Damon's Deal Read online

  “Oh my God, are you hurt?”

  “You could say that. Two bullets and I couldn’t get anybody to answer to get help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a friend’s. I just …” And she stopped and started to cry. “What’s happening?” she asked. “Why did we get targeted?”

  “I mean, the worst-case scenario,” Tasha guessed, “is that somebody we were working against found us.”

  “I know. I know. I was thinking of that. But why is none of the team answering? I feel like we’ve been completely cut out.”

  “Have you talked to Terk at all?”

  “No, but he was just at my door. But I’m not there. I went into hiding.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I have an alarm set when my front door opens. And I saw his face go in and come out again, and he was pretty panicky.”

  Just then, as she said that, Damon’s phone went off with a call from Terk. Damon got up and answered it. “Yes, she’s here, and apparently Mera was also attacked. She’s been shot twice but both minor. She’s staying with a friend. She saw a video of you going into her apartment, but she didn’t reach out because, like Tasha, she didn’t know who the hell was after her. Now I’ll find out where she is, and we’ll collect her too.” He put away his phone, turned, and look back at Tasha.

  “I don’t think she wants to be collected,” Tasha noted quietly. “Mera, do you want to be collected?”

  “I want to know what’s going on.” Her voice trembled. “And, although neither of my injuries are severe, I don’t really want to be on the run right now. I don’t know how we’ll be protected because we’ve been cut off from all black ops support.”

  “Well, that’s because none of us work there anymore,” Tasha said bitterly. “Whoever targeted this attack chose a perfect day. Our last day.”

  “They did at that.”

  Tasha hesitated as Damon held out his hand. “Look. I’ve got Damon here. He’d like to speak to you.”

  “Damon? I thought they were all attacked.”

  Damon took the phone from Tasha’s hand. “Mera, I’m sorry. We have all been attacked. Two of our team are in deep comas. Several others are in a half-and-half state. Terk and I, well, Terk is fine. I’m okay, but I’ve lost most of my extrasensory skills.”

  At that, Tasha sucked in her breath and reached out a hand.

  “So I can tell you the attack was all encompassing. We’re still trying to track down Wilson. Have you spoken to him?”

  Mera was weeping on the other end. “I tried to call him, but I’m not getting any answer.”

  “Did you contact anybody in the government?”

  “I contacted everybody,” she cried out. “And it’s like complete silence.”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” he agreed. “It is complete silence on all fronts. We are alone now.”

  “Oh my God, what did we do?”

  “We didn’t do anything, and what we have to figure out is who’s behind it all.”

  “It’s terrifying,” she whispered. “I mean, I didn’t expect to be attacked.”

  “None of us did.” Damon’s tone was a little harsh.

  Tasha reached out a hand and frowned at him.

  He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and nodded. “I’m just like everybody else. Terrified of what’s going on. Scared to find out about the rest of the team.”

  “I’m staying where I am,” Mera stated firmly. “You can reach me at this number, but I need to heal.”

  “Tell me how bad it is.” His order allowed no argument.

  Yet Tasha heard the hesitation in her friend’s voice.

  “One in the shoulder and one in the thigh. Neither hit bone, only flesh, but I’m not up for running or in any fighting form.”

  “How will I know if you’re safe?” he asked. “When I don’t know where you are and I can’t see you?”

  “I know that is worrisome, but, right now, I know that I am safe, and that’s got to be enough.”

  He hesitated. “I gather you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t know whom to trust,” she replied quietly, “so, for the moment, I’ll just leave it as is.”

  “Fine, but please don’t do anything, don’t move, don’t contact any more government bodies. Give us a chance to sort this out, and we’ll get back to you.”

  “As long as you do,” she stated, “because, believe me, it feels very much like everybody has forgotten we existed.”

  “I know. We’re on it.”

  “Good luck,” she replied quietly. “And take care of Tasha.”

  “I will, but we also have to find Wilson. If you hear from him, call me.” And, with that, he gave her the new number on his phone and then handed the phone back to Tasha.

  “Mera, take care of yourself, please. I’ll go with Damon and see what we can sort out. They’ll need somebody to run equipment.”

  “What equipment?” Mera asked. “Everything was shut down. Remember?”

  “I know, and the office was cleared out overnight, according to Damon.”

  “Overnight? Well, that figures. We’re black ops. Still, you don’t expect to be betrayed like this.”

  “No, and you can bet we’ll find out what happened,” Tasha stated. “Please look after yourself though.”

  And, with that, Mera hung up.

  Chapter 3

  Damon looked over at Tasha. “What are you doing over here?” he asked, his hand motioning to the area around them. “Do you own this apartment too?”

  She winced. “I didn’t know where else to go, and I was afraid the shooter would come back,” she murmured.

  Damon nodded encouragingly.

  “So I did something I never thought I would do. I knew this couple were away on a holiday, so I picked the lock and came in.”

  “Picked the lock?”

  “We do learn a few things in standard basic training.”

  He nodded. “Absolutely. I just hadn’t realized you had learned anything important.”

  “Believe me. I haven’t done very much with it at all. But I can certainly see the value now.”

  He winced. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You really think we’ve all been terminated?”

  It was hard to process, yet it fit. Even with what had happened to her. “Yes. The question is whether it was supposed to be all of us or if some of us were expected to survive.”

  “I’m thinking that everybody was supposed to be terminated. It’s the only explanation for what happened to Mera and me.”

  “I think so too.” He gave an absent nod, his expression far away.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m worried about Wilson,” he admitted. “He was new to the team.”

  “Worried or suspicious?”

  He slid her a sideways glance. “Just for clarity, I’ll always be suspicious of everything right now,” he murmured, “until we get to the bottom of this.”

  She hesitated and then nodded. “He was new, but I think he was good. He was very good at what he did at least.”

  “Yes, and that can be used by other people. Everybody wants to capitalize on skills. And, like you and Mera, he had insider knowledge.”

  “I don’t think he would have done anything deliberately to hurt us all.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he murmured, as he stood. “You coming?”

  “Coming where?” she asked, looking at him. “Are you two organized? Have you a place for me? To live? To work? A secure place …”

  He gave her a wolfish grin. “Well, let’s just say that we’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so,” she murmured. She stood, looked around. “I really should make sure that nobody knows I’ve been here.”

  “Yep, we should, but chances are it’s too late for that.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you’ve been living here for a couple days …”

  “No
t quite.”

  “Right, then chances are you have already touched more things than just the two of us can clear.”

  She frowned. “We don’t have a clean-up team anymore, right?”

  “No,” he murmured, “not yet. We will have one set up again soon though.”

  “Let me get my things.”

  “Are they here?”

  “Yes, I took everything that was important out of there and brought it here, in case I needed to run.”

  “Smart thinking,” When she came out of the bedroom with one suitcase and a bag of personal stuff, he nodded. “It’s still a bit much but not bad.”

  She snorted. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to run on the fly. This was my home.”

  “And I’m sorry about that.”

  At least he sounded sincere. But the two to them had been studiously avoiding being too friendly for so long that it was a habit. What she really wanted was for him to hold her and to tell her it would be okay. Instead she said, “Well, I wasn’t planning on staying anyway. That’s what’s so darn frustrating. You know? If we’d been told that we had to go home, it would be a different story.”

  “What it did, in this case, was to have you sitting in your place, nice and quiet, holing up for them to reach you.”

  “You mean, making me an easy target on purpose?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Assholes,” she muttered, as she took her suitcase to the front door. She looked around and swore. “I hope these people don’t find out I was here.”

  “Hopefully they won’t even notice. But, just in case, do you have a towel or something?”

  She nodded, pulling one out, and they removed as much of her fingerprints and tracks as they could. As she stood at the doorway afterward, she nodded. “It looks pretty good.”

  “What about your place?”

  “Nothing to do. I threw out the bedding and flipped the mattress and ran. I didn’t even look for bullets”

  “They won’t make much difference in this case he said quietly. “This was a pro job.”

  “The lease is up in a couple days, and it was a furnished apartment.”

  “Good enough, as long as you didn’t leave anything behind.”

  She hesitated and then shrugged. “Maybe I better take another look.” And, with that, they skipped across the hall into her apartment, where they did a quick walk-through.

  “A few things are here,” he noted.

  She nodded, grabbed a garbage bag. “We can at least throw it into recycling.”

  With a quick glance around, he added, “Some of this could be what you just left behind.”

  “Exactly,” she agreed.

  With one final look, he walked out. She followed; they closed the doors, and, after checking that the other apartment was locked, they proceeded to dump the garbage bag into the bin. Carrying her suitcase, he led the way down the back stairs and outside. At the rear door he stopped and just let his senses fill in.

  “What are you doing?” she murmured just behind him.

  “Looking for danger.”

  “But your senses?”

  “I’m at about halfway,” he admitted, “which is bad because it’s enough that I think that I can use them, but it’s not enough that I’ll know of any blind spots.”

  “Well, I can tell you that it doesn’t look like anybody is out here.”

  “But, if it were you out there somewhere,” he noted, “and you were trying to completely terminate a whole group of people, wouldn’t you keep up surveillance?”

  “Not if I was cocky enough to assume I had already hit everybody.”

  “I got the impression that Mera was hit before you. Do you think so?”

  “Yes. So maybe our hitman assumed that, having got her, he also got me.”

  “We need to find Wilson.”

  “Agreed.” She looked over at his ride. “You ready to make a go to the truck?”

  He smiled at her. “You saw me arrive, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve been staring outside all day, trying to figure out what my next move was. I didn’t recognize the truck, but you’re pretty hard to hide.”

  “I guess,” he agreed, “even though that’s bad news too. I was so worried about you that I bolted straight here, instead of putting on a disguise.”

  “Well, you changed your walk and the way you hold yourself,” she noted, “but I’ve worked with you for three, four years now. So fooling me is a different story.” Not to mention her heart recognized him right away.

  Back at the truck, he turned on the engine. “Do you have an address for Wilson?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t.”

  “I had one on file, but I don’t know if it’s any good anymore.”

  “He lived on Rue Borda, didn’t he?”

  He nodded. And they headed out.

  “Why are we even still in Paris?” She rubbed her forehead. “I should have just left.”

  “And yet you were working right up until five o’clock yesterday, right? Or two days ago, I guess.”

  She nodded. “And?”

  “When would you have left?”

  “The next day, so yesterday!” At that he nodded. “Meaning?” she asked.

  “You were shot at that night. The only way you would have been safe was if you had booked flights out of the country right after work.”

  “So …” It took her a moment, and then she continued that thought in a low voice. “They really didn’t plan on us leaving, did they?”

  “No,” he replied quietly, “I don’t think they did.”

  “Or it was meant to look that way, but it wasn’t our government who did this.”

  “And I would love to think that, but, with all the communication taken down, we have no way of finding out.”

  “Right. That’s a problem too. What if our bosses were also hit?”

  He shot her a look, as he pulled out and turned a corner. “Now that hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “It is a possibility though, right?” she murmured.

  “Well, we’ll have to wait until we get secure lines to find out because we can’t take a chance of anybody else tracking us.”

  “I get it, but what if they’re in trouble?”

  “They have support.”

  “Which is something we don’t, right? Got it.” She shook her head. “I really don’t like the sound of that. We’ve always had money, flights, equipment, whatever we needed. We’ve always been able to call and have it ready and available for us.”

  “Yeah, and that is past tense.” He looked at her. “Now we’re on our own.”

  She looked at him. “You do remember that I don’t work for them anymore, right?”

  “Meaning?”

  She hesitated, and he continued. “I don’t either. Remember? None of us do.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What do you mean?” he challenged.

  She frowned. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want anything to do with this.” She raised both hands in frustration. “I thought I was retiring. I thought I would be out of this before I headed back stateside and could get a new life.”

  “What’s the matter with Paris?” he asked, with a lopsided grin.

  “A lot if it’s not secure,” she argued. “We don’t have the protection of the government anymore. If anything goes wrong, we’re the ones who go to jail.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “that’s very true. Chances are we would have had some protection before, but we couldn’t have guaranteed that. After all, we never got into that kind of trouble. Or … never got caught anyway.”

  “So what now? Do you think we’ll never get into trouble?” she asked.

  “I gather you want to go back stateside? Leave Paris? Leave this nightmare behind?”

  “Of course I do,” she stated. “I’ve got friends and family there, and so do you.”

  “Well, I don’t have any family. Plus we might end
up in England.”

  She nodded at that. “In a way, that would make sense. You have connections with some of those people.”

  “Well, we had connections through work,” he corrected.

  “Yes, but, after time, they become almost personal.”

  “Almost, yes, but we also don’t know if we’ve gotten the kibosh worldwide either. So far, nobody knows we’re alive and functioning still.”

  “And that’s the thing, you’re not fully functioning! And, without that, we have no team. We have no skills. We have no backup, no assets. We have nothing.”

  He shot her a hard glance. “We were all special ops before we joined this team. We still have skills, the same as everybody else.”

  “Great, but it always felt a whole lot better having that extra advantage.”

  Damon laughed, one of the first free sounds she’d heard from him. “I get it. I really do. And I agree it was a huge advantage to do some of the stuff that we did. But I sure as hell won’t roll over and show my belly just because some of my abilities have been hit.”

  “Sure, but you’re one in seven.”

  “Eight,” he corrected.

  “Fine, one in eight. But still it’s far from the same thing. Without the support of the government, we’re screwed.”

  “And what if it’s deliberate on the part of the government?”

  “Well, then we’re doubly screwed,” she cried out, “because they will track us down.”

  “How would they do that?”

  “Because they have as many resources as we had, plus they have the finances. We don’t have squat.”

  “We have the finances.” He smiled. “Absolutely no problem there.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Meaning, we can still get equipment and things that we need?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh.” She settled back then, pondering it.

  “Does that change things?”

  “Well, it helps,” she agreed cautiously. “Does it change things? I’m not so sure. Because if we’re really being hunted by our own people, there’s really no place to hide.”

  “No, but do you think that everybody will be okay with us being hunted?”

  “If they thought we were a danger, yes,” she noted quietly. “And there was talk about shutting us down for a long time because they were uncertain how stable you guys were.”