Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (30 page)

Reid looked like he was considering it. “I hate hospitals too, but I think you’re right where you need to be.”

“You’ve had a couple of rough days too, you know.”

He walked into the room then, set the flowers on the rolling tray in front of her.

She tried to think of the last time a man gave her flowers and came to the conclusion that it had been never. “They’re beautiful—thanks.”

“Would’ve brought ammo but I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

He was serious and she wanted nothing more than to pull him into the bed with her.

Now, that would certainly pass the time a lot faster.

“I wish I’d gotten there sooner,” he said quietly as he stared at her face.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she lied, and he gave her a small half-smile.

“You’ve got to be careful, Grier. Crystal sent Chambers’s men to get you. He’s serious as hell, and he’s not stopping.”

Reid hadn’t moved and she was about to snap back some kind of
You think I can’t do my job
retort, but she didn’t. Because he was right. And he was telling her so out of concern, not disdain.

Crystal wasn’t an ordinary street criminal. He was as highly trained as Reid, and she’d seen what he could accomplish. “How did Crystal and Chambers start working together?”

Reid hesitated for a long moment and then said, “Crystal followed you, and you followed me. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to discover Chambers’s connection to Teddie’s case.”

“Shit.”

“Has he contacted you again?”

God, she didn’t want to tell him—hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, but Jack had been monitoring her phone and he’d been the one to listen to the message. “Yeah, he called. He threatened me. He said, ‘Job’s not done.’ ” She couldn’t bear to see the pained look on Reid’s face. He turned away for a few moments, and she heard him muttering something to himself.

“What kind of protection are they looking to give you?”

“I turned it down.”

He whipped around to face her. “You are fucking crazy.”

“He’s after you too,” she reminded him. “Does that not worry you? Or are you going to tell me you can handle yourself?”

To his credit, he didn’t say that, although she was one hundred percent sure it’s what he thought. Instead he told her, “Crystal doesn’t like loose ends of any kind, no matter how small. He won’t stop until either you or he is dead.”

“Then I’ll make sure it’s him.”

“You’d better.” Reid looked as though he wanted to say something else but he remained silent. Instead, he touched her knee through the blankets, a comforting rub with a big hand. And then he finished with,
“Rest up,” and he walked out with a quick glance over his shoulder.

She stared at the flowers, saw the card attached. Pulled it out and found a note and phone number on the inside.

We can protect you
.

She didn’t doubt it, even though she wasn’t sure who the
we
entailed, beyond Reid.

When she turned the card over, she saw a series of numbers—four of them, listed one under the other. They looked like they might be bank accounts. And they were written by the same hand as the flip side.

A swift rap on the door made her start, pull in a too fast breath. She winced before she said, “Come in,” thinking it was Reid again.

But it wasn’t—it was her supervisor, with a man she’d never seen before. She tucked Reid’s card under the covers with her and said, “Sir.”

She tried to sit up straighter but her boss held up a hand.

“Please, Grier. Stay where you are.” He came to the bed. “We have some serious business to discuss.”

T
he satphone hadn’t been working well during the hurricane—the signals were congested, no doubt because satphones were pretty much the only comms during a natural disaster.

Instead of dwelling on it, Kell had watched Teddie open the back door leading to the pool—hadn’t wanted to bother her because she’d seemed so intent on what she was doing. Now she was outside, holding
the door open with her foot. The sound of the wind was pretty deafening, coupled with the ocean roaring.

He couldn’t bring himself to call her in, lecture her … because she was taking photos for the first time in a year.

Right now, she was free. In the moment. To call her back inside would mean taking all that away … and she deserved this. He knew as well as anyone that life was full of risks, and she’d simply have to find her own balance.

Besides, he’d wanted to give this back to her, and now that she had a taste of it again, she wouldn’t be letting it go. He was sure of it.

Whatever happened now, he’d make it so she wouldn’t have to live in secret. Chambers wouldn’t take any more of her life away than he already had.

Kell moved back into the kitchen, wanted her to think she’d gotten away with something by being out here. Because that always made things more fun.

The next sounds he heard were all too familiar—to an untrained ear, they would have sounded like bombs, but they were flash-bang grenades, similar to those that had gone off with the actual bombs, which caused far more damage, at the house outside of Juarez.

Which was too big of a coincidence for his taste.

Although the grenades were loud as shit, over the wind and the surf, Teddie wouldn’t hear them or be affected by them, since she was outside. And he had to warn her—save her.

But as he tried to make his way out, he felt the pinprick
in the side of his neck and clamped a hand there, pulled out the syringe. Tried to read the words on it but his eyes were already blurring from the flash-bangs and the drugs.

He thought of Teddie blithely shooting photos, being happy, and he didn’t want things to end this way. He hoped whoever was doing this would just take him and leave her.

He managed to pull his phone out of his pocket, was in the process of dialing when he realized there was someone standing in front of him.

He had no doubt it was Crystal.

“Want me to pose?” Crystal said to him and then laughed. Kell snapped a picture of him and shoved the phone away from him, knowing Crystal wanted Dylan or Reid or Cam to find it there and know he had Kell.

It was the best he could do before he blacked out.

S
omeone was watching her. She had a feeling it was Kell—she’d been outside for so long that she’d lost track of time, and he’d no doubt missed her long ago.

She hadn’t meant to stay at the door for so long, and she’d been selective in her photography because she hadn’t wanted to fly through the film too soon. When she had enough at her disposal, she usually took the shots in rapid succession, always afraid she’d miss something.

She realized now she’d been missing out that way as well.

Now that it was starting to get dark, the uneasy
feeling from earlier returned—and she wanted to move inside to the safety of the house, and Kell.

The wind was picking up—a sign that the storm was coming back strong. The skies darkened further and the door pushed against her—and she fought the panic rising up in her throat.

Calmly, she backed inside and shut and locked the French doors. Stood there and watched the storm pick up for about ten minutes and then locked the shutter into place.

She was surprised Kell hadn’t come out to her in that time. She rested the camera on the table, was just about to open it and pocket the film when a shadow moved across the doorway.

She lifted her eyes and prepared to smile, but it quickly disappeared and she dropped the camera to the floor, fell to her knees beside it because her legs could no longer hold her up.

Samuel. His gun pointed at her.

“Nice to see you again, Teddie. We didn’t really have much time to catch up at the restaurant.”

Because you wanted to kill me
.

She couldn’t get the words out and he motioned for her to stand. She struggled but couldn’t get on her feet.

God, Kell … where was he?

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she managed, put her hand down behind her to grope for the heavy camera.

“You have no choice, Teddie.” Samuel walked toward her, put the gun to his side and half dragged her to her feet. Once on that semi-level playing field,
she swung her arm up and hit him in the side of his face with the camera, heard him yelp with pain as it crashed against him.

She backed up, knowing she couldn’t go far, but hoping she could find Kell. Ran into the kitchen and saw no sign of him. Samuel was on her tail, his cheek bloody and the anger in his tone unmistakable.

“You always were a little bitch—time to teach you a lesson.”

“Maybe you’re the one who needs the lesson,” she spat. “I know what you did to my father … you’d been trying to break up my family for a long time before you finally killed him.”

“Looks like I succeeded,” he said with a wicked smile, wiping away the blood that trickled close to his mouth. “You’ve got no one to help you now—your friend is dead.”

She hung on to the kitchen counter as she tried to absorb that sudden blow.

Dead. Kell was dead. She swirled those words around in her mind and realized they didn’t sit right with her.

There was no way. She didn’t believe Samuel for a second. She would’ve felt it somehow, like a blow to her gut.

She’d connected with Kell, on a level she hadn’t experienced with anyone else. Ever.

If he were gone, her soul would have been ripped out. “You’re lying.”

Samuel told her, “You shouldn’t have trusted him with all your deep, dark secrets. A man like that is too dangerous. He has too many enemies and he can’t be expected to do anything good.”

“Neither can you,” she said quietly, but Samuel was through talking. He grabbed her arm instead, held the gun to her back.

“Let’s go.”

The storm … he was taking her out of the house and into the storm. Her body began to shake violently. “I can’t go out there.”

“You no longer have a choice.”

K
ell woke, found himself bound with chains to the floor in some kind of basement and immediately lunged for Crystal.

The man didn’t move a muscle, just sat there, staring at Kell for a long moment.

“Are you thirsty?”

“Are you going to drug me again?”

“No.”

“Where’s Teddie?” he asked.

“With Chambers. They’ll be here shortly, I’d imagine, if they’re not here already.” Crystal passed him some water and a sandwich and Kell got over his
what the fuck?
quickly, because he needed his strength.

As he began to eat, the chains clanking, he noticed that Crystal was studying him again, and so Kell did the same to him, noting that the man looked as
though he’d been beaten up recently. “Who fucked with your face?”

“Reid.”

Kell put the sandwich down as his gut tightened.

“Don’t worry, your friend’s fine. More than fine,” Crystal told him.

“Teddie better be fine too,” he growled.

“If you had a choice—stay with her and die, or leave her behind and live—which would you choose?” Crystal asked him and Kell knew it was a test, knew which answer Crystal would want to hear.

Even that wouldn’t guarantee that Kell would make it out of here alive, and so he told the truth. “Kill me and let her go.”

“Ah, that wasn’t a choice. But props to you for being creative. Thinking outside the box. How very … Delta Force of you.”

“I’m not Delta,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You love her.”

Crystal said it as though it was a completely foreign concept to him—and it no doubt was.

“Yes.”

“Have you told her so?”

“No.” Fucking psychological bullshit. “But I’d appreciate any time I could get with her.”

“You’ll get twenty-four hours once she arrives, but I can’t put you in the same room—too dangerous, and I’m not that stupid. She’ll be right next to you, though. I’m sure you can find a way to communicate. After that, Chambers’s got plans for her. Keeping her alive won’t keep him out of jail, so …” Crystal looked bored as anything and Kell thought that he could probably rip the chains out of the walls
with his bare hands right now with the amount of adrenaline pumping through his body.

But in order to understand Crystal’s game, he needed to remain as calm as the merc in front of him. “I thought you liked working alone.”

“I like bringing people together. Think of me as a facilitator.” Crystal smiled.

The man was so fucking unhinged. “What’s your game?”

“Making you feel helpless.” Crystal looked around the barren room. “Sure is nicer than the prison you sent your team into.”

Calm it down, Kell … do not engage
.

Figuring out how to save Teddie was far more important than rehashing the past, and she was right next door. Or would be soon.

“You can’t believe Dylan’s letting you get away with this.”

“Dylan letting me? That’s rich.” Crystal paused. “Dylan’s lost his edge. It’s sad, really. But I’ve got someone else in mind anyway for the job.”

Kell wanted to keep him talking but the sound of a door opening above them distracted him. Crystal left Kell alone to wonder who the new player was, and how bad that development was for him.

He bucked against the bonds, his muscles straining even though he knew the chains wouldn’t break. But never surrendering was a part of his DNA and so he rattled them, if no other reason than to prove he was alive.

The pain helped with that as well. He hated being separated from Teddie.

He checked the room out to see if there was anything
he could do to escape. But it was concrete and windowless. He could use the chains to strangle Crystal, if the man got close enough.

Goddammit, he wanted him to get close enough.

Chambers is going to kill her and you’re helpless
.

The thought made him so ill he nearly lost what little he had in his stomach. He tried to stand. He had to get the hell out of his cell and get to Teddie.

He pounded against the wall, and called her name until his throat was raw. “Teddie, answer me.”

He heard nothing in response. He imagined this was very much like what happened to Reid and the others in their underground prison cells in Africa and shook that thought off immediately. Looked around and saw nothing he could use that was within reach of the chains. They were fastened into the cement floor, not the wall. He rolled over and knocked on this wall—it sounded hollow, like drywall, and he began to poke at the loose molding along the floor.