He lowered the binoculars, satisfied. She’d be spending the rest of her life in a government lockup if what the PAX League believed about her was true. And considering the evidence he had already, he didn’t have any doubts. In the meantime, they needed her.
Alive, not dead, and with the dangerous double-crossing game she was playing, she was on borrowed time already. She didn’t know it, but he was about to save her sorry life.
Getting to the truth, and to her secrets, including her real identity, was his job, and unfortunately, that meant keeping her alive. He watched as she swayed her wickedly sexy hips, crossing to the wooden outside steps leading up to the second-story apartment, overnight bag in hand. The small island community of Key Mango that she’d apparently chosen for her home base was hardly exclusive housing. The tiny key was made up primarily of locals, shrimp trawling seamen and dive fanatics, with a sprinkling of Bahamian rental homes and run-down duplex apartments that attracted tourists going for economical over trendy. Not that anything came cheap down here. Even a one-bedroom weather-beaten studio on the least fashionable island in the coral keys would cost a pretty penny this close to the water.
Tabitha Donovan had plenty of pretty pennies tucked in her secret Swiss bank account, no doubt courtesy of Chaba, but she wasn’t showing them off, not with the used car she was driving and not with the less than stellar housing she’d used a credit card in her made-up name to lease. It was how PAX had tracked her here. Mistakes. Criminals always made them, even the beautiful ones.
The street lay quiet in the early evening, nothing but the beat of palm fronds in the wind and the rush of gathering rain hitting the steaming street. This late in the summer, the vacation renters were heading out and more than half the homes and apartments were empty, their distant owners putting months at a time on sale to attract off-season travelers who would be arriving in the coming weeks. The cute blonde wasn’t planning to leave, though. She’d booked her rental through the fall. The better to search for the ancient secret she was planning to sell out at the cost of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives.
But her plans were about to change. Whether he liked it or not—and he didn’t—she was going with him, and going alive. She was a pawn on his way to the top, and now that he knew that top was Chaba, he’d do anything to get there. Even put up with the woman who’d set him up to die.
Shiny hair tucked behind one ear, she pushed the key in the lock of the upstairs apartment. He debated his options. Was the lower level of the building occupied? There were no lights, no signs of life from the first floor residence, but a van was parked on the street in front of the building. He’d been watching for nearly an hour. He didn’t want any hassles with nosy neighbors interfering if she started screaming bloody murder. No way was he letting her, possessor of the deadly secrets of the Santa Josefa and his link to Chaba, slip away, and no way would she go with him easily.
She thought he was Cade Brock, renegade treasure hunter, playboy, wastrel, only interested in the lost Spanish shipwreck for his own gain. It was a role he played well. Just as well as she played Tabitha Donovan. He absently fingered the scar at his throat. He wasn’t interested in money at all, though he had an amazing knack for acquiring it. He wanted justice. And oh yeah, revenge. He was a PAX agent, but no matter what his fellow agents thought of him, he was also a man, human despite the physiological mutations that made him of unique value to the League.
Through the uncurtained upper-story window, he watched the woman walk into the apartment, shut the door and shove something—the car key?—into her back pocket and then…A shadow moved from behind the door as she shut it. A shadow that reached for her throat and yanked her back into his arms.
Cade’s pulse slammed and he keyed the ignition. He wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting for Tabitha Donovan. And this had just stopped being easy.
She tasted panic and pain as a hard arm appeared out of nowhere, slamming her back against an even harder body. Her overnight bag thunked to the floor. A scream strangled in her throat as the pressure of the hand over her face left her desperate for air.
Spots swam in her vision. The shadows of the apartment faded toward black.
Adrenaline surged past the shock and fear. The attacker’s hand moved slightly. She could breathe through her nose and her vision cleared. The chilling butt of a gun pressed against her temple.
Was this what had happened to Sabrina? Or did he think she was Sabrina?
Sabrina with her strange disappearances, her mysterious plans, the charts in her apartment—Not that she’d wanted to believe any of that. Not that Sienna had wanted to believe her twin sister was doing what she thought she was doing.
Sabrina had also mentioned she was involved with a man, a man who frightened her, and now…Desperate, Sienna twisted her head, managed to break free of the hand over her mouth for a second.
“This isn’t what you think,” she said quickly, her voice thin, unrecognizable. “I’m not Sa—”
The hand brutally retook her mouth and she couldn’t breathe again.
“Shut up and pick that bag back up then open the door,” a rough voice ordered in her ear. “Walk outside. Slowly.”
She had to get away. She’d open the door, and then she’d make a break for it. She’d run. She’d scream. But for now, she could barely feel her shaking hand as she picked up the bag then reached for the knob with her other hand, pulling open the door of her sister’s shadowed apartment.
Fear left her swimming in a disembodied, surreal state in which she just knew this couldn’t be happening to her. This happened to women she heard about on the news. Choppy, disjointed sound bites of women abducted and murdered staggered wildly through her mind.
The rain-laced breeze struck her as the man pushed her onto the small landing. He was right behind her.
“Move,” the attacker demanded, and she did.
She twisted in his arms, shot her knee into his groin and, in the split instant when he roared, she ripped away from him, still gasping for breath, stumbling blindly down the steps.
Pain exploded as he grabbed her back and slammed the gun against the side of her head, choking her scream. Her bag thunked down the stairs, rolling to a stop.
The blow brought tears stinging to her eyes and then she forgot pain, forgot everything except the deadly coldness of the eyes she saw as the man ripped her to her feet and jerked her tightly against him again. She was aware of hollowed features, dark clothes, iron strength. Rain dashed against his cheeks, sliding down as if off a slab of marble.
“Don’t do that again.” He jerked her around, pushing her down the rest of the stairs ahead of him.
Horror gripped her as she realized the van parked on the street in front of the apartment must be his. He pushed her toward it. He was going to take her away from here and do God knows what to her next. All she knew about crimes against women told her that if she got in that van, she was going to die.
Another man pushed out of the rear passenger sliding door of the van suddenly. Another man with another gun. He dashed forward, grabbed her bag and threw it in the van before turning back. Why were they taking it? Her mind reeled. There was still the rental car. When Sabrina got here, she’d find it, know she’d been here…But it would be too late.
“Get in the van,” the attacker snarled, releasing her to propel her forward toward the other man, and she caught the tip of her sandal in a break in the cement walk.
She fell to the wet concrete, hitting her knees, the impact robbing her of breath or she’d be screaming. She lifted her eyes as the man grabbed her by her hair and a dark movement flashed into her consciousness even as new pain seared her head.
“You’re lucky he doesn’t want you dead,” he snarled. “Yet.”
He? Who was he?
A screech of tires broke the wind-whipped air.