Her Assassin For Hire

by Danica Winters

  Washing the dye from her hair and face, she wrapped a towel around her head. The dye had done its job, and she couldn’t help but notice she looked like her mother.

  She went to the door between their rooms and knocked gently. She wasn’t going to eat his breakfast alone. Not when he had been so thoughtful. It didn’t escape her attention that he may well have done it on purpose to force her hand and invite him to her room. Either way, whether it was selfless or selfish, she couldn’t deny the fact that she was glad to have him with her. Though he had implied that there was no room for a relationship between them, perhaps they could go on to be friends when this was all through.

  She smiled at the thought just as the door opened. Eli was dressed for the day in a linen shirt, perfectly suited for the heat, and a pair of khaki utility shorts. There was a slight bulge at his waist. He was strapped.

  The realization that he was carrying a gun came as a comfort.

  He looked her over, his gaze settling on the towel still wrapped around her head. “Are we going for a more devil-may-care look today? Do I need to go back and change my clothes?” he teased, jabbing a thumb in the direction of his room.

  “Actually—” she walked over to her bag and grabbed the bulletproof shirt she had brought along just for him “—put this on.” She tossed him the pale blue button-up.

  He caught it midair. “Crap, was I supposed to bring you an outfit, too? Or is this a new uniform style for STEALTH?”

  He slipped off his linen shirt, throwing it onto his bed. She tried not to look at his faintly lined abs and thick-muscled arms before he pulled on the new shirt.

  “Just consider yourself lucky,” she said. “Now, shut up and get in here and eat breakfast.”

  He laughed as he stepped into her room and closed his door behind him. He walked over to the tray of food and started lifting off some of the domes and lids. There was a medley of foods from fruit and meats, to grains and cheeses. “I know you’re normally just a coffee girl in the morning, but I wanted to make sure you ate well. I don’t know when we’ll get a chance to grab some lunch.”

  She stepped over to the trays and poured each of them a cup of coffee.

  He grabbed a plate and started stacking food on it, and she followed suit. After the long flight and all the time changes, her body was begging for food.

  As she lifted the last lid to peek inside, she dropped the silver dome with a clatter. Eli stopped. He picked up the lid exposing what lay underneath. Upon a plate, garnished with parsley and decorative orange slices, was the tip of a man’s trigger finger. Next to it on the plate was a simple note that read Welcome to Spain.

  “Son of a—” Zoey said under her breath.

  Their arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed. Someone was tracking them.

  “I can’t wait to see what they put in my eggs,” Eli said, laughing as he set the lid on the cart next to the plate.

  “Wow, so glad you haven’t matured at all since the last time we were together,” she said, but couldn’t help the little giggle that escaped her. Truth be told, she had always loved the fact that he could take the darkest moments of their jobs and relieve the stress by making a joke of it. “Who do you think the finger belongs to?”

  Eli shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  She took a picture and sent it to Mindy and Sabrina with a text asking them to pull anything they could from it. “You don’t think it’s Chad’s, do you?”

  His face pinched, making it clear he thought that it was her brother’s.

  No.

  She forgot about the food as she threw on a pair of cutoff jeans and her Nirvana tank top. She slipped her phone into the back of her shorts pocket, covering it with her T-shirt. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t argue, thankfully. They had no real starting point, no direction and no idea what the future would bring, but they couldn’t sit in their hotel room and just fester. If she had to go house by house and knock on every door in the entire country of Spain to get Chad back and to ensure he was safe, she would do it.

  As she moved to the door of her room, Eli stopped her. “There’s still a towel on your head.”

  She huffed. Of course there was. She pulled it off and rubbed the last bit of wetness from her hair and threw the towel to the floor. Not bothering to look at herself in the mirror, she grabbed her bags and checked out of the hotel and headed out the door, Eli close on her heels.

  Pulling up an encrypted map, she led the way toward the bank. The streets were narrow, just wide enough in most places to accommodate a single car or gaggle of tourists. She looked up at the historic buildings around her, hoping to see cameras installed sporadically, but she found none. No wonder she had a hard time finding images of Chad. Perhaps he was still here.

  The bank was located near the main thoroughfare in the small town. From the street in front, she could see the Mediterranean. At the beach, children were laughing as they played and splashed in the water.

  What it would have been like to have another life.

  She walked to the front door of the bank, and tried to open the door, but it was locked. It wasn’t until now that she realized how early it was. They wouldn’t be open for another fifteen minutes.

  Though it was stupid, she couldn’t help feeling like she had failed. She always thought she was so smart, so strong, and yet here they stood in the middle of a foreign city with nothing but days-old information. She had to do better.

  She hated to think of what Eli thought of her ineptitude. He had come all this way to help her, and there she was, unable to help herself.

  It was a good thing she wasn’t a crier.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said as he stepped close, running his fingers through her hair and taking a moment to fix what she assumed was her best attempt at a rat’s nest.

  Though she knew the sweet action was meant to soothe, she was so annoyed with herself that she stepped back and out of his touch. As she moved, she noticed the bulge under Eli’s shirt and a thought crossed her mind.

  “Are you all right?” Eli asked, seeming surprised by her edginess.

  Opening up her phone. She looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah, I just had an idea.” She clicked on the video of her brother and zoomed in on the woman in the background and skipped ahead to the moment the girl turned from the frame. At the woman’s waist was a small bulge. As Zoey moved the video clip by clip, a small black handgun briefly came into view.

  She zoomed down even further.

  She knew that gun, or at least she was almost certain she did.

  It looked like the ones used in the phony arms deals with the Gray Wolves. They had been promised as part of the shipments that they had used to lure the Gray Wolves into the trap they were planning before everything went haywire and Trish was killed.

  Which meant...

  She clapped her hand over her mouth with excitement as she hopped from one foot to the other. Though she probably looked like a madwoman dancing around in the city streets, she didn’t care. Finally, they had a break.

  She turned the phone for Eli to see and pointed at the gun. As she did, she glanced up and stopped as she realized that, just like with Chad, this bank was rolling footage. Thankfully, her phone’s screen was turned away from the cameras. Her face on the other hand...

  “We have to go.” She nodded in the direction of the cameras and Eli’s gaze instinctively moved toward them.

  Without another word, they made their way from the bank, going in the opposite direction from which they came in the event anyone was watching. Not that it probably mattered—someone already knew they were there and was likely just waiting for the perfect moment to strike them down.

  They made their way several blocks from the bank before slowing down. She kept checking over her shoulder, making sure they weren’t being followed, but everyone around them seemed caught up in their own
comings and goings and not focused on them.

  The finger in the room was just a threat. If whoever had sent it had wanted her dead, she would’ve been dead by now. Obviously, they had access to her room, so it had to be some type of message.

  “Now what were you going to tell me?” Eli asked.

  “The gun in the video, it has a tracker in it. When we were doing the gun deal with the Gray Wolves, we had all the guns we were going to sell them implanted with GPS devices.” Pulling out her phone, she clicked to the locator.

  “How do you know it’s one of your guns?” Eli asked.

  “I don’t for certain, but it’s the best damn thing I can think of right now.” Her stomach flopped like an undercooked pancake.

  Going back to the enhanced video, she tried to read the serial number stamped into the barrel, but she could only pull the first four digits. Hopefully, it would be enough.

  They walked around aimlessly as she tapped away on her phone, moving down the list of possible serial numbers of the guns they had planted with the trackers. After a few minutes, she came up with a list of twenty-five possible guns.

  They stopped in front of the Iglesia de San Bartolome y Santa Tecla Catholic church, and with an acknowledging look, they ducked inside. In the church, they would be safe from prying eyes.

  Their footsteps echoed on the stone floors, reverberating against the walls and echoing back at them thanks to the large domed ceiling and empty expanses. The cathedral was awe-inspiring with its breathtaking gold-inlaid ceiling, grand organ and pristine marble-white walls. It was different from the other churches she had seen in her years spent around Europe in its fine craftsmanship but simple design.

  Genuflecting, they made their way to a pew in the back of the church and sat down. The pews creaked as they moved, making the room seem even emptier than it was.

  “Take half the list, see if you can pinpoint the trackers to anywhere within three hundred miles.” She mirrored her phone to his.

  “What if we are just chasing our tails?” he asked.

  She bit back the urge to be annoyed. “Do you have a better idea?”

  He looked like she had struck him, and she instantly regretted saying anything. But seriously, why would he speak out? She was doing the best she could. And damn him if it wasn’t good enough.

  He tapped on his phone. “I’m going to send the protective ops STEALTH team into our hotel. Maybe they can get the finger and see if they can pull some DNA or something. At least that way, we can know that it isn’t Chad’s.”

  That test would take weeks, they both knew it, but she appreciated his efforts. “Hopefully we have Chad back long before the results.”

  He nodded and the defeat in his eyes grew like a storm cloud just waiting to break loose. “Are you upset with me?” he asked.

  She sighed as she put her phone down in her lap. She hadn’t been after a fight, not in the slightest, but he seemed to be gearing himself up for one. Though she didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with it, she had little choice. If they were going to continue working together, they were going to have to talk about the elephant in the room. “I’m not upset.”

  “Then what is going on with you? Did I do something wrong? If so, seriously, I apologize.” He leaned closer to her and took her hand in his.

  She wasn’t sure what to do with it, but she liked the fact that in one moment he could be pulling the trigger and killing the enemy, and holding her hand as if it were a Fabergé egg in the next. He was the best of both worlds—lethal and protective.

  It seemed impossible, but in the years that had passed, he had become even more like her dream man.

  “You’re good. I’m just...” protecting my heart...terrified of falling in love...worried about my brother...scared of losing even more... She could think of a hundred ways to end her sentence, but none of her many thoughts pressed past her lips. Being so open with him would not serve any purpose. “I’m just trying to focus on Chad.” She squeezed his fingers, then let go of his hand.

  No matter how great Eli was or how badly she wanted to live in the fuzzy, warm safe haven provided by his kiss, there wasn’t room in her heart for anything right now—not with her brother and her family in mortal danger. For now, her only focus could be on survival.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Though he’d thought he had made the right choice by not having sex with her on the plane, now he wasn’t so sure. She had taken it as a rejection, just as he had feared she would. There was no going back for another chance—especially sitting in the middle of the church. It had felt taboo even taking her hand in the sacred place.

  He took one more look at her hand as he tapped on his phone, trying to find the location of the weapon the woman with Chad had been carrying.

  He had been stupid for saying anything to Zoey about her idea. She was frazzled. He’d seen the desperation in her eyes the moment he opened the door between their rooms this morning and when they had found the finger... Well, that had definitely pushed her over the edge.

  In all likelihood, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it to Zoey, the finger belonged to Chad. Why else would anyone leave such a macabre threat for them to find?

  The only time he’d ever seen anything like that, aside from mob movies, was when a member of his team had found a bloody foot stuffed in their duffel bag. Two weeks later the guy had been killed in action by a stray bullet. Everyone on his assigned team had their suspicions about why the bullet had found him, specifically that someone within their crew had a bone to pick. But he had always doubted the likelihood of something like that happening. His teams were always the best of the best—friendly fire wasn’t in their vocabulary.

  He moved to the tenth serial number on his list of guns. Tapping the number into the search, a green dot appeared on his map. There, in the center of Sitges, just blocks from where they sat, he had found a possible location. “Holy—” He stopped before the rest of the words fell from his mouth and landed like a thud in the center of the pew.

  “Huh?” she asked, looking up from her screen.

  “You were right,” he whispered, glancing around and ensuring that they were still alone.

  He could have sworn a light shone down as he said those words to the woman sitting next to him.

  “Um, what? Do you want to repeat that?” she said, raising one eyebrow. “Did you just say I was right?”

  “Live it up,” he said, teasing back. “Look.” He lifted his phone for her to see the little green speck on his screen.

  She jumped to her feet. “I knew it!” A smile spread across her face and finally some of the darkness faded from her features. “He’s here. I knew he was here.”

  Just because they were close to that dot didn’t mean they were any closer to reaching finding Chad or finding him alive.

  But Eli had already been wrong once. Hopefully he would be wrong again.

  She took his phone out of his hand and, without missing a beat, flew through the doors of the church and out onto the street in the direction of the dot.

  He followed along, watching her hair glistening in the morning sun. The new color was beautiful on her and, as she moved, the sunlight picked up bits of burgundy like her hair was imbued with rubies.

  She was nearly running as she made her way around a corner and toward the apartment building in the distance where the dot was centered. The building had clean, clear lines and was painted a vibrant yellow with black art deco accents. At each arched window sat wrought-iron balconies. It was a place where only the well-heeled could afford to reside—a far cry from the derelict back alley room where he would have expected Chad to have been held hostage.

  He touched Zoey’s arm, stopping her midstride. “Wait.”

  “What? He’s waiting,” she said, nudging her chin in the direction of the building just half a block down the avenue.

 
“We can’t just run in there half-cocked. Who knows what, or who, will be in there.”

  Her face fell. “Do you think we should call Trevor and Jarrod, let them know what we’ve found? See if they want to fly over?”

  He shrugged. More wasn’t necessarily better in this situation. “Let’s just keep an eye on this place, see who’s coming and going. I would hate it if we walked into a trap.”

  She chewed on her lip and nodded. Taking one last look at the building, she walked down an alley to their right, and out of view of whoever could have been inside the building in question.

  “Lucky for us, I have friends in the NSA who understand our need to glean information from their drones on occasion... Without asking permission... Or actually telling them...” She tapped on the screen, pulling up what he was absolutely certain were illegal images from her near and dear “friends” within USCYBERCOM.

  He chuckled. That was the Zoey he knew, doing anything she needed to do to take care of business. The Watch Dogs had an IT crew, a faceless man he had never met, and their intel collection was good, but it was nothing like Zoey on a mission.

  Once again, he found himself missing his old role as Zoey’s attaché.

  For a moment, he considered what it would be like if they could go back in time and revisit the mistakes of his past. If they hadn’t risked their friendship by moving things to the next level, they would probably still have been working in the same group, united against one enemy. She would know, without a doubt, that he was someone she could turn to and trust. Instead he’d let his body take the lead, and it had led them straight into disaster.

  “Getting anything?” he asked.

  Looking at her screen, he could just make out the area where they stood from the eye in the sky, he could see her new brown locks and what he feared was a possible future bald spot on the crown of his head. He was surprised everything was so immediate, so real-time. Out of curiosity, he raised his hand and instantly he watched himself doing it on her phone. If they had had this tech five years ago—heck, even two years ago—many of their failed missions surely would’ve turned out differently.