He dropped to the ground, listened, and headed toward the sounds. He wished he had a weapon, but his hands and feet had enough fury to power a small nuclear station, and they seemed sufficient artillery.
He crept through the forest like a fox, ducking under trees. They couldn’t be far. Especially if they had fired the plane without remote detonation.
Another shot.
And then Mac spotted them.
Or at least what he thought was movement. He trained his gaze on the shadow he’d seen, and sure enough, moments later the person jumped to his feet from behind a downed pine and fired off another round.
Mac stole close, his heartbeat in his ears. He could see the man easily now, his black cap, a line of sweat dripping down his tanned face. He recognized him from their brief encounter at the river. How Mac wished he’d actually left a welt when he’d fired that rock. River Man stood again and Mac sprang.
In his peripheral vision, Mac saw more movement, but he concentrated on tackling the shooter. He connected, and the man went down hard, just as a shot winged over Mac’s head. Mac subdued River Man before he had a chance to breathe, crushing his face into the loam, grabbing his hands, and twisting them back into a submission hold. The man thrashed against Mac’s grip.
“Welcome to Alaska,” Mac growled.
Screaming behind him made him turn. His mouth half opened at the sight of Nina similarly pinned, the knee of her assailant dug into her spine. The man—or rather commando— looked up. Mac recognized Special Forces when he saw it. The soldier/camper had greased his face with dirt, and he wore a black turtleneck, a wool stocking cap, and jeans.
“Hi,” the man said, his eyes pinned to Mac’s.
Mac met his gaze. “I really hope you’re on our side.”
Nina struggled, and the man tightened his hold on her. “I hate to do this to a lady,” he said.
“She’s no lady,” Mac snapped.
The man gave the barest of frowns, then looked past him. “We’re clear, Iceman!”
Iceman? Mac heard the snapping of brush, and another man appeared.
Dressed in black, with a stocking cap and an expression that made Mac bristle slightly, he held a 9 mm pistol in his gloved grip. The man stopped. “Micah,” he finally said to Mac, “and that’s Conner. We’re looking for Andee MacLeod.”
Weren’t they all in a way? But still, these guys were Andee’s friends?
Mac nodded, fighting his last image of her—pasty white, weak, hypothermic. Please, God, let her be all right. “She jumped into the river to escape. She’s with your other friends now.” Mac brushed off the fear that reached up to strangle him. Focus. “I need to get some backup in here.” He took out the radio.
“And call for a helicopter while you’re at it,” Micah said. “I have Andee’s dad, and he’s in bad shape.”
Mac turned to the pipeline frequency and contacted the pipeline security. Their terse tones confirmed that yes, they’d spotted the smoke, and they were already headed toward their position to assure the pipeline’s integrity.
Mac watched with grim satisfaction as Conner and Micah bound Nina and her cohort with their shoelaces. He’d used that trick before. Then they dragged the pair over to Micah’s gully of cover. Another man, wearing a grimy black parka, lay incapacitated, bound, glaring at the other two. And next to him, watching him with a death look and white-fisting a thick club, sat a man who looked like he’d gone one too many wrestling rounds. Mac recognized Scottish features—black hair and blue eyes— somewhere in that mass of cuts and bruises.
“Gerard MacLeod?” Mac asked as he knelt beside the injured man.
“Is Andee okay?” the man answered, confirming Mac’s question.
Mac didn’t know how to answer. He swallowed, dredging up a reply. Maybe? As if speaking for him, a helicopter droned far overhead. “She’s hypothermic. But hopefully headed to Fairbanks.” He noticed the catch in his voice.
Gerard leaned back against the tree, closing his eyes, as if giving in to pain for the first time. “My Andee is a fighter,” he said softly, but Mac saw the worry on his battered face.
“Okay,” Micah said. “I know this might sound a bit shoot-first-and-ask-later, but really, what is going on here? When Gerard told us to blow up his plane, it seemed prudent to obey. Sorry about your ride, though, Gerard.”
Gerard looked at him and shook his head. “If they had gotten into the air, it would have been all over.”
“They’re terrorists,” Mac elaborated. “Pipeline saboteurs.” He glanced at Nina. “This one was on the plane with us, and she kidnapped Andee with big plans to meet her partners in crime.” He saw Nina’s eyes narrow and fought back the urge to unload just exactly how he felt about her betrayal.
Please, Lord, let Andee be okay. He turned away. “I love you, Mac,” Andee had said as she’d slipped in and out of consciousness in his arms. Oh, Andee, I love you too. Only he hadn’t said that.
Yet.
“Who are they working for?” Micah asked, standing beside one of Nina’s accomplices.
“I don’t know.” Mac had his guesses, however, starting with Al-Hasid’s cell. He fixed his gaze on the man at Gerard’s feet. It seemed he looked . . . familiar. In fact— “Is that Constantine Rubinov?” Drug lord, murderer, now terrorist? And Al-Hasid contact?
Gerard said nothing but let escape the smallest of smiles.
In the distance, Mac heard the hum of four-wheelers. For the first time in days, he, too, let a smile crease his lips.
Chapter 21
ANDEE FELT WARM, so very warm, the smell of cotton around her like a cloud. Her mouth, however, seemed to stick shut. She heard laughter, so close that if she just reached out, maybe she could grab it, let it draw her out of the darkness.
“Andee?”
The male voice sounded familiar, like a hymn long buried in childhood or the smell of flapjacks cooking on a woodstove. “Andee, wake up now.”
Her eyes opened. Shadow filled the room. She tried to unscramble the smells, the voices.
Then she saw him. Jim Micah, his short dark hair, his gray eyes solemn as they searched hers. “Hey, Andee.”
She must be dreaming, because Conner stood behind him, his blond hair longer than she remembered, tousled in windblown waves. There was a nasty scrape along his jawbone, yet he grinned at her. “Hi.”
“Where am I?” she rasped.
“Here you go.” Lacey, Micah’s pretty wife, leaned over the bed opposite him, offering Andee a drink of water.
Andee drank through the straw, the water hitting her parched throat and burning a little. “Where am I?” she asked again.
“Fairbanks Hospital.” The voice that answered her came from behind Lacey, and Andee turned her head. She smiled when she saw him leaning against the wall, his hands tucked under his arms, wearing loose-fitting jeans and a light blue thermal shirt that did devastating things to his blue eyes. Those blue eyes that she’d seen locked on her as he’d held her in his arms.
Mac. He smiled back, looking relieved.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you okay?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Of course you’d ask that. Aye, my bonnie lass, I’m okay. Now that you’re awake.”
Memory rushed in. Sarah. Her father. The pipeline.
Mac must have read her thoughts because he stepped next to Lacey and took Andee’s hand. “Sarah’s in the bed next to you.”
“How is she?” She turned, looking past Micah.
Sarah sat up in the bed, her hand on Hank’s head. He was sleeping with his head on the bed propped on top of his folded arms. “I’m okay,” she said, facing Andee, “but my head is pounding.”
Andee winced, seeing that they’d shaved Sarah’s blonde hair. A bandage swathed her scalp.
“Twenty-two stitches and a concussion.”
“I’m sorry,” Andee said.
Sarah shook her head. “Not your fault.”
Andee closed her eyes, accepting Sarah’s words. Then
, “What about the pipeline?” She searched Mac’s face.
Mac smiled, a slow liquid grin that she felt in her veins. “I think your pals Conner and Micah should tell you how they saved the world.”
“We have your father to thank, Andee,” Micah said. “When we heard your plane was missing, Conner and Hank and I headed north. Conner had the emergency info you gave him, and we figured we’d get in touch with your father because the search teams hadn’t found you. When we got to his cabin, he was gone and we could tell there’d been trouble. Thankfully, he’d turned on the ELT in his plane, and we found it sitting empty on the Dalton Highway a few miles north, along with a trail that might as well have been outfitted with neon lights, thanks to your dad. We tracked him down only to find him in the hands of three armed terrorists. We decided to step in—” he shook his head—“but he probably didn’t need our help. In the end, he put up a good fight and even told us to destroy his airplane.”
“Ouch. That had to hurt.”
“It would have hurt more if he’d been in it. And if we hadn’t caught Juan and his girlfriend.” Conner looked over Micah’s shoulder. “Believe me when I say that Gerard’s counting his blessings.” He winked at Mac.
Andee narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on here?”
Mac squeezed her hand. “A happy ending.” He gazed at her with such warmth in his eyes that she felt a blush edge up her face.
“So I take it you met Team Hope?” Andee asked.
Mac nodded. “Nice friends you have. The first time I met Conner and Micah, they were in hand-to-hand combat with a couple of terrorists from Venezuela, while trying to dodge bullets.”
“Thanks, by the way,” Micah said, smiling at Mac. “Her aim was improving.”
Mac looked good with a blush, and Andee had to wonder exactly what he’d done. “Where are they?” she asked him.
“FBI interrogation. They’ll be there for a while. I’ll go in later and see if I can fill in some of the blanks Nina left out. But the short of it is that Nina had intended to hijack you in Prudhoe Bay and make you fly to Disaster and get your father and her two buddies, and then the happy party would fly over the pipeline and detonate all three explosives. With all the mountain peaks, it was most likely the only way the signal would reach all the explosives simultaneously. Then they probably hoped to escape to some Micronesian island in the Pacific.”
“That’s why they took my dad? To force him to fly?”
“Or force you to fly, with a gun to Gerard’s head.”
How close she’d come to losing Gerard. Again. “But who were they working for? Some Al-Qaeda group?”
Mac shook his head. “Nina is Venezuelan DISIP, as is Juan. The FBI identified them when we brought them in.”
Andee frowned at him, puzzled.
“Venezuela secret police. Or at least they were. We’re not sure if they’re still working for Chavez or not. The fact that we found them with Constantine Rubinov tells me they may have been connected with a terrorist group we’ve been tracking for some time. These days, it’s not uncommon to see a number of terrorist groups working together for the same agenda. At any rate, we caught them before they could do serious damage.”
Andee quirked a smile at Mac, remembering her skepticism at his wild scenarios. “Venezuela, huh?”
He shrugged, but she saw a look of triumph in his sweet blue eyes.
“Are you still going to retire from the FBI?” The question rushed out of her and for some reason tightened a noose around her throat.
Mac’s smile dimmed. “I don’t know yet. I guess it depends.” His gaze held hers.
Micah cleared his throat. “I’m hungry. Anyone else hungry?”
“I’m starved.” Conner squeezed Andee’s arm.
“I could eat a moose,” Lacey said. “Want anything, Andee?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. A warm bath? A pizza? Maybe Mac’s arms around her? She shrugged and Lacey nodded.
Andee had a feeling Lacey might know exactly how she felt.
As they left, Mac pulled the curtain between Andee’s and Sarah’s beds. Andee heard Hank start to stir, but all thoughts of Hank and Sarah vanished as Mac sat on her bed. He’d cleaned up since she last saw him. Although reddish whiskers still covered his chin, his hair was slightly wet and curly and tucked behind his ears, and he smelled clean and spicy, the essence of male.
She could hardly believe she’d once thought of him as arrogant. Charming, devastatingly handsome, ruthlessly loyal and passionate, but not arrogant.
In fact, maybe just human, like her. Struggling one day at a time to be the guy God wanted him to be and trusting Him enough not to look back.
“You really scared me,” he said. “Jumping off a cliff. Nearly freezing to death. My little human ice cube.” He ran his hand down her cheek.
She leaned into his hand. “We need to talk about this FBI thing.”
His smile fell. He pulled his hand away, not meeting her eyes.
“I think you should stay in the FBI. I know that I accused you of having to save the world, but you’re just that kind of guy, and that’s okay. And I’m sure that Brody would have been proud of you, Mac. Don’t quit the FBI. They need you.”
He raised his eyes, and she saw his confusion.
“But I need you too,” she said. “Think you can deal with that?”
“What are you saying, Andee?”
She was pretty sure the next words would be locked inside forever if she didn’t force them out now. “I’m saying that I’m willing to give us a chance. To stick around for the winter with my dad, maybe get him to move to Disaster.”
Mac smiled slightly.
“Mac, I can’t take another man letting me down, but . . . you didn’t do that. You jumped in after me.”
“I didn’t save you. You saved yourself.”
“But you wanted to. That matters. And next time I might just let you.”
He twined his fingers through her curly hair. “That’s because you matter, Andee. To me. I’d jump off a thousand more cliffs into icy water just to be with you.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re such a romantic, Mac.” She sighed, however. “I know that whatever is inside you that makes you want to save the world is here to stay. You can’t shrug it off or break free of it because it’s part of you, Mac. But in the end, I know you chose me. Which means when you can’t choose me, I’ll trust that you want to.”
He leaned close. “Listen, I understood when you said that you couldn’t take someone letting you down.”
She stilled, not quite sure what he might be saying.
“The thing is, before I met you I felt numb inside. But I was really slowly disintegrating. I’ve always been sure I could never let someone in my life, that somehow she’d get hurt. Like Brody. Sort of how your dad felt, I think. When I met you, for the first time I felt alive. I realized that knowing you, being with you, was worth trying to figure it out. As soon as Nina grabbed you, all I could think about was getting to you, finding you, and protecting you. And it scared me, because I’ve never ever really felt that way before. But after we got out of the river, I understood that maybe that was how love is supposed to be— I couldn’t feel the joy without the fear and probably a little pain. I’m going to try not to let you down, Andee. You can trust me. Because I can’t not choose you.”
Andee could hardly breathe, caught in his gaze, the lilt of his smile. “Then you don’t regret—?”
“You’re in my heart, Andee. Like a breath or a song—”
“Or a poem?”
He smiled. “Like a poem from the Highlands.” She saw a new twinkle in his eye.
“And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand mile!”
“Is that poetry I hear over there?” Andee heard Sarah’s voice lift, with a giggle.
“Can I use that, Mac?” Hank’s draw
l morphed Mac’s accent into his own Texan. “My only luve, will you marry me?”
Andee’s eyes widened, and Mac’s gaze froze on her. Then he got off the bed and pulled back the curtain.
Sarah and Hank looked up from their kiss. Hank leaned away from Sarah, who smiled at Andee, a tear running down her cheek.
Oh, boy.
“Close the curtain, Mac,” Hank said in a quiet tone.
Mac closed the curtain and stood above Andee. “We gotta get out of here.” He scooped her up in his arms, blankets and all. Andee grabbed her IV stand, rolling it behind as Mac opened the door with his foot and carried her into the hall.
“Where are we going?”
Mac smiled. “To the happy ending I promised you.”
She turned in his arms, surrendering to the place she wanted to be, right here next to him, letting herself be protected, just enough, by this man who’d charged into her life and believed in her, trusted her, came after her.
Loved her?
She drank in the taste of those words.
This seemed happy enough. Hank and Sarah engaged. She, in Mac’s incredibly strong arms. Nina and the other terrorists captured. God had been with them, through her fears, her mistakes. Not only that—He’d reminded her through a formerly arrogant Scot that the Almighty might even know her deepest desires. He might even give her everything she’d always dreamed of. Perhaps Sarah was right. It was time to live without regrets, facing into tomorrow, into the sunrise of each day.
“How’s Ishbane?”
“Headed home. I think Flint is down the hall, and last I checked, Phillips was sacked out in the next bed.”
“And . . . how’s my dad?”
“I think you two might have some talking to do.” Mac stopped before an open door and turned her slightly. “Look at that,” he whispered.
Andee lifted her head and her heart swelled. Her mother sat in a chair beside her father’s hospital bed, holding his hand. Gerard wore a smile Andee had seen so many times before. He looked at her, caught her eye, and winked.
Expect the Sunrise Page 24