Chapter Twenty-Four

Nomad

Nomad had watched Elena take flight through the ballroom.

Not-Mrs. Bland had been right on her heels. Though she stayed in character, to his eye, she was definitely racing after Elena. What Nomad couldn't tell was if it not-Mrs. Bland was a menace or a help to Elena.

Getting to them had been a game of bumper cars as he dodged the now very tipsy revelers.

By the time Nomad got to the hall and pressed through the kitchen door, he found the staff huddled in the back corner, sobbing and yelling. Quickly enough, he understood two women had been kidnapped at gunpoint.

There was a blood smear on the floor. Some blood, but not a life-threatening amount.

"Who was bleeding?" Nomad demanded.

"One woman fought and failed. They dragged them away." She pointed to the exit. Nomad grabbed the handle and yanked the door wide. The alley was empty. "How many people were taken?"

"Two women," the chef said, climbing to his feet, cookie sheet shield grasped in his hands.

"How many dragged the women away?"

There was a conference as they worked out the number. "Four," a woman said. Three fighters and another one with a long gun." But she drew her hands out in a way that Nomad understood she didn't mean it was a rifle but a gun that was longer than usual. The gunman had a silencer.

"What were these women wearing?" Nomad asked just to be sure Elena was in the mix.

"Slim black dress. There's her tiara."

Nomad turned in the direction of the woman's pointed finger. Yes, that belonged to Elena.

"And then a big red dress. She was the lady who fought," the woman continued.

"She knew how to fight," a man said. "She knew what she was doing."

"Broke that one man's arm with the skillet."

"Yes, that's right. She broke his arm. The blood on the floor was from the other man." The woman reached up and touched the back of her head, where Nomad assumed the kidnapper had been hit.

"But the man with the gun … She could not stop that," the chef concluded.

Another man was on his feet. "One of our catering vans was out there, but I heard the motor start, and they drove away."

"There's nothing out there now. Can you describe the van to me?" Time was ticking. Nomad needed to be on the move. "Do you have a picture? The license plate number?"

"Yes. Yes. We took a picture of us as we were unloading that one." He held up his phone, and Nomad took a picture of the image, turned, and ran out of the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs, and out the front door.

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 around until 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.

Damn, that was some badassery right there.

Nomad pulled off his formal dress pump and retrieved a razor blade hidden in the cavity of his heel, along with the other pre-positioned survival objects. He quickly stepped into his shoe and climbed into the back, his focus on the woman in red. She was the wild card. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Just, you know, hanging out." She rattled her hands on the pipe.

Nomad sawed the thick plastic of the military-style zip-ties holding Elena trapped. Elena stared up at him wide-eyed.

"Hi. Do you remember me? We danced together a few times tonight." He used the timbre of his voice to soothe her, hoping that she would trust him and come away quietly.

Elena was white and shaking.

"Just hold still, I'm going to get you down. All right?"

She answered with shivering nods.

After releasing Elena from the pipe, Nomad took her full weight against him as he held her up. Her knees weren't locking. She dangled like the ragdoll that Rory liked to hug when he was sleeping on his doggy bed.

The police were one street over. They'd be within sight soon. Elena was his mission.

Nomad pressed the razor blade into not-Mrs. Bland's fingers. "You're okay?"

Pinching the razor, she stammered, "Yes, I—" She seemed astonished that he wasn't going to rescue her.

Instead, he'd squatted down, draped Elena over his shoulder, and carried her out the back of the truck, around to the passenger seat of the stolen car, and set her inside.

After slamming the door and racing around to the driver's side, things slowed as he folded himself under the steering wheel again.

Putting the car in motion, he reached an arm across Elena, grabbed the belt, and strapped her in safely.

He tapped his lapel to open comms, knowing T-Rex would listen to the update. "Elena, they kidnapped you. I'm glad to get you back."

Elena turned toward him with a slack-jawed frown. "Who are you?"