by Regan Black
Icy fingers danced down her spine. Danny believed she would die if she didn’t cooperate. “How did you two escape?” Chloe asked, turning to Scott.
“Lucky kid was never really in,” Ben said. “Despite Messenger’s efforts. We found him, intervened.”
“Not unlike the attempt to intervene here,” Scott pointed out.
“My super-power camouflage made it easier to gain the upper hand,” Ben said. “I did the double agent thing, feeding our boss Messenger’s movements, we’ve won some battles, but UI is still functioning.”
“And who is your boss?” Chloe asked. She needed names, locations, more intel to get a foothold here.
Danny took his pie plate to the kitchen. “I can’t speak for these two, but I’ll tell you everything once you’re clear. Right now, you need to pack a bag.”
She gave him credit for knowing which buttons to push. Playing along might be the best move right now. Highly trained, she was confident she could turn the tables in due time.
“Go on,” he urged. “The men outside won’t wait much longer.”
“You can hear them right now?” It was an astounding scientific breakthrough, if his claim was true. She was simultaneously impressed, intrigued, and appalled. The Messenger person couldn’t be allowed to continue using people as lab rats.
“I don’t have to. I’ve been them. UI isn’t known for patience on an op, just success.”
“He’s not wrong.” Ben handed his plate to Scott. “I’ll slip out and see what I can learn while the kid does the dishes.”
Scott rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.
Chloe went to her bedroom and unzipped the suitcase she hadn’t yet unpacked. She dumped everything into the hamper and started loading it again with clean clothes and her back up set of travel sized items. If the FBI had taught her any life skills, it was how to pack efficiently and economically.
And swiftly, she thought as Danny watched her every move from her open bedroom door. “Afraid I’ll jump out the window?”
“Not without me,” he replied.
Both of them were waiting on the other to talk or break or even cooperate. What would happen when she walked out her door with him? Would he keep his word or turn on her? If he turned could Ben and Scott stop him? Irritable in the face of countless unknowns, she slapped a pair of shoes into her suitcase, rolled up leggings, T-shirts, and more like a pro.
“We can buy whatever you need when you’re safe.”
“According to you, that will be about an hour past never,” she snapped.
“I’ve done a lot of listening in recent years.” The quiet timbre of his voice rolled over her skin like a touch. “Too many words are useless.”
“Try a few and let me decide.”
“Watching you it’s clear how much you love your job. Your team. More than once, I tried to shift the attention from you.” He’d done it for both of them, really. “Dropping out of sight won’t be a forever thing.”
“Do you think there’s like an FBI dorm somewhere? Do you honestly believe there’s a place where agents can surf the web and have a pseudo-life until the bad guys are behind bars?”
“I’m aware that hiding isn’t perfect. But with my intel, and alive, you can make a difference from your side of the law.”
Once more they’d come full circle. Yes, it was clear one of them would have to break to make any sort of progress. “If—when—UI figures out you didn’t kill me, the target shifts to you?” That scenario raised the hair at the back of her neck.
“Yes. Which is fine because you’ll be safe.”
She stalked into the bathroom and grabbed a small toiletry case, adding it to the suitcase. “You don’t know that.” She zipped the luggage closed and secured the tabs, raising her hands.
“All set?”
“Just need my phone and laptop—”
“No. Both can be tracked. We’ll pick up devices for you later.”
She started to argue, only to be interrupted by the sound of her front door opening and closing. Ben’s voice was nearly on top of them. “Two. On the stairs,” he said, breathless. “We gotta go.”
Danny tossed her cell phone to her. “Call for a ride share. Scott will go out the back and return with the car as your driver. Ben and I will clear the stairs and then catch up.”
He was gone, presumably with Ben, before she could get his promise that he’d give her the information she needed for the drone case and the case she was mentally building against UI.
*
Danny split his attention, listening as Scott made his way out of the apartment via the fire escape while the backup team came up the stairs. They were taking their sweet time about it. He pushed his enhancement, boosting his range by sheer willpower, though the physical drain would suck hard when it hit.
At last he caught enough chatter to confirm his suspicion that Messenger had tapped her phone. The two men were debating whether they should make her death look like an accident on the stairs or take her out before she left her apartment. At the moment, Danny was to be taken alive.
He relayed the information for her and Ben, catching Chloe’s skeptical reaction as her eyes rolled heavenward. No help for either of them coming from that quarter.
He wished there was a way to let her hear the conversation. Due to her training and career Chloe relied and thrived on evidence and proof. All he could offer right now was a circumstantial account that bordered on rumor. “Give me your phone,” he whispered.
To his shock, she handed it over. He went to the fire escape at the window in her bedroom. He pulled his gun and fired two shots into the mattress and then dropped her phone into the shrubs lining the building.
A moment later, footsteps thundered downstairs as the men followed the position of the phone. They clearly assumed she’d shot Danny and was escaping.
Chloe’s dark eyebrows arched, her full lips pursed, though she didn’t say a word.
“Nice,” Ben’s approval was obvious, though he was completely invisible.
“Go, go, go.” Danny murmured. When Ben opened the door, he nudged Chloe ahead of him. On the landing they paused long enough to confirm the team was gone before she closed and locked her door behind.
He saw the small tremor in her hand when she pocketed the keys. “Not forever,” he reminded her.
“You owe me a mattress,” she shot back.
They hustled down the stairs, moving in a burst each time Ben gave the all clear, until they were in the lobby.
Scott pulled up to the curb and Danny urged Chloe into the back seat while Ben, presumably, took the passenger seat up front. When Scott was driving away, Danny looked back in time to see the two other men coming around from the back of her building.
“We have an open agreement with a charter service,” Ben said. “Tell me where we’re going and I’ll get the pilot working on a flight plan.”
“We don’t need to run away. I can access a safe house here in town,” Chloe suggested. “Let me call it in.”
“No. We have less than five minutes before they’re in your apartment and realize they’ve been duped.”
At that point, his current identification and hers would be burned. He couldn’t shake the idea that this situation was exactly what Messenger expected, that he’d suspected Danny wouldn’t follow through with the kill order. The man always seemed to be a step ahead. Then again, maybe Danny was paranoid. Although he’d never given Messenger reason to doubt his loyalty or commitment to the time he promised to serve UI, the backup team had been on him within an hour of the order being issued.
Chloe nudged his shoulder. “What?”
“Ben asked you a question.”
“Sorry. Chicago’s good,” he said, answering the last question he’d heard.
“Fine, but I asked you why you don’t want to leave UI.” The seat belt moved as Ben shifted around, though he didn’t change his current see-through status.
“I like breathing.” Scott and Ben were the first op
eratives Danny had met who’d belied the in-lab warnings that escape was futile. “Those who tried were worse off than when they started,” he said.
“People care about you, man,” Ben said. “Don’t you owe it to them to get out while you can? We’re here to help in case you missed that.”
“The man Hank knew is gone,” Danny said. And now so was the operative Messenger built. He’d tampered with the tracking device UI implanted during his training, but he had no way to be sure he was well and truly off the radar. “The only honor I had left pushed me to stay until I could take hard evidence to someone who might believe me.”
“I get that,” Scott said. “You’re not pissed no one searched for you?”
“In the ocean?” Danny snorted. “Better buried at sea than six feet in the ground. Hank knew that, understood that.” He squirmed when he caught the sympathy on Chloe’s face. “Besides, it was obvious right away no one got in or out of that lab on their own terms.”
“You don’t know where they worked on you?” Ben asked.
“No idea,” he replied. “They sedated me every time they moved me in or out.”
“How so?” Scott met his gaze in the rearview mirror. “We’ve met other operatives who were drugged against their will.”
“Injection. Knocks me out, they move me to where I’m needed, then they wake me up and give me the parameters for the op.”
Chloe gasped. He really did not want her sympathy.
“Not cool,” Ben said.
“Not at all,” Danny agreed.
What he did want was another slice of pie or a burger. Anything to boost his energy. He needed to stop pressing his reach, especially now that they were moving, but he wouldn’t let anyone—UI or law enforcement—sneak up on them.
“Do either of you know anything about the group that nearly burned the operation to the ground a few years back?” he asked by way of a distraction. With luck, the answers would give Chloe more to work with as well.
“Before my time,” Scott said. “Ben was there.”
“You’ve heard of that?” the invisible man queried. “Good times. Better if Messenger hadn’t survived. How’d you hear about it?”
“Seriously?”
Ben cackled. “Right. Still, I’m surprised Messenger doesn’t smother the people telling those tales.”
Danny had a feeling he did, one way or another. It didn’t bear thinking about while his head was pounding and he fought off the looming blackout.
Chloe reached over and touched his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Anything less was failure and he refused to drop before he knew she was safe.
Suddenly his hearing caught on the channel and chatter he’d been waiting for. He swiveled in his seat to look out the back window as a pair of headlights surged toward them. “They’re here.”
Up front, Scott swore and stomped on the gas pedal as he yanked the car around the next corner. He darted in and out of traffic, but it wasn’t as easy as the movies made it look. They’d made fair progress when the squeal of tires and screech of tearing metal assaulted his ears. The collision was disorienting as the back end of the car came around and slammed into something else. The car was still rocking on the frame when they got hit again. Danny couldn’t get his bearings with the sounds overwhelming him.
Without the seatbelts he and Chloe would have been tossed like rag dolls. As it was, her suitcase bounced up into the air between them and came down hard on his foot. He heard the growl of an engine and realized they’d been pinned and the other car was trying to drive right through them.
“Scott? Ben?” Chloe was clearly well enough to take roll call.
A groan was the only reply from the front seat. The air bags had blown and deflated and the chemical smell burned his nostrils and stung his eyes.
“Help them,” Danny said, climbing over her, gun drawn. “I’ll give you some room.” He kicked out the door window and aimed for the driver, putting three holes into the windshield before the bastard slumped over the wheel, lifeless.
The car sagged, sending his next shot high. Behind him, he heard Chloe rousing Scott and Ben. “Status!” he demanded, taking aim at the man who crawled from the attacking car. Danny fired at him, missed again, then managed to put the next shot right through the man’s kneecap.
“Nice shot. We’re clear,” Chloe said. “Come on.” She grabbed his jacket and dragged him backward across the seat. Shards of glass nipped his knees and bit into his palm.
“Any real injuries?” he asked.
“I need to get the kid to a doctor,” Ben said.
“I only need a minute.” Scott was slumped against a brick wall, his forearms and one side of his neck red and irritated from the airbag.
In the distance sirens wailed, but in a city like New York there was no guarantee help was headed this way. Still, they couldn’t take a chance of getting caught in middle of this mess, even with an FBI agent willing to vouch for them.
“I can get you into a hospital,” Chloe offered.
“They’ll handle it,” Danny said. “We need to move.”
“My bags.” She dove back into the wreck and wrestled her suitcase and tote free. “My laptop shouldn’t be the evidence they find here.”
Danny swore. “You weren’t supposed to bring it.” When she started to explain, he covered her mouth with his hand. “Out of time,” he whispered at her ear, shoving her down next to Scott.
“Another team?” Ben asked.
He nodded, his brow flexed in concentration as he listened. His stomach pitched and he fought the darkness pulling him under. “Two men. They have orders to kill everyone at the scene.”
“They can’t do that.” Chloe dropped the tote and was reaching for her badge when Danny stopped her.
“The law won’t worry them,” he said. “Not the way Messenger’s penalty for failure does.”
Danny winced, pushing hard to make sure Ben had all the intel possible. “They’ll move to flank the wreck.” He pointed to the places they would pop up momentarily. “Another team is three blocks out.”
“We’ll handle it,” Ben said. His voice seemed as faint as his form. He shoved a card into Danny’s hand. “You’ll hear from us soon.”
Chapter 5
A litany of curses cycled through Chloe’s mind as gunfire erupted behind them. What if Ben couldn’t handle this? Scott wasn’t one hundred percent, visibly rattled by the crash and airbag and she hated leaving them to deal with what seemed to be a determined, ruthless team. Running away wasn’t her style, but once Ben pointed out Danny’s gray pallor and wide-eyed disorientation, she agreed when he insisted she was the best hope for the man UI dubbed Audible.
Ben and Scott were determined to keep him from returning to UI’s clutches and she trusted her gut instinct to support that cause. She managed to keep Danny moving along down the block and around the corner, where she found an available cab. Dumping man and luggage into the backseat, she gave the address for hotel at the JFK International Airport.
The safe house she was aiming for was a permanently reserved two-bedroom suite in an affordable, independently-owned hotel. Stuck with worn, outdated décor, it was in desperate need of a renovation, but it did the job when her team needed a place to stash a witness short-term. At the very least, it put another layer of security she trusted between Danny and these UI assholes who wanted to kill him.
And her.
She reached for her phone out of habit to warn the front desk she was on the way in with a guest and swore again. She’d have to do this one step at a time, praying they weren’t caught on the move. Beside her, Danny closed his eyes, cupping his hands over his ears.
“Migraine,” she said when she caught the driver eyeing him suspiciously. “Hang in there,” she said to Danny, patting his knee. “We’re close.”
The safe house suite was a handy benefit of having an ex whose family still loved her despite the failed relationship. They always took extra care with her witnesse
s and because the location wasn’t in any database or known outside her team, it had never been compromised. As a bonus, with people coming and going from the airport twenty-four seven, any food, supplies or equipment deliveries were impossible to track.
Danny’s hand covered hers and he squeezed hard. “Let me out,” he said. “Deli.”
Was that another code word? “We’ll get food in just a few minutes.”
“Water. I can’t… can’t… wait.” His breath shuddered in and out. “Protect you.”
“Relax. Breathe. I’ve got this.”
He groaned, his head rolling from side to side on the back of the seat and curling into the corner of the seat. Chloe pressed her hand to his clammy forehead and started searching him for a wound.
He batted her hands away, the effort was so weak it worried her after seeing him handle everything else so competently.
“Your man cannot be sick in my cab.” The driver started to pull over.
Chloe believed in discretion in all things, but she couldn’t take the chance he’d dump them on the street. She flashed her badge. “National security. Drive.”
A few minutes later the cabbie dropped them off in front of a luxury hotel, grumbling under his breath about the dangers of entitled, indulgent people abusing their authority. She didn’t give a whit about his opinion. She just needed Danny out of sight as soon as possible.
The bellhop reached for her bag and she let him carry her things to the front desk. Once she booked a room on her credit card, going on and on about Danny’s migraine, she asked for a sandwich platter for their room.
The staff was so accommodating, they found a wheelchair for Danny and she chattered gratefully and nonsensically until they were inside and alone. She settled Danny on the couch with a bottle of water and one of the complimentary apples. She’d just finished calling her ex’s hotel for a pick up, when room service delivered the sandwich tray.
Placing the food tray within his reach, she rubbed his shoulders. “Enjoy the luxury now. Our next stop isn’t so pretty.”
“Not staying?” he rasped.
