The Bodyguard

by Adair, Cherry; Showalter, Gena; O'Clare, Lorie

  “ ’Course.”

  She felt the weight of Sebastian’s hand on the small of her back before he started rubbing a circle with his thumb. Michaela wanted to be stoic enough to move out of reach, but the reality was, she craved the comfort of his touch. The caring human contact after being deprived of it for what felt like a lifetime.

  “How much further?”

  “About a hundred and fifty yards. There’ll be at least two security guys at the door. Maybe more now we’re so close to the end game.”

  Michaela slowed her steps. She felt a foolish need to prepare him, even though she knew T-FLAC operatives were prepped no matter where or when. She’d been resigned to her own death, but the thought of losing Sebastian, so soon after being reunited, terrified her.

  “How many on the base total?”

  “There were thirty. Now? I’m not sure. I haven’t seen any of them since last night. They’re just as expendable as the others left behind, so I doubt Tongpan and the other head honchos took any of the guards out with them. They’re here—somewhere.” Michaela rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. Sebastian’s LockOut kept her body climate-controlled, but this chill was bone deep.

  She paused for a moment and took a deliberate, slow-paced breath, a breathing technique she’d learned for situations of high stress when it was important to be centered and in control. She glanced at Sebastian. Solid, grim. There.

  “Don’t underestimate them. They aren’t rent-a-cops. Apparently Dr. Gangjon brought them with him at the beginning of the project. They were combat-trained in Russia or China, practically from birth.”

  “Worried I can’t hold my own?” Sebastian’s teasing voice faded slightly, and she turned to see him literally disappear, as he melted into the background.

  He’d chameleoned against the dirty cream and green wall, duplicating the background exactly and blending in seamlessly.

  “That’s freaking creepy, but very cool.” Even though his image was a very faint shimmering outline, she could still feel the comforting warmth of his large body beside her, and smell his musky scent.

  “Isn’t it, though,” he murmured against her mouth as she turned her face up. His lips were hot, his tongue slick and cool as he slipped it into her mouth.

  The kiss made her blood heat and her skin flush but by necessity was woefully brief.

  Michaela wanted to melt into him. To absorb that warmth into bones she was sure would never be warm again. She’d known she’d die here. Alone and forgotten. And while she had every faith that Sebastian would attempt to extract them, Michaela wasn’t positive that would even be possible. They were fathoms beneath a mile-thick ceiling of solid ice. Hundreds of miles from land. Surrounded by icy ocean.

  She had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

  Sebastian had filled her in as they walked. The rest of the T-FLAC extraction team waited for the two men to teleport to a fishing boat at an undisclosed location.

  The only way out was Sebastian’s partner, Cohen. If anything happened to him . . . Unless Michaela and Sebastian found the wizard within the next four hours and he could teleport them the hell out of Dodge, they’d die here.

  No Cohen, no way out.

  She felt the hair on her nape lift moments before Sebastian’s large, warm hand brushed against her chilled skin. “I’m not going to allow anything to stop you—”

  “I know. Thank you. It helps having a bodyguard.” Nobody would see him. But they’d sure as hell see her, and if they suspected anything—had even a hint of what she planned to do—they’d kill her first and ask questions later. A full-body shudder rippled through her.

  “Think of me as your personal Kevlar.” Sebastian’s fingers tightened around the back of her neck. Warm and solid. “Nobody will stop you. And no one, I mean no one, is going to hurt you.”

  “From your lips . . .”

  She wished she felt a tenth of Sebastian’s confidence. Up until now she’d been fine with her fate. It was a shitty, unfair fate, but it was the hand she’d been dealt. But Sebastian showing up had instantly changed all that. Suddenly she wanted more. Craved it with every cell in her body.

  She wanted time to be loved. Time to share walks on a sunny fall afternoon through the colorful carpet of orange leaves with him. Time to share morning coffee and snuggle up under a blanket with him on Sunday mornings. Time to grow old together.

  None of it was going to happen. She’d missed out on her chance when she’d been too confused by her own feelings to tell Sebastian exactly why she couldn’t marry Cole.

  No, there hadn’t been a moment’s regret, until now.

  “This is it. No guards, which is odd.” Michaela eyed the shimmering space she still hoped was Sebastian, then slid her key card through the security reader.

  Usually two of Tongpan’s men were stationed outside the door. Their absence made her uneasy, but it made this considerably easier. No security other than a card access. Only a dozen crucial players were still on the base. No one expected sabotage at this juncture. They’d all been working too hard for this moment, for their promised release. A promise that would never be delivered; because in three hours, everyone left behind would be dead. No loose ends.

  The lighting was brilliant, and she squinted as she always did as her eyes adjusted. For the past two years she’d spent twelve hours a day in this room. But the faint electrical hum of the machinery and the shadowless surgical brilliance of the overhead lighting didn’t feel in any way comforting or give off any warmth. It was cold. Endlessly and unforgivingly cold.

  Sebastian shimmered back into a visible form beside her, and she had to keep herself from jumping back at his instant reappearance.

  He snagged her upper arm. “How were you planning on getting out of here?” He narrowed his eyes, the planes of his face turning hard. “You weren’t, were you?”

  She shrugged. “I was dead either way. If they discovered what I did, or I’d refused to do what they wanted, they’d have tortured me to death, no question about it. At least this way, I’d die knowing I’d managed to save a few million other people. Fair trade, wouldn’t you say? Although, I don’t know if Ackart and Gromyko see it that way.” She went to her usual workstation and turned on the monitor, settling into her chair for the thousandth, and maybe the last, time.

  “Jesus, Michaela—”

  “I was okay with it,” she told him. She threw him a brief smile, then gave all her attention to the glowing screen, checking and rechecking the numbers, comparing them to the codes in her head. A weapons lab in China had done the original design, but most of the construction and precautions had been implemented by Michaela and the rest of Tongpan’s team. “There wasn’t multiple-choice.”

  “Well, while not multiple, we do have a choice. As soon as you take care of that, we locate Cohen, and we’re outta here. Do what you have to do. Can you talk me through it, or would talking me through your process be distracting?”

  “Considering a degree in nuclear physics?” Her eyes sparkled as she rose to cross the room to a setup that looked like something out of a 1950s, science-fiction B movie. What the hell?

  “Just call it latent curiosity,” Sebastian told her easily. Jesus, the equipment was as old and dilapidated-looking as everything else on the sub base. Damn place hadn’t been used in more than forty years. “Just curious how this is going to go down.”

  “The fission-bomb triggers of most H-bombs are solid or hollow spheres of fissionable material—hollow in this case. See here?” She shoved hair out of her eyes as she indicated the silvery orb surrounded by wires running every which way. The weapon was shiny new. Top-of-the-line. Big.

  Jesus.

  He braced a hand on the console beside her and took a cautious look inside the belly of the beast.

  “That’s Uranium-235 surrounded by a sphere of explosives. Delicate choreography is required in detonating the explosive, because it must explode perfectly symmetrically on all sides so that a perfectly spherical ingoing wave of e
xplosive force momentarily compresses the fissionable sphere to a density at which the nuclear explosion occurs. If the explosion is not sufficiently symmetrical, the explosion becomes a ‘fissle,’ a failed nuclear explosion.”

  “An excellent goal,” he muttered facetiously, watching her slender fingers working with the precision of a surgeon within the tangle of wires. “What’s next?”

  “Cut the wires to the detonators to disable them on one side of the sphere of explosives. The explosion will be asymmetrical, and the bomb will become a fissle.” Michaela straightened, a satisfied look on her face. “Done. Nothing will reverse what I’ve done. We have two hours, thirty-seven minutes before they expect detonation.”

  She didn’t tell Sebastian that the explosion, given what she’d done, would still be considerable. Not large enough to melt the polar ice cap but big enough to destroy the base and anyone in it. If he got them out, great. If not, well, he wouldn’t spend his last two hours worrying about being blown to hell.

  “Good.” He took her hand. “Let’s find Cohen, and get the hel—”

  Cohen strolled in. His gaze flickered from the computers to Michaela. “What the fuck is she doing here? And she’s wearing your LockOut?” the other man muttered, clearly incredulous. “Jesus, man.” Cohen caught Sebastian’s eye and raised a brow. “Good times, huh?”

  Sebastian tugged Michaela behind him. She resisted, but he had brute strength and a deep, sinking, oh-shit feeling as he looked at his by-the-book partner. “She’s coming with us.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” His eyes glittered with fury. He clearly had a job to do, and now Sebastian had thrown a monkey wrench into their plans. Cohen raised his SIG Sauer, pointing straight at her forehead.

  “Dr. Giese didn’t come to this facility willingly,” Sebastian informed him calmly, struggling to keep a wiggling, equally pissed Michaela behind him. “Nor was she a willing participant in this scheme.”

  “Says who? Dr. Giese? Quit thinking with your dick, Tremayne. Ever considered Stockholm syndrome? Step aside. We have our orders and very little time to implement them.”

  Sebastian stared Cohen down over the barrel of the loaded SIG. “Over my dead body.”

  “Sebastian—,” Michaela whispered fiercely. He ignored her, his attention fixed on his partner.

  “Whatever it takes.” Cohen’s finger squeezed the trigger.

  The loud retort of a gunshot reverberated through the room.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Damn it! Michaela thought, freaked out. She was wearing Sebastian’s LockOut. He was a sitting fricking duck and could be hit anywhere.

  One thing Michaela knew for sure: the bullet hadn’t gone through and through. She would be injured as well. It literally felt as though her heart had stopped beating as she managed to untangle herself and get in front of him. Using both hands as well as her eyes, she searched his chest for a large entry wound.

  “Damn it, Tremayne. Don’t you dare have a fricking-fracking hole in y—”

  He grabbed both hands in one of his and yanked her behind him again. That really pissed her off. Adding annoyance to sheer terror made her light-headed. She would have made a shitty field operative. “Give me a break, damn it. Stop throwing me around, Tremayn—”

  The stench hit her before she managed to peer around Sebastian’s biceps. “What the—” Cohen was sprawled on the floor, assorted fluids seeping out of his body. There was a great deal of shockingly red blood where his head should’ve been. After several thundering heartbeats, her horrified gaze tracked upward as her brain computed the sequence of events. Someone had shot Sebastian’s partner before he managed to squeeze off that fatal shot. Relief flooded her, then was just as quickly dispelled, replaced by terror.

  Popov, Ling, and Malard had come back! They were accompanied by six security guys who fanned out inside the door.

  All three hundred sweaty pounds of Afanasei Popov alone could block the doorway. He’d struck her so hard for some perceived infraction a few months back that he’d knocked her out cold. His expression said he was ready to do worse. Michaela shuddered.

  Popov shuffled aside to allow room for tiny Bin-gwen Ling, who stood barely five feet tall. He was a classic example of short-man syndrome—ready to rip your head off to show that he could do it, forever compensating in all the wrong ways. He, too, was a sick son of a bitch. Intolerant of the smallest perceived infraction, he was a sarcastic, neurotic sadist specializing in martial-arts torture techniques that caused immobilizing pain without leaving a mark.

  Beside him stood Malard. The pretentious dickhead was usually unobtrusive except when he was being as mean and spiteful as the snake that he was. His thin lips were drawn back in a feral smile, exposing a full set of large, bad British teeth.

  The three senior scientists were sadistic bastards, but it was the beefy Russian bodyguards who held automatics. Frick!

  Every weapon remained leveled at Sebastian’s head. “Freeze,” Popov said briskly. “Hands above your head. You too, Dr. Giese.”

  He’d watched too many American movies, Michaela thought, raising her hands as the men advanced farther into the room. Every fiber of her being was attuned to Sebastian as he subtly shifted his center of gravity.

  Bad idea, bad, bad idea. Nine to one—All right, one and a quarter. Her training had been years ago, a formality when she’d joined T-FLAC. She was just one of many brainiacs. She hadn’t been proficient at hand-to-hand even back then. She might be fit and in shape, but not remotely strong enough to take down a determined-to-kill-her man with a gun and certainly not an expertly trained tango or three. She’d fought her best with Sebastian earlier and might as well have been a gnat buzzing around him for all the damage she’d done.

  She scanned the room for a weapon of some kind. Everything was bolted down, part of, attached to something immovable or out of reach. Not a crowbar or Uzi to be had. Crap.

  The men advanced into the room, forming a semicircle ten feet in front of them.

  “Higher.” Popov pulled out a small black gun, adding it to the arsenal aimed at them. He waved the barrel at Sebastian’s raised arms, and he obligingly lifted them another quarter of an inch. “Who sent you? The U.S.? Rossiya?” That Tremayne might be Russian did not please Popov any more than the other choices. Probably less.

  Nerves clearly on a hair trigger, and without removing his unblinking stare, Popov addressed Michaela when she shifted her feet. “Please not to move, Dr. Giese.” His accent thickened with his agitation. “Well?” he barked, almost unintelligible. “Are you military?” He paused as Ling tugged at his coat sleeve. “What is it?” Clearly annoyed at the interruption, Popov leaned over so the smaller man could whisper in his ear.

  Popov’s bald head shot up, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “What?! He vozmozhno! Heyt! That cannot be. T—” With a start, he blinked behind the smudged lenses of his glasses. “FLAC . . .” Popov trailed off, his skin pasty white and pearly with sweat as Sebastian suddenly just . . . disappeared.

  Thanks for the heads-up, honey.

  He’d chameleoned. Any advantage Sebastian could come up with was better than this Mexican standoff. Michaela managed to look as startled and nervous as the bad guys as she backed out of the way to give Sebastian room to maneuver.

  Invisible, Sebastian assured himself that Michaela was as far away as she could get. There was nothing for her to hide behind. He had to reassure himself that she was a trained professional and that she was wearing LockOut from neck to toe.

  “Bloody hell!” The English guy with bad teeth backed up. “Another wizard for crapsake?!”

  Not quite. But close enough.

  “You should have shot him on sight,” the Chinese man—Ling—screamed, looking around wildly and waving his arms in front of his face as if to ward off a ghost.

  Ghost Chameleon, Tremayne thought with satisfaction, advancing on the nearest security guard and ripping his weapon from his hand.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  T
hree guards dropped to the cement floor in quick succession.

  Pop.

  Four down.

  For an instant, fear rounded Ling’s eyes as Sebastian slammed him against the doorjamb with his fist. Ling staggered from the impact, looking around wildly, his face gray with fear. “Shoot him! Shoot him!” With each syllable his voice rose another octave. Sebastian punched him on the jaw, and the guy went down like a rock, crumpling across the doorway near Cohen.

  Chaos ensued. For all his bulk, the fat guy moved fast, using the two remaining security guys and the Englishman as a barricade.

  “He can’t get past us,” Popov shouted as Sebastian went for his weapon next. The fat guy wasn’t about to give it up without a fight and gripped the SIG in a meaty fist.

  Sebastian couldn’t be seen, but he could be felt. He gave a swift deliberate kick that should have lodged Popov’s gonads somewhere around the region of his ears. As the huge tango gasped, Sebastian clamped his hand down, squeezing the sausage-like fingers hard around the weapon. He kept moving, dodging out of the way as the security men tried to grab him.

  A bullet missed his head by a whistling inch, then slammed into the solid metal door behind him with a high-pitched screech, missing the still-unconscious Ling by a millimeter.

  The more frenzied and confused, the more frightened the men became, the calmer and more centered Sebastian became. He lived for shit like this. Although having Michaela in the room, exposed as she was, didn’t make him happy.

  A quick glance to assure himself she was okay got him a lucky punch to the shoulder from Ling, who’d come around and snuck up on him between the guards’ bodies. At Ling’s triumphant shriek, everyone turned. Now knowing approximately where Sebastian was, everyone converged on the spot and tried to grab him at the same time.

  He was the piñata, Sebastian thought grimly, dropping to his knees and crawling between their legs to come up behind them as they uselessly swung their arms, hoping to make another lucky strike.

  He squeezed off another shot, which was deflected as Popov ran into him, purely by happenstance, knocking him ass over elbow with his rotund body. Sebastian grabbed the front of Popov’s heavy parka, pulling him down with him. He managed to roll out of the way seconds before the Russian hit the floor with a thud.