Nico (The Mavericks Book 8)

by Dale Mayer

  When he straightened and looked at her, he said, “I’m sorry. It’ll hurt, but it’s much better this way.” And he grabbed one hand, then he grabbed her wrist, and he just ripped. She cried out in pain, but he did it again. She stared up at him, her eyes wounded and her mouth open, knowing that the odd keening sound was coming from her, but she was unable to stop it.

  Immediately he pulled her into his arms and just held her close. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

  She collapsed against him, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Why did they choose me?” she whispered. “Why me?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out,” he said. “Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll have a few answers for us.”

  “Aren’t you taking him to the police?”

  “Nah,” the second guy said. “Don’t really feel like helping the police out on this one.”

  She stared up at him, a little nervous and confused. “Are you not the police?”

  The man shook his head. “No,” he said, “but you’re safe with us.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Am I though? I’m not exactly sure about that.”

  “Well, you’re no longer tied up, and we’ve taken out your kidnapper, so maybe you could rethink that.”

  She blinked slightly, trying to figure out just what had happened. “If you’re not the police,” she said, her voice gaining in strength, “who are you?”

  “We’re military, Special Ops,” the first guy said. “US Navy. And we came here to collect you.”

  She stared at him. “Okay,” she said slowly. “But you’re a long way from home.”

  “That’s quite true,” he said, handing her a burner phone. “Should we get separated, use only this phone to communicate with only me. My number’s the only one in the Contacts list.”

  She numbly stuck the phone in her jeans pocket, frowning.

  Just then the elevator came to a stop, and one guy backed out, pulling his laundry cart with her kidnapper still in it. The other one grabbed her arm, following his partner, and said, “Come on. Let’s go.”

  She was still half wrapped up against him but stumbled along. Her legs were moving but not as well as they should have been. Her hands were killing her. She cradled both of her sore wrists up against her chest as he wrapped an arm around her and led her to a hotel room. They all entered and then locked the door behind them.

  Once inside, she looked around and said, “Are we safe here?”

  “Maybe,” he said opening a small fridge and pulling out a bottle of water. He uncapped it and handed it to her. “At least we’re hoping so.”

  After a long drink, she sagged on the bed, even as the other guy pulled up her kidnapper and dragged him to a chair in the little kitchenette area, then sat him down. They quickly tied him to the chair and left him unconscious but sitting. She watched everything happening around her as if it were a movie, as if she weren’t really connected. She kept telling her brain to figure this out and to snap out of whatever fugue she was in. But it wasn’t working.

  “If you’re not cops,” she said, “shouldn’t you at least contact them?”

  “We will as soon as we know what’s going on here.”

  “This guy and three others kidnapped me,” she whispered. “I had just returned to my hotel room, had unlocked my door, and they snatched me up. I didn’t even get a chance to step inside. They went in, grabbed my bags to make it look like I had gone or something, and then they took me and left.”

  “Right,” the first guy said. “And you are Charlotte Ankerby, correct?”

  She nodded slowly. “And who are you?”

  He quickly reintroduced himself and said, “Just call me Nico.”

  “Nico, how did you know where I was?”

  “Well, we figured that you were still in the hotel. Then narrowed it down to the laundry area in the basement or the helicopter on the roof.”

  “It was both,” she said. “I don’t understand the helicopter part, but I heard the kidnappers talking about it.”

  “In that case,” Nico said, “one of us needs to disappear really fast.”

  He stood up but the other guy—Keane, she thought his name was—stood and said, “I’ll go. You keep an eye on these two.” And he disappeared out the door.

  She looked back at Nico. “Where’s he going?”

  “To the rooftop. He’ll see if you were to be taken to the helicopter waiting up there.”

  “That’s not a good thing to think about, but I did wonder.”

  “What can you tell me about the other men with this guy?”

  “The truck was too smoky,” she said. “And unfortunately that was the biggest thing I remember about them.”

  “Were they young or old?”

  “Two were young,” she said. “As in very young. I didn’t know who they were or anything about them. But they were happy to be doing this, as if this was something that they hadn’t really expected to do, and they were now part of the in-group.”

  He brought out his cell phone and held up a picture. “Is this one of them?”

  She looked at it, frowned, and nodded. “Yes, it is. But …?”

  “It’s him,” he said. “Only he’s dead. He was shot sometime in the last twenty-four hours.”

  She frowned. “I can’t really tell you when, but, the last time I saw him, they were inside the big truck where I was held. Two men were smoking at the time, and all four of them were playing cards. This unconscious guy’s one of them. And the guy on your phone is one of the other ones.”

  “Is he one of the ones who smoked?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know if the other kid did too.”

  He flicked through his phone again and brought up another photo.

  She turned her head away. “God. Is he dead too?”

  “Sorry, but that’s the better of the two photos I have of him. And, yes, this kid’s dead. Is he one of the four who you saw?”

  “Yes,” she said. “So two are dead, and now there’s this guy, and I don’t know where the other guy is.”

  “Well, we need to find him,” Nico said. “We have a few questions we want to ask him.”

  She stared at him, confused. “About me?” she asked hesitantly. A groan from the man tied to the chair interrupted their conversation. She looked over at Nico and said, “Is it wrong that I want to go over there and kick the shit out of him?”

  Nico laughed. “I think that’s a very normal and healthy reaction. Except I can’t let you do it.”

  “And I don’t think I’d like myself afterward either,” she said. “But to think that he kidnapped me from my hotel room and kept me locked up for twenty-four hours or longer? By the way, what day and time is it?”

  “Sydney time, it’s Friday, almost midnight. If you were taken about eleven-thirty p.m. Thursday, then they held you for approximately twenty-five hours. So was there anything important that you would miss in those hours?” he asked casually, but she got the distinct impression that her answer was important.

  She looked up at him and blinked. “Yes. I was supposed to give a speech.”

  He turned ever-so-slowly and looked at her. “Is that the reason you think you were kidnapped? Were they intending to silence you?”

  She stared back at him and blinked, but her mind churned on the idea. “Maybe? I was pretty unhappy with the way the organizers had set this up.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me about that before this guy wakes up, so I know what questions to ask him.”

  She quickly explained the problem with the booking and how it had been handled. “They said that it was all arranged, but my assistant said we’d had nothing to do with it.”

  “Who do you believe?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. It could have been my assistant. She is getting older. I did honor the commitment, and I came, but I didn’t want to. I’m trying to avoid these talks and rallies. I’m focusing more on my books, putting my thoughts down for the wider audience. I feel I can reach mor
e people that way.” He stared at her steadily, and she shrugged. “I know you probably don’t agree, but I feel like I need to do this. That it’s my path.” She tumbled over the words as she tried to make sense out of it all. “I just want to go home.”

  “And we’re getting to that point,” he said. “Just not yet.”

  She nodded and shifted. “I don’t suppose you have my clothes, do you? Or can we collect it all? I really want a shower.”

  He looked at her in surprise and said, “You didn’t bring much with you, did you?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I am only here for a few days, then turn around and go home. I wasn’t happy to be here so I wanted to return immediately.”

  “Well, I have a few things that you left in your room. You can’t go back up there again.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said. “Honestly, as I said, I just want to go home.”

  He walked to his bag and pulled out a roll of her clothes with her paperwork.

  She gasped in joy. “Oh my,” she said. “I had no idea. I was so afraid my paperwork was gone, and I couldn’t get home. I’d gotten into my room, unpacked some things, then went downstairs to meet a coworker but returned. They immediately attacked me at my door.”

  “Well, what you need to enter the country is all here,” he said. And he handed everything over to her. She selected a change of clothes, got up, walked to the bathroom, and asked, “Will you be okay with him?” She stared at the prisoner malevolently. “Maybe we should hit him over the head again, just to make sure he doesn’t wake up while I’m in here.”

  “What will you do if he does wake up?” he asked in interest.

  She frowned. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I could help somehow. Would you knock him out again?”

  “Well, if I needed to, yes,” he said. “Why?”

  When she didn’t answer, he just smiled and said, “Go shower. I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want anything to happen to you because you came to rescue me.”

  “Not an issue,” he said gently. “This is what I do. I’ll be fine.”

  She hesitated but then realized that she was so damn tired, and she needed to do something fast if she hoped to accomplish anything. With a quick nod, she disappeared into the bathroom, stripped, turned on the hot shower, and finally stepped underneath the water.

  Only as she stood, letting the water cascade over her head, her hands resting against the wall, supporting herself, did she let the tears flow. The occasional sob broke loose, but mostly her body heaved as the sobs rippled through her in silent motion as they always did. She wasn’t a noisy crier. She was somebody who preferred the silence and to blend with it instead of disrupting it.

  When she finally ran out of tears, she slowly reached for the soap and scrubbed herself down from top to bottom, then added shampoo to her hair and rinsed it out, and finally turned off the water.

  She sagged to the side of the shower, tired, worn out, and shaky. But she was determined to get dressed so that she could go back outside. If she were lucky, she’d collapse on the bed for an hour or two at least. She needed a night or two to recover from this, but she didn’t know how quickly she could get home, and that’s where she would really recover. She was too damn grateful to be here and not wherever those horrible men had planned for her to be.

  Once again dressed with her hair brushed and still wet, but too tired to use the hotel’s blow-dryer, she slowly opened the door and made her way out to find Nico sitting beside one of the men who had kidnapped her. He was awake now. The kidnapper turned, looked at her, and glared. “Bitch. I told you not to make a sound.”

  “You did,” she said with more calmness than she felt. “But why the hell should I listen to you?”

  “Because now you’ll die,” he said simply.

  She froze in place, turned to look at Nico. “Why would he say that?” she cried out in alarm.

  “He’s trying to scare you,” Nico said. He smacked the kidnapper across his face, hard, and walked over and gave her a quick hug. “We have only the one hotel room. I can’t shield you from this, so why don’t you go to the bed and lie down?”

  “I’m too scared to sleep,” she whispered. “Yet I’m exhausted, and I need sleep, but I’m afraid that, if I do, something will happen, and he’ll overpower you and take me again.”

  “Not gonna happen,” he said, as he walked her to the bed and got her settled.

  The door opened just then, and Keane walked in. He looked over at the kidnapper and smiled. “Oh, good. Time for a talk, is it?”

  “Yes,” Nico said. “What did you find?”

  “The helicopter’s gone,” Keane said.

  The kidnapper stared at him in shock. “No, no, it’s supposed to wait for me.”

  “Well, guess what?” Keane said. “You missed your ride, buddy.”

  “That’s not good,” the man said. “They were very strict about making that appointment.”

  “Well, you don’t have her to deliver to them anyway, so you’re in shit for a whole lot more than just that one reason.”

  The guy sagged in place. “Maybe, but at least there was a hope of fixing it.”

  “And how do you figure that?”

  “All you had to do was give her back to me, and it would be all fine.”

  “And why would we do that?” Nico asked in surprise.

  “Because they’ll still come after her. Just because I failed doesn’t mean they don’t still want her. They do. Now they’ll just send more men.”

  After that comment, their prisoner shut up. Nico looked over at Keane and shrugged. “I guess he’d rather not deal with the cops and prefers to face the wrath of his coworkers.”

  Keane nodded. “If this is serious business, which it seems like it is, since they’re killing off all the loose ends, then we have to assume that his miserable life is in danger.”

  “Well, I’m not protecting him,” Nico said. “He’s the one who screwed up. They’ll take him out in their own time.”

  “Whether he screwed up or not, they’ll take him out,” Keane said. “Think about the other two.”

  “Right,” Nico said. He returned to the bed where Charlotte lay. Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell in a gentle movement. He glanced over at Keane and gave her a gentle nudge to show him that she was out.

  Immediately Keane lowered his voice. “Good. That’s what she needs.” He went into the washroom and scrubbed down as much as he could. When he came back out, he said, “We need food, information, and to figure out how to get her home safe again.”

  “Good luck with that,” their prisoner said in a snide voice.

  “Oh, look at that. He talks,” Keane said.

  Their prisoner glared at them, and Nico shrugged. “I don’t give a shit if they take you out or not. But any further attempts to take her out will not make us happy.”

  “Too late,” their prisoner muttered.

  “I don’t understand why they even care about Charlotte,” Keane said to Nico. “She’s an activist, one of a thousand all around the world.”

  “No, she’s more than that.” But then the kidnapper shut his mouth tight and pinched his lips together, then glared at the two men as if sorry he had even opened his mouth.

  “She’s just an author who didn’t even want to come to Australia. Or did you guys orchestrate that?”

  The prisoner shrugged as if to say he had no clue.

  That was likely the truth. Why would anybody let a lowlife like this know any of the details? “Oh, yeah. You weren’t even part of the planning,” Nico said. “You’re just hired muscle. A nobody.”

  The prisoner continued to glare at him but didn’t rise to the bait.

  “Do we know anything more about the helicopter?” Nico asked Keane.

  Keane sat down at the table with his laptop open. “I’m looking into it right now,” he said. “I’ve already asked for some assistance and am tracking it down.”

>   “I don’t know about call numbers, but it should have a flight path of where it’s going and where it came from.”

  “Doesn’t mean they follow it though,” Keane muttered.

  Nico knew that was the truth. Even commercial planes were supposed to follow flight paths but that didn’t mean they did. But, if they didn’t show up on time, then inquiries were sent, and investigations were opened for missing flights. So it was to everybody’s benefit to file a flight plan. Unless you didn’t want anybody to know where and when you were going somewhere. In which case, better to say you didn’t know. Nico was sure there were ways around doing that too.

  As he sat here, studying the sleeping woman, he wondered just how far these guys would go. “I still don’t understand. Why kill her? What does her death do as an activist? It turns her into a martyr, which helps her cause and not the kidnappers’ cause.”

  “Not that these guys necessarily have the brains to think about that,” Keane said. “I think you’re giving them too much smarts.”

  Nico chuckled at that. “We never did get food.”

  “Order something then,” Keane said, but his voice was disinterested.

  Nico, on the other hand, could really use some food. He quickly put in an order through his Mavericks chat window, loving the system as it stood right now. He wasn’t exactly sure who oversaw all the minions running around in the background at all these worldwide spots and whether the chat window guys were like him or if they seriously had a team admin and an espionage analyst. He liked the idea of having a whole government branch, sitting there, waiting for them to give them something to do. And then he wondered if there were more teams like his. We need that. To better operate on a global level.

  Nico sat here wondering about that, then realized that, even if he were to ask the Mavericks, chances were nobody would say anything.