Nike's Wings

by Valerie Douglas

  She looked at the county he was in, the nearby highways.

  “Any structures visible from the road?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered.

  Niki thought about the way the cartels operated. Death threats and threats against families. Sheriff Manuel Ramirez’s staff would be small.

  “Manuel,” Niki asked, gently, “forgive me for asking, but are you married? Engaged?”

  “Divorced,” he said, slowly.

  “Kids?”

  A chill went through him as Manuel turned back to his desk. He nodded, even knowing that the voice on the other end couldn’t see him.

  “Yes, two,” he said. “They live with their mother.”

  His ex had thought his job exciting at first, until the reality of it hit – the long days, the strange hours.

  In his mind’s eye he could see his daughter Teresa dancing, wearing her fairy wings from Halloween still, his son reaching for him with his chubby fingers. Every cell in his body cried out in negation.

  “Get them out of town,” Nike Tallent said. “Quietly. And watch your back, just in case. They need you. I’ll be in touch.”

  “All right,” Manuel said.

  For a moment, he sat, relief and fear moving through him in equal parts. Then he picked up his cell.

  Niki was already redialing.

  “Ty Connor.”

  “Ty,” she said, “I think I’ve found something. The area is perfect and they employ a lot of illegals according to the local sheriff.”

  “Good work, Niki,” he said. “Give me a name.”

  “Sheriff Manuel Ramirez. Divorced, two kids.”

  In her mind’s eye, she could picture it all too well. Manuel Ramirez was virtually alone out there, certainly on a day-to-day basis. Definitely at night. It was the children, though, that worried her.

  Ty sat back, hearing what she said. And what she didn’t.

  Sheriff Ramirez was vulnerable. If the cartels decided to make a move all they needed were his children as leverage.

  Kidnappings were common stock in trade with the cartels - primarily as a means of raising quick cash -, but it was a time-honored tradition to hold family hostage to someone else’s good behavior. Violence was the cartels’ main trading card.

  “I told him to get the children out,” Niki said.

  Ty took a breath, glanced around the room at the others there. The room had gone silent.

  “Okay, we’ll arrange a discreet meeting.”

  There was more Niki wanted to say, but didn’t. Couldn’t. Shouldn’t.

  Mary Beth and Rebecca were still scanning files, so Niki redirected them to search Sheriff Ramirez’s county. To move on that property – once they found it – they had to have probable cause, not just her and Manuel Ramirez’s suspicions. They needed more information. Follow the money. If they could trace it back to the cartels in some way, or if it looked at all suspicious, that and their suspicions would be something.

  She needed a walk. The room was closing in on her. A little fresh air would do her good, and she could scope out the area around the state offices while she was at it. She needed to do that anyway even if it was unlikely Garcia would try to hit anyone here. It would be stupid to stir up a hornet’s nest if one was standing right next to it, better to do it from a distance so you had time to run if necessary.

  She hadn’t alerted the A.G. that she was in or around the building. If she had, he’d have likely assigned an officer to her. She wanted to explore a bit on her own, take a wander, a walkabout, see what she would see unobstructed, uninfluenced by anyone else’s perception or perspective.

  The one thing she hadn’t done yet was look at the situation purely from the perspective of an assignment, a mission, where the intent was to circumvent the systems put in place to keep her out. Now she looked at it as if she were the assassin, trying to break past the defenses put in place to protect the building itself, what was in it, or the individual.

  In this case, an individual.

  Certainly, the Attorney General would be a prime target.

  Where were the lines of sight, the areas of vulnerability? Follow the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complicated a plan was the more likely it would fail by its own weight. Lies worked, but truth worked better. So – simple and direct. There were better opportunities on the A.G.’s schedule if she remembered correctly, but even so, she checked.

  What she saw was a hotel across the street with windows that faced the office building, but not the A.G.’s office, she thought. She’d have to check for certain, but she didn’t remember seeing it outside his window. Not that she’d gotten that close to the window. Having shot people more than once through them and been hunted a time or two herself, it was habit for her to give them a clear berth.

  She’d scoped out the interior a little when they’d arrived the previous day, looking around. It was automatic, routine, entry and escape routes in case she would be in need of them.

  With their State Police escort and IDs, the team hadn’t had to pass through the metal detectors found in every state office building since 9/11, but instead had been escorted straight up.

  Who else could get that kind of treatment? Only other cops. Possible, but not easy.

  She eyed the lobby area, but it wasn’t a good location for much of anything if you wanted to be sure of a quick escape. The cops on duty at the x-ray machines and metal detectors would make things difficult.

  Walking around outside the building, she found the parking garage, with two separate entrances and exits, single points of ingress or egress, therefore a fifty-fifty shot. If he drove his own car - as many public servants did in these days of economizing - he would drive in and out and be a clear target. Even in this day and age, most people didn’t have bulletproof cars.

  Now that he’d been warned?

  She’d check to be certain he used a secure car and a driver with evasion training.

  There was a sense of being under pressure. Garcia was here, somewhere. They knew that now. And he had a sniper rifle.

  Something like this was just his kind of hit, a challenge, a little glamour, a chance to spread his fame, his reputation.

  She was far more wary this time than she’d been in Prague.

  Memories moved through her… A reminder.

  Of Prague, of the open square a day after the failed hit, alert, but not expecting anything. The mission had been over, the target hadn’t been acquired and now wouldn’t be vulnerable until after the agreement was signed. The Czech President had been rendered safe. Then the shock of seeing Garcia, barely registering him as one of a couple passing. Out of context, his face familiar. Her blood had chilled even as she turned to look. To be sure. A deep voice behind her had called her name like an old friend… Alarm had rushed through her even as his arm snaked around her waist and she looked up into Daniel Garcia’s beautiful face.

  It had already been too late.

  She’d felt the blade slide inside her, an intimate invasion.

  The memory held her locked…

  Garcia had stepped away, one step, two, another, melting back into the crowd as she’d stood there incredulous… It made no sense…

  He hadn’t needed to kill her.

  A scream had rung out. Not from her. She hadn’t had the breath for it. Her knees had crumpled beneath her, as strength ran out of her like water…

  It was as if the scream had been a curtain, a dividing line. A terrible silence had fallen as people turned to look… She’d faced a hundred horrified strangers…

  Part of her had welcomed the darkness that closed over her.

  No one had been there to catch her as she fell.

  She’d been careless. Either he’d followed her from the building back to her hotel, or he’d done as she had, and tracked her down. It didn’t really matter.

  Even so, his actions made no sense. He should have just walked away, but he hadn’t. Was it anger or pride that sent him after her? Either were dange
rous emotions in their profession. She remembered the look on his too-handsome face.

  She saw that face now, across the street, as he stepped out from among the passersby.

  Daniel Garcia.

  This time she wasn’t surprised. Somehow, some part of her had expected as much. They might have been able to keep Enrique quiet, but it was a good guess Jackson Cooper hadn’t been so restrained. The first phone call he would have made must have been to his contact to Garcia if not Garcia himself.

  Even so, it was a stupid thing to do, a risk Garcia shouldn’t have taken. She was reminded of a motorcyclist she’d known and a comment he’d once made. ‘Never wheelie in front of the crowd.’ It was a great phrase, covered a lot of eventualities. Primarily it meant don’t show off, especially by adding risk. First, because it would draw attention. Second because if you made a mistake you could get hurt. And third if you did screw up, everyone would see it.

  How had Garcia found her? Had it been a long shot, since she’d identified herself to Cooper as a federal agent? Or coincidence? Had he been doing as she had, checking the angles, the possibilities?

  She had the presence of mind to use her cell phone camera to take pictures of him as he walked toward her, crossing against the traffic. She held the phone down by her leg and angled it to get the whole shot. She hoped.

  Warily, she watched him come. It was a public street. But she’d made that mistake before.

  He was still startlingly beautiful, his face expressionless, his long-lashed, deep-brown eyes as lovely and liquid as a doe’s but as empty and flat as a shark’s. His skin was a pale tan from lack of sun, his features even. Not tall, he was slender, not lean and muscled as Ty was, but not thin.

  There was no reason to arrest him. He’d done anything wrong that they could prove. Yet. She had no supporting evidence of what he’d done, nothing, but supposition and conjecture. Everything else was circumstantial. No solid proof.

  Still cautious, her movements outwardly calm, she shifted direction toward the entrance to the State Building. Toward the security cameras there.

  He could still shoot her and walk away unscathed before help could possibly arrive. She wasn’t wearing a vest. For that matter, he could have done it already since he had the rifle. Unless he wanted to do it up close and personal again. She was alone. Around her were dozens of strangers… At that moment, no one knew exactly where she was.

  It would still be a stupid move. This time she was prepared. She slipped her cell phone into her pocket, just in case.

  They faced each other on the sidewalk.

  Garcia stopped just out of the range of the security cameras.

  “I heard you were looking for me,” he said, his voice deep, as deep as Ty’s, mellifluous and beautiful, with no trace of an accent. He might have been a television reporter.

  Nike eyed him steadily, her hands in the small of her back where her weapons were secured to the low back of the dress beneath her jacket. Her fingers closed around the butts. She knew she could draw them in an instant. It wasn’t Niki who faced him, either. It was Nike. She considered her next action if he moved on her and the myriad steps she would have to take after it to survive.

  Even so, she wouldn’t draw her weapons on an open street unless she had to. There were too many innocent bystanders.

  That was her weakness.

  She wasn’t afraid, precisely. In honest hand-to-hand combat, she knew she could take him easily, even though he had at least six inches on her and maybe thirty pounds. On the other hand, she regularly sparred with the team, and there were her Parkour workouts. He was lean, wiry, but not that strong. They’d fought before, on that rooftop in Prague - before he’d run. Before he’d parachuted down.

  If the fight was fair.

  Daniel Garcia didn’t fight fair. An assassin, he rarely attacked directly and preferred to attack from behind. She prepared for treachery of some kind. Her back itched, waited for a bullet from somewhere even if Garcia himself stood in front of her.

  Something had changed, though. Something had changed in her.

  Ty.

  She could see his lean handsome face, his blue eyes, in her mind’s eye, his hair spun silver in the sunlight. Suddenly she found she minded very much if she lived or died this day, this moment. For the first time in years, it mattered that she survived what happened here.

  None of that showed on her face or in her eyes. It would have been fatal. You didn’t give a predator your true face. Santiago had taught her that much. She’d learned it well.

  She looked Daniel Garcia square in the eye.

  “Yes, I was,” she said in answer to his statement. “Walk away, Garcia. You won’t succeed here either. I’ll stop you as I stopped you in Prague.”

  Not we. She didn’t know if he knew she wasn’t acting alone… Neither Chaco nor Jackson Cooper had seen her with anyone else, but there had been Enrique. That had been very public, and she was very distinctive. In most circumstances that worked to her advantage. All she had to do to hide was dress more conservatively, change her glasses, or wear contacts.

  Except here. Garcia would have known who she was instantly.

  For a moment, only a moment, they faced each other, eye to eye. She lifted her chin.

  “You want me, Garcia, come on.”

  Her eyes met his evenly. A dare. His eyes were still flat black.

  “You should have died in Prague.” Daniel Garcia smiled. “When I finish here, you’ll be my next project.”

  He turned and walked away.

  Niki let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and watched him leave with the same curious grace she’d seen that day in the square in Prague. Except this time, she hadn’t allowed him close enough to stick a knife in her.

  She narrowed her eyes even as she backed away.

  A surge of triumph went through her. In a way, she had him; she had a fix on him, on the way he thought.

  Garcia had indeed been doing a wheelie before the cops, showing off for her, for them, confident he would succeed despite everything they could do to stop him. That confidence might very well be his undoing.

  All the tension drained out of her.

  She couldn’t go back to their quarters, she knew that. Not directly. It would be criminally stupid to go back to the conference center now. She didn’t doubt Garcia could or would follow her or track her. If he did know she wasn’t here in Texas alone, she would lead him right to them.

  If Garcia knew she wasn’t alone…if he’d been watching all along, scoping out the A.G.?

  Fear screamed through her, as sharp as a knife, but not for herself.

  Ty…

  He didn’t have anyone watching his back. Buck was with Jake, so at least their backs were covered, but Ty was at DPS alone. None of them knew the danger they might be facing.

  She was already moving, getting off the street, a horrible burning between her shoulder blades – the expectation of the impact of a bullet. She stepped inside the entry to the building, where she could still see out, but the glass walls gave her some small measure of protection.

  Buck and Jake were out on the street, too, exposed. If she alerted them, sent them to Ty…he’d be safe…safer…and so would they.

  She hit speed dial…called Buck.

  “Parker,” he said.

  “Buck,” she said and for a moment closed her eyes in relief.

  He was all right. She hadn’t known until that moment how worried she’d been about him, about them. Garcia could have taken them both out if he’d been watching, if he’d already been alerted to their presence.

  More than a little surprised by the breathless tone of her voice on the other end, frowning Buck said, “Niki?”

  “Garcia is here, Buck,” she said.

  A chill went through him at the tension in her voice. He gestured at Jake to alert him there was a problem.

  “What do you mean, here? Define here?”

  “Here in Austin, outside the A.G.’s office,”
Niki said. “I don’t know how much he knows. You and Jake have to get off the street. Get to Ty. He’s got no one at his back.”

  “You haven’t called him yet?”

  Buck was neither blind nor stupid. He’d guessed something was going on between Ty and Niki, if by nothing other than the way Ty looked at her or the way she softened when she was around him.

  “You and Jake are too exposed out there and Ty needs someone at his back. I’m calling him next. Go, Buck. Get off the street, please.”

  Everything he needed to know was in her voice, and yet she’d still called him and Jake first. Because they were the most vulnerable. That told him a lot, too.

  “Watch yourself, Niki,” Buck said.

  “You, too.”

  Buck turned to Jake. “We need to get to DPS. Niki just saw Garcia. She thinks we might be targets.”

  A curious crawling sensation went down the center of his back, even though it would have been impossible for Garcia to have made it to where he and Jake were from where Niki was in the time span available. Even so, it still felt as if he had a large bull’s eye on his back.

  Her chest tight, Niki looked out through the glass of the lobby to the street as she waited for Ty to pick up her call.

  What if they were on break? Or out to lunch? Ty wouldn’t know he might be a target, too.

  What if Garcia knew? What if he’d gone there first?

  Her heart went still and cold, clenched tightly in her chest.

  “Come on, Ty,” she whispered as the phone rang.

  Then his voice. “Niki?”

  Glancing at his phone, Ty went still. This was the third phone call from Niki in one day. He suddenly had the sense that everything was coming together, pieces falling into place, one against another. Alarm set every nerve on edge.

  “Ty.” Niki’s voice sounded breathless, and the sound of the relief in it came through clear and sharp.

  Why was she so concerned? Something was seriously wrong.

  Alarmed, Ty was on his feet, stepping away from the conference table.