Playing Dirty

by HelenKay Dimon

  She tried to explain Trent’s difficult and sometimes confusing personality to Ford. “Trent checks out. He has this important job that keeps him in the office overnight, for days on end.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Something in a lab. I really don’t know because it’s confidential.”

  Ford nodded. “I can understand that.”

  She had to laugh because the men in her life had only a passing acquaintance with the telephone and the concept of keeping in touch. But as much as Ford’s schedule kept her head spinning, his trips usually lasted only a few days. “You’re slightly better at checking in than Trent is, but then you are supposed to be older and wiser. He’s twenty-­one. You’re . . . what?”

  “Thirty-­four, and I promised to work on my ­checking-­in skills. Or if I didn’t, I am now.” Ford shuffled the papers and magazines on the coffee table next to him. “As a fellow workaholic, I feel some kinship with Trent. Are you sure he’s not in the office now?”

  “His boss talked to my uncle and said everything was fine. Trent’s working on a big project and got pinned down in the lab.”

  Ford’s eyes narrowed but then the concern left his face as quickly as it came. “Well then, you likely have your answer.”

  “It doesn’t feel right, you know?” She had to move. To burn off the extra energy pinging around inside her. She got up and walked back to the kitchen. “You ever just feel like something is off and you can’t quite grasp what?”

  “Once or twice.” Ford got up and joined her. Wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. “Maybe if you talked to your uncle.”

  Her head fell into that reassuring space beneath his chin, and the heat of his skin penetrated her clothes, making her feel protected. “I tried that, too.”

  “Do you want me to give it a shot?”

  “He’s already itching to meet you.” She looked up in time to see Ford’s mouth drop open. “All the color just drained from your face, by the way.”

  “I wasn’t expecting that.” He flashed a look at his shirt with the dancing alligators. “Warn me so I can wear something that doesn’t scare him.”

  “Uncle Anthony is overprotective.” And gruff and pushy and far too driven, but he loved her and she never forgot that. “He took me in after my parents died in a car crash.”

  “Damn, Shay.” Ford brushed a finger over her bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I was fourteen and sulky and determined to hate everyone, and he didn’t give up on me.” She leaned her head on Ford’s shoulder again because cuddling against him felt better than anything else. “I owe him.”

  “Is that why you’re looking for Trent?”

  That was an easy question for her to answer. “No, I’m looking because he’s family. You don’t mess with that bond.”

  10

  LATER THAT night Ford crouched in the back of a large van with West and Reid next to him and Lucas up front in the driver’s seat. From the outside it looked like a nondescript moving truck with a generic company name. Inside, however, it was a minicommand center filled with electronic equipment that monitored every angle of Whicken’s Bar from a block away as they waited for their mark to stumble out.

  Reid cleared his throat. “Let me understand this—­”

  “Here we go.” Lucas exhaled as he balanced an arm on the steering wheel and watched the street through the windshield.

  Ford thought about ignoring Reid and moving to the front seat with Lucas.

  “While the woman was in the next room playing in the closet, or whatever,” Reid went on, “you made a press copy of her key to her cousin’s apartment and planted cameras in the bookshelves just in case Trent or someone looking for Trent came by?”

  “Her name is Shay.” Ford had no idea why he felt the need to point that out. The team referred to Shay as “the woman” or some neutral form on purpose. It kept her status to that of a collateral in the assignment, or if things went wrong, a statistic. Giving her a name made her human, and that was not their job. It wasn’t his either, but fuck that.

  “So, that’s a yes?”

  Even in the dark interior Ford could see West’s eyebrow lift as he asked the question. Since a few words were about all West could manage at a time, Ford dropped the sarcasm before he answered. “Yes. Ellery is back in the Warehouse watching the camera feed now for any signs of activity.”

  “No way the science genius is dumb enough to stop back home on his way to unleash a deadly toxin.” Reid pulled at the collar of his buttoned-­down shirt. “We are never that lucky.”

  He ran a hand over his sleeves then went back to concentrating on the scene flashing on the monitors. They all wore street clothes, figuring it would be easier to blend in and grab a guy off the street without wearing combat gear. That meant protective vests went under the shirts, and Reid, usually a smooth operator in the “right” clothes for every occasion, wore a plaid shirt held together with snaps.

  Ford fought the urge to take a photo for future harassment potential. “I was thinking the cameras might clue us into who else is following Trent or watching his place.”

  “This kid is a pain in the ass. Makes me happy I sucked at science.” West’s words ticked in time with the clomping of his heavy boots against the metal of the van floor. Despite a recent injury, West kept his movements steady, as if to prove he could get hit by a building and keep going.

  Reid snorted. “I’m not sure I see this as an excuse for you failing high school chemistry, but okay.”

  Not that he didn’t like the sitting and bullshitting that went with surveillance, but while they were all captive in the twenty-­four-­foot van, Ford thought it seemed like a decent time to fill in the pieces of his afternoon. “Unlike you guys who just sat around knitting all day—­”

  “That’s offensive,” Reid said in his most serious voice. “There’s nothing wrong with dudes knitting.”

  “—­I waited until Shay said she was working on bills before circling back to Trent’s place to check his mailbox, go through the entire apartment, and stomp on the floorboards in the hope of finding secret compartments. No luck on that, but I got back to Shay before she noticed I was off searching.”

  West’s head shot up. “How many bills does she have?”

  “What?”

  West’s serious expression didn’t waver. “Seems like you’d have a short window to get all of that done.”

  Before Ford could ask what the hell that had to do with anything, Lucas piped in from the front seat. “I thought our guys checked the apartment already and we had ­people watching it round the clock.”

  “Not someone I control. Harlan’s guys, maybe.” And Ford was not taking a chance on losing Trent to the sloppiness of some government drone in a suit.

  Reid rolled his eyes. “You’re a paranoid freak.”

  “And annoyingly anti-­Brit,” Lucas added.

  “To be fair, I don’t hate all Brits.” Ford kept his focus on the monitor showing the bar’s front door. Two minutes later it paid off. “There’s our guy.”

  Reid looked over Ford’s shoulder at the screen. “I was hoping he’d be wasted and stumbling.”

  “The assignment file called him a functioning drunk.” Not that Ford knew exactly what that meant. Impaired was impaired, and he was hoping this guy was. “Starting the countdown. Everyone in position.”

  “We’ve got potential collaterals all over the street,” Reid said as he maintained his position guarding the truck’s hidden side door.

  That meant potential rescuers, or worse, potential casualties. Groups of guys roamed around and shouted. A few slipped from the target bar and headed toward the opposite end of the street to a second dive. That gave Bravo a very abbreviated window. Grab the target before he went from one crowded spot to another.

  West and Ford jumped o
ut of the truck using the side door facing the road and away from the sidewalk, hiding their advance from the target. West broke off and crossed to the other side of the street then Ford lost sight of him. For a big man, he could disappear like a ghost.

  Their target walked alone and made every mistake. ­People came out close to him but he didn’t stay bunched with them. They peeled off and he stayed on his own and kept going. Didn’t stay on guard or act as if he lived in a city. He kept his head down, staring at his phone. Talk about the perfect target.

  Ford touched the disc in his ear, opening the line of communication with the Warehouse from his end. Harlan and Ward and possibly others listened in but stayed silent, leaving control of the operation to him. “Ellery? Who is he calling?”

  “No one.” She had tapped into their target’s phone and performed whatever tricks she needed to track his movements and calls. “He’s offline. I think he might be playing a game.”

  “That should make this easy.” Ford gauged the distance to the target.

  The man came toward them, less than half a block away now and walking with slow measured steps. His path took him in and out of the shadows from the streetlights. He never looked up, and if he heard the footsteps from where West circled around behind him, he didn’t show it.

  When the target was twenty feet away, Ford slipped past the end of the truck, heading toward him. They’d practiced this sort of takedown a thousand times before, in every scenario and using cameras to help them improve. It was all about incapacitating and timing. Having a distracted mark helped.

  “In four . . .” Reid began the countdown, and it played in all of their ears over the com.

  A ­couple lingered down the block, walking faster than the target and gaining distance. Ford prepared to go in a beat early, if needed. He swept around the vehicle to the sidewalk as Reid’s numbers echoed in his head. Matching the target’s pace, Ford pulled up beside him and a half step behind. The guy shot him a quick glance then returned his attention back to the phone.

  “Two . . . and go.”

  On Reid’s signal, Ford slipped the small needle cradled in his palm right into the target’s neck. The guy stopped and his hand flew to the wound. Just as his mouth dropped open, Ford caught his arm. A step later West swooped in and lifted the target from behind as Reid opened the truck door.

  A crack sounded as his phone hit the concrete. By the time they got him up the dropped steps, he’d morphed into dead weight. West bent to grab the cell then jumped into the truck. In less than six seconds they’d drugged and dragged him off the street, with ­people walking nearby.

  Ford slapped the back of Lucas’s seat. “Get us out of here.”

  Now it was the Brit’s turn to show off his driving. Blend in but move. They drove from their spot at the bar near the convention center to a fenced-­in construction yard in southeast DC. An area without witnesses. Not that they needed to hide. The target was out cold, and would be for a few more minutes. That gave them time to get into the prearranged location and get set up.

  Five minutes later Reid passed the smelling salts under the target’s nose. His head flipped from side to side and his body jerked. But he didn’t get far now that he was hog-­tied to a chair in the middle of the truck bed.

  Reid crouched in front of him. “Have a good night of drinking?”

  “What’s going on?” The guy struggled against the ropes and tried to pull his hands apart, but the zip tie stopped him.

  “We wanted to say hello.” Reid actually smiled as he said it. “Oh, and feel free to scream. There’s padding on the walls. Of course, no one is alive outside to hear you anyway.”

  “You have the wrong person.” The target shook his head and looked frantically from one man on the Bravo team to another.

  That was Ford’s cue. Time to clue the target into how much trouble he was facing. “No we don’t, William Roosevelt Franklin. Very patriotic name, by the way.”

  “What?”

  So much for the guy having any sense of history. “You live at 411 G Street Southwest.”

  “What . . . how do you . . .” Billy shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I was just getting a drink.”

  Ford leaned down with his knees bent and his hands balanced on his thighs. He stood just out of reach. Menacing but not close enough to become a casualty. “But before tonight you were very busy telling lies. Weren’t you, Billy?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He kept shaking his head but his eyes cleared a bit.

  “You filed a complaint.” Ford held out a hand and Lucas dropped a file in it. The folder held blank pages, but Billy couldn’t see that.

  “No.”

  Ford hauled off and punched him in the jaw. It sent his head flying to the side. “Try again.”

  A few seconds ticked by as the guy swallowed and shook his head. Usually it took ten seconds from trying to chew through the bindings to curling up on the floor.

  Ford took another step forward. “Billy?”

  “This is about the warehouse on the waterfront?”

  Looked like their man was getting smarter. “Good guess.”

  Billy froze. His gaze traveled around the enclosure one more time before his chest started to rise and fall in rapid succession. “Look, man, I didn’t see anything.”

  Ford stood there paging through the sheets in the file, pretending to read. “That’s not what you said here, Billy.”

  “I saw movement in and out of that beat-­up place.” Billy’s gaze flew to Lucas and stayed there. “That’s it. I reported it or it would have been my job. My boss is a douche. You know the type?”

  Looked as if the target wanted to connect with Lucas. Ford stepped in front of his teammate to break whatever bond Billy hoped to build. “You can’t blame this on someone else. You did this.”

  Billy shifted in his chair but didn’t get far, thanks to the bonds cutting across his chest and upper thighs. He tried to look around Ford, maybe find a friendly face, and finally gave up as his chest hitched on a long exhale. “You’ve got this all wrong.”

  Ford kept pushing. “Who gave you the report, Billy? Who told you to call this in?”

  “What?” Billy sounded confused, but he didn’t look it. Not now. The haze from the drugs and confusion seemed to have cleared. His voice hesitated, wary now instead of panicked.

  “Someone told you to plant that report. I want to know who and why.” Ford walked around his target, treating him like prey and going in for the kill.

  Billy fidgeted and tried to spin to face Ford as he moved. “I don’t . . . you’ve got—­”

  “I’m done waiting for your memory to reboot.” West stepped in front of Billy. One button at a time, West stripped off his shirt to reveal his protective vest underneath.

  Billy’s shoes scuffed the floor. He banged and pushed as if he wanted to move the chair away from West’s broad chest. “What’s happening?”

  “Now you’ve done it.” Reid made a tsk-­tsking sound as he shook his head. “You’ve made him angry.”

  “Dumbass move.” Ford shoved his thighs against the back of the target’s chair to hold him steady, give the sensation of the walls closing in.

  “What’s with your shirt? I don’t get what’s happening here.” Billy squirmed even more. “Come on, guys.”

  West shrugged as he moved in closer. “I didn’t want to get blood on my clothes, but don’t worry. I’ll put it back on after.”

  “After what?”

  West snorted. “Oh, Billy.”

  “Hold it.” Billy’s voice rose with each word. He yelled and the words rushed out of him. “Wait, this is a misunderstanding!”

  “How so?” Ford asked.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  Wrong answer. Ford motioned for Lucas to take his spot, then moved around to stand next to W
est. Billy wore the expression Ford wanted—­one of paralyzing fear. For the second time in a few days Ford stood over a grown man who looked ready to piss himself. That was fine. Billy could do whatever he wanted so long as he got chatty because Ford needed answers and Billy had them.

  “Billy.” Lucas shook his head as he balanced against the table with the back of one thigh on the top. “You need to think this through.”

  “Because we are about to unleash the fiercest fighting force on earth on your sorry ass,” Ford said, adding to the pile-­on. “A pissed-­off Marine.”

  “Fucking-­a right. Hold this?” West removed his holster. Next came the gun by his ankle and another that appeared out of nowhere. Two knives followed.

  Ford half expected him to whip out a rocket launcher for effect.

  “See, Billy.” West rubbed his hands together as he walked around Billy’s chair then stopped in front of him again. “I don’t have to use weapons to get you to talk.”

  Fear pounded off the guy now. Tension filled the truck to suffocating, and Billy kept swallowing as if he needed to clear the taste from his mouth. “You can’t do this to me.”

  “Oh, I can.” West crossed his arms in front of him, making his biceps and the vine tattoo of barbed wire peek out from under the edge of his T-­shirt. “You wouldn’t be my first, and you won’t believe how much I’ll enjoy it.”

  Even Ford thought that sounded creepier than hell. He made a mental note not to piss West off.

  “I don’t need the guns or those fancy knives.” West bent over, moving in close and giving Billy nowhere to turn. “Want to know why?”

  Billy visibly swallowed. “No.”

  “Because I can use my hands to rip every bone in your body out of its socket.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah, Billy. Praying is smart.” West nodded, stepping away. “Won’t help you, though.”

  Darkness fell all around them. The lights from the site snuck in the front window, but the night had plunged the back in shadows. Only two lights set up on the floor showed the chair. The equipment had been moved into the corner to keep all the focus on the man who looked ready to puke up blood.