by Dana Marton
“Stand in the far corner,” he all but commanded as he dragged the guy to the wall where he’d be hidden behind the door when Maddox pushed it open. “Keep your weapon out of sight unless you need to use it.”
He positioned himself in the middle of the room, his back to the door.
“Bill! Where the hell are you?” Maddox stomped around outside the door.
He rattled the key in the lock. “Why is this open? I told you to keep your hands off her, dammit.” He swore and pushed the door in, peering into the semidarkness. “What the hell is going on in here?”
Jake whirled on him. Lunged. The two men went down hard.
Allison closed the window with one hand to keep the noise from reaching the courtyard, gripping her gun with the other. She couldn’t shoot unless she had no other choice, for the same reason Jake hadn’t used his weapon. The men outside would hear the shot and rush to investigate.
“Get out of the room.” Jake grunted as the two rolled on the floor.
She so didn’t want to get that close to them. She skirted the wall. For a moment, Jake was on the bottom and Maddox slammed his elbow into his face. Blood spurt from his nose. He didn’t even pay attention. Instead, he used the distraction to push Maddox up and smashed his head against the wall.
And while Maddox shook his head, dazed, Jake brought up his gun at last and smashed the butt of his weapon against the man’s temple. Maddox went slack.
Jake rolled him off, picked up his hat, then took the guy’s weapon before tying up both men with their own belts, gagging them and locking the door on them. Then he pulled up his shirt and wiped his nose with the inside of his shirttail. “Let’s move.”
She could do little more than gape at him.
They hurried down the hallway, then down the stairs. “You stay here,” he said when they reached the landing. He wiped his face once again, pulled his borrowed hat low over his eyes then stepped out into the courtyard.
By the time she thought of protesting that acquiring the laptop wasn’t worth it, he was striding to the well where Maddox had been sitting. He picked up everything as if he’d been ordered to bring in the man’s things. He kept his face away from the light, turning to come back when he had everything.
Except, two other men stood from one of the fires and headed for the door at the same time. Her heart stopped beating. If the men passed close enough to Jake, they’d recognize him as an outsider. But Jake veered toward the side entrance as if he’d meant to go that way all along.
She let out a breath of relief before she realized that the men would see her as soon as they came through the door. She darted toward the stairs, seeing at once that she couldn’t reach the top in time.
Handle it. She lunged for the shadows, then flattened herself to the wall in the darkest corner, hoping the men would pass by her.
They stopped outside the door.
“Can’t wait, man. Wildest damn thing we’ve done so far, right?” one of them said, slurring his words, sounding more like a frat boy than a commando soldier.
She wondered where they’d gotten their alcohol. Probably snuck it into the country with their equipment.
The other guy swore suddenly. “I left my gun at the fire. Better get it before Maddox sees me without it and kicks my ass.”
“Don’t let that jerk intimidate you. We’re paying him,” his buddy told him, then stepped through the doorway.
She would have been fine if he hadn’t stumbled. But he did, swerving precariously to the right, then losing his balance altogether and slamming into her. His whiskey breath almost knocked her off her feet.
She tried to push him off, but he didn’t budge.
“Hey there,” he mumbled and groped her, shoving her hard against the wall the next second, one hand painfully squeezing her breast while the other snaked between her legs.
He was so wasted, he probably had no idea who she was or what he was doing, he just felt ‘woman’ and went for it. And she couldn’t scream for help. She couldn’t make any noise at all. She would fare much worse if his buddies came in and discovered what she and Jake had done to their team leader.
She was so scared she couldn’t breathe.
The man pinned her so tight, she couldn’t move her hand which was wedged between them. She, couldn’t use the gun she still held, either.
His hard shaft pushed against her belly as he roughly yanked up her skirt. His fingers dug into her thighs. She scratched at his face with her free hand, but he didn’t even react, past feeling pain.
She knew what would come next. Cold fear hit her like a wall, panic choking her as she fought against him.
Then Jake rose out of the darkness, his face a hard mask, his eyes burning with a fierce power that froze her in place for a second.
The bastard on top of her thought she was giving up and grunted with satisfaction.
“Get your hands off her.” Jake kept his voice low, but it still cut through the air like the sharpest scimitar. The tone of menace put goose bumps on her arms.
The idiot groping her was too far gone to recognize doom when it stared him in the face, and kept on going, refusing to budge when she shoved him with all the strength she had left.
She expected Jake to raise his gun and knock the man out like he’d done with the others, but instead he reached for the man’s head, twisted it with a thickening pop then dropped the lifeless body at her feet.
He wasn’t even breathing hard. He stood in front of her like some dark avenging angel. Yet, even though she’d just witnessed the single most violent act in her life, she wasn’t afraid of him. Instead, when her knees gave out, she collapsed into his arms.
He picked her up and ran with her down the hall, toward the back of the building. She held onto him, wondering who he really was. Because, while she knew little about the XO-ST team or the reasons behind Kenneth’s disappearance, she knew this: Jake Tekla was no travel writer.
* * *
“Are you all right?” Jake set Allison down, unbridled anger still pumping through him. He looked her over, not that he could see much in the semidarkness. He wanted to go back and snap the bastard’s neck again.
She cleared her throat. “Thank you. I’m fine.”
She sounded… quiet. Probably frightened. Her attacker had scared her half to death, and then he lost complete control and finished the job.
He swore silently and calmed his fury. He had made a point not killing the man left to guard her, knowing she would see him on their way out. He’d even left the team leader alive. He hadn’t wanted to scare her. He wanted her to see him as something other than the stone cold killer he was.
He could forget about that now. Didn’t matter anyway. Nothing could ever happen between them. They didn’t live in the same world. They definitely didn’t run in the same social circles. He could handle that. He could handle her not being in his life, as long as he knew she was safe out there somewhere.
He squeezed through the window that had let him into the building earlier and waited to help her out after him.
“I’m sorry I lost it back there. I have two sisters. One of them was abducted last year.” Violence against women bothered him in a big way.
“She’s fine now,” he said, for both their sakes. He still couldn’t stand to think about those times. Then when he saw that idiot with her hands on Allison—
He let out some pent up air, along with his pent up anger. The man, one of the greenhorns he’d seen in the yard earlier, was dead. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone ever again.
He caught Allison and lowered her to the ground, wishing he could hold on to her for a while. But a shout rose somewhere in the building.
“Careful where you step.” He took her hand and drew her behind him in the dark. He had pretty good night vision, developed over years of military night exercises.
“Was your sister hurt?” Compassion thickened her voice.
After what had almost happened to her, he knew what she meant. “Jasmine wa
sn’t raped, but hurt, yes.” His jaw tightened. He hated that his sisters still weren’t safe. They would have to remain in hiding until Wharton was brought down and no longer posed a danger.
He cut a straight path toward town. They covered maybe half a mile in silence before the pink line of dawn appeared on the horizon. Soon visibility would be much better, both a blessing and a curse.
He kept in cover as much as possible, grateful for every bush in the near desert-like landscape. Allison kept up every step of the way without complaint. Not something he would have expected from her when he’d first laid eyes on her. She surprised him at every turn.
After another half a mile they could see the road where a dozen or so peasants herded goats and sheep, some driving donkey carts, heading into town for the day’s market. By the time they reached the small group, the sound of the animals wasn’t the only sound Jake heard. Car motors roared in the distance.
Jake greeted the men in the local language and pushed into the middle of the procession, hoping to gain some time to come up with a plan, knowing Maddox and his men couldn’t tell him and Allison apart from the others from afar.
With a little luck, they’d see the locals whom they must have seen dozens of times before, and decide not to bother with them, search the fields and bushes first. Maybe he could gain enough time to reach the edge of town with Allison.
But as the sun slipped another inch higher in the sky, he could make out the vehicles, definitely on the road, and judging from the dust cloud, flying straight at them.
He glanced around. There had to be a way to protect Allison and keep the farmers from getting caught in the crossfire.
“Keep your head down and stay with these people,” he told her under his breath and gripped his gun, ready to run back down the road and face off with their pursuers.
A single man could do a hell of a lot of damage with a single gun if his magazine was full and he was a good shot. All he had to do was hit the gas tank of the first car…
Allison grabbed after him and held him back, her slim fingers closing around his wrist.
And as he looked closer at the woman she was pulling him to, he realized she looked familiar.
Kenneth’s local girlfriend.
She didn’t know what was going on, but maybe she could see in their faces that they were in trouble because she gestured at her donkey cart, lifting the edge of the woven cloth that covered what looked like half-dozen goat cheese rounds.
The Humvees ate up the distance between them with sickening speed. If bullets started flying, people would get hurt. No time now to come up with another plan. Jake boosted Allison into the cart then dove after her. The woman blocked the view from behind and covered them both once they were situated.
Just in time. The ragtag caravan was pulling off the road already to let the vehicles pass, and a minute later the two Humvees slowed as they came in line with them. Probably examining every man and woman.
Jake held his breath, keeping his gun ready in one hand, taking Allison’s hand with the other.
~~~***~~~
Chapter Six
Her insides trembled, and soon her muscles did, too. She could do nothing to stop it. Shock, Allison recognized the symptoms. She lay wedged sideways in the narrow donkey cart, facing Jake with less than an inch between them. As the donkey dragged the cart over the rough terrain, the whole conveyance shook, causing her to bump into Jake over and over.
He held her hand. That helped. She tried to focus on his touch with all her might and shut out everything else, but she couldn’t, not when the mercenaries had slowed by them and were asking the locals questions. In Arabic, so she couldn’t understand, but she didn’t have to. They’d be asking after two foreigners, a man and a woman. And from their tone, she could tell the questions were peppered with threats.
Beyond the Ukrainian girl who hid them, nobody had any reason to keep them safe. Panic pushed her to jump up and run. Staying still in the face of imminent danger went against some primal instinct. She gripped Jake’s hand, squeezed her eyes shot, her muscles drawn tight as she waited for the bullets that would start flying any second.
Instead, Jake’s warm lips touched hers.
The sensation short-circuited her fight-or-flight response.
His lips were as firm as the rest of his body, but gentle on hers, the kiss barely a caress and yet it melted something inside her, relaxing her muscles a little. She found that with his lips on hers, she had trouble focusing on anything else.
She knew he was only trying to distract her. She’d been so panicked he could probably smell her fear. She knew the kiss wasn’t real, but she went with it anyway, because she needed to be distracted.
She breathed in his masculine scent and tried to get lost in that, tried to block out the voices coming from the vehicles.
Jake held himself in place, his lips barely brushing hers. Any movement would have given them away. But somehow that necessary restraint just added fuel to the fire that began to build inside her.
Then, after an eternity, she heard the cars pull away. Jake stayed where he was for another second. His thumb stroked the back of her hand once, twice, before he shifted slightly and pushed up the corner of the canvas. He lifted his head to look out, then sat up after a minute while her heart still raced.
He said something to the small group as he slid out of the cart and helped her up, probably expressing his gratitude.
She simply bowed her head. But she couldn’t walk by Kenneth’s ‘friend’ without a word. “You will leave?” she asked in a whisper.
“Tomorrow.” A bittersweet smile came onto the woman’s face. “If you sure Mr. Ken not coming back.”
“We’re sure,” Jake said.
Allison followed him across the road into a double row of fig trees, which they used as cover to move forward, toward the town.
Her feet ached, the least of her problems. She made sure she didn’t limp. Wouldn’t put it past Jake to want to carry her. But it was time that she stood on her own two feet, both literally and figuratively. Even if it was nice to know that Jake would be there for her if she needed him.
Odd, how just two days ago she’d thought him wild and unpredictable, while now she believed him to be the most dependable man she knew, certainly one to turn to in trouble. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”
He looked at her. “You saved me this time. Your kindness to a woman you owed nothing saved us both. She helped us because of what you did yesterday. She must have told the others. They kept quiet to protect us, because you gained their respect.”
His approval felt amazingly good.
“Where are we going?” She asked the safe question, instead of asking about what had happened on that cart between them.
“I have my car hidden up ahead.”
And sure enough, within a couple of hundred feet, in a clump of thicker bushes, his white Land Rover waited under a large sheet of camouflage canvas.
Not that their troubles were over. She needed to get her passport before they went north to find Kenneth. Once she had him, she wanted to get him out of the country and to serious medical help as fast as possible.
She needed to hurry with him to Kabul, not back here, the opposite direction, where Maddox and his men might be still looking for her and Jake.
But to get her passport, they had to go back to the hotel, which was exactly where the mercenaries would be waiting for them.
* * *
They rode in silence, off road, scanning the landscape for the Humvees. Jake pressed his lips together, trying to forget the taste of her, swearing he wasn’t going to kiss her again. Oh, hell. You knew you were in trouble when you started to lie to yourself.
“Are you some kind of spy?” Allison asked out of the blue, yanking him right out of his thoughts.
He looked over at her, kept his voice neutral as he asked, “Why would you ask that?”
“I understand the need for confidentiality. But I would appreciate knowing at le
ast the basics. My life is on the line here. Are you a spy?”
“Not exactly.” He reached for the small firearm he’d given her earlier.
She deftly moved it out of his reach.
He could probably have stonewalled her at least a little longer. He didn’t want to. Something he couldn’t give a name to had passed between them in that donkey cart. “I’m with the FBI.”
She took a few seconds to process that. “Does your being here have anything to do with Kenneth?”
He didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. “Never heard of him before I met you, but I’m starting to think he was somehow connected to the case I’m working.”
Another long second passed before she put forth her next question, with a tone of dread in her voice. “Is that why you offered to help me?”
He wished he had a different answer to give her. He held her gaze, unblinking, as he said, “Yes.” He wanted to leave it at that but couldn’t. “There’s something I need to tell you.” He paused. “Kenneth is dead.”
She drew back as if he’d struck her. Blinked rapidly. Then turned her head from him, toward the window. Her voice broke when she finally asked, “When?”
No helping it now. “He was killed a month after he got here.”
She let her head drop against the headrest and closed her eyes, pain and betrayal plain on her face. The way her chin trembled wrenched his guts. He would have much rather taken a punch in the face than have to look at that.
A long minute passed before her tears spilled over. “Daniel, my first fiancé, died ten months after our engagement. Melanoma, the aggressive type. I don’t know if I would have made it through that without Kenneth.” She covered her face. “I’m like one of those Black Widows.”
“You can’t think like that.”
“I should have talked Kenneth out of coming here,” she said on a broken whisper, dropping her hands. “Or I should have come after him sooner.”
“This is not your fault,” he said as emphatically as he could, and reached for her hand, but she wouldn’t let him take it.