“Good. Keep firing. Get a feel for how the pistol fires,” he said. “That’s why I wanted you to practice. You’ll get used to it and it won’t jerk you like that.”
“Did I hit the tree?”
“No. You were off by about ten feet.”
Ten feet?
“Shoot again.”
She concentrated on the forward sight of the pistol and fired when she thought she had the tree lined up the way he’d instructed. The pistol kicked back again but she didn’t lose her balance and this time she saw dirt displaced by her shot.
“Closer,” he said.
She fired again. Bark flew off the tree trunk.
“Yes!” She fired until the magazine was empty, hitting the tree three more times.
“You’re a natural. I’m impressed.”
She turned to face him, warmed by his compliment but not having any illusions about her prowess with weapons. “I’m not going to miraculously turn into Wyatt Earp after an hour of this, you know.”
He smiled. “Like I said, I just want you to be able to hit a body.”
The idea of that didn’t appeal to her much. “What if I can’t? I mean, what if I can’t shoot another person?” She couldn’t handle seeing someone get shot. How could she expect to shoot anyone?
“If they’re firing at you, you’ll fire back, trust me.”
More like she’d run away. But she didn’t tell him that.
The way Sadie handled the Beretta convinced Calan that she was tougher than either of them thought. Or maybe that was just him. Alert and beautiful, she walked beside him toward a restaurant on Bulevardi Bajram Curri. They’d already gone to the government ministry building, but a woman had told them Murati was out for a late lunch at the Villa Fendy.
Calan opened the restaurant door for her and she preceded him inside. White tablecloths covered wood tables that matched the wood trim around windows and a glass-partitioned private dining room.
A woman with dark eyes and hair that was pulled tightly back into a clip watched them approach. “Two?”
“We’re looking for someone,” he told the hostess, who gave a half bow and extended her arm in invitation for them to pass.
Calan put his hand on Sadie’s lower back and they walked through the restaurant. He searched the tables and spotted Murati conversing with another man. Calan had only seen pictures of him, but he looked more clean-shaven in person.
He approached and stopped at the table, Sadie by his side. Murati looked up with his lunch companion and his brow went from inquiry to recognition. Unwelcomed recognition. Odie had sent him Calan’s picture in case something went wrong.
“You should not have come here.”
“You and I have something to discuss.”
“I am in a meeting. It will have to wait.”
Calan reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet, opening it to retrieve the business card. “No, I’m afraid this can’t wait.” He showed Murati the card.
His companion looked at it, too, but Calan knew he couldn’t read it from where he sat.
Murati’s eyes lifted. Calan patiently met his gaze. Then Murati turned to his companion.
“Will you excuse me for a few moments?”
“Certainly,” the man said, shifting his curious gaze to Calan and then Sadie, lingering there.
Murati rose and, glaring at Calan, passed him and led him and Sadie to the front of the café. The hostess watched them questioningly as they left through the front door.
Outside, Murati turned to face Calan.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Calan held up the card. “Start talking.”
“Who are you?”
Calan chuckled darkly. “Don’t play games with me.” He held the card in front of his face. “Who is this?”
Murati didn’t respond. Telling him would probably guarantee his death.
“Who did you work with to arrange our flight here?”
“I cannot reveal that information to you. Now please go. If anyone sees you with me—”
Calan stepped closer. “I don’t have much to lose by killing you. I think you know that.”
The man’s eyes flickered back and forth between Calan’s.
“Just tell me who you worked with,” Calan said. He had to get something from him. Some kind of lead.
“Arber Andoni.”
“Did Andoni kill my pilot?”
Murati looked nervously from his left to his right, checking the sidewalk and the street. People walked to and fro but none took notice of them. “No. It was not him.”
Calan lifted his eyebrows. “No? Was it this man?” He held the card up in front of Murati’s face.
Murati’s eyes grew fearful and he didn’t answer.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Sadie slid her hand under his arm and rested her hand on his forearm, which let him know she didn’t like this.
“You have no idea what you are doing.”
“Then enlighten me.”
“You have interfered where you should not. Our agreement would have gone as planned had you not done so. There is nothing I can do for you now. Our business is finished. Leave now, and never return.”
“Under any other circumstances, I’d have to agree with you. But this is much different than I anticipated. Whoever is after me has ties from Albania to Montenegro.”
“It goes much farther than that, my friend.” It was a piece of information offered genuinely. The man wanted Calan to believe him. Believe, and get away.
“Tell me what I need to know. Then I’ll consider leaving.”
Murati contemplated him a moment and then relented. “I do business with Arber Andoni. He is a good man. But he is close to Zhafa.”
“I thought you didn’t know Gjergj Zhafa.”
“He is a dangerous man.” Murati didn’t acknowledge the charge. “Not one to cross. That is why I ask you again, Mr. Friese, to kindly leave. I have a family. Surely you understand.”
Yes, he did understand. More than any man should. Which was why he couldn’t leave. “Where can I find Andoni?”
Murati shook his head.
“Where does he live? You can at least tell me that much.”
He shook his head again. “I cannot.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out on my own. I have the resources to do it.”
Sputtering something fervently in Albanian, Murati said, “Stupid man. Do you have a pen?”
Sadie dug into her handbag and produced one.
Murati took that and then the business card from Calan. He wrote something down on the card. Handing the card back to Calan, he said, “Do not go to him at his home. Do not frighten his wife and children. There is no need.”
“What will I find at this address?” Calan put the card back into his wallet.
“He is attending a party tonight. The restaurant at this address was privately reserved. I can anonymously arrange for you to be invited so that it does not appear you are seeking him out.” Murati told him the time and place of the benefit. “It is a formal affair. Black tie. I will register you as Calan Friese and a guest.”
Since Zhafa already knew who he was, he didn’t see any harm in using his own name. Nodding his appreciation, Calan turned to Sadie. “Let’s go.” He wouldn’t get any more out of Murati anyway. He didn’t want to force him, either. Call him soft. He knew too much about protecting his own not to be soft when it came to things like this.
“Mr. Friese,” Murati called as Calan put his hand on Sadie’s lower back to get her moving.
He turned his head toward the man.
“You did not hear of the dinner from me.”
Again, Calan nodded. “No one will know we were here.”
“Thank you,” Sadie said to Murati, her innocence painfully obvious. She clearly didn’t belong in Calan’s company. Not in this situation.
When they were far enough away, he said, “Thank you?”
“I felt sorry for him. What if he turns up dead like all the others who’ve crossed your path?”
“He won’t. Andoni needs him. Without him, he doesn’t have government approval. He’d be shut down.”
“Still. You scared him.”
“Scared him. Murati is making a lot of money on bribes. Andoni is probably his biggest donator.”
“And Zhafa?”
Murati wouldn’t have told him about the benefit if he hadn’t known Zhafa would be there. “Zhafa is something else.”
“Yeah, and that’s what worries me. He’s going to recognize us.”
“It’ll be too public. He won’t do anything there.” Afterward was another matter.
“So we’re just going to act like we belong there?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I can pretend about that.”
“I’ll help you. Don’t worry.”
She didn’t seem convinced.
It was important that she not make them stand out in a crowd tonight.
Before flagging down a taxi, he slipped Sadie’s hand in his and tugged her so that she turned and bumped against him, her hands landing on his chest. While she stared up at him with startled eyes, he slid his arm around her and pulled her closer.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said.
Her transparent, sea-blue eyes remained wide and searching. Somehow he needed to find a way to take her mind off the danger. He did what came naturally.
Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers along her face to the back of her head, sinking his fingers into her soft hair. Her eyes half-mooned with desire and he was glad to see it was that easy. It fired a surge of answering response in him. Like a switch, she was back in his arms.
“Sadie,” he murmured.
She tipped her head back a little and he heard her breathing through her parted lips. He pressed his to them.
A sound erupted from her and she wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her feminine curves against him and ran his hand down to her ass.
He wished they were somewhere private. Raising his head, he looked down at her sultry face and the way her eyes drowned with his. He wanted her so much he ached. Good for both of them they didn’t have time.
Chapter 8
T
ension hung thick in the taxi as it rolled to a stop in front of an upscale Italian restaurant in the heart of downtown Tirana. More than once today, he’d almost taken Sadie back to the pension. Only the urgency in finding dress clothes had stopped him, that and the way Sadie had sulked the entire time. She wasn’t happy with the way he’d shown her that nothing had changed between them.
He got out of the car and extended his hand to her.
She hesitated.
Being together disconcerted him, too. Seeing her in that dress after she’d come upstairs from the bathroom hadn’t helped. By the time he finished taking in her long legs and those shapely hips and tasteful amount of cleavage exposed in that tightly fitted black dress, he’d caught her checking him out, too. The desire was always there, a beast that needed constant taming…or relief. And there was only one way to take care of that, the way they both needed to avoid. He wasn’t sure how much longer either of them could fight it. The night at the villa had teased them both with a taste. After kissing her today, the zapping energy between them might as well set the taxi on fire.
Was he confusing what he felt for her with phenomenal sex? It was that good with her, but how could he turn away from Kate like that? So easily.
At last, Sadie gave him her hand. When she stood, he didn’t want to move. He just wanted to keep looking at her beautiful face, lightly made up with soft tendrils of hair falling around it from her artfully arranged updo.
“Remember, it’s too public for Zhafa to do anything. We’ll be fine as long as we’re careful.” Shutting the taxi door, he stepped onto the sidewalk with her.
“Public is good,” she said.
Hearing her double meaning, he smiled and guided her to the entrance. He told the doorman they were there for Andoni’s party. The doorman allowed them to pass.
Inside, a band played a jazzy tune. Chandeliers were set low to shed romantic light on the wide, open room of white-topped tables. Men in suits and women in varying styles and colors of cocktail dresses nearly filled all the tables. He’d deliberately made sure he and Sadie showed up fashionably late. Too early could be dangerous.
Scanning the room, he spotted Andoni. He sat at a table with a lovely dark-haired woman whose diamonds sparkled like strobe lights, and another couple.
A waiter appeared with a tray of champagne and said a word in Albanian that must have been, “Champagne?”
“Grazie.”
He took two glasses and handed Sadie one of them.
She took it and met his eyes as she sipped.
Seeing a table that would give him a good view of Andoni, he put his free hand on Sadie’s lower back and guided her there, not missing virtually every man they passed turning to stare at her.
On a typical day, Sadie wasn’t an extraordinary beauty, but the way she’d enhanced her features and displayed the enticing shape of her body highlighted her interesting good looks. She had her own brand of beauty, the kind that grew on a man so that he never got tired of looking at her. Nothing Barbie about her.
Waiting until she sat first, Calan sat beside her, facing Andoni. The man hadn’t looked their way yet, and no one else seemed to notice them, either. That was good.
“Where is he?” Sadie asked.
“In front of the dance floor.”
She looked toward the dance floor and the band. “The one with the woman in all the bling?”
“That’s the one.”
“Is the man sitting with them Zhafa?”
“I don’t know.” He watched a man from the table next to them get up and lean down to talk to Andoni’s wife. He was an older man. Calan looked at everyone sitting at the table he’d vacated. Three men and one unhappy-looking woman.
“That man talking to them came from the big group over there,” Sadie said.
Her observation unexpectedly impressed him. “Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
“What are we going to do? Just watch?”
“After everything gets going we’ll start mingling.”
“You mean after everyone starts getting drunk?”
He chuckled. “Yes. You sure you don’t want to come to work for TES?”
“TES?”
Realizing his mistake, he inwardly reprimanded himself. Being with her constantly must be wearing on him. Or was he getting so comfortable with her that he forgot to watch what he said?
“What does it stand for?”
“I shouldn’t have told you that.”
Her eyes blinked and radiated her appreciation. “But you did.”
Yes, he had. And that disturbed him. It was too easy being with her.
“You might as well tell me now.” She gazed at him beguilingly as she sipped her champagne.
He found her completely adorable, and she was right. “Tactical Executive Security.” He hadn’t given much away. She’d never find the name in any directory.
“How long have you been with them?”
“Six months.”
He could tell by the sobering of her eyes that she understood the significance of the timing.
“Why TES?” she asked.
He’d gone to work for TES after his girlfriend had been killed. “They’re business is counter-terrorism. They were going after Dharr and I wanted to be the one to catch him.” He figured he didn’t need to keep this from her anymore.
“So you joined them.”
“Yes.”
“Why? You were already chasing him.”
“TES had the connections I needed, the resources. Equipment and money.” And a cause he believed in. “With them, I could move a lot faster.”
“And secretly.”
“Some of our accomplishments do reach the news.”
“But no one is able to tie them to TES.”
“No.” Not so far. “Most people would cheer us on.”
“Except maybe our government, if your actions compromise international relationships.”
“Nothing is compromised if the organization behind the mission is unknown.”
He saw her consider that without any decisive favor for one side or the other. “Are you going to keep working for them?”
Dharr was dead. “Yes.” His thirst for revenge had been satisfied but not his thirst to squash terrorism.
“You say that with such conviction.”
Her dreamy expression told him she liked that. Maybe knowing he worked on the side of good—albeit in secret—made her feel better. He didn’t know how to tell her she shouldn’t be so enamored.
“What made you decide to join the Army?” she asked, sipping the last of her first glass of champagne.
He flagged a waiter over and got her another one. That made her smile with that same dreamy look in her eyes.
“I come from a long line of military men,” he answered her question. “My father lost a leg on one deployment, but he never spoke one negative word against the military. He was a true patriot.”
“And so you grew up with the same ideals?”
“Yes.”
Her dreamy smile changed to curiosity. “You don’t sound very happy about that.”
“I’ve seen things that made me question the way our military operates. It made me wonder if some rules aren’t in our best interest.”
“Do you mean the attack in Yemen?”
He nodded. “One of our own took sides with terrorism. I caught Dharr, but I didn’t do it by following rules or making sure I was politically correct. We’ll never beat terrorism by following rules. Terrorists don’t care about diplomacy. They don’t follow rules. That makes catching them a dirty job.”
“But you were a Delta soldier. Every mission you went on was secret.”
“Yes, they were secret, but none of them gave me Dharr.”
“In other words, the only way to win the war on terrorism is to throw morals out the window and kill without mercy.”
That was exactly the way he’d killed Dharr. “You think terrorists deserve to be treated morally?”
“No, but the governments where they take refuge do.”
“Not if they have their heads buried in the sand. At that point morality has very little to do with it. That’s the beauty of working for a company like TES. We go in and take out our target before anyone knows we were there or who was there. The media don’t know. Our government doesn’t know, not technically anyway, and the government where our target is located doesn’t know. If nobody knows, no one gets hurt except the one who deserves to be hurt.”
Sadie sat back and sipped her second glass of champagne. He sipped his, too, and watched her think over what he said.
Finally she set her glass down and looked at him. “You have a lot of passion on the subject.”
Yes, it was something he felt very strongly about. “I’m going to kill as many terrorists as I can until I’m physically unable to do it anymore.”
Her eyes blinked slowly and he could swear he saw her attraction to him grow the more she heard what she called his passion.
“You have a really good reason for wanting to do that,” she said.
He didn’t want to talk about what had led him down this path, so he didn’t say anything. Leaning back like her, he drank more champagne and checked the tables around Andoni. The older man had gone back to his table. One of the men who’d sat there had gotten up and now stood with a group of others.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this from the beginning?”
He turned to Sadie. “Would you have gone with me if you had known?”
“You have a just cause for doing what you do.”
“Is that a yes?”
She didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
Because her reasons for wanting to escape had more to do with her feelings than his background? Yes, and because of that he had to watch her.
Surveying the rest of the crowd, he saw there were more people here. Many had abandoned their tables to stand and talk near the two bars in the room or to dance. It was time to start mingling.
Just when he was going to ask Sadie to dance, a couple approached their table. Late arrivals.
The woman asked something in Albanian.
“Do you speak English?” Calan asked.
“Ah, Americans,” she said in accented English. “We travel there a lot.” She looked from him to Sadie and back again. “Are these seats taken?”
She wore a strapless white dress and held a small matching purse. Diamonds dangled from her ears and around her neck. She appeared to be in her late forties, with light green eyes that had probably been striking in her youth. They were her best feature—otherwise she wasn’t all that attractive. The man with her looked pretty much like every other man in the room, except for his big nose and mouth. He was also about an inch shorter than his date. They weren’t married, unless they both had chosen not to wear wedding rings.
“No,” Sadie said before he could answer. “Would you like to join us?” She gave them a beaming smile.
Calan noticed how hard she tried to be friendly and wondered why she thought she had to.
“Why, thank you,” the woman said, all sugary and false. “I am Edona and this is Pietro.” She sat in the chair beside Sadie. Pietro sat next to her and to the left of Calan.
“I’m Sadie and this is Calan,” Sadie said, still smiling in an overexaggerated way. “That’s a lovely necklace you have on.”
The woman all but gushed her pleasure. “Why, thank you.”
Were they going to have to listen to her say, “Why, thank you” all night? Calan watched her eye Sadie like a jealous woman looking for flaws. She made no return comment on Sadie’s appearance, which was about ninety-five percent higher on the knockout scale than hers.
“What brings you to Tirana?” Pietro asked.
“Just visiting,” Calan said, looking over at Sadie, hoping she’d take his lead.
“Vacationing?”
“Yes. We came over from Italy.”
The man nodded, taking a glass of champagne for his girlfriend and another for himself from a waiter who had approached with a tray.
“Are you from here?” Sadie asked, looking at Edona.
“Pietro is from Rome, but we live in Tirana.” Edona lifted her head higher. “In a villa on the coast.”
“We rented one in Montenegro.” Sadie glanced over at Calan and he could tell she wondered if she was supposed to say that.
Her distraction made her miss the haughty narrowing of Edona’s eyes. “We’ve been to Montenegro many times.”
Sadie smiled. “I love to travel.”
“What is it you do in America?” She looked from Calan to Sadie.
Enjoying the show, Calan relaxed back with his glass of champagne and waited for Sadie to answer. This ought to be good.
“We…I…my father runs a restaurant corporation and Calan is a business analyst.”
Calan was momentarily awed by her quick thinking.
Edona’s brow lifted. “Hmph.” She looked at Calan and checked him out.
“What company are you with?” Pietro asked.
“Homeland Bank.”
The other man nodded. “Big company. Do you travel a lot?”
“Yes. Mixing business with pleasure right now.” He turned to Sadie and smiled.
“I know what that’s like.” Pietro chuckled, glancing over at his girlfriend.
Her superior expression re-emerged. “Pietro is a top executive for Andoni International Airport.”
Calan filed that away for now. That’s how he’d gotten his invitation to the party. He worked for Arber Andoni.
“What kind of restaurants does your father run?” Pietro asked Sadie. “What’s the name of his company?”
Her face fell a little. She didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to either, and would have stopped her if he wasn’t sure Zhafa already knew who she was.
Edona didn’t want her to, either, Calan saw.
“The Mancini Corporation. Table Mesa Kitchen. Pascoli’s. Salt Reef Bar and Grill.”
“I know of them. Your father is a very successful man.”
Sadie’s face remained unhappy. She glanced at Edona and saw the jealousy oozing off her. Except Calan doubted she recognized the other woman’s jealousy. Maybe she only saw the animosity and assumed she wasn’t fitting in again.
“What is it you do?”
Sadie turned to Pietro. “I…”
“Sadie’s an artist,” Calan said and felt her startled eyes find him. He smiled fondly at her, not having to act. “She oil paints.”
Edona laughed. “Good thing your father makes a lot of money. You’d be starving otherwise. It’s so hard to make it as an artist. It’s the same with musicians and writers. So many don’t make anything at all.”