CHAPTER TWO
Sawyer Cabot checked the time. Two minutes until Angela’s appointment would end. Despite what he assumed was discussed during that standing meeting, she would walk out, picture-perfect, as though she’d spent the day at the office instead of rehashing her nightmare past. Sawyer would escort her back to Titan headquarters, and his on-and-off job of keeping his eyes on Angela would be done.
A door to the small waiting room opened from the main hallway, and a woman entered, her gaze angled toward the patterned carpet. A dark gray burqa covered her head, draping over her shoulders and falling to the floor. Sawyer kept his eyes to himself, shifting his outstretched legs under his chair, and checked his watch again. One minute to go. He’d thought there had always been enough time between appointments for privacy’s sake.
The end of Angela’s session ticked by. The door didn’t open. If Angela was anything, it was on time. She ran a tight ship. Then again, therapy wasn’t exactly a conventional meeting. Sawyer trusted Ibrahim to watch the clock if Angela’s internal time management had gone off course.
Sawyer’s heel bounced. He watched and waited for Angela to walk out at any moment. Then reason caught up with instinct. They were at her therapist’s office. She hadn’t walked out of the appointment yet because something was happening back there. A breakthrough or an epiphany or whatever caused therapists to go beyond their scheduled time slots. This was a good thing. Sawyer wanted this for Angela.
His gaze shifted from the door to the other person in the waiting room. The woman nonchalantly paged through a magazine. Her oversized designer bag sat in the chair next to her. That bag probably cost more than his first car. He wouldn’t put it on the floor either.
Sawyer checked his watch. Angela should have exited by now. Ibrahim never ran long. Perhaps something was wrong. He knew the office layout. There was another way into Ibrahim’s office. The entrance opened into a private hallway with the therapist’s private office, a file room, and a locked egress point to the public hallway. He knew the blueprints of this floor like the back of his hand. Not that Sawyer had been worried. Memorizing the layout was just part of the job.
Ibrahim had been vetted. He was safe. The office was safe. No one could get in and or out without security-provided access. Still, Sawyer checked his watch. His gaze pivoted from the door Angela would exit to the door that led to the hall and elevators. He glanced at the woman with the handbag and wondered how much time Ibrahim built between appointments. It had never been an issue before.
Then again, maybe she wasn’t a client. A sales rep, maybe? Unscheduled drop-in? Unsettled energy corkscrewed up his back. Sawyer tapped his heel. Would interrupting Angela’s session cross the line? Ibrahim had a panic button. It hadn’t been activated.
Sawyer pushed out of his chair. He paced the tight space. The woman’s gaze followed him momentarily, then she settled her bag closer and returned to her magazine.
He checked his watch. Three minutes late. Something was wrong. Sawyer approached the door—but pulled back. Nothing was wrong on the other side. Even if something was wrong, Titan had systems to notify the world if Sawyer had to burst through the door. The likeliest situation was what…? Angela was having some deep therapeutic moments that Ibrahim didn’t want to interrupt. Or, even more likely, they’d lost track of time. Perhaps Ibrahim’s timer or clock hadn’t notified him of the session’s end.
The door handle twisted with a quiet metallic click, and the tenseness lodged in Sawyer’s chest released. He turned toward the voices coming through the cracked doorway. Angela, always polite, thanked Ibrahim for his time. Ibrahim, always quiet, thanked Angela for her hard work in their session.
Behind Sawyer, he sensed the waiting woman now stood. The hairs at the nape of his neck stood as well. A patient wouldn’t stand for their appointment before they were greeted. They wouldn’t approach before a patient from an earlier appointment had stepped through the threshold.
Sawyer turned.
The door that separated Angela and Ibrahim from the waiting room opened wide, and a rush of cool air kissed his neck.
“I’ll see you next week,” Ibrahim said.
The other woman moved. She was a blur of a burqa with a pistol in hand.
Sawyer reached for the door behind him. “Get back.”
“What—” Angela called.
The heavy door slammed amidst Angela’s cries. Sawyer lunged for the other woman. Her pistol-wielding hand jerked hard. Gunfire popped. Sawyer wasn’t hit. He wasn’t the target. Only a door separated this woman from Angela.
Sawyer attacked as the woman rebounded. Dark fabric flowed like a curtain of distraction. His mind registered the weapon. Compact. Self-loading. It might’ve been a Russian PSM, made for Soviet officials, with a history for KGB assassins. He’d never seen one before and couldn’t see it now. Blindly, he wrestled with the shooter. Her build was slight, but she was strong. Trained. They hit the floor. Gunfire popped again and again; he wasn’t the target.
Angela’s muffled scream reverberated in his head. Sawyer and the shooter rolled. Heavy office chairs scattered around them. Fabric floated like a labyrinthic barrier. He fought to find the PSM and grappled for a handhold.
The shooter moved like water. She twisted and kicked, and Sawyer finally caught her wrist. Their breaths labored. Her breathing was the only sound she made.
His grip tightened. “Let it go.”
She rolled hard. Her head and face covering pulled down. Sawyer didn’t lose his hold. His free hand wrapped around her neck. Adrenaline coursed through his system. The pistol fell from her grasp. He pushed it out of reach.
Behind him, the office door opened.
“Sawyer,” Angela cried.
“Get out of here.” Sawyer flipped the shooter onto her stomach and pinned her legs under his weight. Sweat pricked the back of his neck. “Go.”
“Angela,” Ibrahim snapped.
“Call Jared,” Sawyer demanded.
Angela skirted the perimeter of the upturned office. “Already done.”
He ripped a strip of fabric from the burqa, doubled it over, and wrapped the woman’s hands behind her back. His racing breath slowed. He repeated the process for her feet. Then he noticed the way Angela hovered. “Ange, what are you doing?”
“What do we do about her gun?” Angela asked warily.
“ We do nothing. Leave it.” Sawyer gave her a stern look, tore another strip of fabric, and tied the shooter to the furniture. He glanced at Angela again. She was too close. Too curious. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I wanted to see…” She crept closer. “The person who wants to kill me.”
Ibrahim stepped to Angela and reached for her shoulder. “Angela.” He half squeezed, half pulled her back. “She doesn’t want to kill you for a reason. You are only a target. A job.”
Sawyer ran his hand over the shooter. The quick pat-down produced a tactical knife strapped to her ankle. “Pham sent her. You know that.” Sawyer redoubled his pat-down, searching for communication gear. “You work alone?”
The woman didn’t reply.
“How the hell she found you, though…” His molars ground. “I’d like to know that.”
Angela broke free of Ibrahim. She inched closer and crouched an arm’s length from the subdued shooter.
“I’m not a target. I’m a person,” Angela said.
“Ange…” Sawyer shook his head. Trying to reason with an assassin wouldn’t be productive. Still, Angela leaned closer as though inspecting an oddity rather than a killer. He tried to elbow her back. “Get back into Ibrahim’s office.”
“Absolutely not.” Angela moved closer.
“Come on.” Sawyer blocked her with an arm. “Get back, Ange.”
“Angela.” The color had drained from Ibrahim’s face. “Listen to him. Come back with me.”
“No.”
Sawyer couldn’t read her expression, but her mascara was smeared under her eyes. The shooting hadn’t made her cry. Angela never cried during therapy—at least, as far as Sawyer knew. He glanced at Ibrahim and back to Angela as she edged in. Her breaths were eerily steady. A cold confidence flared in her dark eyes.
“Angela, can you get an ETA from Boss Man?” Sawyer asked.
“Jared will be here when he’s here.” The unfamiliar edge in her voice made his nerves tingle.
Sawyer touched her elbow. “You okay?”
“That woman tried to kill me.” Angela swatted his hand away and glared daggers at the shooter. “Pham sent you to kill me.”
With a thousand-yard stare, the woman’s eyes remained straight ahead, as though the other people weren’t in the room.
“I’ll get an update on Jared,” Ibrahim volunteered.
Sawyer nodded. “Thanks.” They’d had a major security breach. How the hell had anyone found Angela? They’d gone more than a year since Pham’s network had put a hit out on her. After all this time without so much as a blip, a lone assassin found her in Abu Dhabi.
Sawyer picked up the PSM. The lightweight pistol fit in the palm of his hand. He ejected the mag, pulled back the slide and lifted it from the frame, and removed the recoil spring, rendering the weapon temporarily useless. “Give her some room, Angela.”
Angela ignored him and poised before her attacker like a rattlesnake focused on its prey. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing, Ange. That’s the point.” He put the pistol and its parts on an end table piled with therapy and entertainment magazines. “You’re not a person to these people. You’re a target. A paycheck.”
Angela reared her hand back and slapped the assassin. The impact snapped her head to the side—a red welted handprint arose on her cheek.
Ibrahim jumped for Angela. Sawyer stared. Her crisp blouse was partially untucked from her skirt. Stray hairs had escaped her tight ponytail. Those details wouldn’t have been noticeable if he hadn’t known how exacting Angela was in her appearance and how tightly she tried to control life. “Let her go.”
Ibrahim shot him a look. Sawyer nodded. Angela had lost control. Her nostrils flared. He had no idea what had happened in her therapy session. But she was face to face with the threat they had been avoiding. It was real. Everything she tried to ignore, to play off and pretend didn’t exist, was very real and deadly.
Ibrahim let Angela go. She balanced in high heels and smoothed a skirt that made her legs go on for days.
The shooter probed the inside of her own cheek with her tongue and slowly faced ahead again, not saying a damn word.
“You want an answer that you’re not going to get,” Ibrahim said quietly.
Sawyer agreed. Ibrahim understood. Mercenary assassins didn’t offer chit-chat. They didn’t have experience with capture and forced conversations with their targets. They wouldn’t provide answers to questions from their near-kills, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to explain why they’d taken shots—at least not in a way that would make sense to Angela. Angela Sorenson was a payday.
He walked behind Angela and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Even if she had something to say, it won’t be what you want to hear.” Sawyer pressed his fingers into the straps of her Kevlar vest. “She’s a paid gun. A lone operative. The only thing she’s thinking about is her next move.” He kept his eyes on the shooter’s thousand-yard stare and dropped his voice. “She’s calculating how to get loose. How to eliminate everyone in the room. What to expect when Boss Man shows up. What to do when she’s moved to transport. How to handle lockup. How to escape.”
Angela glanced over her shoulder. From inches away, her eyes searched his. “She tried to kill me.”
For the first time, her voice betrayed fear. Anger curled in his chest. “Not if I’m around. Have you ever noticed what we do at work?” He laughed, but it didn’t lighten the mood.
Angela pulled away and glared as if she’d never considered that Titan dealt with risks of death on a nearly daily basis.
Sawyer let her walk to Ibrahim.
“Come,” Ibrahim urged. “Let’s go. We can talk in my office.”
“I have had enough therapy today.” Angela looked from Ibrahim to the shooter and then to the bullet holes that puckered the walls. Her gaze swept over the upturned furniture and returned to her therapist. “I’m sorry about your office.”
Sawyer snorted. The woman had dodged bullets and retaliated against her attacker, and now she offered an apology for chaos. “This isn’t on you, sweetheart.”
“To the contrary,” she murmured. “I’d say I’m one hundred percent the reason.”
Sawyer glanced at Ibrahim. They could team up and explain the hell out of the circumstances when she didn’t have adrenaline coursing through her blood. Angela was logical. This would make sense. But now was not the time. His only focus was on returning Angela safely to the fortress they called home.