Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (2 page)

She was no operative and Kell would soon find out about the idiot part, but he suspected whatever or whomever she was running from wasn’t what this op needed.

“It’s a woman.”

“We are dealing with the Mexican Cartel, Kell, not trying to get laid.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kell muttered, and Reid cursed at him and the next thing he knew Reid was coming toward him and it was easier not to argue.
Kell was usually the control freak in these situations, always had been, and since Reid was typically out of control, it all worked out.

But since Reid had nearly died on the last official op he was on, the roles had reversed. Kell had gone off looking for revenge like a one-man killing machine and it had taken a long while to reel himself back in.

Some days, he felt as if he’d never left the jungle, wore his knife on his arm both in the shower and while he slept, refused to let his guard down and generally felt as though he’d come unhinged and couldn’t be put back together properly. What’s more, he didn’t want to be. Running wild suited him, suited the missions he would be part of the foreseeable future.

It also made Reid nervous as hell—but then, Reid had been doing that to him for years, and payback truly was a bitch.

“I can take the shot,” Reid said, and the car was just the right distance for either man to do it … except the woman running directly at them had blown that.

If nothing else, they didn’t want any witnesses, and she’d sped up when she’d heard the sound of the car. But if he was honest with himself, the frightened woman seemed to bring out a chivalry in him he no longer wanted.

“Abort,” Kell said sharply and Reid cursed again as he hustled toward him in the dark. They’d been waiting for hours in position, sanctioned by two governments to take out Rivera.

But Cruz … that would’ve been a hell of a get.

A pipe dream now, since the woman was on target to run directly into him in less than five seconds.

Shit
. He scrambled up just in time for her not to trip over him. He caught her against him, instead, and she started fighting him, clawing and kicking, and he nearly lost his balance and rolled down the small embankment.

Fortunately, Reid steadied them both, and she stopped fighting for a second, enough for Kell to get a hold on her.

“Who the fuck are you?” Kell snarled in her ear, using cruelty to suss out whether or not she was a plant … and that made the woman struggle harder. He smelled the fear on her and decided that she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his grip loosened a little.

Whoever she was, she might as well be wearing a Kidnap Me sign and so what to do with her now wasn’t even a question—they couldn’t leave her here. She was prey for just about anyone in this country, including himself.

“Car. Down,” Reid said, and dropped. Kell did the same, had the woman on the ground in seconds, a hand covering her mouth as the car with Cruz flew by, spilling light over where they’d stood seconds before.

She was pushing against him and trying to bite his hand as Reid was telling him, “We’ve got to follow—catch them around the hill.”

It was risky … just the kind of mission Kell liked, but not with the add-along of a freaked-out woman. One who’d ruined their perfect shot simply by running in front of their target.

One who was someone else’s target, and Kell couldn’t risk her getting hurt if she was innocent.

To that end, he directed his next words to her. “Who are you running from?”

He took his hand from her mouth so she could answer, but she didn’t. He rolled off her and helped her to her feet. It was pitch black and she didn’t have NVs, so she was lost. She was breathing hard, her bag was on the ground somewhere by Reid’s feet and when she didn’t answer, he grabbed it and started to rifle through it, looking for ID.

Nothing. No wallet or passport or money. Just a change of clothing, a key to a motel room and a brush. And a loaded, illegal handgun—a quick swipe with his thumb had found the roughness where the serial number had been ground off and Kell swiftly unloaded the chamber and pocketed the bullets without her noticing, since she was now staring at Reid, who was muttering and cursing to himself while he checked maps on his phone. He handed her the bag and she focused her attention back on him.

She took it, wound it around her shoulder and, finally, she managed to speak. “Please—I need help. A ride …” She stopped talking, put her palms on her thighs and leaned over, trying to catch her breath.

“Do we look like a taxi service?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing out here alone?”

She ignored the question. “I need to get to the border now.” Fear kept her voice tremulous and no doubt her body shook from both it and the exertion.

“Not happening.”

Her breathing wasn’t getting any easier. “Please,” she said again. “I … need to know …”

“Honey, we have no time for manners—spit it out,” Kell told her.

“Are you … the good guys?”

He looked at Reid and then back at her. “That depends on whose side you’re on.”

She didn’t ask any more questions, and seconds later he heard the low rumble of an oncoming vehicle. “More company.”

“Ours? Or for her?” Reid asked even as he scanned with the NVs, and it really didn’t matter at this point because Kell hated this shit, did not want some girl—woman, whatever—needing his help when he was in the middle of an op.

Worst timing ever. And it took a lot to be able to say that.

“For … me.” She sat herself on the ground, drawing in harsh breaths and close to hyperventilating—and he and Reid hit the floor too. He pushed her down, lay over her for camouflage as the old truck rumbled by slowly, surveying the side of the road. Kell caught a glimpse of NVs before he put his head down and let them pass.

When the truck was far enough down the road, he moved so he was crouching over her and that’s when he noticed the bloodstain on the shoulder of her shirt. He tried to rouse her, but she’d passed out sometime after hitting the ground.

“She’s in shock,” he told Reid. He carried her over to the Jeep and put her in the backseat, checking under the denim shirt she wore and finding a flesh wound—a nick from a flying bullet. Reid was next to him, passing him a gauze pad to stop the bleeding until they could get to safer ground.

She remained curled up on the seat—her breathing was calmer now, but she was pale.

Kell turned to Reid. “We have a major problem—those guys were mercs.” He could recognize them better than most, being one himself.

“Beyond the fucked-up op and this woman?” Reid glanced between Kell and the woman currently passed out in the Jeep. “And it seems like they want her badly—so what the hell did she do?”

“That’s what we need to figure out.”

“First, we need to get the fuck out of here,” Reid said calmly. Too calmly, which meant … “Incoming.”

As bullets flew overhead, they dove into the Jeep, Reid in the driver’s seat and Kell in the back, giving the woman cover with his body and his rifle as Reid skidded along the rocky sand back road toward safety.

Kell turned to try to get a glimpse of who the hell was shooting, managed to fire off a couple of warning shots from his own rifle but didn’t bother trying to do more damage—because why waste ammo when you were firing into the dark—but even with the NVs, he could barely make out anything in front of his face.

“Could’ve just been kidnappers or drug dealers …” Or men trying to cross the border. Or any number of random occurrences that were oh so popular in this part of the world.

“We’re clear,” Reid said, but he didn’t slow down, nor did he head right to the safe house.

Kell stared down at the sleeping woman cradled in his lap and wondered what they’d gotten themselves into this time.

I
t only took a few moments for the men to decide they would finish the op tonight. There was only one second chance, and it would be at Rivera’s mansion, making the job infinitely harder—and in some ways, more appealing.

First, they needed to make sure the mercs weren’t circling back to tail them—and after half an hour, both were satisfied.

Reid spun the Jeep over the open back road as Kell readied himself for what their next steps would entail. Because this was their plan B and they’d prepped for this eventuality with the keen eye they’d been taught in the Army.

Rivera’s mansion was high on a hill, with more security than one man would ever need unless he was paranoid as hell. That paranoia was his weapon against other men like him—or gang members, all looking to take his place. The guards around Rivera’s property were always on the lookout for blitz attacks, well trained for displays of shock and awe, but Kell and Reid would give them something unexpected.

He closed his eyes and pictured the map they’d pored over earlier. Courtesy of Dylan, it had the most up-to-date approach possibilities.

Dylan Scott was former Delta Force and the man they currently worked with—and for. Dylan had been recruited by the CIA at one point and refused their offer, contending that he worked better alone. These days, he utilized the men he considered friends, like Kell and Reid, wanted them to stick together and
keep one another safe in this business of private-contracting black ops, off-the-book missions.

Reid stopped the Jeep at the bottom of the hill, outside the range of security cameras and in a circle of foliage that would do nicely to camouflage the vehicle and the woman inside it.

Kell stepped out of the car after handcuffing the woman’s wrists together and to the inside door handle. She didn’t move, although her chest rose and fell and her color was good when he flashed a penlight on her face.

Exhaustion, mixed with stress. Or maybe she had a concussion or something worse, because he didn’t know a goddamned thing about her beyond the fact that she was a major liability.

He turned away from her to concentrate. The wind rustled. A thin sheen of sweat covered his body and he flexed his hands inside the fingerless gloves he’d pulled on.

Wetwork was his speciality. He could do more with a ballpoint pen than most men could do with an AK-47. Close-quarters battle, silence, stealth. He’d spent the first half of his life being invisible in a crowd. He’d perfected that ability during his time in Delta Force, knew that the line between life and death was a fine one, and he readied himself now.

There was always the possibility of things going wrong. He and Reid had dealt with every contingency but Kell knew they’d be hanging the unconscious woman out to dry with no one to help her.

“If you uncuff her, she’ll run—no doubt straight into this op,” Reid said when he saw Kell look back at her for the millionth time. “She’s safest here.”

“Which isn’t safe at all.”

His friend shrugged. “We don’t even know why those mercs are after her. She could be worse than Rivera and Cruz.”

Reid was right, Kell knew that. But still, his protective instincts were all fired up, and no one was safe from them. “Why don’t you stay here?”

“To protect her?”

Kell didn’t answer that, because that wasn’t the only reason he wanted Reid out of danger. “I’ve got this.”

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Reid basically gave Kell the equivalent of the middle finger with his expression and took off up the hill, leaving Kell no choice but to follow.

He gave a final, backwards glance to the well-hidden Jeep and then moved forward, finding two dead guards along the way whom Reid had taken out soundlessly.

The guards had gotten cocky and it would be their downfall tonight.

Kell discovered that Reid had saved a couple of guards for him. They were watching the perimeter of the house from the west, but they were tired, and only focusing on what was in front of them, had not been properly trained—Kell could spot that lack easily.

Kell took down the first man quietly, so as not to alert the second. When the man slid to the ground with his neck snapped, his partner turned to Kell, who took him out efficiently with a pen to the carotid artery, all the while thinking of the destruction this gang of drug dealers and thugs had caused over the past months for the city’s residents. And now nothing
else mattered but getting this job done. He moved silently to the mansion, which was lit up like a Christmas tree. If there were guards on the roof, they hadn’t spotted him or Reid.

It was time to put the drug lords to bed for good.

This was his element—had been for a long time. As he left thinking behind, everything became easier. This was instinctive—the prowl, the hunt … even the kill had become as much a part of him as breathing.

He wove around to the back of the house—saw the basement windows half buried behind thick bars.

The glass wasn’t bulletproof, hence the crisscross of metal Rivera thought would keep him safe in the fire- and bombproof bunker.

Assholes should’ve gotten rid of the windows completely. It allowed Kell to see the targets sitting on a couch, drinking and talking. If he looked directly across the room from his position on his belly, he could see Reid, a mirror image to him.

Cruz and Rivera in one place—something big must be going down, because this was incredibly stupid on their part.