Free Killing Time (One-Eyed Jacks) by Cindy Gerard

grounded herself by looking around the plane. Pretty basic, totally empty. Apparently the cargo business wasn’t merely a front. The passenger seats had been removed and the fuselage was rigged with nylon straps fixed to the floor to secure freight.
    “Let’s go.” Suddenly he was right behind her.
    She jumped and whirled around. Hyper- awareness. More proof that she was running on empty.
    He stuffed his passport and some cash into his hip pocket.
    “You travel light.”
    “I travel fast.” Face grim, he headed down the airstairs.
    Whatever that moment had been about earlier, he clearly hadn’t liked it any better than she had. Which was fine with her.
    “Now what?” she asked after he’d locked up and they were hustling back toward the hangar door.
    “This is your show, chica. You tell me.”
    After a quick look around outside to insure that they hadn’t been followed, he gripped her elbow and sprinted for the waiting cab.
    •   •   •
    Her Kevlar vest had stopped two rounds from penetrating her chest cavity. Besides saving her life, the vest had saved her from broken ribs when she’d hit the roof of the cab. Pain ripped through her body with every breath she drew, but she’d recover. It was her arm that worried her. She couldn’t feel her hand anymore, and blood still trickled sticky and warm down her arm, despite the makeshift tourniquet she’d forced the cabdriver to tie at gunpoint.
    Slumped in the backseat of the stinking, hot relic of a taxi, she felt herself slipping. Blood loss. Shock. Disbelief that she’d blown it so badly. That she’d become the prey. That both targets had gotten away.
    She was so damn pissed.
    “H . . . how long?” she asked in Spanish, disgusted by the weakness in her voice.
    The adrenaline that had mainlined through her system when she’d tumbled off the roof of the cab and had made it possible for her to crawl into the backseat had let her down. Her MP5K had easily persuaded him to speed away from the hotel, then park in a back alley several blocks away. It seemed like an eternity had passed since she’d made him use his phone to call the number she’d committed to memory before she’d left for Lima. She never commissioned a job without a contingency plan, and was anal-retentive about backup—even though she’d never had to use it until now.
    The cabbie quaked behind the wheel. “Twenty-seven minutes,” he said, the fear thick in his trembling voice. He’d learned quickly to be precise.
    Twenty-seven minutes. Two minutes since she’d asked the last time.
    What was taking so damn long? Someone should be here by now.
    She felt her eyes roll back in the sockets and her head fall backward, and she snapped to with a start. This was bad. She couldn’t win the battle to stay conscious much longer.
    But she had to hang on. Had to. She caught herself going under again and forced herself to a more upright position. Knowing she needed the shock of pain to keep her even semi-alert, she jabbed the barrel of the MP5K against her ribs. And bit back a scream asthe blinding, white-hot pain exploded through her brain.
    A black SUV suddenly pulled up parallel to the taxi. Two doors opened, then closed. The driver’s-side door of the cab flew open with a gruffly ordered, “¡Vaya!” Go.
    The cabdriver couldn’t get out from behind the wheel fast enough. He took off running down the alley, stumbled, righted himself, and disappeared in the dark as the rear door of the cab opened.
    “What took you . . . so fucking long?” she gritted out, fighting both unconsciousness and pain as a pair of strong arms reached inside and helped her out.
    “GPS isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. How bad?”
    She didn’t know this man or his driver. She only knew their service came highly recommended. “Bad enough.”
    “The doc is waiting,” he said, then picked her up when her knees buckled and her world went blacker than black.
    •   •   •
    It was 11:10 p.m. by the time