Guardian Agent (5 page)

He appreciated the vote of confidence. Scanned the room. “Where is the aunt?”

All he got were funny looks. “The aunt from Arkansas,” he clarified.

“Spending the winter with her sister in Florida,” Tekla said.

Thank God. The last thing they needed in the middle of this volatile situation was another civilian.

“When are the men coming?” Tekla asked Jasmine.

She shot a questioning look to Gabe.

He glanced at his watch. “About forty minutes.” As a gesture of goodwill, he tucked his weapon away. “She needs help.” He nodded toward the younger sister.

Jasmine rolled her eyes at him. “Why did you think I came to you?”

“Didn’t have a chance to ask, with you trying to scratch my eyes out and all that.”

Tekla shot a dark look at Jasmine.

“I can’t do this alone, okay?” She pulled a bottle of water from someplace and handed it to her sister before looking back at her brother, her eyes begging. “You need as much help as Mandy does. We can’t just hang tough. It’s gone beyond that. I can’t fix this.”

The quiet desperation in her voice touched Gabe’s heart. She’d been surviving with no resources, no support, in a foreign country, trying to save her brother and her sister. And the thing was, she’d done it. She’d taken care of them. Evaded an entire commando team. Risked her life, putting everything on the line when she’d come to him.

“I’ll help.” Hell, that had been a forgone conclusion probably from the moment he’d caught her on the roof and first faced her spirit and courage, first realized that something might be off with the op. “You turn yourself in to me,” he told Tekla, “and I’ll make sure your sisters will be safe.”

“Absolutely not.” Jasmine shot to her feet with a look of betrayal on her face. “I brought you here to help my brother escape.”

“Your brother made some bad choices. He’s going to have to face the music for that, but the rest of you don’t have to get hurt.”

“You don’t understand anything!” she yelled suddenly, wrapping her arms around her slim body. She began to pace, throwing desperate looks at her brother.

“Then tell me what happened.” Gabe turned to Tekla. “If there’s a rational explanation for what you’ve done, let’s hear it.”

“The less you know, the safer you are.”

“Like your sisters?” he snapped. “Do you know what a miracle it is that they’re still alive? How long are you prepared to gamble with their lives?” Gabe caught himself and toned it down a notch. “If you don’t trust Brent and his crew, I got connections I can call on. I can turn you straight over to the U.S. authorities. The FBI, even.”

“This thing goes too high. Brent has a backer. Someone in the government.”

Gabe considered the possibility and the implications. Brent was one of two dozen team leaders at a fairly small private security company that specialized in overseas missions. The contract to retrieve Jake Tekla had come from the government that couldn’t send military force after the man into a sovereign country like Italy. Maybe in the Middle East they could have justified something like that, but certainly not in Europe.

The U.S. government didn’t want to get local law enforcement involved, at least that was the way Brent had explained it to Gabe when he’d been hired on. A rogue American soldier, a killer loose wouldn’t have inspired much confidence in the U.S. And the Italians were already wary of military presence in their country, especially since the cable car accident a few years back when a U.S. jet flew too low, cutting the cables, sending twenty people plunging to their deaths.

So sending a private outfit after Tekla and keeping the op under wraps had made sense when Brent had first explained it. But, apparently, Brent and Tekla had a shared past in Lahedeh, and it sure looked like Brent had a private agenda where catching Tekla was concerned. What were the chances that his team just
happened
to get the government contract?

Maybe Brent did have someone somewhere, making sure the contract went his way.

Too many unknown elements. Too much to lose. The op wasn’t entirely right, but Tekla wasn’t innocent, either. Gabe didn’t want the man’s family to come to harm, but he drew the line at aiding and abetting a killer.

He looked the guy straight in the eye. “I need to know about those three men you killed.”

Chapter Seven

“How about we step out into the hallway?” her brother asked Gabe.

Jasmine opened her mouth to protest, but Gabe said, “I think your sisters have a right to hear this. I think they should get a vote in what happens.”

She gave him a slight smile, her heart softening. She liked that he was treating her and her sister as equals. She liked the way he looked at her, a
lot
differently than he’d looked at her ten years ago. As if he actually
noticed
her now. Way too late, but definitely flattering.

Man, she’d been crazy about him. Well, that ship had sailed. She wasn’t going back to live on Obsession Lane. She’d embarrassed herself over him enough for a lifetime back in the day. Every email she’d sent to Jake had at least one question about whether he’d seen Gabe again, and if so, how he looked, had he mentioned her.

Thank God, this time around she was a lot more mature and a lot smarter. She was
not
going to develop any kind of crush on him again. Although, if he managed to save them, she might—
just might
—forgive him for tying her down and drugging her.

The two men stared at each other.

She knew how difficult it would be for Jake to trust someone after all they’ve been through. He had a lot of pride. And he’d always shouldered all the responsibility for the family. He
hated
to ask for help. He always wanted to fix everything alone.

But he also always did the right thing.

“All right.” The tight set of his jaw betrayed that he was only doing this because he had no other choice. He lowered himself to sitting and set his gun down at last.

Gabe acknowledged the gesture with a nod. “Let’s start with what happened in Lahedeh. What were you and Brent doing there?”

“We were still looking for Osama at that point. My team—Brian, Greg, Eric and I—went down into the water cistern. We found two locals down there with these huge terra cotta jars. They got Brian before we got them, and injured Eric. Greg called in the medics. They were there pretty fast. I knew one, but not the other.”

“Brent,” Gabe put in, his face clouded.

Jake nodded. “Greg and Brian were pretty tight, from the same town and all that, enlisted together. So Greg was ticked that they killed his buddy. He started pumping more bullets into the dead locals. I told him to knock it off before someone got hit by a ricocheting bullet. So then he starts kicking over the jars. Or tried. They were too heavy. He knocked the lid off one… I’ve never seen that much gold.”

“What gold?” she asked the same time as Gabe did.

“Some warlord’s hoard. Worth in the millions.”

Her blood pressure spiked. “Our lives were destroyed because of money? That’s the big secret you couldn’t give up? I thought it had to do with national security. Are you kidding me?”

For the first time in her life, she really,
really
, wanted to hit something.

“Eric was the team leader. He sealed the jars, told us this was all confidential. Word couldn’t get out or we’d have the warlord’s private army after us, plus all the locals and treasure hunters. He took charge. Later he told us that the treasure was transported to the National Museum in Kabul.”

“Except it wasn’t,” Gabe put in.

Jake shook his head. “Last day I was in Afghanistan, I had a couple of hours to kill in Kabul and a cute private I wanted to impress. I thought I’d take her to the museum, show her the gold and tell her the part I played. See how far that gets me.”

She rolled her eyes. Her brother had a way with women, no doubt about it. He definitely had the Casanova gene, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. She hated to see him like this, sick and weak. That he couldn’t protect them about killed him, too. He was too used to being the tough guy, a warrior.

“They never heard of the gold.” He adjusted his bad leg. “So I tried to call Greg when I got back home. He was dead. Friendly fire.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Called the medic I knew. Friendly fire again. Couldn’t track down the other guy. Figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.” He took a slow breath and shot an apologetic look to Jasmine, his eyes filling with regret. “That was a mistake.”

* * *

Gabe watched as Jasmine wrapped her arms even tighter around herself and stared at a spot in front of her feet, all emotion sliding off her face.

He wanted to know what happened to her after her brother had first gone into hiding, but Mandy had slumped over while they’d been talking, and that worried him. She didn’t seem fully aware of her surroundings anymore. They had to take care of Mandy before they could move out of here.

He stepped forward. “We have to bring this girl’s fever down.”

Jasmine looked at her sister then launched into action, shaking off whatever dark weight had been sitting on her shoulders. “There’s a tub in one of the other rooms. We could bring cold water up from downstairs.”

“Do you have any buckets?”

She hurried to the corner and pulled two five-gallon paint buckets she probably had picked up at a construction site.

He took those from her. She grabbed a chipped pot from the windowsill and led the way.

He could tell downstairs that the water to the building had been shut off at one point but someone, probably Jake before he’d been injured, had rigged it. He filled the buckets and she filled the pot, then they started up the stairs. The drug seemed to be wearing off. She no longer swayed with every step.

“What happened back in the U.S. before you came here?” He wanted to help, but to do that, he needed to see the full picture.

She wouldn’t look at him.

He knew he should let it go, but something deep inside him demanded to know. He followed her into a smaller room and dumped the water into the tub, caught her by the arm as she turned to go back. “Jasmine?”

She avoided his gaze, a haunted look coming onto her face. “When they couldn’t find Jake, they came after us to draw him out.”

He waited, cold tension gathering in his stomach as he wished he knew what to do for her, what she needed from him. With the work he did, his relationships with women had been always superficial: quick and easy. But he wanted to give something more to
this
woman, something real, something she could hold on to.

His jaw clenched with frustration. “Jasmine?”

“Mandy had some emergency junior prom planning meeting, so she had to stay after school, thank God. I was home alone.” She swallowed hard.

He put the empty buckets down and gathered her into his arms without giving her a chance to resist. “Who?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice broke. “They took me and kept me tied up in a basement to draw Jake out.”

No wonder she’d fought his restraints so violently. If he’d known— “I’m sorry.” He bent to rest his chin on the top of her head.

And, little by little, she relaxed against him.

He wanted to ask what they’d done to her, but he was afraid of hurting her by dragging up the past. So he simply held her until she pulled away.

“Jake came. He got us out of the U.S.” She moved toward the door. “We better get Mandy.”

He put two and two together halfway down the hallway. “These were the two civilians Jake killed in the U.S.?”

His opinion of the man rose a couple of notches. So there
was
a good explanation for those kills. Of course, the death of that army captain still remained unexplained.

The empty pot slipped out of her hand, her reflexes probably still not one hundred percent, and she bent to retrieve it. Her top rode up her hips, revealing a strip of skin. Two half-moon-shaped scars peeked out at Gabe.

“Did you get hurt on the roof?” He winced, hoping he hadn’t been too rough on her when he’d brought her down.

She yanked on her top to cover the spot. “Old stuff. It doesn’t matter.”

He stilled. “Did those two men do this to you?”

A grief-stricken expression came onto her face, making him wish he hadn’t asked. “Sorry.” He was such a damned idiot sometimes. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

She drew a shaky breath. “I don’t. Not even to Jake.” She watched him for a second. “But I want you to know what kind of men Brent works with.”

The tone of her voice almost made him wish she didn’t.

“One of them liked to come down to me while his buddy was sleeping at night. He would pull my shirt up or my pants down…” She swallowed. “He liked to bite me.”

Human teeth marks, he recognized the scars now and the gruesome images in his head filled him with fury.

“He got real excited if he drew blood. Sometimes he touched himself.” She looked away.