It didn’t matter to him that she was strong and capable. His instincts shouted for him to be the one to protect her.
“Be careful tonight. Don’t forget to take all the advice you gave me.”
She nodded. “I’m a survivor, Nigel. Don’t worry about me. No matter how bad things look, I can always bounce back.”
“Just be safe. I don’t like seeing you shot at.” He didn’t say it out loud, but having just found Justine, he wasn’t ready to lose her. She had made him realize that living for his job and his daughter wasn’t enough to satisfy the man he was inside.
“Me, either,” she said. “But that was really more like a graze.”
Nigel pulled off the road onto the shoulder when she directed him to, and she got her motorcycle out of the back. He helped her get it down and then stood back while she climbed on. If anything went wrong tonight, this could be the last time he saw her. And that hurt. He wasn’t nearly ready to say good-bye yet.
He leaned forward and kissed her. She closed her eyes and kissed him back for a moment, then pulled away.
“Justine, love, thank you for the last two days. They could have been hell for me and you made them bearable. No matter what happens tonight, please know that the blame rests solely with me.”
She shook her head and put on her sunglasses. “If there is any blame, it’s mine. You hired us to protect you and your daughter. And don’t think that you won’t see me again, Nigel. Men who think they aren’t coming home don’t come home.”
And he needed to come back because he’d just discovered what had been missing in his life up until now. And that was Justine. She was the link that he and Piper had always known wasn’t there, but had no idea how to replace.
He took her face in his hands and kissed her again. He thrust his tongue deep into her mouth and let his hands skim down her body. She was a warrior and had on the armor of one. He felt the Kevlar vest instead of her breasts and at the curve of her waist was a gun belt.
But she kissed him like she was all woman. All his woman, he thought. And he wished he had time to make love to her again.
He wanted to go into this battle secure in the knowledge that she was his.
She turned on the bike and revved the engine. She mouthed something, then turned her head and checked the traffic before driving away. He got back into the Humvee, trying to figure out if what he thought he heard her say was what she actually said. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that Justine had admitted to loving him. And that was all he needed to go get Piper. He knew that at the end of this night, he was going to sit down with Justine and find out exactly how she felt about him, because he knew he loved her, too.
J
ustine didn’t question anything as she fell into position behind Nigel. This was the third stop he’d made in trying to get to Piper. She could hear the frustration in his voice with each consecutive stop they made. This time, he’d been directed back toward the jungle and a restaurant a half mile out of Cusco.
If Nigel had any kind of altitude problems, the running around was going to fatigue him. Luckily, she thought he was doing fine.
“I’m three cars back, Nigel,” Justine said.
“If Marshall doesn’t show up soon, I’m really going to lose my patience,” he said.
“I know,” Justine said.
This was the hard part of negotiating with criminals. They had to play games like this in order to keep from being caught. “Charity is going to pick you up again after this stop.”
“Any word from Emile?”
“Nothing yet.”
“The place is up ahead. It’s closed for remodeling,” Nigel said.
“I’m going to go past you and double back. Be safe.”
“I will be.”
She watched the Humvee pull off the road into the parking lot, which only had a few cars in it. She kept her eyes on the road and drove past on the motorcycle. This was the part of her job she really didn’t like. She could take risks all day long and it didn’t bother her, but watching someone else put their life on the line…she didn’t like that.
She pulled off the road when she heard Nigel enter the restaurant. She left the bike parked in the jungle where it wasn’t visible from the street.
“Search him,” a man said.
“I hardly think searching me is going to help, Marshall,” Nigel said. “I’ve got a gun and that’s all.”
“I doubt that. I know you have a bodyguard.”
“How do you know that?”
“I may have mentioned it,” Alfred said, his accented voice strong and clear as it came over the microphone.
She heard the sounds of Nigel being patted down. They found the gun and the knife she’d given him to put at the small of his back. But they didn’t take the earpiece.
“I want to see my daughter, and then we can use this phone to wire the money to you.”
“I’m in charge now, Nigel. You don’t call the shots. I do.”
“Fine,” he said, his accent crisp and a bit cold. “But let’s get it over with. I’m tired of chasing you all over this city.”
“Are you tired? Maybe now I don’t seem so incompetent.”
“No, you still do.”
She heard the sound of a fist connecting with flesh and guessed that Nigel had taken a punch. She heard him spit, probably blood. “My daughter.”
“You’ll see her when I’m ready for you to. Take him down the hall and remove every bit of clothing. Liberty Investigations has a reputation for being very thorough. I bet he has a tracking device on him.”
Justine heard nothing but footsteps and knew Anna and Charity would be silent while Nigel was being searched. She pulled her BlackBerry from her pocket and sent a text message to the other woman.
She moved through the brush and jungle-like terrain. She knew from past experience that the plants in the jungle could be more dangerous than the animals, though she did keep her eye out for spiders, which were very poisonous here.
“Take off all your clothes,” Alfred ordered Nigel.
“Listen, I am a wealthy man. I can make it worth your while to work for me instead of Marshall.”
“Marshall owns the land my family lives on. You can’t give me back my home, can you?”
“I can give you a nice new home. Whatever home you want in the Baron compound.”
“No. I’m not interested in that. Marshall knows you too well. He said you would offer me a bribe. When you have your clothes off, put on those over here.”
She heard the sounds of disrobing and knew Nigel was following orders and getting dressed again. “I have to bind your hands now. Then we will go back.”
She was surprised Alfred hadn’t notice the switchblade and she wondered how Nigel had hidden it from the security guard.
“Okay, now you will ride in my car to the final destination. You will have to walk a bit. I’m sorry that your shoes have to be left behind, but I’ve heard there are devices that can be embedded in them.”
“If you’d shown this much initiative at work, you’d still have a job.”
“I didn’t like my work at Baron, but this job I think I’ll keep.”
“Kidnapping and extortion? That’s a pretty risk line of business.”
“Not really. Executives always pay to keep their families safe.”
Justine realized that this wasn’t the first time Marshall had done something like this. And it made an odd kind of sense. The mercenaries they’d battled at his compound were expensive and well paid, and the only way he could have that kind of cash flow was to be in an illegal trade.
Nigel didn’t give a damn where Marshall took him. He was tired of being dragged from place to place, and was ready to do more than exchange words with Marshall. Clearly the man had found work after he’d left Baron Industries, and he had a feeling that he wasn’t using linkedin.com for job hunting, but more for executive hunting, to find information on people he then targeted for kidnapping and extortion.
They left the restaurant, and Nigel felt pretty good about the fact that at least the earpiece and GPS tracker were still on him.
Marshall hardly resembled the senior manager he’d seen every day in white dress shirts and ties. He looked very at home in the jungle, with his fatigues on and his weapon strapped to his thigh.
“Why not drug running?”
“My cousin is in that line of work, and I’m not interested in competing against him.”
Baron really needed a much better system to vet their employees. Why had they never realized that Marshall had all of these connections?
“Your daughter is being held in one of the jungle villages of my cousins. I will give you the name of the village, and the direction it is located in, once the money has been transferred into my account.”
“I’m not giving you any money until Piper is with me. So why don’t you call your cousin and tell him to bring my daughter to me.”
“You aren’t the boss anymore, Nigel. I am.”
“I can’t pay you until I know Piper is alive.”
“I thought you’d say that. I have a phone and you can talk to her.”
Marshall went to the other side of the room and dialed a number on an old satellite phone that was big and definitely out of date. But it still worked.
“Let me speak to Emile.”
So Emile was still with Piper, but that didn’t mean it was good news for them. Emile had sold them out once, and might still do so again.
“Put the girl on the phone,” Marshall said.
“Hello, Piper. Would you like to speak to your father?”
Marshall held the phone to Nigel’s ear. “Piper?”
Static crackled over the line and he heard a voice say “Daddy,” but it was so distorted he had no idea if it was Piper or not.
“Piper, is that you?”
Again, mainly static and the thread of a voice.
He pulled his head back from the phone. “I can’t distinguish if that is my daughter.”
Marshall hung up the phone. “You can’t even recognize your own kid. What does that say about you?”
“I think it says that you don’t have my kid. So you either produce her or I’m walking.”
Nigel started for the door and heard Marshall following him. “If you walk out of here, you’ll never see her again.”
“I’m guessing you want the money. You know I’m willing to deal, but I have to see her and know she’s alive.”
Marshall nodded. “Very well. I will take you to her, but it will cost you an extra half million dollars.”
“Sure, fine. Let’s go.”
The vehicle he was led to had darkened windows and large all-terrain tires. It was a sturdy vehicle.
Nigel looked at the driver, trying to see if it was Emile, but the man wasn’t. He took heart from the fact that Piper was probably safe with the mercenary.
He was shoved to the backseat of the vehicle, and hit the bruised side of his face as he landed. He grunted in pain and then sat up. When he did, he noticed the earpiece had fallen out and was now on the seat. He sat down near it and used his fingers to pick it up.
Since his hands were bound behind his back, he couldn’t put the piece back in his ear. All he could do was hold it so they could hear the conversation.
The jeep bounced over the rough road and up the mountain path. They followed the road until it met a stream, and then they were forced to stop.
“We have to walk from here,” Marshall said.
Nigel knew this was going to be tough. But he didn’t say anything or complain as they started walking. It was hard to keep his balance on the jungle trail, especially with his hands bound behind his back. But he didn’t care about anything. He just kept focused on the fact that Piper was in some village up here, and he was going to see her soon. He hoped like hell that Justine was still on his trail, because he knew he was going to need reinforcements.
He stumbled over a root and tumbled to the ground. The fall jarred him and he dropped the earpiece. He tried to pick it back up, but was dragged to his feet before he could get it.
The terrain in the jungle was rough, and Justine and Charity were as close behind Nigel as they could be. Anna was almost with them, but they weren’t waiting for her, knowing that time was of the essence. They were pretty sure Nigel had lost his earpiece because they had lost track of his conversations a few minutes ago.
“I hate the jungle,” Charity said.
“I don’t mind it too much,” Justine said. They were both running at a steady but slow pace. They had no other choice because the trail they were on wasn’t the best. The signal from Nigel’s GPS tracker kept going in and out.
Justine kept her BlackBerry in one hand, with the tracker application opened. “This bites. I keep losing him every few minutes.”
“Do you have a consistent signal, Anna?”
“Yes. Do you want me to stay here by the vehicles? They’ll have to come out this way.”
“Yes. That’s a good idea. Let us know when they stop.”
“I will. Right now, you two aren’t too far behind them. I think the best thing to do would be to get within five hunded feet and keep that pace,” Charity said.
“Okay. I’ll let you know when you are that close,” Anna said.
“So what’s up with you and Nigel?”
“Now?”
“You know you’d never talk to me if we weren’t trapped here together. And since we’re trekking through the jungle…”
“There’s nothing. He’s our client, and I’m doing my job.”
Something whizzed past her ear and Justine dove for the ground at the same time Charity did. They both rolled into the underbrush on opposite sides of the path. “Someone is shooting at us,” Justine said.
“It’s not Nigel,” Anna said.
“I’m going to return fire,” Justine said, drawing her weapon. She’d brought her silencer because sound carried, and sometimes it was better in these situations to be as quiet as possible.
She rolled over on her stomach and scanned the horizon, looking for anything out of the ordinary. She noticed a leaf twitching, like something had bumped against it. The entire jungle got silent and she knew there was someone not too far from them. Someone who had spooked the animals and insects into hiding.
“I think our guy is ahead to the left.”
“Take your shot when ready,” Charity said.
Justine took a deep breath and waited until she saw that leaf move again. And then pulled the trigger and fired. She heard the ping of the bullet being fired through the silencer and then a faint grunt.
She’d hit someone.
She fired again in the same vicinity and someone returned fire. Justine eased forward on her stomach, staying low, trying carefully to stay out of any poisonous plants.
She saw a print of a boot to the left, and heard the footstep a minute before the man came out on the path. She shot him at close range in the thigh, and he dropped to one knee. She sprang to her feet and he came at her with a knife, slicing up toward her right arm.
“Get down,” Charity said in her ear, and Justine dove to the left as Charity fired and hit the man between the eyes. He fell forward—dead.
“We’re going to need a body bag, Anna. Do you have a lock on my position?”
“Yes. I’ll send the authorities when we do cleanup.”
Justine walked back to Charity and didn’t say anything. Why hadn’t she taken the shot and killed that man when she’d had the chance? She never hesitated to kill. Was this what loving Nigel had done to her? Had it made her so she was afraid to do her job?
But she hadn’t minded causing him injury. She had simply not wanted to take a life.
“He wasn’t going down easy,” Charity said.
Justine had had her fill of killing last night at the compound. She’d been angry and had seen that killing rage in Nigel. And coming on top of finding Constance, it had been too much. “I always take the shot. Why didn’t I this time?”
“I have no idea. But a little girl’s life is danger. Maybe you were thinking that questioning that man would be better than killing him.”
“Maybe. Or it could be that I’m changing. Did what happen to you and Daniel change you?”
“What happened? Do you mean falling in love with him?”
“Yes.”
“Why, do you think you’re in love with Nigel?”
“Never mind. Why did I even bring this up? Let’s just stay on the path. I think it’s safe to assume Marshall has someone guarding his back trail.”
“I think so.”
They continued down the path a little farther, and Justine tried not to think too much about what had happened and about how she’d hesitated, but she couldn’t help it. She was changing, whether she wanted to admit it or not, and there was nothing she could do to change it.