Moving Target (Target #3)(12)

However, none of this adds up.

She wasn’t restrained. She seemed clearheaded and, most of all, she wasn’t a cowering, whimpering mess of a woman.

Disoriented. Determined. Pissed. Beautiful as ever. Maybe more so.

What am I thinking? Of course she is more beautiful now. When I met her, she was barely a woman, and now… now even with the bruises on her face, she’s altogether lovely. Altogether fire, and yet she trusted me to help her, even as she made her wants and needs known.

This is good. A woman who has been repeatedly abused would not be so… Chloe-like. So full of life and vinegar.

“How did this happen?” I ask quietly. Every so often, I glance in the rearview mirror. So far, no one is following us, but I changed the license plates as a precaution. “Start at the beginning and leave nothing out.”

She turns to me, her grey eyes dull. “Two years ago, my husband died. Mario—do you remember him?” I nod sharply. The best friend. Naturally, she would end up with him. “He made me another bucket list, a new one, and said I should complete it, since I’d spent most of my twenties taking care of him.”

“He was unwell?”

She nods, tears slipping down her cheeks. Quickly, she swipes them away. “He had bone cancer, and nothing worked. Not even PharmGen’s experimental stuff.”

My heart stutters. Could her husband have been one of the poor souls they’d experimented on without his knowledge or consent? “Experimental?”

She nods. “Yeah, they gave him all these drugs and a strain of chemo that hadn’t gone to market yet. The government paid for it because they said it was possible he’d gotten it on a mission. Something about chemicals in Syria—turns out Mario didn’t just work for the CIA. He did Black Op stuff. Anyway, they wanted to help.”

“I’m sorry nothing worked.”

“Me too,” she whispers.

I grip the steering wheel tighter, my jaw clenching. “So you were following your bucket list?”

“Yeah. I’d already done a couple of things on it, but the one I was really excited about was dancing under the Eiffel Tower with a stranger. I mean… it seemed like something the old Chloe would do.”

The old Chloe. The one who went home with me for a weekend. The one who I couldn’t decide is she were bait or the real thing, and ended up not giving a damn because I couldn’t help but want her.

“So there I was, dressed to the nines, and this guy comes up to me, asking me to dance. He was smooth. Too smooth, you know? I should have listened to my instincts. They were screaming at me that he was all wrong, but I didn’t listen. We danced and he led me away from the crowd, then uh, he covered my mouth with a cloth and I passed out. Woke up a day later.”

“Was the man still with you?”

She shakes her head. “No, a woman was there to help me. She was sort of like a nurse. They kept me fed and all, but they also kept me as high as a kite.”

“Do you know his name?”

“He never told me, and I didn’t ask.” She laughs nervously. “All I wanted to do was dance—nothing more, nothing less. Names didn’t matter.”

“Do you have any other… injuries?” I do not want to ask the question, but if I need to take her to a hospital, I will—my identity and my instructions be damned.

“No,” she says quietly. “They didn’t really do anything else to me.”

I blow out a steadying breath. “Good.”

“Yeah. Awesome.” She stops talking after that. A few minutes, she leans the seat back and closes her eyes.

On some level, she still trusts me. Sleep is when we are most vulnerable after all.

“I promise to keep you safe,” I tell her sleeping form. “I will find out who ordered this, and I will make them pay.”



It’s nearly evening when we arrive. I gently shake Chloe awake as soon as I park the car.

Her black lashes flutter, eyes opening slowly. A little smile curves her lips when she sees me, but then reality must set in because she all but growls at me to get away from her.

“We’re here,” I say, my tone flat.

“Oh goody.”

“I know you’re angry and scared, but trust me. I will let nothing bad happen to you.”

Her head whips around. “Trust you? The man transporting me to only God knows where?”

“I didn’t know it was you or a person at all. I thought it was just a package.”

“Just a package,” she all but sneers at me. “You expect me to believe you? You expect me to believe that you didn’t help them put me in the trunk?”

I struggle to remain calm under her accusation. “Ordinarily when I transport a package, it is an inanimate object. When a client hires me, they know what my hard limits are—no women, no children, and no men. Or animals.”

She blinks at me. “How humane of you.”

My jaw hardens. Chloe is nothing like the woman I once knew. “Stay in the car. I will come get you. Then we will secure a room for the evening while I figure out what’s going on.”

“Upping your fee?”

“Should have left you in the trunk to piss yourself.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to snatch them back. The look on Chloe’s face is heartbreaking. “Forgive me. My words were hastily spoken.”