Vengeance (SSU Trilogy Book 1) (16 page)

Then one of the hounds grabbed the fork in his mouth and took off in the direction Niko had gone. Wishing she could yell at the dog to stop, Jenna gave chase. She didn’t want the dogs bothering Niko on his phone call.

Uh-oh. Too late.

The other hound had caught up with her mate and tackled him. Just as Jenna knelt down to pry the wrestling dogs apart, they slammed into the door to Niko’s office.

It popped open.

“Just get me the location,” Niko snapped. “The second you do, I’ll be on a plane.”

Jenna froze, forgetting the dogs, who rushed in to surround their master, trying with licks and wags to entice him to join their game.

I’ll
be on a plane, she thought. Not
we’ll
.

Niko was planning on going after Kai without her.

The anger that wasn’t far from the surface since she’d left the SSU compound erupted.

Chapter 12

Niko paced across the office as he listened to the report from private investigator and former journalist Gascon Laroux.

“I don’t know where he’s holding your aunt,” Gascon said. “But it ain’t Mexico. He’s reacquired many of his old properties, but there’s been no sign of him recently.”

“Keep looking,” Niko ordered. Sooner or later someone would give up Alvarez’s location.

Dios
, the wait was killing him.

Gascon possessed an extensive network of contacts. Whatever properties Alvarez had buried under false names, Gascon would find them. Eventually.

But Aunt Madalena didn’t have time.

“Try Peru,” Niko said. “Even though that’s where we captured him, he has emotional ties to the region. His original fortress was destroyed, but he may have rebuilt it or bought another. He—”

The door burst open and the dogs tumbled into the room.

Niko turned his back and stuck his finger in his ear, trying to hear Gascon over the excited yipping of the dogs. The man was making some sort of disclaimer.

“Just get me the location,” Niko snapped. “The second you do, I’ll be on a plane.” He jabbed the disconnect button and tucked the phone into his pocket. Dammit, he wanted to be in on the search, but he was too well known south of the border. And Alvarez would be watching for him to try something.

Better to let the crime lord think he was playing along, searching for the chip and Paterson.

Callie whined and lay belly down on the floor, nose pointed toward the door. The other dogs nudged his hands, but when he didn’t respond, they followed Callie’s example.

The quiet in the room thickened. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Ah shit. He turned around, dreading what he was going to see.

Jenna stood in the doorway, face flushed with fury. Her chest rose and fell on jerky, angry breaths. Her eyes glittered.

Niko thought back over his conversation. She couldn’t have heard anything before the dogs burst in. Nothing about Madalena. So what had her so—

“You’re planning on going after Kai by yourself.” Jenna flung the words at him. “Leaving me behind.”

Hurt flashed in her eyes, kindling an answering spark of guilt in his chest.

Hell no. He wasn’t going to feel sorry for Jenna. She wanted to think of herself as an operator? Great. Then she’d better grow a friggin’ spine. “You’re a liability,” he said. So she thought this was about her brother? He’d play along. No way was he letting her in on the situation with his aunt.

Jenna flinched. “I thought we agreed. Kai’s my brother. I have the right to go after him.”

Niko shrugged. Using Jenna as bait was last on his list of options. “You’re injured. I have a mission. If I get an opportunity before you’re healed, I’m taking it.”

Jenna’s lips curled in a bitter snarl. “Leaving me trapped in the middle of nowhere with no way to hunt you down.”

“You’re not a damn prisoner. You can leave any time you like.”

“
No
one is getting to Kai before me,” she shot back. Her golden eyes flashed fanatically bright. “If I have to hike out of here and hijack a plane, I will. Kai is mine!”

What the fuck?

She wasn’t talking like a loving sister. More like a crazed bounty hunter. Sure, the SSU wanted him on suspicion of murder and stealing the chip, but Jenna was supposed to be focused on bringing her brother in to make sure he was treated fairly.

Wasn’t she?

He knew there was evidence pointing to her brother’s involvement in the attack on her family. Ryker believed that made her brother a possible threat to Jenna. But if Jenna thought her brother was responsible for the killings, maybe
she
was a threat to her
brother.

He fought back a snarl. Dammit, if that was the case, then Ryker was playing a dangerous game.

Jenna stepped toward him. “You could make me stronger. Train me to be tough enough so I’m not a liability.” Her lip curled in bitterness. “But you’re like everyone else. You see me as a victim. A freak. Not a partner.”

Niko ran his hand through his hair. Stifled the urge to shake some sense into her. “Dammit, that’s not it. Listen, I saw the pictures of you before the attack, okay? I’ve seen your file. You were like some fucking Pollyanna. All sunshine and laughter and do-gooder instincts. Now you’re trying to tell me that you’re some hard assed bitch? Get real.”

He shook his head. “Sunshine, all those months of training don’t mean squat if you can’t keep emotion out of an op. You got shot in Moscow because you couldn’t keep your compassion for the apartment manager under wraps. You pulled your weapon on me in the hotel room because I made you mad. With instincts like those,
no one
can train you long enough to be as ruthless as you need to be.”

Jenna paled and stepped back. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“Fucking cry me a river. I know women who have been through twice the amount of pain and loss as you. Get over it.”

Her expression froze in shock. And hurt. “It changed me,” she insisted.

“Compassion, sunshine. You didn’t change as much as you think.”

Her mouth settled into a mulish line.

He shook his head. What the hell had Ryker and the SSU trainers been doing? Coddling her? Well screw that. Training was supposed to strip away a person’s defenses, leaving no hidden kernel of insecurity or emotional weakness to pop up later, putting a mission in jeopardy.

He didn’t do coddling.

He leaned toward her. “You think you’re such a hot operator? Not in my book. I wouldn’t want you guarding my back.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Don’t like that? Tough. You’re a danger to yourself and to others. Hell yeah, I’m leaving you behind. Even if I have to tie you up and lock you in your room.”

#

Sunday, Night

Washington, D.C.

“Someone hacked into the database, looking for Jenna’s records,” Ryker told Niko over a secure phone line.

“Shit. Please tell me they didn’t find anything.”

“Nothing true,” Ryker replied. He took extra precautions when it came to Jenna’s safety. “Our records confirm that Jenna survived the attack against her family, but state she died in the hospital. There’s even an authentic death certificate. However, the records also claim that we assigned Jenna’s identity to another agent in order to use her as bait for reeling in Kai.”

Niko made a sound that could have been approval, or an indication the younger man thought Ryker was nuts to put anything in a file, true or not. If Ryker could have given Jenna a brand new name, he would have. But she’d refused. And the sheer panic in her eyes at the suggestion had made him back off. She’d lost so much, he hadn’t the heart to take her name away, too.

“Any idea who did it?” Niko asked. “Tonelli?”

“Doubtful. He’s not known for his computer skills. It’s more likely one of his CIA colleagues.” But no one beat Ryker’s computer security. His experts worked slightly ahead of the curve of new technology.

“We’re trying to locate the hacker, but it’s likely a dead end,” Ryker continued. Truth was, he’d ordered his people not to look too hard into the breach. The intruder had intimate knowledge of the SSU’s computer systems, including the back door Ryker had left open. If the hacker was who he thought, the information on Jenna wasn’t going anywhere.

Still, “I’m more concerned than before about Jenna’s safety,” he told Niko. “I don’t want her away from you.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, Andros. Jenna’s your responsibility. You can’t bring her back here, and if I hear that you’ve dumped her on someone else? You’re fired.” Ryker took a deep breath. “She’s the daughter I never had. Keep her alive.” He hung up before Niko could protest.

The threat of losing his job probably wasn’t enough to keep Niko with Jenna, but reminding him that Ryker considered Jenna family should do it.

Niko understood protecting one’s family.

#

Monday, Morning

Outskirts of Helsinki

In a small café on a bustling street on the outskirts of Helsinki, Kai Paterson watched as the information on his laptop screen blurred then swam into focus, blurred then focused again.

It took his tired brain several seconds to realize the screen wasn’t malfunctioning. No, he had tears in his eyes. Tears he couldn’t afford, because he couldn’t draw attention to himself.

He read the words again.

Name of deceased: Jenna Paterson. Time of death: 11:03 a.m., May 14th.

The damn words wavered again and Kai closed his eyes against a wave of grief. It had been foolish to hope, but the amber eyes of the boy in the Moscow bar wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d dreamed that Jenna was alive and woke with an urgent need to check for himself.

So he’d hacked into the SSU’s computer, searching for the truth. His Ph.D. might be in biochemistry, with an emphasis on bioterrorism, but he also held a masters in computer science.

His hope had doubled when he discovered Ryker had left open the computer system’s back door, the one set up to help agents who were so deep undercover they couldn’t access SSU files through legitimate channels.

He hadn’t checked the files two years ago after the attack, because he’d accessed the police files directly. But the minute he’d opened Jenna’s SSU file, his heart sank.

The truth was that whoever that boy had been in Moscow, it hadn’t been Jenna in disguise.

Jenna was truly dead.

And God, he wanted to kill the assassins all over again.

#

Wednesday, Afternoon

Rocky Mountains, Montana

Jenna completed another lap in the pool, either oblivious of Niko or ignoring him.

With a grunt of disgust, he threw his towel on a bench and settled in to wait for her to come out. No way in hell was he sharing the pool with her.

He scrubbed his hand over his hair and reminded himself that he wasn’t the bad guy. Jenna was the one who’d been sulking around the past three days. From breakfast to lunch they enjoyed a truce, working together to sift through SSU reports about Paterson’s activities before the night Nevsky died. Looking for something that the other agents assigned to find her brother had missed.

Searching for clues as to why he’d worked with Alvarez to have his family killed.

Each day, Jenna’s tension grew with every hour, until by lunchtime he was afraid she would break. The second lunch was over, she bolted. And avoided him the rest of the day.

Or tried to. Somehow he always ended up where she was at least once an afternoon. Which meant he was fully aware that she was putting herself through grueling workouts.

That pissed him off. Every time he came across her working out, he had to turn away and bite back angry words. Fight the instinct to lock her in her bedroom and force her to rest until both her head and her arm were fully healed.

A fucking chauvinist reaction, but one he couldn’t deny. Besides, there was only one reason she was pushing herself. She planned to go after her brother. With or without him.

And that terrified him.

Jenna performed a sleek underwater turn and pushed into the middle of the pool. He watched her slight form cut gracefully through the water.

Christ. Talk about an innocent among devils. What the hell had Ryker been thinking, letting her enter operator training? The program had two purposes. Sharpen the skills of operators coming in from other special ops organizations, and give new recruits a strong foundation before seasoning them on real-world missions with experienced agents.

It was not intended to take a frickin’ art history student and turn her into Rambo. He didn’t care how high Jenna had scored on marksmanship. He didn’t care where she ranked in her class. Just because she’d survived a brutal attack didn’t mean she had the heartlessness to succeed in this mission.

She wasn’t capable of taking on Alvarez, the CIA, and whatever other organizations were now gunning for Paterson. And he’d meant what he said the other night.

He didn’t trust Jenna to watch his back. He still wasn’t sure if she was after her brother to keep him safe, or for some darker purpose.

He worked his jaw, knowing what he had to do and feeling the familiar burn of acid in his stomach. He had to prove to Jenna she was out of her element. Agree to train her, then frighten her so deeply, she’d give up any idea of going after her brother.

Dammit. He
hated
violence against women. The thought of hurting Jenna made him want to howl in denial.

It’s for her own good. Think what will happen if Alvarez gets his hands on her. You want her to end up like Aunt Madalena?

Niko closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and once again prepared himself to violate his own code of right and wrong in order to get the job done.

Chapter 13

Wednesday, Night

Washington, D.C.

“You still have no idea why Paterson was in Moscow?” Niko demanded when Ryker answered his phone.

Ryker rubbed the top of his head. “No. He was alone when our guy spotted him, just like last year when we caught sight of Kai in Egypt.”