Her Name Is Knight(Nena Knight #1)(3)

Nena didn’t have the heart to tell him he and Elin would never happen.

“Oh, look,” Elin said wryly, “the cavalry’s here.”

Keigel was handsome—even Nena thought so—with a headful of long locs, an immaculate beard, and brown eyes that betrayed how much of a softy he was. “What I just walk in on?” he asked.

“Nothing, lovie,” Elin cooed, trailing her long nails lightly along the angle of his jaw. He visibly melted from her touch. Stuff like that tickled her.

Nena barely heard their exchange, deep in her own thoughts—about the attorney, about her two upcoming jobs, about this party she didn’t want to go to. “Do I have to take a date?” She didn’t like surprises.

Elin slid past an openmouthed Keigel, gracing him with a heart-stopping smile. She called over her shoulder, “Naturally. But better pick one out before I do.”





3


AFTER


Up until this point, dispatch jobs were no different than clocking in at a nine-to-five. Her kills didn’t get a second thought. However, tonight, when the Miami sky looked like the inside of an African diamond mine, the thought of leading another mission zapped the strength from her. For a second, she’d rather have been navigating the perils of Miami’s elite than running through the upcoming dispatch of the Cuban cartel’s second-in-command for the millionth time.

A sense of unfulfillment sneaked up on her, making her wonder where this sudden ache welling up in the middle of her chest was coming from. What was she thinking? She chastised herself, swallowing down the wretched feeling as quickly as it had come upon her. Joining Dispatch had given her purpose and a blessed reprieve from a lifetime of cursed memories. Yet as Nena looked down at the rifle in her hands, she couldn’t help wondering if there was more to life than taking lives.

Her watch read 11:00 p.m.

“It’s time,” Witt announced through their imperceptible ear comms. He was holed up with Network, their all-seeing mission control, in the undisclosed location in Europe from which all their successful missions spooled.

“Echo, you copy?”

“Copy,” Nena said, tamping down her unease and shedding the rest of who she was. It was time, as Witt said, and that meant it was time to be the other half of her, time to be Echo. Just one name from her long, sordid history of names.

“The security system?” she asked.

Nena and Alpha, second-in-command of their five-person team, watched together as the red lights on Alpha’s handheld device flashed twice, then emitted a long flash before changing to green, confirming that the mansion’s security-and-surveillance system was off line and now running on Network’s feed. Anyone watching the cameras would see only a loop of the empty house and grounds.

Witt’s crackly voice always provided Nena a sense of calm. “Keep it clean, family. In and out.”

She, Alpha, Charlie, and Sierra pulled on the rest of their gear: night vision goggles, black ski masks, thin gloves to hide any identifying marks or their racial makeup.

The team slipped out of the black nondescript van, leaving X-ray behind in the driver’s seat. Covered in darkness, they crouched low, pausing before beginning their hustle toward the entry point. They moved in snakelike tandem through the ornate statues of naked women and cherubs lining the walkways. Each member swept the perimeter with their weapons, checking for guards.

The layout of the mansion and its grounds was burned in Nena’s memory as if she’d lived there all her life. It took them three minutes to cross the lawn using the bushes and palm trees for cover. They were coming up to the house when Nena spied two guards standing atop the low-slung shingled roof. She leveled her semi at her target and squeezed off a shot. Before the man was down, she aimed and shot again, dropping his partner. She’d been dispatching for so long that taking lives, even corrupt ones, elicited no more emotion from her than firing off an email. She didn’t relish killing. Killing just . . . was. It was keeping order and advancing the Tribe’s cause.

The Cuban’s new foray—peddling immigrants through their black-market transit system—jeopardized the Tribe’s business partnership with the organization. The Council wouldn’t allow their funds to support human trafficking. After all, was it not from their lands that so many Africans had been stolen, sold, and shipped to America to be enslaved? They’d never sanction that dark part of their history being revitalized. But Juarez, the Cuban, wasn’t the one who made the decisions. Juarez was only the face of their drug empire. It was his number two, Esteban Ruiz, who was the brains behind the face, marking Ruiz for dispatch. With him gone, the organization would be under the Tribe’s control and their wrongs set right by the Tribe’s standards.

She gave another signal, and her team split up, the other three branching off to their preplanned locations while she located the mark.

She found Ruiz where she’d known he’d be, behind his massive oak desk in his office. His executive chair was turned away, facing a wall of TV monitors, his head back, and at first, Nena thought he might be asleep. Even better.

She shouldered the strap of her rifle, pulling her sidearm and aiming it as she neared him. Her steps faltered when a deep groan emanated from him. That was when she noticed movement beneath him. He had one hand resting on the arm of the chair, the other . . .

She craned her neck, unable to tell where the hand was, only that it was moving. She didn’t even want to guess.