Guardian Agent (7 page)

“They know we were on Soremo, but they don’t know which building. I’ll be in and out before they get that far with their search.”

He sidled over to a pier and let her jump up, then pulled away, not liking the way things were going.

They reached the bridge in another ten minutes, a silver ribbon stretched across the water. Gabe followed along and soon saw the army truck idling on the mainland end, waiting on the shoulder. He got the boat as close as he could, tied it up, then helped Mandy and Jake.

A corporal met them halfway to the truck, a young African-American man. “Gabe Cannon?”

“That’s me. Thanks for coming.” He didn’t introduce the others, wasn’t sure how much information the colonel had passed on. The less everyone knew the better.

The man helped support Tekla who walked with a bad limp, favoring his injured leg, while Gabe carried Mandy. They all tried to look as inconspicuous as possible under the circumstances.

“I’m glad you’re here on time. We need to leave immediately,” the man said.

“We’ll have to wait for my other sister,” Tekla protested.

“That’s a negative, sir. We don’t even have official permission to stop here. We only pulled over so one of the men could
check a tire that sounded funny
. We can’t wait around and we can’t, under any circumstances, enter the city. We can’t engage in any local trouble in any way. We are not to draw attention to ourselves.”

They were at the truck. The back opened and two men reached down to help Mandy up.

Tekla searched the water, looking sick and desperate, at the end of his rope. “We have to wait.”

While he tried to talk the corporal into breaking orders, Gabe ran back to the water’s edge to watch for Jasmine, so he could signal as soon as he spotted her. He was sure the truck wouldn’t leave if she was in sight.

But instead of Jasmine, he spotted one of Brent’s men on the bridge. Then another. And another.

The B Team.

He hadn’t been followed when he’d taken Jasmine back to Soremo, he’d made sure of that. He could think of only one other explanation for them showing up here at the exact wrong moment. He patted his shirt, found nothing. Yet it had to be on him somewhere. Brent had somehow planted a damn tracker on him.

He glanced at the watch the team leader had borrowed a couple of weeks ago to use the stop watch function for a friendly one-handed pushup competition. Gabe ripped the watch from his wrist and tossed it.

They knew exactly where he was. Brent had probably tracked him on his laptop, radioing his movements to the teams. Which meant he would have seen where Gabe had spent the last hour before heading here. Brent had the location of the house. The A Team was probably there right now. With Jasmine.

He ran toward the boat, but a bullet hit the fuel tank and the explosion knocked him off his feet. He could see, as he lay there, dazed, as the corporal jumped into the back of the truck, pulled a protesting Tekla up behind him, then they booked it the hell out of there.

The corporal and his men could take care of Tekla and Mandy. But Jasmine…

All alone against a commando team, battle-hardened men with an authorization to kill. A wall of fear hit him.

Gabe dove into the water and swam as if his life depended on it.

Chapter Nine

He only had to make it over to the cement pillars that held up the bridge, and climb one. Everybody was watching the burning boat. Since whoever had shot the fuel tank had used a silencer, no shot had been heard. Nobody had any idea what was going on.

Traffic came to a halt, people getting out of their cars to get a better look. Gabe grabbed an abandoned motorbike and flew forward between the lanes of cars.

Glanced back. The B Team didn’t follow. They were too busy chasing after Tekla.

Gabe picked up speed, ignoring his wet clothes and the rules of traffic. He had to reach Jasmine before it was too late.

* * *

“Come on out. We won’t hurt you,” one of the men called out one level below her.

They were herding her to the east end of the building from where there would be no escape. She had to reach the staircase to the roof. This end of the building had no exits. No windows either. The place butted up against a warehouse, the back walls solid brick.

Her chances for getting out of here were slim. At least Gabe had her family. He was the type of man who set things right. He would help Jake and Mandy.

God, she wanted to stay alive to see them again. Jake and Mandy. And Gabe. Because, who was she kidding, she was falling back in love with the man all over again.

“Your brother gave himself up. All we want is to take you in safely,” came the next lie from below.

Jasmine kept low and ducked between fallen beams, trying to steal around the men. She had to find a way to get out. She couldn’t engage them and fight them off. There were nine of them. Her gun only had four bullets. She would save those until the very end.

Which seemed to be suddenly here.

She ducked as a man crept into the room on her right. He scanned the rubble. Hadn’t seen her yet. She could only seem him through a gap in old wallpaper that hung from the ceiling in the corner where she hid. He turned slowly, gun trained. Then looked right at her.

She took her shot and ran like hell, knowing the sound would draw the rest of them.

She was looking behind her as much as she looked ahead. Steel arms snaked out from behind a column and caught her.

* * *

Gabe heard the gunshot from outside and his pulse quickened. The team would use silencers, so it had to be Jasmine. He found the window she’d brought him through earlier and vaulted right in.

Impulse pushed him to rush to her, but his training held him back. Assess. Plan. Execute. He searched the small area he could see.

No envelope where he’d put Mandy down. Either Jasmine had gotten it or Brent had. He moved on without pausing to search. Jasmine came first.

He stole around a doorway. One man stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up, watching in case she tried to escape through here. Gabe snuck up on him, shoved his knee in the back of his to bring him down. A hard tap to the man’s temple with his gun and he was out for the count.

He didn’t want to shoot if he didn’t have to, since he didn’t think the men were involved in Brent’s private agenda. Plus, a gunshot, even with a silencer, could be heard by other team members who were nearby.

He disarmed the guy then crept up the stairs. Saw movement in a doorway. He pulled into the cover of a column and waited. Troy, the ex-FBI guy, was moving his way. Probably the most decent man on the team, but Gabe had no choice, no time for explanations. He waited until they were in line with each other, then went for it. Beyond a small grunt, nothing betrayed that he brought down another man.

He inched toward the back room where the Teklas had stayed, listening for the slightest noise, the faintest creak. He thought another man or two were ahead, and could hear the soft sounds of others on the level above him.

He reached the door and looked through the open gap. Two men in there. Gabe scuffed his boot on the floor. One of the men came to investigate. Gabe took care of him, then stepped into the room. The other guy swung and raised his gun. Gabe shot him in the right shoulder and left thigh. That should keep him down for a while. He strode over and ended the man’s moaning by shoving his hat into his mouth, then secured his hands with a plastic cuff.

“Jasmine?” he whispered to the piles of stuff strewn around the room in case she was hiding in there somewhere.

No response came.

He stepped back, retraced his steps to the stairs then stole up to the next floor, gun in hand.

A bullet whizzed by his ear at the same time as he heard a small pop. He ducked, rolled and aimed. And didn’t miss. A debilitating hit, but not fatal. Nobody rushed to investigate. The others must have been out of hearing distance.

He moved down the hallway carefully, then another and another. Ahead, two men were inspecting a giant room, clearing it section by section. Gabe looked at the sagging beam that barely held the ceiling of the hallway above him, slammed the door shut then shot at the beam until it gave, collapsing the ceiling and sealing the men inside.

Not that he had time to gloat. He was too busy running, since his impromptu demolition worked only too well. The partial collapse in front of the door created a chain reaction. Bricks were coming down all around him as he ran.

Then a beam caught him in the back and knocked him to the floor, an avalanche of bricks half burying him. He had barely begun to dig himself free when he caught sight of Brent through the settling dust.

He had Jasmine by the arm, holding his gun to her head.

“You served your purpose, Gabe. I think your contract is going to end here. Short, but productive. Just as I hoped.” He gave a cruel grin.

Gabe controlled his fury. He’d been pegged from the beginning, recruited because of his connection to the target. “Long shot, wasn’t it? Tekla and I were never best friends. Last time we saw each other was a decade ago.”

Brent had counted on the man to come out of hiding and give himself up, if he thought he could do it safely, to a friend. It hadn’t exactly worked out that way, but the stalemate had been broken. Gabe had led them to Tekla’s hiding place. Brent had Jasmine because of
him
. Man, he hated the thought of that.

“I didn’t bring you here because of your friendship to Tekla,” Brent lectured. “You were brought in for your girlfriend here. When the men I hired took her, they searched the house and sent me every scrap of paper. Most of it was crap. But this one little diary…” He gave a mean laugh.

“A teenager’s diary from ten years ago. Didn’t pay much attention to it first, but I read the damn thing after Tekla took out those men. I figured I might find a clue to where he was hiding. People go to familiar ground when they’re on the run and all that. Nothing about Venice in the diary, I tell you that. But there were pages and pages of you.” Brent sneered.

Jasmine blushed scarlet and wouldn’t meet Gabe’s eyes.

He was too angry at Brent, too worried about her being in the middle of all this danger to feel amused. But he promised himself to enjoy the hell out of this little piece of information the second they were safe.

First, he had to get out of this jam. “Tekla got away. He’s talking to the authorities right now. Whoever has been protecting you won’t take the fall for this. He’ll make you the scapegoat.”

Brent flashed a grin of pure conceit. “I have enough on the man to be sure he’ll never turn against me.”

So he hadn’t simply bought a politician with the promise of a share in the gold. It all came down to blackmail. “What’s next then?” He needed to keep the man talking. His gun hand was almost free.

“I shoot you now, then wait for the B Team to call me with the news that they have Tekla. Once I know I no longer need your girlfriend for anything, I’ll have some fun with her before I shoot her.”

Jasmine stood frozen—eyes wide, cheeks pale—looking lost in some nightmarish memory. She was too stunned to struggle.

Come on, honey
, Gabe tried to tell her with his eyes.
Do something. Anything. All I need is a second of distraction.

“You know, reading all those teenage fantasies wasn’t as bad as it sounds.” Brent leered at her, but was still talking to Gabe. “Let’s see what she does with a real man. Maybe I won’t shoot you just yet and let you watch. If you say, pretty please.”

“Go to hell.”

“I take that as a no.” Brent raised his gun.

That brought Jasmine out of her frozen fear, and she launched himself at the man who hadn’t expected much resistance from her. Big mistake.

“What the hell—” He turned to deal with her.

Which was all Gabe needed. He shook off the rest of the bricks and took aim. He didn’t try to go easy on this one. He put a bullet right into Brent’s head, in the middle of his forehead.

Another shot rang out at the same time, slamming into the man’s chest.

Troy stood in a doorway, his face grim as he looked at Gabe. He must have heard it all. “Let’s get out of here before the others gather themselves and someone gets killed in the confusion.”

His scarred face looked even more haunted than usual as he watched Jasmine, and Gabe remembered the rumor he’d heard from another guy on the team. The same explosion that had messed up Troy’s voice and face had also killed the woman he loved. And for the first time, Gabe had an inkling of what that could mean to a man.

“Thanks for the help.” He crawled from under the rubble, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg.

Troy nodded, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t you ever knock me out again.”

“Sorry about that.” But his attention was on Jasmine who still stood in the same spot, her eyes riveted on the blood flowing around her feet.

Brent had grabbed on to her as he’d fallen, his lifeless fingers still circling her ankle.

“I’ll make sure we have a clear path out of here.” Troy took off.