Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(51)

“So what do they want?”

“As far as I can tell? Nothing. They seem happy to be churning out money and keeping a low profile. The last thing they want is to go public and have to hold quarterly earning calls and divulge who they do business with.”

I was adding things up. “They probably never even wanted to go public.”

“Which means three things. You’re not dealing with some little start-up. Care4 is a global, well-established company that deals with rough, shadowy clients. And unlike every other company I’ve heard of, they’re not peacocking, acting bigger and more successful than they actually are—they’re pretending to be much smaller.”

“Okay, that’s one.”

“Next. This woman you were tailing, Karen Li. If they weren’t worried about her ruining an IPO, what were they actually scared of? What was she taking?”

“Charles, she—”

He wasn’t finished. “Third. Maybe most important. A company that literally makes surveillance equipment. With contacts all over the world. Why would they come to you?” He looked intently at me, eyes serious. “You have to approach this woman you’re following, Nikki, and find out why Care4 is so scared of her, and what she is trying to take.”

“That’s the problem.”

“What do you mean, problem?”

“This woman. Karen Li. They got to her. She’s dead.”





27


I spent the night sleeping fitfully, wondering what Karen Li had hidden and how I could possibly figure out where it was in the next two weeks. It was starting to seem impossible. By early morning I had given up sleeping. I got dressed and headed for a taqueria down the block. If I was going to be awake thinking, coffee and breakfast might as well be involved. It wasn’t quite a plan, but having made even this small decision felt better. Outside the air was warm, the sky clear.

They grabbed me on the sidewalk.

Two of them. One on each arm. Hard. Squeezing up close to me so I couldn’t kick. Manhandling me toward a waiting black sedan. Someone inside the car shoved the rear passenger door open. They’d done this before. The whole thing took about five seconds.

Statistically speaking, the chances of surviving a kidnapping decreased dramatically as soon as you left public space. For instance, as soon as you were shoved into the backseat of a car. I waited until I was almost at the car door before I jerked my head sideways into the right-hand guy’s chin. He swore loudly and spit blood. His teeth must have caught lip or tongue. That encouraged me. I gave his instep a hard kick and jerked my arm away, pivoting to my left and aiming a right hook at the man on my left. That didn’t work as well. He rolled his shoulder up and caught the punch without releasing my arm. Then he got the other arm around my neck and pressed in with his full weight. He must have had at least fifty pounds on me. I poked for an eye but missed. By that time the first guy had stopped cursing and grabbed me again. He crammed in on top of me, crushing me into the car, the one on the left already inside, pulling me by the neck. The choreography wouldn’t have got them hired by the Bolshoi Theatre, but it was effective enough. They got me in the car.

The man to my right slammed the door shut.

The car accelerated.

I forced my body to relax. No point in wasting more energy. Not yet.

“You almost made me bite my tongue off!” The right-hand guy spit blood savagely onto the floor mat and added a few extra words that wouldn’t have made it onto network television.

“You’re talking just fine,” I pointed out.

He swore again but I wasn’t paying attention. Because I’d been able to take a look at my captors. I’d thought I was in a bad situation. It was actually worse. I was sitting in between the two men from Mendocino. The one on the left was heavily built, wearing the same leather jacket as he’d had in the San Francisco café. He had a ruddy face, short neck, and sandy hair. His mud-colored eyes watched me closely. The one on my right was thinner, with a Vandyke beard and sports coat. Both his hair and skin were the color of pumice. Both men had obvious holsters under their jackets.

I was seated in between the two men who had killed Karen Li.

They didn’t seem concerned that I’d seen their faces.

When it came to kidnapping, that was another not-so-good sign.

The man in the leather jacket was rooting around in my purse. He found the Beretta first, then the collapsible baton, and my keychain with a little container of pepper spray clipped onto it. He tossed the purse onto the front passenger seat and said, “We gotta pat her.”

The one on the right glared at me. “Don’t try to stop us.”

“Or?”

He shook his head impatiently. “So tough, aren’t you?”

The man in the leather jacket ran his hands down my body. I forced myself to allow it. Not that I had much of a choice. He was thorough. Also, to his credit, not lecherous. He didn’t shy away from feeling between my breasts, against my hips, and between my thighs, but he did it without pausing or groping or any of the million dirty tricks men did when patting a woman down. He found everything. The brass knuckles in my jacket pocket. The flat black leather sap I kept in my back pocket. The tiny .32 Derringer pistol in the ankle holster in my right boot.

The man in the leather jacket gave me a look. “Who are you looking to hurt, Nikki?”