Wait and See (Kendra Michaels #12)

Prologue

Adam Lynch ducked as another bullet whizzed by his head. Didn’t these assholes know he had a plane to catch?

BLAM!

Nope, they obviously didn’t care. Lynch crouched low and bolted toward a pile of concrete and crumbling tile.

He was at the site of a nineteenth-century school building in what had once been a thriving factory town in these hills.

Now, however, the factory, shops, homes, and schools were rubble, relics of a bygone era.

Which he would be, too, if he didn’t find a way out of here, Lynch thought. If he counted correctly, there were four men trying to kill him. He leaned over and found an opening between chunks of concrete and took aim with his automatic.

BLAM! The concrete next to his head exploded before he could squeeze off his shot. He’d been spotted! Lynch rolled away and scrambled toward the remains of a gardening shed.

He stopped to listen.

Three sets of footsteps were charging toward his old location.

But where in the hell was the fourth?

More footsteps, behind him.

He spun around and threw his knife. Contact! Right in the chest. His would-be killer fell less than fifteen feet away.

Close one. He was probably luckier than he should have been. Can’t depend on that kind of luck again.

This was supposed to be a simple mission, he thought ruefully. Fly to the U.K., set up the target, then get the hell out of Dodge.

No such luck.

The simplest jobs were always the ones that could get you killed, his mentor had often told him. The guy was so right; after a lifetime of dangerous missions all over the world, he’d been killed by a dumb, dirty cop in rural Mississippi.

Lynch shook his head. He wasn’t going down. Not here, not today. He retrieved his knife from the man’s body and pressed himself against the old gardening shed.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! Bullets riddled the backside of the shed, penetrating the tin walls all around him. Except one, which skimmed his back and went through his upper arm.

Dammit! Lynch grabbed his wounded left arm and rolled several feet toward a rusty VW bus. Which, he realized, probably wouldn’t stop bullets any more than the shed.

He stopped and listened. All the movement was still on the other side of the shed. But they were coming his way.

He needed to play offense, not defense.

His sleeve was sopping with blood. Shit. The wound was more serious than he thought. It hurt like hell, and he was getting lightheaded.

Fight through it. He’d been through worse.

“Mr. Lynch . . .” It was a man’s voice speaking in an Eastern European accent. “We don’t want to kill you.”

Sure they didn’t.

He continued. “We just need some information.”

He knew exactly what they wanted, and he also knew that a bullet to his brain would quickly follow. No dice.

Was he trying to elicit a response from him so they could zero in on his location?

No, he realized. The guy was trying to distract him, to keep him from hearing the two other men surely heading his way.

“What do you say, Mr. Lynch? Do we have a deal?”

Lynch peered underneath the van and surveyed the broken patio beyond. No sign of his pursuers, but there was something he couldn’t immediately identify . . .

Ah, hell.

It was a spotty trail of his own blood, leading directly to him. If the gunmen hadn’t spotted it yet, they soon would. He took off his shirt and wrapped it tightly around his upper arm and the minor wound across his back. That would stop the blood trail, at least for the moment.

Wait a minute . . . Maybe this could work in his favor.

As he watched, two large pairs of feet in matching combat boots stopped at the trail of blood. That’s it, guys, put it together . . .

Lynch loosened his shirt and backed away, drizzling more of his blood over the cracked pavement. He rewrapped his makeshift bandage and took a new position behind a stack of tractor tires, faded and worn from their age and exposure to the elements.

The men were trying to be quiet as they crept toward the van, but Lynch could hear them splitting up and moving to either side.

The first man appeared from the rear, his assault rifle extended before him. The second man appeared from the front a heartbeat later. They studied the pool of blood where Lynch had been standing only a minute before.

BLAM! BLAM! Lynch dropped them both with two quick shots. The men practically fell on top of each other, dead.

Lynch ran toward the road that had led him to this desolate spot. From there it would only be a mile and a half to the spot where he’d stashed his car, and from there he could—

Oh, shit.

A group of eight men were waiting for him on the road, dressed in the same boots and fatigues as the men he had just killed.

Lynch dropped his automatic and raised his hands. No way could he take on this squad and hope to come out alive. He was good, but he wasn’t that good.

“Still not ready to make a deal?” It was again the man with the Eastern European accent, who had stepped onto the road from behind him. “I wasn’t pleased you managed to take down that many of our men. Unfortunate for you. You’ll wish you’d died much sooner once we start questioning you . . .”

Lynch’s vision blurred, and it was suddenly impossible for him to form words. He had lost too much blood . . .

He staggered backward as the world spun around him.

The pavement raced toward him.

Darkness.