by Shandi Boyes
“If I don’t get you down that mountain, you’ll bleed out. It won’t be pretty, and it will hurt like fuck, but I’m not letting you die up here. You’re coming down that hill with me, Dane.”
When I attempt to throw him over my shoulder, he puts up a protest. Considering he is minutes from death, his strength inspires me.
“You either come willingly, or I’ll drag you down that fucking mountain by the scruff on your chin,” I grunt through the pain shredding my chest in half.
I know his issue. I know he’s worried I’m putting myself in the line of fire to save him, but if I don’t get him to a medic within minutes, he will bleed out. This isn’t a possibility. It is a fact. I already lost a part of myself on this field tonight. I’m not losing him as well.
Dane locks his eyes with mine. His pupils are so massive, I can’t see any specks of blue. “K-K-Kristin.”
“No!” I shake my head so rapidly it grows woozy. “If you want to tell Kristin something, you tell her your goddamn self.”
Kristin is Dane's high school sweetheart. They married not long after we graduated college, and they had a baby girl only four months ago. She is the apple of her daddy's eye. I'm not going to let anything stand in my way of getting him back to his wife and daughter. If I'm taken down during the process, so be it. It won't be the only stupid thing I've done tonight.
Feeding off the adrenaline roaring through my veins, I yank Dane up by his arms. His helmet falls to the ground with a clatter when I heave him over my shoulder, landing next to my beloved 69ers cap. I wore that cap tonight as it's my lucky charm. It has never let me down. Had, I mentally correct.
The amount of blood seeping into my suit jacket is all the evidence I need to know I’ve made the right decision. For every second passing, Dane’s likelihood of survival diminishes. I have to get him to a medic, and I have to get him there now.
“We’re coming down. Cover us. Shooter is on a rock face northwest of base,” I advise my superior officers.
My radio crackles before I hear, “Hold back. We have no marksman in place.”
“I can’t hold back. If I hold back, he’ll bleed out.” Devastation dangles on my vocal cords.
"Hold back, Agent Rogers. This is not a suggestion; it is an order. . ." The rest of my supervisor's reprimand is lost when I yank my radio receiver from my ear.
I’ve broken enough rules tonight to have me removed from my position, so what’s another bout of defiance?
I fire three shots in the direction I believe the sniper is lying in wait before charging down the mountain. I’m not advising him of my location, I just need him ducking for cover long enough for me make it to the stand of trees three-quarters of the way down the valley.
We make it halfway to cover before pain shreds through my left knee. I continue racing to the tree line, using the harrowing pain to fuel my determination. The bullet that tore through my knee feels like I’m being operated on without anesthetics, so imagine how intense Dane’s pain is? I can’t let him suffer like this. He is my best mate.
I make it another good hundred or so feet before my busted knee buckles under our combined weight. We collapse onto the dew-covered ground with a thud, the roar leaving my throat unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I’m not screaming in pain. I’m frustrated. Annoyed. Pissed as fuck at the situation we are in.
If I had just left when I failed to find evidence of an illegal operation, we wouldn’t be hunkered down in barely an inch of grass, waiting to be slaughtered. But no, I had to listen to the irrational thoughts in my head. I had to see if Rae was as mesmerizing off the stage as she was on it.
I entered the backstage of Substanz as a civilian; I left as an agent.
While sheltering Dane’s body with my own, I scan the area. I’m expecting a helicopter to hover down low and protect us before a stream of agents charge the rockface the sniper is sheltered behind.
I get neither of those things.
I get silence—and a reminder that one life will never be more valuable than many.
Chapter Four
“Call him off.” My still unnamed hero leans over the seat to grip the driver’s suit jacket. “Call him off before I shell your body with as many bullets as are raining down that valley!”
The driver smirks a mocking grin, revealing the decision on who lives or dies isn't up to him, before returning his attention to the horrific scene unraveling in heart-clutching detail. The agent who let us flee is a sitting target. He is hunched halfway down the grassy meadow, using his body to shelter another agent who is clearly injured. If the slump of his head isn't enough of an indication to his near-death state, the amount of blood pooling into the blond agent's suit jacket is the final nail in the coffin. He is moments away from death—if he hasn't already crossed over.
Incapable of watching the horror unfold for a second longer, I return my eyes to my backseat companion. I want to plead mercy on behalf of the agents, but words are eluding me. I’m so stunned by tonight’s events, I can’t separate fact from fiction. There has only been one other time I’ve been stumped like this: the night of Luca’s death.
Unfortunately, not all my confusion stems from his accident. It comes from the events that occurred before we climbed into his Jeep, screaming at each other at the top of our lungs. I wanted something Luca couldn’t give me, but instead of showing me how I could have both my wish and him, he stripped away any possibility of it ever coming true. He took himself away from me.
When my eyes lock in on my mysterious stranger, I realize he hates this turn of events as much as I do, but he is also at a loss on how to stop it.
After a few seconds of silent deliberation, he secures a cellphone from his suit pocket. For his sophisticated suit and high-end haircut, I wasn't expecting him to pull out a relic. His cellphone is dated—perhaps even as old as me.
A small trickle of hope seeps into my veins when the gray-eyed man roars down the line, "This wasn't our deal, Henry. You guaranteed I’d get her out safely, not cause a bloodbath." A groove embeds between his dark brows. "There is a sniper gunning down agents in cold blood. . . No. . . Why would I bring in my own crew?"
Relief washes over his face a mere second before he hands the driver his phone. I swallow the bitter taste in the back of my throat when the driver nods three times, hands back the stranger’s phone, then steps out of the car. He heads for the trunk like a man on a mission.
I feel like I’ve stumbled into a crime show when he removes a long-barreled assault rifle nestled between the spare tire and the jack. He sets up a tripod on the now-closed trunk before screwing the rifle into place.
After a quick adjustment of the scope, he fires one bullet. It is swift and precise, and as quiet as death itself. Oblivious to my gaped jaw and bugged eyes, he dismantles his gun, places it back in its rightful spot, then joins us inside his car.
Without a word spoken, he continues our trip. Stunned at his nonchalant response to the loss of life, my gigantic eyes drift to my backseat companion. He shrugs, a little lost.
Even though I am on the verge of coronary failure, my heart rate settles when my eyes return to what could have been a valley of death at the bottom of the hill. The blond-haired agent is back on his feet, hobbling toward the concealed entrance of Substanz, dragging the unresponsive agent behind him.
Chapter Five
“A business proposal?” I flop onto my bed in my dorm, still as stunned as a mullet. “Two federal agents were shot, one severely, all to issue me a business proposal?”
The man who introduced himself as Isaac halfway through our hour commute to my college dorm offers me a handkerchief. I almost rib him about his old-fashioned ways before an image flashing before my eyes makes vomit charge up my esophagus. It is the lifeless flop of the dark-haired man’s head when his fellow agent dragged him to safety. It brings horrid memories rushing to the forefront of my mind of another time I witnessed the same thing.
“Did he die?” I choke out, my words barely a
udible as I struggle to hold in the scarce bit of nutrients left in my stomach. “Was another man killed because of me?”
The mattress dips when Isaac sits next to me. “Nothing that happened tonight was your fault. It was a wrong place, wrong time scenario.”
I glare at him, calling him out as a liar without words. When he fails to hear my unspoken accusation, I say, “If I didn’t run, the agent wouldn’t have followed me. If he hadn’t followed me, a second agent wouldn’t have backed him up. If he didn’t back him up, he would have never been shot. How is this not my fault?”
Before Isaac can answer me, the shrill of a cell phone sounds through my dead quiet room. Thank goodness my roommate is in Tuscany with her parents, or how would I explain getting home at one in the morning with two suit-clad mafia-looking men in tow?
While striving to ignore my heaving stomach, I eavesdrop on Isaac’s conversation. I don’t know why I bother. He communicates with nothing but grunts and groans.
My brows join together when an unexpected chuckle joins his unscripted conversation. “I understand. Pleasure as always.” He snaps his relic phone shut before his gray eyes drift to mine. “Both agents will survive their injuries.”
I exhale a relieved breath.
It is quickly withdrawn when Isaac says, “But. . .”
He remains quiet, building the suspense.
“But. . .?” I encourage, hoping to move him along.
He keeps me hanging long enough for sweat to bead on my top lip. “The agent we interacted with in the field was wearing a wire. My source believes he has images of us on his device.”
I groan. It was either groan or cry; I went for the less pathetic one. I’m beyond relieved the agents aren’t receiving a visit from the grim reaper any time soon, but if we were caught on surveillance, everything we just went through was a woeful waste of time. I’ll still face charges, but instead of them centering around prostitution, they’ll add evasion, conspiring to commit a crime, and god knows what else into the mix.
I don’t want that. The only time my face should be splashed across the headlines is when I am revered as the best business lawyer in the country, not because I tried to sell my snatch to an undercover operative before I slipped his net with the help of a mafia-affiliated man and his disobedient lacky.
The inane beat of my heart triples when Isaac chuckles, apparently amused by my screwed-up-with-panic face. I’m glad he can find pleasure in my discomfort, but I am anything but overjoyed.
When he continues laughing, I sock him in the stomach. "Why are you laughing? Nothing happening is funny!"
He shrugs, not believing me.
When I glare at him so firmly, steam billows from my ears, he asks, “Have you ever watched Rugrats?”
“Am I an American? Of course I have,” I snap back, my tone snarky.
His smile grows, replacing some of my annoyance with giddiness. My teetering moods can easily be excused. Isaac is an extremely attractive man. Unique-colored eyes, a panty-wetting face, and the strength to carry me up three flights of stairs when a panic attack rendered me a wheezing idiot guaranteed him a spot on the Top Ten Most Handsome Men list I’ve been compiling since high school.
He didn't even bat an eye when my dinner was ejected in an awfully unladylike manner. He just held my hair out of the firing zone before cracking open a window to lessen my queasiness. In different circumstances, I would have assumed his chivalrous act was a ploy to get into my panties. But for some reason unbeknownst to me, I know he isn't acting. This is who he is. He's a protector. An alpha male. The very definition of the virile man I usually gobble into my spank bank for future examination.
If my mind would stop veering to the handsome blond agent who created more moisture in my sex than my eyes with his gallant effort tonight, I could come out of this situation a winner. It is a pity my body knows whom it wants, and it doesn’t mind sidestepping equally attractive obstacles until it gets him.
My god—I can still smell the testosterone pumping out of the agent’s pores when he raced across the field with another agent on his back. His back was against the wall, but not once did he give in or cower. He tackled the issue head-on, his fight one I wish Luca could have imitated. If he fought with one-tenth of the grit the agent did tonight, he would be sitting beside me, squeezing my hand like Isaac is.
“Can you open the window? There is too much maleness in this room. It’s suffocating me,” I mutter, blaming the heat of three bodies in a small space for the moisture gliding down my cheeks.
When the unnamed man does as asked—for once—I shift my focus back to Isaac. He has spotted the tears slipping down my face, but thankfully, he acts ignorant—for the most part.
“What does a cartoon have to do with our faces appearing on America’s Most Wanted?” I ask, hoping to get our show back on the road. “I’m sure TV execs won’t display our mugshots during preschool time-slots.”
That hurt just to say. Bye-bye dreams of becoming a lawyer. Hello four by four concrete cell. Maybe I should change my name to Bertha? It’s more befitting of a trailer-living momma with fifteen kids and a husband called Billy.
A quivering breath parts my lips when Isaac brushes away my tears with a sweep of his hand. For how swiftly he removes them, it appears as though their arrival frustrates him as much as me.
Confident my cheeks are moisture-free, he assures, “We won’t be featured on America’s Most Wanted.”
His tone is confident, but it doesn’t lessen my worry in the slightest. “They don’t just have me fleeing a crime scene, Isaac; the surveillance images contain other illegal stuff.” For a woman known for her smarts, I sound like a moron.
For the first time tonight, Isaac’s smirk morphs into a genuine smile. “My contacts handled all aspects of your time at Substanz. As far as anyone is aware, you've never stepped foot in the place, much less operated your little side business from its core."
My spine straightens to a rod, the anger burning my veins sufficient to remove any residual moisture from my eyes. “I’m not a prostitute!”
“Never said you were,” Isaac rebuts, smirking. “Although next time, I recommend not swindling an agent for a bonus.”
“We didn’t know he was an agent.” I’m five seconds from stabbing myself in the throat for how whiny my voice sounds. “We thought he’d be easy prey.”
“Did your dad not teach you anything? If you look hard enough, you’ll spot a sucker in every crowd. He was giving off plenty of signs. None of them screamed ‘sucker.’”
The ridicule in his tone shocks me. “What are you saying? You knew he was an agent all along?”
Isaac nods without pause. “In under a second.”
Spit flies into the air when I make a pfft noise. “Whatever. Even an in-depth search of someone’s private life leaves some stones unturned.”
My mouth falls open when Isaac denies, “Not all the time. I know you very well, and we’ve only just met.”
My eyeroll ends midway when Isaac nips my attitude in the bud by saying, “Regan Myers, graduated top of your high school class, which wasn’t hard considering there were only seventeen other students in your grade.”
I punch him in the arm like we’re old friends, unappreciative of the candor in his tone. Even if it is true doesn’t mean it is laughable.
Isaac continues, “You grew up on a dairy farm in a little town in Texas. Your parents were high school sweethearts who married only a few weeks after their twenty-first birthdays. You were supposed to take a gap year to backpack Europe, but after a financial blunder saw a forty-five percent share of your family’s ranch transferred to foreign investors, you went straight to college, where you’ve remained the past four years, working your tail off in the hope of graduating early.”
His eyes flicker like he is reading my life history in the stalker dictionary inside his head. “Did I miss anything?”
I twist my lips to hide their quiver. “Just a few things.”
When hi
s brow arches in hushed confirmation, I say, "I was crowned Miss Moo Queen my senior year. I had two boyfriends; both were wankers, hence my love of battery-operated company. And my dog's name is Isaac."
Isaac throws his head back and laughs, assuming I am being funny. I’m not. “Woof woof. You’re a miniature chihuahua.” I toss a photo frame from my bedside table onto his lap.
I nearly punch him for a second time when he laughs even louder upon spotting Isaac’s fangless growl.
“He kept biting the cows. They retaliated,” I disclose, smiling my first genuine smile in nearly three years.
Isaac’s eyes lift from my furry companion to me. “Did he learn his lesson?”
I shake my head.
"Then his name suits." He places the frame back in its rightful spot before twisting his torso to face me. "Even when their opponents are ten times their size, Isaacs never stay down. That's why I arrived at Substanz tonight: to lessen the big guy's kick."
He jerks his chin to the business proposal he handed me earlier. “I’ve been watching you for a while, seen the hard work you put in, and that’s why I want you to be a part of my empire.”
Usually, I'd be freaked at a guy admitting he has stalked me, but Isaac doesn't give me the creep factor. He's stern, has a way with words, and looks killer-fabulous in his three-piece suit. “Creep” is not a word I would ever use to describe him.
"I'm not planning to study criminal litigation. My focus will be fixed on business mergers and acquisitions. Nothing against you, but from what I saw tonight, I doubt my skill set could be useful to your business.” My voice dips toward the end of my comment. “You are here for my knowledge, aren’t you?”
This time around, when he chuckles, I don’t hold back my retaliation. I punch him so hard, my knuckles throb. “For a guy who looks suave, you need to up your suaveness. This is the third time tonight you’ve insulted me.”
My stern tone halts Isaac’s laughter. "I insulted you? How?"
"First, you didn't glance at my ass in my practically non-existent leotard when I dove through the chained fence. Second, your hands stayed far away from my womanly curves when you carried me upstairs. And last, but not at all least, you laugh at the thought of us getting naughty without our clothes on. My ego hasn't been this bitch-slapped since Lenny Moron declined my invitation to dance because his mom told him only good girls go to heaven, and supposedly, there were no spots for me since I like sticking my tongue down boys’ throats!"
