He sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that. At all. I’m just worried about you.” He gave her a cute contrite look that was in direct contradiction to the anger that roiled in her gut. “I just mean that you need protection, someone who is with you through thick or thin. I can do that.”
There was no way he was going to take no for an answer, and she wasn’t sure that she could even get the word past her lips—not when he had just saved her life.
“Let’s just take one day at a time.”
A huge smile spread across his wide face, accentuating his chiseled jaw and piercing green eyes. There was a quickening inside of her, as though her body was springing back to life after being so close to death.
“I’ll take a day,” he said. He crouched down and grabbed the dead guy under the arms.
Unwilling to stand idly by and simply watch as he did the heavy lifting, she took hold of the man’s feet and lifted him up. “Where do you think we should put this trash?”
He grunted as he shifted the dead weight in his arms and walked backward toward the open barn door. “Your trunk empty?” he asked, motioning toward her car with his chin.
“It can be.” They lugged the body over and dropped him on the ground. The body wheezed as it deflated.
“Huh,” Eli said, looking down at the guy. “That’s a new one. You ever hear that sound before?”
Though she’d never pulled the trigger and killed a man, thanks to STEALTH she’d heard more than her fair share of dying breaths—just never one postmortem. Bodies did strange things after the soul left them.
“No,” she said, opening up the trunk, unloading the boxes from the conference and putting them on the ground next to the body. “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen with a body?”
He grabbed a box out of the trunk and set it on the ground, taking a moment. “Postmortem hyperthermia. Hands down.” He nodded, grabbing a box from her hands. “I was on assignment in Guatemala and came across a woman who had just died of what I think was a drug-induced heart attack. Her daughter had tried to resuscitate her before I arrived on scene. By the time I got there, she’d been down about forty minutes, but she was hot to the touch—hotter than a fever. Like, crazy hot.”
“Okay, that’s weird.” She took hold of the dead guy’s feet and they flung him into the back of the car. As he landed, the car bounced.
“Yeah, but it got better. The daughter swore that her mother’s body had been taken over by a demon. Went into a full panic. I tried to calm her down, but she ended up setting the entire house on fire—mother’s body and all.”
“Can’t say I blame her.” She wiped her hands on her dirty jeans, aware that they were precariously close to slipping back into their old ways—bantering with one another, having strange conversations in even stranger circumstances and at the same time enjoying each other’s company.
She needed to go back to being pissed off at him. It would make it easier to push him away.
One day at a time.
“I need a shower,” she said, trying to avoid spending another second with the man who drew so many feelings and questions. She walked to the barn to make sure there were no obvious signs of a struggle in case anyone stopped by. Thankfully, she appeared to have taken all the damage. She ran her fingers over the spot in her gut where the bullet had struck her only hours before.
Bullet to the chest, nearly strangled to death, beaten and now dealing with her ex—it had been one hell of a day.
Clicking off the barn’s light, she walked back to the house with Eli at her side. They were in step with each other as they made their way up onto the porch. It struck her as she grabbed her keys and unlocked the front door that there was no way to hide Eli from her brothers in the light of morning.
They were going to rib her something fierce.
She stopped herself before she opened the door and turned to him. “It may be best if you sleep—”
“In the barn? No. And it’s too cold to sleep out in my truck,” he said, cutting her off as though he could really read her mind. “I’ll take post outside your bedroom.”
“So you can listen to me snore?” she said, opening the front door. He pushed past her, taking point as they entered the house.
“Snore, chat, whatever...” His mischievous grin returned.
She looked away in an attempt to hide her own grin. He couldn’t know that he still flustered her. “Don’t you have to go to work? Make those bosses happy?”
She could almost hear his grin fade as she brought up one of the many things that could drive them apart, though none were greater than the old hurts that lay between them. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m still in Billings at the conference, at least for the next few days.”
“And what happens when those few days are over?” She closed and locked the door behind them, then threw her keys into the bowl that sat next to the door.
“Like we said, one day at a time.” He walked toward the kitchen like he knew the place. “Besides, I make my own hours.”
She raised a brow. When he had worked for them, he was on salary and worked at her side constantly. There was none of the “we’ll call you when we need you” freelancer thing. He had been a major part of their team and their lives. It was because of him that they had been forced to change the way they worked. When he left, it became abundantly clear that it was a liability to let anyone outside the family inside their circle at that level...security could be breached best by trust.
There was the sound of him putting water in a teakettle as she walked into the kitchen.
“London fog?” he asked, holding up a box of decaf Earl Grey.
“Sure.”
“You’re still drinking it every night before you go to bed?” he asked, his back turned to her as he set about working.
It made her squirm that he knew her that intimately. “Um, yeah. Most of the time.”
She wasn’t sure she should admit it or not. It would have made her feel better to lie and tell him she had changed, that she wasn’t the woman he had once known, but aside from making her feel better, it wouldn’t have served any purpose. The only thing that had really changed—besides her location—was the need to keep people, and love, at arm’s length.
If she could just figure out how to keep Eli close enough to ensure her safety, but far enough away from the danger of falling in love with him all over again.
Chapter Six
Aside from the dead body in the trunk of Zoey’s car, things had gone better than he had expected—and he hadn’t been forced to tell her anything about what he knew about the situation with Chad. But as he stared at the wall across from her bedroom door, he couldn’t help but feel like he had made a mistake in not coming clean.
She needed to know about the contract out on Chad’s head.
There was the creaking sound of the floor as she paced around her bedroom. Either she was trying to calm down after the attack or she was working away. Knowing her, it was probably a little bit of both.
It was a relief he had gotten to her in time. A couple of minutes later and who the hell knew what kind of condition she would have been in. She had seemed to think the man only wanted information about her brother, but if that was true, why had he used a voice-cloaking device and attacked her in the dark?
Eli couldn’t make sense of why the man had gone about the attack as he had. If Eli had taken the contract on Chad’s head, he wouldn’t have dinked around going after his sister in the night; he would have waited, watched and calculated before making any sort of move. The man had been reckless.
By coming here and following Zoey, the man must have been desperate. Perhaps the clock was ticking.
He hadn’t gotten the specs on the hit, just that there was a job up for grabs. However, some employers loved to give little bonuses for quick and “accidental” deaths. But it didn’t see
m like the kind of thing a group like the Gray Wolves would do when ordering such a hit.
But there were a million different conditions and factors he didn’t know. Maybe it would have been better if he had taken the contract. At least that way he would know more about the job and what he and Zoey’s family could expect. If nothing else, when he decided to tell Zoey the truth, he wouldn’t be going to her empty-handed and clueless about what the future was going to bring—other than madness.
He clicked on his phone and contacted his boss, James, at Watch Dog.
ON RECON. SEND ENCRYPTED FILE ON CASE #19807—M8.
In a matter of just a few seconds his boss emailed him the posting. It was the basic details. Chad Martin, date of birth, last known location and a picture. The photo was grainy and looked like the kind that had been pulled off a surveillance camera. There was a black star at the corner of the picture.
He texted James back:
BLACK STAR =?
This time he waited for James’s response, almost as if James had to look it up. After ten minutes he got a text back:
Foreign GOVT assigned
If that were the case, it couldn’t have been the Gray Wolves that had put out the contract. Or could it have been? There were several known persons within foreign governments who were also members of militant groups, or funded by them. Perhaps Bayural had paid someone within the Turkish government to put out a hit on Chad. Or, for all he knew, Bayural held a seat in the government.
WHICH ONE? he texted back.
UNKNOWN. MORE INFO ON HIRE.
If he took this job, his employers would expect him to get the kill. They weren’t in this business for the familial honor, not like the Martins were. The only thing that mattered to the Watch Dogs was their bottom line. Which meant there was no room for failure if he accepted this contract—if he failed or let his feelings get in the way of finding and killing Chad, they may well put a bead on him. His bosses loved to reiterate that they were only as strong as their weakest link, and they would stop at nothing to be the strongest chain of contractors in the world.
He couldn’t rush this decision. But there were no other options to get the information he desperately needed to figure out who had taken out the hit.
He did a quick search on the Gray Wolves and their leader. The public information on the group was sparse: just a few mentions in Turkish papers, Al Jazeera and the BBC. No information on Bayural, or any ties he held in the government or to the prime minister.
Eli didn’t know how he would come out of this without hurting himself or someone he loved, but his options were limited. He had to do what he felt was right.
I’LL TAKE THE JOB.
DONE. STANDARD RATES.
He had no problem giving the Watch Dogs their cut so long as he could do what he was really trying to do by taking this job.
Before he clicked off the screen, an email from James landed in his encrypted in-box.
Glancing back at the closed door beside him, he could make out the sounds of Zoey’s pacing. She had to be upset—she was just dealing with it in a different way than he was.
He clicked on the email and took a look at the details spread out before him. Whoever was picking up the tab was serious. As he had assumed, there was a bonus of one million dollars if someone could get the job done within seven days of the posting. According to the date, that was three days ago.
Based on the craziness of the man in her trunk, there was no way they were done dealing with mercenaries who were hungry for a profit.
In addition to the bonus, it looked as though there was a four million flat on taking him down. Five million dollars was a lot of money—his normal jobs paid only low five figures—and then cut the company’s commission. Even in his own life that kind of money would make a huge difference. He would never have to raise a gun again. He could retire anywhere. No wonder even the poorly skilled sewer rats had come out to take on the job.
He could see snow still coming down through the window at the end of the hall. Winter was crashing in upon them.
If he did kill Chad, he would probably walk away with more than enough money to buy a place just like this ranch. It was just too bad he knew and liked the man he had just agreed to take out—only time would tell if he would have to pull the trigger or not. The only person he truly wanted to take aim at was the person responsible for putting his friend in the sights.
Though he was paid to think about the “what ifs” in any situation, this time he focused on putting those kinds of thoughts to the back of his mind. For so many years, working with STEALTH, they had always had a focus on the family sticking together. At one point, before things had blown up in his face, he had definitely been part of that family.
Nostalgia beckoned him, but the door to the room beside him opened, and Zoey stuck her head out. “You can’t sleep, either?” Her hair was ruffled, as though she had tried to sleep and had wrestled with her pillow. He savored the opportunity to see Zoey in her natural, beautiful state. It reminded him of waking up with her at his side every morning.
“Have a job to do.” He slipped his phone into his pocket as his words echoed in the night.
It is just a question of which job, and where my loyalties will stand or fall.
He could feel her gaze upon him, as though she was trying to read between the lines.
“I can leave you alone then,” she said, moving to close the bedroom door.
“No,” he said with an adamant shake of his head. The last thing he wanted to do was sit out here any longer by himself—especially if she was offering some kind of olive branch. “I was just filling my time while I waited for your bogeyman.”
“So, you’ve come to believe that the man was here for me, not Chad?”
He stood up, his knee popping as he moved.
“Ha,” she said, glancing down to his offending appendage and not waiting for him to answer. “Getting older, are we?”
He chuckled. Zoey always had a way of finding his vulnerable spots—and aging, especially in this business, was one of them. Killing for a living was a young man’s business, and not for someone in their midthirties with a repaired rotator cuff and pins in his ankles that required him to announce their presence anytime he wanted to catch a flight.
“Hey now, I’m not old. I’m just getting more refined,” he said, giving her the grin that used to beckon her into his arms.
This time, it didn’t work. Instead, she stepped inside the bedroom door. But then she waved for him to follow.
There wasn’t much in the way of furniture in her room, just a bed, a dresser and a love seat tucked in the corner. She nodded toward the couch as she walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge on top of a sleeping bag she had unzipped and smoothed into a bedspread—as much as a blue-and-red flannel mummy bag could.
Nervous energy. She’d never been one for caring about the state of her dwelling. They were never in one place long enough to unpack—at least, usually. He remained standing.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
She cringed as she ran her finger over the zipper of the bag. “Uh, a month or two.”
“Going stir-crazy yet?” he asked.
“You have no idea.” She pursed her lips, nodding. “Jarrod tried to convince me to stay home, to stay away from the show in Billings, but I couldn’t stand staring at these four walls for another second.”
“I thought you were working with Mindy on H&K’s new line?” he asked.
“Remotely, I’m still working tech with STEALTH. But ever since...well, you know...we’ve been keeping a low profile.” She sucked in a breath. “Which for some, has been easy. Chad has really liked catching up on old basketball highlights.” She cocked her eyebrows in feigned annoyance, but he could see the glimmer of love for her brother and his quirks in her eyes.
“He’s here,
then?” he asked, motioning toward the bedrooms down the hall.
“No,” she said. “I’m not sure where he is now, but he was supposed to be coming home from Sweden this week. He had been checking on our manufacturing plant, the one Mindy’s father had built near Stockholm.” She glanced over at her phone and its broken screen. “I tried to call him when I was driving back from Billings, but it went straight to voice mail. I pulled the info on his phone, but the last data usage was from Sweden two days ago.”
Damn, he forgot how good Zoey was to have around when it came to tech. His new team didn’t have anyone that could even compare. She could pinpoint just about anyone on a map at any time, using anything with a digital footprint.
Which reminded him of his phone. All of a sudden it—and the secrets it held—weighed even heavier in his back pocket.
If, even for a moment, she considered him anything less than one hundred percent trustworthy she could probably hack into every device he owned within a matter of hours.
The thought provided him with a new and deeper sense of foreboding.
But if he opened up to her now and told her what he had done, she would probably be forced to turn him out. How could she possibly trust him when five million dollars sat on the table? Zoey would undoubtedly think he was just using her to get close—and he couldn’t risk having her flee. If she disappeared, the only time he would likely ever see her again was when her face flashed across the news as a missing person—or worse.
She could glean far more information from the actual post than he could. With all of her skills, she could probably pull everything from the post’s initial location and time stamp all the way down to the author’s eye color and their DNA sequence.
He had to tell her. The chances were okay that he would be able to make her understand why he had taken the job if he told her now, but if he waited...well, those minimal chances decreased by each passing nanosecond.
Her Assassin For Hire Page 5
