Kill List (Special Ops #8) (5 page)

“You should have gone to the police.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not? Did you do something wrong?” Was she in anyway involved in this? No, she couldn’t have been. He wouldn’t believe that.

“I saw him, Chogan. I walked back toward the room and I saw him just before he pulled the trigger and I went and I hid. While I was hiding and he was searching the room, he even opened the closet where I was hiding but because I’m small I was able to take refuge behind the bigger safe and he didn’t see me. But even though he closed the door I could hear him on his call. He said to whomever he was talking to to send two officers and get rid of it—the body. If officers are disposing of dead bodies for him then I don’t know if I can trust the cops. So I didn’t go to them. I just—I hid.”

He could understand her fear now. She had seen the man murder his sister. She could have been killed herself, and then to hear him talking to a law officer about covering it up, yeah, he wouldn’t know who to trust either. Difference was, he didn’t trust many people at all and he certainly wasn’t in trust of any cop at this point in the game. He also could take care of his own defense while she couldn’t.

He pulled her into his arms and onto his lap. He held her while she sobbed against his chest and clung to his shirt. He was ready to attack the details of the murder when he heard the constant grumble of her stomach.

“You’re hungry.”

She sniffled and nodded. “You didn’t have any food here.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since the day Amber was murdered. I didn’t know where to go and I thought it best if I stayed out of sight so I thought of your place. I figured you would come back here…at least I hoped you would.”

He ran one hand through his loose flowing hair just thinking of how long that had been. “I have food upstairs. You’re going to eat, and then we’re going to talk.” He stood, holding her in his arms and taking the stairs one at a time until he reached the top. He walked over to the kitchen and sat her in a chair. He pulled the blinds closed completely to keep any possible roving eyes out of the equation. The last thing he needed was for somebody to call the cops and report Olivia’s whereabouts.

He riffled through the bags he brought home with him, pulled out an apple, washed it and handed it to her. She could eat that while he got dinner together.

He watched her take bites so fast she was barely chewing one before taking the next. He put his hand on her wrist. “Slow down, honey.”

Tears shone in her eyes and she nodded. He understood her hunger. She had been living on water about a week now. Amber had been killed, but it was already the next day where he was located when he received word. Even though the call had came in swiftly, and he had gotten the message since they weren’t out on a mission he still had to leave his local, land in Germany and exit commercially from there back to New York. Then he had spent more time at his parents’ house than he planned to. God, it had been over a week now. She was starving. But perhaps what hit him in the core of his gut was the fact that starving or not she was too afraid to leave the safety of his basement. She would have let herself die there rather than go out to find food. Something about that told him more than what he had already discerned from the limited information he had on the situation. Something about that told him this murder was deeper than a man with a gun and a need to kill innocent chamber maids.

She finished one apple and he washed the grapes and gave her those too. He watched her eat a little more slowly now, but still just as ravenously.

“We were cleaning his room,” she said. “We were later that morning because the previous room looked like a frat party gone wild even though it was really occupied by business men from L.A.” She shook her head. “It was dirty—a lot, so we took longer. When we got to 1422 I told her I was taking the bathroom and she could take the disheveled sheets. We joked that the bulk of the mess might be in the bathroom. I took my case; I cleaned and I had already put my case back but I left the brush in the bathroom. Amber was trying to move his briefcase back to its previous location. She had to move it to do the cleaning. It was under the bed,” she nodded to nobody other than herself as if she were re-verifying the cases position. “Post cleaning the room we always make sure suitcases and anything else we had to move goes back to where it was first. It’s part of the rules. Nobody gets away with violating that rule. Somebody complains that their Gucci bag wasn’t on the dresser like they had it but the maid put it on a nightstand instead and the boss definitely goes in on the maids who cleaned. Amber was just trying to do the job one hundred percent the way it was supposed to be done. She was putting the case back and when she picked it up the clasps popped open and everything fell out. She was picking them up. She told me she didn’t need me to help. When I started my way back to where she was I saw him holding the gun behind her and I saw him pull the trigger. I didn’t have any time to warn her.”

“It wouldn’t have helped anyway,” he was sure of that. She couldn’t blame herself. Had she made a sound it would be her body vanishing into the night and nobody would have known where either woman was. “You called the police.” He was near certain of that fact now.

She nodded. “After I heard the door close I waited to make sure he wasn’t just hovering outside the door you know. I snuck out and I was headed back toward the service elevator and I heard him on the phone telling somebody he left something in the room that was important or something. He was coming back my way so I took the laundry shoot out of there.”

“From the fourteenth floor?!”

“Feet first,” she nodded. “Broken bones seemed better than death, but I suppose if the cart at the bottom was gone or empty I could have died too. Thank God I’m not a wide boned woman or I wouldn’t have fit down that thing. But when I got myself together I knew I couldn’t let them just get rid of her. I knew I had to do something so I called 9-1-1 from the basement. I hoped the right cops would show up and they wouldn’t be crooked.” She shook her head. “I forgot to disguise my voice, but I guess it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to know the rooms aren’t cleaned alone, and it wouldn’t take a genius to find out that Amber and I were partners every day and for every clean. I laid low and I heard the sirens and the screeching halt of cars so I knew the right ones had turned up. If it were the officers he had asked for they wouldn’t have come with sirens blaring. They would have done everything quietly.”

He nodded. She was right on that.

“I tried to stay hidden long enough before I found a way to secretly make my way here. I didn’t want any of your neighbors to see me. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have come here, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Yes, you should have come here. I should have come home sooner.”

“I don’t know what he was, Chogan. I mean, why kill her? Why do that to her? And the only thing I can think of is that there was something about those photos in the case that he didn’t want anybody to know about.”

“Photos?” A red flag went up and he went to Defcon 1 in his alert. The highest level of alert as if nuclear war was imminent and in his mind it fit this situation perfectly. Photos plus an execution style murder from a now vanished man and crooked cops to handle the cleanup definitely was a highest level of alert situation to him. This definitely was a war, one that very much could detonate like a nuclear bomb. Destruction was imminent. The question wasn’t if it would happen, but when it would happen. There was no possible way, whoever this man was, that he would just walk away and leave a witness behind to identify him. The gun used obviously had a silencer so this man wasn’t just some sordid criminal with a gun. The room occupied was on the higher end of the price line so he wasn’t a poor man either. Photos?—Photos plus silencer, plus well connected, meant assassin to him. This man was an assassin and Amber had found his kill list.

“Jesus,” he growled. He was going to need a lot of help here. Sure he could take the guy out if he knew what he was looking for, but a high paid assassin wasn’t a fool. That man would find Olivia fast, kill her and move on to his kill list. And if he had cops on the take then that was going to make it even more difficult.  The only thing he could use Autumn to help him with now was pulling the right strings to get two men from his unit in here now. Maybe she could let him borrow one of the safe houses too. There was no way he could do what he needed to do in the city.

“I’m sorry, Chogan. I’m sorry I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I’m sorry I slept on your couch and used your blankets. I’m sorry for all of it.” She started crying again in large gasping hiccups. He tossed the knife onto the counter and went to her, pulling her up into his arms and holding her tightly.

“Do not apologize to me for this, Liv. Do not apologize for staying alive. What you can tell me might help me get this guy sooner rather than later.” He sat down and let her behind grace his lap. “And don’t worry about the couch or the blankets. There’s no other woman I would share these things with than you.” And he meant that sincerely. This woman was in his heart, in his mind, in his blood. He had wanted her before but the possibility of losing her, of thinking she might be dead already, had kicked him into a shift mode that made him realize he wouldn’t wait any longer. He would claim this woman. He would claim her, save her and protect her. He would do all of this while avenging his sister’s death. This was his promise to himself and he would keep it.

He wanted her, but not tonight. Tonight she needed to rest, to come down off the fear and the hunger and the pain. Tonight he would let her rest, but beyond that he couldn’t promise he could stay away longer. He was running full throttle on adrenaline and lust, and love—definitely love. He would have her completely. The only thing he had to worry himself with now was that he remembered not to take her like a wild animal, like he was going to pound her into the bed with every thrust. No, he would have to be more—
gentle
. Could he be gentle? Could he not let the warrior within leap to the forefront and claim her with a passionate furry that would leave her sore for days? He exhaled slowly. He didn’t know the answer to that because right now he was thinking hard about ripping that uniform off her, getting her panties down and pushing into her hard and fast. Yeah, he was a rough rider and right now he wanted to ride her hard.

She smelled soft, like fresh soap, the soap that he kept in the half bath down in the basement. She had bathed the best she could using the sink and he was nearly sure of that. He brushed his lips against her forehead, inhaling her scent. “You smell like soap,” he said. “Soft soap and woman.”

She sighed. “I used the hand soap in the bathroom. I just ran a little water and used one of the hand towels you had on the rod down there. Dial, I think is what that is—the natural one.”

“Yep,” he inhaled the scent of her again. His body aching harder now. “My sister picked out a pack and gave it to me a while back. I’ve been trying to use it all but I’m not here long enough for that.” He felt his body warring with his mind. Do not go caveman on her is what he told himself, but his dick had a completely different opinion on the matter. The soft woman sitting on his lap was turning him on more than ever. He wanted to connect to her, to the goodness in her. He wanted that net of softness to shuck off the hardness even if only for the moment. He was still coming in hot from his previous op of rescuing a female journalist who was going to be sold as a bride to the most recent terrorist uprising disorganization as he called it. The blond Brit wasn’t one of theirs but she obviously had some pull with the right people in her country and they had pull with the right people in America and he and his team had a job to do. They did it all, from search, rescue and extract, to hit them hard and kill them all. Had somebody asked him if he would be hardcore military when he was a kid he would have said no. There is no way he had seen his life being this, but once it was there was no way he could imagine anything else. He was past his twenty plus one and he could fully retire if he wanted to, but what would he retire to? What kind of man would he be if he weren’t doing what he did now? He wasn’t sure of that. He was a Marine bred in the heart until he was ready to devote his body to the core, and now he just didn’t know what else he could be.

Had he figured out something else two years ago he would have been home protecting his family. He would have yanked his sister out of that job and made her go back to school. Maybe he would have convinced her to open her own resort on some safe zoned island, but he sure as hell wouldn’t have let her get killed on her knees.

Maybe he blamed himself for not saving her before. Maybe he blamed himself for not insisting she do something else with her life. But she was happy. Odd as that may have seemed to some his sister liked working for that upscale hotel and she liked rising to the position she was in higher and higher. He didn’t know why. He couldn’t imagine enjoying cleaning other people’s crap out of a toilet, but from what she had told him most visitors weren’t at all bad since they had higher class guests, and the tips were beyond good. Yeah, three hundred dollars from some of the men left on the nightstand for her and the other worker every two days of their stay was one hell of a tip. She was happy, but had he even thought her slice of makeshift heaven could become her hell he would have ripped her out of there so fast she wouldn’t know what storm blew into her life and dismantled it.

And Olivia…yeah, he blamed himself for not being here sooner to help her too. He should have come home sooner and she wouldn’t have been starving.