by Cindy Gerard
She hadn’t needed him then. Hadn’t needed him since.
Yet she needed him now.
“Wyatt?”
He snapped out of his momentary trip down Bad Memory Lane. “A friend. From a long time ago,” he said, rising. “Look, I need to check on flights out of Hartsfield. Then I could use a ride to Atlanta.”
“Sure.” She stood up with him, understanding the urgency. “Jed will drive you.”
“Look, Annie—”
She stopped him with a shake of her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle Momma. Just go do what you have to do.” She hugged him hard. “Then you get your sorry self back here, ya hear? You still owe us five days of the week you said you’d stay.”
He hugged her back, sorry to be the cause of the worry in her voice. “Count on it.”
3
At nine the next morning, ten hours after he and Jed had left the farm and the concerned look on his momma’s face, Wyatt stepped off a direct flight from Atlanta Hartsfield to Comalapa International Airport south of San Salvador, El Salvador. It probably should have been, but it turned out that ten hours wasn’t nearly enough time to prepare himself to face a past he’d been trying to outrun for twelve years.
One phone call had managed to reach out, grab him by the throat, and knock him on his ass.
He hadn’t seen either Sophie or Hugh in all that time, and one look at Sophie—who was waiting at the arrival gate fifteen yards away—damn near sent him to his knees. Sophie Baylor Weber was the reason he’d let more than one good woman like Carrie Granger walk away.
Jesus. He was thirty-seven fucking years old, and his heart was slamming so hard it felt like a bass drum pounding against his ribs.
Kaboom. Kaboom. Kaboom.
He’d experienced this gut-knotting, heart-clenching, visceral reaction the first time he met her. What he felt when he saw her now was just as pure, just as primal, and just as it had been then, one-hundred-percent involuntary. If it was only about desire, he could handle it. But it was more. It was hunger. It was craving. It was an overwhelming need to protect and possess her. To be possessed by her.
And damn it, it was still love.
He was so fucked.
She hadn’t spotted him yet, and as he advanced by inches in the slow-moving line of disembarking passengers, he took advantage and looked his fill. The fact was, struck by the notion that this sudden, close proximity had reduced twelve years to a heartbeat, he couldn’t look away.
She still had that same endearing little head tilt, the same pinch between her arched brows when she concentrated, the same gentle curve of her slender neck that had always made him long to press his lips there, right there, where he knew a tiny strawberry birthmark stained her nape just below her hairline.
Yeah. Okay. He needed to rein himself in, because, damn, he was way out of line. But she looked so amazing. Like she always had. Hell, she could wear a sweatsuit and look sexy. In the plain cream-colored tank top, slim brown Capri pants, and leather sandals she wore today, she managed to look like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Style. Sophie had always had it in spades. Nothing had changed on that front over the years.
Years that had matured her, yes, but not aged her. Years that had been damn kind. Benevolent, even. She was stunning.
She still wore her dark brown hair long and straight and chic. Even though her expressive brown eyes were wide with worry and her slim, curvy body stood tall and rigid with tension, her bearing told him what he needed to know about her state of mind. Her fear had cracked but not broken her spirit. She looked a little lost yet brave and strong and even more beautiful than Wyatt remembered.
Desire hit him like a comet. Hot and fast. God, he still wanted her.
But if desire was the comet, guilt was its tail. He had to pull it together. She was married. Not just married but married to a man who had once been his partner and his best friend. If that wasn’t enough to feel guilty about, the gravity of her problem was. He’d come to her because she had trouble, big trouble, and that had to be his priority.
A commotion to his right drew his attention away from her. Half a dozen uniformed guards carrying AK-47s—not your garden-variety airport security rent-a-cops—marched toward their line and formed a makeshift barrier to hold them all in place.
What the hell?
He glanced around and saw the reason for the security detail. A private jet with the seal of the United Kingdom on the fuselage had landed just behind his commercial jet. A UK embassy bigwig, most likely. When he saw a very aristocratic-looking gentleman flanked by four watchful men disembark and walk across the tarmac toward the terminal, that pretty much soaked it. The men were clearly personal security. They all had the look of Secret Intelligence Service. The SIS was the British equivalent of U.S. Secret Service, which meant that nothing and no one was leaving this section of the terminal until their guy was clear of any possible threat and tucked safely inside an armored car.
Must have been a snafu, he decided, or there would have been a car waiting on the tarmac. That kind of screw-up made him uneasy; it reeked of either incompetence or a setup. Since SIS didn’t screw up, that left door number two. And that could mean problems.
His gaze swept the terminal, looking for signs of trouble. He saw nothing—which he knew from experience meant exactly jack shit. He glanced past the guards to Sophie and felt another jolt of awareness slam inside his chest when he realized she was staring at him. The look in her eyes told him that she’d been watching him for several moments. The catch in his breath told him he had to get his act together.
She raised a hand, offered a tentative smile. He forced a return smile, then, reading the frustration and desperation on her face at the delay, mouthed, “Hold on.”
She nodded, understanding that he was stuck for a little while longer.
Finally, the exterior door to the tarmac opened. The Brit, smelling of expensive cologne, and his SIS guards, smelling of gun oil and the sharp edge of vigilance, filed into the terminal and walked swiftly past them. The guards with the AKs relaxed the perimeter. Not the SIS. They stuck to the diplomat like armor on a tank—as they damn well should until they could get him safely out of the terminal and into an armored transport of some type.
Wyatt didn’t like this. Couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. El Salvador was like the wild west on steroids, with no Marshall Dillon in sight. Violence, drugs, and abductions were standard fare, which, sadly, was why Wyatt was there. Didn’t matter that he was weary of the violence and pushing his capacity to bear witness to yet one more horrific instance of man’s inhumanity to man. It was what he did. He fought the bad guys. And because it was what he did, his sixth sense told him he needed to get Sophie out of there ASAP.
Finally, the line started moving. On a deep breath, he broke out of the pack and headed for her. She reached out a hand as he approached and folded her arms around his neck. Digging deep for restraint, he wrapped a single arm around her, determined to maintain a professional distance. But when she turned her face into his throat and whispered, “Thank you,” he thought, Fuck it.
He dropped his go bag on the floor and embraced her. She needed a shoulder; hell, he’d been one for her before.
Old habits. Old feelings. Old needs. Seemed every damn one of them was stronger than his resolve.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
He breathed deep of the fragrance of her hair—fresh, female, and, after all these years, still familiar.
Not come? She’d had little reason to worry. Sure, he’d considered saying no. For about five seconds, sanity had ruled and he’d told himself to stay the hell put. It was kind of like hoping for a bomb not to go boom.
He reluctantly released her. They had to make tracks. Too much time had passed already. The first forty-eight hours in an abduction situation were the most critical; they’d already burned eighteen hours since the child was abducted yesterday afternoon.
“Let’s get out of here.”
/>
“This way.” She took his hand, following the British entourage as they headed for the main exit.
The terminal was small, fewer than twenty gates total, which meant they should be outside and heading for short-term parking in no time. And they would have been if a barrage of AK-47 fire hadn’t cracked through the terminal and sent him diving for the floor, jerking Sophie down with him.
“Head down!” Wyatt shoved Sophie beneath him as deafening return fire answered the initial rifle salvo a split second later.
Panicked screams erupted all around them, as passengers as well as airport employees and shop vendors ducked for cover.
Shielding Sophie’s body with his, Wyatt took a chance and lifted his head high enough to get a read on the location of the shooters and ID their target.
The main terminal was fairly small, a long, wide corridor with no more than sixteen gates flanking the north and gift shops, a food court, and several small kiosks lining the south perimeter. The exterior walls were glass, the interior a mix of concrete, steel, and more glass. Everywhere Wyatt looked, terrified travelers had ducked behind any protection they could find—arrival and departure desks, newsstands, trash cans, anything that would act as a barrier between them and flying bullets.
There was good news: Sophie didn’t appear to be the target. As he’d suspected, the British diplomat was. The SIS, shielding their man and apparently seeing no chance of extracting him from the kill zone, had hunkered down behind the marginal protection of a newsstand.
Then there was the inevitable bad news: He and Sophie were stuck between the attackers and the Brits, smack in the middle of what was rapidly escalating into a full-out firefight.
“What’s happening?” Sophie flinched as another deadly volley flew over their heads.
Wyatt pushed her cheek back to the hard concrete floor and braced against a spray of splintered ceramic tile as an answering round of rifle fire hammered the walls.
“Apparently, someone’s got a big bone to pick with the Brits, and we’re caught in the crossfire. We’re like sitting ducks out here.” He reconned the area and made a decision to head for the counter of a fast-food eatery near an exterior wall. “On my go, stay low and make like a leopard. Crawl left, and keep crawling until you can’t go any farther. Got it?”
“Got it.” She sounded breathless and scared but together as the battle heated up to a war.
The automatic-rifle fire rattled in constant, frenetic bursts. Wild rounds broke glass and sheared through walls and ricocheted wildly off metal handrails and I-beams. Wyatt counted ten, maybe fifteen, individual rifles interspersed with a couple of pistols, a mini Uzi, and an H&K. None of them was sparing the ammo.
“Go!” he yelled above the shouts and screams and the deafening explosions of rifle fire. Not two feet from them, a wall of plate-glass windows shattered and fell in a shower, splintering into thousands of shards of potentially lethal flying projectiles.
He scuttled left, keeping Sophie in his sights as she kept pace with him. Finally, he reached the counter. He reached for her, dragging her the final yard, then pushed her between him and the base of the counter.
They were still on the periphery of the battle, but at least they were no longer out in the open. Breathing hard, he wiped a trickle of blood from above his eye—glass cut.
Another spray of gunfire whizzed overhead, and a ketchup bottle on the edge of the counter exploded, splattering ketchup on the floor in front of them.
“Crawl around to the back side of the counter,” he ordered. “Watch out for the glass. Go.”
Right on her ass, he scrambled on all fours to the edge of the counter and ducked around behind it. Wyatt half lay, half leaned against the interior side of the wall and tucked Sophie snugly against him. They were out of sight of the gunmen but not out of danger, with only a partition of wallboard and stainless steel standing between them and any stray bullets.
If this had been his fight, he’d be figuring out a way to arm himself. But it wasn’t his fight. Not today. Today, his main priority was getting Sophie out of there in one piece.
“There’s gotta be a back way out.” He rose to a crouch and, grabbing her hand, headed for what he hoped was the kitchen and a delivery entrance.
“Wyatt—” Sophie pulled against his hand. He glanced back at her, saw the look on her face, and followed her gaze to the far side of the room.
Five long, smack-in-the-line-of-fire yards away, a young woman huddled in a ball on the floor, hiding behind an overturned table. In her arms was an infant. The baby couldn’t have been more than a couple of months old and was wailing at the top of its baby lungs. The mother was paralyzed with terror. The thousand-mile look in her eyes said, I’ve gone away and you can’t make me come back.
And bearing down hard, using the cover of an angled exterior wall to conceal his approach, a masked gunman crept slowly toward them. The shooter wasn’t aware of the woman and child yet—they were out of his line of sight behind the table—but that was all gonna change when he worked up the nerve to poke his head out from behind the protective wall.
Wyatt would stake his life savings that the gunman didn’t give two figs about collateral damage. High on adrenaline and fear, he’d point and shoot at anything that startled or scared him—then the baby wouldn’t be crying anymore.
“Shit.” All he wanted to do was leave the Brit’s protection to the SIS and the local security detail, avoid getting caught in the middle of an international incident, and get Sophie gone.
Right. Since when had he ever gotten what he wanted?
“We don’t have time for this.” Wyatt huddled over Sophie as she knelt on all fours, attempting to talk the terrified young mother into crawling the five yards toward them and relative safety before the gunman or a stray bullet found her there.
“Give me another few seconds. I think I can reach her.”
Shrapnel from glass and tile and concrete flew over their heads like missiles; the relentless hammering of the AKs battered their eardrums.
Screw this. “We’ve already pushed our luck as far as it’s gonna go. I’m going after them. Hold your position here, then be ready to hustle them toward the back door when I grab them, okay?”
She nodded, even though she had to be well aware that she could still get caught in the rifle fire. Damn if he didn’t think she was about the bravest woman he’d ever known. Considering he knew some damn brave women—among them Crystal Reed, Abbie Lang, Jenna Jones and B. J. Mendoza—that was saying a lot about Sophie.
Gauging the distance between the counter and the wailing child and mother, who now appeared to be catatonic, he inhaled deeply, let his breath out on a rush, and dove for the terrified pair. He was airborne for most of the first three yards, a big damn bull’s eye of a target, skimming horizontally a foot above the floor. He hit the cement floor on his belly and skidded the final two yards until he reached them. There was no time for small talk or reassurances. He got his feet under him and, keeping his profile low, scooped both of them up just as a spray of bullets riddled the wall above their heads. Then he ran like hell for the back of the restaurant, the baby screaming, the mother still too terrified to react.
And the damn bullets just kept cracking.
Sonofabitch.
He handed the pair off to Sophie. “Find that back door! Go!” Then he turned back to deal with the shooter.
He’d tried, damn it. He’d really tried to stay out of this. But it was personal now, because that last round of fire had been aimed at him. Worse, it had been aimed at Sophie and that mother and her baby. The gunman didn’t know it yet, but he’d be wearing a toe tag before this day was over.
Wyatt ducked back behind the counter, scuttled over to the deep-fat fryers, and lifted a mesh basket full of burned French fries out of the boiling grease. Holding the basket away from his body, he scrambled back over to the counter. He reached the far end just as a pair of boots hit the floor in front of him.
He shot up with a
roar, slammed the basket over the shooter’s head like a net, and jerked him off his feet. The guy screamed in pain, dropped the AK, and grabbed frantically at the basket, as hot fries and grease burned his face and neck.
Wyatt dove for the rifle as it skidded across the cement floor toward the center of the terminal. When he finally reached it, he scooped it up and rolled onto his back. The gunman was back on his feet, howling in pain, a knife in his hand, and bearing down like a wild man.
Wyatt didn’t bother to shoulder the gun. Shooting from the hip, he aimed and leaned on the trigger, firing off three quick bursts as the guy advanced. A jagged row of crimson stains gushed from his chest. He stopped dead in his tracks—literally—then crumpled to the floor.
It would have been a perfect time for a ringing silence, Wyatt thought, as the acrid scent of gunpowder and blood filled the air, but he knew that wasn’t in the cards. The gunfire continued around him as he lay on his back, fully exposed, dead center in the middle of the melee again.
He glanced to his left and saw another masked gunman rush the SIS’s makeshift stronghold. Wyatt’s reaction was instinctive and automatic. He rolled to his knees, shouldered the AK, and emptied the magazine. The shooter dropped like a stone.
A head popped up, and an SIS agent looked from the dead guy to Wyatt. Surprise registered first when he saw he had an unexpected ally, then he gave Wyatt a clipped nod of thanks. Before Wyatt could return the gesture, the SIS agent shouldered his own weapon and fired several rounds above Wyatt’s head.
“Jesus,” Wyatt swore, jerking his head in the direction the SIS agent had fired. Not six yards away, another masked gunman dropped to his knees. Blood oozed out between the fingers he clutched to his chest before he toppled, face-first, onto the cement floor.
Wyatt looked back at the SIS agent. Tit for tat, he acknowledged with a nod, and scrambled like hell to get back to Sophie while the battle raged on all around him.