“Once upon a time,” he began, and she laughed. “Do not laugh, it is a fairy tale, so it must begin this way, I believe.”
“Not laughing,” she said, though he could feel her doing just that. He smiled in the darkness and closed his own eyes.
Focusing on the story, he continued. “There was a man and he saw a woman he admired, but she was unavailable. He waited a long time, then suddenly she agreed to lunch. Then the man got the woman in lots and lots of trouble.”
“Oh, you did not,” she protested. “You're not responsible for this; whoever did it is. Your brother or whatever, not you.”
“Thank you for leaping to my defense, Carrie-mou, but this
is
because of me.”
“Oh, please. Don't be a martyr. We're in it together,” she muttered.
“I was wondering, earlier yesterday, or was it the day before? At the gallery.”
“Two days, maybe three. I'm losing track. What were you wondering?”
“If you would think I was a stalker or a”âhe searched his mind for the English wordâ“weirdo, for having thought about dating you for nearly ten years, only to finally do it and get you abducted.” He sighed, knowing that no matter what she said, it was his fault.
He felt her hand on his chest, pressure as she levered herself up to loom over him. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her.
“Let me show you what I think of that,” she said. The moment of waiting in the dark was a-tingle with suspense. What was she talking about?
Her mouth closed on his and her hands began to roam over his body, leaving no doubt about what she meant.
Sweaty, dirty and scared they might be, but their attraction for one another hadn't waned in the least. Rising up, he pulled her onto his lap and she straddled him, stripping down fast and pulling his hands to her breasts as she ravaged his lips.
“My beard,” he protested, between kisses. “I will scratch your beautiful skin.”
“I don't care,” she growled, her mouth leaping back to his. She yanked his shirt up and ran her hands over his flesh. Every trial and tribulation forgotten, he feasted on her, reveling in the power and glory of her body, the sheer joy of being alive.
Their coming together was fast and furious, a coupling of heart and mind and body in a blinding flash of passion. Panting, with hot tongues and racing hands, they drove one another to the heights of pleasure.
When she arched back in his hands, crying out, and her body clenched around him, he followed her over the edge with a hoarse roar of completion.
“Carrie!” he cried her name, rocketing his hips upward, leaping to fulfillment as they came together in a blinding, furious explosion.
There in the dark, their murmured words and caresses a luscious aftermath, he knew that he would never let her go.
Â
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Niko eased the truck up to the hidden gate at the dig site. Everything was quiet and he motioned Sam to open the gate.
“Stay alert,” he warned as he, too, got out of the Jeep, covering his man as Sam dragged the iron gate open, hooking the lock into the ring of the post.
“No worries, compadre,” Sam muttered, backwalking to the passenger side door. The two men eased into their seats and Niko let off the brake and slowly proceeded through the gate and down the rough track to the camp.
“Niko!” Sam exclaimed, pointing to a rise of vultures from the edge of the trees where a front sentry would have been posted.
“This is not good.” They found the first of their team at the edge of the woods. What was left of him after the animals and birds had been at him, that is.
The rest of the team lay where they had fallen. The clouds of birds and insects surrounding the bodies were a noisy testament to the dreadful manner of their deaths and the speed with which the jungle reclaimed everything.
Walking slowly, and covering one another's backs, Niko and Sam reached the pit. Niko turned over Carlos's body and peered down into the dark hole.
“Davros? Are you down there?”
Nothing answered him. Their presence had scared the vultures into the trees, but the birds were still there, lurking noisily, waiting to resume their feasting.
“Look.” Sam pointed down into the hole as he spoke. “There's no one in there.”
“Do you think they escaped?” Niko examined the ground around the grate, noting the delicate feminine footprints that only pointed toward the grate, not away from it.
Sam shook his head in the negative. “Nah, one way in, just like you wanted.”
“Apparently not,” Niko said, spotting the doorway. “They found a way out.” He scanned the jungle. “This was an ambush, Sam, but whoever it was didn't come for Dav. They just killed the team. They didn't even come into the camp.”
“Agreed. You got an enemy, or we got in someone's territory and didn't know it.”
“Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Let's back on out of here and call this in, eh?”
“Plan.” His answer was monosyllabic, and heartfelt as he backed toward the Jeep.
At the Jeep, they reversed course. Miles up the road, at a slightly higher elevation where they could see the entrance to the road, but not the camp itself, Niko pulled out a satellite phone and made a call.
“No, they weren't there,” he said, in response to the question. “I'm going to go in and check, yes, after I get some backup here.”
He waited as the word came through that backup could be there in a matter of a few hours.
“Good, we'll wait. My whole team's dead. Yes. Okay.” Anger filled him at the thought of his men, all of them loyal, all of them veterans of campaigns with him all over the world. Emergency measures were in effect now, and he'd take all the necessary precautions he and his team had agreed upon. “I'll wait on the signal.”
He hung up and turned the Jeep, pointing it back down the way they'd come. “We'll wait here for backup. A few hours, supposedly. You okay with that?”
“Better than being at the clearing, yeah?”
“Yeah. Good. Let's get some rest.”
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When he hung up the phone, leaving Niko expecting backup, he was smiling. Having isolated the man, separating him from his mercenary troop, then disposing of them, he took the next step in exacting his revenge on all the Gianikopolis men. Now, he would be able to step into Davros's place in the world market, and if Niko came through this, he'd have the older brother as his hit man, a fitting end for both sons of the notorious father.
“Good news,” he said to the men who guarded him. “Everything went as planned.” He frowned. “With one slight exception. Evidently there
is
a way out of that cell, some kind of doorway in the structure itself.” Trust Davros to find it, the lucky son of a bitch. He'd always managed to squeak out of every trap set for him. It was infuriating. “Now we'll see if Niko is cut out to be one of us, permanently, or if he too needs to be culled from the herd.”
That Davros had somehow escaped continued to annoy him. He wanted to shoot something, or smash something. Just thinking of killing something, tearing someone or something limb from limb, eased his wrath, so he was able to release the tension with the exercises he'd learned, clenching and unclenching his fists as he thought of pounding them into soft flesh.
Yes. That was better.
Davros was of no matter to him now. There would be nothing for him, in the end. When he found his way out, if he ever did, he would find a bullet waiting. His man was still watching the camp where Niko had found his team. He had reported Niko's movements, so Niko's call had been anticlimactic. After all, he'd arranged the carnage, so he'd had to fake his distress at Niko's losses.
As to Davros, if he didn't emerge, well that was good too. Thinking of Davros, dying in the dark in a hole, further eased his wrath.
“Are you ready to move out?” he asked the leader of his second team. The man's coiled strength was legendary, yet he stood at perfect ease by the ornate doors.
“As ever.”
“Then execute the plan.”
“With pleasure,” the man said, giving a half salute as he turned and left. Without a doubt, he would be in place, his sniper rifle at the ready, when Nikoâor Davrosâturned up again.
“Make sure the jet is stocked as usual. We leave in twenty minutes.” He tossed the order to one of the other men over his shoulder as he too left the room. All would be in order and he would see to this final stage personally.
After all, Belize was so much warmer this time of year than Colorado.
Chapter 12
Staring through the scope of the long rifle, Jurgens could see the bodies where they lay, saw the vultures, saw the Jeep as it arrived and then left. When the men in the Jeep had focused on a body on the far side of the clearing, moving it with care to stare downward, beyond it, they gave him the answer to the riddle.
“A rat in a trap,” he murmured, thinking of the elegant Davros Gianikopolis down in a hole. Not good. It had been several days now. He and the woman were either dead or close to it. The three men who had killed the returning team from a distance had not gone into camp, nor had they lingered in the area. He had tracked them back down the road toward Belmopan, losing them as they picked up speed heading away from the scene.
Only one remained, on another hillside, watching the camp just as Jurgens did.
It was a puzzle.
He was certain that if Dav had been visible, the newcomers in the Jeep would have shot him. Instead, they checked the hole, discussed briefly, then backed away, to drive a distance and wait. Jurgens slipped off long enough to find them. The run had done him good after lying so still. When he returned to his hidden nest the other watcher was still there, holding his place, evidently unconcerned about other activities. Killing more watchers was not in his orders then. Davros perhaps, should he come out of the hole, but no one else.
That they were waiting said Davros was still captive, or contained somehow.
He narrowed his eyes, thinking. He'd done his research on the Gianikopolis family. In this generation, there were only the two brothers, Davros and Niko. He guessed, from the look of him, that the man in the Jeep had been the older one. Niko.
“Lazarus risen,” he muttered, tapping a note into a small device, under the cover of his camouflage. Something had troubled him about the job offer long before he'd discussed it with Caroline and chosen to refuse it. Once they'd refused and he'd set about protecting Davros, both he and Caroline had continued to dig.
Far away from home, on borrowed equipment untraceable to him, Jurgens had begun to track the man who'd wanted Davros dead. That man was an unknown, a cloaked piece on a chessboard littered with deceit and death.
The hidden player had a high stake in this. Worse, he was manipulating the game to an end Jurgens had yet to uncover. Evidence of his deceit lay rotting in the intense sunlight. Niko's presence, his waiting stance said even more, at least to Jurgens.
Play within play. Game within game. And, he believed, for Niko, betrayal.
Everything about the killing in the clearing, Niko's arrival and easy departure said:
setup.
Someone had positioned the older Gianikopolis brother to capture the younger and was now playing an incredibly dangerous and delicate game of cat and mouse with the older brother. And Niko seemed unaware he was being played.
None of the maneuvering boded well for Davros. Not at all.
When night fell, as it was rapidly doing, he would contact Caroline. She was continuing the search. It was her special gift, research. The information she could find astounded him, every day.
She
astounded him.
A flicker of movement caught his attention and he focused through the scope once more. Two men crept through the thick brush, coming up from the road in a shifting, careful pattern. They carried military-style gear and were heavily camouflaged, just as he was. He saw no markings on their clothing, no indication of their loyalties. They worked quickly, laying a trail of land mines on the road into the compound.
If Niko were to return, neither he nor his friend in the Jeep would leave.
This told him they were not Dav's men, nor did they work for Gates Bromley or his woman.
The shadow player, perhaps.
Not good. Too many forces at odds. Too many pieces on the chessboard.
He continued to watch, unwilling to shift the balance yet. He gritted his teeth when the men turned to the hole as well, having finished with their work at the road. They crept over to the same place Niko had, but they were more intent. When they aimed their weapons downward, he could see both night-scopes and suppressors. Shifting to his work, Jurgens sighed, focused and let out a long, slow breath.
Idiots.
He squeezed the trigger, once, then twice. Pivoting fast, he shot again, taking out the sniper who had been watching the camp as intently as he had. The fact that that watcher hadn't shot meant he worked with these men, therefore he had to be taken off the chessboard.
The mines were not in his purview, but he could prevent the direct murder of Dav and his woman, should they still be alive.
The men fell where they stood, crumpling to the ground. He felt the usual rush of elation as he exercised his skills. The shots were perfectly placed; death had been instantaneous. His shots had been exact enough that neither weapon had discharged.
Now, he would contact his Caroline.
She would no doubt shed some light on the shadows. And they could talk about chess.
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Gates jerked in surprise as an e-mail pinged his inbox. It was marked URGENT! And it was from the Agency.
He opened it as Ana answered a call on the house phone, directed to her. Perhaps the Agency was doubling their efforts. He heard her murmured conversation as a background lilt, as he shifted over from his running program to the e-mail server.
They had convened the team at Dav's estate. The Agency must have tracked her here.
He opened the e-mail, finished reading it just as Ana set the phone down. In her stillness, she vibrated with tension, distracting him from the e-mail. They'd been waiting for the package to arrive with proof of life. The ransom was ready to transfer from one account to the designated one the kidnappers had given them. They were trying to dig up more leads in the meantime.
“Did you get the same intel?” he demanded. “South America? There's a lead in Argentina.”
She shook her head in the negative, a mute disagreement. Her inability to speak shocked him and Gates leapt to his feet to go to her.
“What? What is it?” he demanded, a hand on her arm. “They're not dead.” He knew they weren't dead, but his heart sank anyway at her refusal to answer.
“No. They're not. That was about a location. It was... help.” Ana said the words slowly, as if feeling her way to them, which was odd.
“Who? Agency? Where? Why?” He shot the questions at her.
“No, not Agency, and not South America. As to the
who,
I'm not sure.”
“Not sure? What? A trace,” he began.
“No, she anticipated that, and said it wouldn't work.”
“She? Who is she and why are you considering this?” He knew she had reasons. She wasn't as good as she was at their business without good reason and without good instincts.
“Short answer is she's helping because Dav helped her pull off something huge.” She stopped, looked him in the eye. “I think it's legit. He's in Central America,” she said, answering the questions out of order.
“Agency says South America,” Gates answered her, tension singing in every fiber of his being. “They have leads. Solid ones.”
She nodded, this time in agreement. “I know. They're wrong.”
He ran a hand through his hair and paced. Pacing let the frustration out, helped him think. “Okay. Okay. Lay it out. Tell me why you think this is legit.”
“She found me,” Ana said with a puzzled shrug. “Here. At this number. Unlisted and untraceable. And I don't live here.”
“Could be the kidnapper,” Gates said at once, calculating the odds. “They have some pretty sick skills to pull this off. Pretty easy to get a phone number, comparatively.”
“No. No mention of the ransom demand, nothing about the account in the Caymans and the money there, no hesitation in her voice. Calm, but quick. Sure.” Ana detailed the sense of the call; the very calmness with which the information was delivered had led her to “profile” the person. “She had nothing to hide,” Ana continued, “and nothing more to ask or offer. Just a direction.”
“A mislead.”
“A mislead would give us more, not less,” Ana argued.
He thought about it, checked his gut. When his gut agreed with Ana, he slapped his computer shut.
“Pack gear.” Gates shouted the order over his shoulder.
Georgiade was coming down the hallway toward them. He pivoted where he stood and started toward the security quarters at a trot.
Another shout from Gates stopped him, momentarily. “Full field outlay, night ops packs and weapons.”
Georgiade nodded and hurried on. Gates knew everyone would spring into action and be ready to go before an hour was out. “Where in Central America?” he said, turning back to Ana.
“Belize,” Ana snapped out the answer as she snatched the phone back out of its cradle. “I've got to get on the phone to the Agency. We need a smooth path, embassy help. We're gonna need clearance to go in on search and rescue.”
“They aren't going to like you disagreeing with their analysis.”
“I'm not going to tell them how scanty the lead is,” she snapped, defensive because she was going on her gut, asking him and all the team to trust that her instincts were correct.
He waited through the long tense minutes as she contacted the people who could help them. He listened with only partial attention as he simultaneously made mental lists, revising and shifting what gear they should take as he thought of scenarios.
“We're good to go,” she said, clicking off the phone. “Let's move.”
“Dogs?” he asked as they hurried down the hall after Georgiade.
“Yes,” she said, then saved her breath to run.
They got to the security area within minutes. The team was gearing up with an efficiency that made him proud. When he saw them, Franklin left his pack, coming to them.
“We takin' the dogs?”
“Yes,” he said, and Franklin grinned.
Ana panted out a further order. “Make sure they've got that stuff on them, the flea stuff. That's all the Belize people asked for.”
“Done,” Franklin replied, heading out of the room at a run. He'd gather his best dogs and be back, Gates knew, probably before the others had time to figure out which boots to wear. Franklin had been on this kind of op before and kept a bag packed and the dogs ready.
Ana turned and left the room as well, and Gates knew she'd be sorting through their gear in the car, making up packs that would go with them.
“Who's staying here?” Callahan asked. Her hard gaze dared him to say it was her.
“New guy, Geddey. He's coming in early. He'll keep things tight here while we go hunting.”
“Ana?” Royce asked. He was by his locker, and never looked up from the task of strapping a clutch piece on his leg.
“Arming up and loading the plane.”
“Feebs comin'?” Damon wanted to know. He wasn't going, with his injuries still healing. He'd get Geddey whatever he needed, and keep watch on Declan.
“Clearing the path for us, but they won't be on the plane,” Gates answered for Ana, his hands busy zipping a pack as one of the new members of the team, Holden, zipped another.
“Landscape with Apaches,” Holden muttered.
“What's that mean, Holden?” Callahan demanded.
“Like that old painting. They'll be there, probably,” Holden said, shifting to face her. “But nobody'll see 'em where they're hiding.”
“Agency too, but we won't see them, either,” Royce muttered.
They all looked at Gates and he nodded. He didn't say a word. They were right, but he couldn't and wouldn't confirm. With this late knowledge, all of the agencies would have difficulty keeping up with them, but they had people in place inside most of the Central American countries. Someone would be there unofficially.
“Let's keep moving,” he said curtly. “We need to head out.”
Gates hauled gear and arranged it in the SUV. He was still waiting to find out about Ana's contact. But with that, and his own equipment now humming with various searches and algorithms, he was digging out a web of transactions. The flights and the country had begun to hint not only to Belize but to a man.
A mastermind.
A shadow.
He'd begun forwarding data, and the Agency was interested, but only if they could be sure there was no blowback on them. They had little or nothing on the man in question, and nothing that pointed to a grudge of this magnitude against Dav.
With so little data to go on, they were unwilling to act overtly.