Crave

“I’m your attorney—I should damn well hope so!”

“I owe you twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“And I’ll tell you how you can settle the score.” She planted her hands on her hips and leaned forward, that perfume of hers getting into his nose . . . and his blood. “You can stop being a stupid ass and show up for your hearing in two weeks. I’ll give you the time and date again, if you’ve forgotten to write it down.”

Okay . . . she was totally hot when she was pissed.

Annnnnnnnd that was so not an appropriate reaction under the time-place doctrine. Among other things.

At that moment, Jim and his boys approached, but Grier didn’t spare them a glance—even though Jim was staring at her hard. And didn’t that give Isaac an idea of what she’d be like in a courtroom. Man, she was incredible when she was focused and angry and ready to serve someone up on a plate.

“Two other things,” she bit out. “You’d better pray that guy whose arm needs to be set in plaster doesn’t call the police. And you need to see a doctor. Again. You’re bleeding.”

Just to fill in the gap, even though there wasn’t one, the promoter came up with what looked like a couple thousand dollars. “Here’s your cut—”

Abruptly, Grier’s eyes turned pleading, even as her beautiful face remained tight. “Don’t take the money, Isaac. And come with me. Do the right thing tonight and it’ll save you a whole lot of misery later. I promise you.”

Isaac just shook his head at her and stuck his hand out to the promoter.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

As she cursed and turned away, he was momentarily struck dumb by the fact that she’d dropped the f- bomb.

Snapping back into action, he reached for her arm, but the promoter stepped in the way. “Now, before I give this to you”—he slapped the bills on his palm—“I want you to come fight two nights from now.”

Which would be a no-go. He was hoping to be out of the country by then. “Yeah. Sure.”

“It’ll be here, assuming we got no problems. You were frickin’ amazing—”

“Just shut up and gimme the cash.”

Isaac rose up onto the balls of his feet and stared over the milling heads, watching Grier’s fancy-dancy hairdo march out toward the back door. By and large the men got out of her way, but then, given her mood, she was probably capable of castration.

Just by force of will.

Drowning out the promoter’s jock-sniffer ass-kissing, Isaac grabbed the money, shoved his feet in his combats and took his sweatshirt and windbreaker back. As he ran off after his public defender, he buried the green in his pockets and double-checked on his guns, the silencers and his plastic bag piggy bank.

“Where the hell are you going?” Jim said as he and his boys followed at a jog.

“Wherever she goes. She’s my attorney.”

“Any chance of talking you out of this?”

“Nope.”

“Fucking hell,” Jim said under his breath as he shoved some guy out of the way. “FYI, Matthias’s number two left.”

“Black sedan,” the man with the piercings cut in. “The quarter panels were dinged and the thing was dirty as shit, but the tires were brand-new and there were electronics in the trunk.”

That was XOps for you, Isaac thought. Incognito and state-of-the-art at the same time.

As he broke free of the exit, the sound of cars and trucks starting up and taking off turned the night into a traffic disco. Amid the growling engines and flashing headlights, he looked around for her car. She’d drive something foreign, he was guessing. A Mercedes, BMW . . . Audi . . .

Where was she?

CHAPTER 11

Undisclosed location, OCONUS

Matthias was well aware he was an agent of evil in the world.

Which didn’t mean he was totally bad. In large measure, the billions of innocent people on the planet were not on his radar screen and he left them alone. He also did not take candy from babies. Or shave cats. Or give the e-mail addresses of people who’d pissed him off to European sex-toy sites.

And he had, once—back in 1983—walked an old lady across a busy intersection.

So he wasn’t all bad.

That being said, if, in the process of getting a job done, he had to accept certain collateral damage or sacrifice an “innocent” or two, that was the way shit went: In those cases, he was no different from the car accident or the cancer or the lightning strike, nothing but life’s lottery lost for the given individual.

After all, everyone’s clock was ticking, and he’d played Grim Reaper enough to know that firsthand.

As he repositioned his broken body in his leather chair, he groaned. At the age of forty, he felt more like a hundred thousand years old, but being a survivor would do that to you.

At least he didn’t have to shit in a bag and still had one eye that worked.

In front of him, on the glossy desk, were seven computer screens. Some showed pictures, others streamed data, and one told him where each of his operatives were on the planet Earth. With what he was in charge of, information was mission critical. Which was an irony of sorts. He was a man with no identity operating a team that didn’t officially exist in a world of shadows—and intel was the only concrete thing he had to work with.

Although even that, like people, could fail you.

As his cell phone rang, he picked up the thing and looked at its little screen. Ah, yes, perfect timing. Matthias was looking for two men—and he’d sent his second in command after one of them.

The other . . . was complicated. Even though it shouldn’t have been.

He accepted the call. “Have you found him.”

“Yeah, and went a few rounds with him in the ring.”

“He’s alive, though.”

“Only because you want him to be. By the way, his lawyer showed up at the fight—and guess what. She happens to be the daughter of a friend of ours.”

“Really. What are the chances.” Actually, they were a hundred percent, because Matthias had gone into the Suffolk County court system in Massachusetts and purposely had retired captain Alistair Childe’s surviving offspring assigned to the case.

They’d needed to get that traitor Isaac Rothe out from behind bars so they could kill him and keep his body for future use—and good old Albie’s little girl was just the ticket: She was a fine attorney with a bleeding heart that led her into places she didn’t belong. Perfect combination.

And clearly it had worked: Rothe was free less than twenty-four hours after his arrest.

Christ, it had been that easy to find the bastard. But then, who’d have thought he’d use his own last name?

Huh, Matthias thought. Maybe he was taking candy from a baby here.

“You should have let me kill him in the ring,” his second in command bitched.

“Too many witnesses, and I want him flushed out of Boston.”

Because now that Grier Childe had served her purpose, he had to get Isaac the hell away from the woman. Matthias had already killed the captain’s son, and so he considered their score even. However, the sonofabitch had already tried to leverage his way out once and that meant the daughter had to be used to keep her sanctimonious daddy-o in line: As long as she was alive, she could be killed, and that threat was better than duct tape over a flapping mouth any day.

“Follow him out of state as only you can,” Matthias heard himself say in a calm, level tone. “Wait for the right moment, and not around Childe’s daughter.”