by Julie Leto
Sean tugged on her sleeve. Without words, she followed him out of the alley.
“Recognize him?” he asked once they’d crossed the quiet street next to the hotel onto a busier main road. The hour was late, but a few blocks north, nightclubs and bars remained open. Tourists in San Sebastían wanted their money’s worth, which meant a fair amount of partying into the night.
“I have no idea who those men are,” Brynn replied.
“They certainly didn’t waste any time following Liam’s information. By now, they’re rifling through our stuff, trying to figure out where we’ll go next.”
Brynn sighed, grabbed Sean by the hand and pulled him down a sidewalk into a residential neighborhood west of the hotel.
“When are you going to stop underestimating me?” she asked.
“I’m not under—”
She shushed him then picked up their pace as they made their way around a small park barely large enough for a swing set and a bench. From the refuse can next to a private residence, she retrieved the bags she’d stashed inside it ten minutes before she’d received Sean’s text ordering her to abandon their hotel.
“How’d you know we’d need to run?” he asked.
“When I came out of the shower and you weren’t there, I decided to take steps to facilitate a quick escape, just in case.”
He took the heavier bag from her and slung it over his shoulder then grabbed her waist and tugged her against him. Apparently, her preparedness turned him on, judging by the rock-hard erection pressing against her belly.
“You didn’t think I’d left you behind?”
“No.”
He tilted his head. “Not even for a second?”
She bit her bottom lip, knowing it was her tell and not caring. “I may have had one moment of weakness.”
He pressed a light kiss on her temple. The intimacy, enhanced by the darkness of the night and the danger of their predicament, nearly sapped her breath.
“You aren’t weak,” he whispered. “You’re smart.”
She leaned back, searching his dark eyes, which, not surprisingly, gave nothing away.
“Too smart to believe you’d leave me behind when you still need my help or too smart to fall for you when I know that, sooner rather than later, you are going to take off without a backward glance?”
He tugged her closer. “I will look back, Brynn. That much I guarantee.”
Brynn appreciated his honesty, but a part of her—a part she’d tried and failed to protect ever since the game-changing swim in the Barcelona safe house pool—cracked open. The break wasn’t wide or deep, but it was there, leaking out emotions she’d worked her entire adult life to control.
Despite their sensual stolen moments, she and Sean weren’t on vacation. Despite their cover, they weren’t on their honeymoon. They were on the run from an unknown enemy who had once again succeeded in forcing them out into the open.
“I think we need to compel my forger to work a little faster,” she said.
“You don’t think he ratted us out?”
“No,” she replied. “I’ve been working with him for years. If he’d been the one to talk, those goons could have waited for us at his place rather than paying for random information from Liam or risking a scene at the hotel.”
“Your guy didn’t know where we were staying. Or maybe he insisted the takedown happen far away from him. His business depends on people trusting that he won’t give them up.”
“Which is precisely why he would never sell me out,” Brynn argued. “His bank accounts are full of too much of my money. He would not risk losing long-term income for a short-term score.”
Sean shrugged. “He isn’t young. Maybe he’s not thinking long-term anymore.”
Brynn filed away his concern, understanding there was a logic to Sean’s line of thinking, but one that was counter to her experience with the man. Still, she couldn’t afford to be too trusting.
What had started out as a simple rescue operation had turned into a clusterfuck, as her brother would say, of massive proportions. And yet, she still hesitated calling Ian for backup. They’d worked hard to put the company back in the black. If she pissed off the wrong people, her family’s legacy—not to mention all the agents they employed worldwide—would pay the price.
Unwilling to risk boosting another car, she and Sean started off toward the forger’s residence on foot. The nightclubs were closing. The sidewalks swelled with die-hard partiers forced to trip home to their rented flats by the lack of anything else to do until the sun rose and the beach beckoned. She and Sean blended in to the crowd arm in arm, attempting to look as trashed and tired as the people around them even as they moved with much more stealth and speed.
“What case you were working the last time you were here?” Sean asked as they headed northwest.
“I was only here for a couple of hours, picking up a passport for a young woman we were extracting from her abusive boyfriend.”
“The girl was in Spain?”
“Madrid,” she replied. “But she was originally from Denmark. The guy was a trust fund baby. He had some reach, which was why her family brought us in, but if the bastard had had any associations with San Sebastían, I never would have used el Creador for the job.”
When they reached a vacant corner, bright with neon lights from an all-night café, Brynn directed Sean down a side street. In about a mile, they were going to have to cross a bridge. Two people walking across the long, well-lit span was bound to attract attention.
Brynn could practically hear the mechanisms in Sean’s brain whirling and clicking as he attempted to work out the different scenarios that could have led them to their current situation. Like her, Sean was accustomed to carrying out expertly planned missions that had few unforeseen diversions.
Now, they were playing entirely off the cuff.
“We need to get over the bridge,” she said.
Sean watched the street for a few minutes.
“Taxi?” he suggested.
“Not if the word is out on the streets for us. How do you feel about motorcycles?”
He snorted. “I feel like I have enough danger in my life, thanks.”
“You?” she asked, genuinely shocked. She could easily visualize Sean in worn denim and black leather. “You’re not a Harley guy?”
Sean leveled her with a look of exasperation. “I can ride one, but I don’t have a death wish. I prefer my transportation to have four wheels and, if possible, four-wheel drive.”
“In the short term, we’ll have to settle for something in between,” she said, indicating a line of scooters chained up beside an apartment building.
Sean groaned but helped her liberate two motorbikes in less than thirty seconds, then they wheeled them around a corner, donned the helmets they’d found in the boots beneath the seats and then took off toward the bridge.
Before they reached the final turn, they pulled over, parking in front of a shuttered sundry store. Brynn whipped off her helmet to review their plan unhampered, but Sean took the advantage, tugging her to him and kissing her soundly. If he hadn’t slid to a stop so that his thigh touched hers, her bike would have tumbled beneath her.
Tongues intertwined and sensations all-consuming, Brynn lost all track of time and purpose until he released her, his hand lingering on her cheek and his gaze locked with hers, hampering her ability to remember why they were idling on stolen motorbikes on a dark street corner.
She cleared her throat and shook her head in a vain attempt to reclaim her equilibrium. “What was that for?”
He shoved his helmet back onto his head. “Just a kiss. For luck.”
She eyed him warily. “Seemed like more than that.”
“Yeah, it did, didn’t it?”
Sunrise was fast approaching. Brynn forced herself to remember the stakes. His life. Her future. She hated that the two things seemed so unlikely to combine once they’d achieved their mission, but no plan was perfect.
The
y had one shot to get what they’d come for—and to pull it off, they had to go their separate ways.
Six
The lights on the bridge glowed neon orange. As Brynn sped over the four-lane, paved span, Sean locked his gaze on her taillights. He revved the engine of the motorbike, prepared to shoot off in her direction if anyone or anything attempted to stop her.
God, he had it bad.
Sean had been assigned to protection details before. But before Jayda—no, before Brynn—none had stripped him of his ability to focus on his job. Now, he was deeply aware of a dark gray shadow of loss lingering on the edges of his concentration.
If something happened to Brynn, it would be his fault.
If something happened to Brynn, the pain would be unbearable.
And now more than ever, Sean knew his limits.
He’d been an idiot, addled by his injuries, to think he could get involved with Brynn and not have it severely fuck with his head. She was the most dangerous mixture of woman he’d ever encountered—and that included Jayda.
Jayda had left him hollow.
Brynn, on the other hand, filled him to the brim.
Ten seconds before his cell phone beeped, alerting him to the pre-arranged time of his departure, he took off. They’d mapped his route quickly, coordinating a meet-up at their predetermined location to be arrived at from separation directions.
Sean forced himself to drive as if he had all the time in the world and nothing at stake. He saw nothing and no one out of the ordinary—until he reached the rendezvous point.
Brynn was not there.
He jerked to a stop. The chosen intersection, a block from el Creador’s apartment, had a hardware store on one corner and a café that opened only for lunch and dinner on the other. Across from the closed restaurant was a stack of law offices. The fourth corner was taken up by a derelict building, the brick façade plastered with fliers for concerts and festivals that had happened two summers before.
He was in the right place.
So where was Brynn?
His heart slammed against his chest so hard he had a brief flashback to his time in the metal chair. He revved the engine again, hoping the sound would lure her out if she’d decided to take cover. Seeing no flash or headlight, he drove slowly around the block, rewinding their hastily drawn plans in his head.
But Sean had made no mistakes. He reversed her planned route then shot off in that direction. His tight lungs fought for air as he navigated the deserted streets, wishing he’d held out for a vehicle that went faster than this buzzing bike.
If he’d been going faster, though, he might not have spotted her.
Or more specifically, her scooter.
It was flat against the paved street. A wild line of scattered metal and tire tracks extended at least twenty feet from the wreck. He circled around then stopped dead, threw off his helmet and searched for a sign of where she’d gone.
He saw nothing.
Heard nothing.
The bright blue bumper of her ride had crumpled like a soda can crushed between two massive hands.
She’d been hit. Forced to stop.
But where was she?
His phone dinged. The emotion he’d shielded within his chest burst open so forcefully he grabbed at his sternum with his hand.
She’d activated her tracking app—in reverse.
She was beautiful, brilliant and now, he knew, nearby.
He ditched the bike and took off on foot, holding the phone directly to his ear to hear the increase in frequency and volume of the pings while he concentrated on scanning the darkened buildings for any sign of where she’d gone. When the dings turned into a prolonged whistle, he shut the phone down. He was tucked into a junction that connected four buildings, but he saw no sign of her.
Until a piece of paper floated in front of his face then fluttered to the ground.
He picked it up. It was a torn corner—glossy, as if from a flyer or magazine. He looked up and scanned the sides of the buildings, shadowed in the darkness by balconies, metal stairs and clotheslines.
Then, tucked behind a portable grill on a third-story fire escape was a flash of pale skin.
He opened his mouth to call out to her but stopped. If she’d ditched her bike, moved out of sight and activated the tracking device on his phone, she’d been followed. Her pursuer might be watching him now, waiting for him to lure her out of hiding.
Or waiting to jump Sean and drag him back into hell.
Sean flashed to the warehouse dungeon when he’d been minutes, maybe seconds, away from death. The fight had been beaten out of him—his resistance training too far removed from his life outside of the agency for him to rely on it any longer. He’d resolved to let go, surrender, meet whatever fate awaited him in his next life, since he’d done a bang-up job of fucking up the first.
Then he’d heard something.
A clicking noise.
Brynn, picking the lock. Brynn, sliding into the room. Brynn, figuring out how to thwart the sadistic devices that had trapped him.
She’d risked her life to save him.
Now, he had to risk her life again in order to return the favor.
He picked up his phone and tapped on the screen until the volume of what sounded like the tracking signal broke through the silence. He let out a triumphant, “Yes,” then started to run as far away from Brynn as he could get.
* * *
Brynn pulled her foot back under the tarp, gulping down a string of curses as the strips of denim on her left pant leg abraded her raw skin. The road rash string streaking up her thigh had become so painful she was nearly numb.
But not numb enough.
She had to remain still. Soon, the sun would rise. The cockroaches that’d run her off the road would scatter back into the sewers. She had no idea how she’d gotten away, except for the fact that she’d been faster and nimbler than they’d bargained for after they’d run her scooter off the road.
But the burst of adrenaline that had saved her life was long gone. Every second that elapsed felt like a year. Every tiny movement took her minutes to complete. She clutched her cell phone in her hand, wanting desperately to text Sean, but she resisted. They’d agreed on radio silence. She’d already bent the rule by sending him the tracking signal. But he’d seen her. He knew where she was. He was leading the bad guys away from her, but he’d be back.
She trusted that he’d be back.
Her eyelids pressed down with the weight of lead bricks. But when the fire escape shifted and shook, she forced them open and threw back the tarp, gun drawn. Sunlight blinded her. Before she could cry out, she was disarmed.
“Aw, hell.”
Sean’s voice cracked through her agony. She blinked, forcing her eyes to deal with the glare.
The window directly above her was open. Half of a curtain fluttered in a chilled morning breeze. A middle-aged woman with a baby on her hip watched Sean slide his hands underneath Brynn’s bruised body then shift her weight until he could figure out how to get her into the apartment.
“I can stand,” she insisted.
“You can, can you? How do you know?”
She didn’t. Chances were actually fairly good that if he put her down, she’d buckle. She bit her tongue while he navigated her through the open window. The jostling was painful enough. Nothing compared to what he’d gone through, but still enough so that tiny sparks of invisible stars sparkled on the edges of her vision.
He spoke to the woman with the baby, who’d started to wail. She hurried out of the room, calling out in Spanish. When she returned, she’d traded that baby for a basin of water and towels.
“Scissors?” Sean said, mimicking the tools with his fingers.
“¿Tijeras? Sí, sí.”
Again, she disappeared. Sean laid Brynn on a bed of rumpled quilts that smelled of talcum powder, fruit juice and laundry detergent. She bit back curses as he adjusted the position of her leg.
“Tell me what happened,”
he said.
“We have to get to el Creador.”
“Who says I haven’t already?”
“You led them away,” she said.
“I did,” he insisted. “I can also walk and chew gum. Or walk, and then chew gum. It’s tricky, but with practice…”
She laughed and was glad that doing so didn’t hurt. Her ribs were fine. It was her leg that seemed to be on fire.
The woman whose home they’d invaded returned with the scissors. She helped Sean cut Brynn’s jeans off then wash the wound free of gravel and dirt. The woman spoke enough English to understand Sean’s requests for bandages and antibiotic cream, which she seemed to have in generous supply.
She also brought Brynn a powerful espresso laced with brandy, which she gulped down while Sean wrapped large strips of clean gauze around her thigh.
“Doesn’t feel broken,” he said, stretching out her bare leg and running his hands over the unblemished flesh.
In any other circumstance, his gentle exploration would have been sensual. Instead, it was aggravating. She was the caregiver. He was the patient. This was the dynamic she understood. This was the dynamic she preferred, because it put her in the superior role and kept her from dropping her guard entirely, even after they’d become lovers.
What was she supposed to do now?
“So you’re a doctor now?” she snapped.
He handed her two over-the-counter painkillers. “I’m no Doogie Howser, but you’ll have to take what you can get. And I know enough about field medicine to patch you up. You might have a nasty scar, though, unless that antibiotic lives up to the marketing claims.”
She could only hope. She didn’t care about the scar, but she did know that a scrape this big was going to slow her down.
And right now, the last thing they needed was a lack of speed.
Sean glanced toward the doorway, drawing Brynn’s attention to the state of the apartment. It wasn’t large, but it was neat, except for a smattering of toys strewn across the scuffed hardwood floors. Brynn was laid out on a twin bed in a room that contained a battered dresser, a chipped mirror and hand-painted stencils of dinosaurs on the walls. A crib was shoved in the corner, the bright white bedding askew.
