He let out a mighty yawn, stretching so that his big body tightened. Once he relaxed, she felt the hand rubbing against her back slow and then stop altogether. His breaths grew deep and even. A minute later, he was asleep.
It had always amazed her how agents and operators could do that, just drop off at a moment’s notice. She suspected it was a learned habit. If, in the midst of a mission or a battle, you were forced to stay awake for hours or days even, it behooved you to learn to go out cold the minute things calmed down.
She usually envied that ability. But not now. The last thing she wanted was to succumb to exhaustion. Instead she would spend what little time she had left listening to his heart beat, feeling his big chest rise and fall, and cherishing every second she was in his arms.
Chapter 43
Vehicle Departure Road, Eurotunnel
Christian had been arguing with Emily since the moment they hopped into Rusty’s truck. He acted highly offended by her constant berating, but the truth was, he liked it. Sick shite that he was, it got his blood pumping. Made him feel alive and excited and…horny.
Emily’s last comment had been a real zinger. He wasn’t sure how to come back from it. Telling her to piss off was his first instinct, but it sounded so completely inarticulate compared to her most recent offering. So, instead, he satisfied himself with images of bending her over his knee and paddling her sweet ass as punishment.
And damn the bloody woman. She knew she had rattled him. It was well past dark, but the truck was lit up like Christmas by the streetlights on the road where cars waited in the queue to be loaded onto the train, so he had no trouble seeing the delight that sparkled in her dark eyes and the victorious smile plastered on her pretty mouth.
“You’re doing a happy dance on the inside, aren’t you?” Christian made sure to wreathe his face in a fierce frown.
“Color me Rose on the lowest deck of the Titanic.” Emily waggled her eyebrows.
“In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I find you as irritating as a housefly. Be gone. Shoo.”
Since the two of them were crammed into the stiff backseat of Rusty’s pickup truck along with Angel, there was nowhere she could go. Which, of course, Christian was secretly fine with. Having her pressed all along his right side as they waited to have their passports checked was one of his fonder experiences of late.
Well, that and the motorbike ride.
“Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch!” Ace complained from the front passenger seat. “As usual, you two are making my head hurt.”
“Are they always like this?” Rusty asked him.
“Always.” Ace let loose a long-suffering sigh.
“Heteros.” Rusty shook his head.
“Exactly,” Ace agreed.
For Ace’s sake, Christian wished they could spend a little more time in England with Rusty. Ace hadn’t expressed an interest in anyone since coming to work for BKI. And it didn’t take a psychic to see there was a well of sadness inside Ace that needed filling and maybe, just maybe, Rusty Parker was the man for the job.
“Sorry about the headache, mate.” He leaned forward to clap a conciliatory hand on Ace’s shoulder. “But as usual, she started it.”
“And I’ll finish it too,” Emily declared.
“Always have to be the one with the last word, yeah?” Christian raised a brow.
“Only when the situation warrants.”
So tough, he thought, hiding his smile. But there is tenderness in her too.
He longed to explore both. Unfortunately, she seemed immune to his masculine wiles.
He opened his mouth to continue the fun, but Angel stayed him when he hissed. “Quiet.” That one word was followed by another. “Look.” Angel pointed out the window.
Christian followed the line of Angel’s finger and immediately spotted what had drawn his attention. A man dressed in civilian garb walked casually down the line of parked vehicles. But despite his leisurely stroll, his eyes never stopped moving.
“Looking for Chelsea, do you think?” Emily asked, watching the man approach the pickup truck.
“Maybe,” Christian said. When the man’s eyes flicked away from the truck just a bit too quickly, he added, “Or maybe not.”
The mystery man barely made it two meters beyond the tailgate when he lifted his hand to his ear. He was signaling someone or talking into a cuff mic. Either way…bad news.
As if on cue, the doors on a sedan a dozen cars behind them swung open in unison. Five men dressed for winter, the collars on their raincoats tilted up, their hats pulled low, exited the vehicle. Christian didn’t need to see what was in the hands shoved deep in their pockets to know they were packing.
“I’m assuming you’re all seeing this,” Rusty said, carefully pulling the truck out of park.
“We see it,” Emily assured him. “And what the hell? Who are they, and how do they know about us?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Rusty shook his head. “What now?”
“Now we get the ruddy hell out of this line and turn back,” Christian told him. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t fancy being stuck in this truck while whoever they are converge on us to do whatever it is they’re here to do.”
“Agreed.” This from Angel.
“But what about Zoelner and Chelsea?” Emily looked startled. “They’ll be waiting for us on the other side.”
“Zoelner is nothing if not resourceful,” Christian assured her. “They’ll find their own way. Rusty?”
“Yeah?” Rusty’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror.
“Get us out of here.”
“Right.” Rusty nodded and put the truck in reverse. They received a honk from the motorist behind them for their efforts. But after a three-point turn, Rusty had the big truck up and over the concrete median, heading away from the terminal.
Christian watched the not-so-subtle bloke blink in frustration as they motored past him. Then he watched the gent raise his hand to his ear again. This time, the movement of Not-So-Subtle’s lips proved he wasn’t giving a signal, but was, in fact, speaking into a cuff mic. As a unit, the five men in the raincoats turned back toward their sedan. Christian tried to get a look at their faces, but was thwarted by the tinted windows on the four-door. Buggering hell. He couldn’t see the license either, because the car behind the sedan was nearly kissing its bumper. There was no way to tell if it sported government plates.
“We’ve got more company,” Ace warned, looking into the passenger-side mirror.
Christian craned his head around to see a black SUV pull from beside the curb. This time he could see the license plate. “I don’t like the looks of that,” he muttered.
Emily turned around, her wavy hair slapping against his face and assaulting his nostrils with the smell of her shampoo. It was exotic. Like jungle flowers.
“Why don’t you like the looks of that?” She looked a little wild-eyed.
Not for the first time, Christian wished she had stayed back in Chicago, safe and sound. Then again, the last few weeks, living with her in that tiny flat had been…well, memorable. He wouldn’t trade for anything the night sleep had eluded them both and they had sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking—not arguing, not taking swipes at each other, just talking.
“It doesn’t look official,” he explained. “No hazard lights. Not government tags.”
“Well, if it’s not the officials coming after us, who is it?”
“I don’t want to find out.”
“Neither do I,” Ace said. “Rusty, punch it.”
Chapter 44
Emily’s entire day had been a carnival ride of one unlikely event after another. And now here she was involved in a car chase. A car chase, for crying out loud!
To make matters worse? She seemed to be the only person in the truck shitting bricks. D
own to a man, her companions were as cool as proverbial cucumbers. Christian was the worst of them. There wasn’t a tremor in his voice or a hitch in his delivery when he said, “We need to get off the motorway and ditch this bloody pickup truck.”
“Ditch the truck?” She blinked at him as Rusty swerved around another car and sent her slamming into Christian’s side.
To her dismay, he threw an arm around her shoulders to steady her. “It’s the only way to lose our tail,” he said.
“And once we ditch the truck? Then what?”
Rusty slammed on the brakes, leaving rubber on blacktop when a car pulled into his lane. She was lucky she was buckled in, or she would have gone sailing between the front seats and straight through the windshield.
Once she’d recovered, she demanded again, “What happens after we ditch the truck?”
“Not sure.” Christian shrugged, looking completely blasé. “First things first.”
“Right.” She nodded. “Wonderful. Sounds like a plan. Not!”
“There!” Ace pointed through the windshield. “Take that exit.”
Rusty crossed three lanes of traffic at a blistering pace. When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the black SUV dart past them, unable to pursue without causing a twenty-car pileup.
Blowing out an unsteady breath, Emily realized she had dug her fingernails into Christian’s thigh when he covered her hand with his and winced. “Little less pressure, darling. I think I might be bleeding.”
“Oh!” She unstuck her nails from the denim of his jeans and gripped the seat in front of her instead. “Sorry. I—”
Her thoughts snapped off like bones brittle with age when Ace pointed to a road that led back into Folkestone. “Take that. And everyone keep their eyes peeled for a car we might steal.”
“Appropriate,” Angel corrected. “To steal something indicates we might think to keep it. We will merely be borrowing a car for a short while and—”
“There!” Ace cut him off. “That one.”
Emily blinked through the windshield. They had turned onto a neighborhood street. Houses packed side-by-side sported postage-stamp-sized lawns, rosebushes, and the occasional tipped-over tricycle. “You mean the gray one? The Ford Focus? Why?”
“The Ford Focus is one of the most popular cars in the UK,” Angel said, as if that bit of trivia was supposed to mean something.
“Given we’re not certain what’s going on, it’s best if we blend into the crowd,” Christian explained. Bless him. “Also, the vehicle comes standard with a Thatcham 2 security system, which means no alarm, just an immobilizer.”
“An immobilizer?”
“Something that keeps common thieves from being able to hot-wire the vehicle.”
“Good thing I am not a common thief,” Angel said, not a shred of braggadocio in his tone, just a statement of fact.
The most popular car in the UK, Thatcham whatwhozits, and immobilizers… Emily had always fancied herself a pretty knowledgeable gal, but obviously she was just a babe in the woods when it came to this stuff.
“Let me out at the curb there.” Angel pointed. “Then drive around the block and wait. I will meet you there once I have the vehicle.”
“Shouldn’t we wait with you?” Emily asked, peering around, trying to see if anyone was in their front garden on this chilly March night. Thankfully, the block was quiet. The only movements came from the wind in the trees and a lone moth that seemed particularly intrigued by their right headlight.
“No.” Angel said. “This pickup truck is too conspicuous. We do not want someone to look out their window and become curious.”
“Right.” She nodded. Curiosity was bad. Everyone knew what it had done to the cat.
Rusty pulled in front of the car they planned to steal…er…appropriate, and Angel hopped out. No sooner had the door slammed shut than Rusty was back on the gas and they were leaving Angel to quietly mosey toward the unsuspecting vehicle. With him gone, the heat radiating off Christian seemed amplified. So did the smell of him, that expensive earthy-sweet aroma of his cologne.
“How long will it take him to break in and hot-wire the thing, do you suppose?” Emily asked, her heart reaching speeds of a mile a minute.
“Not long.” Christian hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
She turned to see that, inexplicably, Angel had already jimmied open the door on the little Ford and was sliding into the driver’s seat. As promised, no alarm accompanied his intrusion.
“Wow. I don’t know whether to be terrified or impressed.”
Rusty hooked a right, taking them around the block. When they reached a Y in the road, Rusty stopped the truck.
“And now we wait?” Emily craned her head around, gnawing on her lip and picking at a loose thread on the upholstery of the backseat. She rubbed the back of her neck and scooped her hair off her nape. It was hot. She was sweating. Unzipping her jacket helped. But only a little. She fanned her face.
“Yes. We wait,” Christian said. “And stop fidgeting. You’re making me nervous.”
“You?” She sent him an incredulous look. “What about me? This is my first car chase. My first time running for my life. My first time stealing a vehicle.”
“Appropriating,” Ace corrected.
“If I hear that word one more time, I’m going to kill one of you.”
“With what?” Christian asked, the twitch of his lips doing little to hide his amusement. She was glad one of them was having a good time. “We left all our weapons at Rusty’s when we thought we were hopping an international flight.”
“I’m creative. I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”
“Speaking of the weapons,” Ace interjected, “do we dare go back and retrieve them?”
“Not tonight,” Christian said. “Maybe not ever. If whoever these people are recognized Rusty’s truck, chances are good they bloody well know where he lives. They probably have eyes on his house as we speak.”
“So if we can’t go back to Rusty’s and we can’t get to France, where will we go?” Emily asked, swinging around to face Christian.
“We could try our hand at a hotel,” Ace suggested. “Check in using our fake passports.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Christian mused, rubbing his chin. “Still too public.”
“So then, what?” Ace asked.
“We go to my uncle’s.”
Emily’s chin jerked back. “Your uncle’s? I didn’t think you had family left over here.”
“Why would you assume that?”
“Well, because…because…” She trailed off. The look on his face was like a line of police tape. It shouted DO NOT CROSS!
“He has a summer cottage on the coast in Port Isaac,” Christian continued. “He won’t knock off from London ’til June. So the cottage should be empty. We can hole up there until we get this cock-up sorted one way or the other.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Ace declared. “Okay, kiddies, hop out and grab your things. Angel is headed our way.”
Emily glanced out the back window. Sure enough, the Ford Focus rounded the corner.
Christian pushed open the door, and the smell of salt-tinged air and threatening rain swooped into the truck. She followed him into the night and took her backpack when he handed it to her.
They had kept their gear in the bed of Rusty’s pickup truck, and she had a fleeting worry that all their stuff wouldn’t fit into the little four-door hatchback. And then a thought occurred…
“Rusty.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “I’m so sorry I got you into this.”
Rusty’s ridiculously handsome face became even more ridiculously handsome when he smiled. “Don’t worry.” He covered her hand. “I haven’t had this much excitement in years.”
“But your truck. Your house.” She shook her head. “You have to lea
ve both behind until—”
“Just stuff, dollface. Just stuff.” He used his key fob to lock his truck and turned toward the hatchback when it pulled up beside them.
“Shotgun!” Ace called, pulling open the passenger door. “Sorry.” He turned to shoot Rusty an apologetic look. “But if I have to ride in the backseat with those two”—he motioned back and forth between Emily and Christian—“I might just kill one of them. Or both of them.”
“And what makes you think I won’t?” Rusty asked.
“Uh, because you’re a nice guy?”
“I am that,” Rusty said. Then added, “But you’ll owe me.”
“I look forward to the repayment.”
Even given the direness of their situation, Emily was delighted to see the blush that spread over Ace’s cheekbones. She didn’t miss how quickly he ducked into the car.
Glancing at Rusty, she found him wearing a contemplative look. “In case it’s not apparent, he’s a nice guy too. You could do worse,” she told him.
Rusty’s eyes swung over to her. “Not that I don’t love your nosiness, dollface, but maybe you should straighten out your own love life before you start meddling in mine.”
“I don’t have a love life,” she assured him.
“No?” He glanced over her head.
When she turned to see what had snagged his attention, she saw Christian standing beside the vehicle looking like a Gucci ad on steroids. He was holding the door and his expression said, Get your ass in the car, woman!
For some reason, that bossiness caused a little trill to swirl low in her belly. She turned back to Rusty. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him before flouncing into the backseat and settling her backpack between her feet.
Rusty and Christian followed her in, creating an Emily sandwich. And even though Rusty was drop-dead gorgeous, it was Christian’s nearness that overwhelmed her.
“We need to call Chels and Zoelner,” Ace said from the front seat. “Let them know what’s going on.”
“I’ll do it,” Emily volunteered.
Anything to take my mind off Christian…
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