by Kaylea Cross
She whipped around and raced away, avoiding a straight line because it would make her an easier target. Two more shots rang out. Puffs of dust exploded on her left where the rounds hit the other building, barely missing her.
At the end of the alley she wheeled left and darted up another side street.
“Don’t shoot me,” Tyler warned.
Huh? Running flat out, she barely avoided plowing into him when he suddenly stepped out of a doorway ten feet in front of her.
She swallowed a gasp and managed to avoid him, her feet sliding. He shot a hand out, grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her back into the doorway with him. With the back of his right arm he pinned her to the cold brick of the building, then ducked his head around the corner of it to check and fired three shots.
“Go,” he commanded, shoving her toward the eastern end of the street. “I’ll cover you.”
What was this bullshit? Just because she was a woman? “I’ll cover you.”
“Go,” he growled without looking at her, focused on their target.
They could stay here and argue about who would cover who, but that was cataclysmically stupid. Booting her pride aside, she followed his order and ran in the direction he’d pushed her. She veered right at the next street, paused to check behind her, then whirled at the sound of squealing tires and a racing engine.
A delivery van roared up and squealed to a sudden stop in front of them. Megan and Tyler both aimed their weapons at it, ready to fire. The side door slid open to reveal Trinity. “Get in,” she ordered.
Perfect timing.
They raced for it together, jumped in, and Tyler yanked the door shut with a slam as the van took off with a squeal of tires.
Ping, ping.
Bullets pierced the rear quarter panel.
Weapon in hand, Megan slid across the bench seat, whipped off her backpack and immediately swiveled to look out the rear window. Tyler settled next to her and dumped his own pack, his hip pressing into hers, pistol in hand as he did the same.
“You wish me lose that guy, yes?” the driver said in panicked, heavily accented English.
“Yes,” they all responded.
“Hold on.” He hit the gas, wrenching the wheel sharply to the right onto Legion Bridge.
“Either of you see a tail?” Trinity asked from up front a moment later, checking out her window and using the passenger side mirror as they sped across the bridge.
“White BMW,” Tyler said, having a better vantage point. “Just nearing the foot of the bridge now.”
Megan spotted it weaving aggressively in and out of traffic. Gaining on them slowly.
Trinity gave the driver a string of rapid orders. As soon as they reached the far side of the bridge, at the last possible moment he took a sudden left.
Megan shot a hand out to brace herself against the door. Tyler caught her in an iron grip around the waist and hauled her back as the van skidded around the corner.
Per Trinity’s instructions the driver made a myriad of turns, winding them back and forth through the warren of streets as he drove them northwest away from the city center.
She didn’t see the BMW.
“I think we’re clear,” Megan said as they reached the motorway. The driver accelerated, merging with the other traffic and then immediately moved into the fast lane to pass it.
She and Tyler kept watch out the back for another few minutes. But at the speed they were traveling, and with no sign of the vehicle, chances were slim he’d be able to find or follow them now.
Tyler exhaled and turned to face front, sliding his pistol into the holster on his hip. She tucked hers away as well. Everyone was silent for a long moment.
“My van has bullets in it,” the pale-faced driver muttered, his motions agitated as he drove. “You guys spies or something?” the driver asked as he shot past slower moving traffic on the right.
It broke the tension. Megan grinned but didn’t reply, and didn’t look at Tyler. She didn’t know him very well but she could feel the rigidity in him, as if some inner strain gripped him.
Trinity made a call to relay what had happened to someone, probably Rycroft. Ten minutes later they arrived at the airfield. Megan grabbed her pack and exited the van. Two bullets had punched clean holes through the rear passenger-side quarter panel.
Shouldering her pack, she started for the small terminal building. A small, sleek jet was waiting on the tarmac beyond it, ready to take them to Vienna.
The building was empty except for a man pushing a mop around. He barely spared her a glance and went back to cleaning the floor. Trinity walked past her, still on her phone. Megan followed, tensing slightly at the hard, rapid strides behind her.
She bit back a gasp as two hard hands wrapped around her upper arms and whirled her around. “Hey—” Her words cut off as Tyler yanked her off her feet and dragged her into the men’s room, then crowded her up against the door.
She shoved the heels of her hands against his solid chest and opened her mouth to tell him to back the fuck off, but the look on his face made her voice dry up. He was livid, his slate blue gaze drilling into hers, jaw so tight the muscles stood out on either side.
He caged her in against the door with a hand on either side of her head, his huge frame barring her way.
She could have gotten away. A knee to the balls or a shot to the throat and she could easily have escaped. But that look on his face froze her.
“Don’t ever do something that fucking stupid again,” he snarled, right in her face.
“Do what?” she shot back, strangely torn between kneeing him and soothing his ruffled feathers. Or maybe kissing him senseless.
“Argue when I tell you to run. Stand there and fucking argue about who’s covering who when there’s an armed assassin after us. If I give you an order, it’s not because I’m on some male power trip. It’s for your safety. So if I give you an order, you follow it. Got me?” His gaze was so hot it was a wonder she hadn’t melted under the force of it.
Or maybe…maybe she was melting.
It wasn’t male pride she heard in his words. Beneath the anger and frustration, she heard his concern for her. His worry about her safety.
No one had worried about her before. No one except a handler, and only because they had been concerned she might fail to complete her mission. But for some reason, Tyler seemed to care about her.
She didn’t like what that did to her head. Or the flipping sensation it caused deep in her abdomen.
She lifted her chin, refusing to be cowed. She was his equal, dammit, not some helpless female who needed to be coddled and protected, and he needed to recognize that. “Or what?” she demanded.
“Or nothing.” His eyes roved over her face. They dipped to her mouth, and he gave a tight, frustrated shake of his head. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, then plunged a hand into her hair and brought his mouth down on hers.
Chapter Eight
What in the hell was he doing?
The astounded thought blared in his head but Ty ignored it and slanted his mouth across Megan’s before he could stop himself. He wanted her and wasn’t going to bother hiding it. Not when she could have been shot down in front of him less than ten minutes ago.
He’d told himself to let it go. He’d told himself not to touch her. But when he thought of what could have happened back there, of how close he’d come to losing her…
Fuck it. He was staking a claim right here and now.
The pressure of her palms increased on his chest. He stilled and braced himself, prepared for her to shove him away, her body slightly angled as if she might drive her knee up between his legs.
But she did neither of those things. No, she stood there with her back to the door, unresisting as their lips clung together. Almost as if she was absorbing the feel of the kiss.
He swallowed a groan, wanting to devour her. Christ, he’d imagined doing this to her—and a whole lot more—for years in his fantasies, never believing he’d ever get t
he chance. Now that he finally had her mouth under his, he wanted more. Anything and everything she was willing to give him.
Needing to get closer, he slid his other hand into her hair, cradling the back of her head as he touched his tongue to her lower lip. A tender stroke meant to coax, meant to make her open for him.
He wanted inside her. To forge that intimate contact. Ached to sink his tongue into her mouth to possess her in even that small way.
As if it snapped her out of a trance, Megan shoved him away, breaking the kiss. They stared at each other for a loaded few seconds, both breathing harder, the wild, latent energy of the kiss swirling between them. Her hazel eyes glittered with silent challenge and something more, a blaze of color riding high on her cheekbones.
Before he had any idea what she was going to do, she grabbed his head and leaned in to seal her lips to his again, plastering the length of her lithe body against him. He released a low groan of need and slung an arm around her waist, locking her to him.
She had a solid hold on his hair with her fists, the tiny burn along his scalp adding to the fire erupting inside him. Her lips parted under his. He licked along her lower one and retreated. Megan mewled in protest and followed his mouth, wanting more.
His entire body responded.
I’ll give you more, dimples. Any damn thing you want.
He stepped forward to pin her to the door with his hips and delved his tongue inside the warmth of her mouth. Slowly. Tasting her. Savoring her while his body screamed at him to take more.
She met the sensual caress, touching his tongue with hers. Velvet soft. Slow. So damn erotic he was rock hard in his pants, his dick straining against his fly where it pressed into her abdomen.
She broke the kiss, angling her face away. Bowed her head as her hands came to press at the front of his shoulders. Her breathing was unsteady, her cheeks flushed, eyes closed.
Ty leaned his forehead against her temple and eased up on his possessive grip, breathing in her tempting scent. He was keyed up, his whole body rigid with need.
“That was really stupid,” she murmured.
Yeah. Yeah, it was. But he’d be damned if he’d apologize, because he’d loved every damn moment of that kiss and didn’t regret a single thing about it.
Megan ducked under his arm to grab her pack from the floor where he’d dumped it, then straightened as she shrugged the strap over one shoulder and met his gaze. “Is this how you usually are with all your female partners on an op?”
“No. Never.” He hadn’t worked with female partners all that often, and he’d never touched them intimately. Megan was different. She made him lose his head, and that was dangerous for them both.
“Then why did you do that?”
He didn’t see the point in lying. It was too late to hide his feelings for her, though she wouldn’t know how deep they went. “Because I care about you.”
Shock flared in her eyes. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.” He reached for his own pack, sidestepped her and reached for the door handle. He was still hard, his body suffering whiplash from the dual shots of the adrenaline crash and the feel of her warm and willing in his arms mere moments ago.
He walked out of the bathroom without a backward glance, giving Megan some privacy and time to compose herself. Just thinking about the way she’d responded to him made him bite back a growl of longing.
With one kiss she’d singed him, inside and out. He’d gotten a taste of the need and passion hidden beneath the layer of armor she’d been taught to encase herself in.
Now he wanted all the way beneath it. To strip it all away until they were skin to skin and he was buried as deep inside her as he could get, him staring down into her face so he could watch her expression as he made her come apart around him.
He jerked his wayward thoughts back into line when Trinity came into view at a door near the far end of the small terminal building. Behind him he heard the bathroom door open, then Megan’s quiet footfalls on the linoleum floor.
“Everything okay?” Trinity asked him as he approached.
“Yep.” There was no way she didn’t know what had just happened. None. He wasn’t going to embarrass Megan further by drawing attention to them right now, however. It was none of Trinity’s business regardless. “We good to go?”
She nodded, her gaze shifting past him to Megan. “Wheels up in five minutes.” She pushed the exit door open and walked out onto the tarmac to where the jet waited for them.
Ty took a seat in the middle of the plane. He stowed his gear and buckled in for the flight, watching as Megan boarded the aircraft. She’d fixed her hair before leaving the bathroom.
She studiously ignored him as she moved down the aisle into another seat a few rows ahead of him, giving him all kinds of time to admire the shape of her body, the sinuous, confident way she moved. And she was so unpretentious he was willing to bet she had no clue how sexy that was.
Looking out the window he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing his body to relax. She’d want to avoid him now, was trying to put distance between them and shore up the barrier the kiss had shaken, but that wasn’t possible. There was no going back. No erasing what they’d done, or the pull between them.
In just over an hour they’d be touching down in Vienna to await word on the next target location. Whenever word came in, they’d be heading out together again. There were already too many unknowns going on with this operation for his liking, possibly more hitters coming after them, and having more players involved made this even more dangerous.
If he’d been determined to see this thing through before, after that kiss he was even more invested in keeping Megan safe now.
Ty didn’t care whether she liked it or not; unless some unforeseen circumstance made it impossible, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight again until this was over.
****
The net was starting to close in around her. She could feel it.
Amber ran up the stairwell to the rental unit on the third floor, pausing only momentarily to ensure that her anti-tampering devices were still intact on the door, and rushed inside. Twice now she’d felt someone watching while she was out in the street, and she’d only been here in Vienna for a day.
Time to move again. This was the second place she’d stayed at in Vienna since arriving yesterday morning, and still she wasn’t safe. The constant travel was a grind, but a necessary one if she wanted to remain alive and eliminate every last one of her targets and her training had prepared her for this. She was ready to endure the hardships that came with seeing her mission through if it meant getting retribution on those who had set her up and left her to die.
The good news was, her latest target was missing. Hannah Miller hadn’t shown up to an emergency meeting with her former handler this morning. Amber had intercepted the “secure” email from the handler a little after dawn, checking in with the missing operative, who hadn’t responded. Now it was only a matter of time before Hannah’s fate was revealed.
“So, you’re the hacker.”
Amber glanced up from her computer, in the midst of setting up another offshore account for them to funnel away the funds they were about to take from their target. The blond woman stood watching her, dual shoulder holsters revealed as she took her jacket off and draped it across the corner of Amber’s desk. “Yeah. You’re Hannah?”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her pale blue eyes. “That’s me.” She flicked a glance down at the screen. “We all set up?”
“Almost.” It was so strange to be working with a team. Valkyries were solo creatures for a reason, but they’d banded together to take out a dirty CIA contact and his network of arms dealer thugs. To the victors belonged the spoils, and by night’s end, Amber expected to have a little over ten million hidden in various offshore accounts for them to split at the end of the job.
“Good.” She patted Amber’s shoulder, and the patronizing feel to it rubbed Amber the wron
g way. “We’ll take care of securing the funds. You just make sure you hide it where no one else can find it.” She’d walked away, all attitude, as if she was the badass and Amber a mere computer geek they’d brought along on this op because they’d been forced to.
It had bugged her then, but it infuriated her now that she knew the true depth of their duplicity. All of them, but especially Hannah and Zoya, the ringleaders of the plot.
Unfortunately Amber wouldn’t be able to stay here and await confirmation that Hannah had been captured or killed. She had to get out of the city immediately, slip across the border into Switzerland to buy herself some more time. Change her identity once again. Bury her banking information, and see if the shadows she’d sensed at the edge of her consciousness for the past two days would follow here there as well.
She moved around the apartment quickly, packing up her electronics and the rest of the sparse gear she’d brought. Only as much as she could easily carry with her in a backpack.
Get out. Get out now.
The voice inside her was urgent, and she’d learned long ago to trust it.
Shoving the laptop into her backpack, she took one last cursory look around, wiped down the light switches and taps, and left. Her heart beat faster as she took a different stairwell to the bottom floor, hyper aware of her surroundings and on guard for any threats.
Hand on the butt of the pistol in her jacket pocket, she paused, waiting and listening. Once she was satisfied the coast was likely clear, she cracked the door open with a slight metallic creak that made her mentally curse, and glanced around.
The sky was already turning purple. A swarm of bats flitted through the air and across the half moon, heading out to hunt for the night. The trickle of water came from a nearby fountain, along with the faint murmur of distant conversation.
She moved fast, on full alert as she headed for the narrow, cobbled alleyway two blocks east, where she’d left her bike. No one followed her. And no silenced shots fired bullets at her.
