Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel Read Online Free Page A

in a DMV picture, she was beautiful. She’d obviously dropped her bag on the way into the house, along with the bag of groceries and bottle of cab. He set the bag aside to return to her, when he got her home.
    Somehow the kids’ guinea pig was still in its cage, even though the enclosure had been knocked to the floor. Nick righted the cage, cleaned it out, and gave the animal some water along with an extra-large portion of food before hunting down the family cat in the laundry room. He fed her as well, dumping what he estimated would be a week’s worth of kibble in her dish.
    The normalcy of those actions kept his fury at a slow boil, but when he was done with the simple chores, his anger roared to the surface again. Still, he knew fury was better than the naked fear that lay under that anger. He ignored the white-knuckle terror as he continued searching, hoping to find some scrap of evidence that would give him a clue to Jennifer’s whereabouts. He already had a fair guess as to who’d taken her. Most likely it was Cesar’s brother, Ernesto Vega.
    Amid the debris he spied the ladder-back chair from the photograph he’d received. The chair was upright in front of the fireplace with a manila envelope on the seat, just like the one he’d received in Grand Cayman. His name was printed on the outside. Inside was a piece of stationery, and another photo.
    He took a gulp of air before studying the picture. Jennifer was lying on a bed—asleep or dead, he couldn’t be sure. He prayed she was merely sleeping. She wore a blouse and a trim tailored skirt, but her shirt was torn and simply knotted at her waist. She looked extraordinarily vulnerable: hands tied behind her back, eyes closed.
    If you want to see your sister-in-law alive again, come to the Gaylord. Suite 345, Saturday at noon. She’ll remain drugged until then. Remember, it’s always personal.
    Damn. Nick wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or terrified at the confirmation. They thought Jennifer was Angela. How could they have made that mistake?
    The two women didn’t look at all alike. Then he remembered the platinum blonde hair in the photo, and it was easy to understand how the error had occurred.
    God. It was what he’d always been most afraid of and what he’d worked so hard to prevent—his work putting the people he cared for at risk. Still, he was grateful that Ernesto didn’t know as much about him and his past as he’d originally feared. Except by now, of course, they might have figured things out.
    He reread the note. He had to focus. Saturday at noon. That was in two hours.
    Drugged.
    He recalled Jenny’s affinity for health food and her aversion to even taking aspirin from that summer they’d spent so much time together. A future doctoral candidate, she’d already been a natural teacher. Late at night, lying side by side in his bed, she had made the history of dinosaurs come alive, a topic that hadn’t interested him since he was a child.
    She’d understood him in ways no one had, before or since. In the weeks after his parents’ accident, as his father’s reputation was destroyed posthumously in the press, Jenny had been the person he could count on when it felt like everyone else had turned their back.
    Her support had enabled him to sort through the horrific media storm surrounding his father’s alleged embezzlement and the subsequent dismantling of the Donovan law firm. That summer had led Nick to re-evaluate everything in his life, and he’d chosen to join the Navy instead of attending law school. He’d never told Jennifer how much she’d influenced that decision, or that she’d held him together when he’d felt like his world was falling apart.
    They’d stayed in touch, for a few months at least. Even when she’d quit returning his calls and emails with no explanation, he’d kept up with her through Angela. Had he really thought Jenny’d wait for him?
    Why had she quit returning his calls in the first place?
    God, he was