by Cherry Adair
“You’re welcome. Now, no offense, but—nice knowing you. Good-bye.” She quickly got to her feet, slamming the lid down.
Hunt grabbed her wrist. “Not so bloody fast. Empty the envelope onto the table. Now.”
She looked down at his dark hand circling her pale wrist, trying to figure out how such light pressure could hurt so badly and how his grip could be unbreakable. Damn. He was full of neat tricks. She gave him a hurt look from under her lashes. “You’re hurting my wrist. Again.”
“It’s not broken. Yet. Don’t push me. Dump it.”
Taylor flipped the lid of the metal box open with a thump, then took out the envelope and jabbed it into his rock-hard stomach. “Here. Open it yourself. And don’t even think about taking my diamonds, they’re my paycheck.”
Hunt released her wrist and took the bag from her, tossing the contents onto the mahogany tabletop. The diamonds looked even better piled all together on the dark wood. Taylor rubbed her wrist. Clearly there was nothing else in the envelope but jewelry. “Satisfied?”
“You have no idea. Let’s go. We’ll give you a lift to a hotel on our way back to the airport.”
“How lovely for me.” Taylor secured the box, returning it to its position in the wall, and walked ahead of them out of the room. She went through the exit security measures by rote.
Fifteen minutes from start to finish and they were back in the waiting limo. The rain had stopped and the early morning air smelled clean and fresh.
“Where to?” Hunt asked. He didn’t seem to care. Which was just fine and dandy with her.
“The Hotel Baur au Lac,” she told the driver. It was a quick train ride from home.
The car pulled away from the curb. They passed a flower seller packing up for the day. There was a stall near home. She’d stop there on her way out of town and buy a bunch of colorful flowers to take Mandy. Her sister loved color. And the simple amazement of scents. Not like the interior of the car. It smelled . . . wrong.
Rain made the view through the windows waver. Odd. She thought the rain had stopped. Taylor frowned, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. She swallowed bile. There was a carafe of water and several glasses in a little bar near Hunt, but she was afraid if she moved, she’d throw up. She never got sick. Never. It was one of the few things she counted on when working all over the world.
“Carsick?” Hunt asked, his image large and menacing in the dusky light inside the car. His eyes seemed to glow in the semidarkness as he loomed over her.
Black dots swirled in her vision. “Nope,” her voice slurred. “Don’ get ca—”
Everything went black.
Twenty-four
8:30 A.M.
OCTOBER 10
OUTSIDE ZURICH
Hunt caught Taylor as her eyes rolled and she started to slide off the seat to the floor. “What the bloody hell . . . ?” He hefted her gently onto his lap, fingers going to the pulse at her throat. Normal. Her face was pale, but cool to the touch. No fever.
“Stress?” Max asked.
“She induces it,” he told Max absently, tilting her face up and feeling for a pulse beneath her ear. Even she couldn’t fake this. Her pulse was too slow and even, her eyelids didn’t flutter, and her body lay limp and boneless against him.
He cupped her cheek in his palm. He’d never seen her face this unanimated, and seeing it this way now gave him a strange hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. She wasn’t the type of woman to swoon under duress.
“Taylor? Wake up, love.” He reached back to slide aside the privacy window, but it was stuck. Bloody hell. He rapped on it to get the driver’s attention. “Get us to the hospital. Now.”
His head jerked around at a loud, hollow thump. Beside him, Bishop was slumped against the door. Unconscious.
“Fuck.” Hunt realized too late that something was seriously wrong. He fumbled beneath his jacket for his H&K in the shoulder holster. The grip seemed to slip through his fingers. Bloody hell. He’d never been this butterfingered in his life. He tried again and finally managed to withdraw the weapon. It felt as though it weighed twenty pounds.
“Hold your breath,” he yelled at Max, who was also scrabbling for his own gun. “Open the goddamned windows.” Hunt saw his friend’s glassy eyes roll. Max jerked himself upright, felt for the window control. Cracked it an inch. Shook his head. Tried again.
Still holding the last breath he’d taken, Hunt shifted Taylor’s limp body to the seat between himself and Bishop and reached for the automatic window button on his side. It was as though he were moving through treacle.
Too late.
His fingers touched the small square button, but it felt soft instead of hard. His head spun.
Get . . . everyone . . . out of . . . ah . . . what? Car. Out . . . Car.
Trees and buildings whizzed by in hyperdrive. The windows appeared to buckle as he tried to force his fingers, eyes, and brain to cooperate.
Max slid in slo-mo across the seat toward the window closest to him. “Ga—” He didn’t make it. He slumped, then slid into an ungainly heap to the floor at Hunt’s feet.
Gas. Yes. Hunt knew. His vision grayed out, then returned, dim and useless. He felt himself slipping under and gritted his teeth trying to hold on.
Window. Door. Out.
Throw Taylor from the speeding vehicle? She’d be safe. Dead, but safe. The car had to slow for something. Traffic. Lights. Pedestrians. He must be rea— Hunt shook his head trying to clear the thick fog. Must be ready.
Using every muscle and tendon, he attempted to straighten his sagging body, but nothing worked. His automatic dug into his rib cage as his body and brain melted and dissolved.
Weapon. Must. Tay—
Hunt opened his eyes, head braced against the window to his left. Red danced and wavered in his vision. He blinked several times to bring the surreal, Salvador Daliesque world into focus. The car was parked in a field of brilliant scarlet poppies spotlit by a white half-moon.
He straightened, removed the H&K from the seat beside him, and checked his inside pocket with the other.
The three disks were gone.
Fucking bloody hell.
He turned to check on Taylor. She was exactly as he’d left her—he glanced at his watch—Jesus! Three hours ago. He felt for her pulse while doing a lightning-fast scan of the interior of the vehicle. Bishop was gone. Max was still unconscious on the floor.
Powerful shit to have them out this long.
And why, he asked himself, would someone go to the trouble of gassing them only to leave them alive and still armed?
Without a doubt it was because whoever had utilized the tranq gas had believed it would kill them all. Sloppy. Extremely sloppy not to positively confirm the hit. He couldn’t imagine Morales being this careless.
Bishop? Hunt wondered, furious with himself for letting down his guard for a moment. Had the operative turned rogue and betrayed them? Tranqed them, stolen the disks, and even now headed to sell the intel to the highest bidder?
Hunt sprung the latch and pushed open the car door. Cool damp air rushed in. It felt good on his face. He bent to feel Max’s pulse. Alive, at least. He nudged him with his foot. “Rise and shine, old son.”
Max raised his head, groggy but, Hunt knew, immediately aware. Max pulled himself back on the seat across from Hunt and rubbed his jaw, eyes still glassy. “Jesus. What hit us?”
“Who?” Hunt said grimly. “They got the disks.” He reached for Taylor, then thought better of it and stepped out into the high, damp grass alone to reconnoiter, leaving the door open to the chilly, late-night air. She couldn’t have had anything to do with this, could she? His gut told him she was nothing more than a not-so-innocent bystander.
“Ah, crap.” Max got out of the car as well, weapon in hand. Whoever’d hit them was long gone. “Just fucking perfect.”
Other than a centuries-old oak tree in front of the vehicle, there wasn’t a damn thing to see for miles around. They were in the middle
of bloody nowhere. Not even the city lights were visible.
“Bishop’s split,” Hunt told Max grimly. “I’ll check the driver.” He walked around the back of the car. “Tire tracks. We had an escort.” He paused to inspect the deep ruts in the wet grass. “Following in behind us. Truck, it looks like. Two sets of footprints here—men. One five-eight, five-ten, hundred and sixty. The other taller, about two hundred pounds. But check this out. Another vehicle . . .” He crouched down to get a better look. “Four-door sedan. Five, six people. Lighter weight. Small guys.” He rose, followed the crisscrossing steps.
“Scuffle here by the rear door. Did what they had to do, then got back in their vehicle—truck, by the look of the tread—and peeled out fast. These guys were in a hurry . . . The sedan took off behind them. Look at the tracks going off over there. They were burning rubber following the truck.”
“Working together?” Max asked.
“If they were, they fought about it,” Hunt said dryly, looking at spatters of black-looking blood on the grass and the side of their limo. There was a great deal of it. Either someone had bled out and they’d taken the body with them, or several people were seriously injured. It was impossible to tell.
He opened the driver’s-side door. The sour-sweet smell of blood hung thick in the damp air. “Christ. Driver’s gone. But I found Bishop. He’s up here, tucked nicely and neatly in his place.” He had a momentary twinge of guilt for believing that Neal Bishop had turned on them, but was over it in an instant.
Bishop had been buckled into the driver’s seat and was slumped over the steering wheel. Hunt reached in, feeling for a pulse beneath the younger man’s ear. Slow but steady. His forehead bled sluggishly, like lava, from the Mount Vesuvius of a bump in the middle of the poor bastard’s forehead. That was going to hurt. But he’d live.
The windshield was shattered. A spider’s web radiating from where Bishop’s head was supposed to have hit it. Crumpling the front end of the limo was the huge oak tree. A neat “accident,” cleverly constructed.
Bloody, bloody hell.
“He’ll be all right.” Hunt straightened, looking over the roof of the car. “Helluva headache, I suspect.”
“Ah. The master of understatement,” Max said laconically, breathing fast enough for Hunt to know he was fighting nausea. His own stomach didn’t feel too hot either. “Mano del Dios, Black Rose, or another tango we haven’t connected yet?”
“Even odds,” Hunt responded, scanning the vast field they were in. “The real question is, how in the bloody hell did they know we were in Zurich?”
“Flight plan.” Max rubbed his face. “Man, that was some powerful stuff.”
Hunt shot him a pointed look. “Flight plan?” T-FLAC rarely filed a correct flight plan. It was yet another way to stay a step ahead of the tangos. “No, I suspect they were keeping close tabs on Taylor.”
“Maybe. But there’s no way in hell they could’ve landed in Zurich before us,” Max pointed out. “Absolutely no way.”
“Satellite tracking of the plane.” Hunt dipped his head to see how Taylor was doing on the backseat. Still out. He straightened, leaning an elbow on the car’s roof.
“The news about her Houston museum heist was in the paper by the time we reached the airport. If you’re looking for a thief, you follow jewel thefts. They had her in Houston.”
“Or the Mediterranean, or wherever else someone pulled a jewelry heist in the past two months,” Max pointed out, his color returning. “She’s spectacularly good, but she’s hardly the only jewel thief in the world.”
“They’d do what we did. Follow up on every lead. No matter how small. Like us, they’d eventually figure out the who and the why. Then they’d have the where.”
Though their pilots would have filed a false flight plan on takeoff, even T-FLAC couldn’t go over international airspace without talking to traffic control to let them know exactly where they were. Bingo. “One call with the correct destination, and they had someone waiting to follow us from the airport. And talking about calls . . .” He felt in his breast pocket for his cell phone, frankly not expecting to find it.
“Look at this.” He held it up for Max to see. A bad feeling swirled in the pit of his stomach, and it had nothing to do with gas. “They left us with not only our weapons, but also a way to contact help. The bastards were confident their knockout potion would kill us.”
“Very inefficient,” Max agreed.
“Indeed. Come and get Bishop.”
“How come I don’t get to rescue the pretty girl?” Max demanded, walking around the back of the limo to join him on the driver’s side. He tugged at Bishop’s sleeve, then grunted as Neal Bishop fell into him.
“Because you’re too ugly. You’d scare her the moment she comes around. We need her thinking clearly, not reeling.” Hunt shrugged out of his jacket and spread it on the ground, then reached in for Taylor.
She felt light and deceptively unsubstantial in his arms. Odd, when her personality was so much larger than life. Kneeling, he gently settled her onto the meager covering. Wet grass beat the god-awful stink of death hands down.
“Bishop’s coming out of it,” Max reported. “Ah, man!”
Hunt chuckled as he heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting. He rose and reached into the car for the carafe of water for Taylor, then thought better of it. Who knew if the gas they’d inhaled was also water soluble? Or if the person who gassed them had taken the extra precaution of spiking any open container in the limo? He grabbed a can of soda instead. The carbonation would help her nausea.
It was another fifteen minutes before she opened her eyes and groaned. By which time Max had called in and requested backup, Bishop had ordered the pilots to stand down, and Hunt had walked behind the vehicle tracks looking for clues, anything to indicate who had hit them and where the hell they’d gone.
“Nothing?” Bishop asked, looking a little green about the gills as he leaned against the side of the vehicle.
Hunt crouched beside Taylor. “Nothing.”
She opened dazed eyes when he touched her clammy cheek. Blinking, she swallowed several times. “What—” She licked her lips and stared up at him with pain-stricken blue eyes. He could see her brain trying to function. Trying to process. Trying to assimilate what had happened.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded.
How like her to assume he was the culprit. One corner of his mouth quirked. “Sorry, darling, but it wasn’t us. And it wasn’t done only to you. We’re minutes out of it ourselves. Someone pumped the vehicle with some sort of nerve gas.”
“Someone?” She frowned. “Why’m I the only one lying down?”
“Smaller frame, lighter body weight.” Her dark hair, misted by raindrops, curled around her stark white face. Her cheek felt hot and clammy in his palm. “How do you feel?”
“L-Like sh—” Her throat convulsed. He quickly moved his hand to support her forehead and rolled her over. In the nick of time.
When she was finished, Hunt handed her a neatly folded handkerchief. “Done?” He watched her carefully as she pressed it to her mouth.
She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered fervently, “Please God.”
“Ready to sit up?”
“I feel kinda pukey,” she admitted, throat moving as she swallowed repeatedly to keep from throwing up again. He did what he could to check her pupils by moonlight. A bit dilated.
“That’s to be expected. Here, let me help you.” He assisted her, holding her as she fought back the nausea. He handed her the open can. “Sip slowly on this until it passes.”
She managed to gulp down a good portion of the cold drink, and a little color came back into her face. “Is everyone else all right?” She pressed the can to her cheek.
“All present and accounted for.”
“Oh, God.” She rested her head against his chest. Her body felt warm against his, her silky hair brushed his chin, smelling of wet violets. “Why would anyone—” Her head shot up
and she stared at him. “Oh my God. The disks! It was those damn stupid disks they wanted. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That gas was meant to kill us.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I would’ve been responsible for killing— Oh, my God.”
“Water over that bridge,” Hunt said unsympathetically. Although he certainly felt a smidge as she peeked up at him over her hands with such a look of horrified contrition that he wanted to gather her in arms and— Jesus fucking Christ. “None of us died.” Not today.
“The authorities are on their way,” he said. “You’re going to the hospital as soon as they get here.” He held his weapon ready as several pairs of headlights broke the night. The rain began again in a soft, barely felt mist. He wanted her out of the weather and in a warm bed. Preferably with him wrapped around her. Jesus, what a bloody mess. Literally and figuratively.
Twenty-five
The next few hours passed in a blur for Taylor. Hunt refused to let the authorities interrogate her until she’d been checked out. The nausea subsided by the time they reached Universitäts Spital, but by then she was too exhausted to protest when he remained with her for the entire examination. A clean bill of health and a nasty lecture to get good rest were all the hospital offered.
Max and Neal waited for them outside the hospital, beside what was presumably a rental car. She looked around in surprise to see that the rain had cleared and it was already well after dawn. The air smelled clean and fresh; the light glowed a hazy, pale yellow of a canary diamond. Pretty.
“Okay?” Max asked, scanning her face as she and Hunt approached.
She gave him what felt like a wan smile. “I’m going to have to postpone that tractor pull I was so looking forward to.”
“Disappointing,” he said gravely. “Why not take a nap instead?”
“God, don’t toy with me.”
“The authorities contacted HQ,” Max told Hunt when all the doors were closed. “We answered what we could, no need for either of you to be interrogated. We’re free to go.” He opened the back door for Taylor. “In you get, beautiful.”
