Too Hot to Hold

by Stephanie Tyler

  “Isn’t that the point of Witness Protection?”

  “Even the marshals, their only contact points, don’t know where they went.” She didn’t tell him that her foster father was a U.S. marshal and he’d reluctantly shown her the database in the interest of helping Sophie. “I saw the reports. They were released from the program and allowed to join the military. And then they disappeared. Some were discharged, like Sophie. And some just never showed up for work again,” she explained.

  “You think they were the ones recruited for GOST?”

  “It’s a perfect plan—sick, but perfect. They couldn’t go against GOST and risk being exposed to the people who’d wanted them dead to begin with—the people who’d forced them to go into hiding in the first place. Comply or die.”

  “Your sister was in Witness Protection before she was commissioned?” he asked.

  “From the time she was twelve,” she said, braced for his next question about her own Witness Protection status, but he didn’t ask.

  That was good—she wasn’t ready to tell.

  Instead, he got up off his knees. “We’ve got to figure out how fucked my brother and your sister are.”

  She could barely look him in the eye when she delivered her next words, the ones she’d been dreading saying out loud. “Based on the intel I’ve got, it might be too late for both of them.” She’d spent more time around computers than humans, knew how to get what she needed. When it was her against the computers, she could always win. “I found a CIA directive from a man named John Caspar to Agents Simms and Ferone—an order to eradicate GOST and its members ASAP. Africa was the test ground. If things went the way they planned—if their operatives did what they were supposed to—they were going to train a new group and take it global. Obviously, it hadn’t gone well.”

  “Who is this John Caspar guy?”

  “That’s the problem—he doesn’t exist. I’ve been trying to get a handle on him for months. He’s virtually untraceable. And since I can’t get a picture or address or even a job description, I can’t follow him on foot.” She sighed, pushed some stray hairs off her face.

  “How does this tie to Nick?”

  “Your brother did some work for a mercenary named Bobby Juniper, aka Clutch.”

  Chris nodded slowly. “You think Clutch is part of that group.”

  “He fits the profile.”

  “Nick was trying to make contact with Clutch before he left but couldn’t. He left him messages. The location that he and Kaylee were headed toward. They’re about five hours ahead of us—landing in Ubundu.”

  “You have coordinate points? From who?”

  “Look, this is going to sound crazy… but based on what you’re telling me, maybe not so much. Kaylee Smith’s husband was an Army Ranger—the Army claimed he was KIA and then, a couple of weeks ago, Aaron called her. And then some FBI agents came to her and said he’d gone AWOL. And then Aaron called again, told her to go to Africa. Gave her coordinate points.”

  “I ran Kaylee Smith’s name earlier—she’s not in the system.” She yanked her computer closer. “What’s her ex’s name?”

  “Aaron Smith. I tried to run a line on him but came up empty.”

  “You would. I won’t,” she said without thinking. But when she looked up, he didn’t seem offended or put off. Instead, he smiled, like he enjoyed the one-up and sat next to her as she began to work the system again in an attempt to beat the clock.

  Sarah was the most efficient guide Nick had ever had through this country—she knew the roadways and the detours and she hadn’t consulted a map once during the ten-hour drive from hell.

  Kaylee looked rattled still—a lot of that had to do with the condition of the roads. If you weren’t used to it, the bone-deep jostling could unnerve you completely.

  But she’d had no complaints at all. Just coped—even slept a little, albeit it was most likely a stress-induced nap, and what the hell had she been through in her life that she took all of this in and bucked up under the pressure? Her home life must’ve been far worse than she’d made it out to be. He knew from experience that it was usually easier to gloss over a bad childhood than to talk about it. Easier to remain stoic, which was exactly what she’d been over the past hours.

  He’d wanted to reach out, massage her shoulders, maybe even hold her hand to reassure her—but none of that would keep his head on straight. Not with Chris’s voice mail still echoing in his head.

  Hey, man—the agent’s looking for Clutch. I’ll explain more when I can. I’m headed your way…

  It seemed a lot of people were looking for the merc, and no one was having any success in finding him. What the hell had Clutch gotten himself—and Nick, by default—involved in?

  If Chris were here, he’d remind Nick about synchronicity Dad always said that nothing was a coincidence—not the places you ended up or the people you met—that in some way everything would end up circling back to you, to either help or harm. It was up to you to figure out which.

  Nick had always been able to tell good from bad—easy enough when someone with a weapon was coming after you. But in this situation, it felt as if good and bad were mixing, and he couldn’t tell yet what end was up.

  He’d have to trust his gut to get him through. That’s what Chris would tell him to do. Dad would tell him to look for the signposts.

  Jake would tell him he was out of his motherfucking mind to go on this mission without authorization and to back away from Kaylee as quickly as possible. But it was far too late for that now. Even more, he didn’t want to back away from her.

  But that couldn’t be Nick’s concern, not when Sarah had them parked about half a mile outside the coordinates.

  When she’d pulled the car over, Kaylee had woken up and Nick had discovered that he had put his hands on her, had been stroking her hair while she’d been curled up next to him along the seat.

  He pulled away fast and climbed out of the car.

  “No one’s been through this way for days,” Sarah told him now as she traced the ground with the thin beam of light from the flashlight. “It’s the only way into where you want to go. The other route is blocked right now, thanks to the rains.”

  He walked the path she’d motioned to—because of the recent rains, it would’ve been easy enough to see tire tracks or footprints along the only strip of land able to be called a road. Sarah was right, there was no need for him to leave her and Kaylee behind and go searching any farther in. They’d be smarter—and safer—waiting here, hidden just off the path to see who went by.

  “I’ll keep watch, stay outside,” Sarah told him.

  “We’ll rotate. You need sleep.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  She gave a short laugh. “American soldiers—you’re all the same.”

  You’ve met a lot of American soldiers?” Kaylee asked Sarah as Nick moved off with the flashlight, muttering something about checking the perimeters and ignoring Sarah’s last comment.

  “Usually they come to this country when their career is over and they’re looking for more action. Quick money.”

  “Private contractors,” Kaylee said and that made Sarah smile.

  “We still prefer to call them mercenaries here—there’s no shame in the word. I was training to be one myself.”

  Kaylee studied Sarah from the light afforded them by the open driver’s-side door. She was pretty—Scandinavian features played heavily across her tanned face, the wide eyes, the full lips, features just odd enough to make her deviate from the standard ideals of beauty. Even the heavily tattooed left arm added to the picture instead of making her appear hard. She just looked sexy, with her torn shirt and her cargos that hung low on her hips. “Really? You wanted to be a mercenary?”

  “At first no man would train me, so I learned as much as I could on my own, and then one man finally agreed to.” Sarah pressed a finger to her lips before continuing, as if thinking of the right way to explain things. “I wante
d freedom. I wanted to be able to protect myself—to take care of myself. I wanted people to fear me. It’s hard being a woman in this country, especially a woman alone.”

  “It’s hard being a woman alone anywhere.”

  “I imagine it is.” Sarah was studying her now. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  Kaylee glanced over at Nick, who stood alone and silent on the edge of the clearing—broad-shouldered and stock-still—and she wondered if her stomach would always flip a little when she saw him. “Nick? He’s, um… a friend,” she finished lamely and Sarah smiled as she yanked a rifle from the backseat.

  “Pretty good friend to escort you into the jungle. I’ll take first watch so you can spend some time with your friend,” she told Kaylee. She stopped halfway out of the car. “You’re prepared that it might not be your ex-husband who wants you here, aren’t you? Because most of these kidnappings …”

  She trailed off and shrugged and Kaylee felt the quick jolt of panic run through her again. Nothing Sarah said was new—Nick had warned her, over and over—and still, here she was in the middle of nowhere, fighting her better instincts, which told her to verify her source much more thoroughly than she had for this one. “I’m aware of that. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I didn’t do this, though. I loved him once.”

  Sarah nodded. “I just want you to be prepared.”

  Kaylee wanted to tell her that she could never have been prepared for this, but even as she thought it, she realized it was a lie. So all she said was, “Thank you,” before Sarah closed the door quietly behind her.

  She shifted in her seat to watch Sarah and Nick talking. Earlier, when she’d been unable to fight her exhaustion, she’d slept—a feat in itself in the fast-moving vehicle that tore over the bumpy roads. Sleep had been uneven and she’d sworn Nick was touching her, caressing her outer thigh, brushing some stray hairs off her cheek… even settling a palm on her shoulder with a touch that was at once protective and seductive. Before that, he hadn’t so much as looked in her direction since they’d escaped from the soldiers’ bullets earlier—had pretty much ordered her here and there, and she’d listened because she knew he would protect her.

  As she’d stirred, opened her eyes, she’d seen him jerk a hand away from her.

  Hehad been touching her. And it had been nice. Comforting. For a man who didn’t trust well, he was putting an awful lot on the line for her.

  When he was a boy of maybe six or seven, Clutch vividly remembered playing hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids every summer evening at dusk, when the fireflies began to blink in the humid air of Northern California.

  If picked to be the seeker, he always found the kids easily—so much so that they quickly learned it was more fun to search for him than to be searched out by him.

  No one ever found him. He was so quiet, so still. He loved it—watched as other kids came so close to him that he could feel the tensing of their bodies as they struggled to stalk quietly through the familiar backyards. As big and broad as he was, even as a child, he managed to remain hidden in plain sight. Part instinct, part too many hours reading books on spooks and spies.

  In his life, these skills had continued to serve him well. He could almost smell an intruder in his space, could feel the change in air pressure. Hairs on the back of his neck would stand now that his skills were finely honed, and here in this jungle, nearly a mile outside of the coordinate points where he was set to meet Kaylee Smith tomorrow morning, he knew something was very, very wrong.

  Someone was there, sitting on a cluster of boulders that would give them enough height to see over the brush if it were daylight. But in the dark it just made them more of a target to anyone wearing NVs, like he was. He soon realized that whoever it was sitting there wasn’t the danger he sensed.

  He moved closer and closer still, so he could get a look at the person’s face, saw the slim back and the arm covered with tattoos and realized quickly that it was a woman who waited there.

  It was Sarah.

  He tore off the NVs. Had she tracked him, he wondered—had she found the other members of GOST and been sent to find him?

  No, they wouldn’t have helped her, not without calling him first to verify. None of them knew about her—no one spoke of their lives before GOST … they cried out for those missing pieces of themselves only in their sleep.

  His hands began to sweat and he forced himself to keep a tight grip on his weapon as he locked eyes with the man standing behind her.

  That man presented less of a problem, however, than the one standing next to him.

  Clutch opened and closed his hands as he watched the man prepare his rifle silently. Sarah sensed something, began to raise up from her sitting position, and Clutch had no time to waste. He moved behind the man, killing him with one sharp, swift movement, so he fell softly to the ground as Clutch grabbed the rifle out of his hands.

  He’d go back for the man’s identification later—right now, the other man near Sarah, who’d seen him, needed to be taken out and fast.

  The quiet seeped into the night around her—it had been a while since Sarah sat watch like this, alone without the welcoming sounds of her country.

  Except tonight, her instincts burned. She tried to blame the incident with the men at the airport, but knew it went beyond that.

  Whatever Kaylee Smith was dealing with in her personal life was proving to make this trip more than a simple guided tour to the DRC. The man she was with—American, military and Kaylee’s lover. In Sarah’s experience, that combination always brought trouble.

  And someone else was out here in this jungle besides the three of them.

  Slowly, she pushed off the rock she’d been sitting on, weapon by her side, scanning the rapidly fading darkness for movement.

  She wasn’t sure if dawn was her friend at this moment, but Nick was close too … he’d hear her if she yelled.

  She turned left, saw nothing. Turned right—and froze.

  Clutch.

  He was in the shadows, looked so angry and so handsome at the same time. She held her breath while he stood not more than five feet from her, gun drawn, appraising her as if she was a total stranger. Looking through her.

  She did not like the look in his eyes. A flash of panic hit her, too late to do any good.

  He might not be the same man you knew—who knows what going back to GOST did to him.

  She hadn’t wanted to consider that possibility. He’d never given up on her, even when she’d pushed him away brutally. She at least owed him the same.

  “Bobby.” The name hung between them, her voice barely above a whisper. And still, he said nothing, cocked his head to the side, an almost indiscernible motion.

  Her stomach lurched when he pulled his rifle. She smelled the fear—wasn’t sure if it was all hers or if some of it came off his skin.

  His shot seemed aimed directly at her. She mouthed the wordno , but no sound came with it. And just as suddenly, she felt a sharp blow to the back of her head and her world went black as the shot echoed in her ears.

  When she woke, not more than a few seconds later, she was lying on the soft jungle floor with Clutch hovering over her.

  He’d been stroking her cheek lightly, waiting for her to wake up.

  “You pulled your gun,” she whispered. “At first I thought…”

  “I know. He was behind you, hit you before I got a clear shot.”

  Sarah sat up, looked over at the man he’d taken down—the one who’d called himself Simms at the airport.

  “He had his rifle trained on you. He was going to kill you,” Clutch said.

  “He followed me from the airport—he wasn’t alone.”

  “I already took down another man. He’s over there.” Clutch pointed and Sarah shifted, and recognized the lighter-haired man immediately. “Why were these men following you, Sarah?”

  She realized she was shaking, but it wasn’t from fear. “Not me—the couple I’m driving through. They’re meeting s
omeone here; they have account numbers to transfer the ransom money.” She paused and then jerked her chin toward where Simms’s body lay. “You knew him, didn’t you? Is he… one of them?”

  He nodded in confirmation. “Both of them work for GOST.”

  She grew cold at the thought of how close GOST had gotten to her. “Are you free? Please, tell me you’re free and all of this is over.”

  But even as she spoke, she knew it wasn’t so, couldn’t be that easy.

  “I’m not free, Sarah. Not yet. But I have a plan.”

  She put her palms against his cheeks for a moment, then ran her fingertips along his brow bone, down along his jaw, reassuring herself that Clutch was really, truly there—living, breathing and not some figment of her dreams, dreams so vivid that she’d often wake up with aching hands from fisting the covers.

  But now she was holding him, and she wasn’t letting go this time. “You left me,” she told him, her voice fierce.

  “I just saved your life and you’re angry with me?”

  “Yes, so angry.” But she was kissing him even as she breathed those words against his mouth, her cheeks wet with tears—hers and his running together.

  Together.

  CHAPTER 14

  The shot—a single one that pierced the night—was close. Kaylee watched Nick survey the area calmly, rifle cradled in his arm.

  He looked back at her as if debating something, and finally he mouthed the wordquiet and handed her a pistol. Then he took her hand and placed it on the waistband of his BDUs so she could follow him in the dark.

  He didn’t call out for Sarah, but they’d only needed to walk a bit longer before they’d come upon her, lying on the ground, a man kneeling over her.

  It had only taken them a moment to see the dead body—another to realize that Sarah wasn’t in danger from the man she was currently kissing, although the couple quickly pulled apart when Nick called Sarah’s name.