Bulletproof (Unknown Identities #1) (8 page)

She stopped struggling immediately, but leaned closer to him. Smart girl. The thug opened the door and the three of them slid into the sedan. The driver pulled away from the curb as John closed the door.

“Who the fuck are you?” Red Beard asked.

John caught the look passing between the other two men. “I’m the guy who’s in charge.”

“Bullshit,” said the driver, surging through a traffic light as it turned from yellow to red. “We’ve got the lead on this one.”

“I’m sure you think so.” Since Gabriel had given him Amelia’s name, he’d been looking for a clue as to who might want her dead. This pair was merely the hired help and John wanted to know who was paying them.

“You can’t just put down an innocent civilian and –”

“That wasn’t us.”

“Just the kind of diversion that gets you caught,” John said with a pitying shake of his head. “If your information and tactics were sound I wouldn’t be here.”

The driver swore again. “Call,” he barked the bearded man on Amelia’s other side. The sedan merged with the heavier traffic heading east toward the city.

Red Beard reached into a pocket and John caught a glimpse of the shiny gun in a shoulder holster. Talk about screw-ups. It had been a long time since he’d encountered amateurs like these two.

Why? More importantly, where did they plan on taking Amelia?

The car’s navigation spit out a course correction and the driver changed lanes accordingly. Not local talent. John couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.

He made a show of peering through the window to check signs. When Red Beard followed suit, he tapped Amelia’s leg and pointed to the floorboard. Her nod was small and quick.

“Are you sure you put in the right address?” John asked, reaching for the revolver at his ankle.

“That’s it.” The driver pulled to the shoulder amid a chorus of honking horns. “Get out.” The locks snapped open.

“Come on, Amelia.”

“Oh, no. Just you. She stays.”

John helped Amelia to the relative safety of the floorboards while he aimed his gun at Red Beard. “Correction. You’re leaving. Out.”

The driver swore violently and jerked back into traffic, but John anticipated the move. He flipped the pistol in his hand and, gripping the barrel, he slammed the handle first into Red Beard’s ear and then his temple. John ducked under the wide-flying fist and launched himself across the back seat, driving his shoulder into Red Beard’s side. He scrambled for the door handle as the car lurched from side to side, tossing them around.

Finding the release, he shoved the bigger man through the open door.

Red Beard grasped and fought to hang on, twisting to bring a knee up between them. John shifted with the next swerve of the car and Red Beard’s effort was wasted. John planted an elbow in Red Beard’s gut and as the man gasped for air he flipped him easily out of the car.

Tires squealed in their wake, but John didn’t have time to check the guy’s fate. Didn’t care. This was survival.

The driver pulled hard around a slower moving van and the force nearly carried John out the open door after Red Beard.

Behind him, Amelia screamed and he felt her hands gripping his legs. Her weight was enough of a balance and he used that along with the momentum of the car to recover and get the door closed.

He retrieved his revolver from the floor and held it to the driver’s temple. “Pick a lane and hold steady,” he ordered when the man stomped on the accelerator and aimed for the next off-ramp. The car slowed, falling in with traffic in the right lane instead of wreaking more havoc on the roadway.

John nudged the barrel of his gun into the driver’s skin, noting the sweat beading on his forehead. “Who hired you to pick her up?”

“Go ahead and shoot. Good luck living through it.”

“Who?” He cocked the hammer.

“It was a blind bounty.”

Amelia gasped, apparently all-too-aware that meant the price on her head had drawn out the hungriest and nastiest creatures humanity had to offer. Whoever posted the bounty wanted Amelia dead sooner rather than later. Skill hadn’t been a requirement. Only ruthless determination.

Unfortunately for that someone, John had been called to stand in the breach.

“You’re less than useless to me,” John muttered. The information about how the bounty had been listed was what he needed. He had contacts who would know and he had contacts who would just as likely strike next.

The needle on the speedometer crept up again while the John weighed both sides of the issue. “None of that,” he said, tapping the gun barrel against the driver’s temple again.

“Buckle up,” he said to Amelia.

Eyes wide, she slid back and obeyed. As soon as he heard the click, John judged the traffic and distance. “Take the next exit.”

The driver bitched about it, but he safely changed lanes. When they were in position, John pinched a nerve in the man’s neck and knocked him out.

John rolled into the front seat and guided the car safely to the shoulder. Wrestling with the driver’s dead weight, he eventually managed to get the car into park.

Amelia was out of the back seat and had the front passenger door open. “We’re dumping him I assume?”

“Unless you want to try your hand at interrogation.”

“No, thanks.” She reached in and tugged the man by the wrists while John pushed at his legs. When he was on the ground, she knelt at the man’s side.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for ID.”

“Hurry. I can’t believe we don’t have cops on our tail already.”

“Interesting isn’t it,” she said as she pocketed the man’s wallet. “Let’s go.”

John rolled the driver closer to the shallow ditch and slid through to take the wheel. When Amelia was beside him, he pulled back into traffic.

“What’s next?”

He spared her a glance after checking the mirrors. “Check the navigation. Let’s see where they planned to take you.”

“My apartment.”

“What?” It made no sense to him.

“That’s the address listed here.”

“The starting address?”

“No,” she insisted. “The final address. The destination.”

There was a symmetry to it he supposed, but he didn’t like it. “We’re not going back there.” Her neighborhood offered too many places for attackers to hide. It wasn’t worth speculating why this pair planned to end her there. “Check where else –”

“Already on it.”

He waited as patiently as possible under the circumstances while she reviewed how the pair of assassins had spent their time before they grabbed her.

“They certainly had a bit of a tour. They started at the airport, drove through Back Bay near my apartment and all around my neighborhood. They went over to Chinatown. Huh. No surprise, they cruised by
The Torch
offices.”

“No coincidence there.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

He slid her a glance, recognized the meaning of her puckered brow and pursed lips. “What are you thinking?”

“Boston is a busy town and those are some of the more common hot spots.”

“You’re defending them?” He checked the mirrors, wondering what would come at them next. “That was a classic grab and they would have gotten away if I hadn’t been there.”

“Yeah. I should say thank you.”

His jaw clenched, molars grinding. “I wasn’t fishing for gratitude.”

“I think they killed my contact.”

John didn’t remember seeing any dead bodies aside from the cyclist. “Your contact was the person you spoke with?”

“Who else?”

He admired her tenacity despite the natural and man-made obstacles in her path. He took the time to inhale. Her vanilla-scented skin filled the car and assaulted his senses, but kept him from raising his voice and scaring her. “I’d assumed the dead man in the street was your contact.”

“No.” Her voice lost the bravado. “My contact delivered. I think.”

“Interesting.” Though he tried, he couldn’t put the big picture together without all the pieces.

“Which part?”

He felt her assessing stare. She might as well have touched him the way his face warmed under her gaze. Her curiosity was clearly in fine form. “If your contact delivered, that means either your contact or the pair of idiots who tried to nab you killed the guy on the bike.”

“Why do that? He wasn’t connected to me at all.”

“Classic diversion technique. A bit like divide and conquer. Wasn’t that how you identified your source?”

“It was.” She made a thoughtful, humming sound. “I looked for the person acting differently than the other onlookers at the accident scene.”

“Smart.”

“Didn’t you hear what my source told me before he – or she – died?”

“No.” He checked his mirrors. He hadn’t heard any of her conversation with the person near the church. He’d been busy failing in his assessment of the threat he couldn’t pin down until it bashed him on the head. “But I don’t think your source is dead. I was alone when I came around.”

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s the truth,” he muttered. He had the blazing headache to prove it. The hit would likely have been fatal for a normal man. John decided from now on he would follow his instincts with this woman no matter how much she protested. Even if it meant suffering the pain of skin to skin contact, they would stay together and move as a team. No more giving her enough room to go haring off on a whim. Her life and his future depended on it.

At the moment, his instincts were sure it was too dangerous to stay in this car much longer and far too perilous to continue without solid information about the story she was chasing.

He didn’t consider her silence any kind of agreement.

“My contact wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “Scared or not, he or she wouldn’t kill someone as a distraction.”

Her words certainly weren’t.

“How can you be so sure? You don’t even know if your contact is a man or woman.”

“I stand by the assessment. I understand people.” She shifted in the seat. “Most of the time I’m right. In fact my contact mentioned
you
.”

“Now
that’s
impossible. I didn’t kill the poor bastard on the bike.” Irritation and frustration twisted inside him... but it was the fear slithering across his skin that had him second guessing himself and the situation. “I was with you.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

He glared at her, wondering how she did it. For years he’d felt nothing, been numb to anything resembling humanity or the emotional investment that came along with it. How did he manage to cross paths with the one person capable of tearing down his carefully constructed walls?

But he hadn’t just crossed her path. This situation wasn’t that clean. He’d been planted in the middle of her path by a man he wouldn’t trust to give him correct change for a dollar.

He cleared his throat. Any and all information mattered at this point. “Your contact mentioned me?”

She nodded. “I was promised a name, but got a locker number. The contact said ‘John will know the rest’.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Filtering out crazy is part of the job. My contact sort of died – or according to you didn’t die – before anything else could be said.”

“Sounds to me like your contact is sending you on a wild goose chase. John is a common enough name. Are you sure nothing else was said?” That grab had been so well staged, maybe she’d forgotten something in the adrenaline rush.

“I’m sure,” she said, pulling out her phone.

“Put that away,” he ordered. “In fact, take out the battery.”

“I need my phone.”

“You can get a new one. They could be tailing you with the GPS.”

“My sources know this number.”

He struggled for patience. “Are you expecting another story to break in the next hour?”

“No, but –”

The woman was too stubborn. “Take out the battery. For now. You can check with your sources when we reach a safe location.”

“Fine.” She popped off the protective case and slid the battery from the back of the cell phone. Dropping the separate pieces into her bag, she said, “There must be something on the news already. Am I allowed to turn on the radio?”

“Yes.” The woman was a trial. “For all the good it will do.”

“People wouldn’t ignore two dead bodies on the same block in a town like Sudbury.”

“One body. I told you your contact is not a victim.” He waited while she skipped through a few stations without catching any breaking news. “You’re an optimist.”

“Not even close,” she said, dismissing the theory with a wave and a glimmer of a smile. “I’m a reporter.”

“One who’s managed to piss off someone important.”

The smile that had so quickly brightened her face disappeared in a blink. “It goes with the job.”

“Tell me what you’re working on.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he corrected, holding up a hand when she tried to argue. “This is not negotiable. My job is to keep you safe. Knowing the potential enemies increases your life expectancy.”

“My stories usually piss off people. I tell the truth. You’d be surprised how many people don’t like that.”

“I imagine the people who get exposed unwillingly,” he suggested.

“Make me the bad guy if it helps you sleep better. I’d be out of a job if people would treat each other with respect and dignity, but they don’t and the public deserves to know who they’re doing business with.”

“And since you were doing business with someone you claim mentioned me, I deserve to know the truth about this damned story of yours.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“That puts us on even ground, Ms. Bennett, but it’s clear you need me.”

“Look, the trust thing isn’t personal,” she said gently. I don’t trust anyone.”

“Color me relieved,” he mocked gently, echoing her earlier words.

“Still, you could have staged everything that just happened in Sudbury to scare me.”

“Believe me, if I wanted to scare you, there are easier methods. All of them far more direct.” He checked the mirrors before aiming a hard look at her. “None of them require playing outside during monsoon season or taking a knock to the head.”

* * *

Amelia suppressed the automatic shudder. This guy had a knack for throwing her off balance. A technique she was sure he’d nurtured during his professional career. Whatever else he wanted from her, her trust was something she couldn’t give. Not fully anyway. She wasn’t even going to try and analyze what he’d just said. Somehow she had to regain control.