The Phoenix Agency: The Sum Is Greater (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by M. L. Buchman

  There wasn’t even a thought before he leaned out to kiss her. It was awkward with the full helmet and their relative positions, but it was every bit as intense and incredible as that first kiss in the jungle. That kiss might have helped Hannah create the blast of noise that drew off the NERC guerillas, but that wasn’t why he’d pulled away so suddenly. It was because a first kiss was not supposed to feel like he’d been with that someone his whole life. The timeless quality of it, like he was kissing his lover, his best friend, and his life’s partner all rolled into one had shorted out every one of his circuits.

  And here she was, in his arms, rolling out an even better one that had his toes curling in his boots so hard that he was half surprised they didn’t punch through the soles to clutch the rudder pedals.

  “You feeling even half of what I’m feeling?” Jesse managed on a whisper.

  “I hope so. Because if there’s anything that’s double this, I’m in serious trouble.”

  “Trouble’s my middle name.”

  “I thought it was Outlaw.”

  He held her a moment longer, even though he could feel the mission pulling her away. “You come back safe and I’ll make you a law-abiding citizen of the state of Texas. Y’hear?”

  “I hear.” Then Hannah was gone into the night with Halloran and D’Antoni.

  He watched on the FLIR until they crawled up over the lip of the arroyo and were gone from sight.

  He couldn’t have just proposed to a woman he’d met only forty-eight hours ago. He checked his watch, corrected for the time zone. Nope, he hadn’t.

  Jesse had met Hannah just forty-six hours ago.

  How could something so crazy feel so right and true?

  Well, that was a question he wasn’t going to be wasting any extra time thinking about. It just flat-out did.

  The moment before he’d let her go, Jesse had tucked something into the breast pocket of her vest. It wasn’t some sexed-up gesture, because a fighting vest was about the least sexy thing a woman could wear.

  Once Hannah topped out of the arroyo and had settled into the middle position of a single-file fast trot across the sandy soil, with Halloran leading and D’Antoni in the rear, she remembered and slapped the pocket. Inside were two magazines of rounds for her assault rifle, and a thin stick. She pulled on it, sure that it hadn’t been there before.

  The size was familiar. It was—

  A Tootsie Pop. The second and final one of his mission stash. Oh, she was going to be so good to that man later tonight, he’d never know what hit him. She unwrapped it and tucked it in her cheek. Strawberry!

  To give up his last Tootsie Pop, the man must really love her.

  She dodged around another clump of bunch grass and almost trotted straight into a cane cholla cactus.

  No.

  She found her running rhythm again. D’Antoni didn’t say a word.

  No way had he said…

  She jumped over a dry streambed.

  But she had.

  She jogged left at the rock and around the prickly pear cactus.

  He couldn’t have meant…

  But he was Texan, which meant he’d never lie to a lady. Tell a tall tale, but never outright lie.

  I’ll make you a law-abiding citizen of the state of Texas. Y’hear?

  She’d heard and it was freaking her out.

  They’d only known each other for… She looked at her watch but couldn’t make sense of any of the information there.

  She didn’t…and yet, at some level, she did. If ever she was to bolt herself onto one man, it would be Jesse Outlaw Johnson. Which made no more sense than racing across the Mexican desert while on leave.

  Halloran led them around a low hill, down into a shallow arroyo with such steep sides they had to take time getting hand- and footholds to clamber back out. He was first over the top.

  The air was so dry that it hurt to breathe.

  It tasted of mesquite and…empanadas!

  She grabbed Halloran’s boot and tapped a signal to get down and stay down. D’Antoni squirmed up beside her but didn’t say a word.

  Easing upward, the three of them peeked through the rough brush. Less than five meters away, three men sat around a tiny campfire. They looked rough, dangerous…and well armed. Handguns, knives, one had a couple of lumps at his belt that could only be grenades. Another wore a pair of crossed bandoliers like some Mexican outlaw from a spaghetti western movie.

  There was no good cover to let them circle around, and shooting the guards in cold blood didn’t sit well with her. At this point, they were so close that even retreating would be dangerous and hard to do undetected.

  She signaled the other two to wait. She shook her hair out of its ponytail, then stood up and walked into the makeshift camp.

  “Hola, mis amigos.” Her accent was trained for South America rather than Mexico, but it was the best she had.

  Unsure of what was going on, the three guards placed their hands on their weapons but left them holstered. As she’d planned, their attention tracked her as she circled around to stand on the far side of the campfire.

  “Qué pasa?”

  Halloran and D’Antoni emerged from the shadows behind the still seated guards. She nodded her head: one, two…. On three, she stepped in and placed her Glock handgun against the nearest guard’s temple. The other two were treated similarly, and in moments, all three guards had been dragged back into the shadows and tumbled down into the arroyo with their hands and wrists tied. They’d be able to untie each other so they wouldn’t die out here, but they’d first have to wake from the knock-out shot D’Antoni gave each of them.

  The half-moon rose just as they reached the western wall of the hacienda. Every bush and clump of grass threw hard shadows that her instincts tried to treat as a hole, but Delta had run her through too many similar scenarios to stumble.

  They’d come up to the back of the hacienda. It was surrounded by a massive, two-story wall that was unbroken on this side. Atop the wall, she could spot roving guards, bright in her night vision. She was glad they were pressed back against the wall before the moonlight was bright enough to do more than throw shadows. Getting out of here could be much more dicey.

  “Shit!” D’Antoni’s curse was soft enough to not carry, but emphatic enough that it wasn’t something she wanted to be hearing right now.

  “He doesn’t sound happy,” Hannah whispered to Halloran.

  “Troy and Rick are supposed to be right here,” he answered back as he searched the top of the wall.

  “Not a good sign?”

  “Not a good sign.”

  The west wall of the hacienda was an unbroken expanse two stories tall. No openings, and scaling it from here wasn’t going to happen.

  Jesse happened to be looking at Faith when she jolted as if she’d been slapped. He grabbed her arm to keep her steady.

  The three of them had set up a circling patrol of the helicopter. They shouldn’t be discovered out here, so they’d risked staying together as they circled.

  Jesse had enjoyed getting to know the two women. Letting go of his awe for Faith Wilding the author was hard, but she was so consistently cheerful that it was easy to lose focus on the persona and just enjoy the woman. Kat was having the opposite effect and became more daunting the more he spoke to her. There was a remoteness that he couldn’t seem to breach.

  “She’s always like this when Mike is in the field,” Faith had explained.

  “Am not.”

  “So are, Kat. Not even worth arguing.”

  Whether it was nerves or predisposition, he had much less of a feel for Kat and what her reactions might be if things went sideways.

  Faith had frozen mid-step, nodding several times as if in a conversation, but not saying a word. Oh, right. Telepathic connection with Mark Halloran. It still seemed unreal if not outright impossible and he had a hard time remembering that something so bizarre not only could happen, but actually was.

  “Kat,” Faith broke o
ff. “The boys aren’t at the meet-up. Can you track them down?”

  Kat’s heartfelt curse said that maybe her present coolness was just stress and worry. She rushed over to the helicopter, which had served as the center of their fifty-meter-radius circling patrol.

  By the time Jesse arrived, Kat sat cross-legged on the cargo bay deck. She had a tablet computer booted up and was studying pictures. He peeked over her shoulder and saw the faces of two men, alike, but very different. Both faces lean, and both had that cool professional demeanor. One had longish light brown hair and looked easy-going, whereas the sun-streaked blond looked rugged enough to tear apart a hacienda with his bare hands. There was also an aerial shot of a complex of buildings within an outer perimeter wall.

  Faith sidled up to him and whispered, “Troy is former SEAL and medic. Rick was Spec Ops. And that’s a photo we took this morning from the company jet. Big camera, but we were up at thirty thousand feet so that we didn’t draw any attention. It means that the detail is only okay. I hope it’s enough for Kat.”

  He started to ask a question, but Faith shushed him. Instead, they both stood completely still while…nothing happened. There should be some spectacle, something to witness. There wasn’t even the half-conversation that Faith had in gestures and shifting expressions if not her voice. Instead, there were the three pictures on the tablet computer and Kat sitting rock still.

  Ten seconds, twenty, thirty.

  He started worrying about where Hannah and the others were while this was going on. Please let them be safe. If she’d survived the Colombian jungle only for him to lose her in a Mexican standoff, he’d—

  “Not good,” Kat spoke on a sigh. “Troy and Rick are inside the west wall, but trapped in a room on the ground floor. There’s a third man with them, bound. It must be The Wolverine based on how furious he looks. But there are guards searching everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before they’re discovered. And not much of that.”

  Faith must have been relaying the information the whole time, because she responded with a question. “Which room? Where is it from the outside?”

  “Five meters to the left of where Mike, Mark, and Hannah are squatting,” Kat answered immediately.

  Faith paused, “They can’t risk a breaching charge. A charge big enough to bust the wall would probably kill everyone in the room. Then it would bring every guard down on their heads.”

  “Damn it!” Jesse walked away from the open door of the helo’s cargo bay where Kat was sitting and Faith was still looking over her shoulder.

  He rubbed at his mouth. He could feel Hannah cursing in his exact same tone—though probably more colorfully. Not some civilized pretend curse, but forthright and pissed. He could feel her—

  Jesse rushed back to Faith, “Let me talk to Hannah.”

  “I’m not a telephone.”

  “Sorry, uh,” this was definitely the craziest situation he’d ever been in. “Tell her that the wall, the material in the wall, must have a weakness. Like Jericho and blowing the trumpets that brought down its walls in the Bible story. She needs to set up a resonant frequency of sound to vibrate and then crumble the wall.”

  “That’s—” But Faith cut herself off and sent her thoughts out to Halloran to relay to Hannah.

  “Have you lost it, Outlaw?”

  He smiled as that could only be Hannah’s voice coming back through this crazy line of communication.

  “I, she,” Faith continued, “doesn’t have the power even if that would work.”

  Faith shook her head as if trying to clear it.

  “What does that even mean?”

  He needed to get to Hannah, but couldn’t. Flying to her would attract every gun The Wolverine’s security forces could muster. “Is there time for me to run to her?”

  Kat was shaking her head. “Whatever they do, they need to do it fast.”

  Jesse looked at Faith. Her connection to Mark was so sure across distances—globe-spanning distances if they were to be believed. He and Hannah had to be in physical contact.

  Or did they?

  Who knew how all this worked. Certainly not him.

  “Hurry!” Kat’s voice was urgent.

  Jesse grabbed Faith’s hand. “Have Mark grab Hannah. You and Halloran have to be the conduit that connects us.”

  Faith squinted at him, then nodded.

  “Tell her to try it now.”

  “Do it up, Hannah.” Halloran had grabbed her shoulder and there was a surge of connection. Not with Halloran, but with the man who felt like no other. No time to think about how; she could feel Jesse at her side though he was a kilometer away.

  She turned her attention to the wall and wondered what it would take to create a resonant frequency rather than a boom of sound. A vibration that would emanate out of her and shake the mortar loose from the rock itself.

  A frequency that somehow matched the stone. More than that, like the focused shockwaves doctors used to break up kidney stones.

  The outer layer of stucco slid off the adobe brick wall, but nothing she did could touch the brick itself.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Halloran whispered. “But I’m being told to do this.” Then Halloran wrapped his arms around from behind her, hugging her hard against his chest. Holding her as a brother might. She imagined Jesse doing the same with Faith—it had damned well better feel sisterly was the thought she didn’t have time to voice as the power surged into her.

  A broad circle of adobe dissolved in front of her like the powdered dry mud that it was.

  Even before the dust cleared, two heavily armed men stepped through the hole herding a third man whose hands were bound and mouth gagged. They all were working their jaws as if trying to clear their ears.

  D’Antoni whispered a soft, “Holy shit!”

  Mark gave her a brief squeeze before releasing her. “Boy, oh boy. That’s a sound I won’t be forgetting—half buzz saw and half cattle stampede just trying to pierce my skull.”

  As always, Hannah hadn’t heard a thing.

  D’Antoni took the lead. The two men herding the third must be Troy and Rick. At first she could barely walk without Halloran’s strong arm around her waist.

  There were definitely some details they needed to work on here. There had to be a technique so the use of her “gift” didn’t bring her to her knees every time.

  Their trip back to the helicopter wasn’t a smooth one, but it was nothing the team couldn’t handle. Her hands were steady by the time a cartel patrol in a pair of Humvees came racing in their direction.

  The big TAC-50 rifle she’d chosen punched holes through the drivers’ side windows, which stopped pursuit half a kilometer away. She made sure no one else took their places by dropping a few armor-piercing rounds into each of their engine blocks. The other shooters took down anyone dumb enough to exit the armored vehicles and try to fire back—which turned out to be all of them.

  Jesse had the helo running by the time they reached his hiding place, probably cued by Faith through Halloran.

  All she cared about was that they were airborne the second everyone was aboard.

  8

  For Hannah, the rest passed in a blur.

  Back across the border. An entire phalanx of DEA agents took away el Hambrón and the intel that Rick and Troy had delayed their departure to grab. That delay had nearly gotten them captured, but they’d snagged a complete set of Los Zetas cartel’s border route maps and the next several week’s delivery schedules—in addition to anything the DEA would be coaxing out of The Wolverine.

  “Neither of you is in any condition to drive home after that,” Mike D’Antoni said as he dropped them off behind the house at Jesse’s ranch. “We’ll bring your rental over tomorrow and talk about when you’re signing aboard. I think that you should—”

  Kat took him by the arm and gently pushed him back into the helo while he was still talking.

  Faith gave her a strong hug, then tucked her hand into the crook of Mark’s elbow and t
hey, too, returned to the helicopter.

  Jesse led her to the ranch house porch. She leaned back against him as they watched the helo take off—lit by the half-moon before it disappeared into the darkness.

  She’d thought that her equilibrium was gone and her energy spent, but she could feel it returning even as Jesse held her. Held her as they watched the helicopter filled with their new friends taking off into the starlit sky.

  It was easy to imagine having those extraordinary people in her life. Women who each had skills of their own and didn’t judge her for what she was, but rather accepted her for who she was.

  “Was that your idea of a good time?” Jesse’s whisper tickled against her ear as he began swaying them in a slow dance.

  She could only nod because there was too much caught in her throat to say. And something in her chest so big she didn’t even know what to do with it.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Worth leaving the Night Stalkers for?”

  “Worth leaving Delta for?” Jesse’s soft chuckle teased her back.

  Hannah shrugged against the uncomfortable question.

  Suddenly Jesse had spun her around and was crushing her to his chest. No armor separated them this time. No weapons, spare magazines, or other paraphernalia. They were pressed together hard down their entire lengths. One of his big strong hands cradled her head to rest against his shoulder.

  “Phoenix doesn’t matter, Hannah,” his voice was fierce in a way that she wouldn’t have credited as possible coming from him. “I like what they do. I like those people. But all I care about is making damn sure that whatever I do, we’re doing it together. US military, Phoenix, or raising horses, that’s all just window dressing compared to you.”

  Impossibly, it was absolutely true.

  For the first time in her life, Hannah could picture a future rolling out ahead of her as wide as a spring night on the Texas prairie. And she could picture doing it only with Jesse the Outlaw Cowboy. Maybe it was time for her to break a few rules and try being a little bit outlaw herself.

  She leaned back enough to kiss him, to really kiss him. Unlike when they were creating sound, this fed back the energy until it vibrated within her and she felt so alive that it seemed a sun had been born inside her. A sun that outshone any darkness from her past.