by Cherry Adair
One of the men raced over, grabbed her with an arm about the throat, and tried to yank her up and off. AJ shot out her arm, slamming the heel of her hand up into his balls. Bio-hazard suit or not, the guy felt it. He gave a high-pitched scream, fell to the floor, rolled around in a fetal ball, clutching himself, and screamed like a girl. Three minutes, thirty seconds.
"Now, where were we?" AJ rode Raazaq's bucking body like a barrel racer as she struggled to remove his head-covering one-handed while maintaining her balance.
Encumbered by the bulky biohazard suit, he couldn't maneuver as quickly or as efficiently as she could, but he sure as hell tried. Bucking and squirming, he screamed for his men to get the crazy bitch off him. AJ finally managed to fumble the helmet off, and flung it aside.
She pressed the barrel of the Sig hard between his eyes. "Let me get rid of this ugly scar for you." She averted her head—"Nooo!"—and pulled the trigger. Two minutes, eleven seconds.
Covered in his blood, AJ jumped off Raazaq's lifeless body and raced to assist Kane, stepping over the guy on the floor who was sobbing and screaming, still clutching his balls.
Kane was doing fine on his own. Three men lay dead, a fourth looked like he was trying to crawl into a monitor head-first, a fifth was circling Kane, and number six slumped against the closed door, either dead or unconscious. One minute, fifty-two seconds.
AJ raced to the bank of monitors and panels of flashing lights across the room. What to do? What the hell to do? Crap, she'd never been very good with computers. She stared at the rows of buttons. Some lit, some not. Looked up at the digital clocks on the wall. One minute, thirty-eight seconds. She fired into the console, then stood, feet braced, arms extended, and emptied the entire clip into the beeping, flashing mass of confusion.
The room went completely dark.
In seconds, flames exploded from a hundred different places as wires shorted and connections broke.
"Haul ass, Aphrodite Jacintha," Kane shouted from the door. "This place is gonna blow!"
AJ spun around to stare at him. "What did you say?"
"I said, haul ass! Come on!"
She looked over her shoulder. By the fire's light, she saw the timer had stopped at one minute, eleven seconds.
Had it worked?
Please, God. Had it worked?
AJ didn't stay to find out. Spinning on her heel, she charged across the room, jumped a couple of bodies, and raced toward Kane.
He jerked open the door, grabbed her hand, and pulled her after him, slamming the heavy door behind them. They raced down the stone steps together in the pitch dark. A shout and shot from behind them were cut off by an agonized shriek. Smoke billowed overhead through the now-open door. The noxious cloud chased them down the stairwell, thick and cloying. It whirled in their passing and whipped along just a breath behind them. They heard the snap-crackle-pop as the flames grew and fed on Raazaq's state-of-the-art lab.
"Go! Go! GO!" Kane shouted, hauling AJ behind him, his fingers like an iron clamp around hers.
God, it was dark, the air almost too thick to breathe. They both hacked and coughed as they raced through the blackness. Raced for their lives.
They skidded around a sharp corner. Slam! AJ's shoulder bounced hard into an invisible wall; without a pause she pushed off it and kept going.
Through the Queen's Chamber, down the corridor, down another flight of stairs, the fire hot on their backs now. Hot air pushing at them. Flames licking at the ceiling. Sucking up oxygen. Hard to breathe. Harder to see.
Fifty-two seconds, she counted off in her head. Fifty-one.
Down the stairs, along another corridor. Down the next flight. AJ's breath wheezed from her burning lungs.
Faster. Faster. Faster.
The fire raced them to the oxygen outside. The powerful stench of burnt hair, fried electrical components, incinerated plastics stung her nostrils.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Couldn't see anything, anyway. Throat raw. The only sane thing, Kane's hand, strong and sure gripping hers as they flew across the stone floor.
The stairs trembled and shook beneath their bare feet.
Kane was practically pulling her arm out of the socket, but AJ wasn't about to complain. She was running flat-out, but he was still faster.
He missed a step, tripped down several of them, had to hop, skip, and jump to regain his balance, then righted himself and continued on. "Faster, damn it!" he yelled. "Faster!"
A square of sunlight. The exit. Straight ahead.
Thank God.
Kane hauled her the last few feet, then pushed her outside ahead of him just as an ominous creaking groan rent the air.
"Move it!" He shoved her hard. "Go. Go. Go."
AJ staggered, then turned back to grab his arm. "What the hell are you doing? Come on."
"I'll be right behind you."
"No." AJ grabbed his hand in both others. "Togethe—Oh, God. Your ankle?"
Is broken. "It's fine. Move it. Cooper. Just flicking move it!"
AJ grabbed his arm and slung it around her neck, hand dangling over her shoulders. She held on to his fingers tightly. "I don't go anywhere without you."
Leaning heavily on her, because he had no choice, Kane ran in an agonizing hobble, skip. "Stubborn woman."
"Obstinate man." The grip she had on his hand was so tight, it cut off his circulation. Jesus. What a woman.
Down the path. Winding—shadow, sunlight, shadow, sunlight. Dancing black spots. White-hot pain. Fear like he'd never known before. AJ. Jesus, AJ. Got to get her to safety. He ran faster. Shadow, sunlight, shadow, sunlight.
He stumbled badly. She held him up.
"You can do it. You can. Just a little bit farther. Almost there." AJ kept up a panting litany as they stumbled and rumbled their way as fast as they could.
Christ. Not fast enough.
Billows of black smoke filled me air. He felt enormous heat on his back.
It was going to blow. The whole damn thing was going to blow.
"Faster," he croaked. "Faster, for Christ sake!" Sweat popped out on his forehead and black spots danced in his vision. He staggered as the white-hot pain lanced from his ankle directly to spear his brain. His knees buckled. He almost dragged AJ to the ground with his dead weight, but she grit her teeth and pushed him upright again.
He tried to unhook his arm.
Her short nails dug into his hand and she hitched her shoulder. "I'm… not… done… with… you… yet!" she panted, dragging him along willy-nilly. "Come on, Wright, you lily-livered sissy-pants! Suck it up and move your ass, damn it!"
They burst through the trees at the bottom of the hill.
Into chaos.
People were screaming, crying, running around like chickens with their heads cut off as they panicked after the fact. The crowd was in full-blown survival mode as security personnel raced their people back into the hotel and out of the way of falling debris.
"Just a little farther. You can do it, you can do it," AJ panted, all but carrying him. Kane outweighed her by at least eighty pounds. He wondered if AJ was even aware of just how much of his weight she was bearing as they stumbled across the lawn.
Raazaq's men were fleeing for safety just as fast as everyone else.
They were a hundred yards from the front doors when the ground moved beneath their feet.
Kane flung himself at AJ, taking her down to the buckling lawn, where he covered her body with his own and pressed her flat. There was a sudden, expectant silence—
Then all hell broke loose.
Sand shifted as it had for centuries. As if driven by an earthquake, the ground bucked and twitched with the explosion. The white marble pyramid imploded in a mile-high white mushroom cloud. Flames and thick black smoke licked at the sky for hundreds of feet.
Kane buried his face in AJ's neck, covering her head with his arms as best he could.
It was over quickly. He waited several minutes before he looked up.
"You're squis
hing me!" AJ wiggled beneath him.
"Stay where you are." Kane flinched when he moved. The leg hurt like a son of a bitch.
"What? Did something get you?" She squirmed more aggressively. "Damn it, Kane, I should be the one on top, protecting you. You're the one who's hurt!"
Kane shifted off her back, and started laughing.
The sound of aircraft filled the air. Panting, drenched with blood and sweat, they rolled over, looked up.
The cavalry had arrived.
"Is that the prettiest sight you've ever seen?" AJ gasped, staring up at the Harrier jet fighters followed by Blackhawk helicopters coming in to land.
It was a good sight—hell, even a great sight. "No."
She rolled her head to look at him. "No?"
"No. You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen. Your face after we made love on that voyeur camel was incredible. You sitting on Raazaq's chest was pretty damn spectacular. Hell, watching you eat an orange fired my jets. Those are the prettiest sights I've ever seen." He grinned, lacing his fingers with hers and bringing their joined hands to his lips.
"In fact," he said, kissing her fingers, "any view with you in it is the prettiest sight I've ever seen."
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
Oh, crap."That's a bad thing?"
AJ flung herself on top of him. "No, you crazy, wonderful man, that's a wonderful thing. I love you. I love you. I love you."
"Thank God," he said with heartfelt relief. "I was afraid I was going to have to take you off somewhere and hold you prisoner until you admitted it."
"It wouldn't've taken long," she said, nibbling a path from his chin to his lips. "You fulfilled the gypsy curse."
"The gyp—I guessed your name?" He tried to look surprised. "No way. Which one was it?"
"Never mind. Hurry up and kiss me, would you?"
Kane threaded his fingers through her hair. "With pleasure, Aphrodite Jacintha, with pleasure." He pulled her head down and crushed his mouth to hers.
She punched him even while she was fully engaged in kissing him back.
"Hey, Coop? If Wright's bothering you that badly, get off him," a laughing voice suggested. "Geez, you two, do you know how much trouble your disappearance caused?"
"Go 'way. Hawk," AJ muttered, not looking up. "I have this man in custody."
"Well, yeah. We can see that. But you might want to take a quick look around before you interrogate him further."
AJ lifted her head. "Oh, crap," she whispered, meeting Kane's amused gaze.
They were surrounded.
Killian, McBride, Tariq, Christof, Wondwesen, and Hawk circled them. Between their legs, AJ observed uniformed military personnel pouring onto the scene. She was suddenly aware of the noise. Aircraft, vehicle engines, men shouting. It was pandemonium. People and camels raced about, vehicles drove across the lawns and flower beds. A jeep swung down from the sky, suspended by a military-green parachute, to land a few feet away. Then another. And another. The sky was filled with the noise of approaching aircraft and the ground with the roar of four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Ari Tariq reached out a hand to help her up. "Jesus," he said, looking her up and down, then swung around to check out Kane. "Which one of you is bleeding like a stuck pig?"
"Neither." Kane grinned, allowing McBride to haul him to his one good foot, where he stood balancing precariously. "AJ took out Raazaq. It was a beautiful sight to behold."
"Excellent. We'll hang on your every word over a brew later," Tariq said. "In the meantime, you two have a line of people waiting to talk to you. Coop, you go ahead. They're waiting for you in the dining room. We'll send this one in after he's patched up."
"Who's waiting?" AJ hugged her success to her. The guys were treating her like one of them. She'd completed her mission—and Kane Wright, by damn, loved her.
"Justice Department, Secret Service, and our people—Other odds and ends."
AJ pushed her hands through her hair and tried to clean herself up. Impossible. If nothing else, she was still covered with Raazaq's blood. She grimaced.
Christof pulled his gray T-shirt over his head. "Here," he said, blushing. "It was clean this morning. Take a moment to wash up and ditch those clothes before you go in, if you want."
"Bless you." She took the blond giant's shirt. Her gaze flickered to the team. "His ankle's probably broken, and he's got a hole that needs stitches, somewhere other than his hard head. Take good care of him, please, you guys."
"You gonna marry that girl?" Hawk asked conversationally as the men watched her walking away with unqualified appreciation.
"The minute I can walk down the aisle," Kane assured him. He closed his eyes. "Is she inside?"
"Yeah, wh—" Killian asked, and turned just in time to break Kane's fall as he passed out. "Aw, shit!"
"Wuss," Wondwesen said affectionately, helping support the fallen man. "Let's get him to the field hospital so they can patch up his owie before his Amazon sees him like this."
"Man, that is one lady I wouldn't want to mess with," Killian said, getting a hold of Kane's shoulders.
"Yeah," McBride said with a wide grin. "Join the crowd."
"What the—" Kane said, opening his eyes. He blinked AJ into focus.
"You fainted," she said cheerfully from her seat on the edge of his bed. Her face was scrubbed clean, her eyes sparkled, and she appeared to be wearing nothing more than another man's shirt.
"I did not faint."
"Yes," she said, stroking his face with cool hands, "you did."
"Lost consciousness," he corrected, surreptitiously looking her over for damage. "Where are we?"
"In the hotel. They gave us a nice fresh suite to stay in for the next week or so."
"Quarantine?"
"Yep. As far as they could ascertain, only one vial of the virus was released. And they're hoping that it was inert without the other agents being released to mix with it. But they don't know for sure. So no one leaves until the twelve-day incubation period is over. We're here for the duration."
There'd been grumbles and groans about that. But not many. People were too glad to be alive. And most of them were still scared, so they weren't going to protest too much. Besides, here they had a pool of the world's finest virologists and viral specialists. The best medical personnel, the best antidotes, the best physicians.
From the President of the United States down to the most junior busboy, everyone, without exception, was under quarantine.
She brushed Kane's hair out of his eyes. "How do you feel?"
"Like I have a whopping big cast on my leg."
She grinned. "Good, you won't be able to run."
Kane hooked his palm behind her head. "I'm not going anywhere." He brought her face down to his and kissed her. "I love you, AJ," he said against her lips. "I love you more than I ever dreamed it was possible to love."
"Good," she said briskly, sitting up. "Because I have a proposition for you."
"A proposition? Not a proposal?"
"I'll handle one, you handle the other."
"Yes ma'am."
"There's an opening for operatives to work as a couple. Did you know that?"
"There is?" he asked, straight-faced. Jesus. This woman was going to lead him a merry dance; she was going to give him prematurely gray hair and a life filled with joy. He couldn't wait.
"Yes. There is. So I was thinking—"
"Angina?"
"What?"
Kane laughed, grabbed her, and held her tight against his body, then kissed her long and hard and deep, since it was the only way he could think of to shut her the hell up.
When he finally let her up for air, he looked down into her eyes—something he planned on doing every day for the rest of his damn life—and said, "So? You gonna marry me, or what?"
"Oh," her smile was radiant, "now it's my turn to talk?"
"One-word answer."
"Yes."
Kane grinned and pulled her back into his arms, where she belonged.
"That's the one."