“I'd do it if I were you; Speirs can drop you like this.” Mr. K moved beside him and lifted his hands to snap his fingers.
O'Keefe glanced at K and Aaron pulled the trigger, the sharp ping from his Beretta pierced the room and ended in O’Keefe’s shoulder. The fake CIA agent flew back, dropping the needle, and Aaron dove forward, catching Celine before she collapsed.
“Sweetheart, dammit, I'm so sorry. I should never have left you with him.” Fuck, he'd almost lost her again. “Did he hurt you?”
Celine coughed and draped her chest over his arm, gasping for breath, leaving Aaron struggling to catch his own at the close call.
K strode past them and knelt over O'Keefe, pressing his gun to the man’s temple. “How did Mr. J get in here?”
O’Keefe held onto his bleeding arm and glared up at K. “Don’t know any Mr. J.”
Aaron broke into the conversation. “What about Jack Mankel?”
Celine gasped.
O’Keefe’s already pale skin dropped another shade and he clenched his jaw. Agent K tossed Aaron a questioning glance but picked up the hint seamlessly. He pressed his gun harder into O’Keefe’s temple. “Talk before I redecorate my room with your brains.”
“All I know is I was hired to finish the blonde off. Last minute job. Strictly cash. Nothing more.”
“He’s lying.” K moved the gun from O’Keefe’s head to his stomach. “You know how long it will take you to bleed out from a gunshot wound in the spleen? A long fucking time.”
“I don’t know anything else.”
K caressed the trigger and Aaron tucked Celine’s face to his chest, unsure if K would actually fire or not. His normally carefully calm demeanor seemed to have been eradicated and replaced with a man on the edge of control.
“Speirs, you should cover her ears,” K said.
“No! Wait! Jack Mankel, yeah, I remember now. He’s got a palace near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. A daughter. Big blond guy who works for him with a nasty scar down his face.”
K eased off the trigger and Aaron blew out a low sigh. “Keep talking.”
“He’s been working for Zafar el Abdul. Runs all his covert missions with a couple of secret groups of ex-ops and off the radar assassins. No one really knows anything else about him or his teams except that you donotfuck with him unless you want to die a very painful death.”
Alarm filtered through Aaron at the thought of J having control of his own teams. He had a feeling he was missing some giant clue – What would J want with Caroline Cotter? He had to have enough money now. He had power. He apparently had control of terrorist movements around the globe. “So why did he kidnap the girls?”
“Who knows?”
K glanced over his shoulder at Aaron. “You know that connection I was telling you about in the hallway?”
Shit. Therewassomething going on between the two men. Aaron caught a movement, O’Keefe sliding his good arm down his side to his hip. “K!”
Agent K spun and pulled his gun in one seamless motion. A shot blasted through the room and O’Keefe went limp, the gun in his hand clattering to the floor.
“Good shot,” Aaron said to K with a chin lift.
“Dammit, I wanted to interrogate him more. Gonna check him for I.D.”
Celine shook in his arms, her teeth chattering. Aaron carried her over to the chair to cuddle against his chest. “Take slow breaths. There you go. Count. One, two, three. You're doing great.”
He rubbed her back and held her loose but tight at the same time as he tried to take his own advice and calm the fuck down.
“No I.D. I knew it. I'll have my boys do a complete analysis. Fingerprints, DNA. By tomorrow morning I'll have his full history.” Agent K dropped O'Keefe's coat and stood, holding the security card from the dead man in his hand. “Don't know how he got this though. We only issue these once and only to people handpicked to be on this floor. I'm gonna have to run through every single person that has access.”
“One of the men sent to pick us up, Eli, had an access card, too,” Aaron said.
Celine coughed again and wrapped her hand around her throat. Angry red streaks painted her skin from her collar bone to her chin. If it didn't mean wasting a bullet, he'd put another one in O'Keefe's skull. “You're doing great, sweetheart. Slow and easy.”
“He - he - he tried to kill me.”
