Page 70 of Red Line

A valet pulled up as Nomad leaped down the steps toward the street. Nomad looked over his shoulder to see an elderly couple descending the granite stairs. Nomad raced around the front of the sedan. “Excuse me,” he said, pressing the valet out of his way. “I just need to adjust.” Nomad toggled the seat’s motor, moving the driver’s chair toward the rear as far as it would go. He pressed another toggle to lean the seat back as far as it would go.

The man on the stairs raised his cane. “You there. Hey, you there!”

The valet realized that something was amiss and reached for Nomad’s arm. “There’s and emergency inside,” Nomad said as he thrust the valet away. This provided enough space and distraction to accordion-fold into the vehicle.

Nomad would never be one of those badasses that ran up to a car, threw himself behind the wheel, and took off with squealing tires. His frame just wasn’t made for such things.

Squeezed into the small space, Nomad pulled up the GPS on his phone, tracking one of the electronics he’d placed on Elena throughout their dances. As he tore down the block, he tried to figure out where the truck might be going so he could get out in front of them. There wasn’t much maneuverability in this older area of Vienna with its narrow streets.

Twice, he had thought he could guess their trajectory and tried to position himself to intercept, but then the van’s path changed. Nomad hadn’t put eyes on the van in this cat-and-mouse chase. The only reason he knew he wasn’t chasing a decoy was that there were too many trackers placed on Elena—her shoes, dress, purse, tiara (still in the kitchen)—for all of them to have been found and a plan constructed to send him on a chase.

Nomad called it in to command.

“Get her out of there,” came Colonel Watts’s command. “I don’t care how. Just do it.”

Nomad had already decided that was his tack. Elena had answers between her ears. And the Pentagon needed to know what they were.

“There you are,” he growled as he wove through the sparse late-evening traffic, moving up fast. He knew the driver had spotted him when the van took a sudden tire-squealing sharp left. The driver pressed the gas to juice the maneuver, making his backend fishtail.

“Tactical techniques perform differently in cars and delivery vans, my man,” Nomad said. He’d use that to his advantage. Nomad gunned his car, feeling the latent power of a German-made engine. This was tricky business. The goal here was to stop the vehicle in such a way that he could maintain Elena’s safety and extract her from the hands of four kidnappers with at least one gun. And then there was Grey’s date, the not-Mrs. Bland. She had to be on the good guy team. Right?

Other possibilities surfaced, such as Grey being the honeypot guy playing some role in her sphere.

Never assume.

As they moved up the road, doubling the speed in a residential neighborhood and dodging around the slower cars, Nomad heard the sirens.

Nomad edged up on the speeding vehicle. He was going to have to tap the bumper and spin the van. When he was weapons-ready, that was a no-brain decision. He was hesitant under these circumstances. Which was the bigger risk, stopping her here or waiting until the van reached its destination?

The van’s occupants must have heard the sirens, too. The driver’s foot became lead as he dragged the wheel sharply to the left, trying to make a last-second turn onto a ramp.

Take the risk.

Nomad pressed the gas and made a looser turn onto the ramp, hitting the far corner of the van’s bumper. It was enough impact to jar him, but he’d carefully positioned that strike so as not to set off his airbags. Immediately, he pulled his foot off the gas, letting the steep incline slow his speed rather than jamming on the brake.

Nomad pulled to the side and forced his body out of the car.

Already in a left-hand, over-juiced turn, Nomad’s tap had been enough to send the van into a wild ride around and arounduntil it came to rest against the wall, trapping the passenger side door shut.

Nomad, already in motion, reached into the trunk, grabbed a tire iron, and sprinted across the street. A mighty swing at the driver’s side window broke the glass as the driver threw himself to the side to dodge the blow.

Nomad punched the dazed driver in the temple, and he collapsed against the man in the middle.

The middle guy held up a protective hand to block the strike coming his way.What a useless waste of energy. Nomad put his lights out.

The third guy was trapped by the door and his companions. He wasn’t going to get in Nomad’s way.

Stalking to the back of the van, he found the door unlocked. He positioned himself so a bullet wouldn’t easily find him.

Inside, someone was screaming in agony.

With a tactical cleansing breath and the tire iron ready to swing into action, Nomad threw the doors wide.

Elena’s wrists were bound to a pipe overhead. There were bodies in underwear strewn across the floor surrounding a man, a screaming man.

Not-Mrs. Bland was also zip-tied to the pipe.

Nomad followed her body down her leg to her foot, where her high heel stabbed into the man’s palm with her full weight. A gun with a silencer rested between her feet.

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