Читать книгу Her Assassin For Hire - Danica Winters - Страница 14

Tracking a phone wasn’t as hard as a person thought. Zoey knew that just as well as he did, which was probably why she’d turned off her phone. Eli parked his car in the last spot he had gotten her signal. Just down the road was an abandoned car. Had someone picked her up? Was this the car she had been riding in? Had the car been dropped here in a nearly abandoned location in Nowhere, Montana, to mask her real location?

She was smart. No doubt about it.

With the hit out on Chad, it was no wonder that she was taking extreme measures to protect herself and her family.

At the same time, though, did she even know about the hit? It had only come down from the top a matter of hours earlier. He had refused to take the contract, but that didn’t mean that other independent operatives hadn’t taken on the job.

He should have told her about the contract. He should have gone out of his way to help her. But at the same time, their relationship had been the reason he had been forced to leave his last posting. He couldn’t get wrapped up with her again.

Yet, here he was...parked on a nearly deserted country road trying to jump headfirst back into her life.

The mind and the heart were truly different beasts.

If he did find her, he would tell her. He had to tell her about the hit on Chad. He didn’t know who had taken out the contract on her brother, but from the word on the street, it sounded like they were at odds with a Turkish crime syndicate called the Gray Wolves. The Gray Wolves were responsible for the death of Trish, but why they had continued to come after the Martins was something only Zoey could answer for him.

He looked around for any obvious place she might have gone, but aside from the abandoned car, there was little to go on. He’d made a series of phone calls to friends of his in the FBI and CIA. No one had any knowledge about where Zoey or the rest of the Martins were. One of his friends said that the last known location for Chad had been somewhere in Cairo. However, that had been nearly three months ago and made that information about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane. He’d thanked them, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was wasting time.

He found himself drawn to her. It was inexplicable, but from the moment they had met, they had had this intrinsic bond. Sometimes it was almost as if they were twin flames, one being able to read the mind of the other, and often that meant that they could also feel for what the other was feeling... And right now, that was terror.

He had to find her. He had to get to her. Even if she never knew that he was there, he had to make sure that she was okay.

Parking his truck, he made his way over to the abandoned car and peered into the window. Inside, mounted on the dashboard, was a detection device. Over the last decade, these devices had become more and more accurate, even to the point where they could pick up exact locations, and pretty much anything tech based. They were a hit man’s best friend.

It was odd how many people felt safe behind the anonymity provided by their cell phones. The general public didn’t realize how easy it was to hack into any phone call, any phone, any tablet or computer. Anything that put off a signal could be used against them. In many ways, this new generation of tech defense was part of the reason that crimes had started to go down on a national level. For most criminals, technology was above them. Now, it was only highly educated, highly trained tech wizards who could get away with high-level crimes.

Gone were the days of the old-time bank robberies that involved nothing more than a gun and a face mask. Sure, a person could still do it, but the chances were that by the time the perpetrators made it back to their house, the police would already be there waiting for them.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t petty crimes that went unprosecuted. Hardly, but it wasn’t because of law enforcement’s inability to get information, rather, it was often that the local officers couldn’t afford to handle crimes that didn’t warrant it. For example, why spend work hours on a car break-in if an insurance company would pay out for the damage and loss, especially when there was someone else being stabbed three blocks away? Life was irreplaceable, and insurance was there for a reason.

It was part of the reason that, in most large cities, officers didn’t even bother responding to misdemeanors. As it stood, the last figure he had heard was that eighty-six percent of robberies went unsolved—and that figure was of those that were reported. He shook his head.

It was no wonder that he had a job. People needed men like him, men who would take a stand against the worst of the worst...a man who was sworn to protect, albeit privately funded by those willing to hire him.

Then again, it wasn’t all about the money or he wouldn’t have been standing out here in the dark looking for a woman he had sworn to write off again and again.

He stepped back and took a look over the Chevy Malibu. It appeared to be a new car, maybe last year’s model. He didn’t really track cars; he was more of a truck kind of guy. That was, all except the new Charger Hellcats. Damn, he could really go for one of those. Zero to sixty in 3.4 seconds. In all the right ways, it reminded him of Zoey. Power and strength under the hood, and a body to match, but danger and mayhem was quick on its heels.

He patted his stomach. If he wanted to have even half a chance with her, now or ever, he was going to have to do even more sit-ups.

For her, he wanted to be perfect. Everything she could possibly want and need in a man—at least the man she had said she wanted in the days and nights they had spent together in the field.

He thought about the last time he had seen her. It had been the night everything between them changed... A night from which there may well be no coming back, but damn it...after seeing her in Billings, and seeing her face every time he closed his damn eyes, maybe he had to try. Perhaps they couldn’t or wouldn’t end up together. His life hadn’t been anything like some well-scripted romance, but maybe he could set things right and make sure that everything in her life was okay and she had started to heal—especially since she’d once again lost someone she loved when Trish had died.

He knew how close she had been with Trish. She was the only person that Zoey had ever seemed herself with—besides him. With her sister, she opened up and laughed...really laughed...the kind that made stars dance in her eyes and her cheeks redden.

Zoey was always beautiful, but when she really let herself go and laughed...damn, she was like a sunbeam that could burn away the clouds of anger and loneliness that settled into the valley of his soul.

He found himself staring at the red flickering bar on the Protection 1207i device mounted on the dashboard.

It was possible that she had been tracking him as he was tracking her. He certainly wouldn’t have put it outside the range of possibility. And maybe once he had gotten close, she had called “No joy” and bugged out. She was and had always been clever like that, capable of keeping him just close enough and yet just far enough away to keep herself safe.

He peered into the back seat, hoping to see anything that would definitely tie the car to her. There was no hot pink bulletproof dress, no luggage or bags of freebies from a weekend spent at a conference. Hell, there wasn’t even a stray straw wrapper.

He pulled the plate number on his phone. It was registered to a shell company out of the Caymans.

Just as he thought. This was the car of someone who knew it was going to be dumped—someone who didn’t want the car to be tied to them in any way.

But when he’d worked for STEALTH, they didn’t use the Caymans—or Chevys. Either things were changing, or this wasn’t actually Zoey’s drop car.

His stomach clenched. If it wasn’t Zoey’s car, then it had to be someone else’s...someone who was also tracking her...and it wasn’t a wet-behind-the-ears mercenary. They weren’t great, leaving the car here and all, but they at least knew the right end of the gun. Which meant that his longtime friends were being hunted, and they were in trouble.

He had heard word of their comings and goings with the Gray Wolves in Turkey, and Trish, but he didn’t know the ins and outs of what exactly had happened. Operations like theirs were always kept pretty close to the vest. But, given the fallout, they had to have known that hell was coming in a wave of highly paid killers. Killers without honor—killers that were nothing like him.

He shone his flashlight at the tracks on the dirt road. There were only tire tracks heading down the road and away from the highway. If he acted fast, maybe he could still find whoever had dumped the car.

Hopefully Zoey’s phone going black had nothing to do with whoever had left this car.

His mind raced with all the things that could be happening to Zoey right now, ranging from kicking the merc’s ass all the way to her tied up and moments away from death somewhere.

He ran back to his truck and, with a spray of gravel, raced off in the direction the tracks were going. Though he had no idea where the road led, or who it would lead to, he had to move. He had to save Zoey. He had to keep her safe.

Using Google Maps, he pulled up a street image of the area around him as he tried, and failed, to weave around the ruts and potholes that littered the dirt road. As he drove, a thin dusting of white snow skittered down from the sky, forcing him to slow down. It was almost as if there were some higher power that wanted to stand in his way, making what he hoped wasn’t a life and death situation that much more perilous.

The maps showed a private ranch less than a mile up on his left. Beyond was US Forest Service—public lands.

Crap.

If someone had kidnapped her, or taken her hostage, they very well may have taken her up into the mountains that hugged the valley. If they were up there, and it was starting to snow, it was more than possible he would lose track of them. A matter of a few minutes and a hard snowfall could cover any evidence of her location.

He tried to talk himself down off the ledge of panic. She always complained that he had a way of blowing things out of proportion and being overly dramatic. He could have almost sworn that her favorite thing to say to him had been, “The sky isn’t always falling, Eli.”

And oh, the look she always gave him when she said it.

He had to see that look again. He had to see her again.

The snowfall quickened, coming down in a blizzard of early season white, nearly blinding him thanks to his headlights. As he ascended a hill, his tire connected with a rut, sending his truck to the right and nearly striking the wooden fence post next to the road. He slowed down even though all he wanted to do was hit the gas and not stop until he saw Zoey. Ahead, not too far, was a streetlamp set in the center of a parking lot. It seemed out of place, like a stoic sentinel bravely holding a beacon for weary travelers.

Huddled around the parking area was a barn and, tucked in closer to the mountain, a ranch-style house. This must have been the ranch he had seen on the map. The place was buttoned up; the only sign of life was a deserted pickup parked haphazardly at the edge of the drive, a car behind it and a horse that was skittering back and forth at the fence line.

Zoey had always loved horses. But it seemed like a far stretch that the woman he had known would be settled down enough to buy a horse, live on a ranch and still have time to work with a military-grade weapons manufacturer with worldwide ties to create a line of ballistics gear—and to top it all off, combat Turkish terrorists. Damn, if she was living here, she had one hell of a life.

Unsure whether he should stop or not, he pulled under the light and shut off the engine. Snow landed on his windshield and melted, leaving a smattering of droplets of water as the only reminders of the unique beauty that had fallen from the heavens. It struck him how, in a single instant, something so special could simply be struck from existence.

He tried not to see it as a sign of anything that had to do with Zoey. She was fine. She was going to be all right. He was making something out of nothing.

She was probably inside the ranch house, having a cup of coffee and making plans for her next mission. That was it. He tried to control his thoughts as he stepped outside. The cold bit at his skin and burned his lungs as he drew in a long breath.

There was a rattle of metal on metal and a thud coming from inside the barn. He moved toward the noise. The barn’s door was open, but the lamp overhead made the darkness inside the barn even more abyssal.

As he grew near, there was the unmistakable sound of a round being jacked into a gun’s chamber.

He rushed toward the sound, pulling his Glock and flicking on his weapon’s light, being careful to keep out of sight. He took a moment, scanning the grounds in an attempt to secure the outer perimeter. His only witness was the horse.

Fear threatened to creep in on him as he moved behind the door. He channeled it, forcing it to submit into aggression. Whoever was inside this barn, whatever they were doing, it was going to come down to him or them. Kill or be killed.

His finger moved on the trigger guard, ready. The cool steel against his finger calmed him, centering his focus back to his objective.

He moved around the side of the barn, clicking off his light to stay undetected as he carefully slipped under the pasture fence. Most barns had a Dutch-style door in the back for horses and livestock to come and go. From that vantage, he could enter the scene undetected. As he hustled, the door came into view. Though it was cold, the top of the back door was open. The closed bottom wouldn’t provide a great deal of protection in the event of a firefight, but if he played his cards right, things wouldn’t go that far. If he was called upon to use deadly force, he felt confident that it would be one and done.

From inside, he heard a woman’s muffled groan. “Why?”

He slid open the lock on the bottom of the back door and wound his way inside. The sliding front door let in just enough of the streetlight so that he could see the edge of a silhouette ahead, but remain unseen in the back. He did a quick scan of the stalls as he moved silently to get out of the fatal tunnel created by the barn. The stall just behind the silhouetted man was open, creating the perfect place to hide. He rushed forward, hoping to remain in control and undetected.

As he stepped into the stall, the man in front of him kicked, his foot striking a body that lay on the floor. The woman moaned, the sound wet and gurgling, but muffled by the ground.

He prayed the woman wasn’t Zoey—that somehow, he had just come upon a random attack.

“Who sent you?” she asked.

This time, he recognized that voice, her voice.

He pointed his gun at the objective’s center mass. A light clicked on in the objective’s hands. A cell phone. He clicked away, typing something. His face was lit up by the blue light. From where Eli stood, he could make out the dark complexion of the man. He had a tribal-style tattoo that wrapped around his neck and disappeared beneath the dark shirt he wore.

“Where’s Chad?” a robotic voice sounded from the man’s phone.

It was all the confirmation that Eli needed.

As he pulled the trigger, the bullet ripped from his barrel.

The man didn’t even know what hit him.