The woman jumped.
Damon caught her easily, the impact negligible since she didn’t weigh much and was totally unencumbered. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she sprang out of his arms, plastering her back to the wall, fearful eyes wide and unblinking in the half-light.
Ready to leave her to her own devices—he didn’t need this complication—he sensed a bored spark approaching the corner of the building. With no time to bridge the gap and gather her up, he crouched down, making himself into as small a target as possible and flinging his black cloak around his shoulders and over his head. He didn’t draw his gun. A shot would only attract more attention.
Smoke drifted on the wind, acrid with the heaviness of Turkish tobacco, the smoker only a heartbeat behind. A soft scuff announced his arrival a split second later.
Luckily, the woman made an excellent distraction.
Gaping, the guard froze at the sight of the bloodied, naked blonde standing in the shadows, his cigarette falling to the ground. To Damon’s surprise, he shut his mouth and spun around, giving her his back, then quickly strode away.
Not questioning his good fortune, Damon stood up and thrust the cloak at the silent woman. “Here. Take it.” Even in this area, that much bare skin was cause for comment; she needed its coverage more than he did. When she didn’t move, he bundled her into the heavy black cloth, ignoring the smooth skin that brushed his fingers and the flinch she couldn’t suppress. None of his business. He couldn’t afford the complications. “Go.”
She went. Throwing an astonished look over her shoulder, she quickly limped down the alley, skittering like a panicked mouse but with enough presence of mind to duck behind a tree, into another lane and out of sight. In the span of seconds, it was as if she’d never been.
Damon stared after the hooker, wondering at the wisdom of his actions. It was little enough, but he didn’t hold out much hope for her chances. Even if she escaped her current pimp, she’d probably continue to pay her way on her back—but a life of whoredom had to be better than death at ibn Turki’s hands.
Since she’d had spirit left to fight for survival, he couldn’t have stood by and done nothing when it wouldn’t—quite— jeopardize his mission. Not when it would have meant facing Rory with the knowledge that he’d turned a blind eye to that woman’s death. Though why he put that much weight on a temporary partner’s opinion—and a thief’s at that—he didn’t know.
The strengthening of ibn Turki’s aura cut Damon’s internal debate short. Ignoring the raw bite of a sudden gust of wind, he withdrew to a safer distance. Giving the woman his cloak increased the possibility of detection and exposed him slightly more to the elements, but there was no risk of identification. When he’d bought the garment at the market, the shop had been doing land-office business due to the rains and unseasonably cool weather. There was nothing to connect it with him, except DNA. Despite his master thief’s abilities, to worry about the latter was pushing the edge of paranoia.
Taking cover behind another tree, he focused his mental sense. It should be interesting to see how his target reacted to the change in circumstances.
Pain and fear flared within the second-floor room, then outrage. After a few minutes, the murkiness moved slowly, in fits and spurts, reversing the route it had taken earlier. The hooker must have clouted ibn Turki a good one; the unsteady progress hinted at a concussion. Tracking it through the brothel, Damon ghosted up an alley to a spot with a view of the building’s door, wondering what the Saudi Arabian would do and how he would explain his injury.
Cursing vociferously, the Saudi Arabian shoved someone aside and staggered out the door, blood flowing from a gash on his head. A shout went up from his bodyguards; then they converged on him.
From where he stood, Damon couldn’t make out much of the conversation. Anger, chagrin, outrage, all those were clear to his mental sense, but whatever ibn Turki said didn’t reach him; however, it must have been effective. There was a concerted rush of brothel thugs to the rear of the building, marked by a furor of resentment, mock indignation—and very real fear.
But ibn Turki wasn’t done. Calling up his men, he left the brothel surrounded by a cloud of outrage and bodyguards. Though his gait was unsteady, his direction was unerring. He clearly had a destination in mind.
The Saudi Arabian crossed the mouth of the alley where Damon had taken up station, threatening retribution with typical braggadocio. It seemed that the hooker’s single-handed escape had morphed into a deep-seated plot against ibn Turki, with a band of men lying in wait in the brothel to ambush him.
Damon stifled a derisive snort at the self-serving fiction. Naturally, there was no one to gainsay ibn Turki’s version of the night’s events.
His target staggered on, but he didn’t go far. A few blocks later, he accosted the more heavily armed thugs stationed in front of another door. It immediately became obvious that ibn Turki was a valued guest.
The Saudi Arabian was ushered inside with due haste, the fawning reception apparently sufficient to mollify his outrage, since his aura soon shifted to one of calculation. His arrival stirred a hornet’s nest, if the number of men who rushed off shortly after was any indication. When ibn Turki emerged hours later, a smile of grim satisfaction thinned his lips, boding ill for someone.
A stocky, swarthy man swaggered beside him, flanked by bodyguards. Damon recognized him from his final briefing: Osum, given name unknown, the gang lord who controlled the surrounding streets. The Saudi Arabian had to be an important customer to merit his personal attention.
Damon drifted closer to study the Kosovar. Someone in the past had battered his nose to painful flatness. Added to a luxuriant mustache and the short bristles on full cheeks, it gave the gang lord a swinish appearance—but not one of a domestic pig. To Damon’s mind, Osum seemed more like a wild boar. Feral and dangerous when cornered.
The surrounding buildings discharged more thugs, spewing bunches and clumps until a potential mob filled the street. Dark anticipation hung in the night air, fetid with anger. But even without it, Damon knew something was about to happen.
Heads turned in a wave that started at the edge of the crowd. A subvocal growl rose around a knot of men, flowing on as people stepped aside to let them pass. In the middle, someone was resisting the advance and was dragged forward, in spite of his struggles, to stand before the gang lord.
Damon recognized the captive as the guard from the brothel who’d looked the other way when the hooker escaped. The man hadn’t actively helped her, but he hadn’t stopped her, either.
Standing on the steps to his building, Osum launched into a diatribe. From the tone of the ranting, much of which was delivered in Albanian dialect, the gang lord blamed the guard for the loss of a whore and his—and thereby the clan’s—loss of face with a valued customer, and had decided to make an example of him for his betrayal.
With ibn Turki gloating at the gang lord’s side, there was no question as to the fate of the hapless guard: if no one stood up to Osum, he would die.
Damon gritted his teeth against the inevitable. He’d calculated that equation long ago and drawn his conclusion: one man’s certain death was as nothing on the scales of duty when weighed against the countless other lives he’d sworn to protect. If he intervened in this case, he’d risk dying and leaving Rory to complete the mission on her own, essentially abandoning her in the middle of hostile territory. The thought stiffened his resolve.
Osum snorted loudly, setting off a roar of savage laughter from his audience. He shot the captive in the foot, then, while his victim was screaming, shot him again in the knee.
Pain crashed against Damon’s mental sense, an explosion of red amidst the fear and anger and sickening pleasure flowing from the crowd. His stomach lurched at the emissions. The pig was inflicting pain simply because he could. He kept his face blank with an effort, his disgust at the unnecessary violence a distraction he couldn’t afford. Sure cognizance of where his duty lay clashed with the excruciating pain and gut-wrenching terror the injured man radiated, and was barely sufficient to overcome the urge to interfere.
Damon had stayed too long, exposed himself too much, in his surveillance of ibn Turki. But he couldn’t leave without a silent promise: if there was anything he could do to undermine that mad boar without jeopardizing the mission, he would do it.
Stepping out of the shadows into the early grayness that preceded sunrise, he met Osum’s gaze, unflinching and determined. Sometimes the most difficult thing in the world to do was nothing. The bitter knowledge that he had to stand by and let the guard die was mitigated only by his vow that his death wouldn’t be for nothing.
The wave of cold anger Damon sensed in return told him he’d made an enemy, which was fine by him. He didn’t want to be friends. He’d have to step carefully, but even at the risk of exposure the gesture was worth it.
Certain he’d made an impression on the gang lord, Damon withdrew into the darkness. He continued to watch the torture from the shadows, unable to turn away while the man lived, accepting a share of the responsibility for what would follow.
The violence ended abruptly with a shot to the head. Two thugs gathered up the body and took it away, to be buried in a nameless grave like many others before him.
And through it all, ibn Turki had watched with gleeful self-satisfaction. The smug bastard.
If Damon could have taken out his target right at that moment, without risking the mission, he would have done so without any second thoughts. He could only be glad Rory hadn’t been around to witness this killing, whatever else she’d seen.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On both sides of the river, most of the buildings sat cheek by jowl, their walls built flush to one another. It made crossing to adjacent roofs a walk in the park—or a short climb—with only occasional descents to street level. However, the journey wasn’t entirely trouble free.
The cold night air bit at Rory’s exposed fingers as she crawled across yet another expanse of weathered brick tiles. Unfortunately, she had to leave them bare to find the nooks and crannies she needed to scale the walls of the town’s uneven skyline. Luckily, the rough tiles retained enough heat that her fingers didn’t go numb.
She ignored the discomfort, long inured to the realities of her work. Satisfaction sped her steps. Despite the horrors she continued to witness, she’d managed to finish planting the relays—the job interrupted by the storm—and was well on her way to memorizing the best routes to, from, and around Karadzic’s stronghold. Not bad for a few nights’ work.
Nothing moved in the rooftops. Even the pigeons were bedded down for the night, remaining silent when she passed, noticeable only because of the cloying pungency of their fresh droppings.
In the street below, a pack of dogs scrounged around some bushes slowly taking over the ruins of a bombed-out building. Farther away, a bobbing light illuminated the faces of first one, then another structure. Possibly a roving KFOR patrol.
Rory greeted the sight of the hostel with a sigh of relief, looking forward to getting out of the wind and cuddling up to Damon’s furnacelike heat. Confident that no one could see her, she swung off the roof and slipped through the open window. She pushed up her ski mask and pulled it off, releasing her hair from its constraints.
Damon didn’t react to her arrival. He didn’t even move in bed. She wished it was a testament of his acceptance of her, but the explanation wasn’t so heartwarming: he was on another hunt.
It chilled her to admit that, to know that a man she’d taken as a lover could kill so easily. She was safe while Damon needed her, probably even after then; maybe it was foolish of her, or simply because of how they’d met, but she couldn’t imagine that he would turn that lethal skill of his on her.
Yet she couldn’t countenance his hits. Felix’s teaching—that killing in the middle of a job was verboten since it upped the stakes for the cops—was too ingrained in her consciousness to simply disregard.
Rory stared at his sleeping form, clad in shirt and pants, ready for a quick getaway. He’d brought her more pleasure than she’d had in a while; yet even now he was on a mission, taking out another terrorist in his dreams.
Perhaps it was hypocritical, but the strength of will and ruthlessness necessary to do what he did excited her. However, it wasn’t without risk. Damon could die without waking up.
Her foolish heart skipped a beat at the thought.
His chest expanded suddenly, the way it did when he returned to himself. An instant later, his eyes opened, their chestnut brown almost golden, pinning her where she stood. “There you are.” As though he’d been searching for her.
The emotions she’d been struggling with choked her into silence. Relief at his safety and anger at his casual disregard for death-dealing twisted inside her, fighting like a pair of clawing, squalling cats. Despite her distaste for what he did, she couldn’t bring herself to call it murder, given his targets.
He jerked upright and caught her arm, pulling her down to sit beside him on the bed. “Are you okay?”
“Am I—” Rory sputtered into silence, unable to believe his question.
“What’s wrong?” Damon stroked her back, as though trying to soothe her.
“Do you have to do that?” she blurted out in a breathless rush. She was in no position to disapprove but could no longer silence her objections.
His hand stopped, coming to rest on her hip. “Do what?”
“You know.” Unable to find the words to explain, Rory flung her free arm wide, encompassing the world outside their room.
Damon’s eyes narrowed in comprehension, his gaze drilling into hers. “It’s what I do.”
“It complicates things.”
“Things?”
“I—” Rory shook her head in bafflement, not even sure what she wanted to say, much less how to say it.