Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  He slung the receiver back into its cradle. Alexa Stoppard was his worry now that Julian had passed away. He opened the bottom drawer to his desk with a key and removed a DVD, deliberately ignoring the book that lay beneath. Rotating his chair around, he inserted the disc into the flat-screen television built into his oak credenza.

  The face of his best friend flickered to life.

  Hell, he’d loved the old guy like a brother. And he knew how much Julian had loved Alexa – his young wife – and wanted to keep on protecting her from beyond the grave. The stubborn bastard.

  “She’s the most important thing in the world to me. When I’m gone, Zachary, you are the one man who can ensure her continued safety. She’ll come to you for information, the kind that will put her in danger. And I trust you’ll know what to do. Because I’ve always trusted you.”

  Coombs stared, no longer hearing the words. Julian’s eyes were goddamned imploring him. Christ, the two of them went way back, years before Alexa.

  He grabbed the remote. Julian’s image vanished into the ether.

  Well, Alexa was certainly the poor little rich girl now. More like rich widow. Coombs pictured her walled up at the Connecticut estate, surrounded by Julian’s priceless collections of paintings and sculpture, as strong as she was vulnerable.

  As though money would keep her safe. It would take a helluva lot more than that.

  Impatiently, he swung his chair around and picked up his glowing cigar. The hot smoke filled his mouth. After a second’s hesitation, he opened his desk drawer again and pulled out the book – its title, The Description of the World, gleaming in gold lettering. First published in 1299, it was Marco Polo’s account of his travels across Persia and Afghanistan.

  Coombs had been through the volume at least a hundred times and had all but memorized the story of the explorer, his father and his uncle travelling all the way from Venice to Hormuz, a port on the Persian Gulf. He’d read between the lines, scoured for details, looked for hidden clues, anything that would shed light on their decision to follow a trade route across Asia. And through Afghanistan.

  He flipped through the pages with impatient hands. Nothing, nothing, nothing. This was over his head; criminal litigation, not historical exegesis, was his bread and butter. He couldn’t risk bringing in the experts, not now. The FBI, the CIA, the DEA had more holes than a sieve. As for academics, he didn’t know where to start or whom to trust.

  Coombs snapped the book shut and threw it back in the desk drawer. Taking another haul on his cigar, he grabbed the phone and punched in the numbers he had committed to memory.

  Country code 93 – Kandahar, Afghanistan.

  Three

  Alexa Stoppard opened her eyes and thought she had gone to heaven. Sweeps of cerulean blue, pink-cheeked cherubs flecked with gold dust swirled above her.

  Early Renaissance, a fresco and a fake.

  The thought hurt her head, which throbbed with the intensity of a train coming into a station. Her mouth was dry. Somebody had removed the rag but her hands and legs were bound, fastened to the bed she was lying on.

  A small porthole on the left told her she was still on a boat. The pitch of the small cabin said they were at sea. Far out at sea.

  Bitterness filled her mouth and with it the memories. She remained calm, forcing herself to breathe deeply until her heart rate settled. Waiting was the hardest thing of all, enduring those long moments when time was suspended, luck stretched into the thinnest wire. To make yourself still, make yourself invisible.

  And hope chance was on your side.

  She studied her surroundings. The cabin was small but opulent with a queen-sized bed colonizing most of the room. Sleek cabinetry made of some exotic wood she was hard pressed to identify took up one wall. A desk, a Philippe Starck invisible chair, filled the rest of the space. A partially open door suggested a bathroom beyond.

  Was it the Gabriella? Somehow the ship felt different, smaller, less glamorous. Beyond the pounding of her head, she tried to remember. She had a bare outline of what happened when Wright was killed. Sometime after the cocaine, she’d passed out. But somehow she remembered another boat, a loud motor. She wasn’t sure. It could have been the helicopter.

  A glimpse of light from the porthole indicated that it was day. The day after?

  Her ears strained. She heard murmurs just outside the door to the cabin. Spanish, spoken by Mexicans. Coming closer.

  The door to the cabin slid open with a hiss and two men stepped inside. She slammed her eyes shut, feigning unconsciousness as she tried to gentle her breathing, a thin layer of sweat coating her body.

  “Let’s get her up.” A rough hand on her left foot began loosening the ties. His tone was emphatic, anxious, like the boss was waiting and getting dangerously impatient by the second.

  A combination of dread and elation rose in her throat. She’d sent out feelers and somebody had taken the bait.

  “Up, come on, up, you bitch.” Brutal hands shook her shoulders, hauling her into a sitting position.

  She opened her eyes. He leaned over her, tall and rail thin, his hair slicked back, his eyes, black, deep set. At the foot of the bed was a portly man, his trim beard shot through with bits of grey. Her skin pricked on the back of her neck.

  “I don’t understand, don’t speak Spanish,” she lied. “Please. Need to go to bathroom. Bagno.” The cold muzzle of a pistol punched her hard between her breasts and brought her up short.

  “Shut up.” In English. The tall man’s voice was as deadly as the gun he levelled at her chest. “Or you die right now.”

  Her hands were still tied in front of her. Her head throbbed from what she suspected was chloroform which they’d used to knock her out. She needed food and she needed water. But more than that, she needed to destroy.

  The bastard. The word gave her strength.

  She held the tall man’s gaze defiantly. “I want to meet with him.”

  “Madre de Dios. I told you to shut up.” With a hard tug, he pulled her off the bed. Her head reeled as blood rushed to her brain, her knees nearly buckling under her unsteady feet.

  The stout man gave a slow, disgusted sneer, his thin lips under his greying beard revealing discoloured teeth. “Stupid woman. She thinks it’s so easy,” he said in Spanish to his partner. “Let her have the bathroom. Could be fun for us too, eh? We don’t want her pissing on the floor.”

  Her legs trembled beneath her and she remembered how the ground had shaken under the helicopter assault on the Gabriella. Her thoughts reeled. Why would Hunter order a hit on his own yacht? It made no sense. And those AK-47s, the choice of the American military. Colombian or Mexican drug lords wouldn’t have access to them.

  A cell phone shrilled and the bearded man withdrew it from his pocket. “Si, si,” he muttered into the mouthpiece, scratching his beard before snapping the device shut. He jerked his head, motioning upstairs. “Hay un problema.”

  It took a moment for her to react and she didn’t see it coming. His punch landed on her abdomen with a soft thud, sending her backwards, sprawling on the bed. She tried to catch her breath and focused on a cherub that danced mercilessly before her eyes. Her stomach burned, obviating her need for the bathroom, and she rolled into a foetal position, clutching her middle. Groaning, fighting through the dizzying pain, she was barely aware of the men leaving the cabin.

  It was worth it. It would all be worth it. Would all be worth it.

  She rocked herself gently back and forth. Please let it be Hunter, in the next stateroom. Let it be Hunter they would take her to. The pain in her abdomen was a deep ache. She pulled her legs closer to her body to staunch the pain. This was a test, a rite of passage, another trial by fire. Remember Danni . . . No, don’t remember Danni. This wasn’t the time, not now, not yet.

  She swam somewhere in purgatory between sleep and wakefulness. Thoughts of Julian, the last days of his illness, mingled with images of his dear friend Zachary at the funeral. The cloying scent of lilies as
she begged him for the files sealed twelve years before by the courts. He could do it, a former Supreme Court judge, now that his best friend was dead and could no longer stop him.

  They were coming back.

  She jerked awake as she heard the cabin door slide open, then close again. Panic trumped pain and, with every muscle screaming, she rolled to a sitting position, prepared to face her demons. Her courage dissolved like snow in the desert when she saw that it wasn’t the two Mexicans standing a few feet from the bed.

  The eyes that captured and held her attention were a hard blue. He was a large man, standing well over six feet, broad shoulders, lean torso, narrow hips.

  She could tell all that because he was sheathed in a neoprene wetsuit.

  He didn’t say a word but pulled her from the bed and began stripping her tattered dress from her body.

  “Don’t scream, don’t say a word, or I’ll have to gag you.” His voice was low and dark, the words English and his hands lean and efficient.

  She remained still, listening to her heart pounding in her ears. All her muscles tightened, overwhelmed by a different type of awareness, a renewed danger that poisoned the air. He was different from the other two men – not Mexican, probably American, his movements silent and stealthy, controlled as a jewel thief. All she could make out were his eyes and the outline of a strong nose and clean jaw beneath his mask.

  Still leaving her wrists bound, he unzipped her dress and, with little effort, tore the rest of the fabric until it was a rag at her feet.

  The cool air hit her skin. She looked down at the silk of her bra and suddenly came to life, struggling in his arms. He spun her around and the expression in his eyes said there would be no mistake about his intentions. He knew he had her, and he let her know it with the subtle shifting of his body closer to hers.

  She strained away from him. He held her effortlessly with one hand while with the other he extracted a wetsuit from his backpack, clearly meant for her. “Toilet . . . I need to go . . . desperately,” she said.

  His breath was heavy with impatience. Jaw hard, his eyes dead ahead, he bundled her towards the bathroom. Mercifully, he turned his back while she made quick work of her business, bunching down her panties with her bound wrists. When she was finished, she glanced at his broad back, his profile limned in the light from the porthole.

  There was no way she would go with him. All she had to do was yell, throw something at his head – that water glass on the sink. Trembling, all too aware of her near nakedness and growing vulnerability, she grabbed the glass and opened her mouth to scream.

  Her first mistake. The man was as sharply tuned as the finest seismograph.

  Before she could make a sound he’d dragged her flush against him, his hand clamping over her mouth. The glass tumbler fell to the floor without breaking as she shoved against his chest trying to break the contact. He lifted her off her feet and carried her back to the bedroom. She was pushed to the edge of the bed while he covered her thrashing limbs with his torso. She tried to knee him in the groin but, anticipating the move, he deftly shifted aside.

  He was strong, too strong, positioning his body over hers, pinning her bound hands over her head with one arm. He lowered his face to hers, the blue of his eyes more vivid than the cerulean of the fresco overhead.

  “I trusted you,” he whispered a fraction from her mouth, removing his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you if you do as I say.”

  “I don’t want to go with you,” she hissed the words. “Leave me . . .” She tried to scramble away but it was impossible.

  His breath was hot against her skin, the scent of ocean and something else, a searing shock of physical attraction that sent her bucking beneath him, sending the wetsuit intended for her to the floor. She saw his eyes darken a second. Her heart beat like a jackhammer doing triple time. He held her with his eyes, looking for her submission.

  She didn’t make a sound.

  Slowly he relinquished her bound hands. Then he lifted his hips and balanced his weight on his knees, still keeping her prisoner. His expression darkened when he saw the purpling on her abdomen.

  Alexa sucked in her breath, watching as, with the utmost gentleness, he traced the outlines of the bruise, his fingers lingering, sending darts of heat to her core, the gesture more shocking than the wildest violence.

  She just lay there, her eyes searching his with a wariness shot through with distrust. For him and, most of all, for herself.

  Who was he? A rival of Hunter’s? The wetsuit intended for her meant that he wanted her off this boat. Without glancing at the porthole, she imagined the swell of the ocean outside.

  She stared at his profile above her, his sinewy forearms balanced over her.

  The weight above her eased. With an economy of movement she was already becoming accustomed to, he pushed off the bed and picked up her wetsuit, motioning her to put it on.

  At the moment, she had little choice.

  This time he didn’t turn his back as she struggled into the tight material. Coolly efficient now, he helped her zip up the suit and, gathering her thick hair in a fist, pushed it underneath her cap until only her eyes and lips were visible. Her feet remained bare.

  He took her arm and pulled her towards the doorway. Opening it a fraction, he peered outside before edging them both through. The corridor was deserted, the pitch of the sea making it difficult to wind their way down the hallway and up a flight of stairs.

  She estimated the ship was eighty or ninety feet long, far smaller than the Gabriella. Their bare feet made no sounds on the carpeting as they passed several cabin doors. They were closing in on the deck, the tang of sea air stronger now. She studied the broad back in front of her, not sure when she’d make her move. This she did know for sure – she wasn’t going with him. She had waited half a lifetime to get close to Hunter, the man that haunted her nightmares, and she wasn’t about to be stopped now.

  He shrugged open the door with his shoulder and a gust of wind nearly pushed her back inside. Propelled to the deck with a strong wrench on her arm, she stood on the sodden floor, slippery with salt water, confronting the cresting waves crashing against the boat, at least eight feet worth of swells.

  No land in sight, only endless horizon that blended with an overcast sky.

  The metallic taste of terror closed her throat. The rail of the ship came to her waist and every few seconds the vessel heeled on a precarious angle, swells rolling into the hull. No use even guessing where they might be, but it still looked like the Atlantic, grey and dead cold. She would never survive.

  Which is what her new captor probably intended. She would have preferred a bullet to her head. She watched as he opened a bulkhead and quickly drew out two tanks, two regulators and a facemask.

  She stared in horror. “I can’t swim.” The words that slipped out were barely audible over the crash of the waves.

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  “You’re insane.”

  He didn’t bother to respond but took another quick look up and down the deck before strapping a tank to her back, securing the weight belt and quickly checking the regulator. The mask snapped into place, covering her eyes and nose, swallowing her protests.

  “You really can’t swim?” He was pulling on his own equipment as though it was second nature to him.

  The terror in her eyes was his answer. “We’ll have to improvise,” he said grimly.

  She shouldn’t have revealed her fear. Just let him go first, give him a good push and then run screaming from the deck. She thought quickly about the two Mexicans who might interpret this scenario as a display of loyalty on her part. She’d handle the tough questions. Her mind worked quickly.

  But his body moved even faster. Before she could complete her last thought, he had leaped the rail, grabbed her around the waist and hauled her, like the lightest buoy, overboard.

  The horizon tilted on its side and, for a nauseating second, all she knew was the cold embrace of the oc
ean flying towards her.

  A drumming in her ears, the pressure excruciating. Alexa couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, her arms flailing against the strong body that held her securely. For a moment she struggled, wanting to get loose, to rise to the surface of the water before her lungs would burst.

  The body beside hers grabbed her arms, shaking to get her attention. Frozen with panic, she blinked several times, surprised that she could see anything at all. The dark-green water swirled around them and all she could make out were hard blue eyes, trying to communicate with her. He tapped on her regulator, which at some point he must have shoved in her mouth, his broad chest mimicking the rhythm of deep, controlled breaths.

  Breathe, breathe. How many times had she repeated those words, a mantra that helped her evade customs, the border police, a nervous teenager, his hand trembling from the weight of a Glock. Miraculously now, she became aware of air filling her lungs with each breath she took. His arm still around her waist, he read her expression, looking for signs that her terror was under control.

  They began to float, swim, she as stiff as a board clutching the shoulder at her side as he held on to the oxygen tank on her back. She didn’t dare think where they were going, her hold on sanity as tenuous as a silk thread. Green kelp swayed beneath them as though buffeted by a gentle ocean breeze and, if she looked up, she pretended that she could see daylight break the top surface of the water.

  One breath at a time, she forced herself to calm, fingering her mouthpiece just to make sure it was still there. After what she estimated was half an hour, she realized they were going in circles.

  A rendezvous point. She glanced at her captor who was effortlessly spinning them around in wide circles. They were waiting for a boat – that was the only explanation. But then what?

  Even through her wetsuit, she was beginning to feel the cold, a weakening in her legs that even she knew was a bad sign. They were moving with a deceptive buoyancy, and she worried about how much oxygen they had left in their tanks.

  He glanced at the bulky watch on his wrist. A sudden exhalation of breath and bubbles danced above his head, startling her. Her eyes strained to see through the saltwater murk, distracted by the vigorous frothing overhead.