree.

The shot Nunez had squeezed off a scant inch in front of Jimmy’s face had hit true into Kutros.

And probably popped Jimmy’s eardrum, but he didn’t have the time or inclination to complain. They were alive. Most importantly, he’d kept Chloe alive, even if she’d almost managed to throw herself in the bullet’s path. That nightmare moment was guaranteed to wake him up in a cold sweat more than once in the future.

Nunez shouted. In pain? Jimmy rolled to a crouch, rain beating his back, as he scanned for the agent. Nunez stumbled around the small clearing, shoes slipping in the muck.

With Chloe on his back.

Her legs were wrapped around Nunez’s hips, her teeth clamped into his shoulder to hold herself in place even without her hands. God, she was amazing. And taking a serious chunk out of Nunez.

Jimmy vaulted to his feet and clasped Chloe around the waist. “It’s okay. You can let go. He’s with us.”

She sagged against Jimmy. He lowered her to her feet while Nunez backpedaled. The agent ground his teeth through curses, gripping his shoulder on his way over to Kutros.

Chloe stared from him to Nunez, her hair a wild, wet tangle stuck to her face. “What in God’s name is going on?”

Jimmy waved a hand in the air to Nunez for the cuff keys, his body still tensed from the fight. He wanted to haul Chloe up close and shake her all at once.

He settled for sliding a hand along the nape of her neck, his thumb grazing the reassuring throb of her pulse. “We’ll talk later.”

“Like hell,” her chest pumped with gulping gasps, as he uncuffed her hands, “we’ll talk now.”

Sirens wailed in the background, cutting her short and saving his ass for now, although Chloe’s eyes assured him the reprieve was only temporary. Her ire fired him up all the more at a time when his emotions were already on a fast rise from simmer to boil.

A pair of police cars streaked their headlights over the clearing in a blinding flash that had Jimmy shielding his eyes with his arm to his forehead. Both vehicles screeched to a halt by the roadside, spewing water over Kutros, now cuffed and moaning in a puddle.

Nunez swiped his face off, approaching Jimmy and Chloe fast. “We don’t have much time. Play it cool. Keep the answers minimal until we can get to the stationhouse and my credentials can be verified. With a little luck and some diplomatic pressure, we should be back on base within two hours.”

Despite Nunez’s reassurance, this showed all the signs of turning into a tangle of governmental channels that could land them in Turkish cells for an indeterminable amount of time when they needed to find that farmhouse before Kutros’s people disbanded. However, taking down four local police officers didn’t sound like a wise option, either.

Damn. Make that five. One of the cop cars had an extra passenger.

The back door swung open on the first squad car. Nunez had his attention focused on the well-dressed man sporting a fedora and a high-end suit, climbing out of the cruiser with an umbrella. Jimmy searched his mind to place the familiar face . . .

The doorman from the Oasis, Omar. Turkish police a step behind, he strode closer, his fine leather shoes squishing in the mud. “I understand from Mr. Carvalho’s girlfriend that you are in need of assistance.”