“Have the pilot bring the helicopter around again so I can get a better look.”
“Wait—” Immediately, sound was cut off.
Emmanuelle’s heart jumped, and she nearly smiled. That first command to bring the helicopter around had been issued in a commanding voice that sounded just like Angelo, but she knew wasn’t. One of the younger bodyguards in training, Leone, had an extraordinary talent. His voice could replicate almost anyone else’s. Evidently, Emilio had ordered him to copy Angelo’s voice and give the command to bring the helicopter around. The real Angelo had tried to tell his men he hadn’t given that order, but he’d been jammed.
The helicopter pilot did exactly what he’d been told. Emmanuelle waited, adrenaline running through her veins. Heat coiling. The moment the pilot positioned the craft, several shots rang out, just as she’d known they would. She didn’t wait to see if the snipers had done their job. She sprang into action, leaving the safety of the shadow, taking the first of her prey.
Emmanuelle was on the exposed man in the gathering darkness. He tilted his head toward the sky as the helicopter slipped sideways. She broke his neck before he could utter a single swear word, and then she was moving forward. It took only two steps before she was on the second of the three men she had marked. He had half risen to see the craft begin to spin. She caught him on either side of his face and wrenched, breaking his neck, dropped him and moved up behind the third man, who was wholly upright and had stepped out from behind the safety of the open door for one moment. He suddenly threw himself on the ground, yelling into his radio for his men to get down.
Emmanuelle realized he hadn’t seen her and wasn’t reacting to the dead men; he was reacting to the fact that snipers had taken out the helicopter. It was bucking and jerking in the sky, spinning out of control, tossing two men out the open doors as if they were rag dolls. Emme hit the ground and rolled toward her prey. She dug the toes of her favorite boots into the grass and pushed herself closer to him.
He had his head up, eyes watching the helicopter as it came down in a stunning display of wrecked, twisted metal. “Shit, Angelo, what the hell was that? Dario or Valentino just took out the helicopter. I thought we had someone on the roof. Take that prick out.” He shouted the order into the radio.
This had to be someone fairly high up in Miceli’s organization to talk to Angelo that way. She couldn’t imagine the man she’d known to be so arrogant putting up with anyone, even during a firefight, talking like that, unless they were one of Miceli’s most trusted advisors, and even then, it was risky.
“If I knew where the prick was, I would have done that already,” Angelo snapped, his voice shaking with fury.
The exchange, along with the crash, was the diversion needed to allow Emmanuelle to slide up on her prey and grip his head in her hands, jerking hard as she did so. He was big and strong, his neck thick. He rolled almost before she’d settled on him, going in the direction of her technique. He smashed her leg under him, pinning her to the ground with his superior weight, but she didn’t lose her grip.
Emme’s breathing never changed. Slow and even. The man had turned now, and was punching at her, shoving up with his hands, yelling into his radio for aid. She had seconds before the men from the truck would come around to help him. Nothing else mattered in the moment but her job. She focused completely on breaking his neck.
The man bucked like a stallion, using his weight, realizing for the first time that his opponent was a woman. He reached one hand up and caught at the front of her jacket, feeling the swell of her breasts. Then he punched hard, over and over. She ignored the pain and counted, knowing his entire concentration was on hitting her. She breathed in and out. On the sixth punch, she wrenched hard, heard the familiar crack and reached for the gun that he’d dropped in the grass when he’d rolled over her leg.
As the first man rounded the hood of the SUV, calling out to ask “Mo” what was wrong, she shot him three times, twice between the eyes and once in the heart. She immediately lay flat. She didn’t struggle to get her leg out from under the heavy body. The ground was soft from the rain, so she wiggled gently to see if she could create a little space, but the entire time she searched for another man she’d glimpsed coming toward her from the truck. He would have heard the gunshots very clearly.