Forced to Change

Chapter 10

Carter traced the money from the ransoms to a powerful terrorist group run by a man named Jorge Riaz—the Commandant to his followers—to the place in Cantana. They were funding their cartel by kidnapping affluent American tourists and ransoming them back to their families. The Greenwich Country students were the largest group they'd taken to date and a payday they couldn't pass up.

When we breached the compound there was predawn silence, then a symphony of chaos. From our side, each shot was true, hitting its mark, and bodies fell in large numbers. As the blood-soaked ground cooled, the mission was considered a failure.

We rounded up all the servants and a few of the soldiers for interrogation, then we searched the camp thoroughly. It was on the second search of the main house that I found her, Kathryn Rollins. She was locked in an underground cell, tied under a long bench by her arms and legs. She was barely alive.

"Let me die," she pleaded.

I should have slit her throat. If I'd cut her throat she couldn't have said anything to me. Those three little words changed me. My hand paused in cutting her free because no one had ever asked me for death. It was the fact that I was cutting her free that gave me pause. My thoughts felt instantly singular in their focus. Kathryn Rollins.

Not one person in my decade and a half of killing for profit had ever asked me for death. Then this girl, who I was supposed to kill, wanted to die. It was like my heart restarted. I felt hope and despair, only I didn't recognize them. I hadn't had any feelings in a very long time.

I would have granted her request if not for the man who entered the cell behind me to watch my back. At least that's the lie I told myself as I finished cutting her free a full ten minutes after I found her alive.

***

My mind spliced together the briefing six years ago, Cantana, and the present. I had stopped processing in layers, but I was on a mission and my thinking slipped into the familiar routine.

"Let me die," she'd said. It was the irony of asking me for death. I would have been happy—well, I would have been content just living my life the way I always had—if not for Cantana and Kathryn. Yet I'd made her a promise in a field of snow just moments ago.

Everything mixed together in my head: the meeting, the mission, and the now. I tried to understand the events that caused me to know Katie Rollins. I knew a lot about the woman trembling in fear on the seat beside me in the car, probably more than any other person walking the earth than herself.

Katie was alive. She was alive and she had somehow survived almost six months of torture. I felt something I couldn't define for the broken, bruised, dehydrated, and starved girl. I should have killed her then and there, but even if asked now why I didn't, I still couldn't answer the question.

For twenty-four hours I was able to pretend she wasn't there to be saved. She'd just magically shown up at a hospital, alive. The media picked up the story. If Carter knew it was me that rescued her, he'd never said a word. I was paid, Hank was dead and I'd made sure Hank's family got his share. There should have been a price on my head, only there wasn't. For a while I thought I'd gotten away with it.

I should have let that be it. I should have let Jorge and Noel Riaz go. I hadn't, and since Cantana I'd been trying to track them down. "Lived off-mission" was correct. The problem was CJ shouldn't know that about me.

Carter made sure I had little to no options after I failed to complete a mission after Cantana. I still contended I completed that mission; I just missed Carter's deadline. As much as I wanted to I could no longer deny that Carter had a price on my head. Over the last five years he'd dried up almost all of my old contacts. I was easy to set up without my tried and true connections. So when CJ convinced me he knew the current whereabouts of Jorge and Noel Riaz, it was the perfect bait for me.

CJ had figured out who I was and he had my contract. I couldn't blame him for it; I'm sure I looked like easy money to him. I wasn't even mad, although I should have realized much sooner that he meant to kill me, not help me.

I watched Katie. She was quiet, hands tied behind her back, her feet next to my lap. My hands felt as tied as hers. All night I'd let CJ control every variable, but that was part of the deal. I needed the men we were after more than anything I'd ever needed in my life. CJ was just a clueless moron, the pawn in someone else's plan to eliminate me. I'd thought that once the brothers were dead I could finally close the book on Cantana and Kathryn Rollins.

I wanted to restore order to my life. If I could just finish off those men then kill her, it would be done. There was even a part of me that hoped Carter would rescind his kill order on me. I'd foolishly hoped we could go back to the way things had been before Cantana.

As CJ turned off the main road I could no longer deny the truth. He wasn't even subtle and I'd screwed up big time. The time for negotiating with CJ was over. If CJ had figured out I was onto him, he certainly was playing the part of clueless for all it was worth. The car continued toward the cabin.

There wasn't anything specific I could point to for my reasons for not liking the other man initially, but now, I couldn't believe how much I'd missed along the way. I was too distracted, focused on all the wrong things until it was too late to change anything. CJ made mistake after mistake which I dismissed, still hanging on for an end to this mess.

CJ was part of it, and therefore Katie's involvement was also part of that plan. Her involvement was my fault. Her gas station was where I'd told CJ to meet me. I didn't feel guilty about it; I just recognized that I probably should. I'd picked that gas station as the meeting point with CJ so I could watch her. I wanted, needed to see her.

She always filled up when her tank went below half full and that gas station was where she stopped on her way home from work. It was easy money that she would be there. She was the final piece and her involvement was too soon for my plans.

As I replayed the night in my head I knew I'd made CJ's job easy. His car had run out of gas, causing him to be late. He said his vehicle was more than a mile away, so by the time he arrived on foot we were racing against the clock, and although we were at a gas station it didn't make sense to return for his car.

Then CJ had needed to use the restroom. No coat, though. He'd walked a mile in the freezing cold without a coat? Katie had pulled in, and I got my glimpse. I even made eye contact with her while I waited for CJ to come out of the bathroom—not that she'd noticed me. My eyes saw hers, but she didn't really see me. The blond hair and blue contacts were part of my disguise. I wore them whenever there was a chance she'd see me, though before tonight she never had.

CJ was supposed to hotwire the cashier's truck, but it had a flat tire so CJ decided on Katie and her car. I would have waited for another customer, anyone but her. Really, she had nothing to do with the emotions running rampant through my body. Not that I could name one. Was I feeling anger, jealousy, hatred, fear, rage? I didn't know, but what I was feeling was different and wrong. Maybe a part of me wanted her, too. Lust?

I'd even tried to let Katie escape. I'd let her get out the door of the car. I realized letting her go could easily get her killed if CJ decided to go after her. Katie had gone down in the snow so close to the car I felt I had no choice. I chased her down and made a bunch of promises I had no idea how to keep.

There were too many coincidences that said she needed to be here, too. Why? I wondered. How long would it take CJ to make his move? As we approached the cabin it was obviously a setup. Why aren't you wearing a coat, CJ? Even from a distance I spotted a soft glow from the living room window. A flicker of a shadow crossed the light, almost undetectable to the naked eye, before the place went dark.

If the person inside had been one second faster I could have ignored CJ's follies with the excuse that he was naïve. I would have considered myself paranoid and continued to chalk up his errors to typical novice nervousness. There was only one person in the world that could have made all the things line up the way they had tonight and that person wasn't CJ.

I would never have made these types of mistakes before I met Katie. I wanted to place blame on her and her alone. Her very existence affected me. If I'd never met her in Cantana I wouldn't be strolling into what was, instead of a safe house, a kill house. My mind and body flipped instantly to killer mode. I knew what I had to do in every cell of my being. Find and kill.

I had to make CJ walk in the door first. Whoever was inside would expect me to enter first and that would be it. If I walked in as if I didn't know someone was inside he would just kill me. If I went through the door low, CJ would kill me from behind. My options were limited but the easiest one to control was who walked through the door first.

One thing worked in my favor. CJ, for whatever reason, had no intention of killing Katie. If he'd meant to kill her she'd be dead already. If his goal was to take me out and keep her alive I could make that work against him. A smarter man would have let her die in the process. The problem with letting her die was that she was once again my only link to Jorge and Noel Riaz. If I let her die to save myself I was no better off.

I made sure I carried her up the steps to the cabin. CJ hesitated at the door, which let me know my assumptions were right. I was supposed to go through the door first and CJ wanted Katie to live through the night.