Operation: Midnight Guardian (15 page)

“Quite the contrary, Cutter. My only wish is to get my life back.”

“Not like this.”

“It’s the only way.”

“Mattie, damn it, where are you?”

Another hesitation. Longer this time. Damn, he was losing her. “Tell me where you are. I’ll meet you. We’ll talk about this.”

“No. I know you’ll try to stop me. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay!” he shouted.

“I have to go. I’ll call you.”

“Don’t hang up.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Panic gripped him at the finality in her voice. “Mattie, you have to trust me on this. Damn it, I care about you.”

But the line went dead.

Chapter Fifteen

Hanging up the phone was one of the most difficult things Mattie had ever had to do. She hated doing that to him. She’d felt the tension coming through the line. She’d heard the concern in his voice. She believed him when he said he cared about her.

But that was exactly why she couldn’t do as he asked.

Dropping the phone into her pocket, she rose on shaking legs and looked through the window at the wire office across the street. The clerk at the desk had told her it would take an hour for the wire to go through. She checked her watch. Only forty-five minutes had passed. She watched a group of people on the sidewalk in front of the office and wondered if The Jaguar or his thugs were already waiting for her to show up….

With fifteen minutes to kill, Mattie went to
the counter and ordered another coffee. Taking a seat at one of the bistro tables near the front window, she watched the wire office. She checked her watch again. She drank the coffee, her nerves grinding. Finally it was time to call Cutter.

Dread gripped her as she punched in the numbers to his cell phone. “Cutter, it’s me.”

“Mattie, where the hell are you?” Stress roughened his voice. She hated knowing she’d put it there. All she could do was pray things went the way she’d planned.

“Take it easy,” she said. “I’m okay.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy,” he snapped. “Damn it, I’m worried about you.”

Mattie wondered if he would ever know how badly she’d needed to hear those words at that moment. “I’ll be at the wire office on the edge of town in five minutes. There’s a very high probability that The Jaguar or one of his thugs will be there looking for me.”

“Don’t do it.”

“I need you there, Cutter.”

“This is a bad idea.”

“It’s the only way I can get my life back.”

“You can’t get your life back when you’re dead. Damn it, you’re not armed. We don’t have
backup. For God’s sake I don’t know if I can make it there in five minutes!”

“I’m going to do this with or without you. Either you can help me, or you can walk away. Your choice.”

A curse burned through the line. “Don’t walk into the shop until you see me.” The pitch of his voice changed, and Mattie knew he was moving, running. “I’m on my way. Wait for me.”

Mattie looked at her watch. She knew if Cutter arrived before she made contact he would stop her. As frightened as she was of facing The Jaguar alone, she couldn’t let that happen.

“Five minutes.” Disconnecting, she left the coffee shop and started for the wire office across the street.

Mattie’s legs shook as she crossed the street. When she opened the door to the wire office the young clerk behind the counter looked up at her and smiled. “Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

She forced a smile that felt tremulous on her lips. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in over her head. Could she really pull this off? Sick with fear, she strode to the counter.

“Could you please tell me if you’ve received a wire for me?” she asked.

“Let me check.” He walked to a computer and began punching keys. “Let’s see. What’s your name?”

“Donna Clark.”

“Clark.” He typed in her name. “Where’s it coming from?”

“Washington, D.C.”

Frowning, he tapped the pencil against the counter. “Oh, here we are. Looks like it just came through.” He grinned at her. “You have good timing.”

Mattie wasn’t so sure and looked over her shoulder through the office’s window. Beyond, on the sidewalk, a heavy-set woman and a toddler in a bright-red coat were walking by. A young man with long hair was exiting a lime-green Volkswagen. No sign of anyone suspicious. No sign of Cutter.

Until now it hadn’t crossed her mind that The Jaguar wouldn’t show. Maybe he’d realized this was a trap. A new layer of worry enveloped her as she turned back to the clerk. He was still working on her wire. She didn’t care about the money. All she wanted was for The Jaguar to show up so Cutter could take him in. She wanted this nightmare to be over.

She’d only been there for a minute, but it felt
like an eternity. Why hadn’t The Jaguar shown up? Where was Cutter?

She turned back to the counter. The clerk was reaching for something beneath the cash register. Absently she glanced through a partially open door behind the counter that led to a rear office. The lights were off. But in the dim light slanting through the door, she saw two feet sticking up, as if someone were lying on the floor. What on earth?

Her gaze snapped to the clerk. But his eyes were already on hers. And she suddenly knew he wasn’t some inept clerk at all.

“Hello, Mattie,” he said.

Terror whipped through her. For a moment she was paralyzed with it. Then she scrambled back and spun toward the front door, her only thought to get out and run for her life.

But she wasn’t fast enough.

Midway there something stung her shoulder. Heat raced up her arm. At first she thought she’d been shot. Then she looked down at her shoulder and saw a tiny dart protruding. A thousand terrible thoughts rushed through her mind.
Oh, dear God,
she thought,
help me.

The drug slammed into her brain with the force of a sledgehammer. One moment she was
running toward the door. The next she was lying on the floor on her belly, totally paralyzed, her mind reeling.

Why couldn’t she move?

She saw the man vaulting the counter and walking over to her. She saw his boots, khaki slacks. He knelt and peered into her eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The drug won’t hurt you.”

“Let me go,” she slurred.

Smiling, he snapped his fingers. Two more men entered the room. “Take her to the van. Quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

She tried to fight the arms that lifted her, but her muscles refused to cooperate. They carried her to the rear of the store and to a waiting SUV in the alley.

“Cutter,” she whispered as they opened the side door and shoved her inside.

The man looked down at her, an evil grin on his face. “Not even Sean Cutter can help you now,” he said and slammed the door.

CUTTER SENSED DANGER the moment he burst into the wire shop. “Mattie!” he shouted.

The silence mocked him.

Darting across the customer waiting area, he slapped both hands down on the counter, his
eyes scanning the clerk’s work area where a single door stood ajar. “Hello! Is anyone here?”

He didn’t wait for a response. Jumping over the counter, he drew his weapon and went toward the door. He kicked it open the rest of the way, scanned the murky interior, then leaned in and flipped on the light.

The clerk’s body had been tucked against the wall. The young man lay facedown in a pool of blood. Even before checking the clerk’s carotid artery, Cutter knew he was dead.

You screwed up,
a little voice accused.

Cutter was no stranger to the dark emotions that came with his line of work. But the knowledge that a man like The Jaguar had Mattie made his blood run cold.

It was his worst nightmare. He’d always believed that enduring torture was the worst thing he would ever face. But he’d been wrong. It was infinitely worse knowing the woman he loved was going to face the same horrors.

Cursing himself, he wished like hell he’d handled things differently.

He pulled the cell from his belt and hit Wolfe’s number. The other man picked up on the first ring.

“The Jaguar has her.” Cutter barely recognized his own voice.

“How long ago?” Wolfe asked.

“Less than five minutes.”

“Let me scramble some agents.” Papers rustled on the other end. “Are you at the wire office?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay put.”

“Damn it, Martin, you shouldn’t have condoned this.”

“She would have done it, anyway. Besides, I knew you were there.”

“What you’re really telling me is that she’s expendable. If she can pull this off kudos to the CIA. If she doesn’t, no big loss. Right, Martin?”

“If you weren’t so emotionally involved in this you’d see it was the only thing I could have done.”

“Yeah, and now I’m going to do the only thing I can.”

“Sean, damn it, don’t do anything stupid. We can still salvage this.”

Cutter disconnected. The initial shock of terror was wearing off. His brain was beginning to function. He knew this was probably going to cost him his job, but he didn’t think twice about calling in the only men he knew could help him save Mattie’s life.

Mike Madrid answered with a gruff utterance of his name.

“I’m initiating a Code 99,” Cutter said.

Madrid hesitated, then said, “What’s the situation?”

Cutter rapidly summarized everything that had happened. “We’ve got to get to Logan before The Jaguar…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The mere thought of Mattie enduring the same horrors he had was simply too much to bear.

“Easy, Cutter,” Madrid said. “We’ll get her.”

“For God’s sake, Mike, he’s going to torture her. We don’t know the location of the compound.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“The Jaguar has a weak link,” Cutter said. “But I need your help.”

“Tell me and I’m there.”

He told Madrid about Mattie’s coworker, Daniel Savage. “I believe he’s the one who framed her. There’s a possibility he’ll know the location of the compound. We know he’s been in contact. If we can get his cell phone we can do a triangulation and find the nearest tower.”

“Where’s Savage?”

“D.C.”

“I can be there in half an hour. I’ll pay him a visit, see what I can get out of him.”

“No holds barred.”

“Roger that,” Madrid said. “What’s your twenty?”

“Silver Lake, Alberta.”

“I’ll scramble the Lear.” Madrid paused. “It’s still going to take a couple of hours.”

“Let’s hope Mattie can hang on that long.”

“If I were you I’d start praying,” Madrid said, and disconnected.

Chapter Sixteen

Mattie woke to the glare of a bright light. She was lying on her side with her knees pulled up protectively to her chest. She blinked, and a wall painted two-tone institutional beige came into view. She shifted, straightened and tested her limbs. Everything appeared to be in good working order. In the distance she could hear the clang of steel against steel.

At first she thought she had somehow landed in prison. Then she remembered walking into the wire office. The dead clerk. The man behind the counter. Sean Cutter just minutes away…

Gasping, she sat up and looked around. She was in a small cell with a concrete floor and steel bars on one side. There were no windows, just a single light overhead, and she got the sensation of being underground.

Beyond the bars, a man wearing a brown
paramilitary uniform sat with his boots propped on a scarred wooden desk, watching her with piggish eyes.

“Where am I?” she asked.

Never taking his eyes from hers, he reached for the phone and punched numbers into the keypad. “She’s awake,” he said and hung up.

Mattie shivered. Where on earth was she? What did The Jaguar have planned for her? She thought of how worried Cutter must be, and pain twisted inside her. He’d been right all along. He’d known she was in over her head. That she was unequipped to handle a brutal man like The Jaguar. And now here she was, in mortal danger.

“Ah, Ms. Logan, you’re awake.”

She rose abruptly at the sound of the deep, cultured voice. A chill swept through her when she found herself staring at The Jaguar. He was shorter than she’d imagined. Well under six feet. But what he lacked in physical stature he made up for with the power of his presence. He was an attractive man with eyes the color of bitter chocolate and the high cheekbones of a male model. His skin was flawless and olive. His hair glossy black and pulled into a neat ponytail at his nape.

Two men in uniform flanked him. Mattie
stared at the pistols strapped to their hips, and the grave reality of the situation slammed home.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked.

“I think you already know the answer to both of those questions.”

He reached the door to her cell and studied her for a moment. “I am The Jaguar,” he said simply. “And you have something I want.”

A shudder moved through her at the way he was looking at her. It was as if he was searching for the best place to hurt her.

One of the uniformed men removed a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked her cell door. The second man took out a set of nylon restraints from his belt.

“The real question,” The Jaguar began, “is whether or not you’re going to cooperate with me.”

The two men entered the cell. Fear swept through her.
Oh dear God they’re going to torture me,
she thought.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she heard herself say.

“Come now,” The Jaguar said amicably. “Don’t be coy. I know all about the EDNA Project.” He smiled. “Well, almost everything,
anyway. I’m particularly interested in phase two.”

Only when the wall collided with her back did Mattie realize she had been backing up. The men converged on her. There was no way she was going to be able to get away.

“Don’t get any closer.” She tried to sound authoritative, but her voice was high and tight with fear.

“They’re not going to hurt you,” The Jaguar said.