get the upper hand he couldn’t kill the bastard because he was the only one who knew where Alyssa was. He needed him to take him to her. “You killed Leo?”
“Wasn’t that hard with one well-placed shot.” He grinned. “I told you all I was good.”
“It was never a question of your skills, Nevin. The question was whether or not you had brains to accompany that brawn. Clearly you don’t. You kill a member of the Japanese mafia and you think you’re going to continue to breathe? Smooth,” he said. “I see why Rick denied you entry.” Rick had been so sure Nevin was wrong for the team. He remembered because Nevin was great, initially anyway, on paper. He had decorations, served significant time in the Army and was one of the best cryptologist enlisted, but it was what sat behind the initial read through that pushed him out of the running. There were a few things in his file, the deeper they looked, the more they found. And then when he interviewed with Rick there was clearly something that made Rick decide he wasn’t worth the risk. When Nevin had come to Shane, asking that he override Rick, because as everybody knew, he could override the decision given his rank and his position on the team, Shane said no. He trusted Rick’s instincts, and he also trusted his own. Two minutes with Nevin and he knew something wasn’t right about the guy. He didn’t care how many forms of martial arts he was skilled in, how many languages he spoke, or how great he had been in the field, the man simply wasn’t Dove Team caliber. He would probably sell his own mother to the Devil if it came down to him or her, and that’s not the kind of man they wanted on their team.
“You abandoned a man in the field.”
“He was dying,” he snapped as if that should have justified it.
“Dying, but not dead. You don’t leave a man behind.”
“Yeah well they didn’t kick me out of the Army for it.”
“That was their mistake,” he said. “We weren’t required to follow suit.” There was no way the man should have been allowed in service. He was a complete disappointment to the uniform, to the code, and they should have booted him out from the start. His stay probably had more to do with his father, a New York senator. He didn’t care why the Army left the man in; he only cared about one thing. “Tell me where she is and I might let you live.”
Nevin laughed as hard as he could while keeping his weapon trained on Shane. “Turn around and walk, but don’t do anything stupid because if you do, she will die up there.”
Shane couldn’t risk it. When Nevin got him to wherever he was holding Alyssa then he could kill the bastard, but right now he needed to play it safe. He needed to find her—preferably alive.
Alyssa and Leo pulled up outside Shane’s place. The cops and all the reports had kept them at her store longer than she would have liked, but she understood the need. “I didn’t know he was getting back today?” She looked at his truck, with the door wide open, but there were no lights on in the house. Her heart nearly skipped a beat. “Leo?”
“I see it,” he mumbled. He, like she, saw the papers from the file folder on the ground, the truck door still open and no Shane in sight. Something was wrong, very wrong. She hopped out the car the moment she put it in park and she ran over to his truck. Leo bent down and looked at the ground that her car’s headlights were still illuminating. “At least one man,” he said as he inched forward carefully and looked at the ground behind Shane’s truck. “They went that way.” He pointed ahead of them.
“How do you know that?”
“The ground is hard, but there’s dry dirt here and no wind. Footprints are still visible. I’m going after him.” He pulled his weapon from his boot. Shane had given him one of his guns for his protection detail for keeping her safe. Leo had brought a few knives with him, but he hadn’t brought his gun because he was flying commercially and as he had said, he didn’t want the hassle of getting it onboard.
Alyssa reached into the truck and checked underneath the passenger seat where Shane kept a spare weapon. She knew about