Big Bad Wolf (37 page)

Nick didn’t deny Jed’s unspoken admonishment for letting his mind wander off.
He knew Jed already guessed of whom he was thinking.
His rejoin
der
was short.

“There’s nothing to decide.”
His slate eyes followed the flight of a seagull as it swooped into the ocean.
Stealing a page from Jaymee’s book, he changed the subject.
“Two things bother me about the whole mission.
First, how did they find me?
I was in the middle of nowhere out there, yet they homed in on me as if I personally gave them a call.
I know my boat was clean; I double-checked before starting sail.
Second, how did they find the others, one after another?
I can’t accept we were tracked down so easily.”

“It’s on my mind too.
Emma’s boat was checked by Diamond himself.”

A muscle worked in Jed’s jaw.
“He must blame himself.”

“He’s disappeared,” Jed told him, his voice expressionless.
“The unit is in disarray.”

“And you also opted to disappear in the middle of this mayhem?”
Nick turned around, walking back to where Jed was seated.
“I’m dead.
So is Winters.
Diamond’s disappeared.
You’re here.
Who’s at the helm?”

Jed folded up the maps.
“They’ll find me eventually.
I know they’ll send out a tracker.
Right now, training Grace is all that matters.
And getting this mission completed.
I want those responsible cancelled.
For Emma.
For the others.”

Nick nodded.
They were all in danger as long as these people knew some way to get to them.
“I’ll break the code soon, I swear it.
I refuse to let those Chinese characters get to me.
There’s a link in there somewhere.
I can feel it.”

“Extrapolate,”
Jed
ordered.
“That’s why we’re here.
We move from what we know to the unknown.”

Nick turned around and kneeled on one knee as he scooped sand through his hand.
It felt cool to the touch and he deliberately concentrated on the exercise, scooping a handful, then letting it trickle out.
“After getting the encryption code, I made the copies and gave them to Emma to distribute to the rest of our team.
Then we spread out, each with one for decoding and backup.
That’s the last time I saw them.
I was out there, waiting for instructions from Command, and I attempted to break the code.”

“Did you call Command or try to reach them by computer or phone, so they were able to trace you?”

“No.
All I did was the initial decoding interface, and run a random overview.
Nothing unusual.”

“What warned you?”

Nick dusted his hands.
“You know my computers are different from the others.
I have my own warning system.
There was an incoming missile.”

“Incoming?”

“Yeah, underwater.”

“So you were targeted by an outside explosive, not prewired.”

Nick nodded.
“Right, but there was still a tab on the boat for them to know the exact spot to hit.
It was too well-planned, as if they were out there hunting for us, knowing they would get us.”
He ran impatient fingers through his wind-dried hair. “Maybe I need a refresher course in Chinese.
Maybe I overlooked some important double meaning.
I’ve tried every damned sequence.”

“You can reread those books you lent Grace,” Jed suggested.

“She’s done with those?
She’s good with languages, you know.
I’ve seen her memorize those pictograms in one sitting.
She probably has the encryption code in her head by now, the way she was staring at the program so intently that afternoon.”

Jed’s silver eyes narrowed a fraction.
“She gave me a message to pass along to you before we left.
I didn’t think it strange then, because you were talking to Jay, but it did sound cryptic, now that I think about it.”

Nick grinned crookedly.
“I wonder where she got that from.”

“She instructed me to thank you for the books, and to tell you the Chinese ha
ve
an interesting way of writing.”

“She’s your daughter.
Was that supposed to have an underlying message?”

Jed repeated the message, then arched a dark brow.
“What were the books about?”

“Just essays, reprinted newspaper arti...cles....”

Nick suddenly sat back on his haunches, closing his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger.
His curse was short and explicit.
Silver eyes met Nick’s blue-gray ones when he opened them.

“I assume my daughter has caused some trouble?”

“Trouble,” snorted Nick, his mind racing.
“Hell, Trouble has been playing her father’s little mind games.”

“Oh?”

“An interesting way of writing,” Nick repeated Grace’s message again.

Jed’s eyes glittered in the sunlight.
“You’ve already tried right to left, the way they do it.
Error, remember?”

“Yeah, but Trouble meant the books and articles I gave her.
Chinese newspapers read up and down, Jed.”
His lopsided grin was rueful.
“I’ll bet if we just connect the pictograms up and down….”
He stood up, his eyes far away.
“Let’s go.
I need to get back to Jaymee’s place.”

“Not yet.
Our plan was to retrace your steps.
We’ll start with you getting to shore and work our way to your getting the small apartment.”
Jed stood up, jamming his sunglasses on his nose.
“I need that piece of information to assimilate.”

“All right,” Nick agreed.

Jed’s specialty was information assimilation, assessing how the other side thought and compacting massive chunks of information into relevant details.
Simplification, followed by the process to extrapolate cause or effect.
Very useful for an assassin.
No one could get into an enemy’s mind like Jed, and certainly, very few could rival the Ice Man when it came to silent elimination.

Jed would find and target the enemy from within.
As all Viruses were trained to do, Nick acknowledged.
Invade and disappear.
That was why all these attacks on them were unacceptable.
No one was supposed to know about the Virus Program.

It had to be something tied with the targets and their relatives, Nick darkly concluded.
Emma was Diamond’s wife.
Jed said one other victim was a relative too.
Winters was using his brother’s boat.
Jed.
Unlike the others, he didn’t have anyone vulnerable.
Until now.
A sense of protectiveness burned fiercely in him.
He had to find these bastards and eliminate them.
There was no way he would let Jaymee be jeopardized by unknown assailants who, one day, might link her to him.
Even after he disappeared from her life.
His eyes darkened at the thought.

*

Jaymee tried to hide her fear.
The gun against the small of her back felt hard and cold, and she knew her captors wouldn’t hesitate using it.
It was in their eyes, the way they marched her to the house, the swift slap one of them gave her when she made an unexpected move.

She hadn’t asked any questions.
She had known instinctively these men were after Nick, that they were looking for him now.
For the first time, she was actually grateful he wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity.
Maybe things did happen for a good reason.

“Open the door,” the one holding the gun commanded.

It shouldn’t be locked, but Jaymee took the opportunity to make as much noise as possible.
She had to warn Grace somehow.
Pushing at the door, she said to her captors, “The house isn’t lived in.”

“Perfect hiding place,” the other man commented, his voice echoing through the empty house.
“I wonder why he rented the little apartment when he has this.”

Jaymee blinked in relief.
Another reason to thank God.
If she hadn’t argued with Jed, Grace would be in Nick’s apartment and these men would have gotten her.

“Decoy, of course,” the one holding her replied, pushing Jaymee roughly into a chair.
“Now, Miss Barrows, you’ll tell us what you know.”

“I don’t know what you want to know,” she managed to say in a steady voice.
“Please, do you have to point that thing at me?”

The armed man studied her for a second, then put the weapon away.
He was a big man, and his expensive suit didn’t hide his physique.
He stepped closer, and Jaymee smelled the musky cologne that clung to him.
It made her more afraid somehow, and she wanted to vomit.

“Do you understand what I can do to you if you don’t cooperate?”
His voice was quietly menacing.
“I’ll break every bone in your body, starting with your little finger.”

Jaymee swallowed.
She looked at him in the eye.
“I still don’t know what you want.”

“The man you hired recently.”

“Nick?” Jaymee feigned surprise.
“My new helper?
But he’s gone.”

“Don’t lie to us, please.
The two men we talked to told us you fired them because you’re sweet on this man.”

Damn Rich and Chuck, Jaymee silently cursed, even as fear unfurled in her stomach when the big man in front of her moved even nearer.

“I don’t really want to hurt you too much,” he continued, “but I will, if you won’t tell us where he is.”

“I’m telling the truth!”
She was.
She didn’t know where Nick and Jed went off to.
“He left two days ago, said he was tired of roofing work.”

“Just like that.”
Disbelief in his voice.

Jaymee shrugged.
“Transients are like that in
Florida
.
They make cheap labor.”

“And easy bed partners?” the other man sneered.

He pulled up another chair, and sat astride it.
Leaning forward, he twirled a few strands of Jaymee’s hair in his fingers.
She forced herself to sit very still.

“Keep your mind on getting our guy, Les,” the first man said.

“There are other ways to make her talk.”

“No.
Go check out the rest of the house and see whether you can find any trace of him, or the board.”

Les reluctantly released her hair, and stood up.
“What if he’s really gone?”

“Then we wait for the next time he plays with the encryption board.
We’ll get him.”

Jaymee kept her eyes blank, trying not to show any emotions that might betray her.
She dared not look in any direction, in case they s
aw
clues of Grace’s presence.
Her heart was beating so loudly, she had trouble paying attention to their conversation.
She tried to calm down by counting slowly.

Nick, don’t play with the board, wherever you are.
She didn’t fully understand it, but somehow, handling the encryption board would bring Nick danger.
The foreboding feeling spread as she realized she was asking for the impossible.

Nick.

It was a hopeless silent scream.

*

Nick felt restless as they reached his efficiency.
He wanted to see Jaymee, needed to hold her in his arms.
A heavy sinking feeling settled in his gut as he faced the fact he’d have to live with this yearning for the rest of his life.
He could only hope time would dull the edges.

He clamped down on all thought of personal needs.
They had no place in his job.

“This is it,” he told Jed.
“I laid low for a few weeks.
After deciding to remain ‘dead’ until I could get word to you, I went to look for a job that wouldn’t call attention to me being a stranger in town.”

Jed cocked his head.
“Roofing isn’t exactly your forte.
I’d thought you’d try out something electrical, for computer parts.”

Nick shrugged and gave a wolfish grin.
“No openings.
Besides, my new job had unexpected fringe benefits.”