“Goodbye, Ethan,” the beautiful scientist blurted out as Ethan turned to leave. “Thank you for saving my life.”
“Goodbye, Kiana,” he said, somewhat jerkily.
She’s just a job.
Those green eyes of hers really were something, though.
He knocked on Bretta’s door on the fourth floor a few minutes later. His head, when she pulled the door open, was still full of half-formed daydreams involving Dr. Avesta, dinner dates and too much wine, and he stood blankly for a moment.
“Hi,” Bretta said.
“Hi,” Ethan replied.
“You going to stand there, or are you coming in?” Bretta asked.
Her midnight hair was loose, falling across her shoulders like shadow. She was dressed in one of the hotel robes and Ethan could hear the sound of a bath running in the background. He swallowed. Temptation battered him like waves upon a rock.
He entered and shut the door. “I just wanted to come by and make sure you were okay. You sounded a little flat when you called earlier.”
Bretta nodded. “Yeah, well…” She did not elaborate.
And then Ethan made the rookie error of doing the wrong thing––from a professional point of view––for the right reason. He forgot to be a DIA agent before a human and said, “Look, do you want to come to my room later, for dinner? You can talk to me about whatever the hell happened earlier.”
Now the temptation was hanging in the air in front of both of them like some invisible noose. They looked at each other for a long few seconds. Ethan knew why he and Bretta got along as well as they did. Sure, there was the physical attraction they both felt for one another, blended with a professional respect for each other’s skills, but it also had a lot to do with the fact that they were, both of them, very cagey about letting their guards down too far and too fast.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Just dinner?”
“Just dinner.” His gaze drifted to the bathroom.
You both agreed not to let this sort of stuff interfere with your work.
It was a lot simpler to adhere to that rule when they were in the middle of a gun battle, and not so easy when Bretta was standing before him, dressed in a robe and gazing at him with those eyes that reminded Ethan of the Caribbean waters of Saint Croix, where they last spent any significant time alone together.
Somehow, without any conscious thought or discernible movement that he could remember, the distance between them had closed.
If she were my enemy, this would be well within her killing range. Allure is definitely more a female weapon than a man’s––and how so very effective.
She placed a hand on his chest. Somehow, this simple gesture made him recall the first night they had shared in their simple beachfront villa on Cane Bay. She had put her hand against his chest then too, only not so gently as this. She had pushed him backwards until he’d hit the flimsy wall of the lounge room; her breath warm in his own mouth, smelling of rum and coconut, her skin still coarse with sand and smelling like the sea… and when she’d landed on him, he’d spun her around and gave her the pounding she had so badly wanted.
“Remember, how we said we had to keep this strictly professional, Mr. Galaal?” Bretta’s voice said, transporting him back from the winding, sunlit avenues of Memory Lane.
Ethan blinked. “I do vaguely recall something about it, yeah.”
Bretta smiled. “This whole spiel about the dangers it could pose both of our lives, and whatever mission we were on, if we weren’t able to think and act dispassionately. You seemed to think it might compromise our abilities to think logically if the choice was between one of us or the completion of the job.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “You were listening to that then?”
“Sure. I listen to everything you say. There’s the occasional nugget of wisdom interspersed with all the crap, you know.” A small smile played across her crooked lips as she regarded him from under heavy lids.
Ethan snorted and took a step back. “All right, then. It’s good to see that you are the consummate professional around here, as always. I’ll let you take your bath, and we’ll dine alone tonight.” He turned to go. “I’ll see y––”
“Hey,” Bretta said, cutting him short.
Ethan turned. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to have dinner with you. Just that, well, it’ll be a very dispassionate dinner, okay?”
Ethan grunted a laugh and smiled at her. “All right then. I shall cancel the champagne and oysters.”
Bretta grinned. “Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take advantage of our amenities and have a bath. You never know what dusty sandbox Sam will send us to next. I’ll come up to yours in a couple of hours, okay?”
Ethan nodded. “Sounds perfect.”
Bretta gave him a wicked grin as she closed the door, her ice-chip eyes glittering with an intent that would have to go unacted upon. “Not quite perfect.”
The door closed with a snap.
18
Bretta loved a bath. It was one of those things that never failed to dispel any anxiety or stress she was feeling. Yes, she didn’t really need one, since she’d showered earlier, but hey, she had a date later, even if it was strictly platonic.
The best way that she could describe the sensation of sinking into a hot, sudsy tub, was that it felt like going on a mini vacation. For an hour or two, she wasn’t a soldier, she wasn’t a DIA agent, trained killer, professional abductor or––as far as the US tax department went––ghost. She was just a woman enjoying a good, long soak.
Normally, she would accompany one of these prolonged immersions with a good bottle of New Zealand pinot noir, but seeing as she was still on a job she had made a rather major concession in her bathing routine and gone without. The bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water in the ice bucket––next to the little chopping board, paring knife and lemon that was sitting on the generous edge of the bath––did not quite hit the same mark, but she took comfort in the fact that it was doing nothing but helping to hydrate those fine lines around her forehead and eyes that she had started noticing recently.
After she had added more hot water, had applied and washed off a charcoal face mask and exfoliated her body, Bretta climbed out of the tub. She glanced at the pistol and holster combination sitting on the sink countertop, reminding her that this wasn’t all fun and games, and hopped into the shower. She rinsed off for a while, washed and conditioned her hair and, to her own surprise, shaved her legs.
“This is a strictly professional dinner, young lady,” she said to herself, in a fair imitation of the voice her mother would use on her when she was younger. “No funny business.”
By the time she emerged from the bathroom, dressed in track-pants and a tank top and drying her hair, she felt like a new woman. She checked the time and saw that she had a quarter of an hour to spare before she had agreed to meet Ethan in his room. She smiled to herself mischievously. Bretta Storm could get a lot done in fifteen minutes.
She set down her pistol and sat down at the small dressing table, ruffling her hair and looking at it pensively, when a knock came at the door.
Goddamn it, why is that man so good at ruining surprises?
Then she froze. The motion alarm she’d set up in the common hallway outside hadn’t triggered.
Heart beating in her chest, she grabbed the pistol from the countertop beside her, and dialed Ethan’s number.
“Hello,” Ethan’s muted voice came from the phone.
“I think they’re here,” she said.
“What? Don’t move,” he said.
“I’m going to check.” She padded toward the door, her bare feet making no sound on the thick cream carpeting.
Before she could reach the door, it exploded. Bretta was thrown backward by the shockwave and hit by fragments of wood. She was sent reeling backwards, white motes of light flashing across her vision. The pistol and phone fell from her grip.
Once again, her t
raining kicked in on auto-pilot. As someone kicked her pistol aside, she scrambled to her feet. Her hands came up, she adopted a wider, more balanced stance for fighting and she weaved her head from side to side as she waited for her vision to clear. Thanks to that, the first punch only grazed her cheek.
After a relaxing, luxuriant bath, Bretta’s muscles were loose and supple and slightly lethargic. However, there was nothing like someone trying to smash your head in to do the job of about eight-thousand volts of electricity or a couple of liters of Red Bull. Bretta was suddenly wide awake, her nerves and senses as taught and tight as a violin on methamphetamines.
In an instant, she recognized and identified her attackers. There was the squat, powerful form of Boots, the scar-headed, lithe woman that she labeled Pixy, and––
“Celeste,” she snarled as she blocked a savage side kick from Boots with her elbow.
Celeste gave her an unreadable look.
No Bedouin, then? Bretta thought.
It was unlikely that the whole khuyila––the Hebrew word for “team” or “connected link”––would not be here, and so Bretta presumed that the fourth member, Bedouin, would be outside in a getaway vehicle.
Echoing through the corridors of her brain, from somewhere far away, Bretta heard Celeste say: “The target isn’t here.”
Bretta could feel the air rushing in and out of her nose and mouth like the tide. She could feel the perspiration starting to trickle down the nape of her neck, mingling with the water that occasionally dripped from her wet hair.
Her room was not an enormous suite. It was of a size that would hinder a group of attackers: they’d struggle to all come at her at once and overwhelm her. This would give her a slight edge, an edge she meant to grab with both hands and hold onto until her nails were torn out.
Boots aimed another front kick at her, but Bretta blocked it easily. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw Pixy stick her head into the steamy bathroom.
“Not in the bathroom,” she stated in Hebrew.
Bretta could feel a dull pulsing on her forehead and knew she would have quite a bruise tomorrow thanks to that exploding door.
I’ll have quite a bruise if I’m alive, she amended.
“Where is she?” Celeste demanded.
“Where’s who?” Bretta asked, feigning complete and unbelievable ignorance. “I’m just trying to enjoy my vacation.”
Celeste’s top lip curled back from her teeth. It was a look of determined fury that Bretta had often seen, but never been on the receiving end of.
Boots lifted Bretta’s cellphone from the floor, and showed it to Celeste: the screen showed that Ethan was still connected. Boots proceeded to smash it against the countertop.
“Take her,” the Kidon woman growled.
But Bretta was already moving. She had always believed heartily in the old wisdom that proclaimed she who strikes first, and strikes hard, might need strike no more.
She lashed out at Boots with a spinning heel kick. She had judged her immediate space perfectly. Her bare toes brushed the nearest wall to her, knocking a framed picture of some quaint Barcelona market scene off of it, and connected hard with the bony side of the compact man’s face. Boots, taken quite by surprise, staggered a step or two sideways and collapsed over one of the low armchairs, both he and the chair flipping over backwards to lay messily across the carpet.
Bretta had no time to congratulate herself though as Pixy was already on her. The athletic woman came in hissing, her arms a blur as she struck at Bretta’s torso, upper arms and throat. Bretta was forced backwards, blocking desperately under the rain of blows. She ducked a vicious palm heel strike, had the hearing in one ear numbed by an outside chop and then caught the smaller woman around the waist and ploughed her backwards over the bed.
Both women bounced off the mattress and rolled onto the floor. Bretta made her feet first and, still crouching, managed to deliver a devastating ear clap to the both sides of Pixy’s head. The woman gasped and fell back.
Without ceremony, Bretta was seized from behind by the hair and thrown against a wall. She crashed into it, the impact denting the blue-painted plasterboard and tearing the wallpaper. She was up quickly, though she had to take a hard kick in the ribs as payment for gaining her feet. Blocking two overhead punches, she parried a lightning-fast spinning backfist with her forearm, then sank her own fist into Celeste’s liver.
Once again, there was no break for her. As Celeste folded sideways with a grunt of pain, Pixy reared up and raked her fingers across Bretta’s eyes. Luckily, Bretta managed to close her eyelids and instead the woman’s nails scraped across her cheeks, leaving streaks of fire in their wake.
Bretta stumbled back, blinking back tears, and was caught dead in the center of the chest by a vertical front kick. The ball of Pixy’s foot drove the air from her lungs and sent her bodily through the closed bathroom door, splintering the lock as it crashed open. The momentum of the kick and the sudden weakness that came upon her as the breath was plucked from her body actually sent her lurching and tripping straight through the glass side of the shower. Glass rained down in an explosion of sound and Bretta cracked hard into the sink beside it. Pain shot out from fresh slices the glass had cut into her arms. Somehow, she managed to keep her feet and so was not completely helpless when Boots reappeared, diving at her with his arms outstretched. Bretta fended off his initial attack with a weak slap kick then, and when Boots came at her again––heartened by her apparent weakness––she struck him hard in the throat with a knuckle edge punch.
“Gah!” Boots gagged, his eyes bulging. Capitalizing on the man’s momentary disadvantage, Bretta ducked under his flailing arm, snatched the paring knife from where it still lay on the little chopping board set on the edge of the bath, and rammed it into his left carotid artery. She jerked the blade sideways and blood jetted across the mirror in a shocking crimson arc. Never a one to fail to completely capitalize on an advantage in a fight, Bretta stuck the knife into the stunned Kidon’s thigh and dragged it up and across.
She had read that, when under pressure from a racing heart, blood could pump three meters out of the aorta. She had never really thought about that, until now. The fountain of blood that jettisoned from Boots’ thigh and carotid spurted up Bretta’s body, across her face and up the wall in alarming bursts.
“No!” Celeste said as Boots collapsed at her feet. “You bitch!”
Then someone had her hair in a fist and dragged her out of the bathroom. Warm blood dripped off Bretta’s chin as Celeste’s hand pulled back, swooped around in a tight circle and then connected––in a bolo punch that Sugar Ray Leonard would have been proud of––with her cheekbone with a sickening crunch.
Bretta blinked. She seemed to be on the floor. Above her Celeste was looking down at her. So was Pixy. Bretta grinned a bloody smile. Pixy lashed out and kicked her so hard in the kidney that Bretta almost vomited. Instead, she half rolled with the impact and let out a long, low animal moan. She didn’t want to, but the sound burbled out from between her lips anyway.
“Where is she, Death Angel?” she heard Celeste say. “Last chance.”
“Who?” Bretta wheezed.
The next kick struck her in the back of the ribs like a freight train. Bretta rolled back the other way and was rewarded with a stomp to her guts. Spit sprayed out from between her lips as the air was driven out of her once again.
Bretta’s vision faded in and out. She could sort of hear the other two women talking, but the words came thickly as if her ears were stuffed with cotton-wool.
“…do we do with…” Pixy’s voice was saying in Hebrew. It was a melodic voice, a pretty voice. It was a voice that juxtaposed sharply with the fact that she was a highly-trained assassin.
“He’s dead,” Celeste replied. “Or as good as.”
Bretta blinked. A sharp slap made her open her eyes. She’d drifted off there for a second.
Pixy grunted and, together, she and Celeste hauled Bretta to her feet.
“You killed my team mate,” Celeste’s hissing voice sounded slow and deliberate in her ear.
Bretta collapsed to her knees when Pixy hit her with a hard Thumb strike, right to the pressure point in her shoulder. As an afterthought, she cracked Bretta in the face with her knee––not as hard as she could, but hard enough to start Bretta’s nose to bleeding and to fill her eyes with unbidden tears.
The two women pulled her to her feet again.
Celeste and Pixy started half-carrying half-dragging her to the door. Blood––Bretta didn’t know whether it was hers or the unfortunate Boots’––splattered on the carpet.
At the door, Pixy glanced outside and nodded at Celeste.
“The Mossad have wanted to bring you in for years, Death Angel,” Celeste hissed in her ear, as the two Kidon hustled her down the thickly carpeted hallway. “After we terminate Kiana Avesta, we’ll take you home and hand you over to them. Ayalon isn’t quite as fancy as this place, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it after a few years. You’re going to pay for what you did to my companion. You’re going to pay for all your crimes.”
Ayalon. One of the top four most secure criminal penitentiaries the Israel Prison Service had at its disposal. Better to die.
Her vision flickered, the lights dimming and the hallway receding into a hazy dream world as the Kidon dragged her towards the fire door at the end of the corridor.
Bretta kept waiting for Ethan to show up. Surely he should have arrived by now.
But he never came.
Ethan raced down the stairs two at a time. He’d tried the elevator, but it wasn’t working. He had been forced to take the stairwell. When he rounded the flight to Bretta’s floor, a blur of motion filled his vision and he suddenly found himself floating unexpectedly through the air. The part of his brain that had not been taken by surprise, identified his trajectory as the result of being on the receiving end of a textbook hip throw.
This realization was of little comfort to Ethan when he landed hard on the unforgiving metal stairs and tumbled, in a truly ungainly and bone-shaking mess of arms and legs, down the flight of stairs and into the concrete wall at the bottom of the stairwell.
Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4) Page 17
