Page 77 of Her Defiant Warrior

“Gotta wash my hands first.”

* * *

There was an air of expectation. The museum was at capacity. It seemed like everybody from Dubai was here to see the prince and his family. It made the job tougher to get to the doors down to the lower levels, but they made it. It was a little less than an hour before the speeches were to begin.

Because of the dry run they had previously done, they knew that the basement area near the equipment only had one employee guarding it. The man was huddled in a back corner at his desk with a television set.

Gideon explained this to their new handlers.

“Understood,” the short black man said as they headed down the stairs to the equipment room.

As soon as they made their way to the equipment room floor, the black man nodded to the redhead to go in, and he told Jase and Gideon to stay in the stairwell.

The redhead came back.

“It’s done. Let’s go.”

Fuck!

He’d killed the guy who wasn’t even going to notice us.

Jase gritted his teeth and led the way to the area that housed the switchgears.

“Now we wait,” the blonde man said.

Jase looked down at his watch. The speeches would start in about twenty-five minutes, and then Sergei would want the prince killed. How did the Kraken have this planned? There was a lot of green space around the highly decorative building. Since they were using the landscaping truck, they had to be using the cover of the green space to hide a sniper. There weren’t any tall buildings around the museum.

Jase pictured the highly stylized eye, which made up the formation of the building, and figured out where the podium would be in front of the reflective pool. Almost anyplace in the grass, trees or bushes would provide an excellent shot to the podium. Then the prince would suffer for boinking Sergei’s woman.

Jase watched as Gideon looked over at their three babysitters. Jase knew he was considering the best way to take them down.

He felt his phone vibrate.

He sneezed. Then pulled up his arm so he could sneeze into his elbow. He sneezed two more times. He twisted around to pull toilet paper out of his pocket to wipe his nose. Then read that there were supposed to be two shooters. How Kostya got that information he didn’t know, but he’d take it to the bank.

He shoved the tissue and phone back into his pocket.

He huffed out a laugh. The Kraken Elite sure wanted to make sure they didn’t fuck up and not earn their fifty million. How hard was it going to be to shoot one guy in the head? All Sergei wanted was to make the dude suffer, for God’s sake.

Jase stopped moving. He stopped breathing. Getting yourself killed would not make you suffer.

He shut his eyes for a moment and remembered the picture he’d seen in the museum's lobby that showed the prince with his wife and three young children. Dying would not make the prince suffer. Having your wife and kids killed in front of you? Yeah, that would make you suffer.

The black guy’s phone rang.

Shit, they had fifteen minutes, and they were trying to stop the wrong assassination!

Jase didn’t have time to explain shit to Gideon, but he knew he’d go along with him. Jase waited until he finished his call, then he kicked the boss in the side of his knee so that it hit his other knee. The man cried out in pain and headed for the hard floor. Jase helped him by stomping his foot on the back of his skull.

As he turned, Red’s fist was heading for his temple. Jase ducked and shoved his head into Red’s chin. Then he followed it up with three rabbit punches to Red’s kidneys.

“Finish him,” Gideon shouted.

Jase pushed him away and shot out with a round-house kick to the head, that dropped Ted to the floor.

“What now?” Gideon asked.

Jase pulled out the phone that Nolan had given him and keyed in Kostya’s number. He only knew about four of his teammates' numbers, most of them were just on auto-dial. Kostya didn’t pick up.