Mitch’s brow fell. This was the strangest information of all.
“That’s . . . weird. Halina was so antiviolence she wouldn’t let me kill a bug in the house.”
“Hello,” Kai said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “No one on the team but me had even held a gun before Schaeffer came into their lives. Now look at them—everyone but Seth is a near expert in every weapon from handguns to hand grenades, and even Seth carries when he feels the need. Schaeffer has a way of turning people violent.”
That was very true. And Mitch didn’t like the way this information was shaping up. He’d walked into this planned confrontation on solid ground: Halina was a traitor. And even while 80 percent of the information still pointed in that direction, he was getting undercurrents of something amiss.
Mitch joined light traffic on the main street, still alive with college students. “She hasn’t gone to the store since I’ve been following her. But she’s at the gym every day. What kind of classes does he teach there?”
“Krav Maga,” Kai said. “Luke says her instructor is an expert. Learned the techniques directly from Israeli Defense Forces during his time in the military.”
Mitch’s mind flipped back to his last sighting of Halina in a sports bra and shorts before she’d disappeared into the bathroom, then emerged in a silk slip of nothing before turning off the light for the night. The memory of all those sleek lines, the hint of ab and arm muscles created by subtle shadow, the fullness of her breasts against that dark silk . . .
At a stoplight, he squeezed his eyes shut and shook the image from his head. Yes, she definitely had the toned body of someone training hard. But the radical nature of Krav Maga, an aggressive self-defense technique focused on brutal counterattacks and utilizing a myriad of fighting techniques from street-grappling to judo was extreme, to say the least.
“Ryder, are you just screwing with me again?”
“No, dude, what I’m telling you the woman Dubrovsky was before is very different from the one we’re collecting information on now. This shit isn’t adding up. Which is why I think I’m getting these bizarre vibes.”
“Vibes.” Mitch rubbed tired eyes. “Really? You can’t give me something better than vibes?”
“She has two weapons registered in Heather’s name.”
Mitch swerved to the side of the road and stopped. He couldn’t drive with all this shit flying. “What?”
“Twenty-first-century update,” Kai said. “Chicks shoot guns. Even chicks who aren’t freaking snipers like Keira. And, I have to say, it really turns me on.”
“TMI. I don’t want to know what twisted shit turns you on, Ryder.” Mitch’s fingers had gone white around the steering wheel. “And Halina wasn’t any chick. I had one nine millimeter seven years ago and she hated that thing. When she found out I owned a gun, she got really weird for, like, days. Kept breaking dates with me. Refused to sleep with me until the damn thing was locked in a safe in the closet. She bought the freaking gun safe for me. Wouldn’t look at the gun, let alone touch it.”
“Aw,” Kai said as if he were talking to Mitch’s niece, Kat, about a skinned knee. “That really chinked your mojo, didn’t it, dude?”
Mitch slammed his palm against the steering wheel—tired, frustrated, confused. “Are you hearing me?”
“What?”
Mitch’s temper split. He opened his mouth to blast Ryder, but the guy burst out laughing first.
“God,” Mitch said, “you are such an asshole.”
“It’s so much fun to watch you unravel, Foster. I can’t wait to meet this chick.”
That wasn’t even funny. Mitch didn’t like the fact that others could see how Halina’s involvement in this mess and his impending confrontation with her unnerved him.
“Dude, you’d better be sleeping with one eye open when I get back.”
Kai’s laughter dimmed, but the humor remained in his voice when he said, “Both weapons are Heckler & Koch handguns. A forty and a forty-five.”
Mitch put a hand to his forehead and rolled his eyes. Those weren’t self-defense weapons. Those were killing weapons.
“You know how to pick the feisty ones, Foster. I’ve got to get back to work. Oh, but Luke told me to tell you to keep your smart-ass tongue in check when you talk to her. He said, and I quote, ‘Foster can’t afford to let her take his last ball.’ ”
Kai disconnected before Mitch could snipe back. He slammed the phone into the console between the seats with the same thought that had been rolling around his head for weeks. “Who the hell is this woman?”
Mitch passed a retail district near his hotel. He wanted to stop at one of the bars. Wanted to get just drunk enough to take some hot young thing back to the hotel and pound out this building stress. It was dulling his edge.
He glanced at the inviting neon as he passed, his body wound tight. This damn mess had kept him out of circulation for over two months. Way the hell too long for him to go without sex, which was contributing to his shitty mood. Only, he knew it wouldn’t help this time. Or worse, after watching Halina for the last thirty hours, sex with a stranger would backfire and his mind would go where it absolutely could not go.
He turned into the Summit Hotel’s parking lot, jogged to his suite, and headed to the shower. Turning it on hot, he stripped, set his gun on top of the pile, and stepped directly into the center of the spray. He groaned at the feel of pounding heat on his skin and angled the water so it poured over his neck and shoulders as he tried to stretch out the tension.
Krav Maga. Heckler & Koch handguns. Who the hell knew what else she was up to? Mitch tried to figure out this twist in the puzzle as he washed off. But by the time his temperature had risen to normal, and he’d compared the Halina he’d known to what he knew of this woman who now went by the name Heather, he was convinced he’d never known her at all. That he’d spent their almost-year together in a fantasy-laden fog. There was no other explanation for the drastic differences. At least none that added up to fit the evidence he’d collected.
Shit, he wasn’t looking forward to this confrontation. He didn’t want to see her. Didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to fight with her. The more he learned, the more he wanted to stay as far the hell away from her as possible. Yet in the next instant he wanted to get in her face. God, just thinking about what he’d gone through after she’d walked out made him livid.
A sound tugged at his ear. A sound outside the shower.
Mitch’s thoughts evaporated and the hair on his neck prickled into tiny needles. The skin across his shoulders rippled with gooseflesh.
He eyed the clothes piled on the floor through the gap between the curtain and the wall, and eased his hand through the space, reaching for his gun.
Gone.
Fuck.
The shower curtain whipped aside.
“Sonofabitch.” A mixture of shock and fear zipped up his spine and he straightened, peering across the steamy room and through the water dripping in his eyes. “You don’t even have the decency to wait until a guy is dressed? That’s seriously chickenshit—”
His next word, “dude,” melted in his mouth as his vision cleared and he focused.
On Halina.
Halina. Pointing one of those Heckler & Koch cannons at his chest.
TWO
Heather was already breathing hard when she’d finally forced herself to enter the bathroom. Now, she could barely keep from hyperventilating. And her hands were shaking. Maybe she didn’t have much cold-blooded killer running through her veins after all.