He could use that.
“Whoever’s paying you to do this isn’t paying you enough,” Laurel said, speaking for the first time since the men arrived.
“Yeah? What’s it to you?”
“Only that if you’re going to kill me, I’d like to know my murderer was getting a big payoff.”
He grinned, a stretch of thin lips that held no trace of humor. “We’re not gonna kill you. Just take you to some folks that’ll pay us ten grand.”
“I figure I should be worth at least fifty grand.”
Confusion crossed his partner’s face. “Fifty grand?” Outrage rimmed his words.
“It’s like I said in the first place, you’re not being paid enough. I’d take it up with your boss.”
Mace edged closer to his goal, knowing that Laurel was trying to draw the men’s attention to give him time to get in position.
The second man shot the leader an accusing glare. “You said ten grand was it.”
“Too bad,” Laurel said, a pronounced drawl creeping into her voice. “I’m sure you could get more. Maybe you ought to call this boss of yours and demand a better deal.”
“And maybe you oughta shut up,” the first man said as he cut a hard look at his partner. “She’s playing you.”
Mace angled closer to the leader.
“But fifty grand...” A whine crept into the second man’s voice. “Homer, that’s a sight of money.”
“What’d I tell you about using names? Now shut your trap and let’s get on with it. We ain’t getting nothin’ if we don’t deliver the woman.”
Mace watched as the first man shifted his grip on the shotgun once more. He was getting ready to make his move. Mace telegraphed his intention to Laurel with a small nod. Not by so much as a flicker of her eyes did she indicate that she was following his progress as he closed the distance between himself and the man.
“Now!” he shouted.
TWO
Laurel and Mace had top-notch training on their side, while their opponents were sloppy and undisciplined but brought over 450 pounds of animal fat and pure mean to the fight.
Mace set his sights on the man he’d pegged as the leader and kicked the shotgun from his grip. It was now hand-to-hand. Mace had excelled at hand-to-hand in close-quarters combat training, but his opponent was no slouch and had Mace beat in the weight department.
“You think you’re gonna take me down?” the man taunted, all the while keeping his head out of reach of Mace’s fists. Could he have a glass jaw? The man had a tell. Before he advanced, he wet his lips. It was a small gesture, but it was there.
Mace saw his opening and made his move, neatly evading a blow to the kidneys. He used his opponent’s tell to his advantage, waiting for it, then moving in with a swift uppercut to the man’s jaw.
His guess was verified when his opponent’s eyes went glassy, his mouth slack. Mace followed up with a blow under the nose, causing the man to drop to his knees.
His opponent wasn’t finished, though. He got to his feet, muttered something under his breath, and advanced on Mace with unmistakable intent in his eyes. Mace aimed a short-armed punch to the goon’s face.
Striking the idiot in the face felt good, especially after he’d suggested that Mace abandon Laurel. He spared a glance in her direction and saw Sammy anxiously waiting for the command to attack. The command didn’t come. She flashed Mace an I’ve-got-this look and fought with the ferocity and skill he’d expect of an Army Ranger.
His man got to his feet once more, swiped blood from his mouth and sent Mace a look promising retribution. He grabbed hold of Mace’s arm and did his best to yank it out of the socket.
Mace wanted to give Laurel a thumbs-up, but he was too busy taking down the thug who was fixated on tearing him apart limb by limb.
“Nobody bests me and lives to tell about it. Not that we were gonna let you live in the first place.”
“Enough.” Growing tired of the man’s taunts, Mace did a roundhouse kick, aiming for his ample gut. When he went down, Mace knelt by him, saying, “Stay down, why don’t you, and save yourself some pain.”
The man spat at him. Mace grabbed a pair of flexi-cuffs from his back pocket and shackled the man’s hands.
He turned to see Laurel still grappling with her opponent.
“Homer always thought he was so smart. But look who’s still standing. I’ll take you back in pieces if I have to,” he said to Laurel, “but you’ll be alive. You’ll be real alive.”
Mace started to step in, but Laurel stopped him with a feral grin. “He’s mine.”
He saw that her man had tossed aside the shotgun and pulled a knife, clearly not wanting to kill Laurel, just subdue her. They squared off from each other.
Mace hadn’t pegged her as someone to back down from a fight. He was right.
* * *
The gleam of metal flashed menacingly through the air, but Laurel didn’t retreat. Instead, she moved like a blur of motion, stepping into the sweep of the knife’s arc and twisting the man’s wrist, breaking his hold on the hilt of the knife. It fell from his grasp, and she kicked it out of the way.
“Want to try again?” she asked.
Enraged now, he bared his teeth and charged at her, head first. She spun, then gave him a kick to the pants that sent him toppling to the asphalt parking lot. She put a knee to his back and pulled his arms behind him.
Mace handed her a spare pair of cuffs. “You’ve got some moves on you.”
After securing her man, she planted her hands on her hips. “What do we do with these yahoos?”
Mace pulled a length of rope from the bed of his pickup, tied the men back-to-back, and then bound their feet for good measure. “That should hold them until S&J gets the police on the horn and has them picked up.” A quick text to Shelley took care of the matter.
“Get your gear,” he said to Laurel. “I’ll have one of S&J’s operatives retrieve your car.”
She grabbed her backpack from her vehicle and headed to Mace’s truck.
He swung in the driver’s seat while Laurel slid in the passenger side and Sammy bounded over the seat to the back.
“Ever been on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride?” he asked.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, hold on. ’Cause we’re gonna take it now.”
With a squeal of tires, Mace peeled out of the parking lot. The narrow road wound its way through the valley then climbed steadily. Though navigating it required concentration, his mind wasn’t on the road but on the woman sitting at his side.
The tight set of her shoulders told him she was tense but wasn’t going to voice her worry aloud. Her sharp gaze was fixed on the road ahead.
“You’ve got some moves on you. You handled yourself like a pro back there,” he said.
She sent an unsmiling look his way. “I am a pro. I did the same training as you, Ransom. No one cut me slack because I’m female.”
“It shows.” She was as well-trained as any soldier he’d fought alongside. “Sorry.”
“Because you thought I was a poster child for women in the military and didn’t have what it takes to back it up?”
“No. I never doubted you had the goods. What I didn’t know was whether you traded on them, expecting special treatment because you’re a woman. Now I know that you don’t.”
Her nod was curt. “Apology accepted.”
“Where’d you pick up your friends?”
“Somewhere over the last ridge. I’d hoped I’d lost them, but they kept on coming.” Her voice took on an edge.
He didn’t bother telling her not to worry. She’d be a fool if she wasn’t scared, and this woman was nobody’s fool. A woman who’d made Ranger was exceptional. He’d known plenty of men, good men, who hadn’t been able to make the grade.
The three-legged dog wa
s another mystery. Obviously well trained, the dog was probably military. Military dogs were heroes in their own right. They had been instrumental in taking down bin Laden. If Mace were to guess, he’d say Sammy had been an explosives-sniffing dog, probably losing his leg doing just that.
“Sammy’s ex-military, right?”
She nodded. “He lost his leg searching a building for explosives. He found something and refused to leave until he’d let his handler know. He saved my life that day plus six of my teammates.” Her eyes darkened. “Three didn’t make it.”
Her terse explanation didn’t pretty up the facts, though it had obviously cost her to recount that day. The affection between her and the big shepherd was palpable.
Mace darted a glance her way, then quickly looked away when he saw her bowed head. Though she didn’t say anything, he knew she was praying. While he respected, even admired, believers, he couldn’t agree with their faith. His own faith in the Lord had died during his years in Afghanistan. What kind of God allowed the atrocities he’d witnessed to take place?
Laurel looked up. “I apologize if my praying made you uncomfortable.”
“No problem.”
She slid her gaze over him. “But you’re not a believer?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe. It’s that I can’t.”
To his relief, she didn’t pursue the subject. She folded her hands in her lap and went still. Despite her energy and skills, she had a restful quality to her that he appreciated.
Once again, he experienced a jolt of attraction. That kind of reaction wasn’t typical for him, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. Only one other time had he felt such a pull toward a woman and look at how that had turned out.
He resisted putting a hand to the scar that bisected his right cheek. No sense in drawing attention to it. Not that anyone could miss it. The scar, courtesy of a terrorist’s knife, was the least of his wounds. The left leg that would never be fully functional again came from time in a POW camp.
But even that paled compared to the scars that marked his soul. From long habit, he pushed away the spiraling downward turn of his thoughts and focused on the client at his side.
Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, but this lady would make any man sit up and take notice. Flawless skin was complemented by heavily fringed eyes and a mouth that looked like it might have curved in a smile easily enough had the circumstances been different. As it was, her lips were firmed in an uncompromising line.
He didn’t fault her for that. Having two of the Collective’s foot soldiers on your tail tended to take the fun right out of you.
She held herself tightly, the tense posture saying more than words could that she was preparing for a fight. Her eyes blazed with the rush of adrenaline, and he knew his did as well.
“Relax,” he said. “I haven’t lost a client yet.”
His lame attempt at humor didn’t raise so much as a small smile from her.
“Sorry.” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s been a pretty intense twenty-four hours.”
“I get it.”
After that brief exchange, she lapsed into silence.
* * *
Laurel understood that she was being vetted by the bodyguard. She didn’t mind. Much. She was doing some vetting of her own and decided that Mace Ransom was a straight shooter who didn’t waste time. She appreciated that. A complicated man, she judged.
He was tall, with a rangy build that spelled both strength and speed. Along with jeans and Frye combat boots, he wore an Under Armour shirt and a tactical Blackhawk Warrior Wear jacket system. She guessed there was a holstered weapon beneath the jacket.
His no-nonsense clothes echoed her own. With the temperature steadily dropping in the deep woods, she was grateful for her Duluth Trading jacket, flannel shirt, jeans and Asolo hiking boots.
She turned her attention away from his clothes to the man himself. A bladed nose, sharp cheekbones and narrow-set eyes hinted of Native American ancestry. It wouldn’t be surprising. Many people in the South bore a trace or more of Cherokee blood. All in all, it made for a compelling face.
His features were too rough-hewed, his eyes too full of determination for the bland good looks that found favor in the glossies and online e-zines. No, Mace Ransom would never be mistaken for a movie star or a media idol.
He was closemouthed but could ask questions when he wanted to know something. Even if she hadn’t known he was an ex-Ranger, she’d have made him as spec-ops. It was there in the smoke-colored eyes that missed nothing, in the ramrod posture with the resolutely set shoulders.
His bearing shouted military. She liked the reassurance of that, the familiarity of it. Everything about him was hard. Hard eyes. Hard hands. Hard driven. She’d been around such men for the last nine years of her life. They didn’t give in and they didn’t give up. For that, she was grateful.
The scar on his cheek didn’t repel her. She’d seen worse. Far worse. Along with a day’s growth of beard that roughened his jawline, it added to the dark and dangerous appeal of the man. She bore her own share of scars, some visible, others not. Stars and scars, one of the men in her unit had used to describe spec-ops soldiers.
There was a faint indentation on his chin that might have been a dimple if his lips were to curve in a smile, but the harsh lines bracketing his mouth told their own story, that of a man who rarely if ever smiled. Had life in the Rangers turned him bitter and angry or was there another explanation for the dark cast to his face?
He bore not a lick of the gloss that had characterized her onetime fiancé, though he had been military, too. Jeffrey had been all spit and polish on the outside. It was a pity that he’d been so ordinary on the inside. Laurel pushed memories from her mind of the man who hadn’t been able to handle her making Ranger when he’d washed out.
Unless she missed her guess, there was evidence of a deeper kind of pain in Mace Ransom, the kind that shadowed the heart and the soul. She saw it in the darkening of his eyes when he turned her way and the tight control with which he held himself. At the same time, she detected a steady kind of valor in his eyes, the kind that said he’d do what was right, regardless of the cost to himself.
Whatever put the pain in his eyes, it was not her problem. Or her business.
She wasn’t there to psychoanalyze the S&J agent. She needed his help. Ever since the explosion that had injured her shoulder, she had been functioning at half speed. She needed to step up her game.
“If I didn’t say it already, thanks. For coming. For being here.”
“No need. I go where the job takes me.”
Okay. That put her in her place. She was an assignment. “Still, I appreciate it. I’ve handled myself in plenty of tough situations, but this has me rattled.”
As if sensing her distress, Sammy nudged her neck with his nose. She reached back to scratch his muzzle. “It’s okay,” she murmured. His wet tongue laved her cheek, the small gesture of affection warming her.
“He’s a good animal,” the man at her side observed.
She let her nod answer for her, afraid that her voice would break if she said that Sammy was far more than that.
She returned to her study of the bodyguard. He deserved to know what he was up against. “The tangos on my tail belong to the Collective.”
“I’ve been briefed.” His face hardened, along with his voice.
“Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Gotcha. The Collective doesn’t play nice with others.”
“No kidding? I think they murdered my mother.” She left it at that. There’d be time enough later to go into details, that Bernice’s throat had been slashed, nearly to the bone.
Sammy nudged her with his nose.
“Do you need to go out?” The shepherd gave a sharp bark, and she turned to Mace. “Can we stop?”
She hopped out of the truck, let Sammy out. He spent a minute sniffing the grass before settling down to business.
“Good boy.” She patted her leg. “I wish we could let him run,” she said as Mace joined them. “He’s not used to being cooped up.”
“Sorry. We’ve got to keep moving.”
His words triggered a nasty memory. While she’d been deployed in Afghanistan, her unit had been assigned to take down a munitions dump. They’d succeeded but had taken fire, leaving a couple of men wounded, which had slowed them down. A small band of the enemy had managed to escape into the hills and then proceeded to track Laurel and her men relentlessly, intent on revenge. They had lost a man in the ensuing fight.
“Believe me, I know.”
* * *
Mace didn’t fool himself into thinking that they were home free. There were bound to be others tailing his newest client.
He wasn’t often taken by surprise, but Laurel Landry had managed to do just that. Instead of the hard-edged female Ranger he’d expected, he saw a beautiful woman with auburn hair, golden eyes and a soft mouth.
Not that she was soft. She handled herself like the professional soldier she was.
It was that dichotomy that intrigued him.
The big shepherd stayed at her side. Having only three legs didn’t lessen the fierce protectiveness he displayed when Mace made to help Laurel back in the truck. A sharp woof told Mace to back off.
“Sorry,” Laurel said. “Sammy’s appointed himself my guardian.” She knelt and wrapped her arms around the dog’s big neck. “It’s okay. He’s a friend.” She gestured for Mace to put out his hand to Sammy, who sniffed it. “Friend.”
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