Page 6 of Acting on Instinct
“They thought you were in league with Elena?”
“To someone on the outside looking in, it would certainly seem that way. Here’s where it gets a little complicated. Red and I were not on the same mission in Austria. We joined forces later, in Amsterdam. Before that, in Austria, Red and I had to intervene on Elena’s behalf. The four would have seen Red and me on different occasions, protecting Elena’s movements. America wanted Elena to succeed in returning the ring.”
“That scenario amuses you,” Lynx said.
“In Vienna, these men had to be incredibly confused. I know I was, and I had at least half of the information.”
“You had yet to be introduced to Red at that point?” Lynx asked.
“I had seen Red on a previous assignment, but we did not speak.”
“I see,” Lynx said with a worried frown rippling momentarily on her brow.
And Nomad got the eerie feeling that she did see; that she saw entirely too much, like she could read the stories in the air that he exhaled. He found himself holding his breath.
He shouldn’t try to obfuscate anything.
This was why White brought him here, with her cloak-and-dagger attitude and her “wait until you see” mystery glint in her eyes.
“Bad guys want to do some big harm. They worked for about eight months to find the ring. Then the treasure wassnatched from them just before they reached the goal. Move forward in time, and there was the accident; what did they want to happen there? What was their goal?”
“I presume to kill us so that we couldn’t identify them. They also probably meant to take any electronics that we had with us that might include their images. Perhaps use our biometrics while our bodies were still warm.”
“Did they get hold of your electronics?” Lynx asked.
“No, I was able to defang the dragon, move our things to their car, and use that vehicle to get Red to the hospital for stabilization before the CIA swooped in and managed us.”
“This was a second vehicle. One of them hit you with a truck.”
“That’s right. I believe that one man was in the delivery truck. Three men were in the car behind us. I had clocked the car at a distance. The roads where I was traveling weren’t wide.”
“You weren’t on the highway, taking the fastest route?” Lynx asked.
This was all in the reports they’d submitted. It had been written up in the hot wash they’d endured. Yet, Nomad understood that Lynx was fishing for a decent place to drop a line into the murky water of this manhunt. “On the highway, there are guards in towers every few miles. They were watching all the license plates and tracking everyone. My understanding is that it has something to do with terrorism and moving illicit items. And too, ironically, there are a lot of traffic accidents in Morocco, and we were trying to keep ourselves out of that number. We didn’t want the government to be too aware of us as we were both using aliases and documentation that our institutions developed for our mission.”
“Your vehicle was hit. You came to. You recognized the man at your door. Tell me about the fight.” Lynx had stopped blinking as she glued her gaze on his face.
“Red said she couldn’t feel her legs. I had briefly been unconscious and was forcing my brain into combat mode—observe, orient, decide, and act. Meanwhile, they were already at my door. They used a window-breaking tool to get into my side. I pretended to remain unconscious.”
“They had weapons?”
Nomad stopped. “I think not. I don’t remember dispatching any weapons, and we didn’t look like we could give them any trouble.”
“Did anyone pass you by? Other traffic?”
“No.”
“So you knew there would be no witnesses and no help. What happened next?” Lynx asked.
“After I punched the guy’s lights out through the broken window, I was able to get out. I saw the truck that hit us rammed into our engine. The truck driver was momentarily incapacitated by the accident. That left two for me to contend with at once.”
Nomad paused.
“I get that reliving this is going to be hard for you,” Lynx said softly. “I’m sorry for that.”
Nomad thought that she was speaking from personal experience with trauma and that these words held deep meaning and weren’t simply platitudes.
“At the time, could you see with both eyes?”
