Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 06]

by Into the Dark

Erich intended to remedy the situation immediately. Amy Walker had to be silenced. Just like the McMillan woman.

  “She won’t stop, you know. She won’t stop until she gets the answers she wants.”

  “I’m dealing with her,” Erich assured the man who knew better than to question him further.

  Henry hesitated then left the room. He’d had plenty he’d wanted to say, but nothing Erich had wanted to hear. Erich had already forgotten about him as he pulled up the list of candidates on his screen and scrolled through them. When he found what he was looking for, he dialed the extension for the holding compound.

  “We need to move some product,” he said, deciding he needed to take every precaution. “All twenty. I want them relocated at once. Keep them on standby for assignment details. I’ll notify you when and where they need to be deployed.”

  After typing specific instructions into an e-mail, he shot the document to processing.

  Then he sat back, steepled his fingers under his chin and contemplated when the surprisingly resourceful Ms. Walker would make it to Buenos Aires.

  He knew everything there was to know about Amy Walker, including the fact that she’d been working as a health aid at Winter Haven under the name of Erin James. No doubt to be close to her mother without being detected. A fine idea that hadn’t worked. It had taken several months, but his people had found her. He also knew everything there was to know about the man who had rescued her from the Abu Sayyaf cell six months ago.

  That’s why Erich had been certain she would run straight to Dallas Garrett. Straight to her hero. Women were so predictable. Although, he conceded, he hadn’t seen the extermination of 451 coming. He had thought any spark the woman had in her would have been extinguished on Jolo.

  It didn’t matter. All he had to do was wait for her to surface again. And she would. His man on the ground had tracked her to Florida, then followed her and her “watchdog” to the airport. It had been too risky to take them out then. No time to plan for an extermination to appear accidental. So at this very moment they were en route to Buenos Aires.

  Which was actually very compliant of them. In the long run, it would make things much easier. She’d come looking for her grandfather, of course. And for the McMillan woman. She had no idea that Edward Walker and Jenna McMillan were as inconsequential as grains of sand. Minor elements in an equation that dwarfed the significance of a few human lives. It had always been about the greater cause.

  No, little Miss Walker would never be allowed to get close to her grandfather, let alone the MC6 compound. Decades of preparation and hundreds of lives had already been sacrificed for the cause. A few more would make no difference.

  Erich hadn’t risen to his level of power in MC6 by being careless. He wasn’t about to let anyone circumvent the prize that years of work was about to bring to fruition.

  Very soon, Amy Walker would cease to be a problem. She and Mr. Garrett would meet a terrible fate. Uninformed turistas sometimes found themselves in particularly bad parts of the city—where they often found themselves dead. Terrible tragedy.

  Problem solved.

  He hadn’t yet decided what to do about the McMillan woman. For the time being, he’d hang on to her. Use her for bait for Amy Walker if necessary. In the meantime, it might prove interesting to indoctrinate the reporter into the program. Test their latest therapy on such a headstrong subject and analyze the results.

  He’d see. For the time being Jenna McMillan was out of circulation and any threat from that end was destabilized. First he’d deal with Walker’s granddaughter. Then he’d decide what to do about the fiery redheaded reporter.

  And then, once again, it would be back to business as usual.

  Buenos Aires

  The alley was midnight dark and cave quiet. The heat as oppressive as a ruthless dictator. Out on the street, a mere ten or so yards away, the bar district teamed with the rants and ramblings of boisterous drunks. The stench of booze, humanity and the South American summer funneled into the darkness on air as thick as paste and every bit as cloying.

  “He said he’d be here,” Amy whispered. “How long has it been?”

  From a distance, the grating scream of a faraway police siren rent through a night dripping with heat, tension and second guesses.

  Dallas checked his watch then cut a watchful gaze around the alley. “Half an hour.”

  It was a blip in time since they’d flown out of West Palm close to twenty hours ago and landed in Buenos Aires. He wasn’t yet sure how that had happened. Or how he’d ended up armed and on the hunt in a back alley behind a seedy bar where a scar-faced man with a Fu Manchu mustache and hair as greasy as the oil in the crankcase of Nolan’s vintage Mustang had told them to wait.

  Hell. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. It was like a fuse had blown or something when Amy had taken him to bed. Instead of Afghanistan flashbacks, images of Amy, naked and moving above him, flashed through his mind’s eye like a strobe. Like they were burned into his DNA now—the same way she was.

  He’d deal with that later. Right now, her safety was top priority. He had no clue if there was a threat tonight, but he wasn’t taking any chances either way. He’d never met a back alley that didn’t bring some kind of trouble.

  He glanced at her. Read her tension only in the pinched focus of her eyes. She was in control. Rock solid. Impressive as hell.

  “The trouble with these back-alley types,” he said in a low voice as a rat skittered across the damp, cracked concrete alley that smelled of vomit, piss and rotted garbage, “is that reliability’s not usually one of their strong suits.”

  Neither was integrity, trust or honor—but Dallas wasn’t going to point that out to her now. Now, he was too busy concentrating on getting them out of here without getting their throats slit. The longer they waited, the edgier he got, and the more he was leaning toward believing her story.

  “Jenna gave me the name of her contact,” Amy had told Dallas right after they’d settled aboard for their flight to Buenos Aires where they’d arrived fifteen plus hours after they’d left West Palm.

  Amy had slept damn near the entire transcontinental flight. Something she’d obviously needed to do.

  He’d watched her sleep. Something he’d needed to do. A need he had to keep a tight grip on if another sunrise was going to factor into their future plans.

  The garbage littering the alley wasn’t the only thing that stank. This whole “buying information about the whereabouts of my grandfather” had the stench of setup to it.

  “And where did you say Jenna got the name of this so-called contact?” Dallas shifted his body until he was positioned in front of Amy like a shield.

  “I know what you’re doing.” They’d dropped their packs—his modified ALICE pack and her backpack—on the street next to the cantina wall. When he sidestepped their packs and moved in front of her, she knew it was an attempt to stand between her and any threat that might confront them. “And I don’t need you to run interference for me, got it?”

  He glared at her.

  She ignored him. “Jenna didn’t say where he came from. Just that his name was Alvaro. Said he’d been helping her. She gave me a number to call and told me that if she wasn’t at our designated meeting place, to contact him and he’d know where to find her.”

  Dallas glanced at Amy’s profile in the diluted light. Her eyes were searching, watchful, her silence catlike and calm as she worked to control her breath. And yes, her stance was defensive, spring loaded, like she was ready and capable of striking at an instant’s notice. Striking hard. Striking with lethal intent.

  And lethal was just the word he’d apply to the weapons she carried. They’d barely cleared customs and spilled into a taxi when she’d asked the driver to take them to a gun shop.

  “Work for you?” she’d asked as she’d settled back in the seat.

  He’d lifted his hands, amazed at her boldness and focus. “Lead on.”

  She’d done exactly as he would
have done. There’d been no time to apply for permits to transport weapons on their commercial flight, so he’d planned to arm himself as soon as he had a chance. She’d taken care of the necessity for them.

  After the visit to the gun shop, where it had been amazingly easy to buy any handgun they wanted, she’d bought a gleaming new KA-BAR knife—another unquestioned purchase—then strapped an ankle sheath on the inside of her right leg, just below her knee where it stopped above her hiking boot. The knife was a standard U.S. military issue. A tough knife, not flashy or trendy as the newer “wanna be a soldier” designs. The KA-BAR was a fugly knife, but the 1095 steel was properly heat treated and it did the job. Sixty plus years of combat spoke for itself.

  A KA-BAR, Dallas thought, guarding her back. Jesus.

  And then there was the Glock tucked in a shoulder bag along with her right hand. He knew the pistol was loaded with heavy-load hollow points and equipped with a high-tech LED weapon light. He’d watched, intrigued, as she’d mounted the executive flashlight on the universal rail beneath the barrel like a pro.

  The Glock—another model 30—was well used but in good condition. The flashlight that, smart girl, she’d insisted on picking up before they left the States, was shiny-penny new, state of the art and a weapon in itself. The tight, diamond-shaped central beam had a deer-in-the-headlights effect and could temporarily blind a bad guy unlucky enough to land in the arc of the corona.

  “So,” he said, hitching up his pants and feeling the comfortable weight of a Sig P220 on his hip, “when exactly did you turn into Lara Croft, tomb raider?”

  She even looked a bit like Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of the female Indiana Jones equivalent, lean and mean and ready to wreak havoc and hell to defend and protect.

  He could almost buy the woman warrior picture as she stood there in snug cammo cargo pants and a torso-hugging black tank. Her long blond hair was drawn back into a neat ponytail and secured with a leather thong at her nape; her bare arms and chest gleamed with a sheen of tropical perspiration.

  Yeah. He could almost buy it—if he’d been able to shake the image of the fragile and wounded woman he’d dragged out of the jungle six months ago. Of the woman who had come apart for him in his bed less than twenty-four hours ago.

  As if reading his thoughts, she lifted her gaze to his. Cornflower-blue irises had transitioned to cobalt in the dark alley’s shadowy light.

  “Lara Croft is a fictional character.” The deadly calm look in her eyes shook him. “Lara Croft was never a victim. I was. Never again.”

  He believed her times ten. “So you learned how to handle a gun.”

  “Yeah. I learned. Took classes,” she confirmed evenly, and cast a level gaze to the mouth of the alley where hookers plied their services, drunks stumbled into each other and users scored with their dealers. Big cities were all the same, only the venue was different. “And I learned how to take care of myself.”

  He considered her for a moment while sweat, as heavy as the stench of the city, trickled down his temple and ran under his jawline. The way she’d lit into him in the street in the rain back in West Palm, he figured she must have taken a martial arts class or two. Aikido came to mind. Karate. But both took years to master. So, no, she’d gone for something she could sink her teeth into quickly.

  “Muay Thai?” he speculated, thinking the Thai boxing techniques would suit her build and the time frame she’d had to become even marginally proficient.

  Dallas had studied that particular martial art for over ten years and knew students adapted the simple techniques in short order. Women benefited from Muay Thai because the strikes put a lot of power behind them. He’d witnessed even very slight women students deliver some pretty mean elbow and knee strikes. Remembered one, in particular, who came to class one night excited because she’d thwarted a mugger. As she’d handed the mugger her wallet, she’d stepped in and slammed him on the side of the head with an elbow strike. Knocked him out cold then dialed 911 on her cell. She’d been studying Muay Thai for all of three weeks.

  “Krav Maga.”

  He narrowed his eyes when she named her training choice. Cocked a brow. “No shit?”

  She grinned. “No shit.”

  He wiped his damp face on the sleeve of his black t-shirt. And didn’t feel like grinning. Not one bit.

  Krav Maga. Jesus. “It’s a wonder I made it off the street alive. In the very likely event that I piss you off in the next few days, consider this an apology in advance, okay? So don’t hurt me.” He was only halfway kidding. He outweighed her by a good eighty pounds, way out-muscled her and had the edge on experience and actual combat situations.

  They both knew he was safe from her, but he got the reaction he’d been after.

  Despite the gravity of their current situation, she pushed out a soft laugh. “Feel the need for a little credit on the books, do you?”

  He smiled. “Feel the need to not be on your bad side.”

  Credit the Israeli military for Krav Maga. And, yeah, after what she’d been through on Jolo, he understood why she might have selected that particular form of martial art. The basic techniques were relatively quick to learn, very direct, very brutal, and the basic intent—to “put ’em down fast”—was going to lay a world of hurt on or kill anyone on the receiving end.

  Because Krav Maga was a military-developed system, there was never any consideration to the “blow back” a practitioner would be exposing themselves to in a nonmilitary situation. He wondered if she’d thought about that. The look on her face answered his question. Yeah, she’d thought about it. And she’d picked Krav Maga for a reason all right.

  Lara Croft was never a victim. I was. Never again.

  He wondered just how far she’d go to insure her own safety. Wondered how much she’d really changed. If the softness coupled with strength that had drawn him from the beginning had been compromised by cold deadly intent in her quest for revenge.

  He thought about the cartridge that had been missing from the magazine of her Glock. More than once he’d revisited that fact in his mind. More than once he’d wanted to ask her about it. Wondered if the creep who’d run her off the road was the reason it was missing.

  His questions would have to hold a little longer. The back door of the bar creaked open. A sliver of light, heavy with drifts of prime Columbian weed and tobacco smoke, curled into the alley. The silhouette of a man appeared in the foggy halo of light.

  Beside him, Amy braced her feet in a firing stance and prepared for battle.

  “Showtime,” Dallas said under his breath and, whether she liked it or not, stepped protectively in front of her again.

  It was as another man stepped out of the light and closer toward them that Dallas realized they were being tag-teamed.

  His hand was already on his Sig when he caught movement in his peripheral vision. Amy caught it too. She pivoted, stacked up back to back with him and drew her Glock out of the shoulder bag, spotlighting the newcomer with the beacon-bright beam of her weaponlight.

  Like rats crawling out of their hidey-holes, four more men joined the others…and bumped the credibility of her story from a minus to a double plus on the plausibility scale.

  “I don’t know what they taught you in your shooting classes,” Dallas said in a hushed tone only she could hear, “but here’s what I want you to do. Start at the groin and work your way up. There are any number of interesting and major blood vessels and bones in the pelvic region that you can break and tear. Got it?”

  She gave him a clipped nod.

  “Good girl. Just ride the recoil up starting at the groin and if they’re still standing when you get to the head, reload and start at the groin again. Besides messing with their head to have a woman pointing a gun at the family jewels, it’ll also allow you to see their hands, which you couldn’t if you’re pointing a gun at their chest or head.”

  “Groin, recoil, head,” she repeated. “I’ve got it.” Stone cold. Totally in control.

&nb
sp; Damn, Dallas thought as the rat pack started closing in, these assholes don’t stand a chance.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Another man stood in the shadows, watching the tableau unfold. His name was Gabriel. Other than the Cold Steel Arc-Angel Butterfly knife strapped to his hip, his name was the only thing he had in common with anything godly.

  Gabe Jones stood six feet five inches tall, checked in at a honed 225 pounds, and knew how to deliver a fatal blow to virtually every vulnerable area on the human anatomy—both in theory and in practice.

  For too many years, he’d been a player in a game where the rules were made up as he went along and the stakes pitted life against the grizzly and gruesome reality of death. At thirty-five, he’d already played so long he could hardly remember another way of living—if that’s what his current existence could be called. A time when duty and honor had been his driving force instead of stone-cold anger and a thirst for revenge was a distant and murky memory.

  He’d lost friends, lost faith and, for the most part, lost the ability to see life through anything but glasses made foggy with the film of gunpowder and red mist.

  These days, he had contacts, not friends; enemies, not adversaries. He had access to an arsenal, yet it was his Butterfly he relied on. It was the Butterfly that had earned him the dubious handle of Archangel with the locals. He did nothing to dispel the stories that had bred and grown and were whispered with reverence and fear in the dark circles of the night.

  Men stepped aside when he walked within striking distance. At first glance, women regarded him with sexy cat eyes and wondered what it would take to tame this man with the sleek stealth of a panther and the darkly alluring aura of el diablo. One long piercing glare from his devil black gaze, however, and they understood: No woman tamed the Archangel. When the need arose, he found a willing bed partner, not a lover—a distinction he made clear up front.

  He was a mystery—and he liked it that way. Found it vaguely amusing and to his benefit that he was somewhat of a legend on the Patagonia and the back streets of this city. More to the point, he was an enigma, a lone Americano whose idea of a good time was to indulge in a single shot of Wild Turkey while shooting flies off a cantina wall with a Les Baer 1911-A1 .45.