by Cindy Dees
He laughed, a short snort of disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? I think you’ve killed me.”
“Ohmigosh. I didn’t even think… Did I hurt you?”
“Good God, no, woman. You pleasured me until I think I’m ruined for any other woman.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Oh! That’s good, isn’t it?” she asked hesitantly.
“Yes, madam astrophysicist, Ph.D. and generally brilliant scholar. That’s exceedingly good.”
“So, then, maybe you’ll want to do that again?”
He laughed beneath her. “Let’s just say that’s a yes. But let me catch my breath first, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“And next time I get to be in charge.”
“Oh, my,” she breathed.
Oh, my, indeed.
Chapter 6
He was ruined for anyone else? Lily snorted. She was the one who’d never be able to look at another man again. She snuggled against Carter’s side as he pulled the edge of the quilt up and over them both. She could stay right here forever. Let the world end. She was happy.
She was still happy when she woke up some time later. Lying on his sleeping chest and gazing up at the stars overhead, she absently calculated from their current positions that nearly five hours had passed, based on the movement of the stars since they’d come up here.
Gravel rolled somewhere nearby. Some night creature out hunting for its supper, no doubt. Except, abruptly she was aware of Carter. He’d woken up and gone rigid beneath her. His hand lifted slowly from her shoulder to press a warning finger against her lips. What did he hear that she didn’t?
Quietly, he pushed the quilt away. Chilly air bit at her skin and she shivered as his arm slid out from under her head. What was going on? She listened with all her might and heard nothing whatsoever. Which, come to think of it, was a little odd. Deserts were usually noisy places at night, filled with clicks and buzzes and odd chirping noises.
Carter pointed to her and then to a modest tumbleweed a few yards away. He wanted her to get behind it? She nodded tentatively. He rolled to his stomach and pushed himself up to a crouch. looking like a Greek statue come to life with the faint starlight shining off his marble skin.
She sat up in time to catch a furtive movement at the edge of the plateau. Her mind exploded in panic. They weren’t alone up here! That was no mouse. That was a man-size shape she’d just glimpsed.
A second shadow joined the first. Had her Russian assailants found them again? How could they have? She was on a supersecret military base. Or more accurately, above one. She thought back frantically. She’d seen no fences when they’d come here. No signs. Nothing to indicate that this was a restricted area. Had the Russians been able to track them somehow and drive right up to their cabin?
That was all the speculation she had time for before Carter’s hand moved behind his back, gesturing sharply toward the little tumbleweed bush. He definitely wanted her to hide. This could not possibly be good.
Carter started to ease forward and she moved backward, trying to glide as noiselessly as he, but then she heard a faint intake of breath. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Carter was completely still. She froze instinctively. What was wrong now?
She glimpsed a shadow moving to their left at the rim of the plateau to flank them. Simple geometry dictated that Carter wheel left to face this threat. But he did nothing. A horrible thought occurred to her. Was it possible? Say it wasn’t so. Not now.
She reversed direction, easing up close behind him, then she reached forward and tried to move his arm.
“I’m okay,” he barely breathed.
What was up, then?
The second shadow started moving to their right. “Hide,” he ordered. Carter fell back. Obviously keeping the bad guys in front of them. She looked around desperately, her mind going a hundred miles per hour. There was only that dinky little bush.
“Gun. My pants,” Carter breathed.
She glanced around desperately as the silent, deadly shadows crept forward. Where were their clothes? There. In a jumbled pile.
Carter leaped for the closest shadow. She dived for the clothes, rifling through them frantically as the second attacker stood up, emboldened by her isolation.
The bad guy charged her. Carter grappled with his man, and they rolled toward the edge of the bluff. There. Something hard and heavy. Desperately, she ripped at the khaki fabric of his pants, turning them right side out and digging for the pocket holding the pistol. But the thing was hopelessly tangled.
Lily whirled as the attacker charged her. Jamming her finger through the trigger guard of the pistol, fabric and all, she pulled the trigger. An enormous explosion knocked her off her feet. She rolled frantically and was just in time to spy Carter and the other man disappear over the precipice. A scream formed in the back of her throat. She regained her feet, seeking her man, pants dangling from her hand.
Peering past the afterimage of the muzzle flash dancing in front of her eyes, she saw that the bad guy was flat on his back. She whirled, terrified. Where was Carter? It was as if some primal, mama bear switch had been thrown in her brain. Protectiveness surged through her. She heard shouting in the distance. The sound of car motors and skidding tires. Somebody’d heard her gunshot. Reinforcements were on the way. Nonetheless, she raced over to where Carter had disappeared and stared downward. She heard rocks sliding, grunting, and then a man’s voice swearing quietly. Thank God. Carter.
A male voice shouted her and Carter’s names from the base of the outcropping.
She shouted back, “One guy’s shot up top and Carter’s around the back of the bluff with another man.”
She heard more voices. Shouted commands. Thankfully, it sounded like everyone below was going around to assist Carter and not coming up here just yet. And that was a good thing. For it had just dawned on her that she was buck naked.
She called out quietly, “I’m sending your pants down to you. Sorry about the hole.”
His voice floated up to her. “No problem.”
She scrambled into her jeans and the GO ARMY sweatshirt just before the first soldier burst onto the plateau.
“Everything okay up here, ma’am?” a voice asked from the edge of the plateau.
“I shot a man. He’s over there. You might want to check on him.”
“Nice shot, ma’am,” the soldier commented. “Straight through the heart. Bled out in seconds.”
She’d killed a man? Oh, God. Ohgod ohgod—
“It’s okay,” the soldier commented casually. “You had to.”
He was right. She’d had to do it. It had been a kill-or-be-killed situation. A remnant of the fierce protectiveness that had surged in her gut before tickled her mind. Still. She’d killed a man. “I think I may have to throw up.”
“Normal reaction to a first kill,” the kid said blithely.
Great. She didn’t need to be a normal killer. She didn’t need to be a killer at all. She hadn’t asked for any of this.
“Is Carter okay?” she asked.
The soldier muttered into his collar. He must have a microphone of some kind there. “Still pursuing his attacker,” he announced.
“You should go down and help them. I’m fine up here. Captain Baigneaux can come get me.”
“Roger, ma’am.” Maybe the soldier was just accustomed to following orders without question, or maybe he was a little dim. But either way, he turned and trotted down the trail, disappearing from sight.
Carter arrived soon after that. He snatched up his sweatshirt and yanked it on. His slacks had a blackened hole on his right hip, but Lily figured saving his life had been worth sacrificing the pants.
“Everything taken care of?” she asked brightly.
He scowled ferociously and didn’t answer. He merely grabbed up the quilt and stalked for the edge of the bluff. She followed behind, perplexed. What was his problem? He stomped down the trail in front of her and barked at the first soldier who reacted to their arriv
al by momentarily bringing a weapon to bear on them. Lily frowned. The kid was just doing his job. It was no big deal.
But Carter stormed past the soldier and barged into the cabin without so much as an apology. She followed behind him, frowning.
Carter snatched open the desk drawers one after another. “Bastard got my flash disk,” he snarled.
She shrugged. “There’s nothing on it that couldn’t have been pulled off the internet. We didn’t make any substantial changes to the equations today because we didn’t have enough computer power to run the calculations. It’s no big deal.”
Carter whirled, incredulous. “No big deal? We nearly died and you shot a man, and you say it’s no big deal?”
“All’s well that end’s well,” she replied cautiously.
“Bull.”
What was his problem?
“We’re getting out of here. Now. For all I know there are more Russians out there waiting to jump us. I’m taking you to H.O.T. Watch and surrounding you with every operator they’ve got. You’re not poking your head out of there until we know exactly what’s going on with that damn asteroid.”
“What’s a hot watch?” she asked.
“C’mon. I’m about to show you.”
Carter’s surly mood didn’t improve one bit as he commandeered a Jeep, loaded her in it and tore out of Camp Nowhere. He drove like a man possessed, racing eastward across the desert. The terrain gradually became hilly and then mountainous. And then the glow of a city illuminated the sky ahead of them. Reno maybe?
All the while, Carter was grim. Tight-jawed. Was he actually in a snit because she’d shot the bad guy? The thought of having taken a human life made her violently nauseous to even contemplate, but why was he freaked out about it? He was a soldier.
Finally, as the skyline of what, indeed, turned out to be Reno came into view, she broke the heavy silence. “What’s going on? Why are you so tense?”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be outnumbered, watch the life of your lover flash before your eyes and be unable to do a damn thing to protect her?”
“You did great! You didn’t freeze up, and you took care of your man. And we weren’t outnumbered. It was even odds.”
“You’re not a soldier,” he ground out. “You don’t count.”
“But everything turned out all right. Although I could have done without having to shoot that guy.”
Carter’s jaw rippled in the dim glow of the dashboard. He didn’t seem to share her optimistic view of the night’s events. “What?” she demanded.
“I’m done. I can’t function in the field anymore. I’m finished as an operator.”
“What’s an operator?”
“A field operative. A Special Forces soldier.”
“Oh. Well, that’s not such a bad thing. There are lots of other things a smart, educated man like you can do with yourself. And frankly, I’ll worry about you less if you’re not getting shot at all the time.”
“Says the pot to the kettle,” he grumbled under his breath.
She gave up trying to coax him out of his irritation with himself and the entire situation. She turned to look out the window at the garish strip of casinos that mimicked its much bigger cousin down the road in Las Vegas.
Carter drove them directly to the local airport and pulled up at a building attached to a big airplane hangar. He opened her car door for her in grim silence. Even mad as a wet rooster, the guy couldn’t stop being polite. It amused her briefly. But then he whirled and stalked inside the building, leaving her to follow in his wake.
By the time she got inside, he was passing a credit card across the counter to a sleepy-looking man. The fellow directed them to a pleasant-enough waiting room while the on-call flight crew was summoned and a sleek business jet towed out of the hangar and prepped to fly. She had to give Carter credit. The guy didn’t mess around. When he said they were leaving now, he meant exactly that.
Before long, they were flying south and east into the early morning, headed for she knew not where. In some alarm, she’d reminded Carter she didn’t have her passport with her, but he didn’t seem to think that was going to be a problem where they were going. Wherever that was. He’d been singularly uncommunicative on that particular subject.
He ordered her gruffly to sleep and then reclined his seat to do the same. She stared at his profile until her eyes burned with fatigue, reminding herself that his complete change of demeanor toward her had nothing to do with the fact that he’d gotten into her pants and was now done with her. But his grouchiness still hurt.
Depressed, she rolled over and allowed herself to drift into restless dreams of blood and dying men reaching out to her in supplication.
She awoke at a brief touch on her shoulder. Carter murmured, “Put your seat up. It’s time to land.”
Interested, she peered out her window and was startled to see nothing but deep blue water below. As she watched, it shifted in color to a deep teal, and then to a beautiful, vivid turquoise that could only be the Caribbean. Carter had mentioned great beaches, so she supposed that made sense.
The plane bumped onto a runway lined with palm trees and white sand. She spied no buildings on her side of the plane. A huge, dark green mountain rose up beyond the trees, perhaps a half-mile away. Steep and symmetrical, it looked volcanic in origin. The jet taxied clear of the runway, and still she spotted no signs of civilization.
The engines shut down and Carter got out of his seat silently. Still being surly even after his nap, huh? She shrugged and unbuckled. Lily followed him outside into muggy, thick heat and stood back as the copilot closed up the jet.
“Stay here,” Carter ordered her. He moved in front of the plane and commenced making hand signals to the pilots. In moments the engines started. Carter waved his hands to guide the plane out of its parking spot. He stood beside her, silent, watching as the jet taxied out to the end of the runway, spooled up its engines to a scream that had her clapping her hands over her ears, and then released its brakes. The plane picked up speed, lifted off and retreated quickly into the distance. Silence fell once more.
She looked around in dismay. They appeared to be stranded in the middle of nowhere. She asked lightly, “So where’s the elevator into the cool underground facility?”
“This way.”
Seriously? She followed him with interest as he took off hiking into the trees. Once they gained the cover of the jungle, a sandy footpath came into sight, winding through the thick tropical foliage. She was sticky with sweat and strands of hair stuck to her forehead before they emerged from the steam heat of the jungle to a beach.
As promised, it was a truly beautiful little beach in the shape of a crescent moon, ringed by white sand and lapped by lazy blue waves. She could go for a dip in that cool, beckoning water right about now.
Carter followed the curve of the beach and she slogged along behind him, struggling through the deep sand. He rounded the headland and disappeared momentarily from sight. As she rounded the point herself, she came to a startled halt. Was that…
No way. A mini-submarine sat low in the water in front of her, its hatch raised as if it was waiting for them.
“C’mon,” Carter said with a little more animation.
She picked her way over the outcropping of sharp rocks to join him.
“I’m going to lift you over to the sub,” he announced. His hands went around her waist, and she was passed to a man nearly as large and muscular as Carter who emerged from the interior of the vessel. Carter leaped across the stretch of water lightly behind her, and they descended a ladder carefully to the interior of the small vessel. Large glass panels in its side kept the thing from feeling too much like a tin can about to be crushed by the massive weight of the water around them.
But her breathing still accelerated as the hatch thunked closed and pressure pushed on her eardrums. The submarine submerged perhaps a dozen feet and cruised at that depth for a little while. She could still see rays of sunlight
streaking the water outside and was able to settle back and enjoy the fish’s eye view of the sea—at least as much as she could while sealed inside a tin can and sunk in the ocean.
“You’re determined to freak me out by finding every confined space you can to stuff me in, aren’t you?” she accused under her breath.
“You know what they say, exposure’s the best cure for a phobia.”
She glanced at him sharply. He was right. And that gave her an idea—
But then the submarine came to a halt, distracting her sharply. The driver fiddled with the controls and the vessel performed a slow ninety-degree pivot. It began to submerge at a very steep angle. The sunlight above disappeared in moments and only blackness was visible outside. Something metallic creaked, and panic ripped through her.
“I don’t like this,” she quavered.
Carter reached over and grabbed her hand. “Look at me,” he ordered.
She glanced up at him, eyes wide and heart pounding.
“We’re heading into a tunnel. It’s not long. It opens into a cave inside an extinct volcano. There’s a huge network of tunnels through this island created by lava flows millions of years ago.”
“Magma,” she corrected absently.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s magma when it’s underground. Only when it emerges above ground does magma become lava.”
“Lava. Magma. Hot, melted rock that carves tunnels and caves out of mountains.”
She smiled at his grumpy tone. Maybe he wasn’t that fond of tiny dark spaces underwater either. Her own panic receded slightly.
The driver spoke up. “We’re almost there. We’ve begun our ascent into the docking cave. Pirates used to use this place to smuggle slaves and whiskey. They’re the ones who supposedly widened this tunnel and smoothed out the walls. Legend has it they hauled barrels of whiskey through here using a system of ropes with men on each end of the tunnel.”
The surface of the water came into sight overhead. Artificial light shone down through it. And then the mini-sub broke the surface and she breathed a sigh of relief as Carter popped open the hatch. “Welcome to H.O.T. Watch, Lily.”
