pdf - Eye of the Storm.PDF (3 page)

lime, yummy—she ghosted into the room and came up behind him. She placed the flat blade of her less-than-pristine knife along the man's carotid.

"Don't move,
senor
. I might slip and cut you," she said, her voice loud enough to draw her brother and his team’s attention. "Don't bother to finish the Mojito. We're not staying for drinks. Although I'd kill for a to-go Pepsi."

"Imp! What the fuck are you doing here?" Her brother's question was in the form of a roar. "And whose fucking blood is that?"

She glanced down and noted the blood spatter on her white shirt. Well, hell, she bet she had blood all over her face.
Eeuw
. She breathed slowly to dampen her renewed queasiness. No time to be sick, things would go tango uniform soon enough.

"No time for explanations. Someone needs to cover the door and windows.

Company’s coming." Using her knife as incentive, she forced the bartender to move with her—or chance getting his throat cut.

“Keely Ann Walsh!” Her brother stomped toward the bar. His face, a mask of calm, but his eyes held a powerful mixture of emotions—fear, concern, anger—all aimed at her.

“Talk. Now.”

Maddox followed her brother. Petriv moved to the side of the open doorway. At least someone was taking her seriously. "I was looking for you—to warn you." Her hand trembled; she really needed some sugar and fast. She wasn’t kidding about killing for a Pepsi. She recognized now her nausea, her weakness was because she had low blood sugar, not an uncommon occurrence for her in hot, humid environments. The bartender jerked away from the blade. She pulled him back, emphasizing her point by pricking him with the point of her knife. “Not a good idea,
senor.
”

“About the company. Got that. Goddamit, are you hurt?” She recognized that tone.

He wanted answers and he’d keep them there all the damn day until he got them.

She sighed. "It’s not my blood, okay? Had a run-in with a merc out back."

Cursing in gutter Spanish, the bartender attempted to pull away again. She drew a line on the barkeep's flushed neck with the dull edge of her knife, leaving a trail of his friend's blood in the sweaty folds of fat. "Your friend is dead,
senor
. Please don't do anything stupid. I've done more than enough killing in the last two days."

The bartender spit to the side. "I have no friend,
senorita.
I am sorry, I also have no Pepsi. I have Coca-cola." His English had a Brooklyn-tinge to it.

The bartender tensed. Stupid, stupid. He was thinking, planning. She could almost see the wheels spinning in his head, powered by little Chihuahuas. She'd let it play out, see how dumb the man really was. Plus, the resulting lesson would show Tweeter's friends she could handle herself. They'd soon have to trust her to fight alongside them.

"Coke? That'll do." She withdrew the knife, giving the bartender an opening to make his move. "Get me one. Carefully."

Tweeter cursed under his breath. So did Maddox and Petriv, in assorted languages, each of them very vulgar. She shot them a warning glance. This was her fight, her lesson.

Her brother glared at her and pointed his gun at the bartender's head. She shook her head and glared back. Overprotective brothers had been the bane of her existence. Maddox and Petriv she'd excuse for having their guns trained on the bartender, they didn't know any better. But Tweeter should.
Sheesh.

Petriv moved away from the door to get another angle on the bartender's head.

Maddox stood alongside her brother. The SSI owner's nostrils flared. His lips thinned.

His piercing gaze watched every move she and the bartender made. Her conclusion? He was way pissed, but still ready to make a move to save her poor little female butt. She almost snorted. He'd learn she could save her own hind end—and soon. The bartender really was that stupid and would try to take her.

"
A Coke for the
senorita. Un segundo
.
"
The man turned to smile at her. His face showed his shock. She got that a lot from men she'd held at knifepoint. The bartender's grin widened. Sucker thought he could take little ole her.
Not going to happen, dumbass.

She sensed movement from her brother and Renfrew Maddox. She didn't shift her gaze away from the bartender as he reached toward an under-bar refrigerator. "Let the man get me my Coke, guys."

Maddox made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl.

"Keely—" The warning in her brother's voice would normally make her cringe, but she was too busy concentrating on the barkeep's movements. All weakness was temporarily gone, due to a timely surge of adrenaline. She fondled her knife, keeping it ready.

Instead of bending down to get a cold soda, the man turned, his head and body just enough below the bar top to mess up the other three's shots. He used his arm to knock her knife hand up and away. Expecting something like this, she kept a firm grip on her weapon. She thrust the heel of her left hand up and broke his nose. Too bad for
el fatso—

she had two hands and was equally adept with both.

There was still some fight in the man. Howling, he lunged for her. Using his forward momentum, she blocked the hand reaching for her knife with her forearm and kneed him in the balls. Then to add insult to injury, she used the old trusty knee to the diaphragm.

Her dad and brothers had taught her to fight dirty. While the big strong man thought he could contain the little slip of a female, she had him on the ground, crying like a little girl.

By the time Tweetie and Maddox came around the bar, she'd flipped the very unhappy barkeep and had a booted foot in the small of his back, holding him down, her knifepoint at the nape of his neck.

"You got any flex-cuffs? I used mine on the way here. My source in Puerto Iguazu only had three sets. I was just thrilled the guy had ordnance for the Kamov that’ll haul our butts out of here."

Her brother's lips thinned and flags of white appeared around them. His was furious, but containing it well. After all, he
was
the most even-tempered of her brothers. He tossed her a set of cuffs from his belt, which she caught with her left hand. Pressing down on the bartender's left kidney with the heel of her hiking boot, she sheathed her knife and cuffed the man’s hands behind his back, then flipped him over. His moan told her she might have broken a rib or two. She blamed it on the adrenaline.

Now that the immediate danger was past, she was shaking from the combination of too much adrenaline and too little sugar. Stepping over the downed man, she peered in the refrigerator under the bar and indeed found cold, six-ounce bottles of Coke. Pulling out two of the small bottles, she closed the door. Popping the top off one on the edge of the counter, she held up a finger toward her brother who had relaxed enough to open his mouth to speak, then downed one bottle. God, she needed that. She could already feel the sugar and caffeine blasting into her bloodstream.

Maddox stood next to Tweeter, glancing from her to the man on the ground and back, a look of stunned disbelief on his chiseled face. Petriv joined the other two; his lips quirked. The stone-cold assassin was fighting a smile. Who knew he'd have a sense of humor? His file hadn't mentioned it. Intelligence files usually mentioned everything right down to the size of a man's dick. Petriv's was seven inches, slightly above average from all her reading; Maddox's, eight. She managed to avoid looking at their crotches to see if her intel had been correct.

Petriv caught her eye and winked at her. She inclined her head graciously. The Ukrainian threw back his head and laughed. Maddox shot Petriv an angry glare. Ooh, he didn't like his associate flirting with her, huh? Tweetie had told her his boss had no use for women and had established a "no-single-women-on-Sanctuary rule." Only operatives'

wives, long-term, live-in girlfriends and fiancées were allowed to live on the property.

The DoD and CIA files on Maddox labeled him as a loner; he'd had only two long-term relationships in his life, one for twelve months and another for nine, and neither of those women had lived with him 24/7. Knowing the male of the species fairly well—with a dad and five brothers how could she not?—he probably didn't avoid sexual conquests; he wasn't a monk, he just had no use for permanent relationships.

She placed the empty bottle on the bar with a thunk and opened the second. This one she intended to savor. "Uh, someone really needs to watch the door." She broke what had become an uncomfortable silence. She hated being the cynosure of everyone's eyes. "You were led into a trap, guys. I took care of the back door. The sound of breaking beer bottles means they're coming in that way."

"Keely, what the fuck…"

"Tweeter, you can't say that word. I'll tell Mom." Their mother, Molly Walsh, disliked the f-word, but with a house full of military men, she fought a losing battle. Her response was to demand payment—a quarter for every f-bomb. Her mother sported some very nice jewelry because the Walsh men and their friends uttered a lot of f-words.

Keely frowned at her brother to underline her point, then turned to the man at his side and held out her hand. "Mr. Maddox? In case you hadn't guessed, I'm his little sister.

I worked on a project for NSA through the auspices of my employer MIT until about twenty hours ago. While working for them, I came across this anomaly in the COMINT, uh, the communications intelligence I processed—which I will explain later if y'all really want to know the deets. Bottom line, this is a trap. There is no al Qaeda cell in this hole in the jungle. They're all across the river in Paraguay, if you really want to know.
This
is a trap set by Reyo Trujo, who seems to have a humongous hard-on for you, through the machinations of a highly placed traitor in the Department of Defense." Then she smiled sweetly and pulled out a granola bar from her pocket, unwrapped it and took a bite.

Caffeine and sugar only went so far in combating low blood sugar—and she’d need all the energy she could muster for the fight to come.

Maddox looked at her hands as if they might rear up and bite him. Again a sound somewhere between a rumble and a snarl came from deep in his chest. His icy grey-blue eyes warmed and turned a deep, smoky slate blue. His gaze traveled over her as if trying to classify her species—or figuring where to take a bite out of her first. She shivered.

Now, she knew firsthand what a soft furry bunny felt like when a wolf had it in its sights.

The man was an honorable, dominant, alpha male with predatory tendencies, much like her dad and brothers. This was a good news-bad news thing. Good in that she knew how to deal with the alpha personality; bad in that such honorable alphas wanted to cocoon her in bubble wrap and put her somewhere safe.

She didn't get "put" easily.

"Keely." Tweeter's voice had gone low and soft. Too soft. He was pissed—and really, really scared. "How did you get here?"

When in doubt about handling men getting on their protective high-horses, her mom told her to answer their questions literally, in great detail and at length. Such responses had a way of distracting the overprotective male.

"I flew commercial until Puerto Iguazu—and let me tell you there are no straight-through flights anywhere in this part of the world."

Someone snorted. She turned. Had the sound, much like stifled laughter, come from Maddox? Nah, his face was stone cold, the expression of a man who ate nails for breakfast. She must have imagined the sound. He caught her look and raised an arrogant dark brow. She glared at him, then turned back to her brother.

"Then I rented a chopper—”

"The Kamov," Petriv offered. He winked at her. Again. A trained assassin with a sense of the ridiculous. How fun. "A good bird."

She shot him a sunny smile. "Yes—you were listening. Good, 'cause we need to get out of here." She chased the granola with the second Coke, then stepped over the wiggling bartender and headed around the bar.

None of the three men moved. She stood, hands on her hips. "Did y'all hear me? Bad guys. Twenty of them or maybe more—well, come to think of it, seventeen or maybe more … I'm not counting the bartender—are coming to kill you."

Her brother grabbed her arms and shook her. She winced. "Tweets, you don't know your strength. You're hurting me."

He hovered over her, attempting to use his foot or so advantage in height to intimidate her. He should have learned by now it didn't work on her, but he always tried.

"Don't give me that crap," he said, exasperation in his voice. "I'm hardly touching you. Are you sure none of this is your blood?" His forehead creased with concern as his gaze traveled her torso and a finger traced the blood spatter down the front of her shirt.

She slapped his hand away, then leaned her forehead on his chest and sighed.

Unwanted tears welled in her eyes. She refused to let them fall. That was a wussy-assed thing to do, and there was no time to be weak. She was safe and her brother was safe.

She'd made it in time.

He held her more tightly against him. "I hate to ask—but why are there now only seventeen or so mercs left?" He took her hat off and leaned his chin on top of her disheveled, sweaty curls, his fingers soothing her scalp as he untangled the mess now falling to the center of her back.

One of the other two men gasped. Typical male response to her hair. She hated her hair. Most days, it was a nuisance. It was thick and heavy, and in hot humid weather, it curled and frizzed like crazy. But all her brothers, her dad and, most importantly, her mama begged her not to cut it.

"Why seventeen, Keely Ann Walsh?" He rocked her within the circle of his arms as he used to do when she skinned her knees as a little girl.

"Because I had to, um, disable two on the way here and then kill the guy out back. I was on a short clock, like Dad always says. I couldn't let anyone or anything stop me from getting here. Okay?" She wasn't happy that her last word had ended on a shrill note.

She took a breath and let it out slowly. If she had a mantra, she'd be chanting it.

"Okay, calm down, Imp." He smoothed her hair, a losing battle since it always did what it wanted to anyway. "Did you see any of the other mercs?"