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They circled each other, Grace trying to make her way to her knife that had skittered close to the cockpit doors.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked as he closed in on her.
“Back to London, of course. Weren’t those your orders? It seems you and that husband of yours are having communication problems.”
Grace stiffened as Kimball so casually tossed out that bit of information. No one but Frank Bennett and Jack had ever known she was married to Gabe. It had been too dangerous—something that could have been used against him if the knowledge had leaked. She had no illusions as to her position in the agency. She knew without a doubt that if it came to protecting Gabe and what he did for the country, then they’d throw her to the wolves in a heartbeat. But somehow this man knew who she was. Knew who Gabe was.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hedged.
He flexed his knuckles and smiled cruelly. “I didn’t recognize the great and mighty Gabe Brennan when I looked at the surveillance photos my men sent me. I’ve always heard of your husband, of course, and I believe there was a time I worked with him when he was—”
Kimball shrugged his shoulders as if what he was saying didn’t bother him, but she could tell by the hatred in his eyes that his experience with Gabe hadn’t been a good one.
“We’ll just say he was someone else at the time,” he continued. “But you—I recognized you in the photo right away. That red hair of yours is a hell of a beacon.”
Before she could dodge out of the way, he’d snatched the black wig from her head and tossed it to the ground.
“We have a mutual friend,” he said. “I’m sure Mr. Tussad would love to be here right now, but I’m not working for him at the moment. You of all people should understand how important the financial options and benefits are when considering taking a job.”
Grace went cold inside. Tussad’s name had the ability to paralyze her like no other. “What do you know of Tussad?” Grace asked. She knew she was giving herself away. The anger in her voice couldn’t be concealed.
“Don’t you want to know how I recognized you?” he asked.
Her fists clenched at her sides, and she put her weight on the balls of her feet, the anger inside of her building like the fiery heat inside a volcano, ready to burst from the side of a mountain.
“I never saw the resemblance between you and your daughter, but Tussad assured me she was yours. You should have known I was there that day. Anyone trained in combat would have felt my gaze. And I looked at you for a long time, Grace.”
The predatory look in his eyes and the way his gaze dropped to her breasts made the bile rise in the back of her throat, and the heat of her anger was replaced by the cold lash of his words, striking against her body as if they were physical blows. She finally understood what he was saying.
“It was you?” She could barely get the words past her dry throat, and his vicious smile was all the assurance she needed that he was the one who’d pulled the trigger that terrible day.
She charged him with the force of her anger leading the way. Satisfaction coursed through her when she felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage and bone beneath her fist as she struck him in the nose. The pain his own blows inflicted on her didn’t register—the sting to her ribs or the blood that dripped freely from her mouth onto her shirt. Her arm hung useless by her side as she battled him, but her anger eventually gave way to unbearable pain, and she dropped to her knees before him.
Kimball grabbed her by the throat and lifted her until her feet dangled just off the ground. “It’s going to be a pleasure putting a bullet through your heart,” he whispered, close enough that she was able to feel his hot breath against her face. “It’s only fitting you should die helpless, just as your daughter did.”
The game of life and death had ceased to matter to her, but she vowed she’d live long enough to see the man buried in the ground.
“My days may very well be numbered,” she said hoarsely, his grasp tightening around her throat. “But yours are numbered as well. I will kill you, Shawn Kimball. That’s a promise. And you’ll never know I’m there until it’s too late.”
She spit in his face and was in no position to dodge as the back of his fist connected with her jaw. The coppery tang of blood filled her mouth just as the darkness closed in on her.
ChapterTwenty
The game had changed.
Shawn Kimball kept an ice pack against his broken nose as he scrolled through the numbers on Grace’s phone, comparing them to those on the phone he’d stolen from the pilot.
He glanced once at the woman. She was out cold, her hair matted with blood and tangled around her swollen face. He’d tied her hands and feet and tossed her in the corner. It would be a while yet until she woke up.
Kimball had accepted the job to help Deckard Sloane re-create the Passover Project because the money had been too good to pass up. But he wasn’t an idiot. He’d been around Sloane too long not to realize that he had every intention of getting rid of anyone who had ties to this particular job.
But sometimes it wasn’t the money. He had enough money to last ten lifetimes. Sometimes the past just had to be dealt with. And this was one of those times. He didn’t have any particular loyalty to Kamir Tussad. Hell, he didn’t have loyalty to anyone but himself. But when Gabe Brennan was working undercover with Tussad, he’d screwed up three major arms deals Kimball had been brokering, the US confiscating the weapons and killing several of his business associates.
At the time, Tussad had been merely inconvenienced. He had enough power and enough contacts to sweep the mistakes under the rug and offer new deals. There was certainly not a shortage of men and women in the world who wanted to hold all the power during the next war—because there was always another war. It was the way the world worked.
No, it hadn’t been Tussad who’d suffered. Kimball had been the broker for all the bad deals, and it was him who’d been stripped and beaten. He was the one who’d taken well-placed knife wounds—wounds that wouldn’t kill, only give excruciating pain. Tussad had eventually come to his aid because he had another job he needed Kimball to facilitate, but his usefulness was the only reason he’d interfered. Kimball would be dead otherwise.
The CIA thought he was still working for them at the time. It hadn’t been hard to feed them lies and give them the occasional victory. So when he’d told them someone on the inside was betraying them, the agency had been in such disarray trying to find the culprit that it hadn’t been difficult to break into classified files and see what agents were working undercover in Tussad’s organization. He’d been handed Derrick Kyle and Gabe Brennan on a silver platter.
