Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (19 page)

“Down!” he shouted. “Gun! Get down!”

He pulled his Sig Sauer, even though the range was impossible. He didn’t fire. There were too many people in the hotel between him and the shooter. The soft
psfft
of bullets hitting the porch kept time with the rhythm of his feet on the stone walkway.

He landed on the stairs and hit Jenny at a full run, tumbling backward with her in his arms over the railing of the porch in an eerie repeat of their flight off the steps of her home in Dallas days earlier.

He turned as they struck the ground and Jenny landed on his chest with an
umph
, knocking the air out of him. The pain from the fall seventy-two hours ago blossomed once again in his chest, but he ignored it and scrambled out from under her. Bryan opened the bungalow door with his backup Beretta Tomcat and no shirt, staying well behind the threshold for cover.

Still trying to catch his breath, Nick studied Jenny before he stood up. She looked okay—looked more than okay with her robe askew. The sight would have been distracting as hell if someone wasn’t trying to blow their heads off. She was hidden from the shooter by the bungalow. Nick was the one most exposed as he peered over the edge of the porch floor, still holding his weapon.

A maid coming up the walk from next door stared at him for about three seconds before she started screaming. She’d obviously seen Nick’s Sig and the tumble off the porch. The gun barrel in the hotel window was no longer visible. With the silencer, the only ones who’d heard the shots hitting the porch were Bryan, Jenny, himself, and possibly the maid.

“Y’all okay?” called Bryan over the caterwauling housekeeper.

Jenny glanced at Nick before answering. “Yeah, but we landed in . . . God, I don’t know what. Whatever it is, it stinks to high heaven.”

Nick noticed the rotten stench of river gunk for the first time. He’d been so scared when he saw the suppression barrel with Jenny fully exposed on the porch that he hadn’t been aware of the nasty smell till now. Jenny’s voiced sounded strong, and he smiled despite the bleak situation.

“The river can produce some interesting stink here,” said Bryan. “No problem. We’ll get you into the shower in just a few.”

As unreasonable as it was, Nick didn’t like hearing Hollywood talk about getting Jenny into a shower. The idiocy of that thought hit him immediately.
Christ.
Had he hit his head in that dive off the porch?

“You okay?” asked Bryan.

Nick finally had his breath and hopefully his wits back when he realized Hollywood was waiting for an answer. “Yeah, I’m getting damn tired of this though.”

Bryan snorted a laugh. “I hear you. Did you see the guy?”

“Third floor, west end of the building. Curtains were blowing out the window.”

“Okay, yeah, I see it now,” said Bryan, stepping out from behind the doorway. “That window just closed.”

“You think he’s gone?” asked Nick, standing up straight. The maid quit shouting and took refuge in the bungalow she’d just cleaned.

“If he’s got any sense he will be.” Bryan had to know they were too far away to make a difference in chasing after the shooter, but he took off for the hotel anyway. The man had definitely been a serious runner at one time in his life.

Barefooted and with no shirt, Bryan called back over his shoulder as he ran. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, our car is a dark blue Jeep on the west side of the parking lot. Keys are under the floor mat.”

Nick shook his head. Bryan wouldn’t catch the shooter, but Nick understood he had to try. It wouldn’t matter if the would-be assassin wasn’t a professional. The Keystone Kops from the hotel would be challenged to figure out what had happened.

Even without the maid’s screams echoing across the property, security would be arriving any minute. He and Jenny had to get out of here tonight. If this was the cartel, they seemed to have an extraordinarily clear bead on where she was at all times. They also seemed to be exclusively focused on her.

The shooter had had a clean shot at Nick on the path and hadn’t taken it. Bryan’s news about the contract on Jenny appeared to be accurate. Still, nothing about this made sense.

“Jenny, go get cleaned up. And gather up your things.”

“Do I have time for a shower?”

He looked at the muddy gunk splashed across her robe and legs. There was more river crud under the robe. He knew because he’d had his hands all over her and the wet goop when they’d gone off the porch and landed in the soggy mess. For just a moment his mind flashed to what else was under her robe besides mud, but he immediately shut that train of thought down. “Yeah, just make it snappy. We’re about to have company.”

“The local police or hotel security?” she asked.

“Only hotel security if we’re lucky. I might be taken to police headquarters, but I’ll be back soon. Get packed, and be ready to leave. Wait.” He looked at her and at the gun he was about to put in his waistband. “Come here.” He pulled her to him when she stopped a couple of feet away. He tugged her into a hug before she could protest and pressed the Sig into her hand. “Can you shoot?”

“Depends on how close the target is.”

That would have to be good enough.

“Take this.” He looked over her shoulder. Security wasn’t on their way down to the bungalows yet, but there was a great deal of activity around the pool area as several guards rushed out of the main building. “Security will just confiscate it if I have it. Lock the door and secure the chain behind you. Don’t let anyone in except me or Bryan.”

She pulled the weapon into the fold of her robe as she pressed herself to him and kissed him with the same abandon she’d had an hour ago. He wasn’t sure what that kiss was about, but at least there’d be no argument about his accompanying her to the dig site. Thank God for small favors. He watched the guards as she pulled away and walked toward the porch, never looking back.

All the activity was still up by the pool, but it would be moving this way soon. He had a couple of options. Dumb tourist seemed the most expedient way out, but he was going to need some help to pull that off.

He hit the speed dial on his phone for Marissa Hudson, and she answered on the second ring. “Good Lord, Nick. What the hell? I just talked to Leland a couple of hours ago. You’re in Africa?” Her husky-sounding voice was rough with sleep and sounded irritated.

Nick managed to irritate Risa on a regular basis, but she’d still come through for him, even if it was the middle of the night in Texas. He glanced toward the hotel. The guards were moving past the pool area and hustling along the path toward him. He heard the door to the bungalow close.
Good.
Jenny was now safely inside.

“Yeah, I’m here, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to be arrested. Can you work some of your magic from afar?” he asked.

Risa made an unhappy sound on the other end of the line. “Let me see what I can do. I’ve got a contact at the embassy there in Niamey. Don’t you and Bryan remember what flying beneath the radar means? It means you keep our butts out of hot water with the locals.”

Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Risa had contacts everywhere, and she knew how to use them. She was the moneyed half of AEGIS with a family that was deeply involved in politics. She’d bitch about it, but she was a master diplomat. And AEGIS needed one, given the messes they made from time to time getting citizens in and out of other countries through extraordinarily unofficial channels.

“Yeah, well. That’s why I work for AEGIS. Nobody worries so much about the politics.”

She snorted a laugh. “No,
you
just don’t worry about the politics. Where’s Bryan?”

“He went after the shooter.”

“Not the wisest course of action at this point. Gavin told me you were all staying together.”

Nope, not with Bryan checking out Yarborough leads.
But it wasn’t Nick’s place to out Bryan on that.

“We’ll be okay. I’m taking Jennifer on to Ingal and the dig site.”

“What about Bryan?” Risa asked.

The guards were almost to him, and they were all holding RAP-440 handguns. Nick wasn’t going to answer Risa’s question now. It seemed the easiest way to stay out of trouble. “I’m hanging up and surrendering to the hotel security guys. Get me out this, Risa, ’kay?”

“It’d serve you right if I let you cool your butt in an African jail overnight.”

“Yeah, but you won’t. You love me too much.”

Her whiskey-coated laugh echoed in his ear. “I sure as hell do not. But I don’t want Jennifer Grayson to pay for your mistake, so you just cooperate till I can get everything squared away.”

“You got it.” Nick hit
END
on the call as the head security guard started shouting.

Chapter Seventeen

Wednesday evening

Niamey airport

T
WO HOURS LATER
Jenny sat beside Nick in a single-engine airplane looking down the same runway she’d landed on earlier that afternoon coming from New York. The world had taken on a surreal sense, and she’d lost count of how many times someone had tried to kill her in the past week. That, combined with her misery over having told Nick about the miscarriage, made the evening seem like a bad dream she couldn’t wake from.

Hotel security had taken Nick away immediately after the shooting. She’d watched out the window of their bungalow as the guards waved guns and shouted at him, but he’d been back less than an hour later. His AEGIS employers must have powerful connections. He said he’d never been taken farther away than the hotel security office before someone had called from the U.S. Embassy. The Grand Hotel du Niger management had even apologized for harassing him and ended up comping the cost of their bungalow.

“What about Bryan?” she had asked when Nick returned and insisted they leave immediately.

“Bryan can take care of himself. Are you packed?” And with that they’d headed back to the Niamey airport. She’d had no idea where they were going, but she’d slipped into the Jeep at the hotel as Nick had directed, staying silent even as he drove to a secluded hangar by the airfield.

“Bryan arranged a private plane for us earlier. I’m flying us out of here.” He hauled their luggage out of the back of the vehicle and headed toward a small plane on the runway.

Of course he was piloting the plane. He could do anything apparently. After they’d boarded the four-seater aircraft and settled into their seats, Nick handed her a headset.

“It’ll be easier to talk with these. Blocks some of the noise, too,” he said.

She put the noise-cancelling headphones on, surprised at the gentle hiss of dead air that sounded as if the volume had been turned down on a television. All kinds of activities were taking place around them, but she heard none of it in the headset.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked.

Nick’s lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him. She stared for a moment before realizing he was most likely on another channel talking to the tower. He turned, and suddenly his voice was clear and directed at her. “To the Paleo-Niger Project site.”

Jenny raised her eyebrows. “Directly to Ingal?” she asked, peering at him in the dim glow of the cockpit controls. She didn’t mean to sound skeptical. She was just so surprised, she didn’t know what else to say.

Nick’s face was thrown into shadow by the uneven lighting, but she saw him nod. “We could go to Agadez and drive in, but there’s a private airstrip in Ingal. It’ll be easier this way, although we may have to ride a camel to your dig site.”

She smiled before realizing he couldn’t see her facial expression in the near darkness. “I know the airstrip in Ingal. I can’t believe you’re taking me . . .”
Where I want to go,
she thought. Not being able to read his face gave her an odd, disconnected feeling.

“I think your dig site may be the safest place for you right now,” he said.

She didn’t have a reply to that, and he turned away to attend to the controls of the plane, taxiing down the short runway and taking off.

She was stunned. After everything that had happened, she was going exactly where she wanted to be—the Paleo-Niger Jobaria dig. She was too numb to be excited. Was it really possible?

After they were in the air with the city behind them, Nick’s voice sounded in her ear again. “Could you hand me one of the sodas?” It was disconcerting to hear his voice in her ear as if he were whispering to her.

She turned in her seat to reach the cooler he’d bought at the sundry shop on their way out of the hotel. The padded bag held sandwiches and drinks. She handed over the chilled bottle and took a water for herself, then settled in for the flight. She had the distinct impression Nick did not want to be here with her, but they weren’t talking about that.

She didn’t want to be here with him either. It hurt too much.

“Why are you letting me go?” she asked. “You seemed so against the idea before.”

That was putting it mildly. He’d thrown up a multitude of roadblocks until tonight.

“Like I said, it seems the safest place for you to be. Plus, I can see anyone coming, as opposed to where we were in Niamey—or in Dallas, for that matter.”

She nodded. That made sense, and the idea of being able to lose herself in the activity at the dig site was a siren song. She’d have welcomed anything that took her mind off of flying bullets and Nick in her bed.

She shuddered.

“You cold?” he asked.

She shook her head, unable to tell him why she’d really shivered. She still couldn’t believe they’d had sex after all these years. But she wasn’t the least bit sorry, particularly as she was having such frequent reminders about how short and uncertain life really was. Despite his anger, she was relieved Nick knew everything now, even if he never looked at her the same way again.

She needed to try and make it right. “I know I hurt you,” she said.

He didn’t answer or indicate he’d heard her in any way. The cloud-covered sky was pitch black and eerie, making her feel all alone in the darkness, even though he was seated next to her. She knew she should let the subject drop, but she couldn’t.