Cold in the Shadows 5 (20 page)

They both knew there were a lot of things he hadn’t told her.

Okay then. “Like what?”

His expression blanked the way it did when he was hiding something important. “The Colombians don’t want you for the murder of Hector Sanchez.”

She scrunched up her brow and opened her mouth to ask the obvious question but he beat her to it.

“They want you for the murder of Mario Aguilla.”

“That’s impossible.” Her brain scrambled. Mario was her student. He was twenty-four and full of more charm than any young man had a right to. She’d met his parents. She had high hopes for a career in science for the young man. “That doesn’t make any sense. Mario isn’t dead.” But from the look on his face she knew it was true. Numbness encased her. “Why? How?”

“We think the cartel went looking for him after I dragged you away from the institute.”

It felt like a wide gaping hole had been blown in her chest. She looked down, half expecting to see the damage he’d inflicted to her heart. There was nothing visible, but on the inside she felt like she’d never be the same again. A young man had been murdered because she had defended herself and Killion had rescued her.

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Then whose fault is it?” she snapped.

“Raoul Gómez and whoever the hell set you up for this huge fucking fall, that’s who.”

She narrowed her gaze. “And you?”

He nodded. “And me.”

They stared at one another for a full ten seconds. Part of her wanted to dissolve into a puddle of tears, but that wouldn’t get them out of here, and it wouldn’t bring Mario back.

“His parents think I killed him?” she asked in a thin voice.

He nodded.

“Do mine?”

He nodded again, looking stricken.

A lump of anguish grew inside her. People had been told she’d murdered a young man she liked and respected. Family. Peers. Did they believe it?

Why wouldn’t they?

Everything she’d worked for had crumbled to nothing, but Mario’s life had been stolen from him immutably. She had no career to go back to. Not anymore. Not until she cleared her name and got justice for her student. The only way to do that was to help Killion find out who was the mastermind behind this wretched scheme. Find them and expose them.

She walked over to the table and scanned the charts. “There’s an atoll to watch out for, just over there.” She scanned the horizon and pointed out a small rock jutting out of the ocean about a mile northwest.

Killion put his hand on her shoulder, but she stiffened at his touch. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I needed to be certain you weren’t involved.”

“It’s fine.” She shrugged out of his grip.

From the look on his face he understood that “fine” didn’t necessarily mean “fine.” It meant, “
Back off before I scratch out your eyes
.” He was smart enough to let it go.

After everything that had happened, her heart felt as if it were frozen solid in her chest and her blood had stopped pumping. Grief and rage coalesced into something bitter and angry. Focused too. Honed like a dagger. She needed to hold onto that focus because she intended to claw back her life. Even though the odds were stacked increasingly against her, she would exonerate herself and get justice for her student. No matter the cost.

Chapter Thirteen

I
T TOOK A
full twenty-four hours for them to make it to Jamaica. Now the sun was sinking in the western sky and a light breeze was starting to whip up the white caps. The sea and sky merged in a pale shimmering gray that he hoped would help hide them as the twilight deepened.

“Got everything?” he asked Audrey.

She nodded with a cold detached expression that had been the only emotion she’d shown since he’d told her about the dead student. He could tell she was devastated and furious and using that fury to carry her through this nightmare. Killion got it. He even appreciated her calm, precise help with piloting the boat and getting them this far. But he missed the other Audrey. The funny one. The one who argued with him. The one who’d said she trusted him and sounded like she meant it. The one who’d kissed him as if he were water in the desert and clung to him like shrink-wrap.

Even the memory of that kiss had him shifting uncomfortably. The woman was distracting him from the mission and her life depended on him getting everything right.

What he needed was someone to meet them on the island and take Audrey to a safe house while he took off and did the job the president had tasked him and Lincoln Frazer to do. Find the person who’d hired an assassin to murder a sitting vice president. So what if the guy had been an asshole? They didn’t get to make that decision, and they certainly didn’t get to murder Dr. Audrey Lockhart just because they wanted to. He’d underestimated his enemy once and they’d caught them unaware. No more assuming they were safe. No more blind trust.

He left Audrey in the inflatable and went back and opened the hatch to the dank hold, inserted an earplug into each ear and picked up an AK-47 by the strap. He fired a full magazine into the bottom of the boat, spent shells flying around like popcorn in a skillet. He switched the cartridge and aimed at the same spot, watching splinters of wood spit and spray around the enclosed space. Impressed by the strength of the hull he changed the magazine a third time and this time was rewarded by a spout of water. He kept firing until the small trickle turned into a steady flow.

Convinced he’d done enough to scuttle the vessel, he tossed the now empty submachine gun to the deck, picked up his beach bag and slung it over his shoulder. He climbed over the side of the trawler and hopped into the inflatable, casting off before settling in beside Audrey on the bench seat.

“You good?” he asked, starting the outboard. She had a canvas hat pulled low over her eyes and wore a pair of crappy men’s black sunglasses that kept slipping down her nose. He didn’t want anyone with a telescopic lens getting a good look at her face when they got closer to shore.

“I’m fine.” She kept her eyes on the horizon, voice clipped, body rigid.

Sure.
He blew out a frustrated breath and pushed away from the hull of the trawler, then motored around the old fishing boat. It was a waste, but keeping Gómez and his co-conspirator in the dark was worth it, and should help to keep Audrey safe. Plus, any forensic evidence that they’d been onboard would be at the bottom of the ocean.

The boat was beginning to sit lower in the water. They were about four nautical miles north of Montego Bay. There was no one visible on the horizon, and he’d obliterated the name and number of the vessel where it had been painted on the hull. He just hoped the boat sank before anyone spotted it. He hadn’t wanted to attract attention by setting it on fire.

Using the compass on his watch, he directed the inflatable west. He needed to find a beach quiet enough for them to land without anyone spotting them, but close enough to some small tourist spot that they could easily walk to a hotel.

Audrey was much better than she had been a few days ago, but walking more than a mile was going to tax her strength. Thankfully they’d had a good supply of fresh water and food on the fishing boat, but she hadn’t eaten much, and he was worried about her. It wasn’t an emotion he usually allowed himself to feel, but it had been a constant since he’d stepped in after Hector’s attack.

He lived in a gray world that was multifaceted and obscure. Moral purity was a lie. There was no such thing as good and evil, or right and wrong. He did the best he could do, keeping his oath at the forefront of his mind. A good interrogator—like a good case officer—had to be capable of deep sincere attachments while at the same time maintaining a cynical detachment.

Usually he excelled at cynical detachment, but somewhere between Audrey warning him not to touch Hector Sanchez’s skin because of the poison, and her getting the drop on him with a gun she obviously had no idea how to handle, he’d lost that cynical detachment and started to care. To really care.

She hated him for lying to her—imagine if she knew the full extent of his deception?

As a Company man his commitment was to his oath—to protect integrity and defend the US Constitution without losing sight of human decency. He was often asking people to commit treason against their own countries to get the information he needed, and that required a measure of compassion and understanding. But his country and his mission were always paramount in his mind, which was why he was so successful at what he did. For the first time since he’d joined the Agency, he wasn’t sure he could make an objective decision for the good of the mission. He’d invested too much in Audrey’s survival. She wasn’t an asset. She wasn’t a detainee. She was someone who’d been targeted by the person who’d murdered Ted Burger, and that made her valuable to him. But she meant more to him than that and those were feelings he couldn’t afford if he wanted to do his job properly.

He motored onwards, looking for just the right spot to haul out. There were lights strung across most of the beaches, hotels just in the distance. Couples walking hand-in-hand along the sand.

He carried on past the big resorts. The area became dark and wooded.

He was so attuned to Audrey’s wellbeing that he noticed immediately when she hunched her shoulders and began to shiver. He shrugged out of the fleece he’d picked up on the boat and handed it to her. She shook her head at first.

“Put it on,” he told her sternly.

She took it, pulling it over her shoulders, pinching her lips in annoyance at what she probably considered a show of weakness.
Hell
. She had no idea how strong she was. Most people would be flailing about complaining bitterly about how unfair life was for treating them this way, but she seemed to have accepted the shitty situation. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about just how fiercely she was holding it all together though. Even a trained operative would struggle after what she’d been through, especially with no end in sight. He wanted to tell her he’d be there for her, but that was a lie. Jed Brennan would find her a safe house and whisk her away.

She’d cease to be his problem.

But what if the safe house wasn’t so safe? Like the place in Minneapolis where the US Marshals had put Vivi Vincent and her son before Christmas? The house had been attacked and two marshals killed. It was a miracle Vivi and Michael had survived.

Audrey had already experienced two miracles, three if you counted the experience on the island. How many more times could she cheat death? But he couldn’t just quit the mission. Until they caught the mastermind behind this, Audrey was always going to be in danger. So far the perp had used smarts and ingenuity to attack her multiple times while remaining incognito.

His fingers tightened on the rudder.

It was almost full dark now, and he was thinking they might end up going around the entire island before he found somewhere suitable. Then he caught sight of a group of hotels about a half a mile down the coast, and spied a curving sandy cove just off to his right. There weren’t any lights, but a pair of car headlights swept along a nearby road, and no way would a spot like that not have a point of access. He angled the inflatable until they were perpendicular to the waves and headed for the pale sand.

“Hold on.” It was high tide, which was good news, but the surf was rough closer to the beach, throwing the boat around. He accelerated through the big waves then lifted the propeller out of the water and jumped over the side, hauling on the rope to move the boat up onto the sand.

Audrey had removed her sunglasses and looked like she was about to jump out and help him.

“Stay put,” he ordered sternly.

She kept forgetting about the newly healed knife wound, just the way he’d forgotten it when he’d been trying to get inside her yesterday. Only her gasp of pain had stopped him from dragging her clothes aside and thrusting deep.

At the time she’d been wild for him, needing a distraction from the horror and fear she’d endured. That moment of madness was over and done with. Now the only thing she wanted to nail to the wall was her student’s killer. Sweat formed on his brow and not just from the exertion of pulling the heavy boat up the beach. She’d been so sexy. So sweet. Another wave broke against him and the cold water doused any sexual fires that might have started to burn.

He kept hauling on the rope, fighting the undertow. When the surf was ankle deep he went to the side of the boat. “Come on.” He waved her over. “Grab the bags.” He held out his arms.

“I can walk,” she protested.

“Just put your arms around my neck and stop being a pain in my ass.”

Her eyes flashed.
Finally
. She slid her arms around his neck and he pulled her against his chest, gathering her to him in a way that felt too familiar. He dropped her a few feet beyond the reach of the water and then concentrated on hauling the boat out. It was fricking heavy, but he put his whole body into moving the dead weight past the water line, until the muscles in his arms and shoulders burned. Audrey followed him up the beach, an insubstantial shadow in the darkness, but even so he knew exactly where she was. Finally he was satisfied. He dropped the rope and delved into his bag for a flashlight.

They both wore flip-flops, though Audrey’s were three sizes too big for her and she kept tripping. He took her arm to try to prevent her falling on her face. “Careful.”

He flicked on the light and swept the beam over the vegetation that edged the pale sand, searching for an opening in the greenery.

Audrey grabbed his wrist. “There.” She pointed with the flashlight.

The woman had good eyes. He waved her ahead of him, and they tramped through the sand, which turned into a dusty path that ran through the trees. He kept the beam just in front of Audrey’s feet in case there were any snakes around.

She stopped abruptly, and he put his hand on her shoulder to prevent bumping into her.

“What is it?” he whispered, alert for danger.

“Hear that?”

Killion listened hard for some indication they weren’t alone. “I don’t hear anything.”