Verifiable Intelligence (7 page)

Behind him, he had a glimpse of two of the three BMW’s. At least he’d lost one. It didn’t matter much either way. In less than a mile he was going to lose the other two. Residential and commercial lots gave way to dense trees and sweeping grassy hills as he entered a regional park.

The road twisted. Thick clusters of leafy green trees grew dense on either side of the narrow street. He leaned far over the bike, and metal scraped against asphalt when the Ducati whipped around the curve. Somewhere behind him the squeal of cars hitting their brakes reached his ears.

The ground leveled out. A small man-made lake stretched before him. The tranquil area was ringed by a pedestrian trail and surrounded by public parking. He shot right into the middle of it like the proverbial bull in a china shop.

Pedestrians scattered like birds. Some on bicycles, some on foot, they all ran for safety as Jace barreled up the sidewalk. Making a split second decision, he headed to the left.

Dense trees immediately closed in as he gunned the Ducati down the pedestrian path. He didn’t recall exactly how far it was to the meandering public road that passed close behind the park, but he knew it was a long haul for a car to go around.

Ignoring the shouts and obscenities hurled at him, he spotted the exit and took it. Racing wheels spun on gravel before grabbing traction and launching the Ducati onto the paved, two-lane road.

It was deserted, save for two open mouthed joggers getting into their parked vehicle nearby. A grin kicked up the corners of his mouth. Now it was on to Six Flags.

Chapter Eight

“My picture was on the news this morning,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “How come none of these people are noticing me?”

Dayne considered this. “You don’t look like you need help.”

“Oh.”

“People have this preconceived notion that kidnapped kids are held at gunpoint and scared out of their wits.”

“Should I scream?”

“Not unless you want to really piss me off.”

Ryan grinned. Dayne was surprised when she couldn’t help but grin back. He was an irresistible kid. She was amazed that she hadn’t seen the resemblance between him and Jace to begin with. Ryan had Jace’s strong, stubborn jaw, broad nose, and generous lips. It was the hair. Ryan’s was thick and black. Within memory, she hadn’t ever seen Jace’s hair. He’d always kept it close shaved, claiming it was because he often used disguises and wigs went on better over a bare scalp. Dayne liked to poke at him, so she always claimed he was going bald and trying to hide it.

“Can’t we ride anymore rides, Dayne?”

“No, your brother will be here any second.”

“But I wanted to ride Batman again.”

“No way,” Dayne’s voice was flat. “If I ride that damn thing again I’m going to puke.”

“Weenie,” Ryan said.

“I’m not the weenie. You’re the one who was screaming like a little girl.”

Ryan laughed sheepishly.

Casing the surrounding area for the millionth time, she casually reached beneath her jacket to reassure herself that her Sig was still there. It hadn’t been easy to smuggle in, but she was crafty. The metal detectors and bag searchers at the gates of the amusement park were more thorough than the lackeys working airport security.

She wasn’t certain why she felt such apprehension, but she did. The fountain area was jam packed with people. It always was. That was the primary reason she’d chosen it as a meeting place. But her gut intuition was telling her that something wasn’t right.

“It’s Jace!” Ryan squealed excitedly.

Dayne reached out and snagged the back of his windbreaker in her fingers. “Stay put!”

“But it’s Jace!”

“Yeah, and if I let you go he’ll take off without helping me.”

Ryan’s face went blank before slowly crumpling. “You mean you’re just using me?”

“Hey kid, it’s the way the world works.”

She hated the look on his face. Betrayal, hurt, and disappointment all vied for prominence in his expression. She hated the way it made her feel even more. It shouldn’t matter what this half-pint kid thought about her or her motives. She was looking out for number one. Her ass was on the line and this kid was the only leverage she had.

There was no more time to self-analyze. Jace stood less than ten feet away. She’d forgotten how big he was. His broad frame made her feel like a midget. But it was more than just his dominating physical attributes. The man had an intensity about him that just didn’t quit. It made her breath catch in her throat and a weird heavy sensation settle in the pit of her stomach.

“You all right, Ryan?”

As always, Jace went straight to the point. It was one of the things that had driven her crazy during their partnership. He never had any qualms about voicing his opinions, even if he was biased or just wrong.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

Dayne eyed Ryan’s pouched lower lip with amusement. She’d actually hurt his feelings. And damned if that didn’t bother her too! What was wrong with her?

“Well, Castille.” Jace crossed his arms over his broad chest. “What are your terms?”

“I just want to know what the hell is going on, McKay.”

“I’m not sure.”

“I find that laughable…and I’m not buying it.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Whether you believe it or not, it’s the truth.”

“Antonio said you took the contract on Yuri Dolohov’s brother.”

“I did.”

“So it apparently pissed him off.”

“It would seem so.”

“What do you
really
know?”

“Pardon?”

“If this was simple retaliation, Ryan would be dead.”

His gaze flickered over his younger brother. Ryan’s face had gone waxy at the mention of his being dead.

“What are you suggesting, Dayne?”

“That they used Ryan as bait to draw you out. You aren’t exactly easy to kill. The kid is leverage.”

Now Ryan gasped openly, mouth hanging wide open.

“Okay.” Jace held up his hand, palm out. “We’ve got to take this elsewhere and chat. Scaring the shit out of Ryan isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

Dayne glanced at the kid. “You want to go back to the arcade, Ryan?”

“Yeah!”

Jace lifted an eyebrow. “Arcade?”

“It was totally awesome!” Ryan gushed. “They’ve got skeeball and that game where you shoot baskets for prizes and stuff.”

Jace rolled his eyes before nodding. “Lead the way, Ms. Castille.”

Grabbing Ryan by the arm, she headed to the right. She tried to keep her mind on the perpetual duty of scanning her surroundings but found Jace a disconcerting distraction. Why did he have to be so good looking? Even when he was being the biggest asshole on earth, he did it with irresistible masculine charisma.

She could overlook the broad shoulders, washboard stomach and trim waist. She could even deal with his really firm backside. The tanned hue of his supple skin was nice, but she could get past that, too. It was his face. His strong sloping jaw and stubborn chin were appealing. But his lips were unforgivable. The only word she could come up with to describe them was sensual. His full, perfectly shaped lips only
looked
unyielding. And thanks to a teensy slip on her part on a South Texas beach, Dayne knew just how resilient his lips could be. Soft, pliant, with the ability to give a woman the chills and…

“Dayne, where are you going?”

Ryan’s quizzical voice yanked her into the present with a resounding thwack.

Good God, she was acting smitten! It was disgusting, vile, and dangerous. Why did Jace have to keep looking at her like that?

His intense hazel eyes, not green and not brown, could mesmerize her like a mouse caught by a cat. Dayne gave herself a mental shake and nudged Ryan past a souvenir shop full of blown glass into the arcade.

Open on both ends, the structure hosted plenty of patrons who wandered in and out at will. She glanced around and waited for her gut instincts to relax. When she felt reasonably sure no threat lurked behind the overweight, middle-aged attendant or the half dozen kids swarming around the whirring machines, Dayne relaxed.

“Be careful, Ryan. And if I tell you to get your butt back over here, you do it. Understand?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Dayne.”

Keeping one eye on Ryan, Dayne turned to Jace. Dressed in well fitting jeans, work boots and a simple T-shirt, he looked deceptively normal. She wasn’t fooled. She knew he had a weapon on him somewhere but even unarmed he wasn’t any less lethal.

“I never told you thanks for letting me live in Hong Kong, McKay.”

Dayne almost choked on the words when she spit them out. Why would she start a conversation like that? Reminding him that she already owed him? Never wise.

He situated himself with his back to the wall. “How are you involved in all of this, Dayne?”

“Honestly, I haven’t a clue.” She crossed her arms. “I was minding my own business in the library yesterday afternoon. Next thing I know, Ross King walks in and the situation ends in murder and kidnapping.”

“Ross King?”

“Look, don’t act like you think I don’t know who Ross is. He’s got that scar you left on his cheek in Baja. And he’s still missing teeth from my run in with him this past December.”

The corners of Jace’s mouth twitched. “You knocked out his teeth?”

She dropped her gaze on the pretext of checking her jagged cuticles. “Yeah, he was pretending to be Santa Claus and I whacked him with a big candy cane.”

“That guy must really hate you.”

“At least teeth are fixable.”

Jace’s eyes drifted toward Ryan. “Whatever, we still don’t have any idea who’s behind this.”

“Tony Barnes was one of the guys holding your brother.”

“Barnes the militia mercenary?”

“Yep, and some guy named Novack.”

His brow wrinkled as he sorted through his memory database of sleazebags for hire. “That was probably Rusty Novack. Did he have a bald spot and a big nose?”

She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, that was him. They kept referring to a boss.”

Jace made a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh. “Your pal Herrera seems to think it’s Dolohov.”

“He’s not my pal.” She didn’t bother to hide her annoyance.

“You seem to have a lot of male pals on the wrong side of the law.”

“Ha, Ha.” She shot him a withering look. “Can we not argue about Vitale right now?”

There was a brief pause while she watched him work things out in his head. She probably should’ve been doing the same thing, but her brain was tired of mulling over questions she couldn’t answer. Instead, she let herself get distracted from the situation by pondering Jace’s abrupt return to her life.

The half-light in the arcade cast him in equal parts light and shadow. It was actually a direct reflection of the way he felt about things. She had never understood his unspoken code of ethics. The very idea of ethics in a job like theirs was ludicrous as far as she was concerned. But Jace had a strict set of morals he followed. It’d been those morals causing most of the disagreements during their eight-month partnership. That and his unreasonable hatred of Ramsey Vitale.

“Dayne?”

His tone wasn’t rude. In fact, she suspected he knew she’d been spacing out instead of thinking about their situation.

“We’re going to get out of this.”

Was he actually trying to reassure her? “It isn’t like we have a choice, do we?”

He ignored her sarcasm. “None of it makes sense. The players don’t match. The teams don’t add up. And there has to be some bigger problem we’re not aware of. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything else?”

“Oh,” she said. “I forgot to mention the list.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Barnes and Novack were talking about it in the hangar.”

“Are you saying there’s some kind of hit list out there?”

“Hit list, shopping list, I have no idea. But when they came after me they brought high-powered Russian assault rifles with some major armor piercing bullets. They knew I was going to be hard to kill and they were prepared to do whatever it took to finish me off.”

“And you’re telling me these guys are working off some kind of list?”

She paused to think this over. Now that Jace had said it. It did almost seem like there was a hit list out there with her name somewhere near the top. “Actually, I’ve got no idea what’s on the list. But they talked like their boss had something to do with it.”

“Shit.”

Even under the circumstances, she found the expression on his face amusing. His smooth brow was furrowed, the two veins in his forehead becoming more visible each second as his mood darkened. Since they’d first met, she found she had an uncanny ability to ruin his mood. Needless to say, she was used to watching him get mad. Somewhere along their twisted road, it had ceased to unnerve her.

“We have to get a handle on this, Dayne.”

“I’d be more worried about it getting a handle on us.”

He took another deep breath to say something else but he never got the chance. They both heard it. You didn’t last long in their line of work if you couldn’t pick the sound of gunfire from innocuous background noise.

Chapter Nine

“Down!” Jace growled.

Dayne didn’t get a chance to look for the shooter before her world tilted on its axis. Folding her against his body, he rolled to the ground. He grunted when they landed hard on the unforgiving cement. No more than a breath later, the rifle round shattered cement inches away from their bodies before ricocheting into the ceiling.

Under any other circumstances, she would’ve spent a moment trying to digest the fact that he had probably just saved her life again. But she had to know where the bullet had come from. An amusement park might’ve made a great hiding place, but it also worked as a sniper’s playground. Picking them off one by one would be child’s play if they couldn’t find a way to get the upper hand.

“Ryan!” Dayne snapped in her no nonsense voice.

She had long ago decided that assassination had become easy money simply because Americans were far too comfortable. The scene in the arcade was proof positive of that theory. Nothing had changed. Nobody had heard the bullet over the persistent blare of the machines. And nobody cared that the two of them appeared to be rolling around on the floor together in public.