A Demonic Bundle (59 page)

If you liked this book, you’ve got to try Amy Fetzer’s latest, FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE, out now from Brava…

“Y
ou don’t have time for that.”

Instantly Riley scooped up the pistol and spun on his knees, aiming.

A figure stood near the blown out entrance. Shit. He hadn’t heard a thing.

Still as glass, the man’s head and shoulders were wrapped in dark scarves over a once green military jacket, now a dull gray like the weather. The only skin exposed was his eyes. Around his waist, a utility belt sagged, and the sniper rifle was slung on his shoulder, the weapon held across his body, ready to sight and fire. Yet he stood casually, without threat.

“If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have wasted bullets to see you two safe and alive.”

The sniper, Riley realized with a wee shock, was a woman.

She advanced with easy grace, stepping over piles of rubble to hop down at his level. Her rifle looked all too familiar.

“Yes, it’s American,” she said, noticing his attention. He lowered his weapon. She stood a couple feet away, staring down at Sam. “He doesn’t look good.” She unwound her head scarf and a braided rope of shiny dark hair spilled down one shoulder. She met his gaze. Beneath arched brows, whiskey colored eyes stared back at him.

“Sweet mother a’
Jaasus
.” She was younger than him.

“I get that a lot.” She gestured at Sam. “What do you need to do?”

“Set his leg again and get a tighter splint on it.”

She nodded as her gaze bounced around the interior. “Let’s get busy. I don’t know how much time we have.”

Though the pop of gunfire was lazier now, Riley wasn’t ignoring the help, or the danger of staying put too long. He instructed, glad Sam was unconscious or he’d be screaming to the heavens. After unbuckling her utility belt, she got behind Sam, her legs and arms wrapping his torso and hips as Riley grasped his calf and ankle. On a count, he pulled. Even drugged, Sam arched with silent agony. Riley ripped the flight suit more and pushed the bone down, forcing it to align closely. Blood oozed from the gash. He met her gaze and nodded.

“It’s set. Well…better than it was.”

She eased from Sam and unclipped her canteen, offering it.

He cleaned his hands and the wound, then Riley worked against the cold. With the needle poised over Sam’s flesh, he shook too much to stitch. “For the love of Mike.” He dropped the needle, sanding his hands, blowing on them. She quickly grasped them both, wrapping her scarf around them, then brought his fists to her lips. She breathed hotly against the fabric, and Riley felt the warmth sting his icy skin. She rubbed and breathed, her gaze flashing up. He felt struck, her soulful eyes hiding so much.

“Better?”

He nodded, unwound the scarf. “The rest of me is a bit chilly still.”

It took a second for that to sink in and she made a face. He chuckled, then said, “Get yourself on the other side, woman, and let’s make some quick work here.”

She snickered to herself, yet obeyed, holding Sam’s skin closed as he stitched. She still wore gloves and though she was dressed warmly, he noticed everything was cinched down, nothing to catch, and her rifle would collapse. It was a weapon he’d seen in spec, a prototype of the MP5. Not in production, yet she had one. And if the bodies outside indicated, she knew how to use it. It was at her right, by her knee with a bullet chambered.

“You’re Company.” CIA. Probably attached to NATO.

He had to give her credit, she didn’t look up or make even a single nuance. If she was any good, she wouldn’t give anything away.

“Tell me how an Irishman got to be in the Marines.”

Okay, he could go that direction. “I was a runner for the IRA and my older sister caught me. Dragged me home by my ear, she did.” His lips curved with the memory as he took another stitch. “My parents, fearing for my immortal soul, sent me to America to live with relatives.” He shrugged.

“So dodging bullets comes easy, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Then he went and chose a career in it. He glanced at Sam, knowing this would cost him what he held dear. His Marine enlistment. But he couldn’t let the one man who treated him like a friend instead of his superior die in the frigid Serbian forests.

“I saw the jet go down.”

His gaze briefly slid to hers.

“He was doing some amazing flying before the missile hit. I’ve been behind you for a day.”

“So you’re the reason the patrol didn’t catch up to us?”

Bless her, that blank expression didn’t change a fraction.

“Thank you for our lives.” He clipped the thread. “I’m Riley.” He held out his hand. She bit off her glove and shook it. Her skin was warm, her palm smooth and dry.

“Safia,” was all she offered with her disarming smile.

He wondered why someone so young was in the field alone. She helped him work the inflatable air cast over Sam’s upper thigh, then wrapped him in rags and curtains Riley’d found to keep him warm. Sam’s fever would spike and he had to get him some antibiotics. He’d used his last just now.

The woman unwound from the floor, strapped her belt back on, then dug in her pack like a purse and blindly reloaded her magazines. He recognized C4 packs and some gadgets he didn’t. She was a little fire team all by herself, he thought, smiling. Armed, she went to each opening. He reached for his gun when she disappeared out a gap in the wall. He waited, chambering a bullet and aiming.

Tell me I can’t be that much of a sucker.
Icy wind spun through the building. Seconds ticked by. She reappeared and stopped short, then cocked her head. She smiled almost appreciatively, and he lowered his weapon. She moved to him with an elegance that defied her crude surroundings and the two pistols in her belt. Her exotic features and tanned skin puzzled him. Without head scarves, she looked completely out of place.

Then the radio hooked on her belt buzzed and she brought it to her ear, listening. The language sounded Albanian. She didn’t make contact, only listened, then said, “We need to go.”

Don’t miss Alison Kent’s NO LIMITS, out this month from Brava…

B
y the time his guest returned, freshly showered and shampooed and dressed in his things, Simon had thrown together a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, and toast. He didn’t immediately turn around and greet her but focused on piling the food on paper plates, digging into his box of grub for sugar and powdered cream.

Concentrating on what was simple kept him from facing the complications that came attached like baggage to Michelina Ferrer. It was a different sort of baggage than what he’d been dealing with the last few weeks, but her being here was still going to weigh heavy on his mind.

Dealing with Bear and Lorna and the property would be enough to try any saint. Add King to the mix, and, well, Simon’s patience wouldn’t pass the first test. And now he had a mystery on his hands, a crime that needed more explanation before it would begin to make sense.

That was the only reason he finally turned around, the only reason he lifted his gaze from the food he carried to the woman standing in the frame of the kitchen doorway toweling dry her dark hair.

Her face was the same one he’d seen on
Page Six,
on magazine covers, on TV. The same one from his billboard. The same one…but not.

Her skin was scrubbed clean. She wore nothing glossy on her lips, nothing colored and glittery on her eyes, nothing to smooth out her cool ivory skin. She had freckles on her nose, two small red zits on her chin.

And her eyes were sad and scared, not sassy or sultry or seductive. A big problem, her eyes. An equally big one, her unbound breasts beneath his gray T-shirt, the curve of her hips and thighs in his long-legged briefs.

He set the food on the table, cleared his throat, went back for the Styrofoam cups filled with coffee and for plasticware. He didn’t turn back toward her until he heard her sit, the chair legs scraping across the worn linoleum, the creak of the wood beneath her weight.

The table hid most of her body. He could still make out the shape of her breasts, the fullness, the upper slope that made him wonder about the weight he’d feel beneath. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to avoid her face, so bare and exposed, or her eyes.

He had to look at her to get her story. He had to watch her expression, see the truth, her fear, find out how much she knew or had guessed or thought about what had happened. This is what he did—gathered information, ferreted out intel, zoned in on the pertinent details, used it all to come up with a plan of action.

He needed one. Desperately. One that had nothing to do with her body being naked under his clothes, one that addressed the fact that she was Michelina Ferrer. And she was miserable, frightened, and lost.

He couldn’t help it. He feared that juxtaposition—what he knew about the celebrity versus what he sensed about this woman with her armor washed away and fearing for her life—was going to make it hard to keep this job from turning personal.

And be sure to catch Lucy Monroe’s new book, WATCH OVER ME, coming next month from Brava…

“D
r. Ericson.”

Lana adjusted the angle on the microscope. Yes. Right there. Perfect. “Amazing.”

“Lana.”

She reached out blindly for the stylus to her handheld.
Got it.
She started taking notes on the screen without looking away from the microscope.

“Dr. Ericson!!!”

Lana jumped, bumping her cheekbone on the microscope’s eyepiece before falling backward, hitting a wall that hadn’t been there when she’d come into work that morning.

Strong hands set her firmly on her feet as she realized the wall was warm and made of flesh and muscle. Lots and lots of muscle.

Stumbling back a step, she looked up and then up some more. The dark-haired hottie in front of her was as tall as her colleague, Beau Ruston. Or close to it anyway. She fumbled with her glasses, sliding them on her nose. They didn’t help. Reading glasses for the computer, they only served to make her feel more disoriented.

She squinted, then remembered and pulled the glasses off again, letting them dangle by their chain around her neck. “Um, hello? Did I know you were visiting my lab?”

She was fairly certain she hadn’t. She forgot appointments sometimes. Okay, often, but she always remembered eventually. And this man hadn’t made an appointment with her. She was sure of it. He didn’t look like a scientist either.

Not that all scientists were as unremarkable as she was in the looks department, but his man was another species entirely.

He looked dangerous and sexy. Enough so that he would definitely replace chemical formulas in her dreams at night. His black hair was a little too long and looked like he’d run his fingers through it, not a comb. That was just so bad boy. She had a secret weakness for bad boys.

Even bigger than the secret weakness she’d harbored for Beau Ruston before he’d met Elle.

She had posters of James Dean and Matt Dillon on the wall of her bedroom and had seen “Rebel without a Cause” a whopping thirty-six times.

Unlike James Dean, this yummy bad boy even had pierced ears. Only instead of sedate studs or small hoops, he had tiny black plugs. Only a bit bigger than a pair of studs, the plugs were recessed in his lobes. They had the Chinese Kanji for strength etched on them in silver. Or pewter maybe. It wasn’t shiny.

The earrings were hot. Just like him.

He looked like the kind of man who had a tattoo. Nothing colorful. Something black and meaningful. She wanted to see it. Too bad she couldn’t just ask.

Interpersonal interaction had so many taboos. It wasn’t like science where you dug for answers without apology.

“Lana?”

The stranger had a strong jaw too, squared and accented by a close-cropped beard that went under, not across his chin. No mustache. His lips were set in a straight line, but they still looked like they’d be Heaven to kiss.

Not that she’d kissed a lot of lips, but she was twenty-nine. Even a geeky scientist didn’t make it to the shy side of thirty without a few kisses along the way. And other stuff. Not that the other stuff was all that spectacular. She’d always wondered if that was her fault or the men she’d chosen to partner.

It didn’t take a shrink to identify the fact that Lana had trust issues. With her background, who wouldn’t?

Still, people had been know to betray family, love and country for sex. She wouldn’t cross a busy street to get some. Or maybe she would, if this stranger was waiting on the other side.

The fact that she could measure the time it had been since the last time in years rather than months, weeks or days—which would be a true miracle—wasn’t something she enjoyed dwelling on. She blamed it on her work.

However, every feminine instinct that was usually sublimated by her passion for her work was on red alert now.