Extreme Measures

by Elisabeth Naughton

  That could describe anyone, she knew, as four different men, all matching that tall, dark description, walked by the outdoor café at various intervals. Each time one would pass, anticipation curled in her stomach and then dropped like a stone when he moved away.

  Come on already. I don’t have all damn day.

  Eve’s frustration grew to exponential levels. A quick glance at her watch told her Smith—which wasn’t his real name by a long shot—was now twenty minutes late. Scenarios and options for what the holdup could be raced through her mind.

  She brushed a strand of shoulder-length blonde hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She missed her long, dark locks already. But the change, like everything else she’d done to prepare for this meeting, was important. In a few weeks—hopefully, if all went as planned—she’d hit her stylist in Monterey and dye it back.

  If all goes as planned . . .

  She nearly snorted. She’d learned long ago that things in this business never went as planned. But that didn’t stop her. Or make her think of leaving. She’d considered leaving once, a long time ago, but that seemed like a different world now. And it was probably a good thing her plans hadn’t panned out then. She could barely remember what life was like in the real world.

  Her rambling mind froze when she caught sight of a man across the street heading her direction. She narrowed her eyes to see him better. He wore jeans, a gray T-shirt, fancy boots, and a baseball cap to cover his head so she couldn’t decipher his hair color. But he was definitely tall. And dark, judging by the stubble on his jaw. And his gaze was locked solidly on her.

  Her adrenaline shot up as she watched him cross the street a block down. As he maneuvered around tourists and locals. But she calmed herself, just as she’d been trained, when she realized his gaze hadn’t once wavered from her face.

  The fingers of her left hand tightened around the napkin in her lap. The Glock pressing against her lower spine reminded her just what was at stake.

  The man slowed as he approached. She caught his eye color. Blue, definitely blue.

  He stopped in front of her. Smiled. Two deep dents creased his youthful face.

  He was her guy.

  “Juliet?”

  Eve smiled. Using an alias came as easy as breathing. And this one . . . well, she’d been using it for years. “You’re late.”

  He slid into the seat opposite her. “Couldn’t be helped. You brought it?”

  American. Definitely. But Eve couldn’t tell which part of the country he hailed from. Not that it mattered. Though there was something . . . familiar about him.

  She scanned his face but was sure she’d never met him before. However, that tickle in the back of her throat told her she knew him from somewhere, and she needed to be careful.

  “First I’ll need proof you have my”—she paused for a moment, just to show him he didn’t hold all the cards—“package.”

  Smith shot her a devastatingly handsome grin, leaned back in his chair, and stretched his long legs in front of him. Anyone walking by would think they were old friends. But she knew different. “And what if I said no?”

  For some reason, at that second, a long-ago conversation with Sawyer ran through her mind.

  “Bluffing is 90 percent of the game,” she’d said. “You know that. If they believe you, that’s all that matters.”

  “It’s different for a woman, though,” he’d countered. “Are you ever scared?”

  “Always. But that’s part of the risk we take.”

  It’d been one of those quiet nights in Lebanon when they’d both been on duty, monitoring the run-down drugstore across the dusty road through their apartment’s crappy windows while Carter had been snoring in the next room. Why the conversation popped into her head now, she didn’t know. But she definitely didn’t need it. Or thoughts of the man who now hated her with every fiber of his being.

  She pushed aside the memory and reached for the bag at her feet. Her chair scraped the sidewalk as she stood. “Then I guess our meeting’s over.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Juliet?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder and followed Smith’s gaze as it shifted across the street to a white van now parked against the curb. A burly man dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt climbed out to stand in the road. He folded his arms over his massive chest and stared right at her.

  “That move is not advised.” Smith nodded toward her chair. “Sit.”

  Eve scanned the street for other threats, for something she might have missed earlier. Didn’t see anything other than the van that had appeared during their conversation. But the hair on her nape was suddenly standing straight, telling her the power of this meeting had shifted. And not in her favor.

  Slowly, she eased back down into her chair. Smith smiled and signaled the waiter. A server darted over and listened as he ordered.

  He was gloating. This most definitely wasn’t going as planned. Eve’s adrenaline ratcheted up.

  When the waiter left, Smith pulled a cell phone from his pocket, pressed a button, and slid it across the table toward her. “Take a look.”

  Eve expected to see a photo of the file she’d been tracking, but what flashed on the screen was an image of a woman, lying on her side, hands bound behind her, ankles tied together, feet bare, and a black sack covering her face. Eve lifted the phone, watched as the woman struggled against the bonds, trying to free herself. When she rolled toward the camera, a purple butterfly on her right ankle came into view. The same tattoo her sister Olivia had gotten during her freshman year of college.

  No.

  Eve’s gaze shot to the man across from her, and any pretense of bluffing disappeared. “Where?”

  He nodded toward the van across the street. The burly driver was now gone.

  Her heartbeat shot up into the triple digits. “How do I know for sure she’s in there?”

  “Look closer.”

  In the background, Eve could just make out the floor of the van and the rear cargo doors with a smattering of daylight illuminating the black sack over her sister’s face.

  Fear pushed in from every side. Risking her own life was one thing, but her sister . . . Olivia was a schoolteacher. She didn’t know the first thing about espionage or terrorist factions or traitors.

  “What do you want?”

  His smile widened. “I think we both know what I want.”

  She set the phone down, pulled the envelope from her bag, and slid it across the table. Smith looked inside, smiled at the currency he saw, and then tucked the envelope into the back pocket of his jeans. “Sometimes even the best laid plans go awry. Very nice doing business with you, Ms. Wolfe. I wish you and your sister all the best.”

  Smith rose and tipped his hat. He moved around her and headed away from the outdoor café, his whistling slowly disappearing on the breeze. The waiter appeared and set a mimosa on her table. “Enjoy, ma’am.”

  The noise of the café rose up around Eve. People chatting, silverware and glasses clinking, all melded with the traffic on the street to signal normal. Peaceful. A regular day in a beautiful city. Not a thing out of the ordinary.

  Except this wasn’t ordinary.

  Olivia.

  She hadn’t talked to Olivia in months. Not since their father’s funeral. And then they’d argued over Eve’s gypsy ways and the fact that Eve was never around for the important things, like their father’s last days. Eve already felt guilty enough over that, and Olivia’s rant had only deepened that guilt, which resulted in Eve leaving early and Olivia not returning any of Eve’s calls when Eve had contacted her days later and tried to apologize. But as frustrated as Eve was with her little sister, a tiny place inside knew Olivia deserved an explanation—about all the missed holidays, the months of no contact, and, most important, what she really did for a living. To repair the rift between them, to salvage the last blood relationship she had left, Eve had been ready to confess all to Olivia. Only now it was too l
ate. Olivia’s life was in danger all because of her, and her sister might never even know why.

  Ignoring the drink in front of her, Eve eyed the van, then the bustling four-lane traffic. She’d get herself killed if she rushed right out there. Plus, if anyone was watching, she didn’t want to draw extra attention. Pushing back from her chair, the legs scraping cement with a sound that echoed in her ears, she tossed the cell in her purse and then swung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and walked slowly but intently through the outdoor tables toward the streetlight half a block down.

  She stopped at the corner with a handful of people waiting to cross and worked to keep her expression neutral. Tried to keep her nerves from giving her away. A child—no more than four, holding his mother’s hand—looked up at her with big hazel eyes.

  Eyes, Eve thought briefly, that seemed to look through her, all the way to her soul. Eyes that reminded her of Sawyer.

  She glanced quickly away.

  Come on, come on, come on . . .

  Just when Eve thought the light was never going to change, it signaled Walk, and she stepped off the curb onto the street with the child and his mother and the rest of the pedestrians.

  The van exploded in a fireball that shot flames thirty feet into the air.

  Eve’s body went sailing. Screams echoed around her. She hit something hard, registered a sharp stab in her skull, knew consciousness was leaving her. But before she blacked out, she saw the shops lining the street, the van, even the umbrellas outside the café she’d just been sitting in, all engulfed in flames. Flames that looked like they signaled the end of the world.

  And in the middle of it all, the body of the child, lying still as stone in the rubble around her.

  Zane Archer could pick Juliet—correction, Evelyn Wolfe—out of a crowd with barely a look. Didn’t matter that she’d cut and dyed her hair. He knew her walk, recognized those sexy legs in the slim black skirt that hit just below her knees, and, thanks to three months he now wished had never happened, was more than familiar with every inch of that toned body.

  He’d watched her interactions from the shadows of an outdoor table at Starbucks a block down. After six months of searching, he’d finally found her. Meeting with a contact, in the United States, in broad daylight.

  Man, the woman had balls of steel.

  The throb in his thigh kicked up, a result, the doctors said, of the scar tissue and nerve damage he’d sustained from that bullet he’d taken in Guatemala, but he wasn’t popping another pain pill. Not yet. He watched as Juliet handed the man an envelope, as the man rose and left, as Juliet looked around cautiously and then swung her bag over her shoulder and hoofed it for the crosswalk in those ice-pick heels that drew his gaze toward her legs. Long, slender, muscular legs he remembered wrapping around his hips, drawing him in, shutting out all other thoughts.

  Fake, he reminded himself. Whatever he thought they’d shared was nothing more than a lie. Just as she was nothing more than a traitor. The lone woman responsible for Humbolt’s death and all the shit he’d been through during the last year.

  The red rage of revenge swirled behind his eyes. He pushed to his feet, tossed his paper cup in a trashcan at the edge of the building, and then stuffed his hands into his pockets and headed toward her.

  He’d made it half a block before the van exploded into a thousand pieces and a fireball engulfed the street.

  The explosion knocked him back to the ground. His head hit the concrete with a crack. Around him, screams and panic rose up to join the smoke and debris raining down. He coughed, rolled to his side, and pushed up to his feet, gritting his teeth at the pain reigniting in his thigh. He’d lost his sunglasses in the chaos, but he barely noticed. All he could focus on was Eve. He wasn’t losing her. Not this time. Not when he was so close.

  Squinting to see through the smoke, he searched the sea of running bodies. And caught sight of her on the ground, fifty yards away.

  Panic closed in. Panic that she was already dead. That he wouldn’t get the revenge that had been driving him. That she’d never have to pay for what she’d done.

  He pushed his way through the crowd. Screams and sirens echoed in his ears, and burning smoke filled his lungs. The heat of the flames singed the hair on his arms as he drew close to the point of impact. Someone knocked into his shoulder, sending him spinning. He stepped on a chunk of cement with his bad leg and nearly went down. Blinding pain shot to his skull, but he pressed on, pulling his T-shirt up over his mouth to stop the smoke from pouring into his lungs.

  He felt like he’d been dropped into a war zone. When he finally reached Eve, she lay motionless on the ground, covered in a layer of dust and bleeding from multiple scrapes and cuts across her skin.

  He knelt at her side, leaned in close, and listened for her breathing. Hoping, praying.

  There!

  She wasn’t dead. He checked her body and found—luckily—that the wounds weren’t life threatening. She’d have a hell of a headache when she awoke, and a few of her cuts needed stitching, but she wasn’t dead, just unconscious. Relief rippled through him. Relief and a pressing reminder that they needed to get the hell out of there before the situation changed. Glancing around, he spotted her bag five feet away, covered in soot. He reached for it, then hefted her into his arms.

  She was dead weight as he carried her past rescue vehicles now flooding the street, past police and fire crews racing to the devastation. The burn in his leg flamed all over. A paramedic called out to him, motioning for him to bring her to him. Zane ignored the guy and darted behind a burning car lying on its side.

  He didn’t doubt the explosion had been for her. As he shifted direction and headed down a side street for the waterfront where he’d parked earlier, he ground his teeth together. Someone was obviously sending her a message. But then, what the hell did she expect after dealing with terrorists and selling out her country? He’d caught her red-handed, and even that hadn’t stopped her. The woman should have known it was only a matter of time before her actions caught up with her and someone put a hit out on her.

  Someone besides him.

  Every inch of Eve’s body hurt. She tried to roll to her side but couldn’t. A moan echoed somewhere close. A moan, she realized, that had come from her.

  “You’re finally awake.”

  Eve stilled at the sound of the voice somewhere close. She tried to pry her eyelids open, but they weren’t working. And doing even just that made her whimper in pain.

  Something soft brushed her forehead. A haze had descended on her brain. She couldn’t place the voice, but she recognized it. And she still couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move?

  “Don’t try to get up, beautiful. Wouldn’t want you hurting yourself so early now, would we?”

  Little by little, her brain came back on line. The haze slowly dissipated, clearing from her mind in wisps and curls. She gathered her energy and was finally able to break her eyelids apart. Pain radiated through her skull, but she focused on the fuzzy orange light ahead. Tried to see through it.

  “Always were an overachiever,” the male voice said. “Guess that hasn’t changed.”

  Who was he? Why couldn’t she answer him? And why weren’t her arms and legs working? She struggled. Managed to move her foot, just a fraction of an inch, but at least it was something. Footsteps echoed, fading in the distance. Eve stilled, squinted to see more clearly. A dark shape seemed to move somewhere ahead. Then the shape grew larger, and the sound of footsteps increased in intensity.

  “Here,” he said. “Drink this.”

  A straw pressed against her mouth. Her throat suddenly dry, Eve drew the straw between her lips and sucked.

  Juice. Apple.

  She moaned at the taste. Sucked again. God, that was good.

  The straw was pulled from between her lips before she was ready to let it go. A click echoed as the cup was set down. Eve rolled her head from side to side. Her neck was moving now. And the orange blur was sharpening. The dark
shadow in front of her becoming clearer.

  “That’s it,” the man said, his voice closer, the heat of his breath sliding over her cheeks. Mint and musk. Those were the scents that bombarded her. Familiar scents. She just didn’t know from where. “You’ve been out for quite a while. Thought maybe I’d been wrong and that I should have taken you to a hospital. Glad to see now that I wasn’t. A hospital would just cause all kinds of problems we don’t need.”

  Eve stilled at the bite she heard in his last words. A bite that indicated he was not friendly.

  Dread curled in her stomach. She didn’t know where she was, but she needed to get away. Basic instinct told her staying would lead to something bad.

  She tried to reach for her gun, only her arms weren’t working. Her legs, yes. Her head, yes. But not her arms. Why weren’t her arms working?

  “It amazes me you were this careless, beautiful.” Fingers brushed over her temple, pushing hair back from her face. “After all, you trained with the best, didn’t you?”

  Everything inside Eve went cold. Those words were familiar. She tried to focus the blur into a single image. Could only see dark hair, dark eyes, and a fuzzy face. Tried to remember where she’d heard those words before.

  “Of course,” he went on, “you don’t work with the best anymore, do you, Juliet? Should I even call you Juliet anymore? No, why don’t I call you by your real name? What do you think, Evie? Think that’ll work? Yeah, I think it will. I think for what I’ve got planned for you, tossing out all the old shit is the best way to go.”

  Eve’s pulse shot into the stratosphere. Her hazy vision cleared just as the sound of his voice registered. She sucked in a breath when Sawyer’s—no, Zane Archer’s—face came into view. A tanned, scraped, and extremely pissed Zane Archer.