“I get that my brother tracked you down when our communications went down and I stopped checking in twice a day, but how did you—” Then it hit her. Anger stormed through her. Red hot fire burned from her feet to her head. “Reid Thomas Armstrong.”
“Wow.” Parker’s eyes widened and he whistled. “That is a spectacular pissed-off female tone.”
“The use of my full name is bad.” Reid’s voice dropped even lower. “Trust me. Even though it’s not my real name, it’s still bad.”
She took a step forward until she stood right in front of him, just inches away. She poked a finger into that impressive chest. “You still track me?”
Parker’s frown deepened. “Wait, what does that mean?”
“Okay, hold on a second.” Reid’s hands came up along with the soothing tone. “Calm down.”
He had once admitted to her that it was a practiced law enforcement move. The lilt to his voice and comforting words. The whole thing where he settled down people who had lost the ability to function or think rationally. Brought them back from the edge. How he remained straightforward and logical, even repeated phrases and carefully picked his words.
Well, she wasn’t in the mood to be soothed. Not about this. “Say that again and I will fire that gun right at your—”
“I don’t always use the tracker,” Reid said as his hands moved in front of him. “This was an emergency.”
Parker looked from Reid to Cara and back again. “What tracker? What are we even talking about?”
“The one he implanted. In me.” She jabbed Reid’s chest one more time, half furious she hadn’t removed the thing and half grateful for the failure.
Parker’s mouth dropped open. “What the fuck?”
She was starting to like this Parker guy. “Yeah, that was my reaction when I found out.”
“Let’s go back for a second.” Parker let out a sound halfway between an exhale and a harsh laugh. “How do you two know each other?”
“We used to date,” she said. That didn’t cover it, but she thought the explanation came close enough.
Reid glared at her. “We were engaged.”
“Barely.” And that was another subject she absolutely did not want to discuss. The quick proposal, the doubts, how it all fell apart. Memories of Reid had become a flashing warning sign in her brain. A testament to how not to get involved with a guy.
Forget that she’d loved him. That she still thought about him and fought off regrets. That doubts about leaving him pummeled her every hour at first, and still on a daily basis. The nagging sensation that she’d given up too soon and out of fear.
Yeah, forget all that.
“The length doesn’t matter,” he grumbled.
She almost laughed. “Typical guy response.”
Parker nodded. “She’s got you there.”
“I figured out we made a mistake and left.” Talk about a shortcut. She bypassed all the confusion and heartache and the very real sense that she’d waded into waters well over her head the second Reid jumped through that window and covered her body as the bullets flew all those months ago.
Reid’s jaw clamped shut. “We’ve gotten off track.”
Not as far as she was concerned, because the point was not about their relationship. It was about his controlling behavior . . . which kind of was about their relationship. “I broke up with him,” she said to Parker, “but not before he implanted a tracker under the skin on my shoulder while I was out due to a knife wound.”
Parker winced as he turned to Reid. “Do you do that with all the women you propose to?”
The thought of him . . . of being one in a line . . . She pushed the idea away and concentrated on the anger welling inside her. For the first time in days she felt like herself again. Not just like a zombie wandering around, waiting to drop from exhaustion or be carted away. “Good question.”
“There was an ongoing kidnapping threat back then.” Reid offered the comment as if it explained everything.
“How long ago?” Parker asked as he took the satphone from Reid.
“I dumped him sixteen months ago.”
“Yeah, please keep saying it that way.” Reid exhaled.
She shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Good thing I have a strong ego.”
She didn’t want to think about his ego or any other part of him. He possessed unbelievable skills with a gun, in the bedroom. Everywhere, really. He could even cook, when all she bothered to do was order takeout.
Focusing on her rage was the only way to get through this. “So, my brother told you he lost contact with me, and you turned on the tracker, or whatever you did to find me, and came out here.”
Reid shrugged. “Sure.”
No, that wasn’t right. She sensed there was more to the story. Bad parts he wasn’t telling. “You just happened to be in Russia?”
A huge grin spread across Parker’s face. “Montana.”
The answer didn’t make any sense to her. “What?”
“We were supposed to ride to Montana. Luckily, we hadn’t left DC yet.”
She broke eye contact as she tried to process that bit of information. Papers blew around her feet. All harmless. The notebooks and laptops she’d collected contained the important information about the expedition. Unfortunately, most of the technology had been damaged and only the hidden notebooks survived that night.
“So, this isn’t an Alliance assignment.” Which meant they didn’t have clearance. They didn’t understand the import of what was happening out here or how a case of missing scientists made more sense than they might think. She didn’t wait for them to answer. “You have to leave. Now. Ten minutes ago, actually.”
That didn’t make sense, she knew, but there were protocols. In the event of an emergency, she needed to contact specific people, none of whom were Reid. But he could get the call out since she hadn’t been able to raise anyone on either the satellite phone or radio back at the main camp. If he waited around until right before reinforcements came, she would not be upset about that.
Reid treated her to a second exhale. This one longer and more dramatic. “That’s a ridiculous suggestion.”
Parker made a face that suggested she wouldn’t find a partner in him on this one. “It kind of is.”
“You don’t get it. This expedition is not . . .” Everything depended on her silence. Her team might need rescuing, but then again, silence might buy their freedom. She had no idea which choice to make.
She’d waited, in hiding, for the attackers to come back. For her to pick up some stray sentence that might explain what was going on and how much danger surrounded them. She’d tried to trek to their main installation that first day after waking up alone and terrified, but the buffeting winds and what she suspected was a head injury stopped her. This morning she’d made it there only to find the buildings cleared and abandoned . . . except for those hidden notebooks.
“Cara?” Reid skimmed his hand over her arm. “Finish the sentence.”
“The expedition is not on the books. It is top secret and it’s clearly gone sideways.”
“Good thing we specialize in the not-supposed-to-be-happening type of situation.” Parker walked a few steps away and started playing with the phone.
With Parker’s attention drawn away from the silent surveillance he’d been conducting, Reid took over. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even move. He just became more . . . aware. She couldn’t explain it. But she sensed the exact moment when he flipped from intently listening to her to focusing on the area around them.
The strange covert tag team approach should have surprised her, but it didn’t. From the second she saw them climb over the crest of the hill, she sensed they were in sync. Two men cut from the same mold. Parker, younger with darker hair and a bit less of a regimented feel to him. Reid, hot, lethal, and a constant diversion from everything she should be thinking and feeling.
Which brought her zapping back to reality. She wanted their exper
tise, but Reid could not do his usual rush-in-and-take-over job. “You can’t be here. Hell, I’m not supposed to be here.”
“And we’re going to talk through all of that, but not right this second.” Reid spun around and glanced at Parker. “Anything?”
Parker shook his head. “We seem to be in a dead zone, and I don’t know why.”
“I was having a problem with . . .” Reid glanced at her. “. . . other equipment earlier.”
Parker kept fiddling with the phone. “That’s not good news.”
“Keep trying. We need to figure out if this is a normal technical blip or if something else is going on. Either way, we’ve got to get word to headquarters and arrange for an exfiltration for Cara and technical backup for us.”
Ignoring the part where she was not leaving that way, with her research open to being stolen, Reid’s orders qualified as the exact wrong way to handle this situation. The Alliance would swoop in and take over. Break her cover and possibly further endanger her missing team and the true reason for the expedition.
Maybe that was fine, and someone could tell her that, but until then she had to comply with the requirements given to her. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t help in another way. In a way that was much more important.
She took a step forward, putting her body between the men. “Instead of staying here or going to the main compound, you could investigate what happened to my team. That could be a violation of some oath I took, but at least you wouldn’t be messing around with the research.”
Being a good six inches taller, Reid looked right over her head to Parker. “Good point. We’ll need intel on the area and expedition parameters.”
This side of Reid she remembered all too well. She grabbed his arm and yanked. Anything to get him to listen. “I’m standing right here, telling you there are limits on what you can see. Hunting for people, protecting them, is fine. I’m saying that has to be fine.”
This time Reid spared her a quick glance. “You don’t get to make assignments.”
Air refused to fill her lungs. She tried to drag enough in, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Not when they stood this close. It had been that way from the start for her. “I’m not stupid. The idea of having a few guys with guns around here right now sounds pretty damn good.”
A look of satisfaction crossed Reid’s face. “Then we’re agreed.”
“Almost.”
He eyed her up, ending the visual tour with a frown. “When you stumbled out here you were ten minutes away from going into shock.”
“Not anymore.” Determination and more than a touch of anger fueled her. The fuzziness that threw off her equilibrium slowly lifted.
But the details of that night refused to gel in her mind. She’d walked through every minute she could mentally grab and tried to connect it to anything. Remembered the wind and the tent. Cliff getting out his knife. Then the world went black and she awoke hours, possibly a day, later. Somehow she’d survived the exposure to the cold. Animals. The attackers.
None of it made sense.
“She does look better,” Parker said.
Reid shook his head. “I don’t care.”
That was it. The one commanding comment too far. “You are not in charge here, Reid.”
“Oh, boy,” Parker said as he mumbled something about her tone.
“And you are in charge?” Reid’s voice had gone deadly soft while he looked at her. “Is that what you’re trying to say? Because you look a mess, and last I checked this is not your area of expertise.”
She had no idea what she was talking about, but she knew they needed to work all of this out before he called in the rest of his team with rocket launchers and missiles and whatever other weapons they had in their possession.
If she wasn’t careful, something already awful could turn into an international nightmare. Escalate into an unsolvable political problem. “It’s my expedition.”
Reid opened his arms wide at his sides. “Then where is everyone? Why aren’t the comms working? Why didn’t you check in with Caleb?”
Smartass. “Those are points I need to figure out.”
Parker held his thumb over a button on the phone. “You were attacked.”
“Something like that.” One of the many things she’d lost during whatever happened was the expedition satphone. But she still knew how they worked, and she feared Parker was inching closer to making the call Reid wanted him to make.
Reid went back to studying her. Treating her like a target he needed to interrogate. “I don’t understand that answer.”
Parker nodded. “While you two work that out I’m going to keep trying to make that call to headquarters.”
Each one was more stubborn than the other. She had no idea how to break through to them. “Listen to me. Seriously, we need to comply with my protocol on this.”
Reid pulled her in closer. With his hands on her elbows and the heat of his body rolling into her, he stared down. “Say something that will explain why you’re dancing around all of this, asking for help with some things but not others. Holding on to rules that don’t matter right now.”
He was right. There was no use playing games. She could put this in language he would understand. “The Russian government thinks this is a privately funded expedition. An investigation into the Dyatlov Pass incident for a documentary.”
Reid groaned. “I had never heard about this so-called incident until a half hour ago, and now I’ve heard it twice.”
“It’s famous.” At least she thought so.
“Told you.” Parker dialed then tried again. “Like Yetis.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughed, but when Parker didn’t laugh with her, she sobered. “Wait . . . you know Yetis aren’t real, right?”
“Parker believes in many things that will make your head implode,” Reid said in a voice filled with amusement.
Parker scoffed. “Just because she’s some fancy science type.”
“You mean doctor.” She put her hand in front of the phone and forced him to look up at her. She had full use of her mind and body now. She could probably kick if she had to. “A geologist.”
“A doctor geologist.” Parker nodded. “I guess I should have known.”
These two had a habit of using a certain tone, sort of a know-it-all type thing. She knew she should chalk it up to their job choice and being at the center of all that danger, but it made her back teeth slam together.
That and he’d hit on a subject guaranteed to tick her off, depending on what he said next. “Meaning?”
Parker froze. “What did I do wrong?”
Reid actually smiled. “She’s not a fan of the ‘Asians are good at science and math’ assumptions people make.”
“I didn’t know you were . . .” Parker’s eyes opened wider.
And there it was. Her biggest pet peeve. Having a Chinese mom and a Caucasian dad sometimes left her in this nether world, one where neither side rushed to embrace her. Some of the older guys at work—the ones passed over for field assignments in favor of her—mumbled about her being a “token,” and that was some of the nicer stuff she’d overheard.
“Don’t I look it?” she asked, prepared for him to say the wrong thing.
Parker still hadn’t moved. “I’m afraid to answer that.”
She continued anyway. Might as well make all of this clear now. “No tiger mom. Neither parent is a scientist or math genius.”
“I’m not sure what’s going on.” Looking hunted, Parker glanced over at Reid then back to her. “Look, I was saying I should have known you were a doctor because Reid said we were looking for a science expedition. Science, doctor . . . I made the leap of logic.”
With that, her anger deflated. Ran right out of her. Sometimes her defenses rose before she could catch them. “That’s fine, then.”
“Now that we handled that.” Reid nodded at the satphone. “Try explaining again. We need to get assigned to this case and move forward.”
> She inhaled nice and deep as she prepared to fight this verbal battle one more time without saying too much. “It’s not that simple.”
Reid held his gun as he looked around the valley. Then his gaze shot to the trees. “It never is.”
She thought about what these men did for a living. How they traveled all over the world neutralizing threats and walking into danger when others ran out. “The expedition is here to investigate the unsolved incident.”
The corner of Reid’s mouth lifted. “But?”
“I’m investigating something else. Me and a few others on the team.” She held up a hand. “And before you ask, I’m not going to spill every detail. But yes, why we’re supposed to be here and why we actually are do not exactly match up.”
Reid pointed at the ground and the broken flashlight by his foot. “You realize whatever you were really doing out here probably caused this.”
“Smooth,” Parker said over a fake cough.
“Yeah, Reid. I get that.”
“And I get that you’re trying to be professional and protect your work, but we’re done. We’re going to arrange for transport to get you debriefed and back to your brother.” She tried to interrupt but Reid only talked louder. “Parker and I will secure this scene . . . stop shaking your head at me.”
“I can’t leave yet.”
Reid stared at her but this time the harshness around his eyes softened a bit. “Your team. I get it. We’ll find them.”
“It’s more than that.” She couldn’t even imagine where they were and what they were going through. If she let her mind go there, bile rushed up the back of her throat and her brain froze. “Yes, you need to find them and make sure they’re safe, but there’s also sensitive data I need to recover.”
Reid frowned. “From?”
“Our facilities.” Having a security crew get here probably violated some contract she’d signed before coming to Russia, but she never agreed to die for this job. She’d take the risk and apologize later.
Under the Wire: Bad Boys Undercover Page 3