Dark And Dangerous (24 page)

 
"What do you want to do?" Damian
asked.

Before they had time to
react the shadows erupted with movement.

 
"Don't move."

They felt the cold steel
of a gun press into their backs.

Chapter 26

 
Kayley
barely had time to react as men from all directions rushed towards them.

 
"Damn it." Joe shoved her away from
him and managed two running steps before he was caught and thrown to the
ground.

 
Kayley stumbled at his shove, and righted
herself just in time to see her brother hit the dirt, as men threw themselves
at him.

 
She screamed with fear and ran to help Joe.
She had barely taken a step, before she was caught in a hard grip and shoved
front first against the side of the cottage. Kayley struggled, trying to break
free, and was immobilized with frustrating ease. Her arms were yanked behind
her and handcuffs slapped on. Turning her head she saw Joe lying on the ground
with men holding him.

 
A gun glinted in the moonlight.

Everything inside her
froze .
She had just found her brother and now she was going
to lose him all over again.

 
She went wild, throwing herself back against
the man that had caught her and nearly knocked the breath out of herself in the
process. She stumbled and was caught solidly, and put back on her feet in an
easy move.

 
"Relax, Kayley."

Surprised, she looked up
to find Brown looking back. Her mouth fell open in shock.

 
"What
…
" She simply stared at him confused.

 
"You betrayed me."

Still in shock, she looked
towards the voice and saw Joe staring accusingly at her. He was held by two men
dressed in black, his hands cuffed behind his back.

 
"No, I
—
"

 
"You promised me you wouldn't tell
anyone," Joe accused while they led him away from her, towards the cars
that pulled up in front of her cottage.

 
"Why the hell are we in cuffs?"

She glanced up at the
sound of the angry voice and saw Nathan and Damian being led towards her.

 
"Unlock them," Klein commanded,
walking towards them from the cars, and gestured to the agents. "You have
some explaining to do."

Relieved when Brown
unlocked her cuffs, Kayley rubbed her wrists to get the blood flowing again.

 
"What are you doing here?" she
asked.

 
"I could ask you the same question. But
we'll talk about that back at our headquarters." He gestured to his men.
"Drive them back."

 
"Wait." Nathan stepped over beside
Kayley in a protective move. "As far as I know you can't take us into
custody, unless you charge us with something."

 
"I'm not charging you. We're just going
to have a friendly chat at our headquarters." Klein smiled, a hard row of
teeth. "Unless of course you object. In that case I'm charging you with
obstruction of a federal investigation and withholding information that you had
already agreed to give us. And that's just to name a few."

 
"Yeah,
yeah." Nathan waved him off. "We'll go freely."

 
"That's what I thought." He nodded
at the agents. "Take them back."

 
"But wait." Kayley shook off the
agent that took her arm. "What about my brother?"

 
"He will be taken to our headquarters
shortly," Brown informed her.

Only half satisfied with
that answer, she let the agent lead her along with Nathan and Damian to the
cars. She got a short glimpse of Joe sitting in the back of one of the cars, as
they were led past him and into a van. The door shut behind them and a second
later the engine started.

 
Kayley sat in the middle of the seat,
squeezed in between Nathan and Damian.

Now both of the people
that mattered most to her, hated her, she thought. She had seen it in Joe's
eyes when she had walked past him. Seen the hurt, the anger
and the
disappointment. And had felt his rejection sting her when he simply turned
away.

She looked down at her
hands and concentrated fully on her fingers, instead of the mess she had
somehow landed in.

 
The van drove them through the night, and
finally turned down a small dirt road. It bumped along the narrow lane and
pulled up in front of a small old house. The engine turned off and a few
seconds later one of the agents opened the door.

 
"Follow me," he ordered and walked
to the front door, without so much as a glance back to see if they were with
him.

 
They followed in silence through the house,
down a small hallway and into a makeshift interrogation
room,
that
was actually a living room.

 
"Take a seat." The agent pointed to
a ratty old sofa that had been pushed up against one wall, and left the room
again without another word.

 
But then Kayley supposed he really didn't
need to keep an eye on them, as another agent sat behind a dining table,
reading a newspaper with a bored expression on his face, in the other end of
the room.

 
They crowded together on the small leather
couch. This time at least she didn't have to sit in the middle, she thought.
Although the alternative wasn't much better, because she still felt squeezed by
Nathan.

 
She tried to make herself as small as
possible, nearly crawling into the arm of the couch, but no matter what she
did, he was still pressed against the entire length of her side.

 
Nathan noticed. It was hard not to when she
nearly cringed away trying to avoid touching him. And it stung as much as it
angered him.

 
"Stop fidgeting. We're stuck here, and
until this is over you're not getting away." He gave her a hot look that
made her stiffen.

 
Red stained her cheeks, but she didn't say
anything. Didn't even look at him as his words hit home.

 
So it was over for him, she thought. The only
reason he hadn't left her yet was because he would never turn his back on anyone
in need. But he had just made it perfectly clear that the moment it was over,
he was gone.

 
Her heart stabbed with pain for a throbbing
second, before she shoved it ruthlessly aside. Footsteps stomped down the
hallway, and moments later the door was opened. Klein and Brown appeared in the
doorway along with a very reluctant Joe.

 
"Since you're all in this, we might as
well have this talk together," Klein said, leading Joe to a chair.

 
"Who wants to go first?" Klein
asked, remaining standing. He glanced at each of them in turn until his eyes
stopped at Damian "And who are you?"

 
"Damian Sanders," he answered
simply.

 
"Brother?" Klein could easily see
the family resemblance.

 
"Yeah. I just got all of the good
looking." Damian grinned and Nathan snickered.

 
"He likes to tell himself that,"
Nathan retorted unaffected.

Kayley glanced up at Joe,
and saw his face as hard as if it was cut out in stone.

 
"Joe. I didn't call them on you,"
she said hoping he would believe her.

 
"Then how did they know? Amazing psychic
abilities?" Joe asked sarcastically.

 
"She's telling the truth," Klein
cut in. "We were tapping her phone. A good thing too, or we might not have
found you in time before you got yourself killed."

 
"That's crap. The more people that know
I'm alive, the less safe I am. As long as they thought I was dead they weren't
looking for me."

 
"There's no snitches on my team. And
you're safer here where we can protect you, than you were hiding
underground." Klein frowned. "How did you fake your own death?"

 
"I didn't intend to fake my own death.
But I had a feeling someone was going to come looking for me. So I hid in one
of the other boats, just to be on the safe side," Joe explained.

 
"Yeah, it helps to be paranoid,"
Brown commented dryly.

 
"It wasn't difficult to stay undetected.
Most people just leave their boats at the dock for weeks at a time. After a few
days I discovered it was a good decision. I watched a man come down the docks
after dark and walk around my boat. I could see he was setting something out,
and I suspected it might be a bomb."

 
"Was he the one who died?" Klein
asked.

 
"No. I stayed hidden until he left
again. A couple of hours later another man appeared. I had been expecting it.
Schnyder
likes to use the same MO every time. Have a bomb
rigged and then send in an assassin to wait for the kill, and then get rid of
all the evidence in the explosion." Joe smiled humorlessly. "Too bad
for him that I knew about his predictability. So I waited for the assassin
before I made my move, and caught him off guard. I knocked him unconscious and
left him on the boat. I don't know if it was him or me that set off the
trigger, but a couple of minutes later it exploded."

 
"We believe it was 'the fox' that
died," Klein commented.

 
"I don't know who he was, but I do know
he was there to kill me. I threw his gun into the water and left him."

 
"So you can't charge Joe with murder.
Technically
Schnyder
killed his own man," Kayley
said coming to her
brothers
defense.

 
"We're not charging him with the murder
of one of the most elusive assassins we've been trying to nail for years. If
anything we might give him a medal," Klein said and rubbed his chin.
"I just don't understand why you didn't come to us."

 
 
"I
wasn't going to risk being put into witness protection. You would have locked
me up somewhere like a sitting duck. Believe me, I know how easy it is to get
to a witness in protection. I've watched
Schnyder
silence several witnesses before. But finding someone who's gone underground
isn't. If no one knows where you are, then no one can lead them to you. And
when the opportunity arose to fake my own death, I didn't hesitate to take it.
Make them think they had silenced another witness." Joe smiled coldly.

 
"So you didn't care that you got your
sister into trouble? Didn't care that they came after her," Nathan cut in,
his voice deep with restrained anger. "What do you think would have
happened to her if they caught her? If I hadn't been there."

 
"I
—
" Joe began and was cut off.

 
"No, you were too busy thinking about
yourself to consider the ramifications to anyone else. Your sister could have
been killed. Would have been if they had caught her. And Miss
Kans
nearly was," Nathan said coldly and watched his
comment hit home.

 
"Miss
Kans
?
She's hurt?" Joe looked at Kayley, hoping he heard wrong.

 
"Yes," Nathan said before Kayley
could. "She was lucky she didn't die."

 
"What happened?" Joe swallowed
hard.

 
"Two men came to her apartment claiming
to be your friends," Klein said. "When she couldn't tell them where
you were, they knocked her unconscious
But
not before
she had mentioned your boat to them."

 
"How bad is it?"

 
"She'll live." Nathan gave Joe a
hard look. "With no thanks to you."

 
"What were your plans? To stay
underground the rest of your life?" Brown asked coolly.

 
"No." Joe gave Brown a narrowed
look. "I was going to wait until tomorrow before I gave you the
information I had found."

 
"What information?" Klein's eyes
sharpened.
 

 
"I discovered a map marked with the
details of their drop-off locations. As far as I know
Schnyder
doesn't suspect that I saw it, but if he thinks I'm dead then it doesn't matter
either way."

 
"There wasn't any pictures of it on the
memory stick," Klein commented.

 
"I hadn't found it at the time. But I
knew I had to get more evidence if you were going to catch him in the act. And
he never tells anyone about the drop-off spot until about an hour before, when
they drive to it." Joe smiled a bit triumphantly. "But I knew he had
to have the information somewhere, and I knew it couldn't be at his house or
office where you had already searched."