Kill Shot (16 page)

“How long from start to finish?”

“Anywhere from five to ten minutes is what
Logan said.” Gabe carefully pulled the dropper from the glass vial
and placed one drop on the exposed wires.

“Well, that’s rather anticlimactic, don’t
you think?”

“There’s nothing like the satisfaction of a
big boom,” he agreed.

Several car doors slammed from the street
side.

“We may get a big boom one way or another.”
Grace checked her clip and then moved back to the alley entrance.
She ducked behind the doorframe just as the wood splintered above
her head.

Gabe took position on the other side, and
Grace hunkered low against the wall. Something that smelled like
burning plastic reached her nostrils just as a barrage of shots was
fired into the open door. Gabe held up a small mirror, shielding
the glare with his hands so the enemies couldn’t pinpoint their
exact location.

“I see three,” he whispered. “Ten, two, and
three o’clock. All slightly downhill from our position.” The door
at the front of the building rattled as someone tried to get inside
and trap them from the other direction.

“Got it.” Grace scooted down so she lay flat
on her stomach. She waited until another shot was fired and she
could tell exactly where he was standing and what angle she needed
to fire. “Gotcha.” She leaned out slightly and fired. All she heard
was a groan in response.

“Hurry,” Gabe said.

Smoke started to fill the room, and she was
glad she was down on the floor. Breathing was almost impossible as
it was. More shots were fired at them, and she quickly leaned out
and fired back in quick succession.

They were already up and running by the time
the third body dropped to the ground. Gabe grabbed her hand and
pulled her with him down the alley. Shots fired behind them as they
dodged and weaved between dumpsters and trees. Gabe started the
Audi with the keyless remote, and they both dived into the car. He
already had the pedal pressed down and the car speeding through the
parking lot by the time she got the door closed.

“Holy shit. Did you see what happened to
that building? It practically melted around us.”

“Logan gets a raise,” Gabe said. He joined
the traffic along Cambridge Street and blended in perfectly with
the other cars. There was no sign of anyone behind them.

“Though I’m not too fond of the smell.”
Grace sniffed her clothes and grimaced. “Melted building isn’t
exactly my perfume of choice.”

“I’ll flip you for the first shower.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we just
share?”

“Why don’t we?”

Grace laughed as Gabe sped the rest of the
way back to the airport.

***

William Sloane leaned his head back against
the leather chair that sat behind his desk and groaned at the feel
of the wet mouth around his cock. He didn’t know the girl’s name.
Didn’t particularly care. She’d be paid for her time and her
silence, and if she was good enough, he’d ask her back.

He held her head in a firm grip under his
fingers and squeezed tighter as she whimpered with the pain. The
sounds of her discomfort brought him closer to the edge, and he
thrust against her mouth.

“Suck harder, you stupid bitch.”

He felt the release boil in his balls and
groaned as he pumped come down her throat. God knows he needed it
after the week he’d had, and it had been ten years since his wife
had given him a decent hard-on.

He pushed the girl back, and she fell to her
hands, gasping for breath at his brutal assault. He pulled an
envelope filled with money off his desk and threw it on the ground
beside her. His private line rang, and he took the time to zip
himself up and straighten his clothes before he answered.

“Be here tomorrow,” he told the girl as she
righted her own clothes. “Same time.”

He answered the phone, hoping whoever was on
the other end had good news for him.

“Hello,” he said.

“Mr. Sloane, this is Darius Cole at the
communications center. I’ve just sent out a team to the property
you own on Trowbridge in Boston. You told me to keep a special eye
on it, and sure enough, a couple of folks showed up there about
fifteen minutes ago.”

Sloane grabbed the whore’s wrist before she
could leave his office, and she squealed as he squeezed hard.

“What happened? Why didn’t you call me
immediately?” he asked.

“I’m sorry to say, sir, that two subjects
bypassed security and entered the building. I sent our security
teams out first, assuming they could handle the problem. Video
shows a male and female—not yet identified—set off some type of
device, and the building has been completely destroyed. They also
managed to kill three of the team I sent out.”

“I see,” Sloane said. His voice was soft and
deadly, and the strength of his rage caused his hands to shake.

“Tell Standridge I’m on my way to the site,
and I expect him to be there to meet me.” Sloane moved to hang up
the phone, but his man on the other end stopped him.

“That’s the other news I’m sorry to give
you, sir. The police and fire rescue were called to the property
you secured for him in Back Bay this evening. It seems that an
explosion destroyed the home, and Standridge was purported to still
be inside at the time. They’ll search for his remains once the fire
cools, but it doesn’t look hopeful.”

Sloane hung up the phone on his man’s
apology, his anger so all consuming he was afraid he might have
blacked out for a few moments. His heart thumped wildly in his
chest, and he threw the phone across the room, finding satisfaction
in the sound as it crashed against the wall.

The girl cringed and tried to move away from
him, but she just brought his attention to focus directly on her.
He backhanded her across the cheek and then did it again before she
had time to fall to the ground.

“Get up, bitch.” Her lip was split and bled,
and her eye was already swelling shut. “I said, ‘get up.’”

He pulled her up by the neck and threw her
against the desk, not caring as she landed hard against the objects
that littered its surface. Terror filled her eyes as he clawed at
her clothing. She was a whore—a receptacle for the rage that had to
escape.

She screamed as he thrust into her hard, and
he hit her again just to shut her up. Blackness filled his vision
as he pounded away, and his hands squeezed tight around her throat
until she stopped fighting back. He stiffened and came inside her,
and he didn’t even notice she was dead until he pulled out and fell
back into his chair.

His breath heaved, and his pulse slowly
returned to normal. He straightened his clothes and picked up the
phone to call his butler.

“Peters, I have a mess that needs to be
cleaned up in the office. Please see to it immediately.”

William Sloane grabbed the keys to his car
and slipped out the back door, leaving the dead whore to his
butler. He was going to look at the surveillance tapes and find
whoever was trying to thwart his plans. And when he found out who
they were, he was going to hunt them down like dogs and kill them
slowly.

“Well, you two look…rested.” Jack had his
feet propped up on the conference room table and his hands folded
over his stomach. He’d been waiting for Gabe to walk through the
door ever since he’d gotten the call that their plane had landed at
Heathrow.

“I didn’t know you missed me so much,” Gabe
said. “Your adoration is making me a little uncomfortable.”

“Up yours. Your ugly face is the last thing
I want to see.” He turned to Grace and gave her a wicked smile.
“Hello, beautiful. Did you miss me?”

“I could hardly think of anything else. What
happened to your arm?”

Jack sighed and let his feet hit the floor.
The sore ribs were a nuisance, and he did his best to ignore them.
“I ran into a couple of friends while you guys were off
globetrotting.”

“Oh, yeah?” Gabe asked. “Anyone we
know?”

“Not in the flesh. I was able to get a name
out of one of them. I’ve had Ethan doing a little background check
for me, and I think you’ll be interested in seeing what we’ve
found.”

“Let’s go then. I’ll put my stuff away and
meet you at Ethan’s.”

“I’ll take it,” Grace said, grabbing the
black bag he carried. “I’ve got to take mine anyway. See you in a
few minutes.”

Jack waited until she got on the elevator
before he spoke. “Things seem a little easier between the two of
you. I’m glad to see you scratched your itch. It’s not so obvious
now.”

“I wouldn’t say things are easier between
us,” Gabe said. “We’re still feeling our way. There are a lot of
things we have to work through.”

They waited for the elevator to come back
down and got on, hitting the button for the third floor, where
Ethan’s apartment was.

“Just be patient, my friend. At least she
still loves you.” Jack knew better than anyone what it felt like to
love and have that love thrown back unwanted. If Grace still loved
Gabe, then Gabe was sure to come out on top.

“I want you to keep an eye on Grace,” Gabe
said. “I’m worried about her. Really worried.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t want to be waist
deep in shit while we’re in Iran and have to worry about her too.
Just stay close to her if I’m not around. She might need you.”

“Is it her health? Her personality has
changed a bit. She’s harder than she was, and not as easy to laugh.
She’s not hiding her feelings as well as she once did, either, but
I haven’t noticed anything alarming.”

“She’s holding on by a thread. She’s got a
lot of guilt inside. And I have a feeling she hasn’t really given
herself the chance to grieve.”

“We can’t take her on a mission like that,
Gabe. You, of all people, know it as well as I do. She’ll be a
liability to all of us.”

“She needs to go, and I need to have her
there. All I’m asking is that you keep an eye on her.”

Jack shook his head as the elevator doors
opened and they stepped out. “I hope you’re not making a mistake,
my friend. But I’ve got your back.

“You guys have good timing,” Ethan called
out as they walked through his door. “Here’s our man.”

Ethan sat behind a black, U-shaped console
that dominated the middle of the room. Every part of Ethan’s
computer system was built into the console, and as Jack got closer,
he could see what looked like five or six separate screens
underneath the clear surface of the desktop. Ethan’s fingers
flitted across the surface of the desk with ridiculous speed, so he
looked like some sort of mad scientist, moving and shifting pieces
of information from one location to the other with just a touch of
his finger.

The first wall screen displayed an image of
a man Jack didn’t know, but he recognized the type. He was tall and
broad shouldered. Lots of muscle. His hair was buzzed short in the
picture, and his eyes were muddy brown and mean. He looked like a
SEAL at first glance, and the thought gave Jack a bit of unease
that one of his brothers could be involved in this.

“Definitely has a military background by the
looks of him.”

“You’d be right,” Ethan said. “Shawn Kimball
was USMC Force Recon with two tours of duty under his belt before
he retired. Sniper specialty. He was then recruited by Uncle
Sam.”

“You’re shitting me,” Gabe said. “He was
CIA?”

“It’s buried deep, but it’s there. He didn’t
do as good of a job at wiping his records as you did.”

Jack whacked Ethan on the back of the head
for admitting to Gabe that he’d been trying to poke through his
classified files. The kid definitely suffered from foot-in-mouth
disease.

Ethan rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry,”
he said to Gabe. “I was curious.”

“Right. So where is Kimball now?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.
Actually, it’s the twenty-million-dollar question. Kimball went
rogue in the middle of a mission to intercept millions of dollars
worth of museum-quality jewels from the Russian Federation while on
their way to China. No one’s seen Kimball or the jewels since. But
I found his Swiss bank account and another in the Caymans that both
have tidy sums in them.”

“So we can assume that Kimball is now for
hire,” Jack said. “A man who has those kinds of talents is
dangerous out on his own.”

“Who’s paying his bills now?” Gabe asked.
“Any luck with that?”

“Kind of.” Ethan fingers tapped another
pattern across the desktop and another screen came up on the wall.
“The Munich Exchange has made several deposits in his Swiss
account. On the surface it looks like a Wall Street brokerage firm.
They have dealings worldwide and offices in just about every major
trading center. No CEO of record, though. The Munich Exchange is
owned by the Darwin Corporation, which is owned by Führer
International. I can’t find a common name or a figurehead that
pieces all of them together. But when you put all three of these
companies into the computer, this is what comes up.”

Jack let out a long, low whistle. Someone
had an intense fascination with Hitler. A surge of adrenaline hit
his bloodstream and got his heart pumping. That was a cocky mistake
for their enemy to make. They were close to finding the bastard. He
could feel it.

Gabe leaned around Ethan and began scrolling
through the information with a practiced hand. “Ethan, I want a
full background check on every scientist involved with the original
Passover Project. I want to know everything about them, down to
what kind of toothpaste they used and every relative they had, no
matter how distant.”

Ethan blew out a breath and scrubbed his
hands through his hair. “Just so you know, that’s a massive
undertaking. Even for me. It could take weeks to put all of it
together.”