No Woman Left Behind by Julie Moffett Read Free Book Online Page B

Woodward and slammed his palm on the table. “I told you she doesn’t know him. Damn it. Move on.”
    Woodward jumped at the vehemence in Slash’s voice. “Fine. We can move on. Why don’t you assist me.”
    Slash pulled a chair over next to me. He sat down. “This isn’t about Pentz,
cara
. He’s secondary in all of this. His job was to send you a message, which is exactly what he did.”
    “Me? A message? Who would want to send me a message via a high profile assassin?”
    “That’s a very good question,” Woodward said. “It might have taken us a long time to figure that out except apparently part of Pentz’s assignment was to personally hand-deliver a message. If it hadn’t been for Slash at your parent’s house, he might have figured a more macabre way to do it.”
    Slash frowned and shook his head slightly, stopping Woodward from whatever he might have said next.
    I shivered. “Can we just cut to the bottom line, please?”
    Woodward took a drink of his coffee, regarding me thoughtfully. “The bottom line is that once we realized we were dealing with Pentz, our agents were able to piece together his activities for the past three days.”
    “And?”
    “He’s been travelling under the alias of Roman Krusky. Five days ago, he spent twenty-four hours in Tanzania, in the city of Mwanza, where we think he met his client.”
    “The client? The one who hired him to send me the so-called message?”
    “Yes. Roman Krusky entered the US via Miami two days ago.”
    “Okay, so what’s the message? Why is he so interested in me?”
    Woodward held up a plain white thumb drive. “We found this in your parents’ kitchen.”
    “He left a thumb drive in their kitchen?”
    “Yes. It’s addressed to you.”
    My stomach clenched. “What’s on it?”
    Slash put a hand on my back and began rubbing in small circles. “You need to steel yourself,
cara
. I don’t... I don’t know how to prepare you.”
    I felt his hand actually tremble through my sweater. He was scaring me way more than whatever was on that drive.
    “Slash, just tell me.” My voice wavered.
    He closed his eyes and then let out a breath. His hand tightened on my shoulder. “It’s Broodryk.”
    I blinked in surprise. “Broodryk?”
    Johannes Broodryk was a cyber mercenary from South Africa. He had his fingers in a wide range of cybercrimes for hire including human trafficking, drugs, money laundering and assassinations. He’d work for the highest bidder regardless of politics or ideology. We’d had an exchange of wits on my last case and I’d come out the victor. While he hadn’t been caught, I’d put a huge crimp in his worldwide cybercrime operations. I’d exposed him and now he was the number-one target of most intelligence and cyber agents all over the world. He had a big bone to chew and apparently wasn’t going to let me have the last word.
    Fear changed to anger. “What’s his deal? He put a hit on me with some bigwig assassin and then had the guy miss? On purpose? Help me out here, because I totally don’t get what he’s after.”
    Slash reached forward and pulled a laptop close to him. He opened it, typed in a password, then plugged the thumb drive in.
    The message was a video.
    He pushed play and a roaring sound filled my ears. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
    The first image that filled the screen was one of a brown-haired man gagged and bound to a chair.
    It was Elvis Zimmerman.

Chapter Eight
    A long time ago, when I was still a neophyte on the computer, I had dreams of controlling the world from my keyboard. I would be able to reach anyone, anywhere. Although I know better about my cyber capabilities and limitations now, at this moment, I wanted nothing more than to have the capacity to reach through the computer screen and bring Elvis to safety.
    I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the video. Someone on the screen was talking—Broodryk, maybe—but I couldn’t hear a word. I could only see Elvis