Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (11 page)

“After the other guys came in, she got spooked,
shot the hostage in the shoulder in order to make her escape,” Vivi continued.

“So the marshals and the local police are after her, not to mention McMannus,” Kell muttered.

Reid shrugged. “She’s in a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“So are we, if we’re caught with her.” Kell checked down the hall into the den where Teddie was still curled up on the couch.

“I’ll call back with any updates,” Vivi said before hanging up. Kell did the same as Reid rolled off the bed and stretched.

“You’d better get some answers,” he told Kell.

“Why me?”

“You’re the one who seems to like kissing her,” Reid commented, and Kell fought a strong urge to punch the shit out of him for guessing that correctly.

“We’ve got an address for Chambers,” he said instead.

“Sounds like he had something to do with Teddie’s father’s murder … and that she suspected that, according to what Vivi says about witness’s evidence, right?”

“Teddie told me herself she met Chambers in the restaurant.” Kell looked grim as he glanced toward the couch. Teddie was sleeping restlessly now, her long, bare legs tangled in the blanket Kell had gotten her from a closet.

“Either way, she’s in deep shit,” Reid commented.

But they were in deep shit too, and were they shouldering Teddie’s burdens now? “What the hell is going on here?”

“I could take a run by Chambers’s place when it
gets dark,” Reid offered. “And you can question the hell out of her before we make any decisions.”

“You want to turn her over to the marshals and watch her rot in a Mexican prison?”

“No, that’s not what I want.” Reid turned to face him. “But you need to decide what the fuck it is you want.”

“You think I’m going to bolt, leave you behind again and not take your calls.” Because he’d done it before.

“Yeah, I do. I’ve been waiting for it for the past week,” Reid admitted.

Reid always did know him better than anyone. “I’m not going anywhere for now. But after this …”

“We’ll talk about it then, okay?” Reid cut him off, and Kell nodded.

W
hen night fell, Reid went to Chambers’s house, said he’d pick up a ride along the way. Kell told him to keep in touch and then paced a hole in the floor waiting for a call. Teddie had gotten up once to eat something and then went back to the couch, the past days obviously taking a toll on her, and goddamn, what the hell was he doing here, with her?

The old Kell would’ve called the marshals to pick her ass up, no matter how pretty she was.

She’s not here because of her looks
.

And, if he was honest with himself, the old Kell would’ve had second thoughts on calling the marshals on her too. But the past was such an easy thing to rewrite at a time like this.

Finally, after an hour, Reid called.

“I’m outside Chambers’s house,” he said.

“And?”

“He’s got a bandage and a sling on his arm,” Reid said. “And a hell of a lot of security.”

So the eyewitness reports must’ve been correct—she had shot two men, not one, and she’d conveniently forgotten to tell him. “What’s Teddie’s game?” he muttered, more to himself than Reid, but his friend responded anyway.

“The real question is, how far do you plan on taking this?”

Kell rubbed at the tension in his forehead but it did no good. “I’m going to talk to her now—I’m bringing her to Chambers’s for a little truth or dare scare tactic, so stay put.”

“And then?”

“If I believe her … I’m going to help her.”

When Kell didn’t say anything else, Reid gave a soft,
what the fuck?
whistle but he didn’t say another word about that, asked instead, “Want me to head inside and have a look around? Chambers’s going into the shower—I’ll have a small window of opportunity.”

It would be for the best. “Don’t get caught.”

“Fuck you. And don’t take too long to get to me,” Reid admonished, and Kell hung up and went to rouse Teddie. He handed her some soda when she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and she muttered something about being hungry.

She went to the kitchen and rifled through the fridge. She made a sandwich while Kell watched her, and she sat and ate looking out the window, as if wanting to avoid both his gaze and his conversation.

“Where’s Reid?” she asked finally, but he didn’t answer her question.

“Tell me more about Samuel Chambers. How and when did you contact him?”

“I tracked down his number through another family friend in the diplomatic community—I wasn’t supposed to be in contact with anyone, but there were people who remembered me … they felt sorry about what happened. They thought Samuel would want to help. And so I called him about a week ago.”

“When you called him, what did he say?”

“He was freaked,” she admitted, looking resigned to having this discussion. “He asked me not to share his address with the marshals.”

“And you didn’t find that odd?”

“I know better than anyone that diplomats make a lot of enemies.” She pushed her plate away from her. “Look, I get it. You think this was a really stupid thing for me to do, coming to Mexico on my own to see Samuel. And it was—I admit it, okay? But I was very short on options. No one was trying to bring the men who killed my family to justice.”

“How do you know that?”

“I couldn’t get any answers from the marshals and Samuel himself confirmed it, told me there hadn’t been any new leads on the case. He said he’d been looking into it as well. Don’t you see—he had leads and that’s why the mercenaries were following him.”

More lies, but he went with it. “Did he say he was being followed or threatened?”

She shook her head. “We didn’t talk on the phone long. He told me he had info, that it wasn’t safe to talk on an unsecured line, that I should meet him at
the restaurant.” She paused. “If a marshal had been with me, he might’ve been killed.”

“If a marshal had been with you, you’d never have been allowed to go.” He paused. “Why the restaurant and not his house?”

“He said it was safer for me.”

And the song remains the same
. “But it wasn’t.”

“No.”

“So according to you, the mercs came into the restaurant and started shooting and you just left Chambers and shot at the mercs and then ran?”

“Samuel was shot. I saw him go down and I thought …” she trailed off, as if not wanting to tell the rest of the lie, because she knew Chambers wasn’t dead.

Kell stared at her as if willing something close to the truth to spill out. She wasn’t completely lying, though—just not telling the whole story.

And although she was doing a hell of a job, he knew the lies were beginning to trap her. She didn’t let on, still appeared a little shell shocked from the earlier incident in the alley. She was looking at him as he stood and walked toward her, gasped when he turned her chair roughly to face him.

“Are you bullshitting me?” he demanded, and it was so easy to let the animal in him rise up, to forget that he was supposed to be calm and civilized at times like this.

It was so much better when he was alone with his weapons, his mind only on the mission. Women got in the way. More so when they were lying.

“I’m not.”

“You are fucking with our lives here,” he growled.
“Every bit of intel you give me needs to be the absolute truth or we could all die.”

The harshness of his words broke through her tough exterior and the fear he’d seen in her eyes last night returned.

Good
.

Even though it made him wince internally. Also good.

“You think I’ve been lying to you?”

“Yes,” he told her bluntly, and instead of getting angry, she nodded.

“I don’t know how else to make you believe I had nothing to do with these men. And I certainly had nothing to do with the murder of my family—my God, who would do something like that?”

He didn’t want to tell her that money and revenge did strange things to people.

“I had nothing to do with the murder of my family,” she repeated when he said nothing.

“But you were left alive.”

“And I live with that guilt every day,” she said fiercely. “Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

He did, but he sure as hell wasn’t telling her that. “Come on,” he said, then walked over and opened the door leading to the garage.

“Where did Reid go?” she asked again, more warily this time—and that’s right, keep her off balance. She was ready to spill, and when she saw what he planned on showing her, she would.

“Come on.” His voice was impatient. She followed him, let herself into the passenger’s side of the truck, and for a long moment he thought about cuffing her
but decided against it. For now. But he had them in his pocket, just in case.

They rode in silence. He knew Chambers’s house was twenty minutes away, thanks to the stolen GPS system now sitting on the dash of the truck.

When they drove up the steep hill that allowed them to look down on Chambers’s house, Kell cut the lights and the engine and looked through a pair of binoculars before handing them to Teddie.

“What are these for?”

“Look into the lower windows,” he said.

“What’s this about?” she asked as she brought the binoculars up to her eyes and trained them where Kell had directed.

When she stopped cold, he knew he didn’t have to answer her, but he did anyway.

“It’s about the truth,” he said. “Maybe you want to knock on the door, say hello. Apologize for trying to kill him.”

She looked into the window for a long moment, completely silent, her body language not changing. And then, finally, she lowered the binoculars to her lap and turned to look at him. “If I’d wanted Samuel dead, he would be. I had plenty of opportunity.”

“Since you’re such an amazing one-woman show, maybe I should just leave you here to fend for yourself.”

She didn’t answer, but when he leaned across her to push open her door, she was most definitely surprised.

“Go,” he told her. And he wasn’t kidding.

C
ould she call his bluff?

When Teddie looked into his eyes, she caught a flicker of the dangerous beast that lay underneath. Well hidden and ready to strike. She had a feeling it was the end of the line for her evasiveness. She’d pushed it too far already, and it was as stupid as prodding a sleeping lion.

She pulled the truck’s door closed. “We shouldn’t stick around here long. I’m sure he has surveillance.”

“We need to wait for Reid. But you have five seconds to start talking or you’re out.”

“Reid’s here?”

“Four seconds.”

He wasn’t kidding. “My father told me something about Samuel.”

“Let me guess, the marshals don’t have the info you’re about to tell me?” Kell asked, and she did hate him right then, would hate him even more when he knew everything. She didn’t doubt he would pull every last secret from her, and to think about bending like that made her ache in strange places.

She’d never told anyone what Samuel had tried to do to her when she was just seventeen—the sexual assault she’d fought off—and she couldn’t start there with Kell. It wouldn’t provide proof of anything anyway. Instead, she’d admit why she really went to meet Samuel in the first place.

“My father told me not to say anything to anyone, that it was too dangerous, but he’d discovered that there was a rash of kidnappings of wealthy Americans for ransom that happened every time he moved to a new place for diplomatic service. He believed Samuel was actually masterminding the kidnappings.
And I think Samuel murdered my father because of it.”

Kell punched the steering wheel and swore. “You think Chambers set up your father?”

“Yes. My father had believed for a while that it had to be someone in the diplomatic community aiding and abetting in the kidnappings of wealthy and influential Americans. Typically, they would register with the embassy in case they needed something.”

“So someone who had that information would know when they’d be arriving.”

“Right. And they were being kidnapped right from the airport—no signs of struggle, so it looked like they went with the kidnappers willingly. They probably thought they were getting into a waiting chauffeured car that would take them to their destination. It happened in the last three countries where my father worked. He felt targeted. He worried for our family. He suspected he was in danger and wasn’t sure he was getting help from the authorities, because at that point, nothing had been done. The night after he told me, he was killed.”

She blinked a few times but didn’t cry.

“Why did your father think Chambers was behind the kidnappings?”

“My stepmother was having an affair with Samuel.” She whispered it, but it didn’t hurt any less to say it that way. “She was the leak.”

“But you have no proof.”

She knew about Samuel’s manipulation of the women in her family—for her, that was enough. “My father had no reason to tell me all this, no reason to lie. Samuel and my father went to school together,
with my mom. The three of them were extremely close.” It made the betrayal that much worse, and her voice broke. But she swallowed the sob—she would not cry. Tears hadn’t helped when her mother died or after her father was killed, and they would do nothing now but weaken her resolve. Weaken her.