Full Throttle

by Julie Ann Walker

  “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say you feel that way,” she told him.

  He cocked his chin, narrowing his eyes. “Why do I get the impression I’m missing something?”

  She shook her head. Too much more of that and the terrible poker face—non-poker face?—he’d accused her of having was going to give her away. “No. It’s nothing. I’m just really happy things turned out okay for you.”

  “And you, Abby?” he asked. “Are you sorry you didn’t become a doctor?” His eyes were still narrowed and speculative, like he was seeing far more than she wanted him to. Which he probably was.

  She dropped her head back to his chest to avoid his penetrating black gaze. They were tap dancing—clickety-clack—all around a subject she’d decided to dodge until they got back to safety. And because of that, for a brief second she considered prevaricating. But then she thought No, I’ll be damned if I lie to him about one more thing. So, she admitted, “It’s not that I didn’t become a doctor; it’s that I couldn’t become a doctor.”

  “What?” He stilled beneath her. “Why?”

  “After the…” She had to lick her lips. “After the bombing, I…I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Every time I picked up a scalpel to do a dissection, I had a panic attack or passed out. Like, blam!” She snapped her fingers as punctuation. “Seriously down for the count. My therapist diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  But in all honesty, she’d always figured it was more post-traumatic guilt disorder. When she saw a drop of blood, she was instantly reminded of the bombing victims and the blood that had speckled the scene that horrible day. And even now, eight years later, just talking about it had the memory threatening to overcome her. She could feel the horror of it, the terror of it wrapping a ghostly hand around her throat. And a sudden rush of sorrow filled her chest until breathing became a labor.

  “Hell, Abby,” he whispered, hugging her tight. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  Oh, no. No, no, no. “Don’t you dare be sorry,” she told him fiercely. “You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for.”

  And despite her best efforts, hot tears burned behind her nose. And they were the insistent kind. The persistent kind. Oh, God! I can’t stop them! It was like when she was a little girl and Veronica Wachowski pushed her down on the playground and called her a gangly, green-eyed goblin. Her whole second-grade class had been watching, and in spite of her savage desire to act tough, to act like her tailbone and her feelings weren’t hurt, she’d been unable to stop the tears that flooded her eyes.

  So she did the only thing she could: She gave herself a reason to cry. One he wouldn’t find suspicious. “And since we’re on the subject of sorry,” she quickly added, dismayed to hear her voice crack, “I think it’s time you told me what happened to my security detail. Why you were forced to come up here all alone.”

  She hadn’t missed that strange…something that had entered his tone back there in the jungle when she asked who would be meeting them over the border in Thailand. Although, quite honestly, she’d been doing her damndest to avoid it. Because niggling at the back of her brain like a colony of termites was the suspicion that she wasn’t going to like whatever he told her. And, sure enough, she’d been right to put off the inevitable when his big chest rose on a huge, indrawn breath a second before his words plunged into her heart like a giant pair of hedge clippers.

  “They’re dead, Abby. All except Agent DePaul.”

  Oh…God! It was worse, even, than she’d feared. She’d been prepared for incapacitation or injuries, but…but this? And now she didn’t need an excuse for her tears, the explosive waterworks were in earnest. She choked on them as she pushed up on her elbow to stare down at him, disbelief and remorse nearly suffocating her.

  “H-how?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t when he described, in clipped, no-bullshit terms, the brutal deaths of the Secret Service agents.

  “Sweet Jesus!” she wheezed when he was finished. “Not again!”

  “Abby.” He tried to pull her into his arms, but she refused to let him, refused to be comforted when six more people were dead because of her. “This doesn’t fall to you, cariño. Wait…what do you mean not again? Has something like this happened before?”

  She realized her mistake. “I-I can’t…I don’t…No. No, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’ve lost them, too,” she finally managed, shaking her head.

  His expression cleared, and this time when he wrapped his big hand behind her head to pull her dripping face down to his chest, she let him. Lord forgive her, but she needed him right now. Needed his warmth, his strength, his support.

  Six dead…

  “Shh, shh, neña,” he crooned, running his wide-palmed hand over her hair as she gnashed her teeth and soaked his chest. “You have to know this wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. And those agents were well aware of the risks they faced when they joined the Secret Service.”

  Yes, maybe she hadn’t done anything wrong this time, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible. Those agents never would have been in Malaysia, in the same realm with a skinny bunch of bloodthirsty terrorists, if not for her. Marcy Tucker, LaVaughn Silver, Tony Bosco, and the others would still be here if she’d only—

  “You’re breaking my fucking heart, Abby.” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her completely atop him so he could wrap both arms securely around her. Her knees fell to either side of his narrow hips, scraping against the mat. “But it’s okay, mi vida.” He lifted her chin with his thumb and forefinger to pepper her wet face with gentle kisses. “It’s okay to cry. I’ll kiss each tear away.”

  Only when he was holding her like this, loving her like this, the last thing she wanted to do was cry. In a blinding flash of clarity that seemed to coincide with a blaze of lightning through the hut’s walls, she realized this was it. These few moments, right here, right now, were all they had left. The rain would let up soon and their time together as friends, as lovers, would end with the fury of the storm.

  I’m not ready for that. Not yet. Not yet…

  And despite the soul-sucking pain and grief slicing into her chest like a garden spade, she was determined to make one more beautiful memory. One that would last her a lifetime. “Make love to me again,” she whispered before claiming his lips in a deep, penetrating kiss. She could taste the salt from her tears mixing with the sweetness of the rambutans and her own flavor on his tongue.

  He stilled beneath her, hesitating, even as his tongue eagerly met hers stroke for stroke.

  “Touch me, Carlos,” she husked. “I need to feel your hands on me again.”

  “Dios,” he growled, his hands sliding from her back to her bottom, the calluses on his palms deliciously scratchy. He grew hard in an instant. His plump plumb-shaped head pulsing insistently against her lower belly.

  “Yes,” she breathed into his mouth, bracing one hand above his shoulder and using the other to reach down between them. The thick base of his cock filled her hand as she angled him toward her opening. And when the searing head of him penetrated her, filled her, stretched her, she watched him grit his jaw and arch his neck.

  The move revealed his lovely Adam’s apple and the thickness of his carotid arteries beating heavily with excitement. She couldn’t help herself. She took a small, nipping bite of his toned, tan neck while simultaneously forcing his thick, solid length deeper inside her. All the way. Until she was impaled. Until she was full. Until she was stretched to the absolute limit.

  “Cristo!” he grunted, grabbing her hips at the same time he reclaimed her mouth, sucking her tongue between his lips. Then, as if he could only allow her the freedom of control for so long, he ground her against him, forcing her hips back and forth, sliding himself deep and hard, rubbing her clitoris into an aching frenzy. “Ride me, Abby,” he groaned. “Ride me until I come deep inside you.”

  She did as instructed. And all the while, tears leaked from her eyes because the worl
d was a terrible place, because her people were dead, because this was it. It was all over. This was the last time she’d be with Carlos and—

  Like a shot, she crested the peak and was instantly flung over the edge. She cried out from the intense, soul-shaking pleasure shooting through her body and from the heavy, heartbreaking sorrow squeezing her heart. With a grunt of victory, Carlos followed her into the abyss, pouring himself into her, sealing them together one final time.

  And then, moments later, just as they were catching their breath, just as the last tremors of completion rippled through the place where they remained joined, the rain stopped as it had started…in an instant.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Penni listened with half an ear to the low drawl—uh, Dan had said the guy’s name was Rock, right?—sounding through the speakers of the iPhone. It still sat atop the little table inside the storage-closet-turned-interrogation-chamber. And, yes indeedie. She knew she should be paying attention to the information he was giving them with not only a whole ear, but both ears. Unfortunately, she was too distracted—and mortified—by her recent behavior in the ladies’ room, not to mention the seven huge, handsome…eight if you counted Dan, which she totally did…soldiers occupying the tight space with her.

  The place was awash with the smells of spent aviation fuel, various aftershaves, and healthy, hulking males. And she thought maybe, if she tilted her head just so and squinted her eyes a tiny bit, she might actually be able to see the testosterone floating around in the dense, humid air.

  If it was like walking around in a testicle before, then this is like—

  “…Irdina says she saw the hotel’s security director talking to the same Jemaah Islamiyah militant who offered to give her the money for Jaya’s treatments,” Rock said. And, okay, so that got her attention. And as another Rock, a far more famous Rock, was wont to say, she could totally smell what he was cooking.

  Dan could too, if the fierce frown on his face was anything to go by. “And surprise, surprise. The asswipe called in sick today.”

  “He’s probably on the next flight to Dubai,” the tall, sandy-haired SEAL named Leo surmised. “If he hasn’t already fled to another non-extradition treaty country, that is,” he added in a drawn-out drawl, his brownish-blond beard twitching with the movement of his heavy jaw muscles as he vigorously chewed on a piece of gum.

  “And FYI,” Rock’s smooth Cajun-country accent sounded again through the phone’s speaker. “We lost Steady’s signal a while ago. The jungle canopy and a crap-ton of cloud cover over the region created too much interference, and the satellite couldn’t compensate. It happens. We weren’t all that worried initially. But the storm passed, and we’ve been able to pick up his signal again. It’s showing he’s hell and gone off the logging road. He seems to be on foot and currently near some sort of small clearing. Our best guess given the sat imagery is it’s a native village of some sort.”

  “What the fuck?” Dan growled, running a hand through his hair.

  As if on cue, the seven SEALs began checking their weapons. The loud clanks and shnicks as clips were slid from the butts of handguns and knives were pulled from ballistic nylon sheaths were particularly loud in the little room. Irdina began to cry again, her soft wailing muffled by the shaking hands she used to cover her face.

  “It could be nothing,” Rock continued, as the hair rippling over Penni’s arms told another story. “Maybe he ran out of gas, or maybe he was being tailed and needed to lose them by hoofing it through the bush.”

  “Can you use the satellite’s infrared to see if it looks like he’s been followed?” she was quick to ask, figuring if they could track Steady from a little signal emitted by a device that could fit inside his watch, then that satellite Rock mentioned more than likely came equipped with all the latest bells and whistles in the ever-changing arena of spy technology.

  “No can do,” the drawling man said. “The ambient temperature of the jungle is too hot to use infrared. Basically the whole damned place is glowing like a human body.”

  “Last Intel we received before we left the carrier group,” Leo added, “is that he was some fifty miles from the Thai border. What’s his approximate location now?”

  “Somewhere closer to ten miles south of it,” Rock replied.

  Penni’s level of concern escalated exponentially. It was bad enough that delicate, diminutive Abby Thompson was off traipsing through a snake-infested jungle. Worse still was not knowing why she and Steady had been forced to abandon the motorcycle. A heavy foreboding settled in her stomach like a dense hunk of that rye bread her father used to buy from the Jewish bakery up on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill.

  “How can my team get hooked up to track his signal?” Leo asked. “Just in case communications between us and those of you stateside get hinky.”

  “Give me the numbers for your cell phones,” Rock replied. “I’ll send y’all the application software from the NSA’s secret server. It’ll take a couple of minutes to download the app and to establish your secure connection. But once that’s done, y’all should be able to bypass the satellite link if it proves unreliable and instead track Steady’s signal through the local cell towers when he’s within the coverage zone. Which means, hopefully, you’ll have a far better time keeping up with him than we’ve had.”

  “That’s pretty slick,” one of the SEALs whose name she’d forgotten said.

  “Membership has its rewards,” Rock replied. “Okay, I’m ready. Give me those digits, mes amis.”

  As Leo and his men rattled off their cell numbers, Dan turned to her. “We got a couple options here,” he said, his expression hard, almost…malevolent.

  “Which are?”

  “We can go with Leo and his team to pick up Steady and Abby, or we can stay here and try to catch that security director on the off chance he hasn’t already flown the coop.”

  “And on the off chance he actually knows something,” she added. “He could be like Irdina here”—she flicked a hand toward the poor, sniffling woman—“and be nothing more than a dupe and a patsy.”

  “But what if he’s not?” Dan’s eyes were twin orbs of green fire in the shadow of his face. “What if he can tell us how the hell those JI militants knew the covert locations of the agents on duty? What if he can tell us how they knew about the tracking devices sewn into Abby’s clothes? What if he knows who the mole is? Isn’t it worth our time to try to find out?”

  She made a face. “Hello? When you put it like that…”

  “Good.” He nodded, throwing an arm around her shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. She ignored what his fingers brushing against the bare skin on her arm did to her stomach. “It’s decided then. Leo?” He turned toward the man. “While you and the boys go superhero yourselves a rescue, Penni and I are gonna attempt to track down the hotel’s security director. See if he can answer some questions that have been troubling us about this whole goddamned clusterfuck from the very beginning.”

  “Ten-four.” Leo dipped his chin and shoved his smartphone into the breast pocket of his military-grade T-shirt. “It’ll take us…” He looked down at the thick, plastic watch on his trim wrist, then over at the swarthy, flirtatious man aptly nicknamed Romeo. “What do you figure, Delgado? Sixty minutes, give or take, to make the flight?”

  “I’d say more like seventy or seventy-five,” Romeo replied, punching a finger onto the screen of his own cell phone before sliding it into the hip pocket of his jungle fatigues. His expression was so serious it was hard to fathom he was the same man who’d been grinning so cheerily while slinging insults at his teammates not more than ten minutes ago. “We have to swing by the airport and refuel the helo before heading out, so we’ll be at the mercy of the Malay ground crew there. But according to JSOC”—Joint Special Operations Command—“they know we’re coming and are ready for us. It should be a quick turnaround.”

  “Hooah then, boys.” Dan lifted his free hand to bump knuckles with the SEALs
as they filed past him toward the door. “Keep your heads on swivel out there.”

  “Or as we say in Brooklyn,” she added, “keep chicky.”

  “We never do it any other way,” Leo said as he slid by them.

  And then, just like that, Penni was once again alone with Dan. Uh-oh. Well…and Irdina. Whew. Which reminded her. “What are we going to do about her?” She frowned toward the woman who sat slouched in the chair, no longer attempting to meet their eyes.

  “Hell’s bells.” Dan ran a hand back through his hair again.

  “I guess we could always turn her over to the local authorities,” she suggested.

  “Negative.” Dan shook his head. “I say we get her some food, some water, make sure someone from the social services department—if there’s an equivalent department here, that is—looks after Jaya. And leave her here until someone from our side decides what to do with her. I don’t trust the locals. They’ll either let her get away scot-free or else brutally punish her for bringing this international goatfuck down on their heads. And I’m thinking something more in the middle of those two would be better suited to the crime.”

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  “In the meantime, you and I need to find the manager and get whatever information he has on that security director. Starting with a home address.” Again she nodded. “And Penni?”

  “What?”

  “If you wanna talk about what happened back in the bathr—”

  She shook her head, ducking out from under the comforting, distracting weight of his arm. “No. Let’s chalk it up to grief mixed with exhaustion and idiocy, and leave it at that. At least for right now.”

  For a moment he just stood there, so tall, so strong, his hard expression unreadable. Then he shrugged, nodding, and she blew out a relieved breath.

  She’d said at least for right now. But if she had her way, they’d never speak of it. Though…Christ on the cross, she’d always remember what she’d so foolishly asked him to do…