Vengeance (SSU Trilogy Book 1) (17 page)

“You think he’s looking for a buyer for the chip?”

“At this point, I’m not ruling anything out. But it doesn’t make sense. Why wait this long? Interest in the chip was highest right after Nevsky’s death. He won’t get as good a price today.”

“Well something or someone in Moscow was important enough for him to risk having his eyes uncovered.” Niko paused. “Jenna got the impression he was looking for someone at the bar, which gels with the bartender’s story. Was Tonelli able to track Paterson out of the city?”

“No.” Tonelli hadn’t even mentioned finding Kai’s apartment, which made Ryker wonder what else the man was holding back. So much for interagency cooperation.

Ryker sighed. He needed a break. Just about every government agency was jealous of private organizations like the SSU. And Ryker had more than his share of enemies from his time in government service. Enemies who plotted to bring the SSU down. Those enemies had launched an investigation of Nevsky’s death and the fire that destroyed the scientist’s lab and concluded that Kai, and therefore the SSU, were culpable. Fortunately, Ryker had powerful supporters who had fought by his side and kept the SSU alive.

With Alvarez actively seeking the microchip, the race to locate Nevsky’s data had reignited. Too many organizations salivated over the prospect of using Nevsky’s notes to create their own program for developing soldiers with extraordinary strength and spies with mental processing skills that rivaled a computer. Even Ryker’s supporters had upped the ante. They wanted him to turn over the chip in exchange for not shutting the SSU down.

Ryker shook his head and refocused on the conversation with Niko. One thing at a time. “The last reliable sighting of Kai in Moscow was the receptionist you talked to at the eye clinic. I’ve increased the reward for any news on his whereabouts. But now that he’s hiding his eyes again, he’ll be harder to spot.” At first, Ryker thought Kai’s reappearance was a sign he was ready to turn himself in. But when Kai didn’t contact him, there was nothing Ryker could do but order his men to bring the younger man in, even though Ryker didn’t want to believe the evidence pointing to Kai’s guilt.

Didn’t want to believe that the hatred he’d seen in Kai’s eyes the night of the attack meant Kai had gone rogue. That truth would destroy Jenna. Because despite her conviction that she’d both heard her brother’s voice during the attack and seen him leaving the house, Ryker believed she secretly hoped to be proven wrong.

“Has Jenna remembered anything new to help you find Kai?” Ryker asked. She’d reported her observances right after the attack, but there was always a possibility that seeing her brother again would trigger new memories.

“No. She’s having a hard time of it. She won’t admit it, but it hurts her to remember how things were before the attack.”

Ryker shifted the phone to his other ear. The psychiatrists had decided that Jenna had repressed certain memories in order to cope with her grief. He hated that it was now necessary for Niko to probe her into remembering. But they had to find Kai this time.

“Keep an eye on her,” Ryker warned. “Don’t push her so hard she snaps.” Before Niko had a chance to reply, Ryker ended the call. He was afraid that if he stayed on the line, he’d be tempted to tell Niko to forget the whole thing and just let Jenna heal in peace.

Dangerous thought.

He picked up the small rake from the miniature Japanese garden sitting on his windowsill. He raked the sand into a pile, then smoothed it out, waiting for his mind to fall into similar order.

Until Kai reappeared, Jenna was safest with Niko. But as soon as Niko brought her out as bait, protecting her would be more than one man could manage.

It was time to determine how many others among his agents he could trust with her life.

#

Thursday, Afternoon

Rocky Mountains, Montana

After her usual post-lunch run, Jenna went searching for Niko. She finally found him in the gym.

He lay on a weight bench doing chest presses. His shirt was off and for several minutes Jenna just watched his muscles contract and release as he smoothly raised and lowered the bar.

As a dancer, she’d seen plenty of half-naked men in prime athletic condition. Even her SSU teammates had often been shirtless. Yet even so, Niko was superb. Mature in a way her classmates hadn’t been. Hardened. Scarred. So compellingly male that she itched to touch the silky line of hair bisecting his abs. Wanted to run her fingers over the thick band tattooed around his right biceps. Even the tufts of hair under his arms seemed sexy.

From the speakers in the ceiling, Mick Jagger bemoaned a lack of satisfaction. Oh, God, for the first time in two years, she knew exactly how he felt.

The quick twist of desire in her belly held her a prisoner trembling at the door. She grabbed the doorframe on each side of her, holding herself up while her knees turned to putty.

No! This couldn’t be happening to her. She didn’t…she couldn’t…She shook her head and took one terrified step back. Men were dangerous…She…She had to get out of here.

She backed up another step, hoping she could escape before Niko noticed her. She needed to get away. Figure out why her libido was suddenly back to work, when that was the dead last thing she wanted.

Before she could take another step, Niko settled the weight bar on its holder and sat up. She froze as he swiveled to face her and wiped the sweat off his face with a towel. His eyes were dark with concern as he searched her face. “What’s wrong?”

She shrugged, hoping she was too far away for him to see the confusion that must be showing on her face. Afraid to look down in case stiff nipples were giving her away.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she mumbled, trying frantically to remember why she’d come to the gym in the first place. Oh. Right. She’d been looking for Niko.

“I just wanted to talk to you.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to lose my training. I want you to fight me. I…”

Come on, you can do this. Just tell him. You can’t improve if you don’t admit your weaknesses.
“In Moscow, I froze in terror when the man assaulted me in the hallway. It threw me back to the night my family was killed. I need to keep training, and fighting dirty, to make sure I don’t freeze again. To work through situations with a sexual threat so I don’t get trapped by fear and memories.”

Niko stood up. She couldn’t read his expression. Was he going to help her or not? After the way she’d been lusting after him, was it even wise to spend more time with him?

Yes. She’d just have to control herself. Finding Kai was all that mattered.

Niko turned his back to her and wiped down the bench, then the weight bar, before tossing the towel toward a laundry basket.

Then he swung around, fist flying toward her face. She barely ducked in time to avoid being hit in the eye. She overbalanced and stumbled backwards.

“Is this what you want?” he snarled.

Niko kept coming, the speed and ferocity of his blows almost too much for her to block, never mind counter. She’d never fought anyone as fast.

Don’t think about the pain from your arm. Sidestep. Watch it, his leg!

She pirouetted out of the way of his roundhouse kick. But there was no way she could win standing up. His reach was longer than hers.

There, an opening.

She slid underneath his swinging arm and tackled him. But Niko was ready for her. He grabbed her in a hug as he fell, twisting so that she ended on her belly beneath him.

Niko straddled her torso and yanked her head back by her hair. She felt the cold pressure of dulled steel against her throat, and suddenly she was back in her parents’ living room as the assassin’s blade bit into her skin.

The knife sliced along her skull. Tears mingled with blood, forming a watery mess on the carpet.

“Run, Jenna!” her mother yelled, her voice hoarse with pain, her skull a shiny red mess.

Jenna twisted and bucked, trying to get her attacker off her. But he had her arms and legs pinned between his powerful thighs. He was pressed along her lower body, making her struggles ineffective.

Please, no, she thought. I don’t want to die.

“Easy, Jenna. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her attacker’s weight lifted.

Jenna scrambled away from him, bumped into a wall, and used the hard surface to push herself upright. Then she ran. Believing herself at home, she dodged what should have been the sofa. Instead, she bumped into something solid that shouldn’t be there and almost went down to her knees.

No! Have to keep going.

She dashed forward and crashed into another wall. Her breathing hitched. She was trapped. They were coming for her. When they caught her, they were going to hurt her.

“Jenna?”

She jumped sideways at the voice and nearly fell over. Her hands patted the wall in front of her. Where was the door? She had to reach the door. She had to get into the backyard before the men caught her.

“Easy, Jenna. You’re safe. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.” She sensed the man walking toward her, but his words didn’t make sense.

He was lying. He wanted to hurt her. She had to get away.

Her hands finally hit a door release bar and she stumbled into the sunshine. A few steps further and she collapsed onto her hands and knees, sobbing in relief.

She’d made it. She was safe.

A dog’s excited barking snapped her back to reality.

This wasn’t her family’s backyard. She was on a long, sloping lawn. With woods on one side and the mountains beyond.

Niko’s place.

Oh, God, what must he think of her, totally losing it like that?

Callie raced down the hill from the house and danced enthusiastically around her, wanting to play. When Jenna didn’t respond to her wriggled invitation, Callie whined and pressed her nose into Jenna’s hair.

Jenna turned, wrapped her arms around Callie and buried her face in the fur at the dog’s neck.

Safety. Warmth. Acceptance.

Jenna squeezed Callie tight and waited for her tears to stop.

#

Thursday, Night

Minsk, Belarus

“Listen.” Kai leaned forward and lowered his voice. He’d finally tracked the man he’d been searching for in Moscow to his sister’s house in Belarus. Now they sat at a table in a tiny restaurant at the center of town. “I have to find the chip with Dr. Nevsky’s notes before Alvarez does. Can’t you remember anything that might help?” His voice thrummed with desperation. There were precious few names left on his list of associates of Dr. Nevsky. He needed answers from this man.

The man across from Kai glanced over his shoulder, but they were alone in the restaurant, the owner having disappeared into the back room fifteen minutes ago. “I don’t know what else I can tell you. He was secretive. Trusted no one. None of us knew what the overall goal of the project was, or what the other groups were working on.”

But Kai knew. He’d been in the restricted section of the lab. He’d read the notes recording amazing increases of physical strength and mental agility and the subsequent side effects. He’d seen men reduced to little more than raving beasts, mindlessly battering their heads against the walls of their cells trying to knock themselves unconscious to escape debilitating pain. Men whose bodies had been pumped so full of steroids, they resembled cartoon monsters. Men who weren’t insane yet, but knew it was coming, their eyes pleading with Kai to help them.

He’d tried to set them free the night of the fire, but the self-destruct program that Nevsky set in motion locked down the cells. When the center of the lab exploded, Kai had been forced to leave the men behind and run. He’d barely made it to the exterior door before a second explosion caught him.

Some nights he dreamed of the men burning, screaming that he was responsible for their deaths.

He would do anything to make sure no one else retrieved Nevsky’s notes and restarted his program.

“Did Dr. Nevsky have a lover? Any relatives?” Kai demanded, hating the note of pleading in his voice. But dammit, he needed a break.

“No—well, maybe.” The man looked mournfully at his empty glass of vodka.

Kai sighed. The man might once have been a top-notch scientist, but now he was nothing more than a frightened drunk. Kai pushed his own drink across the table and winced as the man swallowed it so fast, liquid dribbled down his chin.

The man set the glass on the table with a reverent smile.

“Dr. Nevsky,” Kai prompted. “Lovers? Relatives?”

“I don’t know who he was going to see, but he used to disappear to Mexico for the weekend. Sometimes he’d be gone for a whole week.”

“Where? How did he look when he returned?”

“I don’t know where, exactly. He never said.” The man’s smile turned wistful. “But after his trips, he was definitely relaxed. Friendly, even. Too bad it only lasted about five minutes.”

Lover. Had to be. For the first time in weeks, Kai felt the prick of excitement along his spine.

“When was the most recent trip before the fire?”

“Perhaps five, six weeks. But he didn’t look so relaxed that time. More like smug.”

Smug as in Nevsky knew the chip was safely hidden? Kai sent up a fervent prayer.

A group of men entered the restaurant, shouting loudly for the owner to help them celebrate their friend’s upcoming marriage.

Kai questioned the man for a few minutes longer, but he had nothing else of interest to say. As the crowd grew noisier, Kai slipped outside. His initial flare of excitement was now a low simmer. Mexico was Alvarez’s home turf.

He pulled his coat around his shoulders. With any luck, Alvarez didn’t know about Nevsky’s mistress. After all, the crime lord had been in prison when Nevsky made his jaunts to Mexico. It was possible the link between the woman and Nevsky had been missed.

If the woman existed. If Kai’s informant had told the truth.

Not that it mattered. It was the most promising lead he’d had in years. He had to check it out. No matter the risk to Kai’s own life.