by Black, Regan
She darted between two grave stones and cut across the mushy grass, taking shelter under an outstretched branch. Her target paused, looking back at the accident scene, and Amelia’s instincts surged into high gear. This had to be her contact.
Confirming her thought, the person looked straight at her and gave a nearly imperceptible nod toward the white clapboard church.
Amelia strode forward, head high, a confident smile in place.
“What are you doing?”
“Back off,” she hissed at John. “You’ll scare away my last source.”
He caught her elbow. “We have to get out of here.”
“In a minute.”
“You’re too exposed.”
She tried to shake his hold, but it backfired. Anything more would cause a scene which would only make matters worse. “I need that information.”
John swore and she echoed him, but for different reasons. Her target had disappeared around the corner of the church.
Dragging her bodyguard with her, she pressed forward, determination infusing every step. Her hair was plastered to her scalp and her shoes soaked through, the story was the only thing on her mind when she caught up to her target.
“Thanks for waiting.” Amelia sighed with relief. The man in the street was only coincidence. Thank God.
“You were late,” the blonde said without turning to face her.
That voice, even in person it held a smoky quality that could be male or female. The hand holding the umbrella was covered in a glove and the trench coat, slacks, and shoes offered no decisive proof of gender.
Amelia didn’t apologize or make excuses. “Do you have what I need?” she asked her source’s back. The fear was obvious, radiating off of her source in tense waves. She could practically smell it.
All she needed was a name. The name her contact had finally promised to give her this morning. The name that connected Senator Larimore with the security breach that would prove he was mining private data for his personal gain. This piece of the puzzle would break her story wide open and make all of the threats and vandalism – even the bodyguard – worth it.
“It’s too late.”
It couldn’t be! “No one will know about you,” she said with as much calm as she could muster as her pulse leaped like a frightened gazelle. “I promise.”
The head bowed slightly. “You’re not alone.”
“That couldn’t be helped. It’s –”
“Smart.” The shoulders slumped. “I took precautions.”
What the hell did that mean? Amelia wished for a window, for a glimpse of that face to get a better read on her contact, but by design or chance, her contact made sure that wasn’t an option.
“Locker thirty-one. John will know the rest.”
John? She resisted the urge to demand answers from her bodyguard. “What does he have to do with it?”
Suddenly she thought of the man in the trench coat watching her apartment, thought of the nearly new business card in the bottom of her purse and wondered at the elaborate set up. John Noble had infiltrated her life so smoothly and now insinuated himself in her story. Alarms clanged in her head.
“You promised me a name,” she demanded, trailing after when her source moved toward the next block.
Suddenly her contact collapsed. Walking one moment, crumpled in the wet grass the next, the umbrella caught at a useless angle between the body and the white clapboard siding.
Startled, Amelia froze for one second too long. Before she could force her feet to cooperate and carry her toward her contact, she felt herself being hauled away by a rough grip at her elbow.
“Stop!” She dug in her heels, twisted against the hold, trying to wrench herself free. “We have to –” she began, certain she could convince John to do the right thing here.
But, she looked up and realized it wasn’t John who held her. A supple leather glove smothered her scream.
Chapter Four
John rubbed at the goose egg behind his ear and struggled to his knees. His vision wavered, like rain on glass, but he could just make out Amelia’s red head as she struggled against a man in a darker jacket.
Damn it all to hell. He’d been so consumed with her and her mysterious contact he’d missed the real threat sneaking up behind him.
It was a rookie mistake that proved how he’d let himself and his skills go. He might as well sit here and wait for Gabriel’s cleanup crew. He didn’t know the reporter well, but he admired her fighting spirit. Keep fighting, he thought, hauling himself upright. He couldn’t fail here... couldn’t go back to the nothingness existence that had been his for too long.
She had to live. If she died, so did he.
The clock was ticking in his head as John stumbled after Amelia and her captor. Thirty seconds out of sight... he refused to allow them any more of a lead. Failure had been beaten out of him in his extensive training and he wasn’t about to give in now.
Someone had been watching her – or him – and knew how he’d handle the scene. How any hired bodyguard worth his fee would react to the potential threat in the unexpected crisis. He’d sensed a trap, but couldn’t pinpoint it. He was that fucking rusty.
The emergency personnel had been muttering about heart attacks or aneurisms but John’s money was on something far less benign. As he’d assessed the scene, none of the conversational snippets he’d overheard would help anyone. He couldn’t even be sure an autopsy would prove what John already suspected. The man who’d dropped dead in front of Mrs. B’s car had been murdered for a reason.
He reached the corner of the building and peered cautiously up and down the street. The man who had Amelia was built like a linebacker, sporting a scruffy red beard and heading for a dark sedan parked up the street. He couldn’t see the driver, but the exhaust puffing in the cool, wet air, proved the engine was running.
A trap. The words echoed in his mind as he developed a plan.
What were the odds her apartment had been attacked, he’d been tasked with protecting her, and some poor sap on a bike would die at the same place where she was to meet her source? Long. Very, very long.
Whatever her story, someone obviously didn’t want it told.
Based on his assessment of her apartment this morning, someone wanted her dead and keeping her alive meant finally getting clear of the muddy abyss he’d been wallowing in for the past several years.
Prior to getting tangled in Gabriel’s web, John held a skeptical view of coincidental events. Now, he didn’t believe in such a thing at all. None of this was adding up. If he didn’t know better, he’d blame the odd weather on Gabriel and his puppet masters too.
He zigged and zagged, mostly on purpose, as he tried to catch up with Amelia and get her captor. Of all the people and all the situations, Gabriel might assign, it made a sick kind of sense that John would be saddled with a hard-nosed reporter.
Really, he should have expected worse.
Evaluation complete, he took a quick inventory. He had one hundred fifteen dollars in his wallet, along with credit cards in two different names. The twenty-two caliber revolver at his ankle and a knife at the small of his back could do the talking if cash or plastic failed. With a little luck, he could get her back and transport her to a safe place where she would, whether she wanted to or not, fill him in on this big story she was hunting. He had a feeling they wouldn’t make it long if he didn’t know who she was up against.
As he’d assumed, this job was not as simple as Gabriel had led him to believe.
Feeling more confident, his head clearing, he moved closer. Ten short yards separated him from Amelia and the big man leading her toward the sedan.
Too many onlookers for guns and too many emergency officials nearby for a drawn out offense. Quick and dirty was the best option. He saw it play out in his head even as he moved in.
“Christ. You want her to suffocate?” He came up on Amelia’s other side and with her caught between them, he pushed them toward the sedan’s rear d
oor. “Relax,” he said to Amelia, “you’re causing a scene.”
She stopped struggling immediately, but leaned closer to him. Smart girl. The thug opened the door and the three of them slid into the sedan. The driver pulled away from the curb as John closed the door.
“Who the fuck are you?” Red Beard asked.
John caught the look passing between the other two men. “I’m the guy who’s in charge.”
“Bullshit,” said the driver, surging through a traffic light as it turned from yellow to red. “We’ve got the lead on this one.”
“I’m sure you think so.” Since Gabriel had given him Amelia’s name, he’d been looking for a clue as to who might want her dead. This pair was merely the hired help and John wanted to know who was paying them.
“You can’t just put down an innocent civilian and –”
“That wasn’t us.”
“Just the kind of diversion that gets you caught,” John said with a pitying shake of his head. “If your information and tactics were sound I wouldn’t be here.”
The driver swore again. “Call,” he barked the bearded man on Amelia’s other side. The sedan merged with the heavier traffic heading east toward the city.
Red Beard reached into a pocket and John caught a glimpse of the shiny gun in a shoulder holster. Talk about screw-ups. It had been a long time since he’d encountered amateurs like these two.
Why? More importantly, where did they plan on taking Amelia?
The car’s navigation spit out a course correction and the driver changed lanes accordingly. Not local talent. John couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.
He made a show of peering through the window to check signs. When Red Beard followed suit, he tapped Amelia’s leg and pointed to the floorboard. Her nod was small and quick.
“Are you sure you put in the right address?” John asked, reaching for the revolver at his ankle.
“That’s it.” The driver pulled to the shoulder amid a chorus of honking horns. “Get out.” The locks snapped open.
“Come on, Amelia.”
“Oh, no. Just you. She stays.”
John helped Amelia to the relative safety of the floorboards while he aimed his gun at Red Beard. “Correction. You’re leaving. Out.”
The driver swore violently and jerked back into traffic, but John anticipated the move. He flipped the pistol in his hand and, gripping the barrel, he slammed the handle first into Red Beard’s ear and then his temple. John ducked under the wide-flying fist and launched himself across the back seat, driving his shoulder into Red Beard’s side. He scrambled for the door handle as the car lurched from side to side, tossing them around.
Finding the release, he shoved the bigger man through the open door.
Red Beard grasped and fought to hang on, twisting to bring a knee up between them. John shifted with the next swerve of the car and Red Beard’s effort was wasted. John planted an elbow in Red Beard’s gut and as the man gasped for air he flipped him easily out of the car.
Tires squealed in their wake, but John didn’t have time to check the guy’s fate. Didn’t care. This was survival.
The driver pulled hard around a slower moving van and the force nearly carried John out the open door after Red Beard.
Behind him, Amelia screamed and he felt her hands gripping his legs. Her weight was enough of a balance and he used that along with the momentum of the car to recover and get the door closed.
He retrieved his revolver from the floor and held it to the driver’s temple. “Pick a lane and hold steady,” he ordered when the man stomped on the accelerator and aimed for the next off-ramp. The car slowed, falling in with traffic in the right lane instead of wreaking more havoc on the roadway.
John nudged the barrel of his gun into the driver’s skin, noting the sweat beading on his forehead. “Who hired you to pick her up?”
“Go ahead and shoot. Good luck living through it.”
“Who?” He cocked the hammer.
“It was a blind bounty.”
Amelia gasped, apparently all-too-aware that meant the price on her head had drawn out the hungriest and nastiest creatures humanity had to offer. Whoever posted the bounty wanted Amelia dead sooner rather than later. Skill hadn’t been a requirement. Only ruthless determination.
Unfortunately for that someone, John had been called to stand in the breach.
“You’re less than useless to me,” John muttered. The information about how the bounty had been listed was what he needed. He had contacts who would know and he had contacts who would just as likely strike next.
The needle on the speedometer crept up again while the John weighed both sides of the issue. “None of that,” he said, tapping the gun barrel against the driver’s temple again.
“Buckle up,” he said to Amelia.
Eyes wide, she slid back and obeyed. As soon as he heard the click, John judged the traffic and distance. “Take the next exit.”
The driver bitched about it, but he safely changed lanes. When they were in position, John pinched a nerve in the man’s neck and knocked him out.
John rolled into the front seat and guided the car safely to the shoulder. Wrestling with the driver’s dead weight, he eventually managed to get the car into park.
Amelia was out of the back seat and had the front passenger door open. “We’re dumping him I assume?”
“Unless you want to try your hand at interrogation.”
“No, thanks.” She reached in and tugged the man by the wrists while John pushed at his legs. When he was on the ground, she knelt at the man’s side.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for ID.”
“Hurry. I can’t believe we don’t have cops on our tail already.”
“Interesting isn’t it,” she said as she pocketed the man’s wallet. “Let’s go.”
John rolled the driver closer to the shallow ditch and slid through to take the wheel. When Amelia was beside him, he pulled back into traffic.
“What’s next?”
He spared her a glance after checking the mirrors. “Check the navigation. Let’s see where they planned to take you.”
“My apartment.”
“What?” It made no sense to him.
“That’s the address listed here.”
“The starting address?”
“No,” she insisted. “The final address. The destination.”
There was a symmetry to it he supposed, but he didn’t like it. “We’re not going back there.” Her neighborhood offered too many places for attackers to hide. It wasn’t worth speculating why this pair planned to end her there. “Check where else –”
“Already on it.”
He waited as patiently as possible under the circumstances while she reviewed how the pair of assassins had spent their time before they grabbed her.
“They certainly had a bit of a tour. They started at the airport, drove through Back Bay near my apartment and all around my neighborhood. They went over to Chinatown. Huh. No surprise, they cruised by The Torch offices.”
“No coincidence there.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
He slid her a glance, recognized the meaning of her puckered brow and pursed lips. “What are you thinking?”
“Boston is a busy town and those are some of the more common hot spots.”
“You’re defending them?” He checked the mirrors, wondering what would come at them next. “That was a classic grab and they would have gotten away if I hadn’t been there.”
“Yeah. I should say thank you.”
His jaw clenched, molars grinding. “I wasn’t fishing for gratitude.”
“I think they killed my contact.”
John didn’t remember seeing any dead bodies aside from the cyclist. “Your contact was the person you spoke with?”
“Who else?”
He admired her tenacity despite the natural and man-made obstacles in her path. He took the time to inhale. Her vanilla-s
cented skin filled the car and assaulted his senses, but kept him from raising his voice and scaring her. “I’d assumed the dead man in the street was your contact.”
“No.” Her voice lost the bravado. “My contact delivered. I think.”
“Interesting.” Though he tried, he couldn’t put the big picture together without all the pieces.
“Which part?”
He felt her assessing stare. She might as well have touched him the way his face warmed under her gaze. Her curiosity was clearly in fine form. “If your contact delivered, that means either your contact or the pair of idiots who tried to nab you killed the guy on the bike.”
“Why do that? He wasn’t connected to me at all.”
“Classic diversion technique. A bit like divide and conquer. Wasn’t that how you identified your source?”
“It was.” She made a thoughtful, humming sound. “I looked for the person acting differently than the other onlookers at the accident scene.”
“Smart.”
“Didn’t you hear what my source told me before he – or she – died?”
“No.” He checked his mirrors. He hadn’t heard any of her conversation with the person near the church. He’d been busy failing in his assessment of the threat he couldn’t pin down until it bashed him on the head. “But I don’t think your source is dead. I was alone when I came around.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s the truth,” he muttered. He had the blazing headache to prove it. The hit would likely have been fatal for a normal man. John decided from now on he would follow his instincts with this woman no matter how much she protested. Even if it meant suffering the pain of skin to skin contact, they would stay together and move as a team. No more giving her enough room to go haring off on a whim. Her life and his future depended on it.
At the moment, his instincts were sure it was too dangerous to stay in this car much longer and far too perilous to continue without solid information about the story she was chasing.
He didn’t consider her silence any kind of agreement.
“My contact wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “Scared or not, he or she wouldn’t kill someone as a distraction.”
