Taken by Surprise (7 page)

She reached for his right arm. "One hand above your elbow," she repeated as she followed his instructions. "Hold your wrist with the other, and pull. Gently, I'm assuming. You don't want me to yank on it or anything?"

"How pissed at me are you?"

His question came from so far out of left field that she nearly smiled. Instead, she pursed her lips. "Enough that if I wanted to cause you physical pain, I wouldn't do it by yanking on your arm. Relax."

It took a second, but she felt the tension in his muscles ease. She gripped his arm and slowly pulled, watching the lines around his mouth and eyes deepen, listening as he obviously struggled to keep his breathing even. She felt when his shoulder slipped back into its socket, saw the lines in his face ease, heard his single breath of instant relief.

"Better?" Rhonda started to step back, but he caught her with the arm she just helped him to reset. She glanced down at his hand, then back up at him. "I guess that's my answer."

"Feel free to yank on whatever you want," he told her in a tone so wrought with apology she couldn't laugh even though she really wanted to. He must have seen the humor she tried to hide in her eyes, though, and realized how his statement sounded, because he muttered a curse and lowered his head. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."

Rhonda did smile then despite herself. "I'm sorry. It's just, well, that sounded so, umm..."

"Sexual." His touch took on the feel of the word he supplied. His grip turned to the faintest hold on her arm as his palm glided down to her wrist only to climb up her bare arm again. He didn't stop at her shoulder, but danced his fingers up the side of her neck, stopping only when he found the spot between her jaw and earlobe.

Rhonda felt dizzy, intoxicated, as if his fingers came equipped with tiny needles that penetrated her flesh and injected her with a heavy dose of erotic desire. She didn't want that touch to end there. She wanted to feel it on her breasts, between her legs, inside her very soul.

"Will you be able to make it?" His question contradicted the husky tone of his voice.

Her mind tripped and stumbled over the words, feebly struggling to understand. Make what? Would she be able to make it if he didn't start touching her again? Would she be able to make it if he didn't kiss her, if he didn't lower her to the forest floor—forget what might live beneath their feet—and make love to her until everything she had experienced since leaving Silver Springs became a thing of the past?

"I would give you my boots if I thought they would fit."

Rhonda's attention fell between them to his feet. Not that she could see them well at this close proximity. Not even a sliver of the faintly growing light shone through their bodies. She knew he wore combat boots, though. She got a good look at him back in the room at Phay's compound. She had gotten used to seeing Michael in casual clothes rather than his usual well-tailored suits in the few months between her split with Preston and Michael's walking away. Jeans and sneakers didn't surprise her much anymore. BDUs and a solid black T-shirt that highlighted the breadth of his torso did. It made him look like a superhero.
Or every girl's wet dream
. Especially when she took in the face paint, earpiece, and hardened warrior look in his incredible eyes.

"I can make it," she told him confidently, understanding now what he meant by his question. Could she make the long walk to the extraction point on feet already battered and barely protected by a pair of heeled sandals? "I
will
make it. Believe me, I've spent more time in this exotic countryside than I ever intended or wanted to."

"Rhonda, I…" He stopped and simply looked at her. He had never attempted to hide what he felt for her. The attraction, the want, the promise had always shown in terrifying earnestness in the fathomless depths of his remarkable green eyes. It showed right up until the day he walked away from her. He left her without so much as a good-bye, kiss my ass, or anything to give her a clue why.

This time was different. She saw things in his gaze she never saw before. Fear, anger, vulnerability, and, nope, she would not put definition to the last. Still, to see a man she knew to be strong and controlled with such an apparent turmoil of helplessness and frustration going through him gave her pause.

"I never meant for any of this to happen," he finally finished. "All of this is my fault. You have every right to blame me, to hate me."

Blast the man, she should hate him. She wished she could hate him. She wished she could blame him for all that happened since she came to Thailand. In truth, she
did
blame him for so much, the least of which having anything to do with Veng Kim Phay or his cartel.

"Michael, right now all I want is to get to that extraction point. I want to leave this place and everything that has happened here far behind."

The wild flux of her emotions made it difficult to think. She wanted to get back on safe ground where she could make some sense of everything, where she could put her life back into a perspective she could attempt to understand again. Then she
would
let him have it because, damn it, she would not play games with this man. She was angry at him for so many things. Most of all, she hurt on the inside, and she hadn't quite figured out what to do about it.

Chapter Four

Touching her controlled him like an addiction. One feel of her silken skin and Michael found himself suffering from withdrawal symptoms strong enough to knock him on his ass. He should be used to it by now. From that very first contact, a simple handshake, he craved her more than an addict longing for his next fix. She went straight to his brain, shot directly though his bloodstream, and splintered right to his heart and groin.

He let her lead the way, preferring to watch the perfect sway of her tantalizing hips in that amazing dress while he fought the need to grab hold of her. He wanted to yank her back, to feed his hunger to taste her, to feel her, to have her. Instead, he pulled his SIG from the waistband of his pants and held it in a tight, left-handed grip, the fingers of his right hand fisted at his side. The pain in his right shoulder disappeared almost completely the moment it slipped back into its socket. Still, he didn't quite trust the arm to be at full strength just yet.

She stumbled, sucked an audible breath through her teeth, and his emotions raged a war with his gut. Her feet hurt her far more than she let on. Everything in his training and experience told him to keep moving, to reach that extraction point as quickly as possible. Forget that they would likely reach it with plenty of time to spare. The "what-if" game of something going wrong played along with his determination to give Rhonda exactly what she wanted, to get her to a place where she could leave here and everything that had happened to her behind. Everything in his heart and mind told him to stop, to wait for full daylight, to make her rest, to make her talk.

"As long as I'm still breathing, that will heal, too
.
"

Her words echoed in his head until it threatened to drive him nuts. She hadn't been talking about her feet or any other injury he could see. The wounds she spoke of were internal. What had the bastard Veng Kim Phay done to her? What had he allowed his men to do to her?

"Rhonda." Her name left his lips before he even knew he meant to say it. She stopped, turning only her head to cast him a look over her bare shoulder. His mouth watered with the desire to taste the smooth flesh, to nip at the curve where her shoulder and neck met. He swallowed and pulled his focus to her eyes. When he didn't say anything more, she lifted one brow questioningly.

He raked a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. "Maybe we should stop for a while. Full daylight isn't more than an hour away. It will be easier to see where we're going, what we're coming up against."

"Easier to be spotted by anyone or anything waiting out here for us," she countered and slowly turned the rest of her body to face him. She crossed her arms, drawing his attention down to the low-cut bodice and the way the material flirted with the swells of her breasts.

"We take a chance either way."

"And by stopping we take a greater chance of missing the helo."

She wouldn't rest unless he somehow made her. She wouldn't talk unless he somehow coerced her. Michael recognized both points to be fact as he squared off with her.

"We'll make the extraction point in plenty of time." He didn't doubt that despite the little "what-if" game in his head. He trusted in his training and instincts enough to make sure of that. "You need to give your feet a rest, and I can protect you better from things I can see than things I can't. We'll stop here until dawn." This time he didn't ask or suggest. He told her in a tone that left no room for argument. He thought he caught a flash of anger move through her stony expression before he looked away, scanning the forest for a place to take cover.

A clear patch of ground offered a spot to sit away from the beaten path where he would be able to keep watch on their surroundings with a tree at his back. He moved to it, sat down, and waited for her to join him.

"I take it this is as good a place as any," she muttered as she settled on the ground next to him. She sat close enough that her thigh brushed his as she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging them close. She rested her chin on her kneecap and stared straight ahead.

Michael watched her, waiting to see if she would close her eyes, perhaps try to rest. When she didn't, he asked, "Do you want to try to sleep?"

She shook her head. The sigh she made sounded as if she were reining in the temper he thought he spotted in her face. "I'm not tired."

"Amazing what adrenaline can do to the system, huh?" He could still feel the effects of the rush pumping through his veins. "Sometimes it takes a while to come down from the high."

"And to think people actually turn to terrible drugs to get high when all it takes is a little excitement for the body to produce a natural speed better than any artificial substance." She shifted, resting her cheek on her kneecap so she could meet his gaze. "Then again, without those terrible drugs out there, you would be out of a job, wouldn't you?"

"There would be something else equally horrid to fight against, I'm sure." Michael hesitated, letting his attention flutter over her face. Dirt smudged her nose, and her forehead glistened with a sheen of sweat. "I would rather be without a job than to have despicable creatures like Veng Kim Phay out here destroying lives for his own vindictive gain."

"Some trade-off," Rhonda agreed and went back to staring straight ahead.

"Did he hurt you?" Michael went for point blank, needing to know, unable to stand the myriad of possibilities slamming into the walls of his mind a moment longer. He hated to remind her, to quiz her about the past eight days.

"Phay?"

Her jaw tightened, and Michael watched the memory of what she had gone through pan through her expression like a horrifying slide show. She gave her head a quick shake, as if to send the recollections back to the deep cavern in her mind where she wished to bury them.

Him, the tango you shot, any of the fucking bastards
.

Michael knew he couldn't pull a Rambo on anyone she named, but that didn't stop the urge to go off half cocked and take out every last one of the fuckers still standing. The fact that all of them had likely been taken down already back at the compound didn't calm him in the least. If she gave him a name, he would find the fucker, bring the tango back to life, and kill the bastard again for touching a hair on her beautiful head.

"Not as badly as," she lifted her head, took a deep breath, "as what he did to Nancy. Phay didn't pull the trigger. Your buddy from the photo did that."

"Boran Roumduol." Phay's most trusted had made good on the threat he issued to Michael two years ago. He came after Michael in the one way sure to succeed. He went for Rhonda.

"He shot her. No remorse, no hesitation. He could've let her go. It was me he wanted. I knew that the moment I saw him enter our hotel room."

Icy fear raced down Michael's spine, much like the chill he figured she felt at seeing Roumduol. How had she endured it? How would she cope with it now that it was all over? She didn't have training to deal with the hardships of capture, never went through the rigorous simulations that taught one to survive such an insurmountable fear.

"You recognized him." Michael knew she had only seen Roumduol once, in the photo he'd shown her taken by Rayne Jasper one sunny day in the Silver Springs city park.

"That's not a face you easily forget." She chuckled, a humorless burst of air.

The woman had nerves of steel to talk about it so calmly. He knew she wasn't impervious to the things she'd witnessed, the trauma she'd sustained. Perhaps she wanted him to believe it, but he knew better. He remembered the relief in her eyes back at the compound, the way she held herself so rigidly even as her limbs trembled to crumple in his embrace.

"In all the research I've done," she said, pulling him back to the here and now, "all the books I've read and movies I've watched, the bad guys almost always have these hideous faces. I thought it was fiction. You know, make the goons look like goons because, surely they can't be handsome and horrid at the same time. Boran Roumduol made the mold for that theory. And let's not forget Timmy's Mr. Scarball."

"Atith Sovannarith." Another of Phay's most trusted who kidnapped Timmy Walker. The kid had nicknamed Atith Mr. Scarball because of the long white scar beginning at his temple and curving down under his eye as if someone had once attempted to cut out his eyeball.

"Xavier, too. He definitely fit the whole ick-face image."

"He's the tango I killed back there." Though he made it more statement than question, he saw her nod.

"
We
killed back there. I want credit for my shot, too."

"Jesus, Rhonda," Michael whispered. He considered her for a long, thoughtful moment. "I don't know if I should be grateful to Adrien for the time he spent with you at the shooting range or prepared to fire his ass when we get back to the States."

"There isn't much he doesn't tell you, is there?"

Michael winced at the irritated disapproval in her tone. He wanted to assure her that Adrien never told him anything she said in confidence. He wanted to tell her he never asked Adrien for information, he never used their mutual friend to pry into her life. In truth, he knew little about Rhonda's life since he stepped out of it in his attempt to protect her. Adrien volunteered a morsel now and then, just enough to keep Michael wanting to ask for more. He never did.

"I, for one, intend to thank him when I see him again."

"When." Michael nodded. "That's good. You said when, not if. That's the attitude you need to have right now."

"I asked Adrien to teach me to shoot purely for research purposes. I wanted to know what it felt like to fire a gun, to aim at a target and pull that trigger." A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "I didn't know I would be any good at it. Adrien said I'm a natural." The smile faded, turned resolute. "I'm glad. Xavier got what he deserved back there. It felt better than it probably should to help bring him down."

Fear grew claws in Michael's gut. "Hearing you say that makes my blood turn to ice, Rhonda. You wouldn't say something like that if he hadn't done something horrible to you." He remembered what the tango said just before Michael took him out, the foul words about taking Rhonda back to the compound to finish what he started. "Have mercy on me, baby, because the things I'm thinking are about to drive me mad."

She looked at him, surprise swirling with the remembered events in her gaze. "He didn't rape me. He wanted to, tried to, but Phay stopped him."

The relief Michael felt at that didn't last. "He wanted you for himself. Did Phay…?" He couldn't finish the question.

"No, he didn't either. He touched me, mostly casual."

"Mostly?"

"A brush of his fingers here, a light caress there. He kissed me. Talk about repulsive." She shuddered and attempted a smile that turned into a grimace. "I don't think he wanted to hurt me, physically at least. He wanted to frighten me. He succeeded there. He, um, showed me things he ordered done and made sure I knew they were the things that happened to people who betrayed him, who crossed him. He didn't exactly say as much, but I think he was showing me what he planned to do to you when you came for me."

"Jesus, Rhonda, I'm—"

"I tried to tell him you wouldn't come for me, but he wouldn't listen." She plunged ahead, and her words made Michael's own stick in his throat. "I told him we didn't even talk anymore, that our association ended months ago. He convinced himself the easiest way to get to you was through me. No matter how many times I tried to tell him otherwise."

"Tell me you didn't believe that." Michael heard the quiver in his own voice, but he couldn't control it. He lifted a hand to reach for her. She stiffened the slightest fraction, but enough for him to notice. He dropped his hand back to his thigh. Emotion burned his eyes, his throat, ached in his chest. "Tell me you knew I would be here as soon as I found out."

She didn't tell him either of those things. Instead, she let out another of those humorless chuckles. "Half the time he acted as if we were on a date, as if I was his companion, there by choice rather than his prisoner. He took me for walks, set up dinner on the terrace. That's how I knew how to get out of the compound. One minute he wined and dined me, and the next he took me to the back kitchen to watch as one of his goons chopped off a man's pinky finger."

"Christ," Michael whispered. He understood the symbolism. All the men of the Phay Cartel wore a tattooed marking in the shape of a poppy plant at the top of their left pinky.

As if remembering the symbolism herself, Rhonda rubbed her left pinky with the thumb and first finger of her right hand. "He talked about tattooing the design on me, said I shouldn't mind it considering I already had one tattoo." She turned her right leg and glanced down at the tattoo just above her ankle. "Then he turned around the next second and talked about having mine removed."

Michael's stomach pitched. Phay's idea of removal certainly would not have included the medical practices of laser or light therapy available in the States.

"I sat in that room after he took me back there and wondered which would be worse, having the inked skin scraped from my leg or having the bottom part of my leg hacked off."

Michael wanted so badly to interrupt her, to draw her against him despite her stiffening protest, and hold her. He wanted to whisper nonsensical words in her ear until they both started to believe them. He didn't do any of that because what she needed came first. She needed to talk, and she was doing just that, no matter how sick and on the verge of ballistic insanity her words made him feel.

"The pinky he ordered chopped off, I think it belonged to that agent." She finally looked at him, straightening and turning her upper body to face him. "Tina went bonkers at the docks when Timmy was abducted because the FBI had a man undercover in Phay's cartel and he didn't do anything to stop Phay's men from taking Timmy. You were standing at the docks with me."