by Anna Hackett
Hale had to hold himself back. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He bit down hard on his lip, instead.
The last time he’d rushed in, unprepared, and it had cost his fellow SEALs their lives.
“Where is Solomon’s ring?” Drift asked again.
“I don’t know. There is no other way to say it.”
Drift moved fast and slapped her across the face. Her lip split, bleeding.
Hale stayed on the deeper side of the pool and moved to the rocky edge, trying to calm his racing heart. Don’t go in halfcocked. You’ve done that before.
Elin’s life depended on him.
Think, Hale. He tried to remind himself that she was trained, that she could handle this. He knew Elin Alexander was the last person who needed him to run in like an action hero.
What she really needed was for him to think. He studied the group. Four guards and Drift. Of course, they were all armed and he wasn’t…but that didn’t mean he was helpless. That was doable. Hale could take them.
The closest guard to Hale was partly hidden from the others by a rock pillar and standing right beside the water. Target Number One acquired.
Slowly, inch by inch, Hale climbed out of the pool. He slipped into combat mode as easily as breathing. His vitals steadied and his concentration was centered on his target, even as he monitored the rest of the room.
He blocked the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, and Elin’s harsh expulsion of air. Whoever had hit her would regret it shortly.
Hale moved silently, and then grabbed the man from behind, slamming a hand over the guard’s mouth. Hale dragged the man backward into the water. He jerked the man down, and just as the guard overcame his surprise, Hale quickly twisted the man’s neck. There was a muffled crack, and his body sank down into the water.
Hale grabbed for him, thinking he’d check for a weapon. But the body slipped into deep water and Hale cursed.
Stick to the plan. One down, four to go.
Hale climbed out of the water and crouched behind a rock. Suddenly, he heard Elin scream. The sound was like claws to his soul.
“I love this knife.” Drift’s voice. “It’s even prettier coated in your blood, Special Agent Alexander.”
Hale gritted his teeth, even as his head snapped up. His thoughts coalesced into one direction. Save Elin.
He slipped his backpack off his shoulders and yanked out his grappling gun. Peering around the pillar, he took in the locations of the others.
Take one out with the grappling gun and attack the next one closest to him. It would leave Elin open to Drift and the final guard. Damn, it was a huge risk.
“Enough of this.” Drift pulled out his gun and aimed it directly at Elin’s chest.
No. A red haze covered Hale’s vision. For a second, he saw the insurgents killing his SEAL commander, Sean, then the others, one by one.
He couldn’t lose Elin. Hale lifted the grappling gun and aimed at the nearest guard.
He fired. He heard the distinctive sound it made as the bolt and rope flew across the space. He charged toward the other guard, and saw the grappling hook slam into the guard’s chest with a spray of blood.
Two down. Three to go.
“What the fuck?” someone yelled.
Hale tackled his next target, and landed a hard blow to the man’s head, knocking him unconscious. He spied a knife in the man’s slackened hand and snatched it up, already springing away.
Three down. Two to go.
Gunfire echoed in the cavern, bullets peppering the ground where he’d been standing.
Hale dived, sliding across the rocky ground on his side. He spun, sighted his next target, and threw the knife.
It nailed the man in the shoulder, shock and pain skittering across his broad face. He staggered backward and Hale leaped up. He landed on the man and drove him to the ground. The man’s head connected with the ground with a dull thud.
Four down. One to go.
Hale yanked out the knife, jumped up, and spun.
His chest constricted. Elin had somehow freed her hands and was wrestling with Drift for control of the gun. He started forward, his hand tightening on the bloody hilt of the knife.
Elin and Drift strained, turning in an untidy circle. Drift was stronger and managed to turn the gun to aim it at the center of Elin’s chest.
The gun went off.
Elin! No!
Hale sprinted forward, rushing forward as Elin’s body fell backward and hit the ground. Drift had disappeared.
Hale dropped heavily to his knees. She was flat on her back, her face twisted in pain. There was a ragged hole in the center of her khaki shirt.
He slid an arm beneath her. “Elin.” His voice was choked.
No one could survive a shot like this.
“Hale,” she croaked out, her hand groping for his.
He grabbed it, squeezing her fingers tight. “God, baby.”
“I…” Her voice broke off, her body going lax and her eyes drifting closed.
“No.” A hollow feeling burst inside him. She was so warm, but he knew it would fade. Hale felt like his insides had been shredded. He’d failed her. He’d been too late.
“Get the secondary team in here!” Drift’s shout came from the other side of the cavern. “Get them in here. The woman’s dead, but I want Carter contained, and I want the ring!”
The sounds of running footsteps and shouts penetrated the ice encasing Hale. He fought through his shock and pain. Drift had more people coming.
They weren’t going to touch Elin again.
He scooped her into his arms, spun, and waded back into the pool.
He was getting her far away from fucking Drift and Silk Road. He dived down into the water, swimming for the tunnel he’d come up through. He held Elin tight against his chest and tried not to think. Tried not to think about the fact that he’d lost her. Lost the woman he was falling in love with.
Suddenly, she started moving in his arms, thrashing against him.
Shit, she was still alive. He felt like a light burst inside him. She was trying to breathe.
He lifted her up to his face and pressed his mouth to hers. He breathed into her, and then pulled back and kicked as fast and hard as he could.
It felt like forever, but finally they whooshed out of the pipe and into the rock-cut channel with a splash.
Elin was gagging and coughing up water. Hale managed to climb over the side of the channel with her, and collapsed on the ground. He spun her around, his hands shaking, and pushed her sodden hair out of her face.
“Elin?”
She coughed again and pressed a hand to her chest. “Dammit. What were you trying to do, drown me?”
“Drift shot you point-blank in the chest. I thought you were dead.” Hale’s voice cracked on the last word.
Elin stilled, her wide eyes meeting his. She reached forward, dropped her head to his chest and hugged him hard. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, absorbing the fact that she was breathing and alive in his arms.
She pulled back slowly, her hand caressing his jaw. “I’m alive because of you. Or because of your shirt.”
She lifted up the hem of her khaki shirt, and Hale saw the T-shirt she’d borrowed. He hadn’t noticed before, but it was his experimental, anti-ballistic shirt.
The fabric was deformed right in the center, where it had stopped the bullet.
Jesus. He pushed it up. “I hadn’t finished testing it. It’s made from a structured polymer composite, and it worked in the lab, but still hasn’t passed field testing.”
“I like when you talk geek,” she said. “The shirt works.”
“That still had to hurt.” He gently touched her stomach.
“Yeah. It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer. I must have passed out, and it winded me.”
He cupped her cheeks. “Winded now?”
She licked her lips. “No.”
He pulled her forward and kissed her. “Elin. I…think I’m fucking falling
in love with you.”
She stared at him, her mouth dropping open.
He shot her a rueful smile. “Wow, Agent Alexander has nothing to say.”
Her hands gripped his wrists. “I just got shot, Carter. Give me a second.” She cupped his cheek. “I really suck at this love thing.”
“Well, I can’t say I have much experience with it, either.”
“Our odds of success suck.”
He grinned at her. “I happen to like long odds.”
She smiled back. “Me, too. But right now, we have a mission to finish, and some bad guys to catch.”
Hale’s gaze drifted to her battered face. “I’m pretty eager to get my hands on Drift.”
“You can’t kill him,” she warned. “I’m law enforcement, remember?”
Hale pulled her to her feet. “I know a lot of ways to hurt him without killing him.”
Chapter Fourteen
Elin kicked beside Hale as they swam back up into the pool. Without his strength and power in the water, she would never have made it.
They surfaced near the waterfall, and she took some deep breaths. Hale pressed a finger to his lips and she nodded. They swam toward the edge of the pool. The cavern was eerily quiet.
They had no weapons, except for the small, sphere-shaped grenades he’d given her. The metallic balls were heavy in her pocket, and Hale had said he’d developed them himself. Besides, she had a former Navy SEAL with her. He was pretty deadly, too.
And he was hers.
Elin stumbled a little pulling herself out of the water before she righted herself. Oh, that knowledge excited her and left her dry-mouthed. She still had scars on her heart from her failed marriage, and her feelings for Hale had bloomed fast, in the middle of a dangerous mission they still hadn’t finished.
But she knew this was the real deal. Knew it deep in her bones. She also knew he’d never hurt her. Hell, he’d almost gotten killed rescuing her.
It was herself she didn’t trust. Elin had promised to love Matthew and he’d promised to love her—but it hadn’t lasted. She knew they were both to blame, that they’d both given up somewhere along the line.
She shook her head. She needed to focus on getting Drift and staying alive. On keeping herself and Hale alive. She could obsess over whatever this was with Hale later.
They crept across the cavern. Where the hell was Drift? Hale had his head tilted, and then he pointed to the far side of the cavern.
A hidden rock door that she and Hale hadn’t discovered earlier was wedged open. God, it looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. The slab of rock was cracked, and propped open with a large rock. They hurried over and, as they crossed the space, Hale knelt down and picked up a large rock. She watched him settle it in his hand. In his other hand, he held two metallic grenades.
“You have your grenades?” he murmured.
She fished them out.
“The silver one is a smoke bomb,” he told her. “The black one is a magnetic bomb.”
“You’re a handy guy to have around, Carter.” She ran the balls through her fingers.
He gripped her hand, squeezed. “Don’t forget that.”
They paused at the propped-open doorway, and she heard the echo of voices inside.
“Search every tunnel, if you have to,” Drift ordered. “Carter has the ring. I’m sure of it.”
Elin pointed inside and Hale nodded. She peered around the edge.
Inside was a large, rectangular room with rough rock walls. It was lined on each side with what looked like stone bathtubs hewn out of rock.
“Looks like it was a smelting room.” Hale’s voice was a deep whisper.
A place where the ancient miners had smelted their gold and turned it into bars. The Silk Road team was clustered in the center of the space. Elin glanced up and spotted some rotted timbers attached to the roof. Maybe the remnants of some sort of old type of crane.
She looked back at Hale and he nodded.
Elin set her shoulders back and pulled out the small balls. She tossed them, aiming for the group. She heard the quiet rattle as they rolled across the ground. Some of the men were turning, frowning at the sound.
The magnetic grenade exploded first, strips of highly magnetized metal bursting out.
The men closest to the grenade jerked as they were tugged in by the strong magnet. Belts, weapons, and anything else metallic stuck to the grenade. The men all cursed and struggled, landing in a tangle of limbs.
Elin smiled. She’d never seen anything like it and she wanted more of those little grenades.
Then, the smoke grenade went off with a bang.
Smoke filled the room, and the Silk Road guards started shouting. Elin and Hale rushed in.
She moved to the left, taking one man down with a hard chop between his shoulder blades. A knife fell from his hand and clattered to the ground.
Nice. She snatched it up and jumped over him. She looked up to see a woman stumble out of the smoke. Elin kicked the woman in the gut, sending her flying.
“Elin!”
Hale’s cry made her spin. Another attacker, a mountain of a man with a shaved head, charged out of the smoke. He had an assault rifle aimed at her.
She ducked. Bullets sprayed above her head, and she heard something crash. A second later, Hale swept past her. He slammed his rock into the man’s head. The man made a strangled groan and collapsed.
Elin rose, just as another man rushed out of the smoke at her. He was also a big bruiser, and he held a combat knife easily in his right hand.
“Come on, then.” She held her knife up. She had trained with a fellow agent who specialized in knife fighting.
They circled each other, an edgy smile on the big guy’s face. Clearly, he thought he could take her down easily.
Go ahead, asshole. Underestimate me. He darted in and Elin spun. She saw him frown, surprised she wasn’t where he expected her to be. She came in low, sliced her blade against his arm, and opened up his bicep.
With a pained shout, he leaped back, slapping his other hand over the bleeding cut.
Elin smiled.
With a roar, the man rushed at her. She didn’t dodge or duck. She jumped straight at him, surprising him yet again.
His knife moved past her and her knees hit his chest. She stabbed her knife into his shoulder. Once, twice. He was already falling when she leaped off him.
That’s when she heard Hale’s harsh grunt. She swiveled.
Her gut cramped. A Silk Road man was behind Hale, a garrote wire around Hale’s throat. The man was pulling hard, and Hale tugged at the wire, his face twisted with strain.
He fell to his knees, and Elin raced toward them.
***
“I’m gonna mess you up, pretty boy.”
The Silk Road man leaned in close behind Hale. The bastard was strong. As the man kept trash-talking in Hale’s ear, he focused on keeping the wire off his throat.
Hale had a finger up under it and it was biting into his skin. Blood slid down his hand and arm.
“Once you’re good and bleeding, then I’ll make you watch while I hurt your woman.”
The insurgents had done that to Hale. Made him watch while they’d tortured his friends. He’d watched them all die, one by one.
His breathing turned harsh, his mind whirled. Suddenly, he was in a different desert, deep voices speaking Arabic all around him.
God, he was going to die here just like his friends.
“Hale!”
The feminine shout broke him out of his overpowering memories. His eyes snapped open. He saw a knife land in front of him, scraping on the rock before it hit his knee.
Elin’s voice. Elin.
Energy flooded him. The woman he loved was here, fighting for her life, fighting for him. He’d escaped that long-ago hellhole. He’d survived.
And since then, he’d dishonored his team mates by living a half life. It was time to fucking change that.
Hale threw his head back. The b
ack of his skull cracked against his captor’s nose, and the man howled.
The garrote wire loosened a little and Hale quickly pushed forward. He reached down, his fingers brushing the knife.
Suddenly, the wire pulled tight again, cutting into his skin. Fuck.
Hale couldn’t breathe. He looked up and saw Elin fighting with another guard. Fuck this. He pushed forward, letting the wire sink into his skin. He felt the slide of warm blood down his neck.
His fingers brushed rock, then metal. He grabbed the knife, clutched the hilt, then rammed it back behind him.
His attacker grunted. The wire fell away.
Sucking in air, Hale spun on his knees and buried the knife in the man’s gut. A few short, well aimed stabs, and the man fell back, clutching his bleeding stomach.
Hale leaped up and sprinted toward Elin.
He skidded to a halt. Her attacker was down. She was standing there, chest heaving, calmly taking the man’s rifle.
She was fucking magnificent. And all his.
Suddenly Drift appeared from the dissipating smoke, a gun aimed right at Elin’s back.
No! Hale shoved his hand in his pocket and grabbed the Seal of Solomon.
“Drift!” Hale tossed the ring.
Drift turned and saw the ring. He dodged away from Elin and leaped to catch the ancient artifact.
Then Hale heard something else that made his blood run cold. A buzzing sound echoing off the rock walls.
Elin’s head snapped up, her eyes widening.
The drone shot out of a nearby tunnel. It was identical to the one that had attacked them at the outpost.
Gunfire sprayed the room.
Elin took three running steps and dived into Hale. They slammed together, hitting the ground. Hale rolled them behind one of the stone tubs, just as more gunfire peppered the rock all around them.
***
Elin couldn’t see a way out. The drone swiveled, still firing. Her hands tightened on her stolen rifle and she watched bullets send the few remaining Silk Road team members scattering.
“We can use these tubs for cover,” Hale said, “and make our way toward the exit.”
She eyed the long line of stone tubs. They gave solid cover, but when they ran between them, they’d be out in the open.