Drake glanced over at her. “That guy is dead. The way he tracked Joseph was identified, and we’ve taken precautions to ensure none of our people are ever traced that way again. I believe the house has been vacant since that time. No one will know we’re there.”
The odometer clicked sixteen miles, and he slowed down, checking his rearview mirror for any indication of movement.
“There.” Jillian pointed to a reflector that was almost consumed by the bark of the towering pine tree. Drake couldn’t slow down fast enough and had to back up. “That’s the road?”
Drake nodded and thanked God Guardian was going to pay for any damages to the rental. He made one final check in his mirror and pulled off the road. He parked about ten feet off the hardened surface.
“What are you doing?”
“Just making sure our tire tracks are covered. Stay here for a minute?” He waited for her to nod and then headed back to the road. He could see a truck traveling behind them. It was about five or six miles back. Drake bent down and grabbed several handfuls of dirt and rock sifting them over the obvious impressions in the dirt before he scattered pine needles on top of that. If someone looked hard, they’d be able to see the tire tracks, but it was the best he could do. He sprinted back to the vehicle and put it into drive, pulling it farther onto the trail. He couldn’t see the vehicle passing on the road, but that meant they couldn’t be seen either. They drove slowly along the trail and found themselves outside a barbed wire gate. He put the vehicle in park. “I’m going to need you to drive this through the gate when I open it. I’ll close it behind you.”
Jillian jumped out of the truck and jogged over to his side of the vehicle. “You know if this didn’t scare the crap out of me, it might be fun.”
“I like your sense of adventure.” Drake dropped a kiss on her upturned mouth before he opened the barbed wire gate. He dragged the wire out of the way and closed it again after she drove through, using the bar and chain that was attached to the fixed fence to tighten it enough to slip the wire loop over the anchoring fence post.
He waited for Jillian to get back in her seat before they rumbled and bumped down the rutted access route. Drake would never call this glorified goat path a road. He wondered how the hell Joseph got the materials and equipment back here to build the house.
Drake pulled up in front of the safe house. For a one-hundred-foot radius around the dwelling, the ground had been cleared of all large trees and bushes. The property had been vacant for a while as the grass stood a good foot high and lay over due to its weight. A path of quarry stone wandered back to a shed behind and to the right of the building.
“This is beautiful.” Jillian’s apparent awe forced him to look at the structure again as they got out of the SUV. It was a nice house, but Jillian wasn’t looking at the house, her eyes were glued to the meadow behind the cabin. Wildflowers grew in a profuse explosion of rainbow colors.
“About four or hell, even five years ago, Joseph’s brothers had given him a rash of shit about ordering over five hundred dollars of wildflower seeds. I think I know what he did with them.” Drake smiled to himself. Joseph idolized his wife. He wondered what the story was behind the flowers. Drake disarmed the alarm system with the code included at the end of the directions and entered the cabin.
“Cabin” was not technically the correct term for the two-bedroom, three-bath home they entered. Drake could tell it had been built with an eye towards old-fashioned craftsmanship. Every room had windows that showcased the beauty outside. The furniture was brown leather, sturdy and sparse. Jillian peeked into the rooms. “Bedroom and en-suite here.”
“Perfect. I’ll get our stuff as soon as I check in.” Drake moved toward the roll top desk that sat in the corner. He lifted the top and flipped on the power to the Sat phone. It would need to warm up and link up before he could use it. He followed Jillian into the kitchen. Yeah, getting marble countertops up here had to have been a royal pain in the ass.
“Look,” Jillian whispered as she pointed out the back window. At the edge of the meadow browsed a small herd of deer. Their tails twitched as they grazed. This far from a town and backed up against a national forest, man wouldn’t be much of a factor. They probably had few predators.
The Sat phone beeped, and he made his way back to the device and placed his call.
“The line is secure, the transmission location is scrambled. No one is going to be able to pinpoint your location. Did you have any issues?” Jacob immediately questioned him.
“No. What’s going on, Skipper?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll let you know as soon as I figure it out. We sent a message to Dixon’s dead drop. We’ve weighed the pros and cons of going in after him.”
“And?” Drake dropped his arm around Jillian as she came to stand next to him.
“And the cons won. Hands down. We don’t know what your old man is capable of doing.”
Drake tensed, speaking through his clenched teeth. “Dixon and I knew. We knew what he was capable of doing.”
“I’ll do everything I can, D. Whatever it takes, my brother.”
“For as long as it takes, Skipper. Does Jewell have any more information?”
“Not yet. Once she turned your cell off and got you headed to safety, she worked on reinforcing the veil around Dixon, trying to bolster the cover story he was supposed to give your dad. We consulted our engineer and shored up a few premises should those bastard care to look.”
“The next check in?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
“Roger that.”
Drake dropped the phone into its holder. He cut the power to the device and drew a long breath before he pulled Jillian into him and held her tightly. Even with everything spiraling out of control, her presence grounded him. His concern for Dixon’s predicament hadn’t lessened, but Jillian’s presence balanced him and drew him out of the oppressiveness that would normally consume him.
She pressed into him and turned her face into his neck. “I’m scared.”
“I know. Try not to worry about it too much. We’ll make plans for the worst-case scenario and pray we never have to use them.”
“No, you don’t get it. I’m not afraid for myself. I’m terrified someone is going to hurt you, that they could take you away after we just...I’m scared to think about a future without you, and I’m sorry if it’s too soon to talk about being together forever, but I do want that, and that scares me too…”
Drake held her as she sobbed the words. Stress, no doubt. He rocked her back and forth and rubbed her back as she cried. She’d been such a trooper for so long he’d forgotten she wasn’t used to the insanity he’d lived in for most of his adult life.
He lifted her and carried her into the bedroom and placed her on the bed. He lay down next to her and wiped the tears from her cheeks before he kissed her softly. “We are going to be fine.” She opened her mouth to say something, but he stopped her with his finger to her lips. “But to make sure you know, in here,” He put his hand over her heart, “that what I’m telling you is the truth, I am going to let you help me design our exit strategy to avoid anyone who might decide to come after us.”
She stilled and locked her eyes with his. “Design?” He nodded. She smiled. “Can we blow things up?”
“Those are the best kind of designs.” He chuckled until her eyes widened and her smile slid away. “What?”
“I was trying to be funny.” She blinked owlishly at him.
“There aren’t any innocent bystanders in this scenario. If someone comes this far to pursue us, they are our enemies. No exceptions. If the exit strategy we utilize to get away from these bastards causes collateral damage,” Drake shrugged away his indifference, “I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
She stared at him for several long minutes.
“What?” Drake could see her mind working.
“I…well, I’m wondering what horrible things you’ve been through. Collateral damage, enemies t
hat pursue you, exit strategies…” Her head shook slowly back and forth. “You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you?”
“In a way, but it is my reality, and if you want a life with me, it will be your reality, too.”
“But you said you ran a training complex.” She lifted up and propped her head on her hand.
“I do, now. I’m also a team member who deploys on occasion in support of my company and my family. I used to do that job full time. For years I worked in foreign countries, always in high-risk situations. The mission that Jacob talked about on the phone earlier?” He waited until she nodded. “We rescued young women who were being sold as sex slaves. Even if I knew then that doing so would put me in the same position today, I would do it. Those women had no one else to help them. There is so much unopposed evil in the world. My work with Guardian mitigates some of the despair.”
Jillian leaned over him as he rolled to his back and smoothed his hair away from where it had flopped over his eyes. “You are a good man.”
Drake made a strangled sound before he replied, “No, I’m not, but I am a man who tries to do good things.”
“Is that so?” Jillian’s hand trailed down to the snap on his western shirt. Her finger wove under it and pulled, prying the fastener apart. She slid her finger down to the next one and repeated the movement.
Drake put both hands behind his head and stared, transfixed, as she unfastened his shirt and pulled it out of his pants, undid his belt and unzipped his jeans. She smiled up at him as she released his cock. She licked her lips and bent down, taking him into her hot, wet mouth. His eyes slammed shut, and he sucked a harsh breath. Fuck, what her mouth could do to him. She could reduce him to a mindless madman within minutes. She popped off him and moved, straddling his knees, getting into a better position to take him down her throat. She bent down again and did exactly that. Drake’s hands found her head, and he wove his fingers through her long blonde hair. It was all he could do not to hold her and thrust into that beautiful warmth. He tugged on her hair. “Close.” It was the only word he could force out of his mouth. She looked up at him, his cock still in her mouth and hummed.
His eyes rolled back in his head. His hips thrust forward on their own accord. What little control he had melted out of his ears along with his brain. She took him deep again and once again hummed around him. Drake clenched his fists in her hair, holding her as he used her throat and chased his release. White hot pleasure shot through him as Jillian swallowed and swallowed again. He loosened the grasp he had on her hair, and she released him to lick the length of his shaft. Drake used what was left of his highly dubious muscle control to pull her up his body.
Their kiss was slow and languid. He needed his actions to tell her how much he loved her and needed her. He slowly removed her clothes and then his. He loved the woman under him and yet his words failed him. They couldn’t convey the intensity of his desire, the depth of his love or the expanse of his need. Instead, he let their union speak for him. Of necessity, to give his recently sated body a chance to recover, he prolonged her arousal until she writhed underneath him with whimpers of desperate need. When her whimpers turned to mindless begging, his indefatigable lust for her had done its job, and with his body pressed against her from head to toe, he made them one. He held her with a reverence he’d never given anyone else, kissed her with the unquenchable desire she alone had ignited, and prayed she would understand the love he offered, without reservation.
Chapter 18
“Here.” Jillian pointed toward a jutting, jagged corner of rock that would impede their speedy exit from the back of the house.
Drake looked up from where he was working. “Good. Mark it and then keep going. I’ll be over there in a minute.” They were clearing the pathways they could use for an escape route. According to Drake, they needed to be able to sprint from the house to past the tree line. His words this morning did another lap through her cranium. “We can ghost it from there, but this is where they’d have the best chance at a kill shot.”
Best chance at a kill shot. The specter of fear traced her skin, raising gooseflesh once again. She stuck a stick in the ground and wrapped a small piece of cloth around it. Rational thought had ceased about thirty seconds after that conversation. She worked, doing what he asked, but she was terrified, too stunned to be panicked. The calm manner in which Drake detailed people shooting at them, described clear fields of access, and how they would impede the enemy alarmed her.
A low shrub overgrew the path. She knelt and pulled a small hand saw out of the backpack she’d lugged up the sharp incline. She held the closest branch down and started sawing where it joined the bush to remove the tripping hazard. “You know last night when I asked if we could blow something up?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Drake was shirtless and digging up the rock she’d marked. He stood, arching his back in a stretch. “I recall something about it.” He smiled and winked at her.
“It was a joke. You know the concept, right? LOL, laugh-out-loud-funny, ha-ha, can we blow something up. Wile E. Coyote and Acme-mail-order type of funny.”
“I understand the concept of a joke. Your suggestion was a good idea, nonetheless.” Drake bent down, and with both his gloved hands grasped the mini-boulder she’d identified. Drake lifted the rock and tossed it away from the path. It rolled down the hill, crashing through the small trees and underbrush before it lost momentum and settled out of the way.
He strode up the incline and sat down beside her. They’d worked hard all day. The first thing they did was bury Delbert. They’d marked his resting spot so they could find it again, but if she hadn’t witnessed Drake dig the hole, she probably wouldn’t have been able to point out where it had been buried. He’d camouflaged the ground so well, the site looked undisturbed. She was exhausted, and she’d only done the light lifting. She pulled out a bottle of water from her pack and handed it to him. He drank it down in one go.
“Tell me what you see.” He gestured down the steep incline toward the house.
“A beautiful meadow. Beautiful flowers. The house, a shack, the SUV.” She pointed towards each as she spoke.
“Do you see any easy way out?”
“No, but we’ve cleared pathways.”
“Best guess, how long would it take you to run from the house up to where we are now?” Drake crunched the empty water bottle in his fist and capped it before he returned it to her backpack.
Jillian scanned the area. From the house to the meadow was maybe thirty feet. They’d have to sprint through knee-high grasses and flowers to reach the slopes that enclosed the meadow. That was at least…oh six hundred feet. The paths up into the trees? The three that they’d cleared were straight up in some places and at least a quarter mile to the tree line. The distance was even farther on some of the paths they’d cleared. She shook her head. “I don’t know, a couple minutes, maybe.” She could run fast. Terrified, she could run faster.
“Right, let’s say you could make it from the house to where we are sitting in two minutes. How many times do you think I could pull a trigger in two minutes?” Drake put his arms back and rested on his hands as he stretched out his legs.
She swiped at the gooseflesh that rose on her arms. “Too many.”
“Correct. Now take that scenario and add confusion, surprise, and disorientation into the mix. Not yours, your attacker’s. You know where you are going. You know what is happening, what is going to happen. The people coming after us have no idea how we will react. How many shots do you think they’ll get off at you?”
Jillian turned to look back at him. “Hopefully, none.”
“See? Blowing up shit has its place.”
“But won’t your friend be upset?”
“I think when it comes down to it, if it is a choice between our lives or some minor property damage, he’d be okay with the decisions we made.” Drake chuckled and dropped his head back, so he was looking at the sky. “At least that’s what I’m banking on. One never
really knows with Joseph."
He laughed at something, and she nudged him. "What?"
His eyes flicked towards her. "Joseph is very efficient at getting rid of things that irritate him." He closed his eyes and mumbled, "Please God, never let me irritate that man." He opened his eyes and drew a deep breath. "I still need to find something to make into a detonator and a substance to explode.”
“We could use Delbert.” She leaned forward and pulled her knees close. “If we use it as a way to build a charge without giving it a release point…it would make one hell of a bang.”
Drake sat up and brushed off his hands. “I won’t destroy Delbert. We can rig something from the equipment Joseph has around. He has an arsenal under the floor in the shed. I’ll get the combination. If he doesn’t have anything stored that’s useful, there are common chemicals we can combine and then use manual ignition points or perhaps rig timers.”
“That panel can be rewired. I have all the tech data and schematics in the hard drives. It is still in development, and I need to refine the processes and procedures anyway. We can rig it and use it if necessary. Like you said, this all may be for naught.” She bumped into him with her shoulder. “Right?”
He nodded and looked away. His failure to look at her and reassure her all this work was just a precaution amped her apprehension. He stood and brushed off his jeans before he extended a hand to her. “It’s about time for us to check in. In another few minutes, it will be too dark to work, and I’m starving.” He grabbed her pack, the shovel, and his pick before he started down the hill.
Drake could hear the shower running. He downed another bottle of water as he waited for the Sat phone to acquire the satellite connection it needed. He dialed into the secure connection and waited.
“Alpha.”
“Hey, Skipper.” Drake sat down and leaned forward, staring at the floor as he held the phone to his ear.
“Standby.” Drake waited for the link to secure from Guardian’s end.
Drake (The Kings of Guardian Book 11) Page 15
