by Karen Anders
He came over to the bed and sat down. Emma grabbed her portion and went back to the chair she’d been sitting in. They dug into the food. Afterward, he stretched out on the bed and within moments he was asleep.
He let out a deep breath, sinking deeper into the mattress. She had opted for a clip-on holster situated in the middle of her back. She pulled out the semiautomatic, checking the magazine and racking the slide, chambering a round. Then she flipped on the safety and turned to peer out the window again. Emma checked out the immediate area. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but that edgy feeling wouldn’t go away. It was a cop’s intuition. A ripple of energy sliding down her spine, but she wasn’t sure if it was intuition or Derrick’s influence.
The air conditioner in the room was a joke and did little to take the edge off the heat. Instead, she rose and went to the back windows and peered out. It was dark, but she knew what was out there. The hottest desert in Mexico, the inhospitable Sonoran for as far as the eye could see, populated with bird, mammal, amphibian and reptile species. She shivered; it even had the only population of jaguars living in the US. Who knew if they had spilled over into Mexico? Suddenly, she heard the lone call of a coyote, or was that a wolf? Backing away from the window, she settled back in the chair after another look outside.
Focusing on Derrick, she watched him sleep. It was no hardship. His face softened in slumber, his jaw not so tense. Damn. He was beautiful. Watching him, a wave of heat built inside her, lovely and erotic—very forbidden—but compelling.
She heard voices, then the opening and closing of doors. There was something in the air, a tightness that transferred to the back of her neck and it prickled. She lunged forward, hitting Derrick and rolling them both across the bed to the floor. He groaned softly just as the windows exploded. The barrage of gunfire was ceaseless.
“What the hell,” he growled. “How many?”
“Too many! We’re outmanned and outgunned. He must have covered his tracks with his cartel brothers.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Derrick took his bag and shrugged into the straps. “The window.” They reached for the window as voices in rapid Spanish sounded in the distance. “Mata a los americanos.” Her Spanish was impeccable—it meant kill the Americans.
They punched out the screen and rolled out the window, crouching as the sound of running feet whipped through the grass. Derrick took her hand and staying low, they headed into the desert, using the darkness and vegetation for cover.
There was a shout and more explosions ripped through the night, the sound of bullets whizzing around them. Derrick made a strangled sound and she gasped. “Are you all right?” she whispered furiously.
“Just a nick. Keep moving,” he said.
A nick? Of all the bull crap, macho man bravado—everything went out of her head as she tripped. Not just a stumble, but a full-out, face-planted-in-the-dirt, hand-scraping, bone-jarring collision with the hard-packed earth.
When she rolled to her back, she realized the enemy was on them. Derrick’s semiautomatic discharged several times and dark shapes fell, but there were more. One guy’s gun jammed and he used it as a bat, catching Derrick on the jaw and he reeled back. She went to pull her weapon, but in the fall, the holster had jarred loose and she reached for nothing but air. She surged up and charged the closest guy to her. With a quick grab-the-thumb, twist-his-arm move, she had him heading toward the ground and the hard blow of her knee as she brought it up into his face and dropped him like a stone. But Derrick was surrounded by three men.
She needed to even those odds. She jumped on the back of one of the men and jerked back. They fell, her back hitting the ground, knocking the air out of her, but she kept her hold on his throat until he wasn’t moving anymore.
When she got out from under the guy and rose shakily to her knees, Derrick was whirling, nothing but a blur in the wan light of the moon with the sound of blows and grunts, cries of pain, until the only man left standing was him.
She dragged her eyes away from his solid form and frantically searched the ground. Her hand caught on her gun and she snatched it up.
“Come on, Emma,” he growled. In moments she was up and racing after him.
Into the darkness.
Hunted.
* * *
A door slammed, and Derrick swore under his breath. Hell, no, they weren’t out of this, not yet. Voices were coming from the back of the hotel, one yelling orders, another demanding answers, and in the middle of all the shouting, someone made a threat and backed it up with Los Equis’s name.
Dammit. It was time to get the hell out of this red zone.
His hand still firmly grasping Emma’s, he went into a crouch and took off, keeping low. The profusion of vegetation, small trees and thick brush would have to do. Doing his best to keep them out of sight and a firm grip on her hand, he ran past an outcropping and a cluster of small trees. He didn’t stop and he didn’t need to listen. There was no mistaking the sound of men in pursuit, the crunch of footfalls behind them enough to spur him on.
Running was their only option.
So they ran, and they kept running, Derrick dragging Emma with him through an endless chaparral and over arid, hard-packed earth. Supporting her when she stumbled. Down into a dry riverbed they slid, vegetation all around them, except for the long tract. Changing direction, the going easier, they bolted along the bank until they came to a small, tree-enclosed area.
As they came out of the depression, he slipped his gun into his shoulder holster. Taking in deep breaths, he released the death grip he had on her arm. His arm was hurting like a son of a bitch. He breathed around the pain. “You’re doing great,” he said, impressed as hell by her quick thinking in a battle and her survival instincts.
He tapped her shoulder and they moved back into the deeper cover of the small strand of trees. He had a round in the chamber of his 9mm and about seven left in the magazine, with a spare in his jeans pocket. The rest of his ammo, three magazines, was back at the hotel.
Under the best circumstances that was a damn short firefight. Under the worst circumstances it was a disaster waiting to happen. Going up against men armed with automatic weapons wasn’t his idea of a good plan. Stealth always won out for him. If he had his sniper rifle, he might even the odds, but that wasn’t something the Mexican government had approved. Thirty-eight rounds weren’t enough for him to win a gun battle if Los Equis chased them down.
“How much ammo do you have?”
“All of it.”
“That evens it up a bit.” Even with her one hundred and twenty rounds, they were still woefully outgunned.
“There were at least ten of them. We downed four—that leaves six against two. Not bad odds.”
“We’re not going to engage them. We’re getting to cover and getting out of the desert. We can’t survive here for more than a few days, not with two bottles of water between us.”
She nodded.
He froze. There was blood on her sleeve. He turned toward her, his grip inadvertently tightening on her hand, his gaze dropping to her arm. “Are you hurt?” he said gruffly.
“No... I—no.” She sounded upset.
There was a bloody smear at her waist, but she couldn’t have run the way she had, for as long as she had if she’d been hit. The material wasn’t torn. It was just bloody.
“It’s yours, Derrick. Are you all right?”
He must have gotten blood on his hand when he’d clutched his wounded arm. Relief rushed through him. The thought of her hurt, even a little, sent him into a tailspin.
“You’re the one that needs attention. Let me look at your arm.”
“Not yet. But damn, woman, you were badass.” The words popped out of his mouth; the recognition of how well she’d followed his lead, covered his back and helped to get them out of that ti
ght situation was warranted. He was incredibly grateful. It all could have gone so much worse—but he wasn’t going to think about that.
Her gaze lifted to meet his, and he felt his heart beat triple time, even with the adrenaline still pumping into his system. Her eyes were steady, darkened by the low light and the shadows. She was panting slightly, her skin gleaming creamy white in the night.
“How many men have you killed?” he said, his voice rough and low.
“What? What kind of question is that?”
“A damn good one.” He wished he hadn’t been pressured to bring her along. He wished he was alone; risking his own life was...familiar, but working with her felt too much like working with an asset and he hated how that felt. She hadn’t been exposed to this kind of danger, brutality, although an LAPD detective was no pushover. If she’d made it that far into their ranks, Emma really was a badass. He knew the score. He knew the playing field they were on, and he knew exactly what would have happened to the two of them if they were anything less than what they were: better than the bad guys out for their blood. “How many, Emma?”
“One, dead center, with no hesitation.”
Better was right. Better than any of these monsters who were hunting them, smarter and faster. Derrick didn’t have to be the best, but he knew with every cell in his body that he always had to be better, every single time, without fail. There was only one rule in warfare he’d been trained for: win or die. For many years, light years away from Emma’s, it had been stark and dangerous and had no room for errors. “So none with your bare hands?”
Her voice shook a bit, then steadied. “No, that was a first.”
“Yeah. May not be your last. Let’s get going.”
He scanned the area, listened intently, but heard nothing, sensed no movement. Checking again just to make sure, he grasped her hand again and pulled her out the other side of the copse.
They had to evade capture, get out of this desert and secure a vehicle. Then it was back on the road and in pursuit of that killer/kidnapper.
They ran for what seemed like miles, until the sun started to lighten the sky. He’d had his eye on a rocky outcropping in the distance. He picked up his pace and Emma matched his strides. She was quite the trouper.
He approached the rocks with caution, looking intently for snakes who liked this type of shade from the rising sun as much as he and Emma needed the shelter. He would be on the lookout for spiders and centipedes for their venom. Those creepy-crawlies would also like the shade of rocks to get out of the sun.
They couldn’t travel by day. It was too damn hot and would deplete them much quicker than traveling at night.
He looked around and spied a stick. Picking one up, he began to probe the craggy depressions, displacing a few scorpions. Satisfied there were no more threats, he knelt down and pressed his back against the rock, exhausted.
Coyotes and bobcats were probably their biggest worries; they could smell blood on the air and the former ran in packs. He glanced down at his arm. His sleeve was torn and bloodied.
The sooner he covered the wound, the better. Last night they hadn’t been able to stop running; the sound of four-wheel drives motoring in the distance told him they were being hunted. So far, so good. There hadn’t been any dogs involved, but he wouldn’t put it past the cartel to go that route.
He needed to get them out of here and back to the car. Trapped in the desert with very little water was dire. Food they could do without for weeks, but water...twenty-four hours was all it took for dehydration to occur.
“What’s the plan?”
“We lay low until nightfall, then we hightail it parallel to the hotel. The hotel was in that direction.” He used his thumb to indicate the general area behind him. “Hopefully we’ll come across someplace where we can get some help or phone reception.”
“You have your cell? That’s a good break.”
“In my back pocket. You have yours?”
“No. I left it in my bag back at the hotel. We’re both armed, have your cell and some supplies. This won’t be so bad.”
He nodded, playing along.
“We make a good team.”
He didn’t respond. Truth be told, the last gig he’d had, pulling Rock Kaczewski and Neve Michaels, Amber’s sister-in-law, out of the fire on a lone sniper trip to the Darién Gap in Latin America, was more his speed. Working with Austin and Amber had been an anomaly in his life. As an operative, he’d been alone most of the ten years he’d been with the company, except for that brief time with Afsana. He didn’t like Butch and Sundancing it—going out with bullets flying. A loner by trade and training, compliments of The Farm, the CIA’s boot camp, going solo was always Derrick’s preferred modus operandi.
* * *
Emma cared only about three things: getting cool, hiding from the cartel and looking at Derrick’s arm. She worried every step of the hours they’d run in the darkness about his arm, blood loss, his well-being. He was so in control: no panic, no headlong dash, just a steady movement. He grounded her and the sudden thought of being stranded out in this wasteland without him was a sobering thought. She shifted to take a look at his arm. “Can you take your shirt off? Let me see what I can do.”
He reached for the buttons and Emma noticed the grimace on his face. “Let me do it,” she said softly, gently nudging his hands away. She started to unbutton his shirt, her fingers nimble and fast.
“You all right?” he asked, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.
She pushed back the material, revealing the smooth skin, her fingers brushing his warm, damp chest. “Yeah, same since the last time you asked me, cuts and bruises. Apparently, I can duck better than you can, or is it that I make a much smaller target?”
He chuckled. “Duck better, probably.”
When she pulled the shirt away from his skin, he sucked in a breath.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured and braced herself. There was a nasty gash across the upper part of his arm, just above the elbow, and it clearly needed stitches. But it wasn’t the ragged cut that made her stomach roil; it was the cloth caught in the wound. Her stomach dropped when she realized she’d have to extract it.
Knowing how much it must hurt, she carefully turned his arm around. There was no damage to the back. She rummaged around in his pack until she found the first-aid kit. She opened the box and grabbed one of the packs that held a sterile dressing. She ripped it open with her teeth, gently supporting his arm; her voice wasn’t quite steady when she spoke. “This needs stitches, Derrick.”
There was a brief pause, then he finally answered, his voice gruff. “I figured.” He held her gaze for a minute, then looked away, the muscles in his face taut. “In this case, in this situation, it’s best not to suture it. A bullet containing oil and gunpowder passing through cloth and dirty skin creates a contaminated wound. Closing it traps everything inside. Clean as best you can, pack it with gauze and antibiotic ointment. It’s going to seep and will need to be changed frequently.”
“All right. I have some anesthetic and painkiller.” She reached for both, gave him the tablets and the water. Then she administered the anesthetic. While it worked to numb the area, she reached for the sealed antiseptic swabs and the forceps that went with them, her hands not quite steady as she broke open the seal. The thought of poking around in his wound to clean it of all debris made her stomach shrink to a hard, little knot.
He only made one sound initially, his mouth tightening, the muscles across his chest contracting when she went for every bit of cloth she could find. His face was pale by the time she finished. Then she was generous with the antibiotic ointment, packing the gash with gauze, then binding it securely with an elastic bandage to keep everything in place.
“Thank you,” he said.
She met his dark eyes and hated causing him pain, but it ha
d to be done. His features softened. Emma looked back down at the bandaged wound, feeling just a little too vulnerable. She nodded. “At least it missed the bone and there’s no bullet to deal with.”
A hint of amusement appeared in his eyes, and his expression relaxed a little. “Silver lining?”
She smiled slightly. “Usually there is one.”
“Ah, glass half full.”
Emma looked at him, caught off guard by the glimmer of humor in his eyes. She didn’t know how to respond. The glimmer deepened, and suddenly the knots in her stomach relaxed. She gave him a warped smile, her tone dry when she responded. “Yeah, that’s me.”
It happened then, a disarming, sensual, intimate smile that did unbelievable things to his eyes and even more amazing things to her insides. The smile held, the creases around his eyes deepening, the glint in his eyes turning her heart to jelly. “Help me with my shirt,” he murmured. She got him back into it, so sensitized to him that she was conscious of every movement, every breath. “There you go, Mister Glass Half Empty.”
Smiling back at him, she fell victim to the sparkle of amusement, to the glimmer of intimacy that she saw in his eyes. Oh, yes. She could care very easily for this man. So very easily. Flustered by that random thought, she dragged her gaze from his, her pulse erratic. She had to stop doing that—letting her mind wander—or she was going to end up in big trouble.
He held her gaze for a long, drawn-out moment; something...desolate...in his eyes made her heart contract, then he looked away, his profile tense.
Digging back in her bag, she grabbed another bottle of water and held it out to him, along with a nutrition bar. They consumed the food and water in silence.
“Let’s get some rest. We’ll have to be up and ready to move by nightfall,” Derrick said.
Emma nodded and was surprised when he pulled her flush to him with his good arm. His closeness overwhelmed her senses, and she swallowed hard, trying to struggle with the longing that surged through her, making her heart race even faster. She couldn’t stop remembering his body after that shower and more important, the kind of man he was, which all drew her in.