by Amy Jarecki
She was tougher than bullets and Mike had learned firsthand she was about as stubborn as a curly nose hair as well.
He paged through her army report. Two could play the stubborn game and few could beat him once he dug in his heels. Besides, he’d made the bet with Moore, a wager Mike wasn’t about to lose. Once the woman agreed to go to Iceland, she’d be Garth’s problem, end of story. Mike could collect his hundred quid and leave her training to the fine folks at ICE.
Unfortunately, the one thing missing from Anderson’s file was what made her tick. Sure, she was hiding in the mountains because she’d been slighted by her country. Her aunt was a bit of a cold fish as well—didn’t come across as someone Henri might confide in, or even warm to. What did Henrietta Anderson love? What were her interests? At one time the lass would have put her life on the line for her squadron, but what about now? What kept her awake at night? What was her passion?
Mike needed to find a way past her rifle and past her badass facade.
Their interests were about as similar as her red desert was to his green Scotland. He liked fast cars. He owned a red Porsche 911 and an old, stone manor on the hill that overlooked Oban Bay. He liked nice things. He liked it orderly. Though he wasn’t home much, he kept his place tidy like a show home. And then there was Henri. She lived in a rickety mine shaft.
After reading until his eyes crossed, trying to find anything he might be able to use to connect with the lass, he decided the only thing they had in common was an appreciation of weapons.
With that decided, he drove to a gun shop, used an ID indicating his last name was MacLeod and he was a US citizen, bought a Remington 700 sniper rifle, ammo, a headlamp and a canteen. Not ideal, but it was the best civilian gun he could purchase without drawing attention to himself.
The next morning, Mike headed back to the reservation. This time, he parked the Jeep a mile away from the mine. By the way Henri had ambushed him, she’d been alerted of his approach long before he’d arrived.
The first rule of war? Strategy. And when the commander is strategizing, his greatest tool is the element of surprise.
Chapter Four
Mike treated the tire tracks leading to the mine as if they were a dusty goat trail in the Middle East filled with IEDs. Since the lass had obviously been alerted to his approach the day before, this time he intended to invoke the element of surprise. This was a mission just like any other and it was time he realized it. He must handle it no differently—just like he was in Syria slipping into an enemy camp and targeting his quarry. Somehow, he needed to get in Henrietta Anderson’s head and he couldn’t do that by reading her damned file.
Going bush, he climbed the hill across from Henri’s old Ford truck. If the condition of that heap of metal was any indication, she ought to pay more attention to what ICE had to offer—if she’d let him get a word in edgewise. Damn, he wasn’t a fan of tough women. Sure, Henri might be bonny with all the right female equipment, but Mike liked women who were a little flirty when they first met—who appreciated his, might as well say it, when they appreciated him for being a goddamned man.
But this wasn’t about a female piece of arse hiding on a Paiute reservation in the middle of nowhere. This was about a sniper, a Special Ops soldier who’d proven she had what it took to be in the field. And Mike wasn’t going back to Iceland without her.
Yesterday, he’d studied the satellite images before he chose his approach. Peppered with sagebrush, the place was desolate or some might call it pristine with no trees and little sign of human life. By the lack of tracks in the stills, it was clear few people frequented Henri’s mine intentionally or by accident. Besides, the barbed wire fence and no trespassing signs were a sure-fire deterrent for most of the locals.
The sun beat down like a blast from a welding torch. By the time Mike reached top of the hill over the mine, his face and arms were working up a burn. Stupid. He always wore a cap and long sleeves in arid climates, the same common sense should have prevailed in Utah.
Next time.
Stepping carefully to minimize his tracks, he circled the terrain on the hill. The first thing he found was Henri’s back door, the one she’d used to ambush him the day before. The ground was still streaked where she’d crawled to the edge of the cliff and watched him through her scope. Footprints surrounded the hole, covered with a bit of grill that had a big tumbleweed tied to it. Funny she hadn’t covered her tracks, though given the isolation of the mine, there was probably no point.
After Mike took a drink from his canteen, he slipped his torch onto his head, shouldered his rifle and climbed down. At the bottom of the shaft, he took a deep breath, relishing the reprieve from Utah’s torturous sun. It was a good ten degrees cooler down there and darker than a cup of Turkish coffee.
He stood for a moment and listened. Nothing honed his hearing like being sightless. A low hum came from below, carrying a slight vibration. It was a motor, no question. Whether it was from mining equipment or a generator, Mike couldn’t tell. Though it sounded like a field camp generator, he hadn’t spent any time in a mine before.
Rule number two of war? Don’t make or act upon assumptions unless you’re given no choice.
As he reached up to turn on his lamp, something rumbled beneath him, making the ground shake. He froze and listened. A hiss echoed in the distance, sounding like debris giving way. Silence followed. Mike smiled to himself. Henri was down there working. Was the lass a gold digger after all? But that didn’t make sense. If she was interested in money, she might have listened to Lindgren back in San Diego, or at least probed a bit when Mike met her yesterday.
He adjusted the light and started through the passageway, moving in a crouch to protect his head. Whoever carved out this tunnel wasn’t six-three, not even close. He came to a juncture with a shaft to the right leading downward. Blinding sunlight beamed in from the left, but beyond the mine’s entrance was a door. Wooden, it was paneled like an old house door, the frame fitting into the sandstone as if it belonged there.
A house door was an invitation to someone like Mike. The third rule of war? Know your enemy. Gather information in any way you can. Make use of spies.
Hell, Mike was a spy. A damned good one. And it didn’t take a sleuth to guess Anderson’s living quarters were behind the rickety portal.
He turned off his headlamp before he tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. No surprises there—the lass wasn’t exactly in the middle of metro US. Though a bit of paper sailed to the ground when he opened it. Henri must be suspicious enough to rig the slip to leave a sign if she had an intruder.
Mike picked it up and, after he stepped inside, replaced it while shutting the door. The hum he’d heard must have been a generator because the lights were on.
The place was like stepping into a Hobbit hole filled with Native American art, or perhaps a cave out of an Indiana Jones movie. The red-rock walls weren’t smooth. They’d been carved by a pickaxe and dynamite. But it was clean. The floor was stone as well but smoother and covered with woven Navaho rugs. There were old lanterns and relics on the wall. It reminded him of a prospector’s hovel, except for the recliner and television. Mike moved to the shelves of DVDs and read the spines. It was a mishmash of action-adventure, Disney, romance and westerns. Interestingly, the Pride and Prejudice jacket showed the most wear. Maybe, deep down, Anderson was a romantic. Right? Tough girl, soft heart?
It could happen.
In the center of the room were a rustic table and two chairs. Beyond that, a hob for cooking and rows of pictures on the wall.
The photographs interested Mike the most. The largest was a black and white of an old Native American man standing at the mine entrance with a pick in his hand. He had to be the grandfather who’d bequeathed her the mine. The frame was made from dozens of tiny colorful beads in zigzag patterns. Moving along, there was a picture of Henri in uniform receiving her Medal of Honor, another of her a bit younger, wearing traditional buckskin dress and standing with a grou
p of other Native American dancers. Anderson stood out. She was taller and fairer, and by far the prettiest, in fact, something seemed off, as if she didn’t fit in and the others resented her.
Is that why she lives in isolation? She doesn’t fit in with her clan...er...tribe?
The rest of the pictures were either of Henri or her grandfather and most of them appeared to be taken near the mine. There were no photos of Aunt Chenoa, no sign of Henri’s deceased mother, and definitely no photo of her father.
Mike moved to the bedroom. It was stark, but what drew his attention were the books on the nightstand—one on prospecting and a thriller.
He picked up the prospecting book and leafed through the dog-eared pages. So, the lass did want to find gold. A piece of paper fell to the floor. Mike picked it up and sat on the bed, unfolding a map of the mine which included the escape route he’d used to get inside. Down the shaft where he hadn’t been there was an X with the notation “small vein here”.
His reading was interrupted when the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He froze. He didn’t even breathe. Years of living on the edge had taught him to always trust his gut and, right now, his internal hazard meter hit the red zone.
In a nanosecond, Mike’s heart rate spiked. He hadn’t heard footsteps. He hadn’t heard the door open, but never in his life would he mistake the sound of a rifle bolt moving a bullet into its chamber. He looked up in time to meet Henri’s eyeball glaring through her Win Mag’s scope.
Springing to his feet, Mike faced her.
“Do you make a habit of breaking and entering?” she asked, using a tone that clearly said she wasn’t about to take shite—the same tone she’d used yesterday.
With his next blink, he took it all in. She’d been working, all right. She was covered in powdery dust. Jeez, she looked like she’d been buried in it—all five-feet ten of pure, solid woman staring at him along her deadly sights. Only her eyes were swiped clean, as dark and shiny as wet slate. Given other circumstances, he wouldn’t mind spending a candlelight dinner staring into browns as hypnotic as hers. But he wasn’t there for fun.
Mike glanced to the open door behind the woman, his mind calculating his odds of escape given her finger caressing the rifle’s trigger. “Ah...”
“Put the map back in the book and set it down.” Her braid slipped around her shoulder as she spoke—a thick rope at least three-feet long and caked with dirt. Whatever happened down there, she’d been in the wars.
He did as she asked while watching her out of the corner of his eye. If she wanted to shoot him, he’d already be dead. He had no doubt she could do it. A trained killer, she was like a panther ready to pounce, daring him to make the first errant move. The thought of taking her on made him hard. God save him, the woman was a freaking Amazon sprung from the dust of hell and ready for battle. Mike bit back a grin—now was no time to tell Anderson how sexy she looked dirt and all.
“You couldn’t leave me alone, could you?” she demanded, the harshness of her voice snapping him from his wee fantasy.
“No’ until you hear me out.” He inclined his head toward the gun slung over his shoulder and gave her a challenging squint—one that usually worked with the ladies. “I thought you might enjoy a bit of target practice.”
“Yeah, with you as the target.” She slid her foot back. “Now you’re going to walk out of here nice and slow.”
Jesus Christ, terrorists were easier to crack than this bird. But the more she talked the more he relished the chase. He even took a step toward her, watching that trigger finger for a twitch. “Come, lass. I’m no’ here to rifle through your gear. I just want a word.”
“You’ve already had a lot more than one, and I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”
He shook his head. “I dunna give up easily.”
She made a pretense of inching up her Win Mag and peering through her scope. “Then you’re going to die.”
“Bloody hell.” Mike headed for the door, but when she shifted her rifle as he passed, his instincts kicked in. The wildcat had a loaded gun in her hands and had just threatened him. Mike might be trained to take a lot of shite, but when it came right down to it, self-preservation trumped kissing the arse of a woman who refused to allow him the courtesy of listening to what he’d flown 6500 miles to say.
Moving with the speed of an asp, he reached back and pushed the muzzle away. Her eyes flashed wide as he twisted the Win Mag until it broke from her grasp.
He tossed the rifle on the bed, ducking as she spun and threw a roundhouse kick aimed at his head. The gun over his shoulder clattered to the floor. Before he could counter her attack, she nailed him in the ribs with a spinning side kick while her thick braid whipped around and dragged across his face. A world karate champion, taking a solid hit only served to hone Mike’s senses. Gaining his balance, he went on the offensive throwing rapid fire strikes, hard enough to stun, but not a one hard enough to cause any serious damage. Henri wasn’t dazed. She attacked like a badger, blocking, jabbing, all the while as Mike backed her to the wall.
And he didn’t let up. He had a mission to accomplish and if the woman wanted to play rough, so be it. Anderson had no idea with whom she was messing. Mike blocked her every kick, her every sucker punch. Sweat beaded on her forehead and turned the dust to mud.
She shrieked like a cat when he trapped her against the wall with his body, staring into those enormous, brown eyes now looking as tasty as melted dark chocolate. She squirmed against him, full breasts pushing into his chest. He blinked, but not before he pinned her with a choke hold. The woman could fight better than most men. Because of that, Mike knew better than to give her inch. Not yet, anyway.
“All I want is a bit of your time,” he growled, ignoring the rock-solid erection below his belt while Henri panted, her breasts crushing into his chest with her every inhale. Christ, he’d worked with women before. Beautiful women, and he’d always been able to control the ole cannon before. Now was no different. That’s right. He didn’t like hard-arsed women—ah—even if they had eyes that could melt a heart of granite.
“Why?” she asked in a sultry tone she hadn’t used before, tipping up her fine-boned chin. “So you can fill me with the same bullshit as that Dutch suit?”
“He’s an Icelander.”
She squirmed against him. “Whatever.”
Damn. Too much heavy-breathing woman was addling his mind. He needed to back off. Fast. “Look, let’s do some target practice. No pressure.”
“Oh, yeah? I’m lethal. I could kill you with my eyes closed. In fact, I might enjoy it.”
He chuckled. Och aye, he knew exactly the enjoyment she was talking about. The rush. It was what every field agent lived for—what made her ideal for the job. “That’s what makes it fun.”
“Why would you trust me?” she asked, wriggling against him. Hell, she just might do him in right there—death by hotness.
“Because you were brave enough to win the Medal of Honor.”
Henri’s pupils dilated, then her lips formed a thin line. “They stripped it from me.”
“But they gave it back.”
“I was framed and they didn’t believe me.”
“No question.” If only he could release her, but it would be stupid to give her an inch until she offered something to show she was bending. At least she’d stopped talking about killing him. Regardless, he still couldn’t back down now. No chance. What he said in the next thirty seconds was critical to this op. I’m not going to lose. “You were mistreated, you got the raw end of the deal. I’d be out for blood if I were you. I wouldn’t trust me either...not yet, at least.”
Her body relaxed a bit—good sign. “So, are you going to keep me in a choke hold all day?”
The corner of his mouth inched up. “Are you going to attack again?”
“Mmmm-aybe.” She swallowed, shifting those damned hips and brushing him where she shouldn’t. Not that he was giving her any room to move. If she realized wh
at she’d done, she didn’t let on. The woman just narrowed her gaze and snorted. “I’m not interested in anything you have to offer.” This time, Henri’s conviction didn’t sound quite as determined as it had the day before.
Grinding his teeth against his ill-timed male response to having a lean woman’s body crushed against his, Mike decided it was time to go in for the kill. “Tell you what. Let’s just shoot few rounds—no pressure. I’m booked into the Hilton Garden Inn for a fortnight.”
“Fortnight.” She rolled her eyes, but the hard-ass routine was gone, thank God. “You Scots and your weird words.”
He released his grip. “The same can be said for you Yanks.”
Stretching her neck, she wriggled her body again. Mike cleared his throat and stepped back. Her gaze meandered downward. A wee pink tongue slipped out the corner of her mouth. She’d noticed.
So, she is human.
Mike took another step away. Damn, of course she’d noticed. His cock behaved like a bloody teenaged appendage. So, shoot him. He was a man. Besides, she’d felt too good pressed flush against him with nowhere to go. Had the circumstances been different, he could have used a dozen different moves to coax the woman to her back, especially with the bed right behind them. But this was business. And she wasn’t interested. And he bloody well better not be. This Delta Force sniper had proven herself to be a walking fighting machine not to mention she was covered in dust—which was now smudged down the front of his clothes. He cleared his throat. “I guess mining work is pretty dirty.”
