Vengeance (SSU Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  A quick twist and he too, was on the ground. She spun around, checking for the location of the other two men she’d seen in the alley.

  One was on the ground. As she watched, the other thug grappled with a man with frizzy blond hair.

  The newcomer was fast. He ducked a blow that would have dislocated his jaw, drove his shoulder into the man’s sternum, and followed his opponent to the ground.

  She didn’t wait to see who won. She raced to the end of the alley and onto the busy street. Dammit, which way had Kai gone?

  Picking randomly, she chose left. She hadn’t gone more than a few paces when a taxi pulled over to the curb a block ahead. A man stepped forward, quickly opened the door and slid inside. For just an instant, Jenna saw his face.

  Kai!

  She tore after him, but the taxi pulled away before she could get its license plate number, leaving Jenna standing in the street, her jaw slack with disappointment, her hands clenched into impotent fists.

  God, she’d been so close!

  Jenna fought back tears. This was only a temporary setback. Now that she had proof Kai was here, she could find him again.

  She glanced back toward the alley to see if anyone had followed her. Nope, all clear. She started in the direction the taxi had been taking. Not because she thought she’d see it again, but because there looked to be a busy intersection up ahead. She had a piece of note paper in her pocket with the address for Niko’s hotel. She’d flag down a taxi and head back.

  A few steps later, some sixth sense had her looking back over her shoulder.

  Two pale blond men in black suits were closing in on her. They weren’t anyone she’d seen in the alley, but the cold way they focused on her let her know she didn’t want them to get any closer.

  Ahead of her, at the end of the block a black town car idled at a red light. Such cars were common on the streets, but this one sat a little too close to the side of the road.

  Uh-oh. The men were herding her toward the car.

  Jenna checked her options. On her right was the long, unbroken expanse of a building. By the time the building ended at the streetlight the men would have caught up with her.

  If she ran and they chased her, they’d grab her before the corner. Her legs weren’t long enough to make her head start last.

  So that left bolting into the street.

  She—

  Too late. Hands grabbed her upper arms, pinching just the right nerve to send excruciating pain down to her fingers. Jenna ignored the stars dancing across her vision and twisted against their hold.

  No way in hell were they dragging her into that car.

  But her struggles didn’t loosen the men’s hold. They only made the pain worse. She planted her feet on the sidewalk and tried to slow the men down, but they just jerked her forward as if she weighed nothing.

  Up ahead, the door to the black car opened.

  Think, dammit. There has to be—

  A black racing motorcycle jumped the curb and plowed into the closest of Jenna’s abductors, knocking the man over. He didn’t release his grip and dragged Jenna down with him, which caused her second abductor to lose his balance and also fall.

  The driver of the bike skidded it into a one-hundred-eighty degree turn and drove back toward Jenna and her captors. The man on her left wasn’t moving, but the man on the right still had a death grip on her arm.

  Jenna slammed her free hand into his nose. That finally made him let go. She followed up by hits to his ear and his throat, then scrambled to her feet and ran.

  Right toward the open door of the town car.

  Oops.

  She pivoted and headed in the opposite direction.

  The motorcycle cut her off.

  She glanced behind her. The men were climbing unsteadily to their feet. One of them reached inside his jacket where a shoulder holster would sit.

  The driver of the motorcycle, with his sleek black racing helmet, black jacket and black jeans, didn’t look any safer. He revved the engine and she made a dash for the street.

  Chapter 6

  The motorcycle caught up with her easily, blocking her path. The driver raised his visor and held out his hand.

  “Easy, Jenna. It’s just me.” Niko’s deep male voice could barely be heard over the sound of the engine. “I thought you’d recognize the bike.”

  A bullet ricocheted off the pavement inches from her leg.

  Jenna took Niko’s hand and settled onto the back of the motorcycle.

  The bike swerved into traffic and Jenna hugged Niko’s waist as he weaved through the flow of cars like a stunt driver in a James Bond movie. Déjà vu anyone?

  “Here, hide your hair.” Niko passed her a New York Yankees baseball cap. She stuck it on backwards. It was slightly too big and she winced as it slid down onto the cuts on her forehead, but she didn’t want to let go with both hands to tighten the strap.

  Her arms still hurt from the nerve pressure her would-be captors had applied and she was afraid she was going to lose her hold, so she pressed her face against Niko’s back, gripped harder with her thighs, and mentally crossed her fingers for luck.

  As they sped through the night, she tried not to resent the fact that being rescued by Niko was becoming a habit.

  #

  Mark Tonelli gingerly pushed himself into a seated position, then used the wall of the alley to help stabilize him as he stood up. He swiped under his nose and his hand came away covered in blood.

  God damn it.

  He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his nose, grimacing against the pain. It wasn’t broken, but it was going to be sore for a while.

  Blood stains dotted the front of his suit. Another suit ruined, thanks to the Paterson girl.

  She’d surprised him again. He hadn’t thought she’d picked up on the bartender’s body language this afternoon when he’d looked at her brother’s picture. The bartender confirmed seeing Paterson last evening, but hadn’t expected the man to return.

  Somehow the girl managed to get herself back to the bar without speaking Russian.

  He hadn’t recognized the young man sitting a few tables away as Jenna, but instinct had told him to keep an eye on the boy. So when he’d taken too long visiting the men’s room, Mark had gone to investigate. And found a chase in progress.

  The boy’s hat had come off during the fight in the alley, revealing Jenna’s spiky white hair. Which meant the man she’d been chasing had been her brother.

  Dammit, he’d been so close!

  But Paterson had disappeared again and so had the girl, chased by four thugs in suits shouting to each other in Spanish. Alvarez’s men.

  He’d followed, but something had sent the men in suits fleeing back into the alley. One of the men recognized Mark as the man who’d been seen around town with Jenna. They’d grabbed him and even though Mark had fought using every dirty trick he’d learned as a street kid in Moscow, Alvarez’s men had overpowered him. When they realized he had nothing to tell them, they’d slammed his head into the wall and he’d blacked out.

  He tested to see if the blood had stopped yet. It had.

  He’d fully expected to wake up a prisoner of Alvarez’s men. Instead, he was relieved to find himself alone in the alley. The only sounds were muted traffic and conversation from the distant streets, and the occasional skitter of a piece of trash across the pavement. Sounds that were all too familiar, calling forth memories he’d much rather forget.

  At age eight his mother moved them to her hometown of Moscow, unable to bear living in Boston after the mob hit on Mark’s father, a prominent judge. For a couple of months they’d lived in relative comfort, but his mother had always been frail and unable to work. After the money ran out, Mark had worked the streets, willing to do anything to scrounge enough money to pay their meager rent. Once his stepfather had entered the picture and their financial situation improved, Mark immersed himself in the good life and vowed never to be powerless again.

&nbs
p; He refused to take tonight’s defeat as a sign his luck was turning for the worse. No matter what it took, he would find Paterson and retrieve the chip.

  His cell phone vibrated against his thigh. Mark strode away from the back door of the bar before pulling the phone out.

  “I hope you have good news,” CIA Director of In-House Projects Wayne Jamieson barked when Mark answered the call.

  He winced. “No, sir. Paterson got away. Alvarez’s men almost nabbed him.”

  There was a disgusted grunt on the other end of the line. “And the girl?”

  Mark thought about lying, but the man probably had other assets in the city and he couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie. “She ran after her brother.” He froze as the door of the bar opened. But it was just an employee dumping out a trash can. When the door closed, Mark added, “Earlier this evening the girl joined forces with an SSU agent named Niko Andros. No big loss, she was a liability. Too much trouble. I’ll do better on my own.”

  “You want to join Kerberos, yet you can’t handle one inexperienced girl?” Jamieson paused, but Mark knew he didn’t really expect an answer. “If you don’t have any luck finding Paterson on your own, then I expect you to get her away from Andros and use her again as bait. Bring me that chip, or no Kerberos. And no name.”

  Mark clenched his teeth. It had been a mistake to let Jamieson know how desperately he wanted the name of the man who’d ordered the hit on his father. A man so well hidden, so high up in the government that Mark hadn’t even realized the top ranking mobster he’d killed hadn’t been the instigator. After years of peace, believing his father avenged, Mark had been shocked when Jamieson stepped forward with proof that the real mastermind lived on. All Jamieson wanted in return for revealing the name and assisting Mark in bringing the man down was Nevsky’s chip.

  But for all the work he was doing, Mark had made it clear he wanted more than just the name. He expected an invitation into Kerberos, Jamieson’s elite, unfettered black ops group. Mark liked the idea of being untouchable. Of joining a group tasked with defending the country in any way necessary regardless of laws or morals.

  Jamieson had reluctantly agreed that if Mark brought him the chip, he’d be worthy of joining Kerberos.

  Mark would kidnap the girl away from Andros if necessary to reel in Paterson and get the chip. But first he’d try it alone.

  The dull thump of a headache began to pulse behind Mark’s eyes. “I can handle it, sir. I won’t fail.”

  “Be sure of it.”

  #

  Kai Paterson let himself into his cramped, one-room apartment in a worn down, working class Moscow neighborhood. No matter the time of day, the place always smelled of cabbage soup and garlic from his neighbors’ kitchens. Still, he preferred that to the cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes he’d endured waiting hours in bars for his quarry to show up.

  He lifted his keys to the hook by the door, dismayed to find his hand trembling with earthquake ferocity. Damn. Between the shakes and this bone-deep cold, he couldn’t deny it any longer.

  The malaria was back.

  Although the shaking wasn’t one-hundred percent due to illness, was it? Tonight he’d come too damn close to being picked up in that alley. And it hadn’t been just Alvarez’s men. There had been at least two Russian agents and one American.

  He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. After two years, it seemed his luck was finally running out. The run of bad fortune had started last month, when he’d tracked one of his parents’ killers into the jungles of Indonesia. He’d been captured by a local warlord and spent ten days of hell in the man’s prison before being freed by a government raid.

  He’d been out-of-his head with malaria and so weak from daily beatings he couldn’t even sit up. The following three days in the hospital were a blur of foreign voices and feverish dreams. When his head had finally cleared, he’d known that as an American, he was no more than a pawn in the regional political games, his life in danger no matter who had possession of him.

  The minute he could walk without dizziness sending him to his knees, he’d matched the Indonesian names on his medical chart to medication labels, taken as many bottles as he could carry, and fled.

  Now he pulled out two different packets of pills, grabbed one of each and chased them down with some water. He had no idea if the dosage or timing was correct. His Indonesian wasn’t fluent enough to understand the complicated medical language. But the pills seemed to help, and he was desperate not to be bedridden.

  Not yet. He hadn’t completed his mission.

  Kai gulped the rest of his water and kicked off his shoes. The floor was cold, but he didn’t bother turning on the ancient heating system. He rubbed his eyes, wishing he was on a beach in the Caribbean with nothing more pressing on his mind than the decision to swim or nap.

  The return of the malaria was just the latest in his string of bad luck. Last week he’d ripped the last pair of colored contacts he used to hide his damnably distinctive amber eyes. When he’d finally located a shop that could order him a new set, they’d told him the lenses would take at least seven days to arrive.

  He should have given up and left Moscow then. But the few times he’d worked here in the past he’d been in disguise, and the manhunt that had been so fierce right after the attack on his family had died down, so he’d taken a chance that no one would recognize him.

  But somehow, someone had recognized him. The men in the alley were proof of that.

  Which meant he was running out of time.

  Kai toyed with the idea of making some tea in his tiny kitchen, but even the thought exhausted him. Instead, he lay down on the thin mattress on the floor. He wrapped a blanket around his body and prayed for his teeth to stop chattering.

  A door slammed downstairs, accompanied by an angry bellow. He tensed, then slowly relaxed when there was no creak of footsteps on the rickety stairs. No one had followed him home tonight, he was sure of it. He’d taken twice as many precautions as usual.

  He pulled the blanket closer against a new wave of chills. Staying here was a risk he’d have to take. If he went looking for other shelter tonight and collapsed, he’d be in even more danger.

  As the chills subsided, Kai sighed and tried to get comfortable on the thin mattress. He was afraid to go to sleep. The last couple of nights, his dreams had been fevered and nightmarish.

  He was even starting to hallucinate during his waking hours.

  Because no way had that really been Jenna back in the bar. Despite the rumors going around that a woman dressed as a whore and claiming to be his sister had been asking about him. A woman accompanied by a man whose description matched Mark Tonelli, of all people.

  It was no surprise that the CIA was also after the chip, but passing a woman off as Jenna was a low blow.

  Even if, for a moment, the golden brown eyes of the boy in the corridor had seemed so familiar he’d been convinced it was his sister underneath the disguise.

  Yet Jenna had been incapable of the intense hatred the boy directed at him.

  So yeah, he’d been imagining things. Jen-shine was dead. Killed along with the rest of his family.

  And it was his fault.

  Chapter 7

  Niko pulled the bike into its parking spot and killed the engine. He sat in silence for a long moment, trying to rein in his temper. Then Jenna scrambled off the seat and he almost sighed in relief. Having her pressed against him felt too good. And totally wrong.

  She’d nearly been raped this afternoon. Had come within a hairsbreadth of being kidnapped back in that alley. Yet his damn dick didn’t care. Too much adrenaline was flooding his system and sex was a mighty fine outlet.

  “Rape victim, asshole,” he muttered.

  Disgusted with himself, and still blindingly furious that Jenna had put her life in danger, he dismounted and yanked off his helmet.

  Jenna’s mouth formed an O of recognition at his blond wig. “Yeah, sweetheart, that was me in the alley
saving your butt from Alvarez’s men,” he growled. And it had been close. Too damn close.

  “Don’t say a word,” he warned. “You’re only going to piss me off and this is no place for a fight.”

  Hurt flashed in her eyes at the harshness of his tone. Tough. “Come on.” He strode into the hotel, aware of Jenna struggling to keep pace behind him.

  Once inside their suite, Niko turned on her.

  “What the fuck did you think you were doing, heading back to that bar by yourself?”

  Jenna notched up her chin. “It was something I had to do,” she snapped. “Alone.”

  “Fuck alone. Didn’t Tonelli tell you who’s out there looking for you? Hoping to use you as bait?” He took a step toward her.

  She glared back at him.

  “It needed to be done,” she replied. Her eyes narrowed. “Unless, of course, you think I can’t handle myself because I’m a woman?”

  “Yeah, right. Play the friggin’ gender card.” Niko shook his head. “You handled yourself tonight, okay? You can be proud. That’s not my point.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and pursed her lips.

  “My point,” Niko continued, “is that an operator who wants to stay alive doesn’t go into a danger zone without backup and an exit strategy.” He stepped into her personal space. “And under no circumstances do you walk alone into a situation where you don’t understand the native language and have no way to call for help!”

  Jenna flinched.

  And Niko’s cell phone rang.

  With a snarl, he pivoted and yanked the phone from his pocket. “Andros.”

  “What’s this about you taking Jenna away from Tonelli?” Ryker demanded.

  Niko rolled his eyes and put the phone on speaker. In a few short sentences, he explained what happened.

  Ryker let loose with a long string of inventive curses, and Jenna raised her eyebrow.

  “Uh…you’re on speakerphone, boss. Jenna’s with me.”

  Silence. Then, “Sorry about that, Jenna. Are you okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank God. I don’t care how you got separated from Tonelli, but stay with Niko.”