Black-Market Body Double (S.A.S.S. Book 1)

by Vicki Hinze

“Desperate to stop you before you destroyed any more lives.” She bucked and he lost his seat atop her. She twisted, slammed a foot into the back of his head at the base of his skull. His head jerked, but he’d been braced, ready for the blow, and that prevented his neck from breaking.

  He rolled, caught her by the arms and seized the advantage. She fought back, doing her best to reclaim it. They tumbled in the dirt, slammed fists to flesh, traded punches and jabs and kicks until both were huffing, winded and covered in sweat and blood.

  Amanda couldn’t sustain hand-to-hand combat against him much longer. He was well trained, larger and stronger. More importantly, he was intimately familiar with every survival technique she’d been taught and some she’d never before seen used. The longer this played out, the greater the odds Reese would win, and she and Mark would wind up dead.

  Marking her time, she backed off, parried, and finally got an opening. She stopped, dropped and rolled, snagged her hatchet and then bounced to her feet. Knowing he expected her to come at him with the hatchet, she feinted and thrust hard with a series of kicks that had him sprawled in the dirt. He hit his head on a rock and from the way he shook it, she knew he was seeing double. Before he found his balance, she had him pinned. “Where’s Kunz?”

  He smiled, his mouth red-rimmed with blood. “He’s not dead, Amanda. He’ll be along after you soon.”

  She’d be along after him sooner. He’d deliberately allowed her to escape with Mark’s double so he could fake his own death then disappear until the heat on him cooled and he could rise like a phoenix to press on with his slimy business of selling and stealing other people’s lives. “I asked a question and I want an answer, Reese. You can respond or wear a Mohawk. I don’t care which.” He was a sorry excuse for a human being. Not an ounce of merit in him.

  Reese laughed and groaned simultaneously. His right wrist was broken and, gauging by the gurgle in his breathing, he’d suffered a few broken ribs. “You thought you had him. He never evacuated, Amanda. He was there all the time.”

  “In Texas?” She couldn’t believe it. “Do I look stupid, Reese? The FBI has crawled over every inch of that compound. There’s nothing left to it.”

  “Apparently, you’re all stupid. He isn’t in the compound, Amanda. He never was.” He laughed again, deeper. “He’s under it. None of your ace investigators looked under it. You, of all people, should have thought of that. You ran the maze of tunnels yourself in Afghanistan.”

  Oh, man. She had to warn Colonel Drake. But first, she had to secure Reese. Her legs were shaking now; she didn’t have the stamina for another round with him. Amanda stood up. “Move and I’ll kill you.” She moved to her gear to get some rope. He was going to die for hitting her, but he was going to tell her every single thing he knew about GRID and Thomas Kunz first.

  Prone on the ground, Reese eased his left hand to his waist, pulled out a snub-nosed .38 and drew down on her.

  Amanda caught the flash of the metal in the moonlight, reacted instinctively, and threw the hatchet. It sank deep in the center of Paul Reese’s chest.

  The gun fell harmlessly to the ground. Reese slumped forward, chest to knees, and then swayed to the side until he lay bent on the ground.

  Shaking, Amanda retrieved her hatchet, checked for a pulse and felt nothing. Reese was dead.

  Mark.

  She returned to the tomb, hacked away at the mortar and soon punched through a small opening. “Mark? Mark, are you there?”

  “Amanda?” He sounded afraid to believe.

  Her throat went thick and a hitch caught in her chest. “It’s me,” she said, her voice a husky rasp. “I’m here.” Oh, God. He was still alive. He was here and alive!

  “Water.”

  Remembering, again feeling that insatiable thirst, she swallowed hard. “I know. I’m hurrying.” Tears flooded her eyes and she swung harder, faster, with renewed force. Mark was alive. “Get as far away from the hole as you can. I’m using a hatchet.”

  “Don’t miss.”

  She laughed through her tears, her vision blurred, her nose still stinging. “I won’t.”

  Finally, the hole was large enough and she passed the canteen through to him.

  “Thank God.” He snagged it, and the sounds of him chugging down water echoed.

  A lump in her throat, she worked with renewed fervor. Finally, the hole was large enough and he climbed out.

  When he stood on the ground before her, she stilled with the hatchet in hand and just stared at him. In an odd twist, her first thought was to wonder. Was he really Mark? Or was he another of Mark’s doubles?

  Kunz had been good enough at mind games to pull off a double-switch. Of course he had been.

  But had he done it with Mark?

  Her nerves wired tight, she opened her mouth to investigate. Yet before she could say a word, Mark smiled and it touched his eyes. “In plain sight,” he said, then opened his arms to her.

  She dropped the hatchet, stepped into his arms and curled hers around his waist, then breathed in deeply. The familiar scent of his skin filled her, melted the fear of his being anyone else, and it drained away. She smiled and hugged him hard, relieved and happy from the heart out. “In plain sight, baby,” she said, passing him back the canteen without drinking from it.

  He drank deeply, then found her mouth and they kissed without restraint or pretense, ignoring the pain of bruises and battles, the dirt caking skin, the sweat and the thirst for water, taking total joy and heart in quenching their thirst for something longer-lasting and more real: the first touch of the reunion they had feared would never be.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They walked along the edge of the highway in the dark, and rounded a bend in the road. The C-5 came into view, and Amanda glanced at Mark.

  His jaw hung loose, stunned. “Heck of a parking place, hon.”

  “We use what we’ve got.” She smiled and clasped his hand, oddly content to be touching him.

  He squeezed her fingers. “I thought about you a lot while I was in that tomb, Amanda.” His voice turned sober. “And while I knew you were with my double.”

  She wasn’t ready to tell him what had happened between her and his double, but it looked as though she wasn’t going to have a choice. And, being honest with herself, if their positions were reversed, she would want answers now, too. She could hardly ask more from him than of herself. But, oh, man, would she like to. “Mark, you know how I feel about men—because of my...”

  “Father.”

  She nodded, even now unable to make herself say the word aloud. “But I trust you, and things between us...well, they got...intense and personal.”

  “How personal?” He didn’t look at her. “A little personal or really personal?”

  “Really personal. Emotionally.”

  “Not physically?”

  “We were waiting for doors to open because of an aversion—“

  “Got it.”

  “I thought he was you. So did he.” She swallowed down a boulder that seemed to have wedged in her throat. This was hard. Much harder than she had imagined it would be, and that had been pretty bad. “Later, I found out you weren’t you and I felt as if I’d betrayed you. And I felt betrayed.”

  “You felt angry,” he countered, still not meeting her gaze.

  She didn’t know whether or not to be grateful, but it felt like a merciful thing. “That, too,” she admitted with a little shrug. There was little sense in denying the obvious. “I finally trust a man, and he isn’t the man I think he is. He’s someone pretending to be the man I trust. Yeah, you bet I was angry. But I was...other things, too.”

  “I can imagine.” He worried at his inner lip with his teeth for a long moment, then stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You were embarrassed because you’d been fooled and manipulated.”

  “Yes.” She definitely had been.

  He went on. “You were furious because you hadn’t been able to tell the difference between him and me, and outraged be
cause you’d finally let your guard down to a man and he deceived and used you.”

  She blew out a sharp breath that puffed her cheeks. “All of that, too.”

  He stopped on the road and turned to face her. “But most of all, I think you were scared of what might have happened to me, or what was happening to me. Am I right about that?”

  She searched his eyes, her own heart, and knew that hiding her emotions and locking them in her internal safe was part of her past, not her future. “Yes, you’re most right about that.”

  He clasped her shoulders, the night breeze ruffling his hair, blowing cool on her heated face. “I understand, Amanda,” he said softly. “All of it.”

  The backs of her eyes burned. He couldn’t know or understand. “You don’t,” she insisted, determined to get this out in the open. If they were going to go anywhere in this relationship, they had to start with a foundation based on truth.

  “I do,” he insisted. “Honestly.”

  “You can’t, it’s not possible.” A hot rush of agony pierced her chest. “I kissed him, Mark, and I told him things. I—I thought he was you—but—oh, Mark. I opened the door.”

  Mark looked deeply into her eyes and then calmly stroked her face with such tenderness that tears welled. She blinked hard to keep them from falling, not willing to suffer yet another humiliation in this. “I know, honey.”

  He kissed her soundly, proving he did know and that he did understand. But how could he? Guilt settled over her, streamed through her, weighing her down. “How can you accept something so awful so easily? I don’t get it. If it were you, I don’t know if I’d be able to get past it. I hope I would, but I can’t stand here and say with authority that I know I would—not without lying to you. I—”

  “Amanda, hush.” He caressed her face, cupping it in both his hands and rubbed gently with the pads of his thumbs. “You thought you were with me. I know that. Don’t you see? In your mind, you were with me, not him. You wanted me. You opened the door and let me into your life and your heart.”

  He pulled her close, rubbed her shoulders. “Listen, at first I admit I was jealous when I thought of him being with you. I was hurt and angry. But then I realized I was being crazy. Even he thought he was me. Being jealous was like being jealous of myself.” He buried his chin in her neck and pecked a kiss to her hair. “You really care about me. How can I not understand that? After everything you’ve been through, you took the risks and let me in. You care about me.”

  Her heart swelled, too big for her chest. She sniffed, hugged him hard. “Peanut puns aside, I really am nuts about you, Cross.”

  “I know.” He gave her a squeeze and then stole her canteen again and swallowed down a long tug. “Being honest, there is one thing that worries me.”

  “What?”

  “Was it the same?” he asked in a low voice. “When you kissed him, did you feel…”

  “You rock my world,” she said.

  “And him?”

  “He lacks your smell.”

  “What?”

  “Your scent. It’s different.”

  “So at some level you knew something was off.”

  She wished she could answer this differently, but she couldn’t. “Not at first. Something wasn’t right. I put it off to everything going on. Well, until he ate peanuts.”

  “But you chose me.”

  “Definitely.”

  “That has me questioning your judgment.”

  She chuckled. “Glad to hear it. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” She wrapped her arm around his waist, and they walked onto the plane.

  Mark had slight tremors from dehydration, so Amanda took the pilot’s seat. When they were airborne, she radioed Colonel Drake and advised the colonel to have their drop-zone friends retrieve Reese’s body from the cemetery. “I have reliable Intel on Kunz’s location,” she finished.

  “And I now have three separate confirmations that Kunz is dead,” the colonel replied. “One is for the old Kunz. Two are for the new Kunz.”

  “Thomas Kunz is alive, ma’am.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.” Her sigh crackled in Amanda’s ear. “So how many doubles does he have?”

  “I don’t know. Three dead ones. But there could be more. If you’ll recall, Hussein had seventeen—that we knew of.”

  “I remember.” She mumbled something, then said, “I’ll get Darcy on it. See if she can pick up on any patterns.” Colonel Drake said, then shifted her focus. “So if the real Kunz isn’t dead then where is he?”

  “I think he’s in Texas,” Amanda told her. “There’s a network of tunnels and bunkers under the compound.”

  “Stand by.”

  The radio went silent. Colonel Drake was no doubt seeking Intel on what they’d found at the explosion site to back up Amanda’s claim. Soon, she returned to the radio.

  “Field reports deny any findings to substantiate your Intel, Captain.”

  “Ma’am. I was in the bunker. I know it exists.” When she’d been blindfolded on Hangar Row and taken to Kunz’s office, it must have been down in the bunkers or there would have been no reason to blindfold her to take her there. Kunz hadn’t wanted her to know about the bunkers.

  “Then get yourself down there and point them out to SAIC Mac McDonald.”

  The Special Agent in Charge obviously hadn’t welcomed Colonel Drake’s inquiry or responded well to her claim that the corpse wasn’t that of Thomas Kunz. “In the appropriated aircraft, ma’am?” Amanda asked.

  “Affirmative, Captain.” A man’s voice sounded through the radio. “I’m elevating this to a Code Two Special Project.” The order was clear and succinct: do what you need to do to get the job done quickly. “How’s your fuel?”

  Amanda looked at Mark. “Who is this guy?”

  “Secretary Reynolds.”

  “Oh.” She reeled in her tone, chastising herself for not recognizing his voice right away. Just proved how distracted she was by Mark. Being distracted at the wrong time could get her killed. Her heart rebelled against that thought. It’d wear off. Short-term, being with him would up her risks, but it wouldn’t last. “Fuel’s getting low, sir.”

  “Drake, arrange refueling and get them whatever else they need,” Reynolds said. “I want Kunz, and I want him now. I want Reese, too.”

  “Reese is dead, sir,” Amanda informed the secretary.

  “Have you verified that firsthand, Captain? There’s a lot of verified corpses turning up alive around here right now.”

  “I killed him myself, sir,” she said.

  “That’s the kind of verification I like best, Captain.” Reynolds turned his attention to the colonel. “Drake, give the order to move on Kunz.”

  “Yes, sir.” Colonel Drake then spoke to Amanda and Mark. “We’ll arrange refueling. What else do you need?”

  About two weeks of sleep. A hot bath and a warm meal.

  To be with Mark. She looked over at him, raised an eyebrow in question. He pointed at her. Her heart gave a little quiver and she smiled. “Nothing at this time, ma’am. Except for some food and water for Captain Cross.”

  Shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon, Amanda landed the plane on the Texas compound’s airstrip. Running on adrenaline that was fizzling out and a few precious catnaps, she looked around, stunned by the amount of damage Kunz had caused to his own assets.

  The compound looked as if it had been pulverized by a hurricane. Debris from the explosion littered the ground and trash and remnants of everything from equipment to clothes clung to bushes and trees. The scent of explosives clung to the humid air.

  “Wow. He really fired it up, didn’t he?” Mark stepped off the plane and set foot on the ground. “Kate couldn’t have done better.”

  A lieutenant drove over in a golf cart. “Captains West and Cross?” he asked, his hair tousled from the wind, his face red from the heat.

  “Yes,” they said in unison.

  “Hop in. SAIC MacDonald is expecting you.”r />
  Amanda got strange flutters in her stomach on getting into the cart. The whole experience was too reminiscent of the time she’d spent captive here. From Mark’s somber expression, he was sharing the same feelings.

  When they had circled the golf course and neared what had been the main building and was now a heap of burnt-out rubbish, the lieutenant stopped the cart.

  A man pushing forty with graying hair at his temples and a sallow complexion on a face shaped like a pit bull’s walked over to them. “West? Cross?”

  “SAIC MacDonald?” Mark extended his hand.

  Amanda didn’t. He looked cranky enough to bite it off. “Mac,” he said. “Listen, I’ve had everyone on-site looking for some kind of entrance to this bunker system since Drake contacted us. We’ve found nothing.” Skepticism filled his face and voice. “You sure your Intel is solid?”

  “As a rock,” Amanda said. “I was in the bunker.”

  “Then how did you get there?” He looked relieved that she knew where the ingress was located and irritated that his people hadn’t been able to locate it on their own.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she admitted through clenched teeth. This wouldn’t go over well, but facts were facts. “I was blindfolded.”

  “Then how do you know you were in a bunker?”

  “The lack of outside noises, the smell of recycled air, the absence of windows, any moving wind or natural scents. We were definitely underground, Mac.”

  Her answer must have satisfied him because he didn’t dispute her. “Take the cart,” he suggested, motioning for the lieutenant to evacuate it. “Look around and see if you can find the entrance. So far, we’ve tapped out.”

  “Sure.” Amanda got into the passenger’s side.

  “We need a radio—to keep in touch,” Mark said, getting in behind the wheel.

  “Lieutenant, handle it.” Mac turned from the young man back to Mark. “Anything else?”

  “Water. Water would be nice.”

  Amanda’s chest clutched. He’d emptied her canteen, and the refill from the emergency run she’d made to the artesian well near the cemetery to get him hydrated enough to make the hike back to the plane. He’d also emptied the water supply on the plane, and an additional gallon of water they had picked up during refueling.