He knew if they could make it to the next ditch, they could follow it to the outskirts of the city, and to the outskirts of battle where DARC Ops manned an operations headquarters. He knew they there they could at least say hello to each other. The mystery of that hello and of her name and her story propelled him faster, him wanting to unlock this little secret that stumbled upon him. A gift, perhaps.
And perhaps a curse.
But the only thing he wanted now was to have a chance for both of them to find out.
5
Sophia
So many questions swirled around her head as she fought to keep up the pace with the American soldier ahead of her. So many things she wanted to ask . . . But now wasn’t the time. Not when he had a grip of her wrist, pulling her along to match his speed. Not when he’d growled the first time she tried stopping and asking who he was.
In her heart, she already knew.
He was a friend. Her savior.
She’d somehow gotten lucky, after the drugged sleep and the imprisonment. She was one of those rare fools who had gotten lucky in Afghanistan. Only now she just wished she could live to tell about it. Living, as she quickly came to understand, meant listening to this man and running with him. And running faster when he growled about it again.
Running through another long ditch, Sophia still wasn’t sure what all had happened, the exact chain of events that had led up to this. Most importantly, she didn’t have a single clue why she was kidnapped in the first place. She had so many friends in Kabul, so many of her father’s men looking after her like she was their own daughter. It didn’t make sense. And Mr. Abbas . . . She’d been with him last. She might not have thought he was a completely ethical man, but she’d at least trusted him not to kidnap her.
So many questions. But all she really knew was that she was utterly terrified.
Terrified and running, and running out of breath. Her heart pounded so loudly she felt it in her ears. Adrenaline propelled her forward though the muscles in her legs trembled beneath her. Her back tense with her fear; she continued on, her breath escaping from her throat in harsh gasps.
“Hold on,” she struggled to say, gasping in the quick silence between words. “Wait.”
She had finally stopped him, both of them staring at each other and breathing hard. Looking at her, something in the man’s face had suddenly changed. Softened. And then he yanked her arm again and went back to their sprint away from the voices, gunfire, and explosions.
A few minutes later, down into a gully near the outskirts of town, after constantly checking behind them for enemy progress, her supposed savior finally stopped and pushed her up against a rock. He wasn’t breathing hard anymore. His eyes were focused and calm. His face, loose. He looked so ready for anything, any insanity that she might say to him. She felt ready for it, too.
It was darker here, and more difficult to read him. To know who he was, to know for sure that he was helping her. Pushed up against him and against a boulder, out of sight, felt only just a little safer. The tiniest glimmer of light shone down at them from a faint sliver of a moon. Sophia felt an inch tall.
“I’m Declan Flynn,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
At first, she was a little surprised at the gruffness of his greeting, his question. But then she remembered the context, the atmosphere, the life-threatening bullshit they’d just run from.
“I’m Sophia Sweeney,” she said. “My father’s is John Sweeney, and I was sent here in his place just to . . .” She suddenly realized she’d forgotten why the hell she was in Kabul in the first place. Had she gotten a concussion? An aftereffect from whatever nasty drug had taken her down?
The only somewhat useful phrase she could think of saying was, “Afghan art . . . I’m from New York, the Museum of Art, I’m head of the Middle Eastern section.”
The bugs . . . The fucking bugs. She was sent to place surveillance devices all throughout Mr. Abbas’s mansion. Yes, her trip was for art, and for wining and dining with her father’s friends, but it was also to bust a case wide open. Was this man standing before her attempting the same thing? Or was he part of the problem?
She wasn’t sure how much to tell him about the bugs. Instead, she left it at the art.
She could tell, through the darkness, that he only half believed her. Three-quarters believed her, at best. He said, “Sophia . . .”
“What?”
“This isn’t about art,” he said quietly.
“I know that.” She bit her lip, contemplating the truth. He’d risked his life to save her. She owed him that. “I . . . I planted some bugs in the home of a wealthy Afghani—”
“What?” he gasped. “You’re a spy?” The way he said it terrified her, his voice filled with dismay and anger.
“No! No . . . not really . . . I—we . . . oh, it was just a few bugs! I’m not a spy! I don’t know anything about—”
“Come on,” he said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think I was drugged.” Her head still felt so full and foggy, her vision a million miles away. She damn well knew she’d been drugged. The effects were still there and still strong. Could he know about them, too? Was she slurring?
“We need to get back,” Declan said. “Have you checked out by our medic. So, you were drugged, and then what?”
“I got back to my hotel. Changed into my pajamas . . . then I don’t remember anything else. I woke up in this basement or something, this holding cell.” She tried to remember who had come to visit her. What they’d said. All she remembered right now was the tray of food they’d dropped for her. And then her using it like a shovel, desperate, clawing away, raging in the dark.
The fresh air felt so good on her face. A cool desert breeze ruffled her hair, and alone here with Declan, she felt so immaculately free.
“And then I used a food tray, breaking it in half and using it to dig through this mud wall. And I guess that was when you saw me, running out of there. I had no idea where I was going.” She looked around, in both directions down the gully. “I still don’t know.”
“I do,” Declan said, lowering his chin to his radio and talking very quietly into it. Coordinates. An evacuation. Backup. Sophia already felt so much safer just hearing the process. Half the words and phrases she couldn’t even understand, even if she hadn’t just been drugged. She wasn’t used to this. She was an art history major.
Don’t cry.
Don’t break down.
“We’re going to be okay,” Declan said. “We just have to wait for a pickup.” He reached over and squeezed her arm gently. “You did good,” he said. “You did good.”
She knew then that it was over. She would be fine. She wanted to stay with him. Be safe with him.
While waiting for further orders, Declan still looking around, his gun propped and ready to fire, she began telling the story. At least the bits that she knew and understood. There was so much of it that she couldn’t understand. Still so many questions that even he couldn’t answer. But it was at least a start. It was a rescue. And he was her rescuer.
“And that’s it? All of it?” he quietly demanded.
She nodded.
“I swear, Sophia . . .”
A stern rescuer, with maybe a bit of a chip on his shoulder . . .
“ . . . if you don’t do exactly as I say, you’ll end up getting us both killed.”
She swallowed back the lump in her throat, nodded, then finally said, “I know. I will.”
6
Declan
He couldn’t believe it. This little wisp of a woman with no experience—military or otherwise—was used to plant bugs at the home of a known Taliban supporter. What was she thinking? More importantly, what were the people who put her up to such a mission thinking?
So what was he supposed to do now? Make all her problems go away? It was so typical of Jackson to offer just enough information to compel Declan into action, leaving the real meat of the issue, the real risks, hidden clev
erly behind such a pretty exterior as Sophia’s face.
Damn, she was pretty.
But he wanted, at once, to radio Jackson and give him another piece of his mind, but he knew he couldn’t. His job was to follow orders, not question them. He wanted nothing more than to forget for a moment how gorgeous she was, and just hammer home the insanity of the whole situation. His call on the radio hadn’t yet been answered, but that wasn’t damning. Not with bombs still exploding around them. But as he cautiously walked Sophia out of their hiding spot, up out of their ditch and, eventually, into the small nondescript shack that was the squad’s temporary HQ, he realized that sort of communication would be impossible.
The place had been bombed to hell.
Entering it and accounting for any injured or dead had been made impossible by its implosion. Now it was just a mound of destruction. No shelter. No men. No radio.
Where had his squad gone? Had they made it out alive? He remained in the shadows as he looked around him, but the streets were quiet. Sophia, too, held quiet, as if knowing the type of worried thoughts that swirled around his head. He was glad she didn’t say anything, glad for the space. He needed it to save them.
“We’ll go into the hills,” he finally told her. “That was our fallback. We’ll go there and get in touch with Jackson, then we’ll get you out of here.”
She was still staring at him, blank-faced.
Declan said, “Have you fired a weapon before?”
Still blank. Still nothing.
“I’ll take that as a no. But just in case you need it,” he drew his handgun halfway from the side holster, ready to show it to her, when Sophia’s hand came across and blocked him.
“No,” she said. “Just let me go.”
“Let you go?”
“Just let me . . .” She looked around again. The poor girl seemed to have picked up the habit of startling at every odd little sound. Watching her, Declan knew she wouldn’t survive the night alone.
“Just let you what?” he said. “Just let you run off and get killed? Kidnapped again? You know how much of a pain in the ass it was to find you?” She didn’t say anything. She likely didn’t know. How could she know?
“A lot of people risked their life for you today. Including me. And you just want to go?” He did his best to hold anger and frustration in check. She was a civilian. She didn’t know. She was naïve and foolish—not just for the part she played in bugging that guy’s mansion, but even being here in Afghanistan in the first place. An art major. He grunted in disbelief.
“I just want to go back to the airport, back to Spain.” She was rubbing her eyes now, her voice sounding weak and tired.
She reminded him of a little girl, separated from her parents at the park or the zoo. His heart softened. He couldn’t expect her to act like him, a soldier who’d been through this sort of thing more than once. A man who lived every day with a big question mark hanging over his head. Was this the day he would die? “I know,” Declan said softly.
“My mother’s waiting for me there. In Spain. She’s probably . . . God, she’s probably so worried.”
“Well, let’s not give her anything extra to worry about.”
Sophia said, “I know.”
“So then stay with me.”
Quieter, she said again, “I know.”
“You know if you go back, they’ll kill you.” Now he was looking around. “There’s too many eyes here, watching for foreigners, no way to arrange any type of conventional travel without drawing too much attention. Plus, you don’t have any documentation. Right? What do you have on you?”
“Why? You want to make sure I’m who I say I am?”
“I know who you are,” Declan said, despite the knowledge that he really didn’t. He was trusting her to tell him the truth. Was she? How the hell could he know for sure? All she was, at least before their meeting, was a mission. A risk for him, and for her, a tragedy waiting to happen. But now, looking at her, listening to her trembling voice, feeling her trembling beside him . . .
Although it went against everything he’d trained for, keeping his emotions cool and detached from the objective, Declan knew that it also gave him a bit of an edge to feel at least a little attachment. Just a little bit at stake. A mission like this, a woman like Sophia, could keep his attention. Keep him honest.
Then he watched her head jerk to the side, her ear tipped into the wind. Declan had heard it, too. Voices. Definitely not American voices. Definitely not friendly.
He knew enough Farsi to understand the conversation, two men arguing about where to look for two asshole Americans. Their voices, and their search, were only a short distance away. As they spoke, that distance shortened.
It was almost as if Sophia knew the drill, not waiting this time for Declan to push her down and cover her. She was the prey. Hunters were after them. Maybe now she realized that it was for her own good. Now she wanted to be hidden and protected. And he wanted her under his protection, huddling close against her warm body as the voices grew louder.
If they could just hold still and hold quiet . . .
There was a soft warm feeling at his chin. He felt her breath on his lips, and then her lips were on his. Kissing him. Frozen, stunned beyond imagination, he could do nothing to stop her. He couldn’t move and give away their position. The sensation had completely taken him out of the moment, and out of the danger, and he was happy for the brief respite. Of course, it was also completely insane. She was scared out of her mind and doing this, kissing him like they were two back-seated teenagers.
Voices came even closer . . .
It should have knocked some sense into Declan. It should have scared him back into duty, into doing the smart, right thing. He should have known better. Now was not exactly the best time for getting his rocks off, despite his clearly feeling the arousal grow in him.
Another kiss, this time Declan doing the hunting, finding her mouth in the dark.
No, he did not know better.
The only thing Declan knew for certain was that this woman and their huddling together were going to create a lot of trouble.
7
Sophia
Despite the voices, the danger, she almost wished they could do more than kiss. She couldn’t even explain the feelings to herself. A desire for the ultimate human contact. A contact that signified life and survival. A feeling similar to desperation and not wanting to die alone. For just a second, she wanted to think of anything but what might happen in the next few minutes. Forget the whole world for a moment. Forget everything else outside of their little hiding spot.
Sophia wasn’t surprised when it was he who remembered past their embrace, Declan who couldn’t forget about the two approaching men. He stiffened. She felt him inhale, then hold his breath. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but now Declan’s body told her everything. She could feel his muscles and his limbs, tensing up around her. It was a different kind of excitement, one that wasn’t as much fun as that momentary kiss.
Despite the fact that she might not be alive long enough to understand it, Sophia felt something. Something strong for this man who knew nothing about her, yet was now risking his life to keep her concealed and safe. Risking his life to get her home to her family.
A surge of emotion swept through her. Appreciation, for him. Humbling, for herself. Was she worth his life? Could any person’s life be worth that of another? Could he save her, let alone himself? That outcome seemed a little less likely now, with the growing number of voices. They overlapped and increased in urgency. She understood Middle Eastern art, but not the languages. Certainly not the words used for finding two Americans in a ditch. Finding them and maybe killing them. After her escape, she was almost certain that would be the result.
It would be the result if they stayed there, staying still, no matter Declan’s best intentions and efforts to hide her.
She mouthed his name against his lips, frozen and still as he. He mouthed back.
�
�I know.”
What did he know? That she was desperate to get the fuck out of there? And why wasn’t he already moving? She knew why. Their pursuers were too close. Any slight move: the crunch of a pebble beneath their feet, a slip of dirt, the snap of a twig or the brush against a rock. Then, when she feared their hiding place would be discovered any second, the voices moved off, the men muttering softly among themselves.
She assumed he knew other, more useful things. Military stuff. He knew training, and escape. Military tactics that would keep them alive.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Declan whispered. He urged her to move forward with him, crab-crawling near the base of the embankment.
So, they both knew, then . . . She was relieved to finally be on the right side of logic, to finally be on the move away from the voices. It was a relief, hearing the sound of the search party grow quieter as she and Declan scurried away. They’d almost heard nothing at all.
But she didn’t have to listen for it.
She could see it.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her heart thumped once in a surge of absolute fear. Through the faint light of the moon, Sophia spotted two men standing around only a short distance away; standing way too casually. It was the best they could do, surprised as they were to spot two Americans almost walking right into them. Rifles not even having a chance to be drawn.
A chance for her and Declan, her American soldier already lurching up out of their crouched crawl and charging at the two men, ready to take them both on. Terrible odds, but better than surrendering. She followed his lead, thrashing her arms around, clawing and scratching into one of them. But the man she attacked was too strong. Finally, thrown down into a cloud of dust, the breath gushing from her lungs with a loud grunt, all she had left was one lucky kick into the groin of the man above her, the man holding a rifle on her. Her lower shin connected perfectly with his balls, the man doubling over. She felt damned lucky he didn’t pull the trigger of his rifle. He grunted and doubled over. Her eyes widened with recognition as her stomach tightened to a sickening knot. Sajad. The creepy son of the art dealer. She scrambled to her feet, turned to help Declan, but too late.
Dark Escape (DARC Ops Book 10) Page 4
