“Ooph!” She had a mouthful of snow, her arms splayed above her head as though trying to crawl up the slope. She was beginning to think she might not make it out of here, after all. What had Julian said about Wade being responsible for some rapes…?
“Fucking bitch!” Wade roared, stupidly.
Wouldn’t skiers nearby hear the shot and call someone? Remembering the TV show about the survivors, Brooke remained on her face in the snow, not moving a muscle. Wade tromped over and kicked her thigh. “Goddamnit! Turn over, bitch! I’m gonna make you suck this!”
Brooke held her breath as long as possible while Wade straddled her and wrenched her by a shoulder. She remained limp, her open mouth packed with snow, while he rolled her onto her back. “Goddamn fucking bitch! I only shot you in the leg!”
However, she kept her arms floppy and was holding her breath so long she felt as though her spirit was rising from her body.
“Good!” he declared. “Now you won’t fucking fight me anyway.”
She heard a zipper, but her spirit was now so high she imagined she could see Wade Rivers crouched over her. It was as though she were hovering near the tops of the pine trees and looking down on her splayed body, clad in the red crew shirt and pink ski pants. She could still feel, but remotely, as though she’d been injected with Novocain, when Wade stuck his fingers in her mouth and tried to hollow the snow from it.
It would be all right, floating up here in the trees. Wade could do whatever he wanted to her body down there. He couldn’t hurt her, because the real Brooke was floating up here with the—oh, what’s that? What a cute little bird. It must be the black-and-white chickadee Xandra pointed out to me once.
And what’s this? Oh, good. Wade’s getting off me. He’s running into that ravine. Some guys are chasing him. Oh, holy shit. It’s Adrian. And Gabriel.
They must have skied up, because Gabriel was swishing after Wade, and Brooke could see him no more.
“Little one, little one,” Adrian crooned, lifting her head into his lap. “Are you all right?”
Suddenly she was back in her body, for better or worse. “Alive,” she admitted. Adrian was just a black silhouette looming above her, but she imagined she could feel his body heat through his ski pants. “He shot me in the leg.”
Immediately Adrian had materialized a large buck knife from somewhere. Leave it up to my boyfriend, the mercenary, to have a giant knife on him. Brooke sat up as Adrian cut right through her ski pant leg and her tights as well. A snowmobile started up down in the ravine where Wade and Gabriel had vanished. The first jolt of excruciating pain knifed through her when Adrian felt around, but he declared, “Superficial flesh wound,” and began taking off his own ski jacket.
Brooke was immensely relieved. “My savior,” she said weakly. “He didn’t get a chance to do anything. You guys came along first. My heroes. I was playing dead.”
Adrian was whipping off his henley shirt and was left in his wifebeater as he set to cutting strips from the shirt. “I’ll just get this bound up. You’ll be fine if I tie it tight enough. Where the hell are your skis? Bullet just grazed the calf here.”
Brooke felt incredibly feminine with her injured leg stuck out like that for Adrian to bind. “Thank you, Adrian. Did you use the transceiver to find me?”
“That, and the sound of the gunshot. What a fucking moron. You were smart to play dead, my little one. When you know you can’t win, that’s the smartest thing to do. I don’t care what Gabriel says. We now officially have enough to arrest him. I’m going to call attempted murder on this one.”
“If you can find him. Sounds like he drove downhill on a snowmobile.”
“And your head…”
“Yes, he bashed me a few times with the gun barrel. It’s okay, isn’t it?”
Adrian knotted his torn shirt tight around her leg and looked at her forehead. He took another cotton strip to dab the worst one. “You’ll have some knots, all right. Are you dizzy? Can you ski back to Walden Camp? Otherwise I’ll wait for the ski patrol with you.”
“No. I’m good to go. What will the ski patrol do that you haven’t done? I want to find Gabriel.”
By the time Adrian had gathered Brooke’s pink ski jacket and the skis from where she’d been holding a yard sale, Gabriel was calling Adrian on the cell. Reception was spotty all over these mountains, but right now they were in good positions.
“Really? You’re kidding me. And he’s still in there? What a fucking moron. All right. We’ll be right down.” Adrian was chuckling as he hung up.
Brooke stood erect after clipping on her skis, holding fast to the sleeve of Adrian’s ski jacket. He’d replaced that over his wifebeater, the henley being a total loss. “Where’s Wade?”
Adrian was vastly amused. Brooke liked it when crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “See that run, right down into Poverty Bowl? Well, Gabriel followed Rivers off of Triple Play land and over some cat tracks until—you’ll never guess this—Rivers jumped off the snowmobile outside of a beaten-up trailer and is holed up in there.”
Brooke gaped. “You’re kidding. But does Gabriel even have his Glock? He’s not on duty.”
“Yes, but he’s been toting it in a shoulder holster for…for a few days now. He’s always pretty much on call, anyway. Listen, Gabriel said Doug’s coming with backup, Marcus and some goons maybe. I’ll wait with you until they arrive, then I’ll go find Gabriel. I’m sorry I’ve got no painkillers, although I’m sure Doug’s got some.”
“I’m allergic to that stuff,” said Brooke, already starting down the fall line. “I want to find Gabriel, too. Follow me.”
“I meant ibuprofen.”
Brooke looked over her shoulder. He was following her. It was an unbelievably safe and secure feeling, knowing the steely and virile merc had her back. “Oh. You mean the painkillers you swallow, not smoke.”
She had a new rejuvenation, fresh energy speeding her into Poverty Bowl. She would have followed Adrian Kinsey anywhere, but she had a feeling he wanted to watch her butt as she skied.
Chapter Fifteen
“I wonder how long this trailer’s been here.” Adrian spoke idly. They had been sitting around the corner of that rocky outcropping for so long with nothing happening, they were turning to mild banter. They were twenty yards away from the rusty, battered trailer, Gabriel occasionally peering around the corner to see if there was any activity. A logo proclaimed it to be the “Crowd Pleaser!” Adrian assumed it was one of those portable toilet trailers used at rodeos and large events from the look of the smiling, waving Porta-Potty wearing a hard hat that was emblazoned on the side.
“Doug would know,” said Brooke, her chin propped on her knees. They were enjoying conjecturing how the trailer had gotten there, off a little-used dirt road that led to Prism Canyon. There was a “No Smoking” sign plastered to one of the doors, so Brooke had imagined that Wade Rivers was using the trailer as a meth lab.
“If it’s a meth lab,” Adrian had countered, “then no one’s supposed to be looking at it. How would they see the “No Smoking” sign, when no one’s even supposed to be here?”
Gabriel now said, “It’s actually closer to the ranch than anything. I wonder if Cody put it here? Has he ever held any rodeos? He’d need a toilet trailer then.”
“I could try calling Cody,” Adrian mentioned. “You got through to me—maybe I can get through to the ranch.”
Adrian wandered off a bit to another outcropping, in that desperate way of cell phone users to find a spot a foot closer to the satellite. Now he could not get a signal and he was starting to worry. Wade Rivers could stay in that trailer a long, long time. He wanted to get Brooke back to the lodge to see the doctor, but he didn’t want to leave Gabriel alone. Where the hell were Doug and Marcus and whoever they’d brought down with them?
He was a bit on edge, too, after having called Brooke “little one.” Now he’d accepted a job at the Triple Play ranch, the same place Brooke planned on managing an offi
ce.
The implications were obvious. Adrian just had to admit them to himself.
He’d been absolutely devastated by Lyla’s rejection last year. He’d been completely thrown for a loop when he’d discovered she’d been sleeping with her ex-husband. She had always bad-mouthed the ex, for one, but that wasn’t always a reliable indicator. The real indicator should have been that anything was possible, and he did spend quite a bit of time away from the States. Women got bored. Anyone would get bored.
It was understandable, so Adrian realized he shouldn’t expect anyone to marry him or even to commit to a long-term relationship until he’d sorted out this overseas business. Like Nathan, he’d need to find some sort of stateside work before being able to entice any woman into settling down. Who’d want to marry a guy who spent weeks at a time sweating in a hovel in Alexandria, waiting for a papyrus thief to make a move?
Adrian realized he was still hesitant to tell Brooke about his new ranch position. It scared him that he was even thinking the words “marry” and “Brooke” in the same sentence. So soon after being burned so horribly by Lyla, it must be a rebound thing that would end badly. Yet he had a noble, upstanding urge to declare his intentions to Brooke. She was a saucy, smart, luscious woman capable of great things, and Adrian could easily see spending the rest of his years with her. He just retained a bit of fear of rejection.
And, like Nathan, he seemed to be thriving in this nontraditional ménage arrangement. He’d never been attracted to another man in anything but a bored, musing way—a bi-curious way, he guessed. When he’d been forced to listen to Nathan and Rory go at it in their Dark Continent airplane hangar, he’d gotten so horny he’d spent most of his downtime jacking off. He’d chalked that up to boredom and a sort of bi-curious boldness. Now, standing on a red sandstone outcropping and waving his phone around to get a signal, he had to admit. He was in love with Gabriel, too.
It was possible. Why not? You loved more than once in a lifetime. He had been in love with Lyla, too. Who was to say the two people you were meant to love forever didn’t wander into your life at the same time? Who was to say one of them might not be a man?
Gabriel was a sensuous, rugged, brilliant Adonis. They had different tastes in things, but wasn’t that the spice of life? They shared a taste in Brooke, and that cemented them. The three of them got along like a house on fire. There was no reason to fix something that wasn’t broken.
“Doug mentioned you accepted a job at the ranch.”
Damn. Brooke didn’t waste time. She was on him like a piranha on a corn dog. But Adrian had to smile wearily, because he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I did. He was nice enough to be very loose about the terms, because I do still want to continue to evaluate antiquities.”
Brooke smiled coyly. Those lumps where Wade had bashed her were growing by the minute. He knew a doctor couldn’t do anything about them, but he didn’t want Brooke around this “Crowd Pleaser” with Wade inside it. “You don’t need to explain. What you do is your business.”
“Not really,” Adrian said, turning fully to her and pocketing his phone. “Not when my future involves you. You have every right to know.”
“Oh?” She bashfully wiggled her shoulders. “Why would I have a right to know?”
Adrian faced her square on. Direct romantic talk had never been his strong suit, which was perhaps part of why he excelled in a field where one broke into buildings and skulked around alleyways. Lyla had always said he was a horrible communicator, and he’d often wondered if that was why she preferred her ex-husband. “You have every right to know. Little one—Brooke—I’ve been in love with you since I saw you at the reception desk. You were so fresh, intelligent, regal. And no, that was before I realized you were the lingerie model.”
Brooke giggled girlishly. “I’m so glad, Adrian,” she said softly. “So you took this job to be closer to me? I mean, you plan to be around Bird in Hand for awhile?”
“I’m not treating it as just a summer job, if that’s what you mean. I’ve always enjoyed horses, so all the better if I can ride one while doing a job, right? But I don’t want to give up my artifact job entirely.”
“Of course not. The artifact job probably pays ten times as much, for one thing.”
“Twenty times,” Adrian admitted. “But that’s not important, Brooke, if it means I’m running through a souk carrying an Assyrian prism with nothing to come home to.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds romantic and dashing.”
“Well, I just named the first object that came into my head. But you get the picture. What point is all of that when it’s just a never-ending cycle of work, work, and work?” He took her shoulders in his palms. “It’s just a harsh, brutal, bitter life. These guys, fellow security contractors like Nathan, do you think seeing their faces provides any solace when I come back from some grueling mission where I was shot at while using a decaying donkey’s carcass as a breastwork? The guys like Nathan are happy to see me alive, but a woman provides a comfort that a coworker can’t. It gets old, Brooke, the camels braying, the muezzin singing, the flies buzzing, and the smells smelling.”
“I imagine. To outsiders it sounds romantic, but to you it must just be maddening.”
“I’d like to try my hand at this long-term relationship thing. If you’ll have me.”
It looked as though her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “Of course, Adrian. Why did you think I was such a blabbermouth about being so madly in love with you from the start? I wasn’t ashamed. The opposite, in fact. I knew I should feel weird and ridiculous admitting I was in love with a man I barely knew, but I didn’t. I felt proud. I told Xandra about it a long time ago.”
Adrian didn’t feel embarrassed, either. He rubbed Brooke’s sultry lower lip with his thumb. “One reason why I didn’t tell you about the ranch is there’s another surprise. Course, I only hammered out the job offer yesterday , but Nathan was there and gave me a new idea.”
“Idea?” Brooke was even more beautiful when her curiosity was piqued. “To do what?”
“Well, it’s obviously just an idea.” Since Adrian didn’t want Brooke asking him any more questions about his surprise, he kissed her. He drank her in, taking long sips from her lush lips, slowly swirling his tongue against the tip of hers. A surge of emotion he could only call love swelled in his chest, and he crushed her probably a bit too hard against him.
He pulled back, remembering her condition. “I don’t see Doug, but I want to get you back to the lodge. I should consult with Gabriel about luring that asshole out of the trailer, or storming in there.”
Brooke froze, her hands entwined at the back of his neck. “Don’t. He’s got a pistol obviously, and God knows what else is in that trailer.”
“He could stay in there for awhile, little one. This could turn into a stand-off like Ruby Ridge, with the fanatic holding his ground inside there.”
“Doesn’t someone usually throw tear gas into the window? There are windows in the trailer.”
“Sure, if we had tear gas. We didn’t exactly go skiing expecting to gas someone.”
“Yes,” Brooke said thoughtfully, “I thought neo-Nazis didn’t ski. Boy, was I wrong.”
The next thing Adrian knew, half of the entire sky was filled with shooting, flaming debris. Instinctively he crouched, pulling Brooke down with him, throwing his body in front of hers and brandishing his weapon in the direction of the trailer.
But the Crowd Pleaser was exploding. There was nothing to shoot at.
As Adrian and Brooke gaped in awe, first the back half of the trailer exploded, sending jagged pieces of aluminum siding and particle board sailing through the air. High-pitched whistles and trailers of sparkling light went shooting from the trailer, dazzling against the bluebird sky. Thousands of simultaneous cracks and pops filled the air. A piece of siding about five-feet square crashed to the snow near Gabriel, and this gave Adrian an idea. He had to let go of Brooke for a few split seconds to scramble ou
t and grab a fairly large piece of particle board that still had a pipe for a sink attached to it. He held this over their heads as more pieces, smaller ones now, rained down around them.
“Fireworks!” cried Brooke, when an entire box of untouched smoke bombs landed with a plop nearby.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Adrian suggested wisely as the front part of the trailer now began to split and explode into a hundred thousand projectiles. Holding the board over their heads, they ran as fast as was possible wearing ski boots, hunched down low in the snow. Now strange torn and smoldering pieces began to fall around them—a raccoon’s tail here, a bear’s paw there. Adrian realized Wade had been storing not only fireworks but poached animal parts in that trailer. A cougar’s head hit the particle board that served as Adrian’s roof and bounced off it, landing ten feet away, staring glassily at them.
“Turn around! I want to look!”
Adrian knew the temptation to watch a toilet trailer full of fireworks exploding was too great, so they stopped and turned around to watch from reasonable distance, peeking out from behind a pine. Streamers arced against the deep blue sky and flowers burst much lower over the ground than they were meant to, sending their petals horizontally like speeding rockets where they smashed into trees. Boxes of fireworks exploded all at once as columns of sparkling light. Fewer animal parts rained down now, and only the pathetic front wall and stairs of the Crowd Pleaser remained upright.
“Ooh!” Brooke cried. “Grand finale!”
What must have been the biggest boxes of rings and spiders were set off. There was one deafening explosion that surged upward in a crackling, blinding ball of light. The cumulative bangs, crackles, and whistles combined into one earsplitting sonic boom that had Adrian cradling Brooke’s head to his chest with his free arm.
Woman on Top [McQueen Was My Valley 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 15