No Stranger to Danger (3 page)

"I'm not your fucking friend," Logan said. "You screwed me over. You killed innocent men."

Conyers might have been his handler for many years, but that had never meant much. Conyers could go fuck himself if he thought there was any bond left between them.

Conyers had never bled for him, had never fought at his side.

Logan had brothers he would lay down his life for.

Conyers wasn’t one of them, and he sure as hell wasn’t a friend.

"Innocent?" Conyers asked. "Do
you
consider yourself innocent?"

Logan glared at him. "I'm
gonna
ask you one more time why you are here. You can answer, or I'll put a bullet through your head and not give a damn about the fallout anymore."

Conyers casually walked around Logan and poked through the stack of papers on the counter next to the open computer. "I see you’ve invaded my personal space and now you’ve stolen from me, too. This is more serious than I had thought."

"Just how serious?" Logan asked.

"I thought you were out to settle a personal grudge. Who did you share this with?" Conyers demanded as he looked at the open file. A twitch ran alongside his face as his stare darted back to Logan.

"Maybe I shared it with the CIA."

Conyers laughed. "The CIA, really? You're a burned spy. They wouldn’t listen to you. They would drag your ass straight to Leavenworth. Or so they would tell everyone. We both know what would happen to you if you show your face Stateside. You aided and abetted a terrorist network and gained them entry into the United States. You've been compromised, blacklisted—you are nothing to them anymore."

Conyers's condescending tone bit on Logan's nerves.

"Your face is on their radar right beside mine," Conyers said, raising his voice, pointing to his face. He reached to the counter to ruffle through papers.

Logan didn’t know whether to shoot him while he had the chance or wing through this and try to find out what he needed to know and somehow get the hell out of here.

As though Conyers saw the thoughts skittering through his mind, he laughed again and cocked his head to the side with a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
"Treason is a heavy crime," he said.

"Who's the woman you're looking for?" Logan asked.

He'd hit a nerve. Conyers was surprised.

"You want to know who the deep, dark, hidden hand in this whole thing belongs to, don’t you? Well guess what? You're not going to find out. But if I'm not mistaken, there
is
one thing you want to do more than find out that information. You want to do the one thing you are trained to do." His tone became harsher, his dark eyes glistening. "Let's face it, son. You’ve never been good at anything but tracking a target and eliminating the opposition." Conyers placed his forehead at the end of Logan's sidearm. "You are an assassin, Logan. Nothing more."

Logan snarled. Conyers got to him. He pulled the trigger.

The click filled the room, and Logan flinched. He blinked in disbelief, and for the first time since Conyers had entered the apartment, he looked away, to his weapon. A flash of uncertainty ran through him as he regarded the M-9 with disbelief.

"When you went to take a piss I had
Taj
come in and remove the firing pin. He secured the area for me. I thought I had taught you better than to leave your weapon out of your sight." He clucked his tongue. "At any rate…" Conyers pulled a
Hekler
& Koch with a suppressor from under his jacket and leveled it at Logan.

Logan clenched his jaw and cleared his throat. He turned the useless sidearm over in his hand and set it on the counter.

With his other hand, Conyers produced the firing pin from his suit pocket, chuckling with a wide smile as he tossed it onto the counter beside the M-9.

Anger throbbed in Logan's veins. God, but he would love to knock those teeth straight down that bastard's throat.

He had nothing to lose.

Quickly, Logan reached out, took Conyers's weapon in his hand, pressed the slide release at the top, and at the same moment dead-legged him with a knee to his left lateral femoral nerve. Within an instant, Logan had his arm snaking around Conyers's throat to choke him out—but then something hard hit the back of his head. Logan became minimally aware someone else was with them in the room, coming from behind as though he had been there all along.

He crumpled to his knees, holding his head, and caught a boot to the abdomen. Logan gagged on empty lungs, fighting to force air back into them as he rolled over.

"Damn it,
Taj
," Conyers growled, his voice hoarse. He lifted a hand to his throat.

Conyers braced himself on the counter as he stepped over Logan, raking through the papers madly. Blearily, Logan could see him searching, and he chuckled despite the pain lancing through his middle.

That chip was well on its way to the underside of Bishkek, its duplicate—Conyers would have to kill him first to get it.

"Fuck!" Conyers yelled and began stacking up the papers and snapped the laptop shut to tuck the bundle under his arm. "Get him and let's get out of here. Take him back to the villa and wait on me. I want to know who he is working with and what exactly he took, and then you can kill him. When you do it, make sure he is dead. Believe me, killing that one is harder than it should be."

"
Naam
, boss,"
Taj
said, leaning over Logan.

With a limp, Conyers went to the door and paused. "Wipe this place clean. Make sure he doesn’t have any intel stashed away anywhere else."

Logan groaned at the swirling blackness closing in. His vision hazed in and out as he attempted to roll over, to push himself up, to keep fighting.
Taj
had been with Conyers since Morocco. Logan got a brief look at
Taj
before the haji cracked the butt of an AK-47 into his skull.

A hand grasped his hair, pulling his head to the side. The pinch of a needle poked his neck.
Propofol
seeped into his veins.

"Fuck," Logan groaned against the tiled floor.

Chapter Three

0300 hours, Monday

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

When consciousness began to swim through his mind, Logan groaned at the sharp pain running down the back of his skull. It was as if his head had been split in two by the stock of that AK. Damn, did the asshole have to hit him twice and then shoot him up with
Propofol
, too?

He was good, but not that good.
Taj
had taken things to an unnecessary level.

As he tried to force himself to alertness, Logan's head lolled to the side until his temple touched something cold and metallic.
What in the fuck?

He should have been more careful. How the hell had Conyers known he was in that apartment? That it was
him
?

"Ah, I see you are awake." Conyers voice echoed from somewhere nearby, like a warbled noise coming through a long tunnel.

Logan squinted one eye open just a slit, just enough to see how many were in the room with him. A wash of white light hit him from a fluorescent hanging above his head. Logan instantaneously jerked at his arms and then his legs. A feeling of dread pierced his stomach.

This was bad. He couldn’t move. Panic flooded him.

He twisted his neck to see. There were five, including Conyers. His former handler crossed the small stone-walled room and came to sit on the edge of the table with his leg dangling over the side.

"What have you done, Logan?" Conyers asked casually, leaning down and grasping Logan by the hair to pull his head back. He was looking into his eyes, judging how much of the drug had worn off. "You've now forced me to take actions I really didn't want to take." Conyers snarled. "I've found the intel you've been collecting since Brazil. If we weren’t here now, in
this
situation, I might say well done." He slammed a stack of papers onto Logan's chest and from there they fluttered down onto the floor in a cascade of white. Conyers gave a snarky laugh. "I thought I trained you better." He shook his head in mock humor, releasing Logan's hair, and chuckling as he pulled a package of gum from his pocket.

Logan winced as his head fell back to hit the table, all muscle control weakened by the drugs they had mainlined him with. He gnashed his teeth at the pain lancing through his skull and took a deep breath to stave off the throbbing.

"Ever the one for praise, aren’t you, Conyers?" Logan rasped. He struggled to focus, looking groggily down at one remaining paper on his chest.

Thank God. It seemed Conyers might have found only the papers he had in plain sight.

He still had a chance.

An infinitesimally slim one.

Logan let his head fall back, reserving his energy. He surveyed the room for escape. There were shelves on one wall with chemicals and a tray of surgical instruments, a car battery. Five-gallon water jugs lined the underside of the shelf—he knew what those were for. The room seemed otherwise empty. Cool air touched his skin, hinting that they were probably below ground.

Logan tried pulling at his bonds again, less blatantly. Someone had strapped his hands above his head, and, as he tried to move, the legs of the table squealed. He looked at the devise holding him and found he was on top of a rolling medical table.

Logan looked down at his legs. A thick leather strap pinned him to the table by the ankles, too. He tried moving his wrists and found only a little tingle in answer.

Propofol
wasn’t meant for long lasting sedation. Depending on the dose, the drug could wear off within minutes. For a man his size, he was sure Conyers had had
Taj
adjust accordingly. He couldn’t have been out for long. Thirty minutes tops. That meant he wasn’t far from his apartment, but he doubted this room was in Conyers's building.

Sha
Amud
?
Conyers had mentioned a villa.

"You're thinking too much for a man about to die," Conyers said as he wadded a gum wrapper between his fingers, the foil rattling in the quiet and making Logan's ears buzz with an annoying fuzziness.

Without warning, Conyers slammed his fist into Logan's jaw and tossed the wrapper to the side as he reached for Logan's face. He stared down on Logan intensely. "Who have you been working with?" he asked. "I'll be honest, this intel could damage my entire mission. I can't let you do that to me."

Logan spit out blood from the tear in his cheek Conyers had just given him where his teeth cut into the inside of his mouth. "I'm working alone," he said. "It's too late for you though. Weston has the intel. I've been forwarding it to him all along."

"Liar!" Conyers hit him again. "I know you're not stupid, so let's be fair to one another, eh. Let's not pretend to take each other for fools."

Logan grunted and instantly shook off the pain, knowing there would be more of that—and worse—to come if he could not get free. He began to work his tingling wrists and ankles against the straps holding him to the table.

Conyers slammed his fist onto the metal top by Logan's head, sending a sharp shooting pain through his skull that made him groan. The loud sound disoriented him completely. He shoved the pain away and blinked through the haze.

"I want to know who you’ve been talking to, and I know it's not Weston. Damn you, boy. How much does your contact know?" Conyers shouted, taking Logan's throbbing jaw in hand and shaking his head. Conyers sniffed. "You think not talking will do you any good? You think I can't make you talk?" Conyers snapped his fingers at a man as he erected himself and let go of Logan to smooth out his navy-blue jacket. At the same moment, the door opened and a man stepped in, speaking quickly in Arabic.

Conyers turned sharply to another in the room. "What did he say?" he asked one of the men.

"He say there was nothing on the computer. The hard drive had been wiped clean,"
Taj
said. "When they tried to circumvent the code, the computer erased everything."

Conyers looked down on Logan, and all the hate in hell clashed in their locked gazes.

"How the hell did you do that?" Conyers growled through tightly clenched teeth. He turned to the man and pointed at him. "I'll kill you if you erased that fucking hard drive because you don’t know what the hell you're doing." He blew out a frustrated breath and leaned over Logan again. "I am going to leave you in Taj's gentle care while I enjoy a few hours of sleep." Conyers stood, started to turn, but then redirected and came to bend over Logan once more. "I'd talk if I were you."

He slowly removed something from his inner jacket pocket, and Logan tensed at seeing the white back of the photo and the all too familiar feminine handwriting with the little pink heart drawn above the name.

"No!" Logan growled, jerking at his restraints fiercely, his mind sent in a whirl of sudden panic he wasn’t used to.

Logan swallowed hard. Every muscle in his body tensed as Conyers turned it, pinching the top of the photo to wiggle it above Logan's face where he could see the woman in the photo.

"You want to save her?" A twitch of fury ran up the side of Conyers's nose. "You took something from me, Logan. You know what I want back, and if
Taj
cannot make you talk, I would be willing to bet that if I bring her in and do the same things to her that
Taj
is going to do to you, then you will talk. Won't you, Logan? You know very well that I can find her." He paused and turned the photo back over between his fingers, to look at the smiling face of the woman. "I know you always held onto your love for her. I know why you let her go, too."

This situation had just hit pit bottom, all around, bad as it could get.

Logan let his head fall back with a scoff.

"To protect her," Conyers said. "See where that has gotten you, boy."

"You
goddamn
son of a bitch," Logan yelled.

As he cursed him, Conyers snapped his fingers and handed the photo to the man who had just entered. "Contact Raven and tell him to find her," he ordered. "Her name is Mara
Cahil
." He turned over his shoulder to look back at Logan, scoffing with a look of calculation. "She did keep your name after you divorced her, didn’t she?"

"Leave her out of this, you fucking bastard," Logan said with a snarl of his own. "You said it yourself, I'm one hard motherfucker to kill—and when I get off this table, you're the first son of a bitch I'm coming after."

Conyers gave him a brief, cynical snigger and patted Logan's knee before he turned and stalked from the room with the two others falling into step behind him. Only
Taj
remained with Logan.

"You won't get shit from me this way," Logan shouted after Conyers.

But it was too late.

Conyers knew exactly which button—and there was only one damn button—to push.

Damn him.

Logan swallowed hard as the door shut with a bang. He lifted his head as much as he could to watch
Taj
. The haji went to a shelf to pull out a set of cables and the battery, which he dropped onto a rolling metal table and hooked up one end of the cables to the positive side and then the negative. Logan instantly started forcing his tingling limbs to move, to work at the bonds holding him tightly.

His efforts were not enough.

Red hazed over his vision.

He was going to kill Conyers. He had never felt such intense anger in his life, and
he
had a lot to be angry about.

Anger at himself. At Conyers. At the fucking buffoon about to send a high-voltage current through is body.
Taj
pushed the cart nearer and stepped closer, smiling sickly down on him as he flipped up the bottom of Logan's shirt. Logan saw it coming. He tilted his head back and ground his teeth, letting out a fierce cry of pain as
Taj
touched both clips to his skin. His body jolted and arched off the table.

The sound of pain reverberated throughout the room and probably all the way to Conyers.

Logan's neck curved up off the table as he clamped his teeth and lost all control, every muscle in his body going rigid.

And then, it stopped.

He fell limply back onto the table. His mind swam to grasp reality, and he panted as
Taj
moved to grab his face. Logan fought him, twisting his neck away as he struggled to regain clarity.

Taj
came closer again. "What is it you have done, American? Whom do you work with? Tell me and the pain will stop. No need to bring your woman into this."

Logan spit at him.

"
Rrrah
,"
Taj
yelled as he flinched back to wipe his sleeve over his face. His fist came down hard into Logan's stomach.

"You tell me now!"
Taj
ordered, grasping Logan by the collar of his t-shirt.

Sure. The pain would stop, because as soon as they had what they wanted, they would kill him. It was simply how these people worked. Truth was, he didn’t have anything to tell them. It was what it was. He had been working alone. No one knew he was there.

He could give them the chip, but at what expense?

He would die anyway, and Mara was already in danger.

Whatever they planned for the US would harm more than just the two of them.

His best bet was to drag out what little time he had and hope for the best.

"Go to hell," Logan said. "I've passed all the information I had, and the microchip, on to another rogue agent. You're not getting anything from me."