by Cindy Dees
Whoa. Was he that callous or did he feel that strongly about getting inside Viktor’s organization? At least he hadn’t made them suffer. There was still a shred of humanity in him, then. “What did your government have to say about it?” she asked cautiously.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve only made one-way dead drops to my control officer since I approached this bunch. Viktor is too damned suspicious for me to break cover or use electronic methods to talk to anyone on the outside.”
More to the point, what did Michael himself think about it? “So, you killed a couple of criminals who deserved to die in the name of putting yourself in a position to stop this hijacking. And now you’ve let more men die to save the innocents on this ship. How’s that different? How does that make you bad?”
He pulled away from her, leaving her arms feeling empty. “Don’t give me that crap about it all being for a good cause. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“I didn’t care. I killed those punks and I didn’t feel a damned bit of remorse.”
“But you cared when the ship’s officers were killed. You care that the children are safe. You still have a conscience. You’re not the monster you’re painting yourself to be.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh painfully. “Ah, but I am. And so will you be in a few years. You kill enough people because someone else tells you to, without knowing the reason why, and eventually you stop caring. You just follow orders and don’t ask any questions. Innocent, guilty, good, bad or simply inconvenient to some politician—it doesn’t matter. You just kill them and move on to the next job. You become a machine.”
His words were a knife straight to her gut. They slid right past all of her defenses and pierced the core of her secret doubts and fears. Would this job steal her soul? Would she become the monster he described?
Stricken, she stared at him. He might not have lost all his soul, but he’d certainly sacrificed a big chunk of it. Was she willing to do the same? Was this cause noble enough—right enough—to warrant a similar sacrifice from her? “Isn’t there another way?” she whispered.
His gaze was implacable, as black as his soul in that moment. “There is no other way. This job demands no less.” He took a restless lap around the room. “People get all up in arms about fanatics like Viktor being willing to die for a cause. But are you and I any different? Are we any better? We chose this path. We volunteered to become shadow warriors. We knew the odds against dying of old age. And we did it anyway.”
Dear God, he was right.
But something in her rebelled at the inevitability of her self-destruction.
She demanded, “Then why are you helping me if you’re such a damned machine?”
He opened his mouth and then jerked as a noise rattled at the hallway door. He shoved her into the bedroom and threw the door shut behind them. “Strip and get into bed,” he hissed before he slipped back outside.
Not again. In frantic silence, she tore off her clothes and slid between the sheets. And swore under her breath as the voice that responded to Michael’s grouchy murmur was Viktor’s. That guy had a veritable radar for when she was with Michael!
In the other room Viktor demanded, “Is she in there?”
Michael growled, “It’s none of your damned business. Go down the hall and fuck your wife if you’re so horny.”
Aleesha’s eyebrows shot up. Viktor’s wife was on board? Was she the twenty-fourth terrorist? Crap. Had she given herself away by running all over the ship and gathering the mothers of the babies and toddlers and organizing their departure from the ship? Had Viktor’s wife ratted her out? Was that why Viktor was here looking for her? Her speculation was cut short when Michael threw open the bedroom door, stormed inside, slammed the door—and thankfully locked it—and climbed into bed with her. A television abruptly blared outside the door, as if Viktor was determined to make his point through the wall. Very loudly.
“Uhh, excuse me,” she breathed. “I’m naked here.”
A grin curved Michael’s mouth in the dark. “That’s how I generally like my women.”
“I am not your woman,” she whispered. Although why she was whispering she had no idea. They could have a shouting match in here and Viktor wouldn’t hear it over the news in the other room.
Michael moved so fast she barely had time to register it, let alone react. He rolled on top of her, pinning her beneath him. She dared not fight him—that noise actually might carry to Viktor. At least they had Michael’s pants between them to protect a smidgen of her modesty. But it wasn’t a hell of a lot to hang her modesty on. Her breasts pressed against his naked chest, and there was no way her thoughts could avoid turning to sex. Surely Michael’s did the same. He was a healthy, heterosexual male as far as she could tell.
She glared up at him in mutinous silence.
“Wanna be my woman?” he murmured. “We’re a brilliant match. A couple of crusty old operatives making impossible choices and losing our souls together.”
She stared up at him. Did he see something in her that she hadn’t? What was it? This mission was about saving innocent hostages. Period. Not a tricky moral situation in the least. She was here to collect surveillance data for the real rescuers, not kill anyone.
“Why do you think I’m losing my soul?” she murmured, her ire at being sprawled naked beneath him forgotten for the moment.
“You know the hijackers’ names and faces—you know which ones are smart, which ones are arrogant, which ones have French accents or New York accents or like ketchup on their scrambled eggs. They’re human beings to you now, not just targets. And you’re going to have to kill them. Trust me. It’s going to cost you a chunk of your soul to do it.”
She stared up at him in silence. She’d never killed anyone. Had assiduously avoided taking lethal shots on her one and only previous field experience. Dammit. If only she had a few missions under her belt, then she’d be able to defend herself against these accusations. She would be able to take the shots when the time came! But an ugly image of the dimmest of the three Montfort brothers centered in her rifle sight popped into her head. He was a giant lump of a man and clearly mentally deficient to some degree. He was just following along, doing what his marginally brighter brothers told him to do. Did he really need to die to save the children? He was barely more than a child himself, intellectually.
She glared up at Michael. “I can do my job. I will do my job. And don’t you ever doubt it.”
“So that means you can kill me, then? I’m one of the hijackers, after all.”
“You’re still one of the good guys. You’re helping us save those kids.”
He leaned up on one elbow and pushed her hair back from his face with his free hand. He whispered, “How can a woman as smart and highly trained as you be so damned naive?”
Naive? Her? What gave him that idea? “I’m just out here, doing my job.”
He shook his head. “Too idealistic, you are. It’s going to get you in trouble. You’ll follow your heart when you should be following your head.”
Ironic words coming from him. He was the source of her current heart-head conflict! She shrugged, at least as much as she could with two hundred pounds of man plastered on top of her. “I think I’ll hang on to those ideals, thanks.”
He nodded slowly. “You do that. You hang on tight to them. Maybe—” He paused as though he wasn’t going to finish the thought, but then he continued. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and come out okay in the end.”
The Medusas’ trainer, Jack Scatalone, had talked to the team once about this. He’d talked about what it was like to question why you were doing a mission when it was all going to hell around you. Said it got people killed. He said you had to know exactly why you were out there and not lose sight of it. And then you had to shut down the soft emotions and just do the damned job.
But how in the hell was she supposed to shut down her softer emotions with th
is man staring down at her so compassionately? His body sheltered and protected her. He looked out for her continually. He’d been covering her back literally since the moment she came aboard this ship. Her heart said to trust him. Her head shouted at her not to be a fool. “Why me?”
“Why you what?” he replied, frowning.
“Why did you single me out from all the other passengers? Why are you doing all of this?”
He stared at her for a long time and finally replied gruffly, “First of all, you picked yourself. You were the only one brave enough to step forward and take dinner to the terrorists. Secondly, I picked you because—I saw—I sensed—” He paused so long Aleesha thought he wasn’t going to finish. “You’re my last hope for salvation.”
Surely he was talking about her being his last hope for help in rescuing the hostages from Viktor and company. But darned if it didn’t sound like he was talking about something else entirely. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” he breathed. “Two years. Two years, Aleesha. And you’re the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in all that time.”
And for a moment, all of it was there in his eyes. The grueling mental strain, the constant fear of discovery, the relentless pressure of knowing how much was on the line. The toll of it all etched on his features, and her fingers ached to smooth it away.
Their gazes met. Held.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.
And the spell was broken. His eyes shuttered once more, he rolled away from her.
Aleesha blinked. He left a conspicuous arm and a leg across her. Thought she was going to bolt, did he? And where would she go with Viktor sitting in the next room?
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Michael murmured in her ear, “He’s watching the news. Waiting for coverage of the Grand Adventure to hit the airwaves. You’re stuck in here until he sees himself on the telly.”
Crud. If she didn’t miss her guess, old Viktor wasn’t going to see his mug on the TV anytime soon. The JSOC crowd had clearly pulled some sort of whammy on Viktor back in Port-au-Prince. And given how hard General Wittenauer had been working to contain the news of the hijacking before the Medusas came aboard the ship, she’d lay odds he’d done something in Haiti to circumvent Viktor getting the press coverage he craved. She rolled onto her side with her back to her impromptu bed partner.
Michael shifted, spooning himself against her. Oh, Lord, that felt nice. And a girl couldn’t help but be grateful that he hadn’t instantly taken advantage of her nudity to make some sort of pass. He murmured, “You might as well get comfortable.”
Comfortable was not how she’d describe the hot tickle of his breath against her ear, the heaviness in her breasts where his arm brushed against them. Provocative, maybe. Or even flat-out sexy. But definitely not comfortable.
Slowly she relaxed in his arms. They lay there in silence together, listening for any movements outside. Both of them were no doubt thinking about the same things, running possible scenarios through their heads and planning best-and worst-case responses to each situation. And the longer she lay there, the safer she felt. Between the two of them, plus the combined resources of the American Special Forces community, there was nothing they couldn’t handle.
But then a bellow of fury from the other side of the bedroom door jolted her to full combat alert. A spate of vicious French curses erupted as Michael sat up, the look on his face grim. “The press hasn’t broken the story yet.”
She sat up beside him, yanking the sheet up over her chest when it fell down around her waist. “I wonder what happened,” she replied mildly.
“Michael!” Viktor bellowed from the other room.
For a moment, the stress of the situation showed on Michael’s face—worry, loathing and exhaustion skated across his features. But then he pulled himself together and slipped out of bed. Poor guy. She couldn’t imagine tiptoeing around Viktor for two years. It had to have been positively grueling. She watched in compassion as Michael paused with his hand on the doorknob, took a deep breath, and then stepped out to face the wrath of a madman.
She took advantage of his absence to jump back into her shorts and T-shirt. They weren’t much protection against the pull she felt toward Michael, but they were better than nothing. As she was getting dressed, she happened to notice a jumble of wires and a small battery pack on the nightstand beside the bed. She knew what that was! An earpiece and microphone set. Must be Michael’s. She pocketed the whole wad quickly. The hijackers no doubt had spare radios. Michael could get another one. If he was on the level, he’d make up an excuse and cover her theft. If he was trying to use her to flush out the rest of the rescue party, he’d probably be unwilling to admit to Viktor that he’d been careless enough to let one of their radios fall into her hands.
Viktor ranted and raved in the other room for nearly a half hour. And one extremely interesting bit of information came out of it, compliments of Michael, of course.
Viktor was screaming about needing to publicize the cause of the Basque people when Michael interjected mildly, “Well, when we get to Guantánamo and pull every last terrorist out of the prison there, you’re bound to get global headlines.”
Holy shit. Was that what Viktor had planned for the Grand Adventure? It made sense. There were at least a thousand hard-core terrorists being held at the U.S. Navy facility in Cuba. They’d all fit nicely on a ship this size. And what, exactly, did Viktor want with a thousand terrorists, not one of whom was a Basque separatist? The men in Gitmo were almost exclusively from Muslim extremist organizations. They’d be well trained and well connected, but they wouldn’t give a hoot about a little patch of mountains between France and Spain.
But maybe she’d just answered her own question. The prisoners in Cuba would be well connected. Maybe Viktor was planning to ransom them back to their various organizations or take payment for their freedom in weapons or favors. If a little splinter group like L’Alliance de la Liberté could tap into the resources of the big dogs of terrorism, old Viktor might just stand a chance of getting his own country.
She continued to listen as his tirade finally wound down. With a last bellow of fury, he demanded that Michael fix the publicity problem, and stormed out of the room. Yikes. She wouldn’t want to be Viktor’s wife right about now.
Speaking of her, why hadn’t Michael said anything about her yet? Was she that insignificant to Viktor and his plans? Or was Michael protecting her identity for some reason? If so, what was that reason?
Michael came back into the bedroom wearily. He sat down on the side of the bed, his elbows propped on his knees and his head hanging between his shoulders. She ached to reach out to massage away the terrible tension in his back. But this wasn’t the time or place to act on her personal attraction to this man. Instead she asked quietly, “Need any help figuring out what you’re going to do to calm down the Grumpy-mon?”
“Grumpy-mon?” Michael grinned, imitating the heavy Jamaican accent she’d used to pronounce the word.
“Well, somet’ing’s pulling on his short hairs fair hard, dontchya t’ink?”
Michael turned to face her, smiling widely. Much better. “Fair hard, indeed,” he replied. “So what do you suggest I do?”
She dropped the accent. “Ask Viktor to draft a statement for you to read over the airwaves. That should keep him busy for a few hours. Then, make a radio call from the bridge. If you broadcast a big message about having taken over the ship and being willing to kill hostages if your demands aren’t met, Viktor should calm down.”
“And who would I be broadcasting to?”
She answered, “Maybe you could get in touch with the guys who’ve been keeping this whole mess out of the news in the first place.”
Michael’s mouth twitched in humor for a moment, but then he waxed serious again. “That buys me twelve, maybe twenty-four hours. What do I do when he blows up again because he’s still not in the news?”
She shrugged. “You cross that bridge when you come to i
t. One crisis at a time, eh?”
Michael grimaced. “Spoken like a pro. Maybe your Spec Ops buddies will get off their butts and rescue the lot of us one of these days so I can quit stringing along that maniac.”
She had no reply for that. No way was she going to talk specifics about her teammates or the rescue plan with him. No matter how much she personally might trust him, that was a professional risk she wasn’t about to take.
The TV went off in the other room. Crap. Someone had come into the room and she’d been so engrossed in her conversation with Michael, she hadn’t even noticed. A huge lapse of awareness. Major screw-up. She started as Michael’s arm snaked around her neck, pulling her to him without warning. Their mouths were only inches apart, their gazes locked—hers in startlement and his in dawning awareness. Whoa. Sex appeal alert. She stared at him, transfixed by the magnetism abruptly tugging insistently between them. A door closed and the outer room went silent. Whoever’d come in had left again.
Michael murmured, “Have I gotten around to telling you how beautiful you are and how attracted to you I am?”
“Uh, no,” she managed to mumble, thoroughly startled by his directness.
He smiled crookedly. “Well, you are. And I am.”
Now what was he up to? Was he for real or was this just a tactic to throw her off balance? If so, it was working like a charm. Time for a countermove just in case. “So are you. And so am I.”
The humor faded from his midnight gaze, leaving scorching heat in its place.
Yowza.
He asked quietly, “What do you suggest we do with all this mutual attraction?”
She had to give him full marks for being a professional and a gentleman. Most guys she knew would already have been kissing her and moving ahead with getting her clothes off. And damned if his restraint didn’t make him even more attractive! “Are you asking my professional opinion on the subject or my personal opinion?”
