She hated living in fear.
The detectives who’d come to take the report last night had been more interested in her body than in the threats her assailant had made. They’d taken her statement, but made no effort to look for evidence and hadn’t even bagged the plastic ties that had cuffed her wrists and ankles. She hadn’t been raped, robbed or beaten and they didn’t seem to know why she’d called them. When she had the energy she’d get in touch with the embassy in Bogota, but right now there was nothing to do except jump at shadows and scream like a weenie whenever something moved in her peripheral vision.
The Gateway Project. What the hell was the Gateway Project? She’d googled it and got nothing but computers.
Her phone rang. She checked the caller ID—Devon Brightman. If he were just her ex or her sister’s new boyfriend she’d blow him off. But he was also Rebecca’s younger brother and because of the grief they’d shared, no matter how she was feeling on any particular day, she would always pick up.
“Hi.”
“Hey, how’s my favorite nerd?”
“Said the techno-geek.”
“Techno-geeks are way cooler than nerds.”
“Only they and their toys think so.” She laughed. When Devon wasn’t being over-demanding and possessive, he was actually a good guy.
“You back in Colombia?” he asked.
“Yep.” She removed glassware from an autoclave and stored it on a rack.
“You cool with me dating your sister?”
“Sure.” She stopped for a moment and realized she was cool with it. Devon and Sienna were closer in age, both being a few years younger than she was, and had a lot more in common. “Just don’t screw it up.”
He laughed. “Everything going okay down there?”
She opened her mouth to tell him about her attack last night, but stopped. He might tell Sienna and her sister would definitely rat. The thought of giving her mother something real to worry about was enough for a vow of silence. “Everything’s great, but I have work to do. Gotta go.” Not wanting to linger, she hung up.
Pleased with how maturely she’d handled that transition, she got down to work. Shakira played loudly on her music system and her hips were swaying as she measured out Ringer solution. Her work revolved around examining how high levels of batrachotoxin in the indigenous frog’s skin affected the fungus that was wiping out their brethren worldwide. It might give the wild poison dart frogs an advantage in an ever more challenging environment. Or not. She tried to be optimistic, but it was hard to protect the environment in the face of big business. She often argued with Rebecca and Devon’s father, Gabriel Brightman, about how he ran his massive pharmaceutical company. He occasionally listened to her, but he listened harder to his shareholders.
Even though the fungus was naturally present in the environment, she didn’t keep it on site. She wouldn’t risk it escaping into the wild and being responsible for more deaths. Instead she used a level three laboratory in the city and at her home university in Louisville, Kentucky to conduct the exposure experiments under controlled conditions. Here she collected eggs and samples of the toxin.
The public displays and guided talks at the Amazon Research Institute were a way of educating and inspiring locals and tourists to engage with their environment and support conservation efforts. It was also a way of giving back to the community. She usually enjoyed sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with people, but not today. After last night she just wanted to fade into the background.
She pushed her reading glasses up her nose. Maybe she could scrounge up some company to go to a bar for a few drinks tonight. Then she thought of her sister and decided relying on a chemical depressant to numb herself into oblivion might not be the smartest idea.
She doubled up on latex gloves and pulled her lab coat sleeves down over her wrists before putting her hands inside the terrarium. Using a sterile cotton bud she swiped the tip over the back of the nearest frog. She was gentle and he didn’t seem to mind too much, but she did have to prod him a little to secrete more toxin. It beat shoving a stick through his body and out his hind leg the way the Embera tribe did when they wanted poison for their arrows. Still that was their culture—who was she to judge? Their environmental impact was minimal. She didn’t want to think about the damage her culture had inflicted upon the world or she’d spend all her time running in circles screaming, “We’re all going to die.”
Having collected a bunch of swabs from several different individuals she placed the Q-tips in pre-labeled sterile containers and secured them. Then she noted a fatality in the corner of the tank. The lifeless body was a reminder of all the things she couldn’t control, like her sister’s drug addiction and a stranger attacking her in the dark. She picked up the limp body of the dead frog. The sound of the main door opening and closing had her glancing around. She hadn’t realized anyone else was still here. A man she didn’t recognize walked into the lab and turned his head this way and that as if looking for someone. He had jet-black hair and bullish shoulders beneath a tight T-shirt and heavy leather jacket. His eyes were black as coal and when their gazes met, his locked onto her. He gave her a smile that drove stakes into her spine.
Was this the man from last night?
“¿Quién es usted?” she asked. Who are you?
He didn’t answer, nor did he stop walking toward her.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice rising in panic. No response. He just kept coming. Oh, God. Considering the look on his face and lack of greeting she wasn’t hanging around to find out what he wanted. She took off running. When he started chasing her she knew she was in serious trouble.
She darted through the door that led into the park and screamed for help, but there was no one to hear her. The receptionist who also sold the tickets in the kiosk always left at five sharp. Audrey had given her student the day off, and most of the local scientists were still on vacation. The place was deserted. Darkness had fallen. Good. Plenty of places to hide. Her white coat made her an easy target but the man was so close on her heels she didn’t have time to take it off—and she was still wearing her gloves and clutching the little dead frog in her hand. She needed to remember what she touched so she could clean up later. She almost laughed. Stupid what went through people’s minds during moments of extreme duress—Rebecca had lain dying in her arms pleading over and over to make sure her cat, Marley, was taken care of.
The memory ripped through Audrey’s mind like a machete.
She was not going to die.
Her feet pounded the concrete. If she could get to the area where they hatched the butterfly chrysalises, she could lock and barricade the doors, then use the landline to call for help. Her cell was in her purse back in the lab.
She dashed nimbly down a small path that wound between different enclosures. There were no lights because they didn’t want to disturb the natural rhythms of the animals, but she knew the way. She heard the man stumble and swear, falling farther and farther behind. Good. Exhilaration filled her. She was going to make it.
Her sandal caught on a piece of hosepipe and she flew through the air, losing her glasses a split second before she smacked her head on a post. Pain and disorientation exploded inside her skull. The sound of labored breathing brought her back to the present. A dark shadow dropped to his knees beside her. The smell of cigarettes on hot rancid breath turned her stomach.
“What do you want?” she asked weakly.
Something sharp pressed against her side, and she tried to pull away, but it didn’t stop coming. Pain was all consuming, and shock crashed through her as a knife slid deep. Her mouth went wide in astonishment and she grabbed the man’s wrists, nausea rolling through her body. She struggled frantically to push against his arm.
“W-why are you doing this to me?” she panted. Agony streaked along her side. She could barely breathe, let alone think. “Help,” she begged someone, no one. “Help me.”
He said something indistinguishable in Spanish, b
ut after a few seconds he loosened his grip on the knife and fell backward to the ground. All she could think about was the fact this man had stabbed her and it hurt. Then she understood what had happened. The neurotoxic steroidal alkaloid from the frog’s skin had transferred from her gloves and was now making her attacker’s heart beat too fast as the poison irreversibly opened the voltage-gated sodium channels of his body’s cells. She dragged herself to her knees, tugging off the lab coat in case she’d got batrachotoxin on that too. The man needed immediate medical attention if he was going to live. Ignoring him and her own wound, she carefully peeled off her gloves, balling them inside out before tossing them aside. Blood ran down her hip in a hot, slick trickle that streamed down her leg.
Holding onto the fence she dragged herself to her feet and staggered along the path. She knew she shouldn’t remove the knife, but it cut into her with every step. Blood soaked her jeans, making the denim feel wet and heavy against her leg. She swayed unsteadily, clinging desperately to the fence. Her assailant thrashed on the ground behind her, having a seizure.
The equivalent of two grains of salt could kill a man. She doubted he’d last until she called the ambulance, but she had to try.
The sound of footsteps made her freeze in fresh horror. He had a partner. She wanted to scream with frustration at the unfairness of it all. She couldn’t run. She could barely walk. The beam of a flashlight hit her full in the face, and she tried to shrink back into the shadows.
“Come to finish the job?” she bit out. The pain in her side was so intense she couldn’t concentrate, but the lightheaded feeling from losing too much blood was more worrying. The beam of light swung from her to the ground where her would-be killer lay prone on his back with his mouth wide open, eyes staring fixedly into the sky. If he weren’t already dead, he soon would be. The newcomer bent to check his radial pulse.
“Don’t,” she warned sharply. “Poison on gloves.” Her words came out in short gasps. “Transferred to skin.” A throbbing wave of hurt pulsed through her. “I-I didn’t mean to hurt him.” Why was she warning the guy? So he could finish the job his buddy had started? But avoiding the inherent danger of the frogs was so ingrained she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “If you touch him you might die, too.” She spoke in English because her brain wasn’t up to translating into another language, but he seemed to understand. Her thought processes were dulled from blood loss and shock. Her entire left side was hot, sticky, and numb. She stumbled away along the path.
She didn’t get far. At first she thought she’d fainted. Then she realized the dizzy sensation was her being scooped up in strong arms and carried along the path. Her cheek nestled against a hard male chest and she could feel his heart beating against his ribs. Something about his scent teased her senses, but its significance drifted away as she slipped into unconsciousness.
Chapter Three
KILLION DIDN’T KNOW what the hell was going on, but he hadn’t expected to find a known enforcer for El cartel de Mano de Dios in convulsive death-throes after trying to take out Dr. Audrey Lockhart. Any doubts as to her involvement vanished along with Hector Sanchez’s ability to breathe.
Did she work for the cartel? They’d assumed the murder was something to do with the now disbanded Gateway Project as a couple of known murderers had been poisoned in a similar fashion and it fit their MO. But could Mano de Dios have ordered Ted Burger’s assassination in retaliation for their leader being locked up in a US maximum-security prison? And were the cartel now cleaning house so no one else figured it out?
He rolled the idea over in his mind. It could fit. The vice president had been relentless in going after the illegal drug trade after his son had died of a cocaine overdose. It made a pragmatic kind of sense. Use a hired assassin unassociated with their group to get rid of the problem without anyone suspecting they were involved and bringing down the wrath of the American military on their organization—not to mention getting their faces on their own personal deck of cards.
He hefted the professor higher in his arms, careful of the jutting knife. She wasn’t very big. She wasn’t very heavy.
At the entrance of the park he glanced about to make sure there was no one around. It was full dark now. Streetlights were few and far between in this non-residential area. He strode up the hill, past Hector Sanchez’s idling sedan, and placed Lockhart awkwardly in the backseat of his rental. Her eyes were closed.
“Hey, wake up!”
She opened her eyes.
“Keep pressure on the wound,” he told her sternly.
He headed back to the parking lot, leaned inside the enforcer’s sedan, and turned off the ignition, pocketing the keys. He closed the door, making sure he didn’t touch anything with his bare skin. Langley wouldn’t appreciate having one of their operatives linked to a messy murder. Confident no one had seen him, he got back in his car and started the engine. Lockhart was lying in the darkness, panting to control the pain. The handle of the blade protruded just above her hipbone on her left side. At least it wasn’t in the gut or the chest, but knife wounds hurt like a bitch. Hector Sanchez had a sadistic reputation, and probably intended to play with Dr. Lockhart for as long as possible, to make her bleed and scream.
The world was a better place without Sanchez in it.
Killion put the car in drive and headed slowly down the hill and through town, past local bars, and the darkened police station. He dragged his orange T-shirt over his head and tossed it to her. “Use that to try and stem the bleeding.” He drove calmly, doing the speed limit in a part of the country that generally didn’t bother. He adjusted the rearview, saw that her eyes were now closed and she appeared to have passed out.
“Hey, Lockhart! Wake up,” he yelled.
Her eyes flicked open. “H-hospital.”
Their gazes met briefly. “You know I can’t do that.”
She didn’t have many choices—not in this town, not with a cartel knife sticking out of her side. It wouldn’t be long before Mano de Dios started looking for their pet killer, and when he turned up dead they’d scour the entire country for this woman. If they found her, they’d make her pray for a swift end.
“Why not?” she croaked.
Jesus. “You know why not.” Was she really gonna continue the charade?
Her features twisted as she pressed the T-shirt against her side. Her face looked clammy, her skin pale. “If you don’t take me to the hospital, I’ll bleed to death.”
“If I take you to the hospital you’ll be dead before sun up.”
“They’re not that bad.”
He frowned and concentrated on the road ahead of him. Did she mean the cartel? Or the doctors? His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Was she so confident in her ability to handle the drug smugglers even after an attempted hit? Did she have dirt on them? Maybe she was fucking one of them—she was attractive enough, but Hector Sanchez didn’t freelance. If he’d tried to kill Audrey Lockhart it was at his lord and master’s bidding. Raoul Gómez—the brother of Manuel Gómez who was serving life in a California federal prison—was an evil sonofabitch and had no qualms about murdering women and children to maintain his iron grip on his organization. Killion wasn’t getting on that rat-bastard’s radar until he’d figured out who’d ordered the hit on the VP because that was his mission. And his mission was paramount, even if his methods were a little unorthodox, if not downright illegal. Nothing was going to sidetrack him from his purpose.
Audrey Lockhart could help him. In fact, she was probably the only one who could help him figure out the truth. He needed her alive.
She cried out as he rumbled over a pothole, but things were going to get a hell of a lot bumpier from here on out. He had few options. He could take her to the embassy in Bogota, but then this fracas became official. Considering cartels owned half the cops and politicians in South America, the diplomats might decide that releasing Lockhart into the custody of local authorities to face the justice system here was more expedient than protectin
g her rights as an American citizen. And no way could he reveal classified information about the importance of this mission even to other CIA agents, hell, not even to his boss. In theory, he was due to head back to HQ in a couple of weeks to receive his next assignment, which in all likelihood would be a temporary duty overseas—TDY. In reality, his current mission was going to take a while.
Aside from himself, the president, and a handful of Lincoln Frazer’s FBI BAU-4 team, no one knew Burger had been murdered. Official reports were the guy had suffered a heart attack and the nation had grieved for the elder statesman. Killion didn’t know how many bad guys knew about the assassination plot, but at least one person did and he’d bet his government pension she was bleeding out in his backseat.
He gritted his jaw as he realized something else. Lockhart could not be allowed to talk. Ever. If the world discovered Burger’s murder had been covered up, the man’s life and actions would be put under the microscope. Burger had been up to his eyeballs in dirty deals and international terror plots. The fact they’d deceived the public about his murder would be the least of their problems. World War III was likely if the truth got out.
Thoughts raced through his mind as he assessed options. Plan A had been making sure the assassin knew the vigilante organization—The Gateway Project—was now defunct. Frazer’s people had been monitoring Audrey’s communications to see who she contacted and where she went, hoping to backtrack to the mastermind behind Burger’s murder. Killion glanced at the woman in the backseat who was panting heavily while gripping the knife in her side.
Time for Plan B.
He drove a few more miles and then swung west. Over the last twenty years the drug situation in Colombia had changed. Nowadays it operated on the same principles as a terror network with small groups only knowing about their piece of the operation. That way, if they were arrested, they couldn’t sink the entire cartel. Farmers cultivated small plots of coca in dense forest regions, easier to hide from spotter planes and government officials. Marxist rebels still controlled large swathes of land that were no-go areas. Colombia might be opening up to the tourist trade, but so was Mexico, and anyone who didn’t think that was a dangerous place to visit outside the hotel resorts had their head up their ass.
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