Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (15 page)

He hadn’t asked why she’d left without saying goodbye, although the inference was there. A chill shuddered through her despite the 110-degree temperature in the African airport, but she shook it off. Men in various modes of native attire stood beside the line of taxis, vying for customers. Eventually, she spied a sign with her name and
Russ Foundation
written under it.

She hitched her oversized purse and backpack more securely onto her shoulder and moved toward the prearranged driver with her only pieces of luggage. “I’m Dr. Grayson.”

The man gave her a toothless smile. “Excellent. Dr. Tedford Lang of the Russ Foundation hired me. I am to take you to your hotel.”

Thankful she wouldn’t be forced to hang out in the sweltering heat any longer, she nodded and allowed the driver take her backpack and load it in the trunk of a beat-up Mercedes sedan. As limo services went in Africa, it was above average.

According to Teddy, she was staying at the Hotel Gaweye, a four-star luxury hotel. She’d travelled with Teddy enough before to know what to expect of his wildly optimistic description of third world lodgings. She’d also checked online at JFK before she’d boarded and had seen the hotel booking website pictures, so she knew the Gaweye would be a bit more frayed around the edges than one generally expected when discussing four-star hotels. Still, if the room had air-conditioning and a bed, that was all she cared about. Although, hot water would be nice at this point, too.

The driver took off, and she sank back into the seat, ignoring the way her skin stuck to the cracked vinyl and grateful to let someone else be in charge for a bit. They’d ridden out of the airport and had just arrived in town when the driver pulled to a curb and stopped. Immediately, another man stepped off the sidewalk and opened her door, forcing his way into the cab.

Jennifer, startled out of her travel stupor, took one look at the man climbing into the car and scooted across the seat to the other door, intending to get out on the opposite side. That’s when she saw the revolver in his hand.

“Dr. Grayson, stay where you are.” The black man was big and muscular. The large gun in his left hand was particularly sobering, and it was aimed at her face.

She stopped with her fingers on the door handle. After Nick’s dire warnings, she’d read up a bit on Niamey travel tips while she’d been looking at pictures of the Gaweye. Carjackings were quite prevalent in Niamey and considered one of the more typical types of crime in the city, although this appeared to be no common carjacking. The man beside her holding the revolver knew her name. Icy tendrils of fear raced up and down her spine despite the heat in the un-air-conditioned cab.

The driver took off again, but had to stop immediately with all the traffic around them. Too late she realized that this must have been some kind of set up from the beginning.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

“I’ve no idea, but my services have been bought and paid for. Sit tight and you’ll be fine.” His accent was clipped, British. The hulking man smiled, but it looked more like the kind of grin a cat gives a mouse when it’s about to pounce. She got the distinct impression he was lying.

She studied the back of the driver’s head directly in front of her and called herself all kinds of a fool for ignoring Nick’s warnings. The man beside her, whoever he was, had found her with no trouble whatsoever. She’d walked straight to the sign with her name on it.

The cab crept slowly through the city traffic and shot through a small opening. Jennifer tried not to panic. Members of the dig projects had been told what to do if they were ever detained while travelling on behalf of the Foundation.

You cooperated and you waited for the cavalry. She wasn’t the least bit surprised to realize that this was much easier to read about and consider academically from the safety of one’s office, halfway across the world, than when it was happening to you in real time.

Jennifer didn’t plead or beg but sat rigidly in her seat, staring forward. That was why she didn’t see the other vehicle coming from the intersection until the last minute. The sound of screeching metal tore through the air as a small pickup truck barreled into them, T-boning the passenger side of the car directly behind the front wheel.

The pickup truck hadn’t been going fast, but the Mercedes still spun multiple times. Jennifer was thrown forward then sideways, striking the window and knocking into the man’s gun arm next to her. He dropped his revolver as the Mercedes came to rest against the curb on the opposite side of the street about fifteen feet forward from where they’d started.

They were facing in the same direction they’d been travelling, but the driver was slumped over the steering wheel. Blood covered the dash and windshield. The front passenger door was crumpled inward. The gunman scrambled for his weapon, but it was under the driver’s seat in front of her and out of the man’s reach.

She moved for the door handle again. Blood covered her fingers, and they slipped on the metal. Adrenaline kicked in as she fought for a way to get out of the car. Her forehead bled profusely where she’d hit the window. She grasped the handle, but her door was stuck, thrown out of line somehow in the accident.

She searched the street for the occupant of the pickup and froze when she saw Nick behind the Mercedes, stalking toward the car with a scowling expression and a gun.

Bryan was behind him in the street, and the truck was in the middle of the intersection at a distant right angle to the cab’s bumper about twenty feet away. Jenny’s breath caught in her throat when she saw both men were pointing their huge handguns directly at her. It took an uncomfortable moment longer than she liked to realize that they weren’t pointing the weapons at her, but at the man beside her in the backseat.

The gunman saw Nick and Bryan seconds after she did and quit reaching for his own revolver. Instead, he started trying to open his passenger door on the street side of the cab. His door was jammed shut from the impact.

Her would-be carjacker lifted his hands in the air as Nick approached the Mercedes. Bryan came around to Jenny’s door on the curb side while Nick leaned into the opposite window with his gun pointed at the man who’d tried to kidnap her.

“Get out, Jenny,” Nick ordered. The pet name wasn’t comforting at all right now, perhaps because she didn’t recognize the man using it. He stared hard at the blood on her forehead before skewering the gunman with his glare.

“I can’t get out, my door’s stuck,” she said.

Nick nodded, but his gaze was completely focused on the man seated beside her. “Hollywood.”

“Got it,” said Bryan, slipping his weapon into a shoulder holster and prying open her door.

The damaged metal made another horrific screeching sound. Bryan grabbed her big purse and held out his hand to her. Nick leaned through the window, still staring into the face of the man who’d held her at gunpoint. She was fixated as well. Nick’s eyes were dark and expressionless, vastly different from the man she thought she knew.

“Who sent you?” asked Nick.

The gunman shook his head.

“Who sent you?” Nick repeated the question, and his voice was cold—so cold. He said something else under his breath that Jennifer couldn’t understand.

The man started talking, then weeping. Bryan grasped Jennifer’s hand and pulled her out of the car. She was glad she couldn’t see Nick’s eyes anymore.

“You okay?” Bryan touched her cheek.

She shook her head. She wasn’t okay at all.

“Let’s go.” He took her arm, and she started to follow him.

“Wait. I need my backpack.”

Bryan glanced at Nick and at the people gathering around the accident scene.

“Leave it,” said Nick.

“No!” she fairly shouted. Her dig pack held items she couldn’t replace here in Africa, plus almost every material thing she had left in the world was in it.

“Nick?” Bryan asked.

He stared at her a long moment. “Dammit. Yes, okay, get it. But hurry. The police will be here soon. They can’t stop a drug deal, but a car accident will bring the whole force out in record time.”

Bryan moved forward to the driver’s window and ignored the dazed cabbie who was just coming to. Hollywood leaned in to grab the car keys from the ignition. He popped the trunk. It opened with surprising ease considering the logistics of the truck’s impact.

Bryan immediately had her pack on his shoulder along with the massive purse. He tugged on her arm again. “We have to go, Jennifer.”

Sirens sounded in the background. Nick was talking quietly with the man who’d forced his way into her cab. Bryan was helping her into the truck when gunshots rang out. Shoving her to the floor beside the bench seat, Bryan pulled his gun from his shoulder holster. The
pop pop pop
of bullets sounded surreal on the rooftop of the pickup.

Are they shooting at me?
The onlookers who’d gathered screamed as more shots were fired. People scattered.

“Nick?” Bryan called out, and Jennifer cowered on the floorboard. She’d seen the Mercedes’s window breaking, so very close to Nick’s head. Now she could only hear the gunshots. Somehow that was even more frightening.

“Nick?” Bryan shouted again over another volley of gunfire coming from somewhere above them. Bryan ducked behind the truck’s open driver’s side door, trying to cover Nick and spot the sniper. Still more shots rang out, hitting the bed of the pickup.

“I’m okay,” Nick called. “Shooter’s on the building in front of the cab, top floor.” They might have been talking about the weather for all the emotion that came through in the words.

Jennifer watched Bryan nod, stand, and take four precise shots. From the floorboard she looked through the truck’s windshield as a body tumbled off the three-story building on her right. He’d been much closer than she’d realized. She moved up on the seat and watched Nick race from the cover of the back of the cab to the fallen shooter. He bent down, appearing to search the man’s pockets.

The sirens were closer. The street was deserted, but it wouldn’t be for long, once people realized the shooting had stopped.

“Nick, we gotta go!” Bryan handed Jennifer a T-shirt from off the dash. “Not sure how clean that is, but it should stop the bleeding.”

Puzzled, she stared down at the shirt.

“For your head,” he said.

She reached up to touch the moisture on her cheek and forehead. She’d forgotten about her cut in all the confusion.

“Nick! Come on, man!”

“Just a minute!”

Bryan sat behind the wheel and shook his head. Jennifer focused on watching Nick flip the shooter over. The broken body was so very limp. She swallowed a lump in her throat and blotted at her forehead. Finally, Nick raced to the truck and climbed in beside her.

Sandwiched between the two men, she felt safer than she had in two days. That was until Nick turned to her. The palpable fury on his face had her shrinking back into Bryan’s shoulder as they sped away from the carnage.

Nick stared at her for another long moment, his eyes no longer expressionless and dark but filled with a fire she couldn’t name. He took the T-shirt from her hand. His jaw tensed when he cleaned the blood from her cheek and eyebrow.

“I’m so—” she started.

“Don’t—” he interrupted. “Not one goddamn word.”

She could see that he was fighting to regain his composure, so she kept her mouth shut. Still, his fingers on her face were incredibly gentle as he wiped her cheek. He took a bottle of water from the pocket in the door beside him and wet the T-shirt.

“What the fuck was that, Hollywood?” Nick’s hands were steady, but his voice broke on the question.

Bryan shook his head. “No idea.”

Nick took a swipe at drops of blood spattered on her arm. “Whoever it was killed the guy in the backseat of the cab before I could get any info. He wasn’t carrying ID.”

Jennifer sucked in a deep breath. She hadn’t seen that.

“Shooter hit this pickup, too,” said Bryan.

“Pretty sure the guy was Hispanic. No wallet on him either, but he did have a distinctive scorpion tattoo.”

Bryan leaned forward to look around Jennifer. “What kind of tattoo?”

“Scorpion wrapped in barbed wire.”

Bryan turned back to the road, his mouth set in a grim line.

“Tell me,” said Nick.

If possible, Jennifer felt the tension ratchet up even more in every part of Nick’s body that was pressed against hers on the narrow bench seat.

“Each of Ernesto Vega’s lieutenants have scorpion tats with a raised tail. Full color in red, blue, and yellow, surrounded by black barbed wire. It’s their badge of honor,” said Bryan.

“You think they followed her here? Christ. What is going on?” Nick’s voice was still ragged, but his hands remained tender as he pulled Jennifer’s hair back to wipe away the blood that had dripped down her neck.

He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. She shuddered at the contact.

“What did the guy in the cab say?” asked Bryan.

“Not much. He was too scared. The headshot came as he was telling me they’d kill him if he talked.” Nick shrugged. “Turns out they shot him anyway.”

Bryan drove just under the speed limit through the streets of Niamey, past the Gaweye and the National Museum.

“I have reservations there,” Jennifer said as they passed the hotel entrance.

“I know,” said Nick. “So does everyone in Niamey, apparently. We’re going to a different hotel. Bryan and I have already checked in.”

“Oh,” she murmured.

How do they know? Why would anyone care?
She didn’t dare ask either of these questions since this was the first time Nick had spoken to her in the truck without growling.

He reached into the glove box and retrieved a small, red zippered pouch that turned out to be a remarkably well-supplied first-aid kit. Within two minutes he’d disinfected the cut on her forehead and applied a bandage, all without making eye contact.

Afterward, he zipped the pouch and handed the kit to her. “Hang on to that. We’ll clean you up better back at the hotel.”

He started unbuttoning his shirt. For some reason, that frightened her more than the blood he’d just wiped from her face, and had her asking questions, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t.