Parker joined in the frowning. “What are you saying?”
“We have a site more than a mile from here. It’s the main campground.” She knew that was just the start. Once Reid started picking away at the details, she’d likely tell all. This undercover stuff clearly was not for her.
“Why are we just finding that out now?” Parker asked.
“We’ll get to that later,” Reid said. “Let’s go.” His jaw tightened and his voice dropped even deeper. “And do not fight me on this, Cara. This is what we do. We minimize damage, and we’re going to try to do that here.”
Right. They were experts and did this sort of thing as routinely as she collected soil and mineral samples. If there was ever a time to trust that expertise, it was now. She couldn’t win this battle anyway. He had the guns, the connections, and the muscle. And the idea of having a bodyguard sounded smart right now.
Before she could answer, Reid tried again. “I came to help, Cara.”
“Which is why I’m letting you stay.” How good he looked, how the steady thump of her heartbeat kicked up whenever he turned that intense gaze on her . . . those things made her think she should go. She’d never had much of a defense against him, and she needed to find one now. “Don’t make me regret the decision.”
“Trust me.”
“You said that to me once before.” And she’d paid a steep price for listening.
His gaze narrowed. “This time actually try doing it.”
4
REID IGNORED the voice inside his head that said to rush her out of there, onto a plane and back to her brother. Anything to keep her safe and out of the middle of a mystery that could end with more missing bodies, or worse, a few dead ones.
First they had to retrieve whatever she found so damn important she was willing to risk being shot over it. He bit back a barking yell at her over but only because he understood the need to secure sensitive information at all costs. But that was his job, not hers. He didn’t like the lines merging and blurring.
Since he’d never been great at outarguing her, he decided to focus on speed. With Parker’s help they’d performed a quick search of the debris field, set a few triggers to tell if someone else came through after them, then took off. All that while trying to ignore the churning in his gut and the rolling tension that ran his blood cold at the thought of Cara being hurt or in danger again. He could tolerate a lot, but not that.
After the campsite was photographed from every angle and was as secure as they could make it in these conditions and with limited equipment, they headed off. Skimmed the line between the trees and the open land. The path left them less exposed as they stumbled over tree roots and rock piles.
Their boots crunched against the ground and fallen, scattered leaves. Now and then they’d see something from the campsite and Cara would bend down to grab it. He’d bundled her in his warmer jacket and now she filled the pockets with whatever she decided she had to keep.
Despite the sense that doom might come closing in, Reid tried to keep his walk at a steady pace. For him, it was almost like standing still, but he didn’t want to shake Cara up any more than necessary by jogging the distance to the cabins, as she called them. She might have pulled back from the edge of shock, but he hadn’t had time to check her for injuries, and wasn’t fully convinced she’d escaped whatever happened with only bumps and bruises. One trip or overturned ankle could start her on a severe health decline.
Never mind that she’d regained her spunk, and sure had no trouble broadcasting all over the Russian countryside her decision to dump him. That fucker still stung. Yeah, the affair had been quick and his marriage proposal faster than what most might consider normal, but he asked because he’d meant it, and the fact that she never seemed to get it pissed him off.
She’d walked away, moved on and limited contact with him. Well, at first limited then cut it off completely. But here they were, back in the same cycle. Her work put her in danger, which put her under his protection.
He shouldn’t give a shit about what she’d been doing or the lack of contact. He’d moved on. He’d had sex during the last sixteen months and learned a valuable lesson about proposing marriage. That particular act would never happen again. The whole commitment, love crap clearly wasn’t his thing. The final text message from her on his phone telling him they should “take a break” served as a constant reminder of how much he sucked at it.
Parker pulled even with Reid, letting Cara venture out a few steps in front of them. Parker’s constant surveillance of the area never ceased, even as he leaned over and dropped his voice lower than usual. “You’re making growling noises.”
That was nothing compared to the running commentary in his head. “Fuck off.”
Parker laughed. “Yeah, clearly you’re fine.”
“Something is going on here and I don’t know what it is. I hate not being in control of a situation.” And not knowing what she was thinking didn’t help.
She hadn’t run rogue. For the most part, she listened to directions. She didn’t strike him as the kind of person who sought out danger, but it sure did keep finding her, and he could not get a handle on why. She was a geologist, not an undercover agent. He wondered if she truly understood that.
“Uh-huh. The ‘situation’ is the problem.” Parker buried what he’d said under what sounded like a fake cough.
Reid knew ignoring his friend wouldn’t help. Parker would just pick away, dropping comments until he started talking. Not that they could have a normal conversation right now anyway. Not with their attention on the area around them and the need to listen for any sounds, any movement.
“Just say whatever you’ve been holding in so we can get back to work before the FSB hunts us down.” And there was no question the Russian security service would close in soon. The successor to the old KGB handled everything from border control to terrorism threats to general surveillance. Sneaking into the country put them firmly in all of the FSB’s target areas.
Worse, the FSB had contacts everywhere. A missing expedition, legitimately investigating some old case or not, wouldn’t go unnoticed. People talked. The Alliance not even knowing to look for them left them stranded and on their own. Reid could handle that but he didn’t want Cara in the middle.
“Engaged?” Parker asked in a near whisper.
Loud or soft, the word scraped across Reid’s already raw nerves. “Not anymore.”
Seeing her again carved him inside out. The sight of all that blood had hit him first. The torn clothes touched off a blinding fury at the thought of her being in trouble. Then instead of unraveling, which anyone else in her situation would have done, she grew stronger. She’d gained her equilibrium and started meeting his verbal shots with some of her own. That’s when he’d really gone down for the count.
He’d tried several times over the slogging months since she left him to adjust the image he held of her in his mind. Chip away at his attraction to her. But no such luck. That round face and those intelligent eyes haunted him.
Seeing her again, he realized her self-confidence hadn’t faltered. She wasn’t one to back down from a verbal battle, and though he pretended that annoyed him, he actually loved that side of her. The energy. The way she threw herself into her work and enjoyed her off time with equal pleasure.
She fed on fresh air and craved the outdoors, just like he did. The bedroom, sweet damn the things she liked to do in there. The urge to strip her bare and throw her on the bed pounded on him the entire time they were together. There wasn’t a moment when he hadn’t wanted her. Fast up against the wall or slow and savoring every taste. Often he’d set the pace. Other times she’d seduce him merely by walking into the room and throwing him one of her sexy smiles.
The kissing. The touching. She could wear a body-skimming dress that made his eyes cross one minute and dig in the dirt the next. And that tight body, toned from hiking . . . so fucking hot.
The good and bad memories collided in his head, knoc
king against his personal promise not to get lured in a second time. He fell for her once and that proved to be one time too many.
“I sense the breakup wasn’t your choice at all.” Parker lifted his hands in front of him, which just happened to be in the direction of Cara’s ass. “I mean I get it. She’s way hot.”
Reid let his gaze bounce down, tour over her, for just a second. Then the frustration of her choices snapped his festering anger right back into place. “Find another topic.”
“Yeah, I can see why you’re getting all weird and stuff.” Parker made a big show of exhaling and sighing. “At least this bit of history does explain your pathetic dating life for the last year.”
That struck Reid as too much. Yeah, he didn’t have a parade of women in and out of his door, but they didn’t run screaming when they saw him either. “I do fine.”
“Remember that I live next to you and see everything.”
“Gentlemen.” Cara stopped so fast they almost ran over her. She spun around and glared them both into silence before they could grumble about the interruption to their conversation. “I am not deaf.”
“Okay.” Parker made the word last for three syllables.
“Do you think you’re talking in code? Because I can hear you.” Her gaze switched from Parker to Reid but the severe frown never let up. “Every last stupid word.”
Parker turned to Reid. “She rebounds from injury pretty well.”
“Unfortunately, she’s had some experience,” Reid said, knowing better than to take his gaze off her when she hit this level of fire-spitting fury.
Parker frowned. “About the last time you needed the help of a super clandestine, no-one-knows-who-we-are organization usually reserved for hunting terrorists and madmen—care to fill me in?”
Slowly her shoulders fell. Some of the stiffness left her muscles as she turned around and fell into place between them as they started walking again. “A kidnapping. It was a wrong place, wrong time thing.”
When Parker glanced down at her as if waiting for more, Reid jumped in. “You don’t realize it, but you just described half of our assignments.”
“Ah, I get that.” Cara took a folding knife out of her pocket and passed it back and forth between her palms. “While on a government assignment in Egypt, a co-worker saw something she wasn’t supposed to.”
Reid stared at Parker over the top of Cara’s head. “The ‘something’ was an assassination attempt on the Egyptian defense minister while the guy was trying to eat dinner in a dark, out-of-the-way restaurant with his mistress.”
“Damn.” Parker whistled, just as he usually did when faced with rough information. “That’s some shitty timing on your friend’s part.”
“No kidding,” Cara muttered under her breath. “Armed men followed her back to her temporary apartment, the one she happened to share with me at the time, and then windows exploded. Literally. Reid, here, flew through one.”
“We’d picked up chatter about the plans for the attempted hit and were already on the ground. Bravo Team intervened but got pinned in the gunfire.” Reid knew Parker didn’t want the details, so he skipped those and went right to the heart of the mission. Bravo Team rushed in. Delta, Parker’s team, provided backup. Parker could get all of that from the cryptic sentence. “The result was a three-day standoff until we fought our way out.”
Cara opened her mouth, looked like she wanted to argue, but then snapped it shut again. “That’s the highly abbreviated version that ignores the high body count, the unbelievable terror, and all the lies in the media about a neighborhood evacuation due to a gas leak or some stupid thing, but yes.”
They walked in silence for a while after the intel drop. Parker continued his surveillance. Looked ready to accept all he heard and let the conversation go. But no . . . “Did you propose between magazine reloads or wait until all the bad guys were dead?”
Reid had sensed the amusement and still couldn’t avoid it. “Shut up.”
“We got away,” Cara said, “and he played bodyguard for a few more days until we received the signal it was safe to come out of hiding, that the people involved in the assassination were caught.”
Now there was a pretty way of saying it. Reid remembered a lot of blood, too. “She means dead.”
Parker nodded. “Got it.”
“Right, that was the G-rated version. The one I can think about without wanting to hurl.” She cleared her throat. “After that, he proposed.”
“And you said yes. You seem to forget that part.” She certainly backed away from the answer fast enough. Not that Reid remembered the details, except that he could recite every word of every conversation between the time she said yes and the time she walked out.
He’d assessed and reassessed everything he did and every sentence he’d uttered to figure out where they’d taken the left turn that ended it all. Sixteen months in and he still didn’t have a damn clue where it all went wrong. He’d been spinning up, ready to tell the team and figure out the safety parameters they could put in place in light of her research, and needed time in the field. All while she was stamping her get-out-of-relationship-free card.
“We had a whirlwind few weeks then it fizzled,” she said in a softer than usual voice.
That’s not how he remembered it. He was about to launch into a lengthy explanation of how she pulled back and started with the “highly emotional situations never work for a romance” lectures when they rounded the bottom of a hill and were confronted with signs of life . . . sort of. “Buildings.”
“What?” Her head snapped up and her gaze followed his.
“I think we’re here.” Parker pointed.
Since she looked ready to run toward the structures, Reid slipped his hand under her elbow. “Stay behind me.”
“No arguments there.” And for once she didn’t. She slid back, using his shoulder as a shield, and slipped her finger through his belt loop. “You get to be in charge of this part.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He nodded to Parker. “Swing out to the left. We’ll follow along this side.”
He reached back and touched her hand to let her know they were ready to move. They walked the length of a football field to get to the huddle of four small nondescript white buildings. All single story and boxy. The buildings sat in the middle of an open field with more mud patches than grass.
The two structures in the middle looked to be larger and connected, with limited windows. A small shed stood off to one side. The door to the structure, maybe twice the size of an outhouse, stood open. The wind lifted it and banged the handle against the wall every few seconds, with the broken lock hanging open.
Other than the steady knocking and the rustle of trees, Reid didn’t hear any other sounds or see any signs of life. He couldn’t even imagine why someone would put buildings out here, so far from anything and standing right in the shadow of the grim-looking mountain looming behind. There were hiking trails in and around parts of the Urals, but not here. Not on this side of the mountain, which consisted more of rocky outcroppings than anything else.
With slow steps, careful not to give away their location to anyone who might be lurking nearby, or to trample on something that could trip a wire, they made their way to the closest edge of one of the free-standing buildings. Reid pushed Cara back against a building and edged alongside of the window. Peeking in, he saw a similar scene to the one out in the campground. Papers everywhere. Smashed laptops. Add in clothing strewn across the floor and broken furniture, and they’d stumbled over something more than a burglary.
Reid could see from one side of the building to the other. No people inside. Whoever ripped the place apart had moved on, but that didn’t mean they’d left.
He kept pressing forward, clearing every inch and stopping for a quick check of the other door near the middle of the building. Just a small bathroom. The one place that looked as if it survived a destroy-everyt
hing-in-sight search.
“This is the main building.” Cara whispered the words directly into his ear in a voice so soft even he barely heard her. “The makeshift labs and collection areas. The communications center.”
He nodded to let her know he understood. Then his gaze switched to the far end of the complex. Parker must have cleared the last building because he headed toward them just as Reid reached the set of double doors connected the two main units. He gestured for Cara to stop.
“Do not move.” He wasn’t sure if he said the words or just telegraphed them to her, but he could tell she understood. With wide eyes filled with fear, she inched back until she hovered in the doorway with her back tight against the doorjamb. Her hands tightened around the pocketknife until her knuckles turned white.
He winked at her, hoping she took that as a sign everything would be okay. And it would. There was no way in hell she was doing anything other than walking out of there. If it took his last breath, she’d leave Russia healthy and safe.
Parker went first then Reid slipped inside behind him. The open area was a replay of the other building. A mess of broken equipment and shredded documents. Smashed rocks with piles of what looked like dirt on the floor.
He could make out muddy footprints. Boots, large, likely belonging to men with equally big guns. No spent cartridges or signs of shooting. Even more important, no blood. No sign that humans had been injured here.
After walking from one end to the other, opening the limited number of doors and searching under every desk and around every pile, Parker stood in the middle of what looked to be the main office area. “Clear.”
“Clear.” Reid didn’t get what had happened or where her team had gone. Only the three of them stood in the building now. He motioned for Cara to come farther inside. “I think we can rule out that animals attacked you. This mess was done by men.”
“Did you see any of them the other night by the tents?” Parker shot her an unblinking stare. “Any clue what we’re looking for here?”
Under the Wire: Bad Boys Undercover Page 4