Shannon Stacey

No Place to Hide

The Devlin Group, Book 4

August 20, 2014
ISBN-13: 9798386317997
ISBN-10: 838631799X

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Jack Donovan went through hell and back to save Isabelle once. Now she’s back in his life, hunted by an assassin so elusive some claim he’s only an urban legend. More than just a gun for hire, the killer is driven by a pathological need to take down his targets and, when Isabelle escapes the bullet meant for her, Jack knows he’ll strike again. The only way to keep her alive is to keep her close, and Jack’s about to learn what hell really is.

In the year since Jack rescued her from a guerrilla compound and then walked away, Isabelle Arceneau has begun to put her life back on track. Now somebody wants her dead and Jack is once again her only hope for survival. As the Devlin Group races to uncover the killer’s identity and Jack and Isabelle go on the run in a desperate bid to keep her alive, she knows she can trust him with her life, but never again with her heart.

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Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

“I have a visual confirmation of the target. Standby for my go.”

Jack Donovan listened to the target toss his keys on the table and stood by as instructed instead of charging out and taking the guy down like he wanted. Almost two hours he’d been sweltering in position, and it was so goddamn hot the pungent odors of his surroundings were infiltrating his pores.

A door closed.

“Hold,” Connor O’Brien said, his voice clear over the earpiece. He was monitoring the room via camera. “Target has moved to interior room. Lost visual.”

Jack tapped on his microphone to let O’Brien know he understood. Since Jack was currently in the target’s closet, a verbal confirmation wasn’t a good idea.

The only thing separating him from the rest of the fleabag motel room was a thin, dirty curtain, and he could hear a faint shuffle of movement on the other side. With the target taking a piss, the only other person in play was Ty West, a.k.a. the Devlin Group’s new guy. They’d flipped a coin and Jack won the closet. Ty was taking up space between a filthy wooden floor and the underside of a filthier mattress, probably wondering why he’d given up riding an FBI desk to become a contract agent with the group.

What Ty West didn’t know was that, no matter how the coin flip turned out, Jack wasn’t going under that bed. He had seniority, and the coin toss had been his way of making nice. If it had gone the other way, Jack would have stopped being nice.

A toilet flushed. Pipes rattled. And Jack’s fingers flexed and fisted as he readied himself to strike.

Herbert Scanlon was a very wanted man. So wanted, in fact, that both the good guys and the bad guys wanted to get their hands on him. The drug cartel he did some creative bookkeeping for didn’t like the fact he’d gotten caught by his own employee, and in desperation, Herbert had decided to shoot up his office building, drawing the attention of every major branch of law enforcement. The governments of Texas and the United States wanted all the dirt he had on his less savory associates before they exacted justice for six counts of homicide committed during the commission of a drug-related crime.

The good news for Herbert—because he was eligible for the death penalty, Mexico was going to resist handing him back over to Texas. The bad news—a public servant who’d devoted his career to taking down the cartel, mostly in vain, had convinced the powers that be to call in the Devlin Group. Alex Rossi’s agents didn’t worry too much about jurisdiction and extradition.

Herbert was going to take a little nap, and when he woke up, he’d be back in the great state of Texas, with well-armed guys wearing badges knocking on his door.

No, Your Honor, we don’t know how he came to be back in the United States. We got an anonymous tip revealing his location and picked him up.

Just a simple kidnapping job, provided Jack, O’Brien and West didn’t run afoul of the trouble that made Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world, the Mexican authorities, the drug cartel or even the US authorities. Kidnapping, even for a good reason, was illegal, so the home team would pretend they’d never heard of the Devlin Group if they got into trouble. There would be no naming of names.

A floorboard squeaked, and O’Brien came back over Jack’s earpiece. “Visual confirmed. Stand by for my signal.”

They would wait until his back was turned to the closet, giving Jack a very slight element of surprise. Not that he’d need much. The accountant was shorter, softer and would probably assume the cartel had found him. If anything, he’d cry and piss his pants.

“Go.”

Jack stepped out from behind the curtain and had Herbert in a choke hold with his right arm and had his left hand over his mouth before the guy could even react. He struggled, but Jack held tight while Ty scooted out from under the bed. The new guy held a syringe, and several long minutes of struggling passed between Ty injecting one hundred milligrams of ketamine into Herbert and the accountant slumping in Jack’s arms.

“We’re good to go,” Jack said into his microphone as the ketamine stupor kicked in.

The plan was for Herbert to look like just another American tourist who’d chased too many tequila shots with too much cheap Mexican beer. Drunks attracted a lot less attention than unconscious bodies wrapped in rugs.

They lowered him to the bed and gathered any identifying belongings they could find that would prove Herbert Scanlon had been in the room, along with their cameras. They couldn’t take everything with them—guys who’d had too good a time at happy hour didn’t carry luggage around—but a suitcase of clothes confiscated from Herbert’s home was already in the motel they’d rented under his fake name in the States. Once they added a few toiletries and his wallet to the tableau, it would look like he’d been there for days.

“We’re ready,” he told O’Brien.

“Hold up a few minutes. There’s some activity on the street. Might draw a crowd or what passes for law enforcement around here.”

Jack hated waiting. “We can’t wait too long. If we’re late to the wedding, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

Charlotte Rhames, the Devlin Group’s executive administrator, and Tony Casavetti, one of the group’s top agents, were getting married on Casavetti’s Texas ranch, and the timetable was tight. Deliver Herbert, get to San Antonio. Power nap, shower, don tuxedoes and be at the ranch by noon. The wedding had already been postponed three times over the last year due to work, and she’d made it clear it wasn’t to happen again. And anybody who was late or sustained injuries that might ruin the wedding photos would be getting shit assignments for a good long time.

“Look at my hands,” Herbert said in a low, awestruck voice. “My fingers look like Fred Flintstone’s.”

His whole body looked like Flintstone’s, though Jack didn’t bother to tell him so. He hoped whoever kicked in Herbert’s new motel room door in the morning brought the plastic zip-tie cuffs because standard issue might not cut it.

“Okay, the street’s as clear as it’s going to get,” O’Brien informed them. “Time to get the hell out.”

Jack didn’t need to hear that twice. He looped Herbert’s arm around his shoulders and used his left arm to support him while Ty pulled open the door.

Thwap. The silenced bullet passed between Jack’s head and Ty’s, then continued through the cheap wall behind them.

Ty slammed the door while Jack hissed an oh shit update into his mic. The question was whether it was random robbery-related violence or if the cartel had found them. Random street thugs rarely used silencers, though. It was the cartel, and they were in serious trouble.

Jack’s first instinct was to shove Herbert to the floor, but he was afraid, once the guy was down there, Jack wouldn’t be able to get him back up. Instead he hauled him toward the bathroom, praying whoever was in the hall didn’t open fire on the flimsy walls with automatic weapons because his accountant friend wasn’t fast on his feet.

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw West was belly down on the floor with the lower half of his body folded up in the closet—an uncomfortable position that allowed him to see both the door and the window while making him less likely to take any bullets coming through the wall. Not bad for a new guy, he thought as he convinced Herbert folding himself up in the bathtub was a good idea.

“I didn’t see anybody go in,” O’Brien said into his ear.

“Maybe whatever was going on in the street was a diversion.” He kept his voice low so as not to give their shooter an audible target.

“I’m not a rookie.”

No, he wasn’t. They’d been partnered more often than not during their time with the group, and there was nobody Jack trusted more. “Maybe not, but somebody in that hallway took a shot at us, and we don’t know who it was, how many there are or where they came from.”

“I can come in behind them.”

Jack thought about it for a second. “Negative. It’s better if they don’t know you’re here at all. How’s the fire escape look?”

“Like the rest of the place. I wouldn’t put money on it holding Herbert.”

Shit. “How about just me?”

“Can’t say from here.”

“Is the window above ours open?”

A couple seconds later, he got the affirmative. “No movement, so the room’s either empty or the occupant’s in bed.”

Jack ducked behind the dubious shelter of the bathroom vanity as several bullets punched a line of holes in the wall about four feet up. Then nothing.

“If we wait,” West said, his voice carried to him from across the room by the communication system, “they might get antsy and come in. We take them as they come through the door.”

Or it was a spotter who’d keep them pinned down with random shots until the big guns showed up. Literally. “I hate fighting blindfolded. I’m going up a floor, and then I’ll see if I can scope out what’s going on out there. You got the door?”

“Unless the situation goes to hell, I’ve got it.”

“I’ll be quick. O’Brien, am I clear?”

“Affirmative.”

He gave the rickety fire escape a good shake before trusting it with his weight, and he was halfway up the ladder when movement below caught his eye. A man stepped out of the shadows, but not so far out he could get a good look at him. He got a good look at the glint of light on the gun in his hand, though.

“My four,” he said into the mic, but the thug was already falling to the ground with a hole in his head. “Nice shot.”

“Thanks. Move your ass.”

The room above Herbert’s was empty, but Jack moved as silently as possible toward the door and into the hall because running footsteps might tip off their friends below. He would have preferred taking a staircase on the opposite side of the building rather than coming out into the same hallway, but he couldn’t waste the time.

There was no door at the bottom, so he peeked out just enough for a quick surveillance. There were two of them, looking as relaxed as a pair of hunters sharing a beer in a tree stand. One was on the phone, though, talking in rapid-fire Spanish. The other lifted his gun, just as Jack pulled his head back in, and pumped a few more rounds into Herbert’s room.

There was a good chance that guy was on the phone with some cartel higher-up, asking where their backup was, so Jack couldn’t hesitate. The suppressor was already attached to his weapon, so he stepped into the hall and took them out with two quick shots.

“Get Herbert out of the tub,” he hissed to West through his mic, “and let’s blow this popcorn stand. O’Brien, be ready to roll because we’re going to have company very soon.”

As he stepped past the bodies to open the door, he saw a key fob hanging out of one guy’s pocket, the name of the place they were in barely showing up on the ancient rubber. They hadn’t gotten past O’Brien, then. They’d been watching Herbert, probably waiting for confirmation he was the target, and were forced into making a move when somebody else threatened to beat them to the punch.

O’Brien pulled up in a nondescript but well-running sedan as Jack and West went out the side door, Herbert staggering between them. After shoving him into the backseat with the new guy, Jack went around to the shotgun seat. “Get the hell out of here.”

Just as they were turning a corner in the maze of streets, a sedan as nondescript as theirs pulled up in front of the seedy motel and stopped.

It wasn’t until they’d crossed the border with no more problems, thanks in part to the Devlin Group’s generous contribution to the border guard’s retirement fund, that Jack relaxed in his seat and let out a deep breath. All that was left to do was dump Herbert off and call in the anonymous tip.

“Could’ve been worse,” O’Brien said. “At least we’re all still pretty for the wedding photos.”
“I am, anyway. Hopefully the photographer’s got some program that can polish up your ugly mug.”

While the other two trash talked, Jack leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. Weddings he could take or leave—preferably leave—but he was looking forward to a little downtime.

A few laughs, a few drinks and maybe a pretty wedding guest who couldn’t find a date to the wedding. Not a bad way to relax.

*
It wasn’t the enormous emerald-cut diamond in the jewelry store window that caught Isabelle Arceneau’s eye. It was the reflection of the man behind her.

It was the fourth window she’d seen him in, and since he was too far on the outer edge of the busy Manhattan sidewalk to see the merchandise, she got the uncomfortable impression she was the display he had his eye on. As paranoid as it seemed, the longer she walked, the more certain she became he was watching her.

This time she lingered a moment in front of the window, pretending to be entranced by the glittering display, so she saw him reach inside the coat it was really too warm to be wearing.

For reasons she couldn’t consciously define, Isabelle’s muscles tensed as he withdrew his hand.

He had a gun.

“Isabelle.”

She dove to her left as the shot rang out. Cement burned her palms and her knees as she hit the ground, shattered glass showering her. People screamed, and she was scrambling, managing to kick off her high-heeled pumps, and then she was running.

There was chaos around her as people panicked, but she shoved her way through. She wasted no time or energy glancing over her shoulder for the man. Either a bullet would hit her in the back or it wouldn’t, but she couldn’t fight off a gun. There was no sense in wasting the time to look back.

It was tempting to duck down a side street—to find a place to hide—but the crowd was her only protection. If she ended up in a dead-end alley with the man, she’d not only be defenseless, but she’d probably die alone, with no witnesses to her murder.

Murder. Oh God, why was somebody trying to kill her?

Her bare feet were rubbed raw by the sidewalk, and with each step, the impact bruised her heel bone, but she kept running. There wasn’t a cop in sight, and her cell phone was probably bouncing its way to the bottom of her purse, which was slung messenger-style across her body.

It felt like she ran forever, until her lungs were burning as badly as her feet, before she spotted a coffee shop she’d frequented often enough in the past to know the layout.

She ducked inside, going directly down the narrow hall to the women’s restroom while ignoring the curious looks from the throng of customers. It was mercifully empty, and she closed the solid door behind her. There was a twist lock on the doorknob, as well as a deadbolt, and she engaged them both.

As her ragged breaths became sobs, she crawled as far under the porcelain sink as she could—away from the door—not caring about the dirty floor or the smudgy trail of blood her hands, knees and feet left on it.

Jack.

She wanted Jack Donovan.

That was nothing new. Not a single day passed that she didn’t think about Jack—wondering what he was doing. Where he was. Sometimes, considering his job, she wondered if he was even still alive. For a while, after she’d first returned to the United States, she’d type his name into search engines, but nothing ever came up.

The number he’d given her was programmed into her phone’s contacts. She’d never called it, though she’d sometimes pulled it up on the screen and run her thumb over his name.

Isabelle, if you ever need me, you call. Day or night. No matter what I’m doing or where you are, I’ll be there.

That’s what he’d said to her in the airport in Gabon, before putting her on a plane back to the United States. She knew he’d meant it at the time, but a year was a long time.

She should call 911. Rummaging in the bottom of her bag, she found her phone. After punching in the number, she gave the operator her name and location.

“Somebody tried to kill me. He shot at me.”

“The police are on their way, ma’am. I need you to stay on the line and—”

“I need Jack.”

“Who is Jack?”

“I have to call Jack.”

“Ma’am, I need you to stay on the line so—”

But Isabelle had already disconnected. Jack knew about being shot at. He could help her. She pulled up his name and hit the call button. “Please answer.”

She needed Jack.

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