Read Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel Online
Authors: Kay Thomas
Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel
Personal Target
E
LITE
O
PS
—B
OOK
T
WO
KAY THOMAS
For Tom—thank you for making me laugh when life feels out of control, for loving me unconditionally, and for all the other things I can’t mention here.
Contents
An Excerpt from
White Collared Part One: Mercy
by Shelly Bell
An Excerpt from
Winning Miss Wakefield
by Vivienne Lorret
An Excerpt from
Intoxicated
by Monica Murphy
An Excerpt from
Once Upon a Highland Autumn
by Lecia Cornwall
An Excerpt from
The Gunslinger
by Lorraine Heath
November
Antón Lizardo, Mexico
“N
ICK
D
ONOVAN, YOU’RE
going to die!”
Nick felt the crushing impact, a burst of agony, and warm blood as bullets tore into his shoulder. More shouts echoed from down the hall.
He fought to catch his breath and think through the pain.
What the hell was going on?
He’d been sleeping after a back alley doctor patched him up, only to wake to this chaos.
A hulking shadow lumbering toward him registered at the exact moment Nick realized there was something in his own hand. He looked down and clenched his fingers. A huge sense of relief washed over him as his palm closed around the familiar handle of a Sig Sauer P226 9mm.
Thank God.
Someone had left him a gun.
He couldn’t see well enough to aim with much accuracy, but at the rate the shadowy figure was headed for him, aiming wouldn’t be an issue for long. A deafening concussion rocked the room, and a fireball whooshed in from the hallway. Nick rolled off his gurney to escape the conflagration, crashing to the terrazzo tile. Pain blossomed in his stomach and shoulder. As an IV line gave way, medical tape ripped hairs from the back of his hand, spewing blood everywhere.
Still, Nick clung to the Sig.
A smoky silhouette thrashed about on the floor, a few feet to his left. Fire licked at the cool tiles under them both, and more shots blazed around Nick’s head from the opposite direction. He crawled toward a massive stainless steel cabinet that had been toppled during the . . .
Jesus
. . .
the explosion?
For a fleeting moment he wondered if this was some kind of hallucination brought on by the medication he was taking for his injuries sustained earlier at Rivera’s compound, but the excruciating pain and the stench of burning chemicals told him this was all too real and happening right now.
Smoke continued to fill the room. He couldn’t figure out where the shots were coming from. The body on the floor near him quit moving.
Shit, shit, shit. What in hell was going on?
His right hand was going numb.
Where was everyone? Where was Marissa?
He had a vague memory of arriving at what looked like a veterinarian’s clinic, complete with dog cages in the yard. Bryan Fisher and Leland Hollis had been there. Someone must have carried him inside. After that everything went hazy and gray till he woke up alone in this insanity.
How long had he been out? Hours? Days?
He wasn’t going to be able to do anything to help himself much longer. Another man moved through the thickening smoke—head down, running low. The murky apparition was fifteen feet away when Nick wrapped his left hand around his right and fired twice. His fingers, no longer working correctly, kept sliding off the trigger, which was sticky with blood.
Even through the haze he could see that the shadow was Cesar Vega, the enforcer for the most lethal drug cartel in Mexico. Nick knew he’d hit him at least once. No way he’d missed at this range, despite his impaired vision and dexterity.
Cesar continued racing toward him like a freight train, promising certain death with a booming voice that sounded like a concrete mixer. Between the threats, Nick could hear Cesar cursing in Spanish as he thundered through the doorway, heedless of the crackling flames. The dealer must be coked up and operating on adrenaline, even as he was bleeding out.
Nick tried to check the clip on the Sig, but his right hand was now completely numb, and he was never more grateful to be ambidextrous. Once he was able to switch hands with the gun and wrap his left index finger back around the trigger, he was out of ammo.
Perfect.
Cesar’s progress slowed, the freight train was finally running low on steam, but the dealer still had an AK-47 with plenty of bullets. He stumbled and tripped. When the man fell, he was practically on top of Nick, and the impact was like being hit by a Mack truck. The room shook. Cesar’s assault rifle skittered across the floor.
This was Nick’s chance, but he couldn’t move. The stitches across his abdomen had torn when he rolled off the gurney. Blood seeped from new wounds at his shoulder. He and Cesar lay side-by-side; Nick’s own blood mingled with the drug dealer’s.
Cesar’s lips were bloodstained as he whispered just loud enough for Nick to hear. “They’re coming after yours, and you can’t stop them.”
The dying man laughed, his laughter changing to a cough as his damaged lungs filled with blood. Even so, he managed to rasp out one last threat. “It’s personal now. Your family’ll be dead in six weeks.”
The shocking words were meant to taunt, a final insult. Cesar never would have spoken if he hadn’t thought Nick was dying, too. Nick struggled to sit up, and Cesar’s eyes widened in surprise. Obviously, he hadn’t been expecting Nick to move.
Nick leaned close to the downed man’s ear. “My family will be fine. I always see to it.”
Cesar’s eyes closed for the last time, and Nick heard another deep rumble starting farther back in the building.
Damn.
He recognized that sound. He glanced at the door, seemingly a thousand miles away. He’d never make it.
He looked back at Cesar, dead now in a puddle of blood. The dealer’s dying threat galvanized him to action. He rolled toward the wall, wrenching himself to his feet. His vision swam and blood seeped into his eyes, but he hung on and moved his ass.
Whatever happened, he was getting out. There was no other option. Nick Donovan took care of his family.
Mid-December, ten days to Christmas
Thursday evening
Dallas, Texas
D
R
. J
ENNIFER
G
RAYSON
backed into the driveway and turned off the ignition. Her day from hell was almost over. She’d always enjoyed the last week before Christmas break, but not this year. Newly divorced and alone in a town she hadn’t lived in since college, Christmas felt like something to be endured—not celebrated.
As a Southern Methodist University professor, this week of final exams had been unmitigated insanity. Her graduate students were bug nuts crazy, obsessing over their final course grades and how they would affect internship opportunities. Lord, give her clueless college freshmen partying their brains out any day.
Maybe part of her was just plain depressed. Her final divorce papers had been in the mailbox earlier this week. Due to the financial strain dissolving a marriage induced, she’d had to cancel her sabbatical this spring for the Paleo-Niger Project and its fully intact Jobaria dinosaur. Withdrawing from the Russ Foundation’s trip had cut deeper than the divorce itself.
That a philandering husband was less disappointing than a cancelled paleontology dig certainly testified to the state of her marriage to begin with, even before Collin’s affair with his grad student and the bimbo’s subsequent pregnancy.
That last bit had particularly burned. Practically everyone in her department had received the birth announcement today from Collin and his “baby mama.” Jennifer slammed the car door a little harder than necessary.
Bah, this was crazy. It was almost Christmas. She stood in the driveway holding a bag of groceries and her huge handbag, waiting for the garage door to rise. Light from the full moon reflected off her windshield and illuminated the driveway. Breathing in the cool night air, she looked up at the stars through the bare limbs of a massive red oak.
Just because she was in a place where she hadn’t lived for ten years was no reason to be maudlin. Her single mom had died when Jennifer was quite young, and she’d grown up with an older spinster aunt. It wasn’t as if Christmas had ever been a huge treasure trove of happy holiday memories for her. Still, she vowed to start thinking of things to be thankful for this instant.
For starters, she was grateful to be house-sitting for her best friend, where she could have a change of scenery from her own place with its busted hot water heater and flooded living room carpet. Angela Donovan and her family were on a Mediterranean cruise for the holiday, meeting up with her husband’s brother Nick.
The lick of mind-numbing regret and lust hit Jennifer simultaneously. But since she was turning lemons into lemonade tonight, she focused on her thankfulness resolution and banished Nick Donovan—with his heart-stopping kisses and heart-breaking tendencies—from her thoughts. She refused to dwell on circumstances that could no longer be changed.
Thank God the salon trip from hell this afternoon could be remedied easier than those memories. The treat that was supposed to have cheered her up had been a bust. She should have known better. She didn’t even want to look at her startlingly white blonde hair. What had happened to “Give me a few highlights. Nothing drastic.”?
She looked like a bleached beach bunny gone bad, no offense to Angela, who had gorgeous platinum blonde locks. At least Jennifer could wear a hat until she got to another hairdresser who wasn’t colorblind and slaphappy with the chemicals.
Right now she just wanted a glass of wine, a good book, and a long soaking bath with an unlimited supply of hot water. That was something to look forward to.
Juggling the groceries and her purse, Jennifer reached for the light switch on the wall. As the overhead bulb flashed on, an arm snaked out of nowhere and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her against a hard, pungent-smelling body. A wickedly serrated knife flashed in front of her eyes. She dropped everything. The bottle of wine she’d bought made a cracking
splat
sound on the floor.
“Don’t move and don’t scream. You won’t be harmed.” The voice held a heavy Hispanic accent.
Onions and body odor overwhelmed her senses, along with the sharp scent of cabernet sauvignon. Her knees wobbled, and her stomach lurched. She nodded her head, and the man’s grip tightened.
“I said don’t move!” The hand at her waist crept up her ribcage, and his fingers brushed the underside of her breasts. She tried not to shudder.
What was happening?
Her mind raced to catch up.
This couldn’t be possible.