Hard Target (29 page)

“What?” Still trying to play oblivious, Alex croaked the question, surprised her voice still worked after all the screaming.

“Yes. What are you talking about, Max?” Downing asked, sounding bored.

Gibbons released her with a sound of disgust and the chair legs thudded onto the tub floor with force. Facing Downing, the man jerked a thumb in Alex’s direction.

“She’s Jakes’ piece of ass. The FBI cunt. He must still be around here somewhere.”

Downing harrumphed and moved toward her, a brittle smile overtaking his face.

“I thought I recognized you from somewhere.” He leaned in low and close before focusing his attention on Alex’s crotch. “I’m curious. Does the carpet match the drapes? Or do you wax?”

Alex stared at him, unspeaking, and Downing straightened to address Gibbons once more. “The safe was blown open. Which documents did he get away with?”

Gibbons swallowed hard. “All of them. Including the ones for the Liberian job.”

Metal rang against marble as Downing placed his knife on the side of the tub and his hands on Alex’s forearms. Leaning in close, he growled low, “I own you now, smart girl. I own you both. He wants you returned to him? He’ll have to make a trade before he gets you back. In pieces.”

Alex faded in and out of awareness to the rhythmic beep of a phone being dialed. Head hanging, barely able to focus past the lank curtain of her hair, she looked up at the now shirtless Downing, his wiry muscles smeared in streaks of red. Sweat dripped from his brow, diluting the flecks on his face and turning them pink as they ran down his cheek.

“Jakes?” Downing’s voice cut into the air, making Alex’s heart bleed. She bit into her lip, refusing to say anything when the man tugged her hair so hard she heard a ripping sound. “I bet you never made her scream like this.”

“Simon! Stop!”

The thunder of footfalls behind Simon barely registered as he ran blindly across Central Park West. At four thirty a.m. traffic still trickled slowly enough that only one cabbie had to swerve to avoid committing urban road kill.

“Jakes!” A different voice this time. Closer.

With Alex’s pleas for him not to come for her still searing his brain, Simon ran as fast as he could with the pack full of documents strapped to his back, leaping over rock outcroppings and park benches as they sprung up in his way. Harsh breathing, not his own, sounded in his ear. He increased his speed, his arms pumping almost as hard as his heart in an effort to outrun anyone who might try to stop him.

“Oof!” The impact of hard-packed dirt covered with the barest stubble of grass knocked the air from his lungs in one burning rush.

Despite the lack of oxygen he rolled over and over until he smashed into something harder than the dirt.

A rock. The man let out a grunt, but held on. “Listen to me! She wouldn’t want this.”

Simon rolled again, smashing Ryan against the rock. Harder this time.

“So close! Her dream!” Ryan said.

Another smashing blow and the man’s arms loosened. Just enough. Fingers clawing the dirt, feet sliding, Simon scrabbled upright and began running again. A shadow moved across his path. He ran into a very corporeal fist and everything went dark.

When he awoke, Jenny pressed an ice pack to his right cheek and Gun stood over him, arms folded, a look of deathly calm on his face. Simon attempted to sit, but the jerk of his hands above his head brought him tumbling backward again.

“Son of a…” He looked over his head. Günter or Ryan had cuffed him to the bed in the security flat.

Testing the cuffs and the strength of the headboard with a hard tug, he thought he might be able to break the metal links if he twisted and applied force to just the right place.

“Do it and I’ll double cuff you next time.”

Simon paused long enough to glare at Ryan. “Fuck. You.”

Then he broke the cuffs. And very possibly a bone in his right wrist.

“Ow fucking Goddamit!” He rolled back and forth on the bed while he gripped the wrist.

Someone touched his shoulder and he lashed out blindly, his fist meeting bone. A feminine gasp froze him mid-twist. In the fraction of a second it took him to look over his shoulder, Günter was on him. Face first in the mattress, both arms pinned high and tight behind, Simon didn’t bother to struggle. He’d hit Jenny. An all-time low. Even for him. Still panting, he waited for Günter to rip his arms from their sockets. The Englishman bent, his breath hot, and growled so low it made the hairs on Simon’s arms stand on end.

“If you were anyone else, at any other time, I’d kill you.”

“Wouldn’t blame you.” Simon gasped when Günter applied a tad more pressure to his arms.

“Never. Again.”

Simon managed to shake his head. “No. Never again.”

“And you’ll listen to reason?” Günter voiced the question in the same feral tone.

Simon nodded this time.

The searing pain in Simon’s shoulders evaporated as Günter pushed himself up and away. Simon rolled and took in Jenny’s bruised face.

“Jesus, Jenny, I’m sorry.” He reached for her and she waved him off.

“I’m going to put some ice on this.” She left, closing the door with a soft click behind her.

He didn’t think he could hate himself more than he already did. First Lily, then Alex, now Jenny…

“Lily?” he asked.

When he’d left the flat, the doctor Tallis had brought in was looking her over in a guest room in the musician’s penthouse.

“She’s fine. Still sleeping,” Gun said.

Which meant he could focus on Alex. “Do we even have a plan?”

“Ryan does,” Günter answered.

Dried blood traced the agent’s temple and cheek in red-black rivulets. His chestnut curls still sported leaves, and his suit jacket looked like formalwear for the walking dead.

Ryan pushed away from the wall and said, “That’s always been your problem, Jakes, playing cowboy.”

“I never—”

“London?” Günter cut in. “Not calling in five?”

“As if you even know how to call in help. I saved your ass, you ungrateful Viking castoff,” Simon shot back.

“And I just saved your scrawny arse in return. So now we’re even.” Günter folded his arms over his chest and appeared to grind glass between his teeth.

Simon stood. The room wobbled but he managed not to sway. Too much.

“Why can’t we just give Downing what he wants and keep us all alive to fight another day?” he asked.

“We can’t return the papers to Downing,” Ryan answered. “He’ll assume we have copies and find a way to eliminate Alex anyway.”

Now that Ryan pointed out the flaw in his plan, Simon cringed at his stupidity. In his anger and desperation he hadn’t thought his strategy through. That’s what he got for letting his emotions rule him. It’d been difficult enough leaving her in Downing’s building with that monster, but he’d had Lily to think of…

He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed once more, staring at his feet. Separated cuffs still biting into his wrists, he gripped the edge of the mattress and tried to focus. An expert strategist, he could think any problem through. Find a solution. Except, it seemed, when it mattered most.

“We can’t infiltrate Downing’s penthouse again. He’ll have figured out how we got in the first time.” Günter paced as he spoke, his feet wandering in and out of Simon’s view several times.

“What if…” Simon shook his head. No, that wouldn’t work.

“What if what?” Gun’s giant loafers reentered Simon’s view.

Simon stared into his future and saw torturous days and nights without the woman he loved at his side. He lifted his head. “What if I agreed to trade myself for her? Along with the documents?”

Sympathy, stark and raw, deepened the lines around Günter’s eyes and thinned his lips.

“If that’s what you need to do,” he said after a pause.

Simon nodded. “It’s what I need to do.”

“There may be another way…” The thoughtful quiet with which Ryan spoke drew Simon’s attention.

Pulling the slender handcuff key from his pocket the agent approached Simon, who held up his still-throbbing wrists. The metal fell away, landing on the carpet with successive quiet thumps as Ryan ran through the fundamentals of his plan.

“You really think it could work?” Simon rubbed his wrists and experienced the first surge of hope he’d had since finding Lily drugged but otherwise unharmed in Downing’s bedroom.

“It’s got to, doesn’t it?” Günter asked, the rhetorical question one of the English traits Simon found simultaneously infuriating and amusing.

“Yeah.” Simon nodded, needing to hear the answer from his own lips. “It does.”

* * * * *

Human voices rose and fell in a buzzing hum as Simon waited in shadows in the basement beneath the stage at Carnegie Hall. The president’s arrival imminent, he had only minutes before Ryan’s cue. If the Secret Service caught him it was all over. For both him and Alex, not to mention Ryan’s career.

They’d let Downing choose the place for the exchange and agreed to his terms—only Simon and Simon alone was to enter the little subterranean room beneath the main portion of the hall. At one time used for dramatic mid-crowd entrances, the trap door connecting the room with the hall above had long since been sealed off as part of a renovation and remodel. Only a little door off a twisty passage led in and out of the tiny room where Alex supposedly awaited him. Simon was to leave the documents in the room and take her with him. Any failure to follow precise instructions would result in—as Downing had put it—his very messy and untimely death.

They had one advantage—a thorough knowledge of the Secret Service’s routes, station points and schedule, in addition to correct blueprints of the building. They all knew Downing planned to kill him and Alex, they just didn’t know how, where, or when. Here was hoping he, Günter and Ryan had managed to plan one step ahead.

A sloping hallway led from Simon’s present position to the little room where, if Downing told the truth, Alex waited for him at this very moment. Once he found her they’d have to wait several hours until the banquet ended to make their escape. Several long hours during which anything might happen.

Simon adjusted the pack on his shoulders and felt the pile of documents shift along with his tools and the first-aid kit he’d thrown inside. He still hadn’t emptied the thing since Lily’s rescue and it weighed heavy, cutting into his shoulders despite the padded straps.

“I didn’t think you could get me in here,” Simon whispered into his mic.

Ryan snorted. “You’re not the only genius in a five-hundred-mile radius, you know.”

Applause thundered overhead. Simon’s cue that the introductions and speeches had begun. Now there would be enough noise to cover any ruckus he made if he needed to use tools to open the chamber door.

“Wish me luck,” he said.

Jogging along the short passage, Simon noted no disturbance in the dust on the floor. Shining his flashlight behind him he saw only the tracks he’d made. What if she wasn’t here? What if Downing hadn’t held up his end? No. Downing was smart. He’d obviously brought in manufactured dust to cover his tracks so the Secret Service wouldn’t become suspicious.

“Ryan?” Simon pressed his fingers to his earpiece in an attempt to contact the agent above the thunderous clapping.

No use. He shook his head, knowing he wasted precious time, and continued down the incline. A tiny door, almost two thirds of his height and made of gaping boards, came into view on his left. Simon stopped, shone the light around every crack, examining for booby traps. Wires, grease, anything that might give away an explosives device. Nothing.

Shining the light through a wide gap between the boards, he glimpsed a figure slumped in a chair, something square and large just behind. When the light passed over the form again, she moved, her head lifting to stare at the beam. Hair, matted and stringy, flopped in front of a pale face. From behind the bedraggled curtain, dark eyes shone with a heartrending mixture of terror and hope.

Alex…

Simon reached for the doorknob without thinking. It twisted with the motion of his wrist, admitting him easily. Too easily. He cringed, reflexively turning his head away against an explosion that never came. Gun withdrawn, he executed an otherwise perfect entry into the small space, sweeping the weapon and flashlight in precise movements designed to illuminate any other occupants. Finding none, he said a second prayer of thanks.

The door swung shut behind him automatically, as if on springs. A red light flared to life, illuminating Alex’s face with a bloody glow. Simon halted and, as if in slow motion, looked over his shoulder. What he saw perched above the doorway made his heart fall to the vicinity of his stomach.

A block of C4 studded with ball bearings, attached to a sensor that would activate the blasting caps the moment anyone so much as jarred the door a second time. Sick fucker that Downing was, he’d designed a spotlight to trip on Simon’s entrance, illuminating the bomb in red.

“Ryan!” Simon pressed his hand to his ear. The little earphone crackled with interference.