Kiss the Enemy (Slye Temp) (2 page)

Margaux entered a dark stretch of alley that had been used as a john for the homeless if that stink was any indication. She opened up her stride until she reached the tall chain-link fence surrounding the back lot of the global marketing company. Tanner stepped up and snipped an opening large enough for his wide body, which left plenty of room for her and Nick to slip through.

Sabrina’s hushed voice came through the comm. “Guards at entrance contained. Ryder has confirmation on identity of the New Jersey suspect as Tio Giovanni. Black hair, slender build, five-nine. Both guards positively identified as known enforcers for two separate crime syndicates.”

Margaux blinked at that news. Dingo could run facial recognition software
if
he was at a computer and
if
he had decent images. Had Sabrina sent someone ahead to set up a live feed at the front of the import company? Even so, Dingo didn’t have that access at the moment and Josh Carrington, the other techno whiz on the Slye Team, hadn’t been available tonight. Amanda, the research dynamo Sabrina had snaked from MI6 last year, was on vacation.

That would mean the images were very likely being sent to Ryder’s personal electronic superpower, an electronic analyst genius at the FBI who also happened to be his wife.

Sabrina would be pulling out all the stops to confirm as much as possible before sending in agents.

Tanner hung back as Margaux and Nick approached the building.

Nick spoke softly, asking, “Alarm status?”

Dingo’s voice came right back. “All clear, mate.”

If the alarm had been reset once everyone was inside as a security measure, Dingo had just disarmed it.

Nick moved silently up the metal steps to the rear door of the warehouse and went to work on the lock while Margaux covered his back.

When his hand touched her shoulder, she turned to enter a dark space that would be impossible to navigate without night vision gear. She took the lead, weaving her way with soft steps around forklifts and pallets stacked with merchandise covered in plastic wrap.

She stopped at the corner of tall metal shelving lined up in rows. A mirror set of towering gray structures loaded with inventory ran along the other side of the building, creating a wide walkway down the center.

There was enough space for two forklifts with eight-foot-wide loads to easily pass each other.

Or for two men to meet in the center of the building sixty feet away and discuss destroying parts of this city. A single mercury vapor light glowed bluish-white overhead, leaving the rest of the warehouse in pitch dark.

Nick eased forward and peeked over her shoulder. A guard stood two strides behind each respective boss.

Margaux assessed the room. Lots of metal angles for bullets to ricochet against.

But there were only two exits.

Dread clawed along her neck.
Why?

This felt rushed, which couldn’t be helped since there was no way to plan for when intel would arrive. Besides, this was what Slye Temp excelled at—moving on a hot tip without red tape, then fading into the shadows so alphabet agencies took the credit.

And taking on missions that stopped powerful criminals.

Margaux’s snitch had given her pieces of intel that alluded to the Banker making the payoff tonight. But not enough information to say for sure.

Eight months ago, Sabrina would have been open to the possibility of going after that bastard on a good hunch, but not after a source—translation, Sabrina’s friend in the CIA—said agencies had been tracking the Banker’s ties to international terrorist events for years. According to her source, there was no intel to support the Banker having entered the US at any point in the past or present.

There were no known photographs of the Banker, and Sabrina’s CIA friend had shared that the Banker was believed to presently be holed up in Germany.

That settled that, which was why Margaux didn’t bring up the bastard’s name and draw Sabrina’s ire again.

Margaux’s new goal was regaining the respect she’d once enjoyed before she’d let an obsession make her team think she’d gone rogue. She hadn’t, and no way would she allow her personal issues to end with letting her team down.

Sabrina ordered, “Stand down. The second suspect can’t be confirmed as a known terrorist.”

Nick muttered, “Fuck.” 

He took the word right out of Margaux’s mouth. She eyed the two men who were now shaking hands as if their business was concluded. The pause that followed stretched until Sabrina said, “Margaux I need any other intel you’ve got on this guy.
Anything
else from your snitch I can use.”

Son of a bitch. Decision time. Margaux swallowed and made a leap of faith, whispering into her mic, “My snitch said this
might
involve the Banker, but he did
not
have confirmation. I dismissed that as insignificant since we were told the Banker is not in this country.”

But the snitch had argued that this terrorist was rumored to have put out a hit on an FBI agent eight months ago for interfering with his operation. That fit the description of the hit on Nanci.

“What are you saying?” Sabrina asked.

Margaux regretted all the months she’d focused on the Banker, because right now everyone had to be thinking he was at the core of her investment for this op. She said, “There
is
a chance the unidentified suspect could be the Banker, which would explain not being able to confirm identification as a terrorist. I didn’t tell you because it was only speculation and that was never the point of this op. This is about stopping an attack on Atlanta.”

Silence answered her.

She glanced at Nick.

He rolled his eyes, an action she was sure the rest of the team mirrored at this same moment.

Nick didn’t activate his mic when he whispered right at her ear. “How long have you been suicidal?”

Margaux left her mic off as well to answer him in a hushed voice. “How is this suicidal with an entire team?”

“I didn’t mean this.” He nodded to the left toward the targets. “I meant stomping on Sabrina’s last good nerve.”

“I’m not saying it’s him.”  She paused, wishing she were anywhere else right now. “But what if it is?”  Regardless of what happened eight months ago, if this was the Banker they had the chance to take down someone who brokered the deaths of thousands, and they all knew it.

“Hey, I’m in.”

And just like that, Nick was at the top of her favorite partners list.

Ryder’s voice came on the comm. “We’ve got company. A sporte ute pulling into the drive. I count at least four inside. Time to move or get out.”

Margaux held her breath, not sure what she hoped Sabrina would decide, but if they pulled back they’d lose the terrorist and Giovanni, and maybe sign the death warrants for thousands of innocent people.”

Sabrina finally said, “Op is a go.”  She paused then ordered, “Move in.”

Margaux nodded at Nick then she slipped around the corner with Nick on her left side. She aimed at the guard on her right. Nick would take the one on the left.

Giovanni turned to speak to his guard.

Dingo and Sabrina would be approaching from the front, one covering the terrorist and the other watching Giovanni. It was imperative to bring those two out alive.

Everything sharpened in Margaux’s surroundings. Time took on a life of its own, slowing until everything was in sharp focus.

Sabrina’s booming order ripped through the room. “Hands in the air. Now!”

Did they do that? Of course not.

That would have been too damn easy
,

Both guards spun, shooting toward Dingo and Sabrina’s positions as they did.

The terrorist sank into a squat, and Giovanni dropped to the floor, rolling away, but he had nowhere to go beyond the shelves.

Margaux took out her guard with one shot to the head.

Nick hit his target but missed the kill shot only because Giovanni knocked the guard into the shelves where he continued unloading his magazine.

Bullets pinged against metal and the smell of gunpowder filled the air.

With the rapid fire reverberating, the unknown terrorist must have decided the only threat was coming from the entrance, which had to be why he made a dash for the rear of the building.

He was in his forties, twenty pounds overweight, and must not have been able to bring a weapon into the meet because he had yet to pull one.

Even better? He was heading straight for where Margaux waited. This was too good to be true. Finally, something was going right.

She told Nick, “I got this.”

The shooting stopped. Pounding footsteps were the only sound interrupting the sudden silence.

Eight feet from where Margaux hid in the shadows, the suspect looked up as she stepped out. His eyes bulged with shock then rage. She moved forward before he could react and put her weight into the motion, taking advantage of his forward momentum. She hooked an arm around his neck to clothesline him to the ground.

He hit hard. Crack-your-skull hard.

“Get up you piece of shit,” she ordered and kicked him in the side.

He groaned and grabbed his head. “You fucking …”

“The word you’re looking for is bitch.”

“You’re a woman? You
fucking whore
. You’re gonna burn for this.”

She smiled at him and squatted down. “We’ll see who burns.”

Sabrina came striding up with an HK 416 in her hands. “All clear. Guards inside neutralized. Giovanni is contained. Backup have the four new arrivals restrained and hooded outside. ”

Margaux searched his face for something that screamed merciless killer, but nothing magically pinged to identify him. Was this the Banker?

“Do you have any fucking clue what you just screwed up?” the suspect on the ground mumbled in a pain-filled voice.

Margaux prompted him. “By all means. Tell us what you were here to negotiate.”

He turned to her, his face twisted with more hatred than she thought a human was capable of expressing visually. “You just fucked a two-year deep undercover DEA operation that was one day from success. I’ll see every one of you buried for this.”

Sabrina demanded his superior’s name. When he gave it, she looked straight at Margaux and cursed.

The agent’s eyes rolled back in his head just as Ryder’s voice came over the comm in clipped, urgent tones. “Four Atlanta police units pulling up out front. Two unmarked units in back. Alphabet agencies. We’re burned.”

Blood rushed from Margaux’s head so fast she saw stars.

She was alive because no one knew she existed.

If she got arrested, she was as good as dead.

CHAPTER 2

Sabrina still wore the same black outfit when she walked into Margaux’s apartment at six in the morning, five hours after the busted op, but her ski mask was off and her black hair fell loose around her shoulders. For a deadly operative, she had a Catherine-Zeta-Jones look about her that made men who didn’t know her act like idiots.

The ones who did know her had enough sense to respect a lethal weapon even when it wore a dress.

Margaux shut the door and turned to lean against it with her hands in the pockets of her favorite jeans. Her hair was still damp from the shower she’d finally taken after trying to find Snake Eyes.

He couldn’t hide forever.

At Ryder’s word that the op was blown, Sabrina had turned to Margaux and given the signal that meant “get the hell out.”  Margaux had used her skills at stealth and evasion to do just that, but as far as she knew, the rest of the team had stayed on site. Maybe even gotten arrested.

Sabrina stopped in the middle of Margaux’s living room that she thought of as Shabby Chic, but accepted that it was just shabby. When Sabrina finally turned to her, she asked, “Did you find him?”

Margaux knew she meant Snake Eyes. “No.”

“Snitches go bad all the time.”

“It’s illogical. I was paying him well.”

“To hunt the Banker,” Sabrina said, finishing the unspoken part of that sentence.

Margaux shook her head. “I’ve paid him for all kinds of intel that we’ve used for good busts all over this country.” Finally she shrugged.

Sabrina spoke in her uber-pissed quiet voice. “I gave you warning after warning.”

Here it comes
. “I know.”

“I let you leave the scene when the DEA agent passed out.”

Margaux nodded, giving Sabrina the floor, because repeating “I know” or saying “I’m sorry” while she spoke would only make things worse.

If that were possible.

“I spent the last three hours pulling out every trick I could think of to keep my people out of jail and to convince the DEA that we had solid intel that those two were meeting to discuss a terrorist plot. Thankfully, White Hawk made it to Ryder’s van before the APD showed, because the minute that agent wakes up in the hospital tomorrow, he’s going to start screaming for the head of the woman who cracked his skull.”

More head nodding. How could Margaux possibly make this up to Sabrina and the team?

Sabrina crossed her arms. “I understand about Nanci’s death, but we all lose people. Especially in this business.”

“Wait a damn minute,” Margaux snarled. “I would never, and
I mean never
,  put the team in jeopardy for my own benefit or for anything less than solid intel. I told you everything I knew about that meeting. I was
not
chasing the Banker.”

“But you thought he’d be there.”

“Snake Eyes had a hunch and told me so, but I shut that down because it had no bearing on going after a terrorist with plans to kill people in Atlanta.”

“There was a time that I’d have taken that at face value, but what happened eight months ago changed you.”

Margaux started to argue, but Sabrina wasn’t finished. “I know what it is to lose someone that feels like losing a part of your body. I
tried
to get you to take some time to grieve, because you can’t help what it does to you. But you don’t have anyone besides this team. I made the mistake of allowing you to stay at work the entire time, and I told myself it was okay for you to spend time searching for a terrorist instead of climbing into a bottle or drugs. But you went too far this time for vengeance.”