Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (15 page)

Grier dealt more with fugitives than witness protection candidates, but she’d had enough experience with both to know there were many similarities between the two. Teddie straddled that line now. Whether or not she’d meant to shoot anyone was irrelevant. She had. And Grier needed to catch her.

The marshal who’d been in charge of Teddie’s case was a fourteen-year veteran named Al, and he was pissed.

“She never gave any indication she’d run. She followed the same routine the entire time she was here,” he told Grier now, having met her in Teddie’s room.

“Phone calls?”

“A few here and there that came filtered through her manager. People begging her to come out of retirement. She hasn’t touched a camera in a year.”

“You got too comfortable with her. It made you sloppy,” Grier told him. “She was gone twenty-four hours before you noticed.”

“She’s got no family, no real place to go,” the marshal pointed out, trying to cover his ass.

Grier got it. Budgets were tight and they were all spread too thin. But this was a major fuckup, pure and simple, and it was all going to rain down on her head. It was time to start tracking Teddie, culling cell phone numbers from her records to see what they found. They’d tried to give her some privacy while the Khartoum authorities looked into the killing of her family.

Apparently, that wasn’t going well, if at all. Teddie
was most likely frustrated, but she hadn’t given any indication that she’d try taking matters into her own hands.

Grier mused on Khartoum’s lack of progress on the drive back to the office, asked Jack to pull all Teddie’s records so she could do a read-through in order to really get inside the woman’s head.

She was in the process of doing so, emotions getting the best of her when she went over the details of Teddie’s family’s murders, just as Teddie’s emotions would’ve taken
her
over, when she spotted someone heading toward the glass door of her office.

He didn’t stop to knock.

The man was tall, with tawny-colored hair and amber eyes. The gaze and gait of a predator, albeit a very attractive one.

And he’d zeroed in on her.

How he’d simply been allowed to waltz through a restricted area was another story entirely, but she supposed he exuded a confidence that would’ve gotten him through easily enough with a military or law enforcement ID and a smile.

“I have some information you need on Teddie Lassiter’s case,” he said with no greeting.

Grier kept her voice and her expression neutral. “Why don’t you have a seat and let me take some general information from you?”

His mouth quirked to one side. “I don’t think so. I’d grab a pen and paper and start writing, because I’m only saying this once.”

She didn’t take her eyes off him as she pulled out a small notebook and pen from her back jeans pocket. “Go.”

He gave her an address outside of Ciudad Juarez. “She’s with two men—Kell Roberts and Reid Cormier—who are armed and dangerous.”

“Mercenaries?”

“Worse. Military.”

“Like you?”

There was that grin again. “No one’s like me, sweetheart. And don’t bother trying to follow me—you’ll never get close enough to catch me … unless I want you to.”

His dipped his head at her before he strode out like he didn’t have a care in the world—or a reason why he’d given her this information.

Or an explanation of how he’d gotten it in the first place.

She motioned for Jack to follow him and then stared down at the address for a long moment before turning back to her computer to do some investigating.

Mexico had always been a haven for men and women looking to escape their old lives—for many different reasons, very few of them above the law. She didn’t doubt the man who’d just left her office was one of them, or that she’d see him again, and too close to the address he’d given her for comfort.

Her cell rang—Jack’s number. “Talk to me.”

“I lost him.” Jack sounded pissed, and impressed as hell.

“Come on back in. We’re headed to Juarez.”

“I take it we’re not going on vacation.”

“Not even close.”

T
eddie stayed in the pool until the skin on her fingers puckered and she began to shiver, despite the water’s warmth. She wrapped her naked body in a towel and showered in the downstairs bathroom rather than parading through the house. She’d pushed her luck far too many times over the past days.

After her shower, she slipped on a puffy white robe that smelled freshly laundered and was folded on one of the shelves as she wondered who this house had belonged to previously.

She padded up the stairs on bare feet, her clothes in hand, until she found Kell, sitting on a bed in the first bedroom on the left, the one with the sliding glass door that overlooked the pool.

He glanced at her, heat in his eyes. “You can sleep here. I brought you some clothes to wear,” he said, and she glanced at the black T-shirt and pants he’d laid out. “They’re mine—they’ll be way too big, but they’re clean.”

“No laundry service in this house?” she asked wryly.

“No laundry soap,” he said. She’d wash her shirt and jeans out in the tub as best she could anyway, but for now, his T-shirt would do. She slid into the bathroom and pulled it on. It came to mid-thigh and she pulled the robe on over it forgoing the pants for now.

“Did you learn anything new from your friend?” she asked when she emerged.

“Yes.” He didn’t look happy about it.

“Just tell me.”

He waited a beat and then said, “According to the CIA, they believe your father was the mastermind.
They were investigating both him and Chambers at the time of the murders and they weren’t able to find anything on Chambers. That’s why you’re being offered protection, since you can identify the actual men who murdered your family, but the investigation is at a standstill beyond looking for them. They’re still actively looking for the men, but only so they can’t hurt you.”

“They think he brought this on himself?”

“Our source—”

“Is wrong,” she finished for him. “Look, I came to terms a long time ago with the fact that Samuel isn’t who I thought he was. You will not take away my father from me like that. No way.” It was the closest she’d come to revealing what Samuel had done to her when she was a teenager. And it was the closest she would, for now.

“I’m sorry, Teddie.” He sounded like he really hated being the one to break this news to her.

“Please help me prove otherwise. Before McMannus finds me—or the marshals. Either way, I’ll be dead, literally or figuratively.”

He didn’t argue with her last statement, just told her, “Chambers hasn’t said anything to the police about you or why you tried to hurt him, beyond the fact that you were on drugs and he was trying to help you. He’s saying you came to him for help kicking a cocaine habit. The marshals know what happened, thanks to video surveillance and eyewitness testimony, some of which was corroborated and captured on cell phones, but Chambers’s not cooperating with them. He’s refusing to press charges; still, that doesn’t mean he’s going to leave you alone.”

“I can’t let him get away with what he did.”

“You also can’t prove it.” Kell’s words were harsh but his tone wasn’t. “Is there anything your father told you that you could verify through diplomatic authorities?”

“Suppose they’re in on it?” She crossed her arms as though creating a shield, as if that would prevent whatever he told her from sticking, and then she could pretend it wasn’t true. “I have no way of knowing if Samuel was working alone.”

“The kidnappings happened in every country your father worked in over the last seven years,” he said gently. “Can’t say the same thing about Chambers.”

“Samuel set him up.”

Kell didn’t say anything for a long moment. “That could be true, but it would be a hell of a thing to prove. Is this something else you already knew?”

“No, they never told me my father was a suspect in the kidnapping ring. Don’t you see—Dad found out Samuel was using him and my stepmother and they were killed for that knowledge.”

“Suppose your father was … is … guilty of this?”

“He still didn’t deserve to die like that. And my stepmom and half sisters didn’t either.” She couldn’t keep the bitter anger out of her tone. “I need to be alone for a while.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Please.”

“You can turn the lights off. That’s all I can give you.”

“You let me outside all by myself.”

“That was before Dylan shared this intel with us. Based on past and recent experience, combined with
this new information, you must want to take on Chambers even more desperately now. I can’t let you do it alone.”

She didn’t answer him, mainly because he was right, and she was tired of being as transparent as one of her photos.

Instead, she walked to the bed and switched off the lamp, bathing the room in darkness. With that being the only barrier between them, it felt strangely intimate to be in the room with him like this.

Would he stay the entire night, watching her sleep?

Yeah, like you’ll sleep at all tonight
.

But everything was so much simpler in the dark, and even though she didn’t want to talk to him, he didn’t share the sentiment.

“Why’d your father take his family to some of the most dangerous places on earth?”

“He said somebody had to.”

“You don’t think he might’ve finally gotten frustrated? Realized they weren’t paying him enough for shit like that?”

She took a deep breath so she didn’t snap his head off when she answered. “That’s not who he was, Kell. If you could’ve seen him, when he told me what he thought Samuel had done … the man was his best friend. It would be like finding out Reid betrayed you.”

A pause, and then, “How’d you know Reid is my best friend?”

“It’s pretty obvious.” She smiled in the dark. “If I told you he’d betrayed you, you’d never believe it. You’d go to your grave trying to prove otherwise.”

“So why wasn’t your father taking that approach?”

“He said he had proof. He’d lost thirty pounds since I’d last seen him and he hadn’t needed to diet. He was a mess.”

Kell had to believe her. That was the most important thing right now. Someone had to believe her, because as much as she would do this alone if she had to, she knew her chances were slim to none that way.

Could someone who’d aroused the kind of feeling inside of her the way Kell had be that dangerous to her? Could he really hurt her?

She had the phone number to Al, her handler, and the means and opportunity to call him at any time. Neither Kell nor Reid was stopping her. “I could go to jail for shooting Samuel—especially if he decides to press charges. If the CIA has nothing on him, I just look like a crazy person out for revenge.”

“You’re a dangerous woman, Teddie,” Kell said.

She hadn’t thought about it like that, but she guessed—according to the marshals, at least—she was. “I don’t feel that way. I feel like I’m making deals with the devil.”

He snorted at that. “We’re the lesser of two evils. I can promise you that.”

She believed him, for no other reason than she was still alive. She pulled the blanket around her, leaned against the headboard and rubbed her temples. The peace from the swim and the shower following was long gone, replaced by a throbbing tension headache that tightened around her head like a band.

There was no possible way her father had anything to do with the murders. But she wondered if Samuel’s bitterness over what had happened with her had anything to do with her family’s deaths.

Had her father paid the price when Teddie refused Samuel? Is that when he began the kidnapping scheme?

The possibility was enough to make her physically ill.

She needed air. Water. Something.

She got out of bed, stumbled, went the wrong way, and Kell’s arms were around her, both steadying and stopping her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I don’t feel well.”

He brought her back to the bed. He’d been so close before; his kiss, his scent had lingered on her before her swim. It would now again and she didn’t want that temptation. And so she pulled away, and he watched her as she wrapped herself in the blanket as if he’d been planning on ripping it away and taking what he wanted.

“If I’m so much trouble, why did you kiss me?” she asked.

“Because I wanted to. Why did you kiss me back?”

She hesitated, just long enough to come up with the lie. “You didn’t give me any choice.”

“Bullshit.” His voice was tight and he was next to her in the dark, making her blood boil and heart pound. “Is it easier to give in that way? Because I can play pretend as well as the next guy,” he murmured, a finger tracing along the side of her neck.

She shivered involuntarily. He chuckled. Her nipples hardened.

“Tell me you don’t want to kiss me again. You don’t want me to run my fingers over your nipples. They’re hard and you’re just thinking about it, right?”

She nearly touched them herself, that’s how badly
they ached. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.”

He pulled back. “Of course you did.”