Deceptive Treasures: Slye Temp Book 5 (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

A flat in Thailand ...

The bloody burner phone woke Chatton from a power nap she’d needed after being up for four days straight tracking a Russian operative through Bangkok
.

Only one person had that number.

She snatched up the phone. “What do you want, Wayan?”

“Is it not possible to show some manners at least when you answer a call?”

Not when she knew how much it infuriated him to be shown no respect. Manners were for social relationships, which she didn’t encourage. Her relationship with Wayan was similar to a honey badger stalking a cobra, with her being the honey badger.

Wayan just hadn’t figured that out yet.

“I have an opportunity for you.”

“I’m listening.”  She smiled at Wayan contacting her. This had to do with The General. Those two had joined forces at some point before she’d found them and finagled her way into their midst, pissing off both of them.

Two birds. One stone. Score.

“The US just extracted a pair of North Korean physicists who were part of Project Jigu-X and suddenly decided to defect.”

Way to go, US
. Chatton had been digging around for information on Project Jigu-X recently, just like everyone else in the intelligence business. Even if she was no longer with MI6, her beloved UK sat too close to that buggar leading the DPRK.

Rolling over on her back, she stared at the slowly moving ceiling fan and asked, “This matters to me, how?”

“You are looking for someone.”

She stilled, thinking
. Yes, she was hunting the serial killer who had murdered her parents and who was systematically hunting down every Macintosh in her bloodline, but Wayan did not know that. Couldn’t know that since the only way he could have found out was from her.

“I’m always looking for someone, Wayan. It’s what I do
. Surely you and The General have come to understand the level of skills I possess and that I’m not one to allow assets to go dormant.”

“Yes, we know you are a super spy
. I meant that you are looking for someone specific and this search is personal to you.”

“Oh
? Just who am I looking for?” she asked, dancing around the cobra to make sure he didn’t gain an advantage.

“I do not know who, but that is my point. If you bring me what I want, I will find the person you are hunting.”

Her pulse did a double pump at that. Wayan definitely had the kind of resources that could flush out the killer and he wasn’t above mowing down everyone in his path to gain something if it held a value for him.

She must have taken too long to respond. Wayan said, “Please do not waste our time denying this
. Let us move to the negotiation, shall we?”

“Fine
. Make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“How appropriate to use an American phrase
. I want the two physicists and a woman who escaped with them. Bring them to me and I will either pay two million American dollars for them or I will find the person against whom you hold a vendetta.”

This had potential
.

Not the money.

She’d only joined up with The General and Wayan because she was fairly certain the murders of her family were tied to the artifact she possessed. Wayan had no idea how much she wanted to find the Macintosh killer or he’d have demanded her artifact in trade.

She told him, “How much time do I have to deliver these three Koreans?”

“Four days.”

“That’s not enough time to gather
intel.”

“I have what you need.”

“Such as?” she prompted.

“I know where they are going once they arrive in the United States. You should be able to find out who extracted them with your resources and put enough together to locate them along the way.”

“Should have been US military.”

“My resources tell me it was not.”

Interesting. “What do you want with these three?”

“Explaining to you is not part of our agreement, but these three wished to defect to China
. I am inclined to believe The General is behind this extraction just to keep them out of my hands. I do not blame the three defectors for taking the only way offered to them out of North Korea.”

A benevolent Wayan?
She rolled her eyes.

Still, that did sound like something The General would do
. Chatton thought of the potential problems and asked, “What if the three of them get separated? Do you still want only one or two?”

“The woman is your first priority
. Fail to bring her to me and our deal is off.”

Even
more
interesting. What was so important about this woman? “Need a new mistress, Wayan?”

“Your mind is a dark place
. This woman is too valuable to allow anyone to touch her. She will live as a queen, unlike the life she had in the DPRK. I have plenty of women and would not spend this trade on something so insignificant.”

Now,
that
sounded like the Wayan she knew and despised.

This was a gamble, but one it was time to take
. She had yet to determine if Wayan or the General was behind the Macintosh deaths, but The General hadn’t come through on the one chance she’d given him. That left him suspect, but not convicted yet.

Now was time to find out if Wayan would deliver the killer
.

She’d been watching for an opening to get closer to either one of these two and this would work brilliantly if Wayan was telling her the truth
.

Big
if
there.

Chatton would find the two physicists and interrogate them first to find out if Project Jigu-X was real or not.

She’d also ferret out what made this North Korean woman so valuable.

Then it would be Wayan’s turn to prove he could locate the elusive killer that she’d been unable to find, because she was handing over no one until she had proof he could deliver
.

But she had a feeling he could do exactly what he claimed.

One thing about Wayan was that he took his commitments to heart. A black heart, but those usually came through no matter what. “You got a deal, Wayan. Now, tell me who they are and where they’re going in the States.” 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tanner paced the lobby of the California Hospital Medical Center, wishing he could trade places with Nick, who was in surgery
. Not because he wanted to have a bullet cut out of his chest—been there, done that, got the nasty scar—but deep down he knew Nick was paying the price for a mistake he’d made. The Italian had taken at least three rounds to the chest. His body armor had held until the last one.
Thank God.

He thumbed a number into his phone and noticed the time was closing in on noon
.

“How’s Nick?” Sabrina said as soon as she came on the cell phone line.

He might lie to someone else to give them a quick shot of hope, but not Sabrina. “Fifty-fifty odds right now. Depends on how close the bullet is to his lung and if they find fragmentation. Blade’s monitoring everything.”

“Where’s Dingo?”

“Guard duty.”  Tanner had left Dingo outside the surgery suite, watching for anyone suspicious who might come hunting for Nick.

With Jin missing, the group that attacked them might send someone to recon or try to squeeze information out of Nick
. Dingo would make sure any intruder would get his nuts handed to him for even thinking about touching an injured team member.

But who was watching over Jin?

Had she run
only
because she was afraid of an unknown future? Suspicion reared its ugly head and did the cobra side-to-side motion, waiting to strike.

“Have the LAPD backed off?” Sabrina asked, skipping ahead to just one of the problems in this catastrophe
.

“LAPD’s out of our hair. They’re dealing with the body at the scene and were trying to call this a drug deal gone
bad. Whoever you tapped at the State Department must have thrown some heavy weight at this. They were hammering us for a while, getting nothing of course, then the one in charge got a call from his boss. He was pissed, but he closed up shop and left.”

“Good. We’ve got a hell of a mess to fix.”

She might not sound nurturing, but she’d storm a terrorist camp single-handed to save one of her own, and every person on her teams knew that.

Tanner had hated to be the one to tell her about Nick, but bad as this would sound to an outsider, at least it wasn’t Dingo in surgery right now
. Sabrina, Dingo and Josh Carrington had history. Went all the way back to childhood together, when they’d been half-pint terrors scavenging for food on the streets of New York.

Sabrina added, “Speaking of cleaning up, I sent a crew to the safe house. It’s definitely burned at this point.”

No shit. Tanner had to sidestep a wheelchair that was being pushed by a hospital orderly. The woman in the chair reminded him of his grandmother.

I fucking hate hospitals
.
He stretched out his stride. If he wasn’t so wiped-out tired, he’d jog to reach the automated glass doors. He asked, “Just to be clear, the State Department
is
leaving this in our hands, right?”

“They don’t want any association with this outside of our secret agreement
. In the words of my contact, Slye Temp created this problem and Slye Temp will fix it or I should expect to be brought in front of a Congressional committee to explain why I brought North Koreans into this country without authority. There will be no acknowledgment of a contract ever having been executed between Slye and the Federal government.”

Was there no bottom to the fallout from this
? “I swear I’ll find them, Sabrina.”

“Not your fault, Tanner.”

Oh, but he was pretty sure it was. He’d discuss that with her once this was done. “Any intel yet?”

“Nothing useful. We need eyes on the ground
out there
ASAP.”

“Agreed.”  Tanner finally stepped outside where the sky was overcast. He sucked in a deep breath of warm spring air, pollutants and all
. Anything smelled better than halls of antiseptic air right now. “But how the fu—” He eyed two kids walking into the hospital with their mom so he kept moving until he found a place he could talk unguarded. “How did anyone find us at that house, and that quickly? The best Dingo and I can figure is that they had to already have been in position nearby, waiting before Nick showed.”

“There has to be a leak in the State Department,” Sabrina said in a voice that threatened someone would face a bloody death if she could get her hands on said leak right now
. “I called my contact to let him know about Har and Pang being stateside and explained there’d be a delay in delivery due to Har’s illness. That would have been about the time you were disembarking the jet. My contact said he’d make arrangements for his people to pick up Pang and Har at the safe house tomorrow morning. He hadn’t even called back with the identification of the team he was sending when you were hit.”

“Did he at least agree he had a leak when you told him about the attack?”

“No. He basically said if I delivered those Koreans safely we could put this behind both of us.” She snarled, “That bastard. I was willing to burn one of my best west-coast locations just to get the Norks off our hands and you four back here quicker.”

If that was a pen Tanner heard her beating against her desk, it wouldn’t last long
.

He hated the regret he heard in her voice
. Every move and decision she made was with the sole intent of putting her people first. It wasn’t business to her, not after having her team burned in the UK a few years back when they were sent to rescue Len Rikker, some CIA puke who’d disappeared.

Tanner shuddered, remembering how close they’d all come to dying there.

How about one thought that isn’t bloody right now
? He kept pushing through the information they had. “Based on the leak being in the State Department, the question is, who wanted those two Koreans?”

“Or all three,” Sabrina corrected
. “But I haven’t told anyone about the woman yet.” 

Bringing Jin here might have been stupid, but Tanner still couldn’t see any way of leaving her to face the DPRK military.

Where the hell
was
Jin? Running. She didn’t trust any of them now.

He considered who would want Pang and Har
. “The only answer I come up with is North Korea.”

“Me, too, but—”

“But what, Sabrina?”

“I don’t know ... this is just off. All of it.”

Hadn’t he and Dingo said that same thing? Tanner’s phone dinged with a text. “Hold on a sec.” 

Dingo’s message read:
Surgery over. Nick in recovery
.
Stable.

The tight fist squeezing Tanner’s chest released
. He told Sabrina, “Just got a text from Dingo. Nick’s out of surgery and stable.”

She murmured, “Thank God.”  Then the steel was back in her voice. “I’ve got everyone here working any contacts they have on the west coast
. The minute we have a break, I’ll let you know. I’ll send Ryder and—”

At the risk of pissing her off even more, Tanner interrupted
. “Hold up. Ryder is probably of more use to you back in Atlanta. I just need intel and someone capable of guarding Nick. There’s nothing anyone else can do that Dingo and I won’t already be doing. You know we’ll move faster on our own.” He understood how much Sabrina wanted to unleash the full power of her resources and make someone pay now, but his gut said it wouldn’t help. She’d have to wait.

Just like he would, and every minute was killing him.

An ambulance siren approached from the main highway.

“Fine, I’ll send White Hawk to share shifts with Blade on watching Nick.”  Sabrina made a noise that sounded like a tired sigh
. How many hours had she spent worried over her team? Every second they’d been gone. She ended the conversation with, “Keep me posted, Tanner. Call for whatever you need, no matter what or when.”

As Tanner ended the call, he realized he was scanning the parking lot surrounding the emergency center for a threat
. What was he looking for? Did exhaustion have him expecting someone to jump from behind a car with a submachine gun?

The ambulance raced up to the entrance and people went into motion
. Everything seemed routine.

But he had the sensation of a spider with claws walking up his spine.

He was going to be suspicious of everything until this job was done and his entire team went home.

Alive.

He spent two hours upstairs in the waiting area with Dingo until Nick was deemed in fair condition. He’d spend the night in ICU then move to a room by morning if he kept improving. Two bullets had passed through his arm. One ripped his leg and
four
had pounded his chest. The titanium plates in his body armor had stopped all but the one. Tanner would worship at Sabrina’s feet for giving her team the best high-tech gear available.

The one in his leg had been close
. Another centimeter closer to his femoral artery and they’d have zipped him up in a body bag.

“You go ahead to the hotel and grab some sleep,” Tanner told Dingo as he forwarded Sabrina’s text with the hotel location to Dingo’s phone. “I’ll cover the first shift and I’ll call as soon as Sabrina has any
intel.”

“No,” Dingo said as they both stepped out of the waiting area. “I slept on the flight back. You didn’t
. Every time I looked up, you were moving around.”

Tanner curbed the urge to flinch at the reminder he’d been nodding off on the way to the safe house. Had he been too tired to notice signs of a threat
? “I should have used that down time better.”

“Stop it, mate,” Dingo growled
. “No one made a mistake, not even Nick. They were lying in wait for us. It was a fucking ambush. Some Fed screwed us, plain and simple. Go on and get some rest. You’re more help alert. Blade’s staying tonight, too. I’ll call if anything changes.”

He was right
. But Tanner doubted he’d sleep long. His dreams had been bloody for a few years now, but this time the blood would be spewing from Nick’s body as he was hit by rifle rounds and flying backwards.

When Tanner reached the parking lot, he had to think about where he’d parked the Suburban. Which row?

There it was.

He clicked the driver door open, climbed in and slumped in the seat
. Everything from the past forty-eight hours hit him with the force of a steel-fisted punch. He would be content to sleep right here, right now. If he didn’t get moving, that’s exactly what would happen, but the team needed him rested and ready to roll.

In the next minute, he drove out of the parking lot and found the interstate, headed for the hotel
. Traffic wasn’t bad for almost three in the afternoon, considering this was Los Angeles. What day was it? Tuesday?

His skin prickled with warning
.

Adrenaline pushed into his body from some reserve he hadn’t expected to have
. He always checked his mirrors for someone following, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary behind him.

He tensed, reaching toward his shoulder holster ..
. that was empty. He’d left his HK Tactical in the console to minimize the problems they already faced racing into a hospital with a gunshot victim. They knew they’d be searched once law enforcement arrived, and Sabrina needed time to arrange clearance for their weapons so they all didn’t end up hauled to jail.

He fingered the console as he heard the word, “Don’t.”

Cold metal touched his neck. A fucking gun. One of
his
fucking guns.

Worse?

The light-blue eyes full of apprehension that met his in the rearview mirror belonged to Jin.

She clutched a Glock 17 that should still be in the duffel in the rear of the SUV
. She’d handled herself like a pro the two times he’d seen her fight, but Tanner wasn’t staring into the cold eyes of a woman capable of gunning a man down at point-blank range.

Tanner kept one eye on the road, but kept coming back to the mirror to meet her gaze. Those eyes couldn’t play poker if her life depended on it
. And Tanner had figured something out. She’d started all-out fighting the guy back at the safe house
only
when she thought he was going to shoot Tanner. Jin might be playing tough, but he knew she didn’t want him dead.

She was terrified and probably waiting on him to make a move to take the Glock away from her
. That had crossed his mind, but he dismissed the idea on two counts.

First, if he scared her, she might squeeze her fingers out of natural reaction, which would include the one fidgeting on the trigger.

Second, he might get her to talk if he let her think she had the control here.

“What the hell is going on, Jin?”

“There is much I need to tell you.”

“You think?”  Snarling at her was the wrong tone to take, but he’d run slap out of any good intentions
. “I’ve got a friend who just went through surgery who’s still critical, two physicists missing and the State Department wanting to stomp everyone connected to this fiasco. Yeah, there’s a lot to explain, starting with why you’re holding a fucking gun on me.”