“K? What the hell is going on?”
“Just got some new intel on Mr. J. Possibly a break – I don’t know. One of my guys found a connection between Mr. J and Senator Cotter dating back over twenty years ago. Could help us find him.” K scrubbed a hand over his head and leaned against the wall.
“What kind of connection?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know yet, but believe me, I’ll find out. If Cotter was secretly involved with J somehow this whole time…I’ll take him down myself.”
With J kidnapping Cotter’s daughter, it wasn’t likely the two had any kind of working relationship and with J’s history of treason, Caroline’s kidnapping seemed more like some kind of power play. “The two guys you sent to the airport for transport, Eli and Daniel, they new or something?”
“Don’t know any agents by those names.” Agent K pushed off from the wall.
“The CIA sent them,” Aaron ground out.
“What the hell are you talking about?” K countered.
“Celine Latimer. Me. Your agents were there waiting,” Aaron said.
Mr. K shook his head. “We didn’t send any agents. This floor was ordered to be cleared out over two hours ago.”
Aaron’s gaze narrowed on K as his body went rigid as fuck with dread. “You have an Agent O’Keefe here? Bright red hair?”
“No,” Mr. K said.
“Bastard. J’s gonna finish what he started in Afghanistan.” Aaron ripped his pistol from his back and kicked the door. Pain shot straight up his leg. The door rocked on its frame but didn’t budge.
“Reinforced steel. Here.” K swiped his badge, keyed the code and stepped back.
Aaron threw the unlocked door open, raising his weapon in one fluid movement, embracing the cold comfort of training that settled over his shoulders.
This is what he did best. Killing.
O’Keefe had his arm around Celine’s neck, a needle held at the ready. “Don’t move.”
Celine clawed at O’Keefe’s arm, her face bright red. She coughed, a harsh sound cut short when O’Keefe tightened his grip.
The anger at Mr. J gave way to a cold murderous menace. “Let her go.”
O’Keefe smiled and his eyes narrowed. “No way. Clear out or I’ll kill her, and I promise, the poison works fast.”
Aaron watched as the man’s eyes lit with pleasure. Fucking bastard.
“I’ll put a bullet in you. Drop the needle.”
“I’d do it if I were you; Speirs can drop you like this.” Mr. K moved beside him and lifted his hands to snap his fingers.
O’Keefe glanced at K and Aaron pulled the trigger, the sharp ping from his Beretta pierced the room and ended in O’Keefe’s shoulder. The fake CIA agent flew back, dropping the needle and Aaron dove forward, catching Celine before she collapsed.
“Sweetheart, dammit, I’m so sorry. I should never have left you with him.” Fuck, he’d almost lost her again. “Did he hurt you?”
Celine coughed and draped her chest over his arm, gasping for breath, leaving Aaron struggling to catch his own at the close call.
K strode past them and knelt over O’Keefe, pressing his gun to the man’s temple. “How did Mr. J get in here?”
O’Keefe held onto his bleeding arm and glared up at K. “Don’t know any Mr. J.”
Aaron broke into the conversation. “What about Jack Mankel?”
O’Keefe’s already pale skin dropped another shade and he clenched his jaw. Agent K tossed Aaron a questioning glance but picked up the hint seamlessly. He pressed his gun harder into O’Keefe’s temple. “Talk before I redecorate my room with your brains.”
“All I know is I was hired to finish the blonde off. Last minute job. Strictly cash. Nothing more.”
“He’s lying.” K moved the gun from O’Keefe’s head to his stomach. “You know how long it will take you to bleed out from a gunshot wound in the spleen? A long fucking time.”
“I don’t know anything else.”
K caressed the trigger and Aaron tucked Celine’s face to his chest, unsure if K would actually fire or not. His normally carefully calm demeanor seemed to have been eradicated and replaced with a man on the edge of control.
“Speirs, you should cover her ears,” K said.
“No! Wait! Jack Mankel, yeah, I remember now. He’s got a palace near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. A daughter. Big blond guy who works for him with a nasty scar down his face.”
K eased off the trigger and Aaron blew out a low sigh. “Keep talking.”
“He’s been working for Zafar el Abdul. Runs all his covert missions with a couple of secret groups of ex-ops and off the radar assassins. No one really knows anything else about him or his teams except that you do not fuck with him unless you want to die a very painful death.”
Alarm filtered through Aaron at the thought of J having control of his own teams. He had a feeling he was missing some giant clue – What would J want with Caroline Cotter? He had to have enough money now. He had power. He apparently had control of terrorist movements around the globe. “So why did he kidnap the girls?”
“Who knows?”
K glanced over his shoulder at Aaron. “You know that connection I was telling you about in the hallway?”
Shit. There was something going on between the two men. Aaron caught a movement, O’Keefe sliding his good arm down his side to his hip. “K!”
Agent K spun and pulled his gun in one seamless motion. A shot blasted through the room and O’Keefe went limp, the gun in his hand clattering to the floor.
“Good shot,” Aaron said to K with a chin lift.
“Dammit, I wanted to interrogate him more. Gonna check him for I.D.”
Celine shook in his arms, her teeth chattering. Aaron carried her over to the chair to cuddle against his chest. “Take slow breaths. There you go. Count. One, two, three. You’re doing great.”
He rubbed her back and held her loose but tight at the same time as he tried to take his own advice and calm the fuck down.
“No I.D. I knew it. I’ll have my boys do a complete analysis. Fingerprints, DNA. By tomorrow morning I’ll have his full history.” Agent K dropped O’Keefe’s coat and stood, holding the security card from the dead man in his hand. “Don’t know how he got this though. We only issue these once and only to people handpicked to be on this floor. I’m gonna have to run through every single person that has access.”
“One of the men sent to pick us up, Eli, had an access card, too,” Aaron said.
Celine coughed again and wrapped her hand around her throat. Angry red streaks painted her skin from her collar bone to her chin. If it didn’t mean wasting a bullet, he’d put another one in O’Keefe’s skull. “You’re doing great, sweetheart. Slow and easy.”
“He - he - he tried to kill me.”
“I killed him first,” Agent K said.
Aaron hugged her to him, needing to reassure himself she was really okay.
Celine tried to laugh and ended up coughing. When that finally passed she said, “Is Jack Mankel Mr. J?”
“I’m afraid so, honey.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I didn’t want you to suffer anymore. You were exhausted and injured. I was trying to protect you.” Aaron dropped his forehead to hers, silently praying she’d understand his motives.
Mr. K cleared his throat. “Sorry, but you two need to disappear for a while. If J was able to do all this, get him a secret card key and lock down the whole floor for him to carry out the murder, he’s got more power on the inside than I’d realized.”
He was right. If Celine went home, Mr. J would send someone else to finish her off. He had to hide her and he knew exactly where. “I’ve got a place already set up.”
K nodded, “Good. I’ll need some time to sort this all out.” He extended a card to Aaron. “This is my personal line. Only contact me on a life or death basis. I don’t want to risk your location any more than I have to.”
“Got it. I
know how to disappear.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
24 hours later…
Celine grabbed the overhead handle in the rusty single-cab truck and braced for another bone jarring pot hole. The old pick up’s busted seatbelt clattered uselessly against the side of the door. The front end of the truck veered up and then plunged back down and kept going, regardless of the fact her teeth had just slammed together hard enough to crack. “Where on God’s green earth are you taking me?”
Aaron leaned back on the torn leather seat, one hand on the wheel, the other on the stick shift. “Somewhere safe.”
Bam! The truck dropped down and up and continued its climb up the mountain. She’d seen nothing but dirt road, pine trees, and dense forest for the past hour. No people, no houses, nothing. “And where exactly is this safe place located?”
Aaron swerved in a sharp right, barely missing a pothole that would’ve taken out their front axle, and grinned as he sped up. The old truck rattled and groaned with such ferocity Celine had to close her eyes, sure that the entire thing was about to fall apart.
“Don’t worry, honey, they fixed the road since the last time I was here.”
“Are you kidding me? You call this a road?”
“We’re driving on it aren’t we?” Aaron reached for a can of Red Bull on the seat between them, popped the top and downed it in one long gulp, before tossing it to the floorboard at her feet. Good Lord, the man was practically glowing from an adrenaline high and now he wanted extra fuel for the rush? “That stuff will eat the lining of your stomach.”
“Nah, just keeping the edge.”
They’d ditched the car provided by Mr. K right after they crossed the border into Kentucky. Aaron paid five hundred dollars cash for this piece of shit from a scrap-yard off the scenic route and they’d been driving in it ever since.
“I think calling this a road is a stretch.” More like a wagon trail through the rocky forest. Another bone jarring hole and she nearly hit her head on the roof. “Just tell me how much longer I have to worry about dying in this thing.”
“What? You don’t trust me?” Aaron batted his eyelashes at her.
“I trust you, not this bucket of bolts,” Celine muttered.
“Hey now, you’ll hurt old Mary Catherine’s feelings. She might have seen better days, but at least she’s still running.”
“You named her after the nun? Are you trying to go to hell?”
“Come on, I bet the Sister would be honored.”
“Or she’d pray you right to purgatory.”
Aaron turned to her, his eyes wide. “You think?”
“Watch the road!” Celine slapped her free hand on his arm, digging in her nails without the least bit of remorse.
“Sweetheart, I can drive this road blindfolded. Besides, I’d much rather look at you.”
Celine faced the window, trying to hide the furious blush stealing over her face. He’d been like this since they’d hit the mountain, as if once they’d turned down this overgrown beaten path he’d finally allowed himself to relax. Ever since they left the Pentagon, he’d had her ducking and hiding every time they hit a stoplight.
Even after they ditched the car and he’d stopped to buy them food and clothing, he’d insisted she hide her face under the most god awful ball cap and pair of plastic sunglasses she’d ever laid eyes on.
“I know it’s not much, but that sedan wouldn’t have made the climb.”
Celine turned and saw him glancing at her from the corner of his eye, both hands on the wheel now as he slowed their break neck speed.
“At least the car had air conditioning.” Her clothing clung to her skin in the sticky heat of the cab thanks to its non-functioning a/c unit. She should be used to it after her little trip through the desert.
But what she wouldn’t give for a long hot bath and a big glass of sweet ice tea.
“That ac wouldn’t do you any good when we got stuck halfway up the mountain and you had to hike to the cabin.” He turned a sharp right unexpectedly and Celine slid across the slick padded leather bench seat and slammed into his side. His arm immediately went around her waist and anchored her in place. “If you wanted to be close to me, all you had to do was ask.”
She allowed herself to savor him pressed to her for a second, feeling every inch of his body that touched her and then planted her hands on his side and shoved, sliding back to her seat and latched back on to the handle for support. “You did that on purpose.”
Why couldn’t she just turn this attraction off? She still didn’t believe he was here of his own free will, not really. He’d been ordered, otherwise he never would have given up on his chance for revenge. She wouldn’t have.
Knowing he’d at least started out with her because he had to, not because he wanted to, enforced her need to keep her distance.
Then he gave her that big goofy grin, making it really hard to hold on to her anger. “Absolutely.”
Celine ducked to hide her smile. She’d done nothing but given him the cold shoulder and he had failed to reciprocate. Instead her snarky comments seem to bounce off him like pebbles on steel, not even leaving a scratch.
In fact, he’d been nothing but a gentleman, trying to tease her dark mood away. Forcing her to repeat the words O’Keefe had said at the Pentagon to remind herself that this was all just a front for him. Another mission.
“Look, just up there.” Aaron pointed directly in front of them where the road seemed to come to an abrupt end and slowed the truck as he eased around a small copse of trees and brush, revealing a small A-frame style log cabin nestled in the pines.
The deep reddish wood held a large front deck about a foot off the ground with a solid wood door in the center. There was a window on each side and then one larger pane of glass in the top point. The yard stretched out wide from the sides and a small shed stood sentry on the left.
“Welcome to paradise. We’re over fifty miles from the nearest human being, best of all, no one, not even Noni, knows about this place.” Aaron put the truck in park and killed the engine.
“Do we have electricity?” Celine sized up the small cabin once more, wondering how long she’d make it with no TV or music or a blow dryer. “Running water?”
Aaron popped his door and hopped out, reaching into the back for their bags. “Why don’t you come on inside, let me show you around.”
Avoiding the question. Nope. No shower meant no Celine. She’d suffered enough in that hell hole overseas, the filth becoming a living thing covering her body. Even now, the drying sweat on her skin itched and screamed at her to scrub it off.
She got out, the sun barely above the tree line and followed Aaron up to the front deck. She half expected the door to creak open on rusty hinges, a little off kilter with spider webs drooping down from a rotted out old ceiling. Instead what she saw was surprisingly…nice. Polished pine floors and dark brown leather furniture arranged in a half rectangle around a large stone fireplace.
The walls were pretty bare and painted a deep hunter green. Through an open doorway to the right lay a matching kitchen with new stainless steel appliances and dark wood cabinets.
Directly in front and above the living room stretched a wide loft with a narrow set of stairs along the kitchen wall leading up to it.
Aaron stepped inside and sat the bags on the ground, the department store plastic crinkling loudly in the silence. “What do you think?” He put that careful expression on again, the one where his forehead smoothed out and his mouth relaxed, but his eyes reflected his concern.
He was worried what she thought about his cabin?
“It’s clean.” She hedged unwilling to throw a complement his way just yet.
Aaron took the comment and ran with it, breaking into a big smile. “Built it all myself. It’s perfect don’t you think?
Surprise filtered through her. “You did this? When? Aren’t you gone all the time?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but usually not for long. This is where I like t
o come and decompress after a tough mission. Helps me get back to being a human being again.”
His response was so open and honest it completely caught her off guard and tapped into her curiosity. “Do you have trouble getting back to normal?”
Aaron bent down and grabbed the grocery bags, walked into the kitchen and left Celine to follow. Had she offended him?
He set the bags on the counter and Celine eased onto a bar stool, watching his every move as he began to unpack the newly bought groceries. She should say something, apologize for overstepping her bounds. “Aaron, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked such a personal question.”
Aaron pulled a bag of sweet potatoes out of the sack and dumped them on the counter with a loud thump. She flinched, the sharp movement like an explosion in the small kitchen.
He prowled over to the small bar, leaning across until his face was only a couple of inches from hers. “Listen Celine, I know this might disgust you, and I know it’s not politically correct, but what I do on my missions, it doesn’t bother me. I mean it bothers me, but I move past it because I know if I don’t do it, someone else will have to. What I do - it’s my way to protect my country and give back. I knew what I was doing when I joined up with the Teams.”
Celine touched his arm. “Aaron I admire you, you don’t disgust me. After what I went through, if it wasn’t for you and your team, I’d be a Russian sex slave.” Celine swallowed past the tight knot in her throat. “Or dead.”
“There are lots of soldiers that can’t re-acclimate to civilian life after duty, but I’m not one of them. My teammate Hoyt had a hard time for a while and we were all worried about him, there aren’t many men who go through what he did and come out sane. But with Hayden’s help he was able to come back to us.”
Hayden James had practically saved Hoyt from suicide. Celine had met him, briefly, before his capture. He’d had the face of an angel. Now terrible scars covered his face and body.
Aaron wasn’t beautiful by any stretch, but he was handsome. Strong masculine features and intense brown eyes. He shaved his beard down to a five o’clock shadow, revealing a square jaw and lips just as full as she remembered. At any point in time he could be captured and tortured just like Hoyt and come back all torn and broken…
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Aaron's Honor (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Men of Mercy Book 8) Page 9
