Under the Wire: Bad Boys Undercover (11 page)

“Like, three-legged cows bad.” She slipped the pack over her shoulders as her gaze wandered over the open land. “On top of that there were a series of explosions which further polluted the entire region. That was back in the forties and fifties, and the testing still puts the exposure above normal limits on certain areas.”

He was starting to wonder why anyone came to this part of the world. “Don’t drink the water. Got it.”

“My point is that field testing equipment doesn’t always give the whole picture. The plan was to gather samples from a wide area and then test them at the makeshift lab in our compound.”

He searched his memory. Ran through the mental layout of the compound. “I didn’t see a lab.”

“We can add that to our list of problems, because there was one and now it’s gone.”

“Great, now we have more things to find.” The fact that the Alliance wasn’t already on the ground and moving on this problem had his temper ticking up. “So, to sum up in nonscience language, you had only started
your work when the attack—or whatever—happened out here. Now your team, equipment, and samples are missing.”

“That’s pretty much it.” She nodded. “Yes.”

“Which suggests someone doesn’t want you and your team investigating.” There was no other conclusion to draw. She was too smart not to get that, and he wasn’t in the mood to make up less end-of-the-world-sounding scenarios to explain the reality away.

“That’s how I see it.”

“Who hired you?” That was the key. The one piece he needed to know and get back to Tasha so she could start banging heads together.

“Cliff.”

This was the wrong time for practiced ignorance. “You know what I’m asking, Cara.”

“The assignment came through the U.S. Geological Survey. A government job.” She wrapped her fingers around the strap to her backpack. “I didn’t find out the real job until I had been interviewed, vetted, and was on the plane.”

Not the way the Alliance did business. Not the way anyone should, but he needed to take the assignment-handling up with Tasha or the CIA regional director. Someone who wasn’t Cara.

He searched his mind for the right words to ask the next question but nothing came to him. In the end he went with straightforward and clear. He didn’t have
the energy or time to do much else. “Do you remember any other details about the night of the attack?”

Her grip on the material in her palm tightened. “It’s a blur. Pieces come back, like I have this vision of Cliff shredding the inside of our tent with a knife.”

For some reason that information shot through Reid. Pierced something deep and hollow inside him. “You shared with him.”

She tilted her head a bit. “Do you have a question you want to ask?”

That was a dare and he didn’t take it. “Nope.”

“It was work only.”

Relief whooshed through him. He pretended it had more to do with them evading capture than anything she’d said. “Right.”

“But I can date whomever I want.”

The words sliced into him. “We’re not going to argue about that now.”

“As if you haven’t dated anyone since we broke up. Parker already said otherwise.” She shifted to stand next to him. Leaned against the rocks and looked out over the landscape. Didn’t give him eye contact.

“You left me.” She’d already driven that point home and now had him saying it. Wasn’t that fucking great?

She turned to face him. “Reid.”

It was not the time or the place for this. They needed to move. Focus on the job. Get her to safety then double back for her team. Still . . . all good in theory. In prac
tice, he wanted to be clear that she ripped them apart. Her, not him.

“We were engaged and you got up one day, packed everything and took off.” Visions of half-open drawers and stray socks littering the floor filled his head.

He could call up a memory and see the position of every stick of furniture and every item she’d taken with her. Not much. Neither one of them collected things. He could fit most of his life into two oversized duffel bags. That probably said a lot about him. So did the fact she never unpacked the boxes of books she brought with her when she moved into his place before she took off again.

“You know the reality of what happened.”

Women always said things like that. Expected him to pick up cues and understand arguments that made absolutely no sense to him. This time he wanted the long version of his sins. “Explain it to me.”

“I tried to talk to you back then. I wanted us to pull back, stay engaged while we did the sort of dating normal couples do.” She lifted her hand as if she wanted to touch him, but then let it fall again. “Make sure we were compatible. Admittedly, that would have been hard with your schedule but I wanted to try.”

He remembered every argument she made. Each one boiled down to the same thing:
I want out
. “No, you
wanted
to put off the wedding.”

“I was asking for the time for us to get to know each other.”

Excuses, nothing more. “You suggested we live apart.”

“Are you not hearing me?” Her voice rose, getting louder with each word. “God, Reid. What I felt for you . . .” Her voice faltered and she stopped.

“What?” He didn’t want to care about the rest, but he did.

“It was so big. So overwhelming.” She shook her head. “I fell so hard, so fast.”

She could not sell that. Not to him. “That’s not true.”

“There I was, going under, and I didn’t even know if you really loved me.”

“How can you say that?” He was not shouldering the blame for that. He’d told her he did. Repeatedly.

She’d said she loved him. Cried about how she worried they’d rushed into the engagement and made a mistake. Asked him all those questions that didn’t really matter for their future. He’d tried to reassure her, but she still left.

Later, when he turned over every sentence, every minute, while sitting in the shadows looking at a sneaker she left behind, he decided she’d never felt anything for him but sexual attraction. Even that had been fleeting. Because she hadn’t just walked away. She cut off all contact.

But now, looking at her, seeing the pleading in her eyes and stark pain written on her face . . . “What are you not saying?”

“It—us—took over everything. Every part of my life.” She gulped in a huge intake of air. “When it came
down to talking things through, actually communicating and fitting our lives together, we couldn’t.”

“Did we really try?” Sure, he hadn’t seen the need to discuss every little thing about his past. Still didn’t get why she couldn’t accept the man in front of her and leave it at that.

“Maybe not enough.” She shook her head. “I should have stayed and fought, but I really thought I was the only one fighting.”

“I don’t understand how you can say that.” But he could tell from the hurt in her voice that she did.

“You refused to see that anything was even wrong.” Her voice returned to a safer whisper. “This crazy high-adrenaline situation happened. We got whipped up and excited. I kept thinking we jumped in too quick, made a rash decision.”

“And you still see our relationship that way.” He didn’t have to ask because he knew the answer.

“I don’t know what to think.” She glanced away, talked into the wind. “But I didn’t go in looking for a way out. The doubts and worries that we made a bad decision came and I couldn’t shake them off.”

Every word cut and shredded him. “You.”

She looked back at him and frowned. “What?”

“You mean
you
made a bad decision.” He stood up straight, putting full weight on his fatigued muscles and clamping down on a groan that rattled up his throat.

“Us.”

“I didn’t ask you to marry me as part of some sort of adrenaline afterburn.” The idea sounded ridiculous to him. He dealt in danger and death every day and had proposed exactly one time in his entire life.

Right when he would have walked around the rocks and restarted their journey, she put a hand on his arm. That’s all it took to stop him. All it took to thaw the deep freeze that had settled inside him when she left.

“You act like I didn’t feel anything for you.”

The lukewarm statement made his head pound. He had to force his body to go numb, to not feel anything. “You did? Lucky me.”

“You have to agree the situation back then was intense and unreal.”

The words clicked inside him. Threw a switch that he could not turn off again. “You were the one woman I ever proposed to. So that we’re clear, it was pretty fucking real to me.”

And that was all he wanted to say on the subject. He told her he loved her, she said it back and then a few weeks later ended it. Gave him this speech about how they didn’t want the same things and how the danger colored everything.

She’d moved on. Fine, she could keep on walking . . . just as soon as he got her back home.

“Reid, I need you to know—”

“No.” He moved away from her when she went to touch him.

Actually, he had one more thing. It crept up on him
and demanded he say it out loud. “For the record, I have dated since you. Parker didn’t make that up.”

“I didn’t think he did.”

“I’ve had sex once. Exactly one time. That’s it.” And it sucked. Nine months after she left, he’d gone into a bar in France, just after an Alliance assignment ended. Drank too much and went looking for a one-night stand. The woman was nice, attractive . . . and he felt nothing except guilt. As if he were cheating on Cara. That’s how wrapped around and fucked up she had him.

Her eyes widened. “In sixteen months?”

The number shocked him, too. He’d toyed with a screw-her-out-of-his-system plan. The idea of entering into a series of no-strings one-night stands, running through woman after woman, sounded shitty to him. Like a nightmare for any woman unlucky enough to find him attractive during that time.

“Yeah, so next time you’re tempted to give me a lecture on not being serious about you or my feelings, save it.” Because loving her had shut him down. Even now the idea of being with anyone else left him feeling numb.

Now he really was done with this topic. The argument recharged him. Got the blood and anger flowing. He was pretty sure he could take on an army with one hand and no weapon if he had to.

“Reid . . .”

Problem was, he still didn’t know if he could handle being this close to her. He started walking. “Let’s go.”

T
HEY WALKED
in silence as hours ticked by . . . or so it seemed. Cara guessed no more than fifteen minutes had passed, but spending even one minute with a pissed off man while he tromped across the field, shaking his head every two steps, made the seconds pass like an eternity.

His long legs gobbled up the distance. She had to speed up to nearly a jog to keep up. She understood the need to keep moving but was pretty sure he’d ramped up the pace for other reasons. Maybe he thought she’d be winded and unable to talk. Nice try, but no.

After what he’d said—about not dating anyone else—she should be out of breath. Right now she was stuck on confused as hell. Back then she’d looked at him—who he was and how shut off from anything and anyone but her and his team—and tried to get him to talk. When he acted as if everything was fine, always fine, and he pushed her concerns away, she pictured a long, lonely life of waiting at home while he ventured off to save person after person.

She knew he’d never share much, because he never did. The only hint about his past came from an offhand comment about growing up in the foster system. No clue as to what happened or the life experiences that brought him to the Alliance. Hell, she didn’t even know his real name. It was as if he marked time from the point at which he joined the team and expected her to do the same, ignoring the rest. Ignoring every hard question and all of her doubts.

She got it. She understood how the work he did shaped the man he was. Part of her also knew that a certain type—in command, protector, loner—went into that line of work. But she needed more, then and now. Relationships weren’t her thing. Opening up and loving someone made her feel raw and vulnerable. She’d tried with him, but when he met her every moment of doubt with a cursory “It’s fine,” she gave up. She had to own that. She’d been the one to walk away, but she’d always felt as if he’d pushed her.

Having been smothered growing up, her parents insisting that only artistic pursuits mattered and she needed to enjoy and
feel
each minute, Reid was a refreshing change. They were both driven and practical. With him, she didn’t hear constant reminders about how she’d almost died as a kid and needed to “respect the second chance life had given her.” She could almost hear her mother say those words.

Reid had admitted from the start that he didn’t know
anything about science, but he made it clear he thought it was sexy that she did. For the first time, acceptance for who she really was rather than the sick kid who once beat cancer defined her.

But the practical side of her had balked. Doubt sparked. She’d wanted to accomplish so much more. The idea of being his sidekick, the woman he wandered home to now and then but never really confided in, made her stomach roil.

She walked away right then, because waiting even one more day would have made leaving him impossible. She’d already started justifying in her mind the idea of giving up her dreams and what she needed from him, and that change to her personality had scared her into moving out.

Seeing him now brought all those feelings of loss and longing she kept buried rushing up. She’d talked about how what they had couldn’t be more than adrenaline-fueled attraction because to say more would be to admit how hard she’d fallen in such a short time. How much she loved him. Loved him with every part of her. Not something her rational brain could accept. But she loved to look at him, touch him. His loyalty and decency in the face of astounding evil appealed to her on a very fundamental level.

Staying away from him for all those months had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d thrown herself into work. Took one field assignment after an
other, each one more dangerous than the one before. She knew the choices amounted to running from her feelings and the gnawing sense of loss that consumed her. Knew it and ignored it. Pushed down all her churning confusion over him and tried to pretend it didn’t exist.

And now he was back . . . and she still loved him.

Nothing about him spoke to a need for revenge, even though he had every right to be angry with her. She hadn’t exactly left the relationship in the best way. It worked for her, but it must have bruised his ego. That hadn’t been the plan. She left for survival, before she got in too deep. Before wanting him became more important than the plans she had for herself and her life. Still, he’d ended up as collateral damage, and while she knew he’d gotten over it, that didn’t mean she didn’t owe him more.

Since he’d stepped back into her life just hours ago, she’d already seen him prickly and vibrating with fury. Wallowing in sarcasm and emotionally crouched down, ready to leap into a new round of verbal battle if she said the wrong thing. Now he whistled. For some reason that nonchalance irritated her more than the rest.

She was about to comment on his new talent when he stopped. He held up a fist, and she assumed that meant she should match her steps to his and halt. Not that she intended to go out exploring anyway. Despite their his
tory and the ton of baggage piled between them, she wasn’t stupid. In a situation like this you stayed close to the guy with the gun and the training.

When nothing happened except more staring from Reid, she leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “What is it?”

“The rumbling.”

She had no idea what that meant. The only sounds she heard came from the swish of the branches in the wind and the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. He was the cause of the latter. “Could you be more specific?”

“This way.” Before she could answer, he had her hand and pulled her with him. They veered off to the left and kept going toward a steep slope. The same one he’d warned her about a few minutes ago. “You still run every day?”

She was almost afraid to answer that. “Maybe.”

“Good.” He tightened her backpack straps then nodded. “Get ready.”

“For?” Instead of answering her, he broke into a jog, pulling her along with him. She tried to stop and skid, but his grip didn’t ease.

Her foot slid as he dragged her over the crest of the hill. The landscape in front of her dropped away and the view morphed into nothing but gray sky. No horizon. Just a forty-five degree drop to a rocky gravel bed and a snaking stream carved through the bottom of the valley.

Her knees buckled as she fought to get her footing. A stumble would hurt and gravity would drag her the whole way down. The thick soles of her boots grabbed onto chunks of hill then gave way. She fell hard on her hip but her body kept going.

Reid wrapped his arms around her, stopping the painful slide. His weight anchored them there, a quarter of the way down. Hanging from the hillside.

After some tugging, her bag slipped off her shoulders and he tore it off and shoved it farther down the hill. If not for the way he draped his legs over her, she would have slid along with her things. She looked up to say something but he was already moving. He flattened her on her back. A second later he moved over her, not bothering to give her any space or ease up on the pressure.

Their bodies met from chests to thighs. Heavy breathing wound around her. Not his, hers. He remained still, covering every inch of her like a human shield.

Her chest ached and a new round of banging started in her head. She put her hands on his chest to push him up a bit and catch her breath. Then she felt it. The stiffness of his body. How alert and primed for action he was. He held a gun and another lay in the grass by her shoulder.

They had company. She didn’t need a signal or an explanation. Understood his body language.

She strained, keeping still as she tried to pick up
whatever stray sound had tipped him off. The creak came first. Then the sound of tires bouncing against rocks and uneven ground. An engine growled as a car or truck or whatever it was pulled closer.

Reid wrapped an arm around her head and tucked her even tighter beneath him. With his face this close, she could see every whisker where the scruff around his chin had started to fill in. Heat rolled off his body, and with his head ducked low their cheeks almost met.

The brakes squeaked as the vehicle chugged to a stop. Voices floated above them. She looked up, seeing only a patch of sky peeking out around Reid’s shoulders. He still covered her but she sensed he was ready to pounce if men spilled over the top of the hill and headed toward them.

She waited for the footsteps. Tried to pick up some of the conversation from the little Russian she knew but the words raced by so fast she couldn’t understand much. She immediately regretted not taking some sort of speed language course before heading out here.

Male laughter rose into the air. The guttural sound sent a pained tremble racing through her. Panic blocked her throat. She tried to swallow the lump back but couldn’t.

A car door banged. Then another.

Reid leaned up on his elbow and aimed. Tension pounded off of him. She thought she could feel his heartbeat hammer against her.

She didn’t know the plan but the end result would be the same—more death.

More talking. Right above them now. Near the top of the hill. If the men stepped to the edge and looked down they would see Reid’s body. Maybe not hers, but Reid’s would be enough to cause the world to break into chaos once again.

She thought she heard the word for body but wasn’t sure. She’d stopped breathing, or tried to. She dug her fingers into Reid’s side. He didn’t even flinch.

A few more seconds passed and the world began to spin on her. The dizziness hit her out of nowhere. So did the need to roll to her stomach and throw up. The tension tightened until the air choked off inside her. She wanted to scream but the words stayed locked in her head.

She closed her eyes and counted to ten. Tried to inhale without making a sound. When she got to eight, another door slammed. This time a string of angry words came fast and furious. Yelling, shouting orders maybe. Footsteps thundered against the ground. They’d been spotted. That had to be the explanation. She had no idea how fast Reid could shoot or how many he could hit, but she hoped his training proved half as good as she always dreamed it had been.

Forcing her hands to unclench, she felt around on the ground beside her for the extra gun. Her fingertips touched the metal as the vehicle sputtered to life again.
The vehicle idled . . . right? She concentrated, sure she heard the unmistakable sound of an engine. The voices faded and tires crunched.

Reid exhaled as he raised himself. He held up a finger, which she assumed meant to stay quiet. As if she needed that warning. Then he crawled, not making a sound. Somehow, he moved his impressive body around, all that muscle, as if he weighed nothing.

He got to the top of the hill and looked around before he slid down toward her again. Instead of sitting next to her, however, he climbed on top of her, balancing most of his upper body weight on his elbows.

“They’re gone.” His whisper barely registered over the sound of the soft breeze.

She’d picked up that much. It was the rest of his actions that had her wriggling underneath him. “Then what are you doing?”

“Making sure there isn’t a second truck or group following behind on foot.”

That stopped her movements as well as the relief flowing through her. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say something like that.”

His fingers brushed through her hair. “It should be fine but we’ll wait for a few minutes to make sure.”

She couldn’t break contact with the gun sitting right next to her. Her fingers rested against the barrel. She thought about grabbing it just in case. “Are you sure they left?”

He eyed the extra gun then nodded. “You did great.”

“Since my job was to lay here and not cause trouble, yeah.” She tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. Probably had something to do with the way her teeth were chattering. The aftermath burn was going to kill her one of these times.

“It’s easy to panic in that type of situation. Most would.” His voice sounded so reassuring. Smooth and deep and so sexy. “But not you.”

Yeah, nice try.
“It’s cute that you think I didn’t.”

Some of the tension left his face. “A smart person knows when to worry, and you’re pretty damn smart.”

The conversation headed to a strange place. Since they kept getting thrown into the middle of shoot-outs and lethal scouting parties, this level of strangeness shouldn’t have been a surprise. Still, they needed to work together, and that meant clearing the air. Or at least trying to unmuddy it a little. “I think we should talk about this.”

He frowned. “The truck?”

“This.” She waved a hand in the small space between them. “Us.”

He shot her a you’ve-lost-your-mind look. He actually excelled at that expression. “Now?”

“You said we shouldn’t move.”

He straightened up high enough to glance around then ducked his head again. “Or talk. Did I not mention that part?”

“We both know you threw that in as an afterthought just now to shut me down.” He had to know from experience that she took his directions pretty seriously at times like this. She didn’t doubt he’d use that prior knowledge to his advantage if he didn’t want a challenge from her.

His face went blank. “After sixteen months, now you’re all chatty?”

She couldn’t read him, but the word “chatty” made her back teeth grind together. “We talked back then.”

“No, you talked.” Anger vibrated in his whisper. “You decided we should have been a short fling. Sex, fun, adrenaline. Done.”

His voice had turned singsongy. She guessed he was trying to mimic her, and she fought the urge to punch him in the shoulder. Not that she could get off a good shot from this position anyway. “That is not true. I tried . . . Forget it. We are not plowing over that same ground again.”

“Fine.” His voice suggested her explanation was anything but.

“The point is, we knew each other for about a week before you proposed.”

He frowned at her. “So?”

That would be a sufficient explanation for most people. “What kind of answer is that?”

“Apparently not a scientific one.”

He was in fine sarcastic form today. She would have
complained, but something about battling with him brought her body kicking back to life. The aches faded and the fear eased. But the frustration? Yeah, that hit her full force.