Killing Time

13

“It’s not like you to be so late calling in.”

Eyes closed against the ripping pain in her side and arm, Jane forced herself to concentrate and clear the cobwebs the anesthesia had created in her brain.

She couldn’t allow herself to be so vulnerable again. The nurse hadn’t been happy when she’d refused pain medication after awakening from surgery, but she’d needed to regain lucidity for this conversation. She’d already lost several hours.

“I ran into a problem,” she said, struggling for a breath that didn’t make her sound as though she were dying. Weakness was the last thing she wanted to show him. Just like the last thing she wanted to do was disappoint him. “The targets detected me before I could take them out.”

The silence on the other end of the line was as loud as a jet engine. “Explain.”

As concisely and accurately as she could, she told him what had happened when she’d attempted to eliminate the woman and the man. She was out of breath and weak with pain when she finished.

“Oh, God. You’re injured.” The concern that suddenly darkened his voice almost made her weep.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Jane—”

“It’s okay. I… I’ll be okay.” The hot tear of frustration that trickled down her cheek felt like a double dose of defeat. “But I’m not going to be able to fulfill the contract.”

Another silence. “How bad?”

The surgeon had briefed her moments ago, telling her it would be six to eight weeks before she could consider any physical activity other than therapy on her arm. He’d also pleaded with her to accept pain medication to assist with her healing. “Not fatal. Just feels like it.”

“Where are you?”

She told him.

“I’m sending someone for you.”

She couldn’t stop the tears this time. No one had ever cared about her before. They cared about what she could do for them, but never about her.

“Thank you.”

But the line had already gone dead.

She closed her eyes and made herself focus on something other than the pain and this inexplicable flood of gratitude and relief that mixed with a blinding sense of failure.

She had failed him. She had failed herself.

And a man named Brown and a woman whose true name she did not yet know were responsible.

Which meant this was not over.

Halfway across the world the man she knew as Stingray stared morosely at his file on Jane Smith. With a regretful sigh, he closed it, then tossed it aside, rocking back in his desk chair.

He was disappointed in Jane. Very disappointed and, interestingly enough, extremely worried about her.

In the beginning, it was her total lack of conscience that had intrigued him. He’d often wondered what had been done to her as a child that had produced such a twisted, ruthless killer. The term cold-blooded was overused and therefore diminished in its significance, but not when it applied to Jane. She had no remorse. Felt no regret—except in failure.

The humiliation in her voice when she’d called and confessed the unthinkable had been heartbreaking. She’d been in agony, but she was a soldier. She had done her duty and made the difficult call.

He had few rules, and high expectations that those rules would be followed to the letter.

Jane had broken the cardinal rule. She’d compromised herself and therefore compromised his enterprises. Had she been any other contract for hire, he would have had her eliminated.

Instead, he’d dispatched a man to Lima to bring her back to him. He’d broken one of his own rules for her. And he wondered what that said about him. What it said about his feelings for her.

That would sort itself out eventually, he supposed. Right now, he had more pressing matters. He still had to deal with Eva Salinas and Mike Brown.

But first he had to find them.

He picked up the phone, hesitated, then made a call. He had contacts in the CIA. People who owed him. Hackers who could follow up on their leads. If Eva Salinas attempted to access any of her files, he’d soon find out which ones and where she was operating from. Soon after that she’d be dead. Her and Brown.