Unmasking the Mercenary

by Jennifer Morey

  She went for his gun, but before she reached it, the kid appeared in her peripheral vision, raising his rifle and hitting her with the end of the handle hard on the back of her head. She lost coherency for a minute. Blinking, she realized she was sprawled on the ground. She rolled onto her butt, unable to focus very well. She searched the ground for a gun. One lay a few feet from the man she’d kicked in the groin, who still squirmed in pain. The other lay near the gap-toothed man’s unconscious body, but he was farther away.

  The kid gripped her arm and started to pull her to her feet. A sound made him let go and straighten, turning to look toward the Jeep.

  Haley blinked more and cleared her vision enough to see a huge man striding toward them, aiming a pistol.

  “Get away from her,” he said.

  His deadly tone and ground-eating strides should have been enough to deter any man less than half his size. And then it dawned on her who he was. The man who’d stood outside the hat shop. Was he going to help her?

  The kid let go of her arm and aimed his rifle.

  The man from the hat shop fired once. Yelping, the kid dropped the rifle with a clatter, holding his arm as he fell onto his backside.

  Movement to her right made her look there. The man she’d kicked in the groin was trying to crawl toward his gun. His hand curled around the handle and he rolled onto his backside. Another gunshot stilled him. The hat shop man had shot him in the chest.

  She reached for the fallen rifle the same time the kid went for it. He yanked it from her grasping hands just before the hat shop man swung his meaty fist, smashing against the boy’s head. The kid fell back and didn’t move, unconscious. She wouldn’t have been able to kill a teenager, either, although it wasn’t uncommon to see Liberia’s youth among the corrupted.

  Head still spinning, Haley once again reached for the rifle. But the hat shop man picked it up and straightened, looking down at her with that same impassive expression that had chilled her when she’d first seen him. Then he searched their surroundings, propping the barrel of the rifle on his hulking shoulder while eyes shadowed by an ominous brow missed nothing. Apparently satisfied that the volley of gunfire had scared off anything with a pulse, he turned and went to the Jeep. Haley held her breath while he knelt beside Travis and checked for breath and then a heartbeat.

  Travis.

  Oh, God, please let him live.

  The big man pulled a knife from a pocket on his pant leg and cut Travis’s T-shirt down the front. Then he ripped a strip of it away, pushing some of it into the gunshot wound he’d exposed to help stop the bleeding. He was unemotional and methodical. When he finished, he stood and stepped toward her with those long, smooth strides that showed his intimidating strength. He was not afraid of anything. His body language shouted it. There was a darkness about him, hanging all around him and setting her on edge.

  When he knelt in front of her, she had to stifle an audible sound of alarm. Thick black hair accentuated his terrifying light blue eyes. So much power there.

  “Is he okay?” she asked.

  “We need to get him to a doctor. I know one that’s less than five minutes from here. Can you walk?”

  She started to climb to her feet. He helped her, but she pulled her arm free of his grip, stumbling back as her head swam. He appeared to want to help her and Travis, but trust was difficult for her even under normal circumstances. She shoved away his reaching hand and started toward Travis. The motion made her head swim. Nausea gathered and pooled.

  Not now.

  She lost her balance and began to fall. No. She was going to pass out. The hat shop man’s arm against her back stopped her, and the last thing she registered was him lifting her.

  Rem D’Evereux put the woman in the passenger’s seat of his SUV and went to get her partner. He carried the man to the backseat and deposited him there. He wasn’t a light man, so the task wasn’t graceful. Hurrying around to the driver’s side, Rem sat behind the wheel and glanced over at the woman as he started the SUV. She had to be an operative just like her partner. He tried not to let her beauty make that hard for him to absorb, but it was.

  Why were they watching Habib? Who had sent them? And why?

  He didn’t think they knew about Ammar Farid Salloum. Rem had been following the man for a week now and hadn’t noticed any indicators anyone else was doing the same. It had taken him a while to catch up to him. He still couldn’t believe how blind he’d been. He should have been able to predict Ammar’s motives, but grief and anger had interfered. Now it made him dream of seeing the man gutted and served to the cannibal rebels of Monrovia, men who ate their enemies for spiritual strength.

  Had two American operatives gotten a whiff of the same foul scent? Were they working for the U.S. government or someone else? If he had to guess, it was the former. How much did they know? Was it Habib they were interested in? And if so, why? It made Rem uncomfortable. He couldn’t have anyone learning too much about his reasons for tailing Ammar. Especially any special forces types.

  He looked over at the woman again. Her partner was seen leaving the market, and that man had followed him to the Mamba Point Hotel. Rem had lagged far enough behind to stay inconspicuous. He’d watched along with the other man as the woman’s partner reemerged from the hotel with her. Her beauty arrested him. There was something odd about her. She strangled her long, dark hair in a ponytail and wore jeans and a T-shirt as if she wanted to pass as a man. He’d like to be the one to let her know there wasn’t a chance in an all-male hell of that. Not only was she beautiful, there was an air of fragility about her. And that was what had struck him as odd. What was a woman like her doing snooping around in a cesspool like Monrovia?

  It was one of the first questions he’d ask her when she regained consciousness. Had someone with the U.S. government caught on to what Rem already knew? It grated his nerves the same as it made him want to smile.

  Ammar thought he was untouchable. Over the last week, Rem had wiped the smirk off that worthless terrorist’s face by turning up when least expected, hovering, watching. Always a threat—an unpredictable one. More than once, Rem could have killed him, but he hadn’t. And Ammar knew it. Everything had been going according to plan.

  Until the two American operatives showed up.

  He’d never been any good at prying information from women. He couldn’t hurt them the way he could hurt men. But the one next to him might know something important. Tall and slender, she had the deepest blue eyes he’d ever seen, and that long, dark chocolate hair would look so much better out of the ponytail. His desire to see it that way made him uncomfortable. Why was he so interested in a do-gooder like her?

  He drove to a stop in front of Essam Haddad’s shack of a home that doubled as a clinic. Reddish dirt and gravel surrounded the one-story building packed among a hodgepodge of other shacks. The only thing adorning the front yard was a step leading to the front door.

  Rem left the woman and hefted the man from the backseat and carried him to the door, leaving a trail of dropped blood. Essam opened the door and spoke rapidly in his native tongue, helping Rem carry the big man inside. Through the front room, they entered a one-room clinic. It didn’t look like much, but if Rem were ever in need of lifesaving treatment, he’d trust Essam over any other place offering medical treatment in this country.

  With the man on one of two clinic beds, Rem turned and went to retrieve the woman. Essam looked up from his busy hands and shook his head as Rem came back into the clinic and deposited the woman on the other narrow bed.

  “You should quit your foolishness, Rem. How many more of these will I have to patch up before you’re the one brought to me bleeding?” He swept his bloodied glove over his patient before resuming his work. “You will end up like this.” He’d already inserted an IV and was now digging around in his patient’s wounds.

  “I don’t know who these people are. I think they came to check out Habib Maalouf and someone didn’t like it, as you can see.” He nodded down
at the shot-up man.

  Essam didn’t look up from his work. “Yes, but you were there. One of these times Ammar will be ready for you and then what, hmm?”

  “I won’t be easy to kill.”

  “So you think.”

  “Then I’ll have died trying to do something right.” And that would be a first, which had a certain appeal he’d never admit to anyone.

  “You are willing to die for this cause?”

  Without question. But he kept the thought to himself.

  “You blame yourself too much. It is what drives you.”

  “I don’t confuse the truth with blame.” He’d learned that the hard way. He’d also learned how to be hard to kill. Nobody learned survival like a fourteen-year-old working the streets.

  Now Essam looked up. “You should go home and get an honest job. Put your past behind you, Rem. It is the only way you will ever find happiness for your black heart.”

  “There are no honest jobs for me.” It was too late for that. He’d lie and cheat all the way to hell if it gave him Farid Abi Salloum’s head.

  “You’ve made some bad decisions, I will agree, but it is never too late to change. It is your hatred that will get you killed if you don’t.”

  Bad decisions. Rem had to smother a derisive grunt. He’d survived, that’s all. But that survival had led him down a dark and dangerous path, and now there was only one way off.

  “Once Farid is dead, I’ll bury my hatred with him. You have my word.”

  Essam shook his head. “You are a better man than you realize.”

  Rem didn’t comment. Essam had said as much before, but he didn’t know the full extent of Rem’s past. He knew only the part that had driven Rem here. Better or worse, it didn’t matter to Rem. He was who he was and there was no changing that.

  “When have you acted out of cruelty?” Essam asked. “Never once. Even at your lowest, you have not betrayed your morals. I do not have to know more than I do to be sure of this. You are not a man who can be bought. You are not a man who turns his back on the helpless. You are not a man who confuses right from wrong. You may think it is your failures that have cost you so much, but what you do not see is that it was your honor instead.”

  His honor had cost him? He had no honor, so how was that possible? “You’re a good friend, Essam. I’ll always remember that.”

  “Pah!” Essam swatted his hand in dismissal.

  Rem backed to the only chair in the room and kept quiet. At last the doctor finished with the shot-up man and moved over to the woman.

  “Is he going to live?” Rem asked.

  “I do not know. He has lost a lot of blood and I have none to give him.”

  Essam turned the woman’s head and cleaned a gash there. When he stitched the wound, he removed his second pair of gloves and faced Rem. “I have given her a strong pain medication. She may sleep for a while. I will see that they both make it out of Liberia. There is no point in you staying any longer. You did right to bring them here.”

  “The woman stays with me.”

  “Rem—”

  “I need her.”

  “She’ll be safer outside this country.”

  “She stays with me. At least until I’ve had a chance to question her. After that, I’ll make sure she gets to the United States unharmed.”

  “Where will you take her until then?”

  “Somewhere safe.”

  “As long as she is with you, she will never be safe.”

  Chapter 2

  Haley opened her eyes and winced with the steady thud piercing her skull. She blinked her vision clear. Above her, a colorful mural spread over the recessed and elegantly trimmed ceiling. She rolled her head to see the rest of her surroundings. The room was richly appointed. She lay on a queen-sized bed with an off-white quilt. Across from the foot of the bed was an ornately carved armoire. A chair was angled beside it. Through a balcony door to her right, she could see the ocean in the distance.

  Where was she?

  This couldn’t be Monrovia.

  Sitting up, she put her hand on her head when the thudding boomed stronger with each heartbeat. She pushed the covers aside and slid off the bed to stand. The cool, taupe-colored tile chilled her feet until she stepped onto a dark blue rug. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she and Travis were on their way to dinner.

  Then it all came crashing upon her. Travis. The hat shop man.

  Her pulse fired into frantic beats. She tried to calm her fear. It would only hinder her ability to escape.

  She searched the room for her gun. Not seeing it, she went to the armoire and opened the center door. Television. She opened the left side of the armoire. Her duffel bag was on the bottom shelf. She opened it and rooted through her things. No gun. She opened the first drawer below the television. Nothing.

  Who had brought her things here? And where the hell was her gun?

  She hurried to the door, swung it open, and walked faster than her head could bear. Passing a bathroom and a second bedroom, she slowed her pace when the hall opened to a landing area. A banister and stairway led to the lower level, where she could see the entry and living room and kitchen. Color greeted her everywhere. Through high windows to her left, she could see a tall, thick cement wall and an iron gate with a guard shack. Coiled barbed wire topped the wall.

  Still in Monrovia.

  Not surprising, she supposed, though the fence made her more than a little nervous. Sliding her hand along the banister, she stepped down the stairs, marveling at the grandeur around her. The villa was silent. On the lower level, she saw two open doors, one another bathroom, the other another bedroom. A third door was shut. It wasn’t a huge villa, but it was stunning. Diabolical in a country like Liberia, but she had heard there were some upscale estates near the embassy compounds.

  Across pale tile flooring, beautiful French doors stained a rich brown led to a patio. She could see part of a pool, and a pair of male feet lounging on a chair. She opened the door and stepped outside.

  The man who’d stopped her attackers lay there, the light covering of dark hair on his muscular chest damp and his smooth, tan skin shining with sweat. She took in the ripples of his abdomen all the way to the waist of the black swim trunks he wore. Beneath the material of the trunks, his thighs were slabs of lean muscle, and the bulge of his calves gave further evidence of his fitness.

  Having to remind herself this was not a man she could trust, at least not yet, she looked at his face. His dark sunglasses kept her from knowing if he saw her.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  Now she knew. “Where is Travis?”

  His abdomen bunched as he sat forward and rose to his feet in one continuous movement. She took a step back as he came to a stop in front of her, lifting his sunglasses to prop them on top of his head. The impact of those pale blue eyes both riveted and disconcerted her.

  “Still with the doctor,” he said.

  “Where is he? Is he all right?”

  He didn’t say anything, and that only increased her apprehension. She was afraid to ask. “Is he going to die?”

  “I don’t know. He was in pretty bad shape when I left him.”

  Tears burned her eyes and she covered her mouth to the sound of her gasp.

  His expression remained unmoved.

  Did the man have no heart? “Where is he? Where did you take him? And why am I here and not with him?” Was he holding her against her will? She tried to control her quivering lower lip and the tears that threatened the fighter in her. Oh, Travis…you can’t die.

  “I can’t let you go see him.”

  “What? Why not?” Had this man kidnapped her? The magnitude of trouble she might be in descended on her full force. What did he know that she didn’t? What did he think she knew? She took a few more steps backward. “Who the hell are you?”

  He reached out and gently grasped her arm, stopping her withdrawal. “My name is Rem D’Evereux. If I hadn’t interrupted your encounter
with those rebels, you’d both be dead by now. Travis before you.”

  Yanking her arm free, she forced herself to remain calm. The bulk of him and the indomitable energy streaming from his icy blue eyes warned her this was not a man to cross. Whatever he wanted from her, she had to be careful.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “Why were you outside the hat shop?”

  “I could ask you the same question,” he countered.

  She decided not to respond.

  His gaze roamed all over her face before drilling her with steadiness that unnerved her. “I knew you were just recon the minute I saw you. But what is it you want to know? What brought you here?”

  “You saw me?” She ignored his other questions. How long had he been tailing her and Travis? And why hadn’t they noticed? “When?”

  “Are you government?” he asked instead of acknowledging her.

  “Answer my question first.”

  “I followed Travis from the market.”

  “He would have noticed someone like you following him.”

  “Probably, but one of Ammar’s guards was ahead of me. I stayed far enough behind to remain out of Travis’s sight.”

  “Ammar?”

  “Ammar Farid Salloum.”

  Was he the one talking to Habib in the market? Yes, it was the man in the picture she’d sent Odie. It had to be. “What do you mean his guard followed Travis? Why would he do that?”

  “He saw Travis go into the market after Ammar. Travis didn’t know the guard was with Ammar.”

  “Travis didn’t know who Ammar was until he saw him talking to Habib.”

  “Yes, but to the guard, it looked like he followed Ammar into the market. The guard got suspicious and went in after him and must have seen him watching Habib and Ammar.”

  “And the guard followed Travis to the hotel.”

  Rem nodded.

  Haley absorbed that a moment. The guard who’d followed must have blended in with anyone else on the street. He hadn’t triggered Travis’s suspicion. It explained a lot. Then she realized how much Rem had pieced together.