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  Next Exit, No Outlet

  CW Browning

  About Next Exit, No Outlet

  A ruthless enemy, determined to kill. A deadly assassin with a vendetta. Both trained never to fail.

  Alina Maschik is out of time. As she uncovers the secrets hiding a traitor responsible for countless deaths, that same traitor is moving quickly to silence anyone who stands in his way. When FBI Agent Stephanie Walker becomes the target, Alina does what she does best. But nothing is ever easy in New Jersey. Left with very few options, Viper enlists the help of others to face the biggest challenge of her career. Yet success comes at a high personal cost, and if she fails, those closest to her will die.

  With the odds stacked heavily against her, Viper finds herself in a fight for her very survival. But freedom is never guaranteed, and even the best sometimes fail.

  Author's Note:

  To all my readers who have anxiously followed Viper and Hawk through their journey, laughed with Angela and Stephanie, cried over John and grown to love Michael and Blake – this one is for you.

  Table of Contents

  Next Exit, No Outlet

  Author's Note:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Note from Author:

  “But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye...”

  ~ Exodus 21: 23-24

  Prologue

  Alina Maschik inched forward in the bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging Route 70 East. Red and blue lights flashed continuously ahead and she glanced at the navigation system, noting the time. There had been an accident during rush hour on a Friday. Fantastic.

  Returning her gaze to the traffic before her, she inched forward again. Two lanes were merging into one to circumvent the collision ahead. She could see two ambulances in the middle of the intersection but, beyond that, her view was blocked by the pickup truck in front of her.

  She sighed and shifted in her bucket seat. She had known she’d hit rush hour on her way back from Pennsylvania, but she hadn’t expected to spend over half an hour on a four block stretch of highway. Alina pressed a button on the steering wheel, skipping the rock song blaring from the speakers. A new song began and she leaned her head back against the headrest, her eyes on the back of the truck.

  Damon was at the house in Medford, waiting for her. She should have been there long before now. The plan was to go straight to the house after the operation in Independence Park. He’d followed the plan. She hadn’t.

  Alina’s eyes wandered to her left, watching as what little traffic that had been able to get past the accident flew along the westbound side of the highway.

  Leaving the city after their successful mission, she had seen a man walking away from the area around the FBI building. Recognizing him as an assassin she’d seen last fall in Rittenhouse Square, she’d aborted the plan and followed him. He got into a vehicle three blocks away and headed out of the city. She’d lost him outside Conshohocken, about thirty minutes northwest of Philadelphia.

  The traffic on the other side of the highway began to slow and move to the side. Alina shifted her gaze. One of the ambulances was pulling away from the intersection, lights flashing. As the left lane cleared to give it space, it picked up speed and the siren began to wail. She watched it fly down the left lane, noting the name of the service and the ambulance number absently. Good. Maybe now they would start moving.

  She turned her attention back to the road and eased forward a few feet, following the truck. She was almost at the intersection now. Once she passed the accident, the traffic would speed up again. She glanced at her watch. Finally, she would be moving again.

  A uniformed police officer was standing in the intersection, directing traffic as Alina drew closer to the light and looked at the wreckage. A black Escalade was half on the grass median separating the east and westbound lanes, the front end completely smashed in. Her gaze shifted curiously to the other vehicle. She froze and her blood ran cold as a wave of shock rolled over her.

  Alina’s hands clenched involuntarily on the steering wheel as she stared at the maroon Mustang GT in the center of the intersection. It had been spun around, presumably by the accident, and was facing her. The license plate was untouched by the collision, and the number was clear. It was a number she knew well. The car had spent many hours in her driveway.

  The front end didn’t have a scratch. It was the rest of the car that told the story. The passenger side was completely smashed in, and the window was shattered. On the driver side, the back quarter panel had been hit, and the back bumper was off the car altogether. Stephanie Walker’s Mustang looked as if it had been hit by a train on both sides.

  Alina’s eyes moved to the black Escalade and she dropped her gaze to the license plate, memorizing the number quickly. Fury replaced the shock and, as she crawled forward, she watched as the second ambulance slowly maneuvered around Stephanie’s car and eased into the westbound lane to follow the other one.

  Alina glanced in her rear view mirror and then behind her to the right, checking the narrow shoulder beside her. Seeing that it was clear, she wrenched the wheel sideways and hit the gas. Pulling out of the line of traffic, she shot into the shoulder and to the corner. Turning down a side street, she reached out and hit speed dial on her phone. A moment later, Damon Miles’ voice filled her car.

  “Yes?”

  “Change of plans,” she said shortly, flying down the narrow road. “I need you.”

  There was brief silence on the line and Alina could almost see his grin.

  “Last night wasn’t enough for you?” he finally drawled.

  “At the hospital,” she said, ignoring him. “Leave now.”

  “That’s doesn’t sound good.” The amusement left his voice. “What hospital?”

  “That’s what I need you to find out. It’s got to be either Cooper or Our Lady of Lourdes. I’m driving and can’t access anything, so you’ll have to tap into the scanners for me.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Accident in Cherry Hill on Route 70. Two inbound ambulances, one of them transporting Special Agent Stephanie Walker.” Alina recited the ambulance numbers to him and made another turn, cutting through a residential neighborhood as she doubled back towards the river. “Find out which hospital, then meet me there. Take the bike. It’s faster.”
<
br />   “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Come armed for a fight.”

  Chapter One

  Special Agent Blake Hanover followed the nurse down the wide emergency room corridor, a forbidding scowl on his face.

  “Here we are,” she said over her shoulder as they came to the cubicle at the end. “She’s right in here.”

  Blake nodded to her in thanks and strode into the small room. Stephanie Walker was in a bed with an IV hooked up to her arm, and a monitor keeping track of her heart rate. She had her head back on the pillow with her eyes closed, but when he walked in, she opened them and lifted her head.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” he retorted, walking over to stand next to the bed.

  He looked down at her and his scowl eased a bit. Her face was pale, and a nasty bruise was beginning to discolor half of her forehead. A few superficial cuts on the side of her face had been cleaned and left uncovered, with the exception of one which had a small gauze bandage over it.

  “You just can’t keep out of trouble, can you?”

  His words were softened by a half smile, and her lips curved in response.

  “You know me. I like to keep busy.”

  Blake shook his head and looked around. Spying a chair off to the side, he pulled it over to the side of the bed.

  “Have you seen a doctor yet?”

  “Yes. He was in about twenty minutes ago. I have another concussion and he wants to send me down for an MRI. I also have whiplash and a twisted wrist.” She held up her left arm, bandaged up to her elbow. “They already did a CT scan. No broken bones or signs of internal bleeding. It could have been much worse.”

  “Rob wanted to come, but I talked him out of it,” he said, getting up and going to the opening of the cubicle. He reached up and closed the heavy privacy curtain before returning to his chair. “I told him the less people involved, the better.” Blake lowered his voice. “Tell me what the hell happened.”

  Stephanie shrugged, wincing in pain at the movement.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” she said tiredly. “I’m not even sure I believe it. If it wasn’t for the witness and the statement he made to the police, I’d be inclined to think I dreamt the whole thing.”

  “What witness?” Blake asked sharply.

  “One of the guys that hit me. He couldn’t avoid it. I spun into his lane. The cop said he saw everything and was willing to give a statement. I can pick up the report on Monday, if I’m still alive.”

  He made a face. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Well, let’s face it, Blake. Things aren’t looking all that great. This afternoon someone tried to shoot me, and a few hours later someone else tried to kill me with some kind of toxin!”

  Her voice rose as she spoke and he heard the tremor of panic in her tone.

  “Ok, slow down. Let’s go back to what you remember from the accident,” he said soothingly, glancing at the monitor as her heart rate increased significantly.

  She took a deep breath.

  “I was on my way to Alina’s, as we agreed. I was going through a green light when I saw something black out of the corner of my eye and then, BAM! I never even saw them come into the intersection. He hit the passenger side and threw me into a spin. I ended up on the other side of the highway. A pickup truck would have slammed into my door, but he managed to swerve enough to hit the back quarter panel instead. The impact spun me back into the middle of the intersection and out of the line of traffic.”

  “That was the witness?”

  She nodded. “He stayed with me until the cops got there.”

  “Then what?”

  Stephanie shook her head and leaned back on the pillows.

  “That’s where it gets crazy. Some guy, the driver of the black SUV that hit me in the first place, comes up to the car. I thought he was checking to see if I was okay.”

  Blake raised an eyebrow questioningly when she stopped and she shrugged again.

  “He wasn’t. He tried to stick me with a needle. We struggled and I hit him with the butt of my gun. He dropped the syringe and I grabbed it.”

  “Why do you think it had a toxin in it?”

  “Because I stabbed him with it and he died.”

  “What?!”

  “I told you it was insane.”

  Blake got up impatiently, running a hand through his hair. He did a quick turn around the small cubicle, then stopped and faced at her.

  “How do you know he died?”

  “I asked the cop when he was questioning me. He didn’t want to tell me, but I told him I out-ranked him. Besides, I saw the dude fall, and he didn’t move again the whole time they were getting me out of the car and into the ambulance.”

  A grin pulled at Blake’s lips. “You told the cop you out-ranked him?”

  Stephanie smiled ruefully. “Well, I do.”

  Blake sank down into his chair again.

  “How the hell did they know where you were going?” he demanded, shaking his head. “Even if they followed you, they couldn’t have planned an interception. How did they know you’d be on that road? It’s not even the route you take home!”

  “I’m more concerned with who they are, and why they want me dead,” she replied. “You realize if I’d been knocked unconscious, I’d be dead right now, right?”

  He scowled. “Yes.”

  They fell silent for a long moment, Blake looking like thunder and Stephanie chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully.

  “Who knew I was going to Alina’s?” she asked, finally breaking the silence. “You didn’t tell anyone at the office, did you?”

  “Of course not. Even Rob didn’t know where you were going, only that it was a safe house. Hell, he doesn’t even know it’s in New Jersey.”

  “I told Angie in the car, but I’d just hung up when I got hit,” she said slowly. “Even if someone was listening, they couldn’t have known what road I was on or where I was heading, let alone have time to get there.”

  Blake shook his head, sighing in frustration.

  “None of it makes sense. Have you called the Black Widow?”

  Stephanie looked a little guilty. “Not yet.”

  He stared at her. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know.” She rubbed her forehead, her brows wrinkled. “I keep thinking she’s got enough to worry about, and now this is taking it to the next level. I mean, someone tried to blow her head off last week, and the week before that! Now, I’m going to foist myself on her when people are shooting at me too? That hardly seems fair.”

  Blake shook his head.

  “I don’t think a few extra bad guys will make much difference at this point, do you?” he asked.

  She sighed.

  “Probably not, but I don’t want it on my conscience. Maybe I should just go into one of our safe houses like Rob wants. They’re uncomfortable and depressing, but at least I wouldn’t be putting anyone else at risk.”

  He studied her for a long moment.

  “Is that what you want to do?” he finally asked.

  Stephanie raised troubled eyes to his. “I think so.”

  He was silent for a moment, then he glanced at the monitors and the IV in her arm.

  “Before we tackle that, let’s talk about all this,” he said, making a movement with his hand that encompassed the cubicle. “The longer you stay here, the more you’re at risk. It won’t take them long to figure out which hospital you came to, if they haven’t already. They’ve tried twice now. They’re not going to stop just because they’re a man down.”

  Stephanie’s eyes widened. “You don’t think they’ll come here, do you?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not a chance I’m willing to take. Are you?”

  She stared at him for a beat, then lowered her gaze to her IV.

  “No.”

  Blake nodded and stood up. He looked over at the clear plastic bag on a table inside the opening that contained her clothes.

  “Whe
re’s your gun?”

  She reached under the thin blanket covering her and pulled out her Glock. He grinned, his eyes creasing at the edges, and a warm glint lit his brown eyes.

  “That’s my girl,” he murmured. “I’ll go find the nurse and tell her you want to be discharged. If anyone comes in here without me, shoot them.”

  Michael O’Reilly rubbed his eyes and sat back in the chair. After staring at the laptop screen for another minute, he picked up his empty coffee mug and got up, turning to carry it into the kitchen. When Alina asked him to discreetly dig around in a man’s past, he didn’t really think he’d find anything. The man was a household name, a permanent fixture in Washington, DC, and an old war-hero to boot. He’d got the impression that even she was skeptical in the beginning, asking him to do it more out of an effort to cover all her bases than from any thought that he might actually find something.

  Michael shook his head and put the mug in the dishwasher. A year ago, he would have helped her out of loyalty to her dead brother and his best friend, Dave. But over the past ten months that he’d gotten to know Alina, a lot had changed. When she asked him to do it over a week ago, he’d agreed out of loyalty to her.

  Turning to open the fridge, Michael pulled out a beer and used the bottle opener he kept on the door to pop the top off. Taking a long sip, he turned to go back into the dining room, where he had his laptop on the table.

  Now, he was doing it for himself.

  Until tonight, he hadn’t been able to turn up anything on Mr. X, as Alina called him. She said he was the X factor. Michael grunted as he settled himself back in front of his laptop. X factor or not, up until now, Michael had been unable to find anything on the man. He was as clean and upright as they came these days. Alina was of the opinion that no one was that clean, and so he kept looking. If nothing else, his time with the Secret Service had taught him patience, and tonight that patience had paid off.

  Michael was just reaching for the mouse when his cell phone rang. He frowned and picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Mike,” Blake greeted him. “When did you say you were getting your ass up here?”