Page 53 of Her Defiant Warrior

Damn. Tanner hadn’t been kidding.

* * *

Kostya and the men he’d been working with arrived just before nineteen hundred hours. Jase’s lieutenant just rolled his eyes when he looked around and saw their accommodations.

“How come you guys got to check out of the Motel 3?” Landon Kelly practically whined. “Shit, I refuse to even walk on the carpet in my bare feet, because I know I’ll to end up with some sort of STD if I do.”

“Do I need to explain the birds and the bees to you again?” Jase asked as they all chuckled. Landon flipped him the bird.

Gideon was walking in with Ryker following him. “I heard that. Trust me, you have nothing to complain about, you pussy,” he said to Landon.

“He’s right,” Kostya chimed in. “Right now, we’re supposed to be trying to hire on with the Kraken. They wouldn’t expect down-on-their-luck mercenaries to be staying at the Burj Khalifa.”

“I guess not,” Landon sighed.

“Jase, I got the picture that you sent to me,” Gideon said. “I sent it to Kane MacNamara, and he was able to identify the man. His name was Edward Arden. He spent four years in Leavenworth, then disappeared off the face of the Earth. So how did you get his photo, Jase?”

“Tanner shot him outside of the Mall of the Emirates. Needless to say, our idea of meeting with a member or members of the Kraken in a well-populated area didn’t pan out so well.”

“Damn,” Nolan said quietly. Jase could hear the pain in the man’s voice. “I saw that on my Al Jazeera news feed this afternoon. They said that eight civilians were killed in that gunfight. Dozens more were injured. What in the hell happened?”

“It was a set-up. Just a straight-up set-up. You know we got the meet because of Aiden O’Malley’s uncle. Aiden is a SEAL in Coronado, and his family has a wide variety of men and women who have extensive friends and contacts. His uncle was able to set it up so that they would meet with us. He explained we were potential clients. Should have been straightforward. Unfortunately, no.”

“There was talk of multiple shooters. Was it just this guy and y’all?” Ryker asked.

“Nope. There was a sniper across the street,” Jonah answered. “Jase stayed behind as a decoy, hoping to divert his attention away from the civilians. The three of us scrambled and Mateo took him out.”

“So, none of you were identified?” Kostya asked.

“Nope,” Jase answered. “I was the last one left behind, and I made it out of there, despite the police asking for papers from everyone.”

“How’d you manage that?” Gideon wanted to know.

“There was an elderly woman who was injured and alone. I made a big fuss taking care of her, and waving away the police, waiting for an ambulance. When the ambulance came, I bolted.”

“Was she all right?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah, she’s going to make it. I called her son for her; he and the rest of the family were going to meet her at the hospital.”

God, I’m just as sappy as Nolan!

“I want to go over everything again.” Kostya said. “I think we might be missing something.”

That was never a good sign. If their lieutenant, Kostya Barona, thought they were missing something, you could be damned sure they were missing something.

“Gideon, do you have the video of the briefing with Captain Hale and the CIA Director?”

“If you give me my tablet, I do,” he said to Kostya.

“Have you been going through withdrawals?” Kostya asked as he handed over the tablet to Gideon.

“It’s not just the computer I’m missing, that’s for damn sure.” He turned to Jase. “Do you know what the wi-fi code is here?”

Jase shook his head. Then Tanner provided it.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll pull up the briefing,” Gideon promised, then turned on the television and began tapping some keys on his tablet. While they waited, Jase thought back to when they first arrived in Dubai four days ago.

One of the first things that they’d needed to do was get weapons. Kostya had waited twelve hours for their CIA contact to come through with a way to get weapons in Dubai. When that didn’t work out, he assigned Jonas Wulff to take care of it.