Easy Target (18 page)

Standing, he zipped his jeans but never took his eyes from hers. “You are beautiful, you know.” Before she understood what he intended, he was leaning down and kissing her, softly but thoroughly. She was so shocked, she didn’t respond, even as he walked away barefoot down the steps.

Chapter Eighteen

W
HAT THE HELL
was he doing?

Bryan shook his head as he walked downstairs. He had just done exactly what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t. He’d made the colossal mistake of letting his guard down to the point where he had allowed himself to make love to Sassy. But try as he might, he couldn’t be sorry.

His only regret was that this was going to hurt ­people. Sassy most likely and, of course, Trey, if he ever found out. Bryan didn’t include himself, because he already knew he was toast. He had accepted that fact when he’d kissed Sassy the first time in the hotel in Constantine. There was no way he was making it out of this insanity with his heart intact.

By the time he hit the bottom step with those unhappy thoughts, Bear was vibrating with impatience.

“Your friend Nick is ready to chat. We can do this with a voice call or even by video conference, since you are both using data only. There’s no way it can be traced tonight. What’s your preference?”

Bryan’s head was still reeling from the past hour as he sat beside Bear at the desk.

“Video.” There was something reassuring about seeing another man’s face and reactions when this much was at stake.

Bear tapped a few keys, and a window popped open on the computer screen. Nick Donovan was in the center of the monitor with Jennifer Grayson seated next to him. Beside them were Leland Hollis and Anna Mercado. Leland’s leg was propped on a coffee table in a walking boot. A crackling fire was visible behind the two ­couples.

Bryan recoiled internally. He hadn’t been expecting Leland, and the expression on Nick’s face was grim. But Nick was ex-­CIA; he’d always looked grim until earlier this month, when Jennifer had appeared on the scene.

“Who the hell are you?” Apparently Nick could only see Bear on the screen.

Bear smiled into the monitor’s camera. “I’m just tech support. Here’s Hollywood.” The big man stood and gave Bryan his seat. “I’ll put you on the headphones so you can have some privacy. I’m going to fix something to eat.”

Privacy?
Bryan shook his head.
What for?
Nick had invited the entire flippin’ world. “That’s not necessary. We need all the help we can get to figure out what’s going on.”

He caught a glimpse of Sassy coming down the stairs in Bear’s huge robe. He might have to eat those words. He didn’t want her here, looking like that. Was it as obvious to everyone else that they’d just had sex?

The velour garment came to her ankles. Seeing her in another man’s clothing bothered him. If she was going to wear any man’s clothes, they should be his.

What the fuck was happening to him? He shook his head to clear that bit of insanity and focused on Nick and Leland, reassuring himself with Bear’s earlier declaration that no matter what, this call couldn’t be traced.

He was surprised when Jennifer started the conversation. “You guys in a safe place?” she asked.

Bryan nodded. “You?”

Nick put his arm around Jennifer as he spoke. “Safe as we can be for now. We’re at Gavin’s lake house.”

Bryan wasn’t sure how they’d managed to gather there with the cloud of suspicion Gavin was under, but it made sense. Once the cabin had been searched for evidence and ruled out by investigators, the house would no longer be on anyone’s radar.

Sassy stood just out of sight of the computer monitor’s camera. “Is it okay if I join you?” Her scent wrapped around him once again and messed with his head. He so did not need this right now. But she seemed oblivious to her effect on him.

Bryan nodded without looking up at her.
Why the hell not?
They were practically having a slumber party here. This was not what he’d envisioned when he’d planned to talk with Nick.

Jennifer smiled as Sassy came into view on the camera. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was worried for you.”

Sassy nodded, surprisingly quiet, and took the seat beside the desk Bryan had just vacated. He glanced at her, but she didn’t meet his gaze.

Was she regretting what had happened upstairs between them? He wasn’t sure, but right now that was the least of their problems and definitely not something he should be focusing on.

Could he do that?

“What is going on with you, Hollywood?” Leland’s deep, Southern-­fried voice sounded so clearly through the computer’s speakers, he might have been across the room rather than across the country.

Was it that obvious?

Bryan was shocked by the question before he understood what Leland was really asking. And wasn’t that the question? What
was
going on with him?

Bryan was still recovering from the shock of seeing Leland there on screen with Nick and Jennifer at the cabin. Nick was the most suspicious-­natured person on the AEGIS team. But if Leland was clear in Nick’s eyes, the man must be clean.

Even so, it bugged the hell out of Bryan that every time he’d talked to Leland about where he and Sassy were, someone had found them. The obvious answer to that was to avoid discussing their location. But there was no way to go forward until he dealt with the issue head-­on.

“Someone is tailing us,” said Bryan. “They have been since we got back to the U.S. First there was a break-­in at our hotel room in New York, then the train crash. Leland, it happened every time I talked with you. I think someone has a trace of some kind on your phone. You need to do a sweep.”

Leland tilted his head as he peered back into the screen but said nothing.

“What are you saying exactly?” Nick leaned forward with an intensity that would have intimidated most ­people, but Bryan was used to it.

“I’m not accusing Leland of anything. However, I am pointing out the obvious. Someone knows Leland is the contact person in AEGIS we all call when we need something. Whoever this is has a bug or a trace of some kind on him. Our conversation is going to be over before it starts if you won’t accept that and do something about it.”

Leland nodded, looking unhappy but resigned. “Of course I’ll do something about it. I just can’t figure out how anyone could’ve gotten to me or my phone. I haven’t been anywhere or with anyone that had access since this start—­” He stopped. “Holy shit,” he muttered under his breath.

“What?” asked Bryan and Nick together.

Anna’s eyes widened in alarm as Leland stood.

“I don’t want to believe this. Give me a minute.” Leland hobbled away from view of the camera with one crutch.

“Do you need your other crutch? It’s in the bedroom with Zach,” said Anna. There was a garbled reply, most likely positive, since she stood as well.

Nick glanced over his shoulder at something not visible onscreen. “Okay, he’s checking it out, in another room I might add. What do you have?”

“The train wreck. This sounds crazy, but after everything was over, it looked like some of the drone attacks I saw in Afghanistan.”

“Tell me about the crash.” Nick took a sip from a coffee mug on the low table before him.

“After the initial derailment, the back of the train was intact and undamaged. Several minutes later, there was a massive explosion.”

“But couldn’t that have just been a secondary detonation from a leak inside the crash?” asked Nick.

“When I saw the train right after the wreck . . . when we got out of our sleeper car, the back cars were on the track and the least ‘disturbed’ part of the entire wreckage site. They hadn’t been touched. It doesn’t make sense that something in the back of the train exploded after the initial impact up front.”

Bryan heard the fire popping over the computer microphone as everyone absorbed the information. Jennifer leaned her head against Nick’s shoulder, twisting a ring around her finger. Anna settled into the sofa cushions.

“Then the attack on Tilly and Otis, the nurse and her husband who helped us in South Carolina. I can’t figure out why that happened, but I have to believe it all goes back to things that went down in Africa. I don’t know if it’s wrapped up with the human trafficking or the cartels themselves. But someone is driving all of this. I just can’t pull the pieces together. That’s why I wanted to talk. I thought if we laid everything out from the very beginning, it might make more sense.”

Nick nodded. “When do you think this all started? When Jennifer was taken?”

“No,” Sassy spoke up for the first time. “If everything is connected, it started long before that. It started last summer, when Elizabeth was taken. She and my brother were at the resort in Mexico where Tomas Rivera and Ernesto Vega were meeting at the same time. Elizabeth disappeared and Trey was found passed out in the boat they’d rented, covered in blood. He was arrested almost immediately for Elizabeth’s alleged murder.”

Anna nodded. “At the end of November my son was taken by the Riveras, and Leland went to Mexico to get him.”

Nick took a sip of his coffee. “When Anna and her son were safe and it was over, Carlita Vega, Rivera’s wife, was dead in what Rivera says was a drone attack on his compound that no one has yet claimed responsibility for. Carlita’s brother, Cesar Vega, died the next day, trying to kill me.”

Jennifer reached for his hand as Nick kept talking. “While I was recovering from the gun battle at Rivera’s compound, Jenny was taken from my brother’s home by Ernesto Vega in retribution for his own brother’s and sister’s deaths. Vega put Jenny in a cartel-­run brothel in Mexico and joined forces with Tomas Rivera to get even with me and AEGIS because he thought we were the ­people responsible for killing their loved ones.”

“How did Jennifer get away from the brothel?” asked Sassy.

Bryan turned in his chair to answer her. “Nick and I went to get her out. We had help from an informant. But there was a deliberately set fire. Everyone at the brothel was killed in an ambush, except Jennifer. It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t now. That place was run by Rivera, but Vega was supposedly cooperating with him at the time.” Bryan turned back to the screen. “Do you think Vega was playing both sides?”

Nick took another sip of coffee as he contemplated an answer. “In Algeria, just before we left Africa, Rivera told me he’d learned that someone else was responsible for the attack on his compound where his wife died and the vet clinic where his brother-­in-­law Cesar was killed. He claimed that someone he trusted had betrayed him. By then Ernesto Vega was already dead. So it couldn’t have been Vega that Rivera was referring to. If what Rivera said about a betrayal is true, it makes sense that the same person could have been responsible for the attack on the brothel and the attack on the Niamey dig site as well.”

Bryan hadn’t been there when the Niamey dig site attack occurred, but he’d seen the aftermath. The camp had been burned to the ground. Several Tuareg guards had died, along with a professor from Abdou Moumouni University, but no foreigners. So there wasn’t much news coverage for what had been labeled a “tribal uprising” in an area of Africa that hadn’t seen “tribal uprisings” in decades.

Nick was still explaining his part of the story to Sassy. “When Jennifer got home from the brothel kidnapping in Mexico, Rivera came after her and bombed her house. He came after her in Niamey last week, too. There was an actual contract on her life. Rivera thought killing Jenny would be the best way to get revenge on me for what he saw as my part in killing his wife, Carlita. Until a few days ago, he was convinced that I had something to do with bombing his compound where Carlita died. In Skikda, he claimed that he knew who the person was who had ‘betrayed his trust.’ ”

Bryan nodded. “So someone else has been playing both sides against the middle, maybe trying to pit the two cartel leaders against each other. The question now is who?”

“And why did Jennifer end up on that truck with me?” asked Sassy. “Was it all about revenge, or was someone else after her? Rivera had her in Mexico at the brothel—­why didn’t he just kill her there if that’s what he was all about? At the time he still thought Nick was responsible for his wife and brother-­in-­law’s deaths.” Sassy leaned toward the computer screen. “Sorry, Jennifer, I have to ask.”

Jennifer nodded her understanding at the bald statement. Sassy kept talking.

“If Tomas Rivera wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Paleo-­Niger Project, who was? And why did they take you and Nick from the site and put you on those trucks, instead of just killing you there at the dig site? Every other time Rivera’s men got near you, they tried to kill you.”

Jennifer stared a moment, not speaking, along with Nick. That hadn’t occurred to either of them. Finally Nick spoke up. “You’re right. Taking us from the dig site wasn’t about revenge. Rivera made it clear that his attempts to hurt Jennifer were all about hurting me. Killing her would have been the most painful thing for me.”

Sassy nodded. “But taking Jennifer from the dig site was different. Who did that and why? Did she see something in Mexico she wasn’t supposed to?”

“I considered that after the house bombing,” said Nick, “but we never came up with an answer.”

Bryan listened as Sassy put pieces of the puzzle together that his team had been too close to see. Her reporter’s mind was making some connections he hadn’t considered before.

“I’ve been over and over the time there in Mexico,” said Jennifer. “It’s fuzzy. I was drugged until just a few hours before Nick arrived. I only talked to one of the girls. Mia.” She shook her head and turned the ring on her middle finger once more.

“Could you have overheard something from her that would explain or reveal who this other person w—­” Sassy quit talking.

Bryan glanced over to see what had interrupted her train of thought. She was riveted to the screen and leaning even closer.

“Jennifer, could you hold your hand up to the camera, please?” Her voice shook when she asked the question.

Bryan turned to her as Jennifer’s hand filled the screen, along with a very distinctive ring—­an older silver design with a large crystal stone in the center and several smaller crystals around it.

“Oh my God,” Sassy whispered. “That’s Elizabeth’s engagement ring.”