Silence hung between them.
He let her lead, knowing she was overwhelmed, and sad that she had missed it all. “She’s okay? They’re both okay?”
“More than fine. Big baby, from what I heard.” He shrugged. “No idea of weight, hair color or lack thereof, so don’t ask. Sarah has been prepping for the trial. She’s going to testify.”
“No.” She stood up. “She can’t do it. I won’t...” She stopped.
He took her hand and pulled her back down beside him. “It’s going to be fine. We just have to get you home.”
“It’s been so long since home has been anything more than a word, a moving target I could never reach. At least that’s how it all felt. I know it hasn’t been that long but...”
Josh put an arm around her shoulder. She felt right there, leaning against him. She fit. Like they were meant to be together. But he’d known that hours ago; it was only now that he admitted it.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...” she said as she pulled away and stood up.
He followed her, brought her back against his chest, the feel of her heart beating like the quiver of a small, frightened animal. Yet she was no frightened animal. She was a grown woman, courageous and one who had hours ago hit the wall of her endurance.
His lips brushed hers, the feel of them achingly soft. Her breath was warm and seductive and his tongue caressed her lips, teasing them open. He brought her body close to his, relishing the soft feel of it against him. His hand dipped down the slim waist and over the seductive curve of her hips. She fitted against him as if she’d been meant only for him. The thought brought a rush of passion and desire and his hands only wanted to strip her of the clothes that stood between them, to plunder and make her his.
He couldn’t do that—she was too vulnerable. He’d be taking advantage.
She cupped his face with her hands and kissed him.
It was a kiss that removed any doubts, and he kissed her back. He took charge, pushing her hands aside and wrapping his arms around her.
But she met him kiss for kiss, her tongue sending shivers through him as she tasted his lips, his neck. Her fingers were like pulse points of heat on his skin as she ran them under his T-shirt, flirting with his firm belly, going upward. He bent down, his lips meeting hers, his hands beginning to undo the buttons of her blouse.
“I’m stronger than you think. I survived five months on the road,” she whispered, her breath hot against his neck.
“You were amazing. I couldn’t help but admire what you did. The container ship, brilliant.” He pushed her blouse partway off her shoulders.
She pushed his T-shirt up as her fingers roamed over his muscled chest.
“Josh?” Her hand dropped.
“Don’t stop now.” It was all he could think to say.
“I didn’t plan to,” she said in an oddly breathy voice. “I just want to rid us of this T-shirt. It’s getting in the way.” She took a step back and pulled an arm free of her blouse.
“You’re a mind reader,” he said as her blouse fell to the ground and was soon joined by his T-shirt. He cupped her breast. Her nipple pressed hard against his palm—and he was hard. She was caressing him, and it was too much. His hand closed over hers.
He unzipped her shorts, pulling them down.
“Let me,” she said but instead she reached for him and within seconds there were no clothes between them.
The small room seemed too much, everything was too close—the world seemed to stop and then in a way, impossibly, heat up. She was like no other woman—he felt out of control and he didn’t want that, yet he wanted it all—all of her.
He bent her backward over his arm, his lips ravaging hers, claiming one breast and then the other. She pulled him down to the mattress where her hands also slipped down to where he held on to his control by a thread.
He pulled away from her, pinning her hands as he trailed kisses down her throat, the same way she had done to him so many minutes earlier.
He cupped her hip, running a thumb along the inside of her leg.
Where this was going—there could be nothing after. His job, his lifestyle...she abhorred risk. She’d said so.
He wanted her more than the job. It was a random thought, something that flitted through the mire of desire.
His hand held her breast, toying with her nipple as his other hand explored farther, running fingers between her legs, caressing her until she told him in a way words never could how ready she was.
“There’s no turning back, Erin.”
Had he said that? He wasn’t one to second-guess anything and most especially sex, but with her it was different. With her he wanted it to be perfect. And it was, as she rode him to ecstasy.
And when it was all over, they lay silently side by side, but after a few minutes he leaned over and kissed her, and she ran her hands over his body and he needed no convincing that they should begin it all again.
And as the night deepened, the threats and the thought of death were liquefied in the heat of passion.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thursday, October 15, 4:00 a.m.
She slept curled up as if in a cocoon. Her knees were pulled up to her stomach, her feet were curled around his, her plush derriere pushed against his groin and teasing him to begin it all over again.
He shifted away.
There were other things to consider despite his readiness, despite his body’s driving reminder that he wanted her and he wanted her now. He’d been awake the past hour going through the events of the evening, through the details of their escape from Mulu and backward further to that afternoon. It was a procedure he followed in every assignment, covering all the bases, making sure he’d missed nothing. He’d gone back to that evening, to the plane and to Wade. There he found the inconsistency, the niggling moment of doubt that made him consider possibilities that he once would have thought implausible.
No more.
Now he suspected they’d been compromised. That was always a possibility and not a shocking one to realize. But it was the man he suspected that made him not want to believe.
He stood up. There were times when he had to follow his gut and this was one of those times. Something told him to check the status of the Georgetown airport directly with the airport authorities. He headed down to the hotel’s shabby office and within ten minutes he was back, the expression on his face grave. The airport had never been closed—there was no accident, no crash. Yet, Wade had admitted on the flight that he’d personally informed Tenuk of the Georgetown Malaysia’s temporary closure. There was no reason for Wade to admit that to him unless he was so secure in his lie that he could accept sole responsibility.
“Damn it,” he muttered and his fist clenched as he realized what Wade had done. It had been hidden by Wade’s habit of dressing more like the locals in tropical climates and wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt despite the heat. He swore that it kept him cooler than exposed skin. He remembered what he should have noticed then, the small tattoo, covered by his sleeve. It was nothing noticeable, not to anyone else and for a while, not even to him. It had been that tidbit of information that one takes in but doesn’t acknowledge until later. He should have been aware of it immediately. But there’d been too much going on.
No. He shook his head. That was leeway you gave the ordinary man. It wasn’t something he gave himself.
“One day if I can ever retire, I’m getting a tattoo,” Wade had said, a year ago on another beach, in another time—a different assignment. “On my wrist. Freedom. And then I’m getting the hell out. Thing of it is, I don’t think that time will ever come. My retirement dreams are too pricey.”
Wade had dreamed big and retirement had been a nonentity for him. He’d said many times that his ex-wives cost him too much in alimony and three kids still i
n college drained him of everything he made.
But somehow Wade had found the money; the tattoo proved it. He couldn’t believe he’d missed that tattoo, but thinking back now, it had been inconspicuous, small and almost flesh-colored. He suspected it would be enhanced later—when Wade was truly free. But now he’d realized what he’d missed. The small bird positioned like a rocket taking off on his friend’s wrist was a glaring oversight. The thought made him more than uneasy and he still wanted to deny it but what clinched it all was the check on the status of Georgetown’s airport over the past few hours. It had all been a ruse.
He’d come back to bed, to check on Erin, to hold her and to think.
Tenuk.
He had repeated the information from Wade. It was his job to check. Why hadn’t he?
And then there was Mike Olesk, the man who had given Erin the idea to run. Mike Olesk was the man who had told her to go to Georgetown and to the place where she had been compromised.
They were no longer safe. Wade and possibly Mike Olesk had turned. Whether there were others, no matter how many there might be, didn’t matter. Not now. The only thing that mattered was that they were on their own and they had to get the hell out of here.
His hand brushed her shoulder. He lifted a strand of hair and stroked along her arm, trying to ease her from sleep to wakefulness without scaring her. She shifted but didn’t wake up. Another time he would have smiled at the thought for it was another sign that she trusted him and that she felt safe.
He looked at his watch.
He had no idea how much time they had, but he suspected Wade’s promised afternoon pickup was null and void. The tattoo raised all kinds of flags including an intuition that screamed danger. It was an intuition that he had learned not to ignore.
She turned over and blinked, looking at him with a sleepy, passion-dredged gaze.
“You have to get up, get dressed.”
“What?” She sat up. She was awake in an instant, a skill he suspected she’d learned early on in her flight.
“We’re getting out,” he said in a throaty whisper. “We’ve been compromised.”
“Wade?” she whispered.
He looked at her startled. “What...?”
“Women’s intuition and the look on your face. You look devastated. Only a friend can do that. He was a friend, wasn’t he?”
“I thought so.”
“What happened?”
“No time for explanations. Except to say I think he’s run into a pot of money that will make him a free man.”
“The ten million?” She frowned.
“Exactly. That and a little tattoo on his wrist that says he’s a free man—able to retire early.” He held out his hand, lifting her off the bed. “Wade doesn’t—didn’t,” he corrected, “have that kind of money.”
She frowned. “You’re sure?”
“I’m not so sure of anything right now. Except that we need to get out.”
She reached down, grabbed her shorts and top.
Moonlight stripped patterns of faint light across the small room and seemed to highlight the urgency by casting her face in shadows.
“You’re safe, Erin,” he said, sensing her inner qualms. “I won’t let anything or anyone harm you. I promise.”
“Josh.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I know that and I trust you, but you’ve got to know that you can rely on me, too.”
“Fair enough.”
Fifteen minutes later they were on the path leading to the beach. The night sky was just beginning to lighten.
Damn, he thought, he would have preferred the cover of complete darkness. They’d have to move fast.
“What now?” she asked as they trekked along the hard path that led to the beach.
“Tenuk arranged a fishing boat. It’s waiting to get us off this damn island before we’re trapped here,” Josh said, squeezing her hand. That was one problem solved. Tenuk had followed up with the Georgetown airport and discovered Wade’s lie. He’d been notified by Tenuk only five minutes ago that there was a breach in security and that another Special Forces agent would be meeting them by boat to get them off the island. The conversation had made it clear that Tenuk wasn’t his problem. In fact, the information Tenuk provided only confirmed what he already knew—that the leak was somewhere else. And all of it circled back to Wade. There was a hollow feeling in his gut at the thought, but it was nothing he could dwell on. He had to focus on their current situation.
He could see a figure down the beach more than sixty feet away and faint in the darkness. Beside him, Erin rubbed her elbows, her arms folded as if protecting herself.
“Get down,” he hissed. “Just in case.”
She sank down into the sand, and he knew that if nothing else she would feel less exposed.
The man who had met them at the airport emerged from a thicket of scrub brush maybe twenty-five feet ahead.
“Stay here,” he said to Erin. “Stay down,” he repeated before he went over to the small man who appeared to be wearing the same longyi he had worn earlier.
“The boat is waiting,” the man said in Malay. He waved his hands as he spoke.
Josh nodded, listened as he was briefed on logistics and then turned to go back and get Erin. It was time, time to get her out.
“C’mon, Erin, we’ve got ourselves a trip booked.” He kept his voice light, trying to dispel all the fear and urgency that already had her on edge. “We’re taking a boat out of here.” He repeated that information as if confirming what he already knew and what he had so recently told her. Maybe in repeating the fact that they were getting out, he could keep her focused—calm. Except, he was surprised as he looked at her, to see that she was looking completely together. The earlier tears were gone, as were any questions or doubts about his motives. She was quietly moving beside him, shadowing him. He couldn’t ask for more. “Do you have any motion sickness tablets?”
“Yes, but...”
“Take them. We’re in a small boat on a sea known for making people ill.”
She stopped and opened her pack. The leather pouch he knew had a steel cord that she told him had remained around her waist through her entire trip. She took a pill and handed him one.
He shook his head, returning it to her. “No. They make me sleepy.”
“And you need your wits about you.” She dropped both pills back into the container. “You need me to be alert, too, and I don’t normally get sick.”
They headed down the beach. The sand seemed to stretch endlessly on either side, highlighted by a half-moon that lit a strip of the beach and aided by the rapidly lightening sky. Sixty feet down the beach and another forty feet from shore, a weathered fishing boat waited. It was smaller than he’d expected, not much more than thirty feet in length. He frowned and considered the size of the ferries that plied the Andaman Sea along the Malaysian coastline. This boat was much smaller. It could be a rough ride even in a bigger boat. This one might make it a bit more arduous, but there was no choice.
In the distance he could see the gleam of red of the outboard motor and then the light slipped and the boat fell into the shadows. Jungle bracketed them to the right, screening and providing a border between the beach and whatever lay beyond.
“Move quickly,” Josh said as he prodded her with his hand in the small of her back.
He’d purposely put himself between her and the jungle, because it was from there that trouble would come. His hand fingered his Glock and his gaze ran along the perimeter to where jungle briefly met sand and their waiting transport.
Waves swept onto the shore, not overly large but with enough weight to make a constant crashing sound that broke the stillness. Unfortunately it masked the sound of other things, other dangers. The boat was maybe seventy feet away now, anchored just off shore. The driver wou
ld be there to meet them in five minutes, hopefully less. At least that was what his intelligence source here had said, and it was what Tenuk had communicated to him.
He didn’t like it.
They were too open. He considered heading toward the jungle, crouching there until their driver showed up. But five minutes wasn’t that long and he knew the man who would be taking them in this boat. And he knew that he wouldn’t be a minute less than the five minutes, they’d been told.
As those thoughts crossed his mind there was the sound of gunshot and a flash. It lit a spot in the jungle, pinpointing where the shot had been fired.
“Damn!” He hissed as a slice of pain drove through his left arm.
“Josh?” Erin’s voice was barely audible.
“Get down!” He pushed her to the sand with one arm. His other arm was numb but already beginning to throb. He knew debilitating pain would happen soon, and he knew he had to power through.
The shot had come from not thirty feet to their right, from the shelter of the jungle.
Find cover.
Get out of the open.
The thoughts jammed together in the seconds that followed as he flattened her to the sand, as they crawled forward, the rough grains digging into his elbows. She was right beside him, matching him inch for inch, watching him as he tried to keep his injured arm away from the sand, from pressure—the pain so fresh it threatened to take him down.
“We’re going to stand up and when we do, run straight toward the boat. Then we’re going to hit the water, go under and swim the rest of the way underwater to the boat.”
“You can’t, Josh. You’re injured. And I—”
“Run,” Josh commanded a moment later.
Flashes of light, this time closer, maybe twenty feet to their right.
More gunshots.
Suspect Witness Page 17