Close Pursuit

by Cindy Dees

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALEX SAVORED THE way Katie’s body melted against his, fantasizing about how it would feel beneath his, thrashing in the throes of sex. Gradually, she slid down his torso in her sleep until her head ended up resting on his lap. That brought a whole new wave of forbidden fantasies springing to mind.

  The sight of her mostly naked body danced in his mind’s eye, burned on it indelibly. Lord, the things he wanted to do to her. And the sight of her breast with Dawn’s head nuzzling it... He knew that wasn’t supposed to be a sexy thing, but it had turned him on so bad he could hardly stand it. Someday, he would be the one sucking at her breast, bringing that flush of pleasure to her cheeks.

  He snorted at himself. Must be some misplaced, infantile need to replace his absent mother. He always had been a breast man...

  Although the sight of Katie’s pert little behind cut in half by that strand of lace nestled between her cheeks was enough to make an ass man out of him in no time. Purely depraved fantasies came to mind about what he’d like to do to that part of her anatomy.

  He tried to set aside the images, but for once, failed. Startled, he examined the problem. He always was able to compartmentalize the women in his life. They were something he stored in a drawer in his mind. When a need for sex became urgent, he opened up the drawer, hired a topflight prostitute, took care of the need and closed the female companionship drawer until next time.

  But Katie was not so easy to stuff in a mental drawer. Undoubtedly, it was because they had to live together and interact 24/7. And now they shared responsibility for a newborn infant. He shuddered to recall the nightmare of Dawn’s birth. As a trauma surgeon, he could accept that not every patient was savable. Even in a fully equipped operating room, he doubted Dawn’s mother would have lived. Frankly, it was a minor miracle the baby had made it.

  Katie shifted a little in his lap, and his thoughts lurched back to her. Dammit, he couldn’t keep his mind off her. What was wrong with him?

  Sleep. He needed sleep before tonight. But with his flesh rock hard and her face lying practically on top of his erection, there was no way he was getting any rest. What the hell. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander deep into the dark world of possibilities if Katie McCloud decided she ever wanted to climb down off her good-girl pedestal.

  He spent the day dozing, helping feed and care for Dawn and speculating on who had planted both the primary burr in his coat and the smaller, secondary one in Katie’s hiking boot. They’d been well hidden. Professionally hidden. It had taken an inch-by-inch, meticulous search and knowing what he was looking for to spot them.

  He hadn’t told Katie about either one. No need to panic her more than she already was. The quality of the bugs and how well they were hidden narrowed down the list of people who were following them a great deal. Even though the list of people who might wish him ill was long and distinguished, only an intelligence agency could be behind those tracking devices.

  As dusk fell, he broke out bottles of water and mountain climbers’ energy bars. He and Katie ate quickly, and she topped off baby Dawn with more of the IV fluid. The baby’s birth weight had been excellent, he estimated somewhere around nine pounds, but the infant would need real food in the next day or so.

  He sat in the cave entrance as darkness fell so his eyes could fully adjust to the dark. After about a half hour, he called inside quietly to Katie. “Ready to head out?”

  She murmured an affirmative, and he heard her coat zip. They had fashioned a cloth sling for Dawn out of Katie’s turtleneck that held the baby across Katie’s torso and left her hands and arms free to balance herself. He hoped she wouldn’t need them for the hike tonight. Too bad he didn’t have a phone number for the people he was headed toward. He knew the GPS coordinates of where he was going, but he had no idea what the terrain between here and there would be like. He was not optimistic.

  The sky was ominously dark and silent as they set out. Nearly as ominous as his mood. He was deeply irritated that it had come to using this emergency escape plan. It was a last resort, and he held no illusions about how high the cost of it would be. But what the hell else was he supposed to do with a woman and baby in tow?

  He didn’t like the quiet out here. In these rocky valleys, sound traveled forever. He’d been hoping for the sounds of battle to disguise the noise of their passage. Either the battle was finished in the Karshan Valley or had yet to begin tonight. He feared it was the former, which would mean whoever was tracking him was free to come after him. The first burr he’d thrown down a deep vertical shaft in the back of their little cave. The hole had been maybe eight feet across, and it had taken the empty water bottle he’d put it in many long seconds of falling before it clattered faintly below. The stone mountainside should block any outbound signal from it until its battery went dead.

  He squatted beside the only tiny rivulet of running water they’d come across and turned the second burr loose in a second plastic water bottle to float downstream. He watched it bob out of sight in grim satisfaction.

  “Can we drink this water?” Katie murmured.

  “Not unless you want dysentery and trichinosis.”

  “Never mind.” She laughed.

  “We’ve got enough bottled water to get us where we’re going,” he commented. Assuming it only took them another day to get there. They topped the pass, and he paused to survey the terrain ahead. A vast, sloping plane angled away from them, and he mentally echoed Katie’s sigh of relief when he murmured, “We’re headed across that.”

  But the plain was deceptive, crisscrossed by gullies and littered with boulders and vicious dried bushes bearing thorns as long as his finger. How anyone survived here was beyond his comprehension.

  They’d been hiking for maybe two hours and were making decent time when he heard a noise that made his blood run cold. A motor.

  “Get down,” he bit out. They happened to be crossing a small ditch maybe five feet deep in total, and Katie crouched quickly, looking around nervously. She’d heard it, too.

  He passed her the satellite radio and breathed, “If I’m not back in two hours, use the emergency frequency on that to call D.U. for a rescue.”

  “I’m not leaving you behind,” she whispered back angrily.

  “Thanks for the sentiment, but I’ll be dead.” On impulse, he leaned over and kissed her hard and fast on the mouth. He had no idea why he did it. And then he was up and out of the hole. He took a quick fix on three landmarks so he could find her again and then took off running low and quickly, zigzagging across the broken landscape.

  The engine cut off abruptly. It sounded like a four-wheel ATV. Someone was so following them. He swore under his breath, slid his field knife out of its belt sheath and crept forward, hunting the hunter. The bastard behind them was in for a nasty surprise if he thought the do-gooder doctor was an easy mark. His father hadn’t been a top Russian field operative for nothing. Alex had been groomed his entire youth to follow in his father’s spy footsteps. And that included hand-to-hand combat training from the best—his old man.

  It took him a matter of minutes to spot the stalker. The guy was good. Excellent, in fact. He was wearing civilian clothes and sporting a light brown beard, which made him a mercenary or a Special Forces operator most likely.

  Alex picked his spot, perched high on a boulder and settled in to ambush the bastard as he crept past. It took almost ten minutes for the guy to draw even with his position.

  Plenty of time for Alex to replay that insane kiss he’d planted on Katie before he’d left her. It had been for her comfort, right? Reassurance to her that he’d be back. That was all.

  Plenty of time for Alex to consider the fact that, even if he took out this asshole, ten more just like him would swarm out after him and Katie and the baby.

  Plenty of time for Alex to tell himself he wasn’t in the business of killing people. Hell, he’d become a doctor in hopes of doing a little good in this world before he went to hell. But Katie and
Dawn were depending on him. He might have been trained by a spy to be a spy, but that didn’t mean he ran around assassinating people on a regular basis. A moment’s doubt that he could pull this off passed through him.

  But his father’s training was too damned good. He shrugged off the doubt, locking it tightly in a little closet inside his mind. The moment called for calm. Focus. Fear and doubt were counterproductive, therefore, unnecessary.

  He weighed all the options for after he took this first pursuer out, rank ordering them in decreasing desirability and probability of success. One plan emerged as the clear victor. A plan he hated with every fiber of his being. He’d spent his whole adult life trying to cut ties to his father, dammit. He’d even gone to jail to avoid the man’s grasping fists.

  First things first. He had to take care of this bastard on their tail. It was a risk to confront the tracker but more risky not to. An ambush out here would be the death of them all. And while he wasn’t particularly concerned for his own survival, Katie was a young woman with most of her life ahead of her. And Dawn... She literally had her whole life in front of her. Weird how deep in his gut the urge to protect the infant ran. Must be some survival of the species instinct.

  His target approached, and Alex focused all his senses on the man, his body coiled to spring. Thought ceased. Breath ceased. Time ceased to exist. Now. Alex leaped.

  The guy was strong. Fast. As skilled as Alex had anticipated he would be. Although Alex had the element of surprise on his side, the stalker twisted violently in his arms and got in a hard elbow to his nose that had Alex seeing stars and hanging on for dear life. He didn’t want to kill the guy. At least not before he forced him to tell him who he was working for.

  But crap, this bastard was strong! Alex lost his grip and his opponent spun, a wicked blade in his right hand. There was no time for elegance. He lunged before the guy could get his bearings and slammed his own knife into his gut, ramming the tip of his blade up and under the ribs.

  His follower went down, spouting blood everywhere. Jesus. What a mess.

  “Who are you working for?” Alex demanded, already sliding his pack off his shoulders.

  “Screw you,” the guy snarled.

  Alex pulled out an inflatable internal pressure bandage. It looked like a deflated condom. It was inserted into a puncture wound, inflated and the pressure stopped the bleeding from the inside out. It was designed for wounds exactly like the one he’d given his opponent.

  “Know what this is?” he asked tersely.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can have it if you tell me who you’re working for. Otherwise, you’re gonna bleed out in about two minutes. Your choice.”

  At least the guy didn’t tell him to fuck off. In fact, the man actually stopped to consider the offer. Alex counted the seconds in his head. “Sixty seconds or so left, buddy. You should be starting to feel cold by now. Light-headed. Maybe even having trouble breathing while blood starts to back up into that lung I nicked.”

  The guy was still silent, his jaw muscles working convulsively.

  “I’ve got nothing against you,” Alex tried. “I’ll even insert the pressure balloon for you. But I need to know who your bosses are.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only got an encrypted website URL. They send me a message and I turn on a burner phone they mail me.”

  “Got an active phone on you now?”

  A pause. A rattling breath.

  “If you die, I’m just gonna search you and take it, anyway. Then I’ll leave the phone on until someone calls.”

  “Pouch. Left hip,” the guy gasped. He was starting to make a death rattle when he inhaled.

  Alex opened the canvas pouch quickly and pulled out a cell phone. Not fancy, not crappy. Anonymous.

  “Gimme that balloon, Koronov!”

  This guy knew his real name? That narrowed down the list of who might have sicced this man on him considerably. Alex knelt beside him and jammed the balloon into the wound. Unlike birthing babies, he had a ton of experience with knife wounds from his time working in the prison infirmary. With quick efficiency, he inflated the balloon bandage and blocked the bleeding. He applied butterfly bandages to hold the wound shut.

  “Maybe you live, maybe you don’t,” Alex said briskly. “You waited a long time to play ball with me. Keep it clean and dry. Here’s some tape and clean gauze for you. Rest and drink a bunch of fluids to replace the blood you lost. No strenuous activity for thirty days, and see a doctor ASAP for real stitches.”

  “You shitting me?” the guy muttered.

  Alex shrugged as he rummaged in the guy’s hip pocket and came up with a set of keys. “Like I said. It’s nothing personal. If I wanted you dead, I’d have slit your throat when I first jumped you. Nice moves, by the way.”

  “Go to hell,” the guy sighed as Alex tucked the phone and keys into his pocket.

  “You’re welcome,” Alex replied drily.

  He estimated the guy had hiked a quarter mile from wherever he’d stashed his vehicle in the time since the engine had gone silent. It took Alex a while to backtrack to about the right area and then hunt around until he spotted the brush-covered lump. But it was worth it as he started the four-wheeler’s engine and roared into the night. Now they could reach their destination in one night, and maybe baby Dawn stood a real chance of surviving the fiasco of her birth, after all.

  * * *

  KATIE HUDDLED OVER the baby in panic as the engine came closer and closer and got louder and louder. Please, God, let Alex not be dead. Please let whoever was on that ATV go right on past her and Dawn. Should she use the radio now? Call for help while she still had a chance? The engine cut off, and she fumbled frantically at the radio. Dammit, she should have paid closer attention when Alex tried to teach her how to use it a few days ago.

  “Katie,” a familiar voice called out quietly.

  She sagged, weak, nearly peeing her pants in her relief. “Over here,” she replied.

  She stood up and, when Alex reached her, threw her arms around him and squeezed the stuffing out of him. “I have never been so glad to see another human being in my entire life,” she declared.

  His arms closed around her tightly as she buried her face in his neck.

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Fine. About ready to eat again. I think she won’t need mother’s little helpers to take the fluid and swallow it this time.”

  “Too bad. And your helpers are not little, by the way.”

  Her face heated up, and she was grateful for the darkness to hide her blush.

  “I got us a ride. Unless, of course, you’d rather walk the last fifteen miles.”

  She laughed under her breath. “No, that’s okay. Where’d you get the ATV?”

  “Took it from its owner.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I hope not. I stopped his bleeding. I give him fifty-fifty odds of making it.”

  She shrugged as she threw a leg on the seat behind Alex and settled Dawn in front of her. There was no time for compassion right now. There was a baby to get to food and warmth and her own life to protect. She wrapped her arms around his lean waist, savoring the strong, capable feel of him.

  “Where are we going?” she shouted in Alex’s ear over the engine noise.

  “It’s a secret,” he called back.

  They drove for a couple of hours, banging over the rough terrain uncomfortably. But it was a hell of a lot better than walking all the way. They wound up into the hills again. She was intensely grateful at not having to hike up the long climb to the pass. This time, the plain that opened beneath them as they topped the head of the valley was vast, stretching away in the starlight as far as she could see. It was to one side of this huge open plain that Alex guided the four-wheeler.

  He paused to pull out his cell phone and use the GPS function to check his position yet again. He took a visual fix on something up in the hills and eased the ATV forward once more. In about ten minutes he stopped and
turned off the ignition. “We’re here,” he announced.

  She looked around and saw nothing but dirt and rocks and looming mountains nearby. “Where’s here?”

  “Follow me.” Alex took off on foot up a steep, but short, hillside. With every step, the expression on his face waxed more thunderous. What about this hillside was making him so mad? Fury rolled off him in eddies and whorls that were practically visible to the naked eye.

  He stopped at the base of a giant cliff, and she joined him, frowning. A cluster of crude carvings caught the moonlight and cast shadows that were definitely man-made. But they were just lines and dots. She’d never seen the Karshani people use any symbols like that when she’d been around them. Alex ran a hand across them and then his fingers fisted together.

  He ground out, “I probably ought to give you a speech about having to kill you if you reveal what I’m about to show you. But, in fact, I doubt anyone would believe you if you told them, anyway.”

  Perplexed, she followed him into a high opening in the rocks that was more crevasse than actual cave. He stopped, and then passed her the Cyalume stick. “Hold this.”

  She took the glowing plastic tube and watched with interest as he pulled out his wallet and dug out a scrap of paper. He moved to one side of the narrow passage, and that was when she spotted the steel door. “WTF?” she breathed.

  He threw her a grim look and proceeded to dial in a five-number combination on an old-fashioned rotary combination lock. He took a deep breath of resignation and huffed it out. Like this was some point of no return for him. He turned the massive handle and pulled.

  The door moved a fraction of an inch but no more. “Help me,” he grunted. “Thing’s rusted shut.”

  She put her hands beside his and threw her weight into tugging. Together, they were able to slowly drag the rusted door open a foot or so. Alex took the Cyalume stick from her and slipped through the narrow opening first. Katie lifted Dawn to the side and squeezed through the gap after him. She coughed at the dust their feet had stirred up and looked around in the dim green glow.