by Misty Evans
The wheel spun anew. Mud flew.
He would not let her down. Would not let that bastard Al-Safari get her on that plane.
Every muscle in his back straining, Jax dug his feet into the incline, his boots sinking up to his ankles. Colton hit the gas again and Jax heaved with all his might.
The backend of the car rocked, bounced, the other tire starting to dig a groove as well. If both tires ended up stuck, there was no way Jax would be able to get them out of this ditch.
And maybe it wouldn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t see the final results of the pileup on the road, but he had the feeling the entire three lanes of traffic were completely blocked.
One problem at a time. He took a huge breath in, all the anger he’d built over a lifetime rising to the surface. His best friend coming back without his legs, his parents’ rejection, the SEAL brothers he’d lost in the field.
Ruby.
I will not lose her.
On the exhale, he yelled at the top of his lungs, letting all of it go as he jerked and yanked on the Jeep’s bumper with every last reserve of energy he had.
Colton floored it, and finally, the tires found purchase. Jax heaved and pushed the Jeep to higher ground.
As Colt brought the car to a halt up on the shoulder, Jax sank to his knees. Covered in mud and soaked to the bone, his muscles trembled, his pulse rapped in his ears.
But his mind felt much clearer.
As if the past had been wiped clean, the future as well. While his large body was weighed down by exhaustion and overexertion, his mind was free. No worries, no fear. Not even an ounce of anger.
It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, sort of like how Hunter described meditation and connecting with his higher self.
Whatever the hell that was.
Jax found himself laughing—at the sensation of detachment, of emptiness, at himself. At the goddamn rain and the mud and whatever had just happened here.
Freedom, release, higher self.
Yeah right.
Fuck this shit. Move.
Slogging through the mud, he hauled ass to the car and slid his not-so-higher self into it.
Chapter Twenty-three
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RUBY LIPPED OFF again and Abdel Al-Safari slapped her.
Her head snapped sideways and her earbud fell out.
She’d been trying to get more information out of him about where they were headed. Anything to give Jax her whereabouts as they sped through traffic.
Abdel had stripped off all her jewelry, including the bracelet Jax had put on her arm with the hidden GPS tracker in it. That had all gone out the window. She had no cell phone, no gun, and now the earbud—her last link to the outside world was lying on the seat next to her leg.
Before it fell out, she hadn’t heard anything more from Jax or the team, possibly because her comm had malfunctioned or the limo had special equipment to block listening devices.
Either way, she’d kept hoping that at least her voice was getting through.
Curling her body over to the right as if nursing her injury, she blocked the ear bud from Abdel’s view.
Acting once more, she cried into her hands as she coiled tight into a ball against the seat. Using her hair as cover, she managed to shove the tiny earbud back into her ear.
Dead air was all she heard.
Her fake crying almost became real. Not because of the pain, but because of the all-consuming belief she would never see Jax again.
Mission failure.
The driver had alerted Al-Safari that they had a tail moments ago, the terrorist becoming absorbed in the race, yelling instructions to the him as they wove in and out of traffic. He tried to raise his men on his cell phone, but couldn’t get through at first. He punched at the screen again and Ruby heard a ringing on the other end.
She couldn’t see much out the back window when she raised her head, the rain falling hard and visibility low. They’d left the accident scene far behind and Jax’s blue Jeep was no longer in sight.
Abdel’s phone connected and her stomach dropped even farther. He put it on speaker, an evil gleam in his eyes as he answered.
Beatrice was dead. Her baby too. As soon as Abdel told his men that someone was following them, they’d blow the Rock Star staff sky-high.
She lunged at him, but he kicked her away, a solid shot to her knee. Ignoring the crunching noise it made and fierce pain she felt, she started to lunge again when she heard a very familiar voice.
“Mr. Al-Safari, your friends here at the Rock Star Security Chicago division are no longer able to answer this phone. In fact, they won’t be answering any calls from you ever again.”
Beatrice!
“Who is this?” Abdel demanded.
“You don’t know me, but you will. Any man who threatens my and Callan Reese’s child is going to find out exactly who he’s dealing with, and not in a pleasant way. Regardless of that fact, let me inform you that your bomb was well done, very difficult to disarm, but it has been disarmed. You no longer hold any cards, Mr. Al-Safari. I suggest you stop your getaway car and turn yourself in.”
His glittering black eyes rose to Ruby’s. She grinned.
Half coming out of his seat, he shot a hand out and slapped her again.
The hit was so hard, it knocked her head sideways and she cried out.
“Did you hear that, whore of Callan Reese? That is my card and I still very much hold it.”
He hung up.
Seething, Ruby reached for the syringe to get it out of her front pocket and inject it into Abdel’s neck. The limo veered right and she lost her balance.
Everything happened so fast. Abdel was yelling at the driver and looking over his shoulder out the back window and then the next, they jerked left again.
The impact swayed the limo’s backend, keeping her off balance as it also did Abdel. He fell into her, pinning her against the door, the sound of car horns and screeching tires trailing behind them.
She drove a knee into Abdel’s stomach and brought her elbows down on his back. He grunted, but his reactions were quicker then she anticipated. Her injuries were slowing her down as well. He caught her by both knees and jerked her off the seat, sending her to her back on the floor.
He dropped his own knee into her belly, knocking the wind out of her. Wrists still bound, she swung her fists together like a sledgehammer, catching him in the nose.
A crack sounded, cartilage busting. Abdel didn’t howl in pain, however. He simply glared down at her, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose. “You have my gratitude, Agent McKellen.”
“For what?”
“I have been waiting for a reason to hurt you.”
She aimed for his groin, but in the tight quarters, his legs were too close together for her good knee to do any good. The impact, however, sent him sideways.
Using his momentum against him, she fought to get out from under his weight, kicking and hammering at him as best she could.
She gained some freedom, squirming away, but the car swerved taking an off ramp and the motion sent her down on top of the man.
The air harrumphed out of his chest and he managed to backhand her across her ear. The strike knocked her sideways and a ringing set up shop inside her head.
Heat and pain rifled through her temple, down behind her ear. She blinked away hot tears and struggled to regain some sort of balance.
Next thing she knew, Abdel had her by the back of the neck, fingernails clawing into her skin. With the car rocking and her ear ringing, equilibrium deserted her. Her body went slack and Abdel slammed her head into the window.
A cry left her lips, white-hot pinpricks dancing in front of her eyes. Her hands went out to stop her fall, but only managed to skim off the edge of the seat.
She went down to the floor again, face first. A heavy loafer came down on the back of her neck, the heel jamming into her cerebral spine
.
“Stay down, bitch, unless you want more.”
The overly nasal sound of Abdel’s voice told her she’d definitely done damage to his nose. Turning her head slightly, she peered up at him and saw blood still running from it.
Small satisfaction, but she’d take what she could get.
Breathing in the stale smell of the limo’s carpeting, she tried to regulate her pulse, blink away the pain. The edges of her vision blurred, her body feeling too heavy, her head too full.
She still had the syringe. A whole box full of tiny weapons. One way or another, she would find a way to use one.
Or all of them.
Keeping Abdel alive for questioning had been a noble goal, a smart one. She wasn’t feeling particularly noble or smart at the moment. If—when—she got the chance, she was taking the bastard out.
Every tired, pain-filled cell in her body sent up a little cheer at the thought.
Time seemed to fold in on itself, perhaps because she kept losing consciousness, shaking herself awake more than once. The limo straightened and slowed. Eventually, they came to a stop.
As Abdel lifted her roughly from the floor and dragged her from the car, lightning cracked overhead in the darkening sky. They were at an airport, the limo inside a private hangar and a slick little jet warming its engines out on the tarmac. Across the side of the plane were the words Avathaar Shiva.
Sanskrit. Ruby racked her brain. She’s seen those words somewhere else. Somewhere…
Marrakech. The tiny bar where she’d first danced for Jax. There had been Sanskrit symbols painted on the walls, hanging over the bar.
Brahma, the creator. Vishnu, the preserver. Shiva, the god of destruction. The bartender had told her the place belonged to Avathaar Shiva.
Avathaar. If her memory was correct, that term meant the incarnation of God taking a form that would do the most good during the age the incarnation occurred.
Avathaar Shiva. The incarnation of God as Shiva the Destroyer.
Realization hit, even through the fog in her brain. Izala saw himself as God’s vessel to uplift humanity by destroying anyone and anything that got in his way.
As the limo driver delivered a bag to the plane, a man in coveralls and a hardhat came toward them. He wore an ID badge around his neck and carried a clipboard.
His large, dark eyes barely glanced at her, rain running down his brown cheeks. He and Abdel exchanged words in an Afroasiatic language that combined Arabic and Berber.
Morocco. A common dialect there.
Abdel said something more to the man and hitched his thumb at her as he withdrew his hanky and dabbed at his nose. The man’s gaze landed on her, distant, unemotional. She took a step back and pivoted, ready to run.
The sound of guns being cocked echoed in the hangar. Everywhere her gaze landed, more men with dark skin and hard eyes stared back.
A hand clamped in her hair, pulling her head back. She couldn’t hear well out of her left ear. Her pulse throbbed thick and slow in her temples.
The man in the coveralls used her hair to drag her toward the plane, a gun now replacing his clipboard and boring into her ribs as she stumbled across the rain-slicked runway.
Better to die here than live as a slave in Morocco.
She dug her heels in, took a swing at him with her bound fists.
He didn’t take kindly to the revolt and swiftly struck her across the back of her head with his gun.
The tarmac came up to meet her, her knees hitting the ground. She groaned and fell forward, flat on her belly. The man didn’t break stride, grabbing her bound wrists and dragging her over the rough ground to the plane.
Rain fell into her eyes. Her head pounded. The rest of her body felt numb. The dead weight of her head increased, her poor neck no longer able to keep it up.
Her head lolled from side to side. She dug deeper, trying to find any kind of fortitude, power, anything. If she could just roll over. Or pull her legs under her, or…
At the steps to the jet, another man grabbed her feet. Together, her captors carried her up the steps, into the plane, throwing her at a man’s sandaled feet.
“Welcome, Ruby McKellen,” Mohammed Izala said to her. He was smoking a cigarette, his dark head shaved and gleaming under the overhead lights of the plush cabin. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
At least she thought it was Izala. She’d never seen him without long hair and a beard. The man in front of her was slick and polished. His suit, like Abdel’s, was high quality. His nails manicured. With the exception of his sandals, he looked as if he worked in one of the downtown Chicago banks or attorney offices.
Her throat was dry, but she managed to work up enough saliva to spit at his feet.
An unseen hand grabbed her hair and drew her off the ground into a kneeling position. Her damaged knees screamed in protest. She felt the trickle of blood down the back of her neck.
“She is as anticipated,” Abdel said with a hint of resignation in his voice. “She will be an interesting one to break.”
Mohammed stared at her, seemingly unconcerned about her defiance and the saliva coating a couple of his toes. “And her bodyguard? Where is he?”
“We picked up a tail—probably him—but we lost it on the interstate. He won’t be an issue today.”
Mohammed leaned forward, one hand rubbing his shaved cheeks as he put his face close to hers. “But he will follow you, won’t he, my little bulbul? He’ll follow you all the way back to Marrakech, where we will all be reunited.”
Bulbul. Arabic for peacock. Ruby’s mind raced. Reunited? What did he mean by that? “How did you get into this country?”
A flat smile. “I have friends here. Diplomatic friends. Those who have strong connections with certain men in your Department of Homeland Security. Besides, no one pays attention to prestigious businessmen, do they?”
His English was as good as Abdel’s. His insolence just as infuriating.
“I hear your bodyguard is quite the expert on reconnaissance and extractions,” Mohammed went on. “Also a fair medicine man. I’ve lost too many soldiers—valuable ones—lately. I’m in need of a warrior who can rescue those who are lost and mend those who are broken.”
Expert. Oh, crap. Mohammed Izala hadn’t been just after her for her CIA secrets. He was after Jax. A former SEAL very familiar with military operations in Northern Africa.
She kept her gaze steady on his, refusing to be intimidated. “Jax won’t come for me. He hates me. Blames me for everything that happened with my partner in Marrakech. It ruined his career, you know. That’s why he’s nothing more than a bodyguard these days.”
Mohammed’s liquid brown eyes studied hers. She kept her face impassive, her body language resigned. Inside her chest, her heart beat with a manic rhythm against her rib cage.
Her earbud was silent, dead. She prayed that her comm worked anyway, transmitting everything Mohammed was saying. Beatrice would keep Jax from risking his life for her.
“I don’t believe you.” The terrorist who fancied himself a god reached out and fingered a lock of her hair. “He will come for you, and then you’ll both be mine.”
Abdel pulled her to her feet, dragging her down the aisle to a seat in the back near the kitchen and restrooms. Despite her resistance, he and one of the other men overpowered her, fastening each wrist to an armrest of the leather chair and tying her ankles to the seat’s legs, bolted into the floor. Next, Abdel wrapped a webbed belt across her chest and tightened it in the back, making her ribs cry in protest.
A moment later, the plane’s engines revved. They began to move. Wet, bleeding, and pissed off, Ruby stared out the window, trying to clear the thudding pain in her head so she could form a new plan.
The pilot’s voice came over the speaker system, alerting Mohammed that they were ready for take off. Mohammed responded; Abdel belted himself into a seat facing Ruby.
The plane started down the runway a minute later, inertia pushing her deep into the soft leathe
r as the plane accelerated.
She’d blown it. From beginning to end. She’d been duped by Izala, Al-Safari, Elliot. Every one of them had used her and now here she was, about to be used again as bait to draw Jax to Marrakech.
Closing her eyes, she blocked the depressing thoughts. She needed to preserve her strength, watch and wait for the right time to take out Izala, Al-Safari, and anyone else who got in her way.
Because it would come. Her training had taught her that there would always be an opening for her to breach the enemy’s defenses.
And then Izala and Al-Safari would see the living incarnation of Shiva the Destroyer.
Lost in thought, she didn’t notice at first that the plane had slowed. The pilot come over the loudspeaker again.
His frantic voice cut through her dulled hearing and Ruby snapped her eyes open. Abdel had left his seat and was leaning over her, looking out her window, and rattling off a string of curses in at least three different dialects.
Ruby ducked her head so she could see past his arm where it propped against the window.
There, approaching the plane from the end of the tarmac, was a very muddy, blue Jeep.
THE PLANE WAS taking off.
No way in fucking hell was he allowing that to happen.
Colt had the pedal to the metal, bearing down on the plane, but the fucker wasn’t stopping.
It seemed to slow for a moment, but then the engines kicked in full thrust again, and the plane headed right for them.
Playing chicken with a Gulfstream didn’t seem like the wisest thing to do, but hell, they’d already done their fast and furious gig back on the interstate and had just now busted through the airport’s security fence, which had knocked out their windshield. The plane was seconds away from leaving the ground. If they didn’t stop it…
Not going to happen.
Lightning flashed, thunder boomed. Wind roared through the open windshield, driving rain into his face.
Weather sirens were going off in the distance, blaring out a severe thunderstorm warning. Seemed fitting that he would be facing down an act of Mother Nature at the same time he was facing down his arch nemesis.