by Wendy Byrne
Each time he screwed up, he'd see Petrovich's mocking smirk taunting him. Not quite good enough, are you, Jake?
First things first. No more dwelling in the past, messing up his thoughts. He studied the landscape as they got into a desolate area. Had he just walked into a trap?
He pushed back the thought and focused on the tracker. The cabbie did a good job keeping his distance. The signal slowed down for several minutes before stopping about a block away. Given the risk of being discovered, he had to cut the cabbie loose and go in on foot.
He tapped the back of the front seat. "This is good. I'll walk in from here." After handing the guy his fare along with a healthy tip, Jake got out.
The guy rolled down his window. "Good luck, man. I hope you were wrong about your woman." He shook his head before mumbling through the open window, "Be careful." Seconds later, he pulled away.
Jake weaved his way through broken-down buildings while dividing his attention between the steady green line and keeping a bead on his surroundings. With the car's slow pace, he easily jogged along, keeping to the shadows. The car started to crawl as they pulled off the road and into a makeshift driveway. Alongside stood what looked like an abandoned warehouse, nestled beneath the bridge and sheltered from view. He would not have spotted it except for the tracker. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the structure was weathered with sections of the roof missing, along with pieces of siding.
Two men dragged what looked like a passed-out Tessa into the building. A third man, who appeared to be the one in charge, walked behind them while the driver remained in the car.
Based on her current condition, she wouldn't be much help—unless she was faking the whole "passed out" thing, but that seemed unlikely. That meant he had to recalculate the odds. Three against one in the warehouse would be a challenge. Without windows, he wouldn't have a clue what was going on inside.
First he needed to take out the driver. That would eliminate any chance he might step inside either randomly or when he heard the gunfire that was bound to be a result of the uneven odds. Jake wasn't trigger happy but saw no way around it given the circumstances.
He had to think about escape and work backward from there. Confronting four big dudes with a lousy pistol wasn't going to cut it. Good thing he brought substantial firepower.
He crept closer and peered inside the back window of the car. Even in the dark, there was no mistaking the aroma of weed coming through the open window. Opening the driver side door, he silenced the guy with a chokehold. After dragging him out of the car, Jake stuffed a gag in the guy's mouth and handcuffed him.
The odds were down to three against one. Most times he'd relish those kinds of odds, but he had no way of knowing if there were more men inside. In which case, he was royally screwed.
He also didn't know Tessa's condition. Based on what he'd seen, it could range from groggy to stone cold out of it. Or she could be perfectly fine and faking it this whole time. He worked through a shudder. Second-guessing every thought in his head wouldn't help the situation.
He had to assume she was vulnerable and wouldn't be much help when things went down. Going in blind with guns blazing didn't seem to be a very good option. He needed to see inside to get his bearings before he did anything else.
* * *
Tessa's head and body pounded as the dull ache of the drugs traveled through. She'd been given narcotics once before and didn't care for the feeling of powerlessness then or now. Every time she pried open her eyes, a kaleidoscope of colors blurred her vision. Red, purple, green, and yellow mixed with people dancing in front of her eyes.
Was she at a dance club? She shook her head. No, that didn't make sense. Her hands were tied to a chair or something preventing her from moving them. She wished she was back in Jake's apartment and hadn't attempted to go it alone.
Maybe she was at Jake's. Nope. He'd deserted her.
Wait. No. Did she desert him? Who was Jake, anyway? Did he really exist?
Nick. Memories of what she'd seen flitted around her brain, but were they real?
Thoughts tumbled about in no particular order leaving her fuzzy mind in charge of making sense of them. Not good.
A stinging sensation lit up her jaw as her head flipped to the side. But somehow it didn't hurt.
"Where is it?"
The voice echoed in her ear like she was at the end of a long tunnel. Maybe she was but didn't realize it. If she could only open her eyes. Were they glued shut?
Why did they keep asking the same question over and over again? They wanted information, and she must not have provided it, or she wouldn't still be alive. Tessa squeaked open her eyes to study the men. They blurred before her. Was that three or four of them? She couldn't be sure.
The blood burned inside her veins like they'd mainlined fire into them. Even while she knew the concept was inconceivable, she still couldn't prevent the idea from tunneling inside her head and taking hold. Maybe she'd died and was in hell. That might explain the burning sensation. But where were the horns and pitchforks? The giggle bubbled up inside her until she couldn't prevent it even if she'd wanted to.
Concentrate. What happened?
She'd been sitting at the cafe trying to decide what to do after she found…oh crap…Nick…dead. Men had shoved her into a car. They'd threatened to kill people unless she did what they asked. She breathed a little easier as the resurgence of ordered thinking came into place.
Now if she could begin to control the remainder of her body she'd feel a whole lot better. Whatever they'd given her still made her head keep flopping down, even when she willed the muscles in her neck to hold steady. Add that to her bruised and aching body, and she was a hot mess.
"We need to know what you found. You're not being very cooperative."
Her left eye felt swollen and didn't want to stay open. The puffy skin kept interfering with her vision. She wanted to remember. Telling was bad. That idea had been drilled into her head by all her trainers for so long, the broken record constantly played in her brain despite its current malfunctioning status.
An operative never told. Never. Torture. Death. Whatever they might try to entice her with wasn't going to work. She wouldn't divulge the secrets she'd promised to keep.
Had Alex told secrets before they'd killed him? Had he somehow set in motion this catastrophe? No, that didn't make sense. Why would they wait six weeks?
Geez, her brain was a scrambled mess. Nothing made sense in her current state of mind.
Alex.
What did she want to remember? It was important. Maybe that was what they wanted from her. Maybe he'd told her something that was stuck in her memory somewhere.
Not that she wanted to tell, but she wanted to know what they thought she knew. Maybe something would jog her faulty memory. One last hurrah before she got buried in some landfill.
Landfill?
The last time she'd thought about being buried in a landfill, she was with that Jake guy. Fat lot of good he did protecting her, even if she chose to go out on her own. Just like a man. Never around when you need them, but always around when you want your space.
Tessa sighed. At least that was what she thought she did. Her chest seemed to hurt every time she breathed. Getting kicked a couple of times in the ribs probably bruised a few of them. She wished she had the energy to fight back, but that ability had been taken from her as soon as they shot her up with that liquid fire. Lucidity seemed to be an elusive prospect right now.
"I don't know." Her lips felt parched, like the fire had taken all the moisture inside her body. To speak ate up the tiny bit of dampness inside her mouth. "Can't think."
"We need to know about Backgammon. What do you know?" The man who spoke was tall, maybe over seven feet.
Her eyes drooped closed despite the vehemence in his tone. She shook her head and forced them open. She glanced back up at him, and his body distorted, resembling one of those stilt walkers in the circus. That made no sense. Was he on stilts? No, that c
ouldn't be. She thought she might have smiled. The whole thing seemed comical.
The other man was dressed as a clown, a red bulb on his nose, the flowery pants and ruffled shirt seeming to be in contrast to his hairy arms and fists. The third man was dressed as a trapeze artist, with a leotard, and carrying one of those long poles to help him balance.
She started to giggle even while the fire inside ate up her muscles and bones. Their faces melted. Could they have that fire inside them as well? Was that what her face looked like now?
"She's still too far gone to be cooperative," the tall man yelled to the clown. "You gave her too much ecstasy. Combined with the other stuff we shot her up with, we're never going to get anything out of her. I said a dose to keep her from going crazy in the car, not something to keep her out of it so she's of no use to us."
"Maybe she's faking it," the trapeze artist said.
"Look at her eyes. They're so dilated, there's no color left."
She blinked at their words. She'd heard all of them before, but she was trying to put meaning to what was said.
"Does she recognize us?"
"She wouldn't recognize her own mother with the trip she's on." She couldn't distinguish one voice from the other, except to know they were two different people speaking.
Drugs? Of course she knew that. Their descriptions seemed muddled inside her brain. It was like she knew the words, but struggled to figure out what they meant. And why did she understand them? They were talking…Russian. That's right. She'd taken a course in it.
"This has been one giant screw-up from the beginning. I say we get rid of her and be done with it. Bury the secrets with her."
Why did the tall man's voice sound so familiar? She squinted at him. Did she recognize him from somewhere? The memory whispered at the edge of consciousness, but remained elusive.
"You still haven't found anything on her computer?" the clown asked the trapeze artist. She couldn't help but giggle at their ill-fitting costumes that bunched around their paunchy waists. How did they fly on the trapeze like that?
"She has every file on it so encrypted it will take a real hacker to get to what she's stored there. But I'm still not convinced she'd keep it on her hard drive anyway."
"We've searched her. She doesn't have a thumb drive anywhere, either in her backpack or pockets. Where else could it be?"
"Cyberspace. If I was a betting man, that's where she'd keep it."
"That's assuming she didn't pass something to that guy she was with in Virginia. We still don't know who she told, or if she has anything that she might have left with him or somebody else."
"We got a nice picture from the camera at the train station. It might take a while with the face-recognition software, but as of right now we still don't know. We have to consider the possibility she either told or said something to him. In which case we're screwed."
"Once we know, he's going to be the next on our list of people to get rid of."
All she could think about as she listened to the conversation was that she had to tell somebody they were in danger. If she could only remember who.
* * *
Jake walked the perimeter of the ramshackle building, searching for another way inside. Coming in the front door, guns blazing, was an easy way to get himself killed. But on the side opposite the door, he spotted an unlatched opening that might have been part of an old ventilation system. A weathered wooden piece about ten feet off the ground flittered open and shut in the breeze. He needed to find something that would make scaling the side possible, and searched the surrounding area.
After spotting a rusted-out steel drum, he strapped the gun from his go bag along his back and dragged the drum over to give him the boost he needed. His fingertips barely touched the opening, but it was enough for him to latch on. Using his boots along the rough siding for leverage, he scrambled with a kind of grace that would do his family proud. His fingers curled around the opening as he levered himself up to peer inside. Damn. One of the men punched her in the ribs, sending the chair she was tethered to crashing to the dirt floor. Guess she wasn't in on this after all.
The sound of her moan rattled his bones. Been there, done that, and it wasn't fun. He could only offer a sympathy wince. Bruises had already formed on her face, while the puffiness beneath her eyes gave him a clue as to what she'd been through in the short time she'd been in their company. Her limp body made him believe they'd either given her something or she'd become unconscious during the course of the beating.
"Tell us now," one man shouted at Tessa while two others paced back and forth. "Who is that guy you were with in Virginia? You gave information to him, didn't you? Make it easier on yourself, and tell us who he is."
Knowing they were asking about him wasn't a feel-good moment. He had to do something. Quick. Based on the way her head kept flopping against her chest, he didn't have much time.
Thinking through possible options, he took the only one available. Guns blazing. He'd hoped she'd be able to help him lower the odds, but from the look of things, that wasn't even a remote possibility. Her head kept bobbing up and down, hitting her chest then coming back up again. The expression on her face couldn't be faked, so he knew the combo of drugs they'd given her had been of the extra-strength variety.
They'd had her less than a half-hour, but had still managed to mess her up pretty bad.
Damn.
Okay, he needed to think and plan and come up with a way to take out three men all at once. He looked down the scope of his gun. It could be done. But even he wasn't invincible.
These were trained operatives. He was sure about that. Then again, so was he. He willed back the doubt that crept into his head. Now was not the time to dwell on what he couldn't change.
"She has the information stored somewhere. We can't let it get out or everything we worked for will be gone. We'd have risked everything for nothing."
She gazed up at the man, that weird expression on her face. "Why?" Her words were the first coherent thing she'd uttered, which was definitely bad news for her. That would be their signal to amp up the pressure.
But why were they speaking in Russian? She'd mentioned that once before in passing, but didn't elaborate. Somehow she knew who was after her.
Timing was everything, and he scurried back down the siding and circled the perimeter back to the side where the door was located. He glanced over to find the driver still tied up and still out of it next to the car.
One, two, three.
He counted off the numbers even though he was alone. Old habits from the days of working with his siblings died hard.
Breaking through the door with a well-placed kick was the easy part. Hoping their reflexes were a little slow was the hard part.
He rolled inside and took out two guys with shots to their knees. Then grabbed their guns. While they were rolling around the floor moaning, the third guy was a little quicker and got off a couple of shots before moving toward Tessa, attempting to use her for leverage. Jake squeezed off a shot, which clipped through the guy's right hand, making it useless. He then tackled the guy to the ground securing his hands behind his back.
Next he pulled the other men's arms behind them and secured flexi-cuffs around their wrists. One of the men eyed him. "You're helping a traitor." The guy's words struck him as odd, considering the Russian accent. Was this some kind of triple cross on her part? The growl in his voice synced with the vehemence in his eyes. "We'll be coming after you too."
Negating the impact of the words seemed impossible. His assignment wasn't about judging. It was about ferreting out the truth and keeping her safe in the meantime. He needed to keep that in mind.
Instead, he set about doing that as he cut the ropes that bound her even while the man's voice echoed in his ears. This was not the first time he'd heard those words about her, but that didn't mean the thought didn't reverberate inside. Nothing is ever that simple. Especially in the tangled game the CIA played.
Tessa's head came up
, and she stared at him, a puzzled expression marring her face. "I know you, don't I?" Her words were slurred, nearly incoherent, but in English this time.
"Yep, I'm the guy you've been trying to lose. Now let's get out of here." He helped her to her feet, but quickly realized it would be slow going at her current pace. Instead he swooped her up, tossed her over his shoulder fireman style, and looked around for her computer before stuffing it in her backpack. He readied his gun to take on anything that might be waiting outside, and creaked open the large door.
As quickly as possible, he sprinted off toward the SUV and placed her inside, buckling her. He'd dump the Russian's car after he got to Manhattan. Once he got back to his apartment, he knew exactly who to call on for help.
For right now, he called Jennings and let him know about the guys in the warehouse. While he hoped they'd still be there so The Alliance could bring them in for questioning, he doubted very much they would.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jake's sister, Sabrina, rushed inside his apartment, slapping the morning paper into his hands. "I assume this is the new houseguest you called me about?" As usual, his sister knew how to make an entrance.
He unfolded the paper and saw a security photo of Tessa, along with a caption that read, Wanted for Questioning in the Murder of Nicholas Stamos. Even knowing what he might read, he still skimmed through the article. It mentioned a possible eyewitness as well as a suspicious death—which was code for murder—but stated they were waiting for a final determination of the cause of death from the coroner.
"This doesn't look good," he muttered.
"Ya think?" Sabrina rolled her eyes and moved past him to the guest bedroom. After removing what was left of Tessa's shirt in order to examine her chest and arms, she placed her fingertips to Tessa's wrist. "Very slow heart rate and a faint pulse." She turned toward Jake and scowled. "This woman should be seen by a doctor," Sabrina said, even as she strategically placed acupuncture needles. She turned on her portable heat lamp and plunked it into Jake's hands. "This should give the needles an extra boost. Hopefully they'll keep her from dying." She turned to give Jake the evil eye. "Bring her to a doctor."
