Countermeasure (32 page)

Cassandra released the breath she had been holding and relaxed against him. “I’d have been here sooner, but I ended up in the wrong room.”

Trevor chuckled, settled them closer together, and rested his cheek against her forehead. Within minutes, his breathing grew shallow and the tension in his body eased, almost as if he had been waiting for her to return to him before he could relax and sleep. Cradled comfortably against his warmth, Cassandra slid her arm down across his stomach and twined her leg with his. Soon, the soft rise and fall of his chest under her cheek caused her eyelids to flutter and she too drifted off.

The body of thirty-two-year-old American
tourist Allison Davis was found in her rental apartment in Paris late last night after an emergency call was made from the location. The French police are not releasing details on the case but are calling the death a homicide. They have no suspects and have asked that anybody with information call the police hotline.

What the fuck had happened?
Carl hadn’t followed his orders. He was supposed to check in daily. He hadn’t called in days and wasn’t answering his cell.
Now this.
He was beyond frustrated. Things were not going according to schedule and the added complications in the news had just fueled his anger. It was time to call in the big guns.
He reached for the phone and pressed the numbers he knew from memory, making the one call he had hoped he wouldn’t have to make.

“Yes?” The voice on the other end held a slight accent.

“I have a cleanup job for you, Niklas.” No introduction or pleasantries were needed. He and Niklas had been friends since high school and had served in the army together. When they had both been discharged at the end of their service, they had taken different paths in life but had stayed in contact—a brotherhood, so to speak, born out of necessity.

While he had remained in the States and found a more settled life with a wife and children, Niklas had moved back to his grandparents’ home country, Germany.

Niklas had always had a knack for the gruesome, even back in his military days, and he hadn’t been surprised to hear what kind of business Niklas ran there.

“Details?”

“Two. Your side of the pond. Last seen in Paris. May have already flown the coop. Hound dog required.”

“Are they together?” Niklas asked.

“I doubt it. The man is a freelance handler. Name, Kenyon, Carl. Last report I had placed him in Italy, but he’s gone totally silent. The woman he was sent to approach was found dead in Paris last night. More than likely he’s involved. He’s become a liability. Find and eliminate him. But before you have your fun, Niklas, I need a certain item he might have in his possession retrieved. A portable hard drive.”

“Consider it done. The second target?”

“Female. Mid-twenties. James, Cassandra.”

“Connection?”

“None that I am aware of. It can’t be a simple coincidence she is in Paris at the same time the contact is killed and Kenyon falls off the grid. We have to consider she might have possession of the hard drive.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. There can be no connections traced back to me. None, Niklas. Is that clear?”

“Understood.”

“I’ll send you an email with the dossiers, including extensive background checks on both Kenyon and James. Keep me apprised. I’m depending on you.” He hung up, confident the job would be handled as requested. Niklas was cold and lethal. Once on the trail, his prey never escaped.

He turned his attention back to the news. The unexpected hitch in his plans was a minor hiccup in his morning and had been handled quickly and efficiently. Similar to how he had handled everything in his life to get where he was, and how he would still do anything to maintain his status quo.

The unwanted product of a casual affair, he had learned at an early age that his mother considered him a burden. To her he had been a mistake she hadn’t be able to get rid of. To this day he didn’t quite understand why she hadn’t just terminated the pregnancy or abandoned him after his birth. She had kept him, but only had provided him with the bare necessities. Two sets of clothes—one to be worn when the other was being washed, three meals a day, a bed, and a leaky roof. No emotional attachment, no hugs, no tucking him into bed, no kissing his scraped knees. His childhood had been an emotional Sahara.

In high school he knew right away that if he didn’t want to become one of Niklas’s victims he needed to become his friend—keep your enemies closer was his motto. When they joined the army together, Niklas’s violent tendencies took on a new meaning and, again, he kept close tabs on him. It didn’t hurt to have someone with his talents handy.

By the time he’d left the army, he knew he wanted more out of life. He’d cut ties with his past and built a new life that would help him move further up the food chain. He considered himself to be highly intelligent, deserving of all the world had to offer. He painted himself as more than what he was, taking on the persona of a wealthy entrepreneur. It helped that he was fairly good-looking and charismatic. People were so gullible when you had looks and the appearance of wealth—they would just about give you the shirt off their backs. He had made good use of his acquired influence and contacts.

He reclined his chair, placed his clasped palms behind his head, and studied the family picture sitting on his desk. He recalled how he had come to win Lorraine, his wife. He had briefly crossed paths with her and her wealthy, deeply rooted, influential family at a charity event. They represented everything he wanted and were all he needed to jumpstart the next stage of his life. He had planned it perfectly: a staged assault by Niklas, a heroic rescue—by him of course, the subsequent wedding to Lorraine, and the undying gratitude of her family.

His wife was a beautiful woman. Her expectations had been high where he was concerned—expectations on which he had delivered. It was after years of marriage and two pregnancies that she came to understand he would never be the caring, loving husband she wanted. With the early leg up received from her father coupled with his smooth talking, he’d been able to secure a fairly comfortable lifestyle.

He would never give up either her or the status of being associated with her family without a fight. As a result, they lived a cordial life together with the unspoken agreement that they would maintain the charade of a happy couple for family and friends. Lorraine was a trophy wife, no question about it. A status symbol for the man who had struggled hard to get where he was, to have what he had. She had the freedom to come and go as she pleased and, as long as she was discreet, he didn’t care what she did—otherwise, Niklas was just a phone call away.

He washed away his thoughts of Lorraine with a long drag of scotch and allowed his mind to wander to his children. A legacy born out of necessity to appease Lorraine and his in-laws. While he barely interacted with his children, he had not shirked his duty to them. His own childhood had lacked everything—a stable family with two parents, the safety of a home, all the comforts money could buy—and he made sure his children’s did not. He would do anything to keep his position in society and his children’s stability secure.

His smooth talk and negotiations had gotten him places in the past, but lately it hadn’t achieved his expected results. He had resorted to old tactics and the use of his best skill—manipulation—to force things to take the direction he wanted.

Deep inside, he was afraid he had dug his own grave in his attempt to achieve his aspiration. Kenyon, while highly recommended, had been a mistake. Now Davis was dead. Soon the body count would rise again. He hoped Niklas didn’t prove to be a second mistake. He needed him to succeed in order to safeguard his position and his future. It was never a good thing to owe Niklas, and he hated the fact that he needed his “services.” He knew it was just a matter of time before his friend called in a “favor.” He was sure it would be a distasteful one.

Trevor’s eyes were glued to
the screen, but his mind was a swirl of activity totally separate from the facts and numbers displayed on it. The last two days had been an exercise in caution and patience. Some of it was directly tied to the facts following Allison’s death and their search for Kenyon’s whereabouts, but most of it was related to Cassandra and their budding relationship.

It had bloomed over the last few days, fueled by a newfound intimacy, but there was still untouched territory to be conquered. Where he had avoided discussions about family, she had avoided talks about the future, putting them both on edge.

Trevor had come to terms with the fact that his feelings for her were as solid and concrete as they could be. There was no question in his mind about them. He wanted more. He wanted everything with her. He looked forward to building upon the foundation they had created with their forced work situation and the feelings and desires it brought to the surface.

The problem was getting her to see and understand it without making her run down the nearest rabbit hole. She was skittish. She had made him question his own perception of what was happening between them when she had bolted from his room only to come back and cuddle against him. It was then he finally understood that she was possibly struggling with her own feelings and reactions to him.

Once he understood that, Trevor began to notice the signs. Her unease when they talked about going back to the States and the shadows that filled her eyes whenever he did something nice for her. He recalled seeing similar shadows when she talked about her mother and how her death had affected her father. From what Trevor could tell, it was almost as if she expected something bad to happen to him, to them.

A patient man, he was waiting for her to realize that he wasn’t going to vanish into thin air or leave her on his own accord. As far as he was concerned, they were a long-term commitment kind of thing—a very long-term one. He just had to find a way to show her he meant it. Once she accepted that he was a part of her future, they could discuss the complicated side of his life—his parents—and what impact it might have on them as a couple.

In the meantime, he’d play by her rules and make himself indispensable to her. Hopefully it would help her see that they were meant to be. He looked at Cassandra over the screen of the laptop, and smiled as he watched her nod off. He wasn’t surprised. Their days had been spent in high activity, researching and tracing Kenyon’s steps, and their nights had been spent in each other’s arms. Needless to say, they hadn’t slept much.

He changed gears and thought of the work they had accomplished in such a short time. Cassandra had put her profiling skills to good use, creating as accurate a psych profile as possible on Kenyon. The only thing missing were recent pictures of the man himself. Aside from a few old pictures pulled from his medical records—showing an extremely bruised and beat-up man—and a young shot of him from an old driver’s license, there really weren’t any floating around. The only smart thing Kenyon had ever done.

Trevor had been multitasking—keeping in touch with George while at the same time trying his hand at hacking into the systems needed to collect the information Cassandra had used for her own research. They made a great team overall, both in and out of bed.

He cleared his throat and waited for her to raise her eyes from her screen, but she didn’t respond, deep in her own world, similar to the way he became lost in his own head when focusing on work.

“Do you need anything?” He stood and stretched to release the tightness in his muscles from sitting for too long and walked to the phone to order lunch.

“To find Kenyon. That’s what I need.”

He laughed at her almost bullish tone. “I’m getting us something to eat. We can’t live off air and sex,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood. A sense of satisfaction filled him when she rewarded him with a smile.

“I don’t know. I think I read somewhere you could do that, you know. Live off sex, that is.” Her humorous tone made him happy. He wanted to do the same for her—make her happy and forever keep that smile on her face.