Authors: Stephanie Tyler
He found the tracer wedged behind the tailpipe. And he left it there for the moment, because the rain was still coming down like crazy and the roads were a flood, covering his ankles. No one was going to be able to get to them anytime soon, but he had no way of knowing exactly how close they were.
“Who could it be?” Sarah asked him as he got back into the car. She toweled him off and he didn’t stop her or tell her not to fuss over him.
There were two newer members, both of whom made him uneasy. Smoke and PJ, one of only three women GOST had ever recruited, and he hadn’t wanted to give his trust away so easily. But if they were to throw off GOST’s rule, they had to do it together. They’d all wanted this. “I can’t worry about that now—we’ve got to get out of here.”
“We can make it if we have to—push along the main road, it’s our best shot.”
“We’ll leave my car here with the tracer,” he said. “They have to know that you have your own car, that escape might be an option.”
“The bridge will most likely be gone. We could backtrack—”
“We can’t,” he interrupted her. “We have to press forward. There’s got to be another way—we can figure it out when we get to the hotel.”
When the rain got harder, Nick helped her off the car and held the door open for her.
“Come on, Kaylee, get in.”
The BDUs she’d been sitting on were soaked and dirty. “My pants…”
“Leave them off for now—we’ve got dry clothes inside the car.”
She did what he asked, climbed into the backseat. “Are you coming in too?”
He stripped off his own pants completely—he’d never put his shirt back on from earlier. “Yeah, I’m coming in.”
He got in next to her, naked.
“Your shirt—take it off and let it dry. Never know when the next access to laundry will be.” He rummaged through his bag and pulled out a towel for her. And he watched her while she peeled the shirt off and hung it over the front seat. They’d wring it out later.
His look made her feel powerful and made her blush all at the same time. And then, because she wasn’t doing it, he leaned forward and wrapped the towel around her.
“You’re cold.”
“Where do we go from here?” she asked quietly.
“We go forward. We get out of this danger and then…”
And then…
“And then, if you want, I’ll go home and try to forget you—the man I know. Not Cutter Winfield. I don’t know him and I never will, because that’s not who you are.”
“Do you understand that no one knows who I am?”
“Is this why you said you don’t feel like you’re built for love? Because of your past?”
“You’ve researched the Winfields—have you stumbled on any happy marriages in that family?”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah, nature versus nurture. I’ve heard it before.”
“If we can’t move beyond this—”
“We might not be moving anywhere for a long while.” He peered out the window, but there was no seeing past the driving rain that hit the window at a diagonal. “Why were you at my house that night—the night you saw Walter.”
“I was coming to see you, Nick.”
“To ask for my help.”
“That was part of it. But if you’d refused, I still would’ve wanted to see you.” She wrapped the towel more tightly around herself, a sudden chill going through her despite the humidity. “Why did Walter come to see you? Does he do that a lot?”
Even in the dark, she saw his jaw clench, and then, “He never did before this. Not once since I left home.”
“But when your mother—”
“Deidre. When Deidre died, he decided to seek me out. I had only one woman in my life that I called
Mom
, and Maggie died when I was fourteen.”
“Before—you said it was your birthday.”
“Yeah. Thirteen years ago, I went to live with Kenny and Maggie Waldron—Chris’s biological parents. I consider that my birthday now; it was the night that changed everything for me. Without them, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
“Will you tell me about Maggie?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Because you smile whenever you say her name.”
She didn’t think he would continue—he rummaged around one of the bags they’d brought. He handed her a new shirt and pants. “You need to get dressed—we don’t know what’s going to happen. We need to be prepared.”
That reminder jolted her back into the reality of the situation. She yanked the T-shirt on quickly and pulled the pants on in the small space.
As he rolled up the bottoms of her BDUs, he answered her question. “Maggie—Mom—was protective of us. Always took our side, even if we were wrong. Of course, in private, she’d whip our tails—figuratively, but we needed it. She and Dad taught me to be respectful. She taught me so much, even though she died only nine months after I started living with them. Cancer—it all happened really quickly. But I wouldn’t give up that time for anything.”
“She wouldn’t have liked me very much,” she said. “She probably wouldn’t forgive me for hurting you the way I have.” She fought to keep the sob out of her throat—couldn’t at the thought of a scared, hurt, fourteen-year-old Nick with two great losses in the same year.
He slipped on his own fresh clothing as he spoke. “She taught me to trust my gut when it came to people, that I’d know if they were good or bad pretty much the second I met them.”
“And I fall into the good category?” she asked softly.
Before he could answer, there was a slamming knock on the side of the car—Clutch was in the passenger side within seconds, soaked to the skin from the short walk from his own car and carrying bags and weapons. Sarah followed immediately into the driver’s seat.
Nick had grabbed for his weapon, but Clutch held up his hands to stop him. “We’re okay—we’re alone still, but they know. John Caspar knows we’ve got Kaylee and he knows where we are.”
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” Nick told him.
“Our thoughts exactly,” Clutch said as Sarah turned the ignition gingerly and the engine turned over with a loud sputter.
“We’re going to drive in this weather?” Kaylee asked them.
“Not much choice. He’s on to us, knows about the article. He called—wants me to bring Kaylee to the warehouse. He says he’ll let me live if I do that.” The car began to move.
“We have to get the story in to my boss today so it can make the morning edition,” Kaylee said. It was already two in the afternoon—they were six hours ahead of the States but there was no way to tell if they’d get to a hotel in time for her to e-mail the story.
Still, she scrambled for her computer to do a final edit on what she’d written earlier. She had some battery life—she’d have to make good use of it, despite the way the car jerked and fishtailed along the unfinished roads.
At least the rain had tamped down the dust completely—for the first time since they’d arrived in Africa, Kaylee’s breathing felt clear and easy despite the complete panic that had overtaken her.
“Do what you need to do, Kaylee—let the rest of it go. Let us do what we need to,” Nick told her as he held his rifle and moved into the far backseat of the car, leaving her alone on the long stretch of cracked leather.
Do what you need to do, Kaylee—let the rest of it go…
If only it was all that easy.
18
Nick itched to take the wheel, hated sitting passively as Sarah attempted to barrel through puddles that could overwhelm the car at any given time. It was only luck of the draw and Sarah’s instinct that was getting them along.
At least Kaylee was distracted, hanging on to the computer with one hand and typing with the other, biting her bottom lip in concentration.
Better she wasn’t thinking about the danger bearing down on them—because Nick had the awful feeling that this John Caspar character was much closer than any of them thought. Clutch felt the same way, judging by the hand signal he’d given Nick to keep his weapons at the ready.
Nick remained in the last row of seats of the car, facing the back window for the most part, scanning what he could—although in the torrential downpour, he’d be lucky to make out even a headlight.
There was nothing, and still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being hunted down. Sent into a trap.
And about two hours into the trip, when they’d gone maybe twenty miles, the car jerked to a fast stop.
“The bridge is gone,” Sarah told them.
“Stay with Kaylee,” Clutch told her as Nick nodded at Kaylee. He got out of the car and headed over to the bridge to take a look at it for himself.
He and Clutch stood in the rain, staring at the wooden structure. Nick fisted his hand around his rifle and glanced at Clutch. Neither man said a word, but they didn’t have to.
This bridge wasn’t washed out—it had been blown out, most likely by dynamite.
They were trapped, caged in on three sides, and the only options were to stay put or retreat the way they’d come.
Clutch pushed the water off his face—Nick didn’t bother, barely noticed the rain, was so used to being wet that this non-bone-chilling flood didn’t affect him.
The gap wasn’t terribly wide—maybe five feet across.
“Those trees won’t hold with this rain,” Clutch said, as if reading Nick’s mind. “Building a bridge in this could take hours—we don’t have a saw to take down the trees.”
Nick pushed at one of the heavier trees. Of course, on this side of the river they were anchored tightly by the roots. “How close is the rest of your group?”
“You want me to call them?”
“If what you say is true, at least five of them are on your side. That makes two at most against all of us.”
“I still don’t like the odds—I’ve been gone for a few days, I don’t know what the hell Caspar’s told them.” Clutch shook his head. “We could grab the trees from the other side of the river, bring them across.”
“Best option, but you know as well as I do that we don’t have that kind of time.”
Clutch wiped the water from his eyes. “Then we’ve only got one choice.”
Clutch opened the back of the car without warning, making Kaylee start—she couldn’t see through the windows because of the rain, which seemed to have gotten worse. Sarah got out of the car to join Clutch as Nick slid in next to Kaylee, dripping wet.
“We’ve got to move out. Can you wrap up your computer and our phones as best you can in this sheeting, since you’re still dry?”
He pointed to the plastic Clutch had thrown over the seat back in front of her.
“I can do that. But wait, we’re not walking in this, are we?”
“The rain’s our only cover right now, and it’s not going to last much longer,” Nick told her. “If we can get across the river and into hiding, we can grab a car and get to a hotel without being tracked.”
It was their only choice beyond staying behind to fight. She knew Nick probably would have preferred that had she not been here—but not knowing who exactly they’d be up against made her grateful he’d chosen the path of least resistance.
Although it didn’t seem like least resistance from where she stood—it looked dangerous as hell and scary and she tried to buck up for whatever lay ahead of them. And so she wrapped all four of their phones and the computer, after backing up the article on a Zip drive that she wrapped tightly as well and stuck inside the left leg pocket of her BDUs. And then she pulled the heavy camouflage jacket around her, despite the heat, and pulled her hat back on, tucking up her hair so it wouldn’t drip down her neck.
The ground was slick and she was soaked to the skin the second she stepped out of the car. If Nick hadn’t been guiding her, she would’ve fallen several times. As it was, she had a hard time pulling her feet through the mud that threatened to suck her in with every step.
What Nick had called a stream looked like a rushing white-water river to her, cold and gray and unforgiving. It wasn’t a huge distance to get across but fear made her stop in her tracks.
She’d watched Clutch and Sarah cross first—Sarah had held their weapons and supplies above her head while hanging on to Clutch’s back. “I can’t swim,” she yelled to Nick.
“We’re definitely going to do something about that, but for right now, you don’t have to. Hop on.”
He’d turned and bent down a little, his back to her. She took a deep breath, because she trusted him to get her across, no matter how badly her legs were shaking.
She adjusted the bags so they rested on her back and climbed onto Nick’s.
“I’ve got you, Kaylee. Just hold on, all right? No matter what happens, don’t let go.”
“No chance of that,” she said and for a second he turned to her, and almost smiled a little before he turned back to the task at hand.
She wrapped her arms around his chest and held him tight around the waist with her legs as he waded into the river.
She felt the current dragging at him even as he fought back by pulling himself along the rope he and Clutch had wrapped around a tree across the river. The rain still pounded them, thunder and lightning, and she could barely see her hand in front of her face.
She rested her forehead between Nick’s shoulders and just prayed the computer with her story on it would survive.
In this rain, nothing seemed like it would remain dry. As Nick moved, slow and steady through the water, she tried not to think of the documentaries she’d seen on crocodiles, comforting herself that they wouldn’t attack in this weather. Praying they wouldn’t.
No, you only need to worry about human predators
, she thought with a grimace before bringing her mind back to other matters, like whether Roger would consider her article worth the risk.
When Nick slipped, she fought a scream as her legs went farther into the water, instead tightening her grip on him and felt him regain balance.
It seemed like hours but was more likely closer to twenty minutes later when Clutch was pulling Nick up onto shore and Sarah was helping her off Nick’s back.
“Are you okay?” Sarah asked. “Can you walk?”
Kaylee’s knees nearly buckled. She was aware of every muscle shaking, from tension, from fear and exhaustion. But she’d be damned if she was going to quit now. She looked at the concern in Nick’s eyes as he came to her side, and yelled, “I’m fine,” into the wind.
She was fine—until she heard the shots, automatic weapon fire that two days ago she’d never heard in person. Now she’d be able to identify it in her sleep, would most likely wake up from dreams in a cold sweat for a while because of it.
“Don’t return it—they’re firing blind,” Clutch told Nick. “Let’s just move.”
Nick hoisted her quickly and ran for cover. “Hands over your ears,” he told her, and she complied. It helped, as it had before, but only moderately. But as the sounds faded, she tugged at Nick and insisted she could run herself.
And she did—ran behind Sarah, with Nick on her tail, ran until she blocked the sound of gunfire from her mind.
Lying against Jamie in the dark, the worry finally broke through—an intense concern that had Chris’s own head throbbing, the way hers had earlier.
He rarely got headaches—when he did, it was usually tied to something pretty bad happening to someone he loved.
Shit, he wished he could get in touch with Nick. He’d tried, but there was no cell service.
He sucked at being helpless, would’ve taken off into the dark jungle if he’d been alone and damn the night. But it was a fucking monsoon out there and he couldn’t justify putting Jamie in danger—still had that built-in chivalry that was always present around women. Would make it damn hard to be in combat with them.
Jamie’s hands stroked the back of his neck. “It’s going to be okay. It has to be.”
Her legs shifted underneath his, one of them wrapping around his waist, and his cock stirred. “Let me help you forget this time,” she murmured.
She guided him inside her, arching her back as he pushed in all the way and then he palmed the floor, kept his forehead against her breasts and just breathed. Her fingernails dug into his overheated skin, both of their bodies nearly trembling with anticipation, and then she bucked her hips up into his.
He heard the groan escape from his throat, a low, almost guttural sound that echoed in the empty space around them.
“That’s it… let it go.” Her own voice was huskier than it had been earlier—sexier. And just like before, she pulled him into her own need with a gentle force he hadn’t expected.
He fit against her—with his body molded to hers, he waited for his psychic Cajun magic to kick in, to remind him that this was a temporary fit. But it didn’t. Not when she wrapped her other leg around his waist and began to move in earnest, forcing him to give in to her.
And as they moved together in the dark, her hands tracing one of the long scars along his back, for the first time ever, he felt grounded.
———
At some point, Jamie had lost count of her orgasms and, she was pretty sure, of her mind as well. Now she lay on her back on the floor, spent, with Chris’s long body lying next to hers.
He’d lit a cigarette and the smoke curled in lazy rings headed up to the ceiling. He hadn’t bothered to dress himself yet and she’d followed suit, and for a while there was nothing but comfort between them.
She knew that would change—had to—neither of them could remain distracted for much longer. And yes, Chris had begun to tap his fingers against the floor, the familiar energy returning.
She sat up and rummaged in the dark for her clothes. The rain and wind outside had picked up and the plane shimmied slightly from side to side.
Chris had started to dress too—she heard the rustle of his clothes and the strike of a match as he lit another cigarette.
For the first time in her life, she wished she smoked.
“Those scars on your leg are pretty fresh,” he said, out of the blue, as she buttoned her shirt.
“How can you tell that—I can barely see my own hand in front of me.”
“I have some of my own … they’re pretty distinctive.”
She was rubbing her leg even before she spoke. “Mine are from eight months ago.”
“Everything’s healed up well?”
“It’s fine,” she lied.
Her therapist told her the problem was that Jamie said she wanted to heal, but somewhere deep inside, she wouldn’t let herself. Physically, yes. Her leg worked better now than it had before the shooting, thanks to regular physical therapy and getting back to her morning runs. But mentally, she didn’t ever want to forget that moment in time when her adrenaline pumped and her reaction was too damned slow, her body caught off guard.
She wanted to remember it minute by minute so it would never happen again. “I lost my partner.”
Her words sounded wistful, even to her own ears, and she cursed that weakness.
“I’m sorry, Jamie.” He touched her shoulder in the dark and even though she’d seen it coming, she still jumped.
Dammit, she hated the dark. Didn’t want to think about Mike or her injury right now.
Guilt washed over her for what she’d let Chris do to her—for what she’d wanted Chris to do to her.
Mike would’ve told her himself that it was time to move on. But Mike didn’t know everything about her—she’d seen to that.
Chris had suddenly grown even more quiet—had stopped his usual constant movement, and Jamie felt herself freeze too. And then he said, “We can go now.”
“I thought you said we needed to wait until the rain stopped?”
He didn’t answer, had slammed the door open with his foot, was grabbing supplies and throwing them out the door as fast as he could, and suddenly, as the plane lurched hard, she knew why.
The rain was taking their shelter, and fast.
She stood, getting her bearings as the cabin rocked viciously—he’d already gotten her bag out for her and was waiting by the open door.
“Come on, Jamie—you go now.” He held his hand out to her. He was drenched already from the driving rain that was slamming into the plane and had to fight to get to the edge of the door.
The drop wasn’t bad, maybe five feet straight down into the mud. She landed harder than she thought she would, had to drag her feet up as they became mired.
Chris was right behind her, literally lifting her out of the muck as it threatened to suction around his feet, and together they watched the plane drift down the muddy road.
“Come on, Jamie—up there.” He pointed to a large set of boulders right in front of them—there was a flat-enough top for them to sit on semi-comfortably, more so than climbing one of the nearest trees anyway.