It was all that was needed. Ty stepped out from behind cover and advanced with Buck a step behind him for additional cover. Ty spotted the first shooter, took him out when the man saw their movement and turned to fire, knowing Buck and Niki had his back.
That opening shot drew attention.
Suddenly the shooters realized they were under fire from more than one direction. They scrambled for cover, popping up to take their shots.
Niki watched Ty and Buck, Ty’s silver hair unmistakable even in the scant light. Her heart was in her throat with fear for both of them and yet there was something exhilarating about watching them, two strong capable men doing what needed to be done, putting their lives on the line.
She saw one of the shooters risk the shot, the man rising up to look and she took him out.
Aware now of her presence as well, they opened fire on her, too. She turned her face and body away from the shots as wood splintered the corner of the building. As soon as the burst ended, she swung an arm around and aimed for the shooters.
Garcia. He’d disappeared. Where was he? she wondered.
He’d run out of the bar to draw their attention, to pull them out into the killing field of the parking lot. Where had he gone after that?
She knew she was his primary target, but he would want all of them now. Now, though? She was his target. He’d wanted to draw off her protection.
Niki spun even as Garcia stepped out of the darkness…
He wore full protective gear as he moved on her. He wasn’t taking any chances this time.
Garcia smiled as he aimed.
In a second, he’d have a clear shot at not only her, but Ty and Buck as well.
Niki did the unexpected.
Falling back into the field of fire, she counted on her low profile to keep her safe as she snapped off shot after shot at Garcia. She watched them hammer into a nice tight pattern right in the center of his chest. They drove Garcia back a step or two, if only from surprise. She fired both guns as steadily and as fast as she could as she drove herself backward with her heels in the thin, dusty soil. It didn’t matter whether she survived as long as she kept him away from Ty and Buck for enough time to warn them.
In the parking lot beyond, hearing the sudden burst of fire, the assailants responded to another apparent attack, firing into the darkness above her head.
Bullets hammered into Garcia’s armor.
“Ty,” Niki called.
“Buck!” Ty shouted.
From the corner of his eye he’d seen movement. Then Niki fell backward out into the open and called his name. He swiveled to cover her, put Buck at his back.
He’d been wondering where the hell Garcia was. The man had gone after Buck, arranged for this ambush, hoping to draw them out into the parking lot, but Ty knew Garcia hadn’t finished things by a long shot.
Because of Niki.
Hearing the sharp cracks of her small caliber weapons above those of the rest, now Ty knew, instantly, where Garcia was.
Nodding, hearing it, too, Buck said, shortly, “Got it covered.”
“Jake,” Ty shouted. “Back door. Watch yourself.”
From inside a voice called, “On my way.”
He didn’t need to instruct Mitch. Hearing Ty’s shout, Mitch and Alpha would know what needed to be done, as would the cops still inside the bar.
Kicking hard in the dirt and dust, Niki rolled away as dirt and dust dug into her back. Still shooting, looking at Daniel Garcia as he retreated from the firestorm she’d unleashed on him, she heard Ty’s deep voice as he called for backup.
The door to the kitchens popped open. Jake.
Garcia looked at her, his expression behind the mask furious…then disappeared into the darkness. Running again.
With a cry of frustration, she was on her feet, knowing it was madness to follow him where he had the advantage.
A familiar arm slipped around her waist, curled around her to draw her protectively into his embrace. She looked up into Ty’s eyes.
Silence fell. For a minute, all they could do was look around in shock at the devastation around them, the bar and cars destroyed.
It was over.
Once again, Garcia had escaped.
The parking lot of the bar was a lurid kaleidoscope of police and ambulance lights circling that rivaled the sign of the bar. Red, white and blue lights flashed across shattered windows and bullet-pocked walls. All the fears about the violence in Mexico spilling across the border were both confirmed and denied in one night and one single action.
It took twenty stitches to close up the cut Garcia had laid across Buck’s lower back. As painful as it was, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and they all knew it. If Niki hadn’t acted as fast as she had, if Buck hadn’t stood, turned when he had…
None of theirs had died, but several had been wounded – most lightly, from glass or ricochets. One of their assailants was dead, two were in critical condition and another wounded badly enough to need hospitalization. The rest tried to flee, with varying degrees of success. All those in custody were being questioned.
Garcia, too, was gone. Several of the officers in attendance identified him from Niki’s pictures.
The Border Patrol had made several arrests as well, including one they suspected to be a fairly high-ranking member of one of the Gulf cartels.
It was late by the time they returned to their quarters and far too early when they caught their scheduled flight back to Washington, leaving the rest of the mop up in the very capable hands of the Texas authorities.
An all-points bulletin had been issued on Daniel Garcia, but no one held much hope he’d be caught. It was likely he was already in Mexico.
Chapter Twenty Eight
A note waited on Ty’s desk when they returned to Washington, a request that he, Buck, and Niki join the Secretary and Byron Hood in the Office of the Director of Homeland Security as soon as they returned. The Secretary would clear her schedule for them. The note didn’t say what the meeting was about, although it was a fairly good guess it was about the situation in Texas.
Byron stood at the window looking out as they arrived, he and Secretary Bonham clearly in the middle of a conversation when they were escorted into the room.
“Are you sure you want to do it this way, Byron?” Secretary Bonham was saying as Niki entered, with Ty and Buck just behind her.
It was still odd for Niki to find Ty touching her, his hand once more at the small of her back.
They’d showered and changed in Texas, but none of them had gotten much sleep, only a few hours on the plane. Of the three, though, Buck was clearly in the worst shape. As Buck had put it on the flight back, he looked as if he’d been rode hard and put away wet. Niki and Ty had exchanged a look, both of them keeping their faces straight with an effort.
The Secretary and Byron weren’t alone. Anita Brubaker stood to one side. That was a slightly unpleasant surprise. Something in her expression was a little disturbing, too; she had an air of satisfaction about her.
Byron nodded slowly in answer to the Secretary’s question. There were parts of the job he liked – Ty deserved the honors due him – and there were some he didn’t.
He stepped away from the window to shake their hands.
“You did a great job in Texas. Congratulations,” he said.
“From me as well,” Elizabeth Bonham said. “You knocked the cartels back a bit. Considering what the government of Mexico is doing on their end, you gave them a great boost. Well done.”
Taking a breath, Byron said, “Your success down there helped me make a few decisions, Ty, ones I’d been considering for some time.” He returned to the window. “My part in this was always meant to be temporary, to lend my ‘gravitas’ to it as they like to say, to help get the unit off the ground and give it a chance to establish itself before the political machinery tried to tear it to pieces.”
He glanced at Elizabeth. At first, as they hadn’t hashed it out between them, he hadn�
�t been sure how it would all work. They’d only known each other by reputation, hers as fierce as his, if in different sectors. Over time he’d come to respect her. The feeling appeared to be mutual.
Somehow it had all come together, but that was due as much to Ty as to anything either of them had done. He’d given the concept shape and form, a solid organization.
Turning back to Ty and the others, he said, “It was always the intention to turn the NIO over to you, Ty, when the time came, once you proved yourself capable of handling it, capable enough that no one would have any quarrel with that appointment. I believe that time is now.”
Elizabeth said, “We were very pleased with how you handled the situation in New York, as well as the other emergencies, but Texas went a long way toward convincing me, the other directors, all of us, Ty, of your capability, of the delicate management and diplomatic skills that were and are necessary to handle an operation like this.”
“Our recommendation would also be to have Buck take over as head of ops in your place,” Byron added. “You work well together, and he has the experience to handle it.”
“The question, then,” Elizabeth Bonham said, folding her hands on top of a thick file on her desk, “is what to do with you, Miss Tallent.”
Niki went still and suddenly wary.
Something in Elizabeth Bonham’s eyes, in Byron’s, warned her about what was to come.
Niki’s gaze went to the file on Elizabeth Bonham’s desk.
A chill washed through her.
Niki glanced at Anita, at the barely concealed smirk on the woman’s face.
Byron still shuddered at what he’d read in that file, what they’d intended her to do, what had been done to her to prepare her for it. It had been horrific. If they’d been the enemy, what they’d done would have been considered atrocious, human rights abuses. That it had been done at the hands of their own government? And while the woman now known as Nike Tallent had consented, she couldn’t have known what it was she’d agreed to. She’d been little more than a child. A teenager.
Nor had she been alone.
With Elizabeth’s consent, they’d already begun a very thorough investigation of all of those involved in the program. He knew from the file, from the hints in it that it had reached to the very highest levels of the previous administration. Even so, that wouldn’t stop him.
Ty straightened uneasily, frowning, unsure what was going on – but Niki’s stillness spoke volumes. He didn’t even glance at Buck, but he felt him go tense as well.
Looking at the file on the desk, recognizing the tags on it, Niki took a slow steadying breath and said flatly, “You have my file.” She thought of everything that was in it and closed her eyes. A new kind of fear went through her and her breath went short. “All of it.”
Ty.
What would he think? What would he do when he knew? It would hurt. She would have done anything to spare him this.
She’d been planning to tell him, to find the right time…the right moment.
In the background, Anita barely kept an expression of smug satisfaction off her face, but she didn’t quite manage it. Anger and despair flashed through Niki at the sight of it. How had the woman gotten hold of her file? A part of her felt violated at the very idea that Anita had read what was contained within it.
Niki dismissed her. There were more important issues. She looked at the Secretary.
Elizabeth Bonham confirmed her fears. “All of it. The psychological evaluations… Everything.”
The psych evals. Niki closed her eyes, feeling sick.
One had called her a sociopath; another had said she had a borderline personality disorder. She was considered permanently and irrevocably damaged by all she’d suffered. As had been intended. As Victor had made her. She felt like Frankenstein’s monster.
She couldn’t disagree with some of it. It was nothing more than the truth. She couldn’t deny the fierce exhilaration she sometimes felt when she fought.
“You can understand our concerns.”
“I’m not that person anymore,” Niki said quietly.
All she’d wanted was some semblance of normality. She’d found it in the NIO.
Neither Byron nor Elizabeth Bonham responded.
It didn’t matter.
Something inside her twisted. A part of her raged against fate and she fought a brief burst of self-pity she knew she didn’t have time to feel. Her heart twisted and ached even so.
Whatever chance she’d had to find the right time to tell Ty was now gone.
Looking at Secretary Bonham, at Byron, Niki said, “He doesn’t know. Neither of them does, I haven’t told them.”
She needed to make certain they knew that.
Byron looked at Elizabeth. That statement only confirmed their guesses, something he and the Secretary had been discussing just before Ty, Buck and Nike Tallent had arrived. It was also obvious by the look on the faces of both Ty and Buck that neither had known or did know who Nike Tallent really was.
Or what she was. What they’d made her.
A sick helplessness at their expressions moved through Niki, Nike. Grief, sorrow…a burst of rage at having been betrayed, exposed…
Niki gave Anita a look, and the warning in it was clear.
Finding herself facing that implacable gaze, having read the file that currently sat on Elizabeth Bonham’s desk, Anita suddenly found her stomach dropping. Until then it hadn’t occurred to her that making an enemy of Nike Tallent hadn’t been the wisest course to follow.
“If I could,” Nike said quietly. “I’d like to tell them, him, myself.” She took a breath. It was an effort to say the next, but she did it, for Ty and for Buck. “Please.”
Byron studied her. “Why haven’t you told them before now?”
She might be enigmatic, but working with her even as little as he’d had he’d gotten a feel for her and he liked her. He wanted to understand this, had begged Elizabeth to do the same, to give Niki a chance, giving Anita a strict warning to stay silent until they had answers. Elizabeth, though, had been adamant. The risk was too great. Nike Tallent was a loose cannon, a bomb waiting to go off.
As much as he wished it otherwise, he couldn’t disagree.
It was clear who they were talking about, but Ty felt fought anger, a growing sense of puzzlement that was touched with more than a little frustration and a mounting sense of betrayal.
He’d made love to her and yet she’d kept secrets from him.
Niki found she couldn’t look at either Ty or Buck. She searched for an answer that would make sense, one that would satisfy them, knowing it was as much for Ty and Buck as it was for Byron and Elizabeth Bonham. What had made sense then, though, didn’t now.
Emotions warred within her. At that moment, she wasn’t certain whether Victor and Ocho Santiago hadn’t been right. Emotions could destroy you. She hadn’t truly understood the truth of it until that moment. It felt as if her heart had been turned inside out.
“For a thousand reasons that made sense to me at the time,” she said. “Because I didn’t want anything to change. I couldn’t go back to who I’d once been. Why bring it all up again when it would only cause everyone pain?”
Her heart bleeding, all too aware of Ty standing so quietly beside her, she looked at Byron and tried to convince all of them.
“How many nights have you watched Ty pace, waiting for word from one team or another, waiting to learn if they were all right? Worrying, wondering if he’d thought of everything, afraid he’d forgotten or missed something, something that could go wrong. As it had that day. Think about what he would go through if he’d known what was in that file?”
She looked at Elizabeth, now, too.
“You’re right. He is the best man for the job, because,” she said, choosing every word carefully, “he’d still send me as long as I was the best one to do the job. No matter what the cost to him. Because that’s the job and his duty, because it has to be done. Even so, it would tear him apar
t inside, worrying, knowing what had been done and wondering what it would do to me now, each time he sent me out. Because of what’s in that file, you now know part of the reason why he does it. I don’t believe in torture. I couldn’t do that to him.”
Taking a breath, she said, “I won’t deny there’s selfish side to it. I didn’t want anyone to know what had been done to me, what I consented to let them do… What I’ve become.”
Byron winced even as Elizabeth flinched.
It hadn’t occurred to him until precisely that moment that she’d understood exactly what she’d agreed to let them do to her.
Or that she blamed herself for it.
Nike was intensely aware of Ty standing beside her. He was so still. As was Buck. The trickle of fear had become a torrent inside her.
Her breath came short. She didn’t dare look at Ty, at either of them. She’d lied, if only by omission. This was on her.
Looking from Byron to Elizabeth Bonham instead, Nike said, “If it’s possible, I’d like to tell them, tell him myself, privately.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said, coming around her desk to offer her hand to Ty. “My apologies, Ty, for this unpleasantness, but I do want to congratulate you on your new position and I look forward to working with you in the future as I have with Byron. Ms. Tallent, you understand our problem?”
Nike nodded.
“You can use this office, if you’d like.”
Nike looked around significantly at the unseen security cameras and shook her head.
“This isn’t the place for it.”
As much as he hated to say it, Byron said, “The file will be here, waiting, Ty, if you want to look at it later.”
Ty nodded.
Neither Ty nor Buck said anything as the three of them walked to the elevator. Both men were grim and quiet.
With a sigh, Nike turned to Buck as they rode the elevator down. “Buck, forgive me, but would it be all right if I talked to Ty first? Alone? I promise I’ll explain later, or Ty can if he chooses. Please?”
Buck looked at her. He was angry, confused. He had a sense of having been betrayed, but he didn’t know why. It was the one simple word at the end and the look in her eyes behind the concealing glasses that made him agree. That and the fear for him in her eyes when she’d cried out to Garcia. The memory of her putting herself between him and Garcia’s knife.
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