by Kaylea Cross
Hold that thought, sweetheart. She was going to need every last bit of the fire burning in her gut to see this through. Shit he admired her. He held out another vest for her. “Put this on under your robe.”
She did, paling a little at the stark reminder of the danger ahead. Wrapping his fingers around hers when she finished, he squeezed tight in reassurance and led her out to the parking lot. Ellis and Dunphy were already standing next to the first of the two SUVs, both engines running.
“Gage brought us up to speed. We following you?” Ellis asked.
“With Gage, and just until we hit the outskirts of Pesh,” Hunter answered. “No idea what’s going to happen once we call the number we were given, but once we reach the city hang back until I contact you. We’ve got…” He checked his watch. “One hour sixteen minutes to get there. Tom will keep you updated if I can’t.”
With that he ushered Khalia around to the passenger side then came back to slide behind the wheel. Gage burst out of the hotel’s front door and jumped into the other SUV just as Hunter pulled away from the curb. “Gage, you read me?” he asked, checking the radio link.
“Loud and clear,” he responded in Hunter’s earpiece.
Hunter took a right out of the parking lot and hit the gas, weaving his way through traffic to get to the highway entrance. “Pull up the GPS for me,” he said to Khalia. “Once we get to Pesh we’ll need a map. Try and memorize the general layout if you can.” He’d been there more than a few times but he still didn’t know his way around the city well. Place was a goddamn tangle of alleys and crowded neighborhoods easy to get lost in, which also made it the perfect place to hide. No doubt why the hostage takers had chosen it.
Rather than using the vehicle’s GPS, Khalia used her cell phone. The image on screen showed them as a little moving arrow and gave the remaining distance to Peshawar. His main concern now was the clock, which was ticking down too damn fast. The tense silence in the vehicle broke when Khalia spoke.
“So, what’s the plan when we hit the city limits?” she asked, rubbing a hand against the folds of her robe as she enlarged the map and studied it.
“We make the call and wait for further instructions, find out where these assholes are and what they want from us, and make a decision then.” If he was right and they expected Khalia to walk into their trap, they had another fucking thing coming.
“They’re going to target me though, right? I mean, it’s me they want dead.”
A fierce protectiveness rose up inside him at the tremor in her voice, so strong the hair on his arms stood up. “I won’t take you anywhere I think might be a trap, and I’m sure as hell not letting you get close enough to anywhere that might make you a target for anyone. We’ll wait at the edge of the city and let Tom update everybody involved first. By now the local authorities will be starting their own hunt. If there’s any kind of sting set up once we get the location, they’ll handle it.”
She nodded, lips pressed together, gaze still on the map. “Are you going to call the number, or am I?”
“You’ll have to, so they know we’ve complied with that part of their demands. We have to make everything look as legit as possible, in case they have eyes on us somehow.” And he and Khalia would have to hope that whoever was behind the messages couldn’t trace her call to a specific cell tower in Pesh, or they’d be walking targets.
She didn’t answer, turning her head to stare out the passenger window. He hated that he had to pull away emotionally from her, but he couldn’t worry about her that way right now and do his job. Right now was all about putting on his game face and focusing everything he had on the unfolding mission.
The sound of the purring engine filled the interior as he pressed down on the accelerator and merged onto the highway, weaving his way around slower moving traffic. Ellis stayed right behind them in the other SUV.
He drove at a steady clip, well above the speed limit, not caring about the risk of being pulled over and very much aware of the minutes ticking past. Khalia remained silent and tense beside him during the drive and there were no updates from Tom or the others. When they were within a few klicks of Pesh, Hunter handed her his cell phone. “Mine’s encrypted. Make the call.”
Pulling out the number she’d written down, she dialed and put the phone on speaker. She swallowed audibly before the call connected and the phone began to ring.
A man picked up within seconds. “Khalia Patterson?”
“Yes. Who is this?” Her voice was surprisingly steady.
“Are you in Peshawar?” he asked in heavily accented English.
“Just arriving now.” She cast an uncertain glance at Hunter, and he nodded for her to continue. “What do you want?”
“You,” the man said flatly, and Hunter bit back a growl. “You will come to the address we give you, or the hostage dies.”
Only one hostage?
“Who is it?” she demanded and he had to give her points for maintaining her cool when she had to be scared shitless.
“The man whose daughter you rescued today.”
Those big green eyes flashed up to him as she answered, the stricken look on her face punching him in the heart. “Aisha’s father?”
“You have twenty-two minutes from now. If you alert the authorities, he will die. Do not try anything. You are being watched.” The line went dead.
Fuck. Twenty two minutes to find and verify the location for the Paks, on foot in this city? He pulled them out of traffic and put the SUV in park close to a police checkpoint, alerting Gage over the radio. When Hunter opened his door seconds later, Gage was already there.
“Stay here and wait for an update,” Hunter told him. He rounded the hood and took Khalia by the arm to lead her to the checkpoint as he called Tom and gave him the heads up.
The first of three heavily armed policemen took their ID. His face tensed in sudden recognition and he quickly got on the radio to someone. Another officer squared off with Hunter. “You will wait here.”
Like hell he would. If the local police already knew who they were then they knew what was going down and Hunter wasn’t going to deal with any bureaucratic bullshit when so much hinged on this op and Khalia’s life was in danger just by being in the city. Here he didn’t trust anyone outside of his team, including the police and military, because he’d already learned that lesson the hard way. Every potential leak increased the chance of losing the cell.
“I’ve got twenty minutes to find out where they are. Move the hell out of the way.”
The guard bristled at Hunter’s tone and shifted his grip on his weapon in silent warning. “You will stay where you are until we receive further orders.”
Khalia’s fingers bit into his biceps and he forced himself to tone down the aggression. “Let us through, now.” This was fucking insane, and whoever was on the other end of that radio had to know it. He hit a few buttons on his phone and raised it to his ear. “Tom, we’re being hassled at a checkpoint. Get us clearance or we’re gonna miss the deadline.”
“Working on it,” Tom muttered, and disconnected.
They lost three more minutes waiting for the higher ups to grant permission for them to pass through. A supervisor appeared and started firing questions at Hunter. He was thinking about taking on all three of them when his phone buzzed with an incoming text. Instead of a message from Tom, the screen showed an elaborate mathematical equation along with a name, the word Address, and You are being watched.
“Shit,” he muttered. The supervising officer fell silent as Hunter passed the phone to Khalia. “Can you crack this?” It was something right out of an engineering textbook, full of confusing brackets, square roots, exponents and all kinds of other fun stuff. The kind of thing it would take an hour and five pages of notes for him to solve.
She grabbed it from him, frowning in concentration as she studied it. “I need a pen and paper.”
“Give her a pen and paper,” Hunter barked at the officers. Face slack with surprise, the man c
losest to them rummaged through his pockets and came up with a pen and note pad and thrust them at her.
Hunter watched her work, awed at the speed and skill she showed in unraveling the equation under such intense pressure. Her lips were moving, her right hand scrawling lines of numbers across the paper as she used a calculator app on her phone. She flipped the page and punched more numbers into her smart phone, kept going. He shifted his stance, impatient to get moving. Jesus, how long did the hostage takers expect it to take her to answer it?
As she worked, the guards kept arguing with Hunter. Khalia was on her fifth page of the solution when she began scribbling frantically, and Hunter could tell she was getting close. He held up a hand to make the guard shut up, not wanting anything to interfere with her concentration.
“Six hundred ninety one,” she announced a moment later.
“You’re sure?” Hunter prompted.
“Positive.” Her voice rang with conviction.
Hunter grabbed the pad from her and thrust it in the officer’s face, repeating the street name from the text message, and the number Khalia had given. “Where is that?” Khalia was already punching the address into her phone, bless her.
The man pointed to the northwest and shook his head. “Two kilometers. Very crowded.”
“Let us through now,” Hunter growled. Verifying the location was critical and they were short on time, especially if the Paks were thinking about making a move before he could confirm it was the right address.
The supervisor relayed the address to whoever he was talking to, then waved them through with a curt nod. “Go.”
Gripping Khalia’s upper arm, Hunter took off in a fast jog and called Tom as he ran to give him the info. “Heading there now,” he finished, and hung up.
Khalia hurried along beside him, checking her phone. “Left at the third street we come to.”
God he loved her brain. He’d never seen anything so fucking sexy in his life as her solving that bitch of an equation under those circumstances. “How the hell did you solve that thing?”
“BEDMAS.”
“What?”
“Brackets, exponents, division, multiplication—”
“Yeah, I got it. Christ, you’re smart.” He shook his head in wonder and hustled her along the uneven pavement, dodging cars and carts and people. Because of Ramadan the city was crowded even at this time of night. Citizens were packing up their market stalls and closing shop for the day. He and Khalia now had only sixteen minutes to make it to their destination.
“They’ve got Aisha’s father,” she said in a shaky voice.
“I know.” He kept up the demanding pace, aware of her panting breaths and the way she began to lag. Slowing his speed to a fast walk, he kept pulling her onward. “We’ll stop once we’re a couple blocks away,” he told her.
“What? We can’t, the time limit—”
“You’re not going to that address, Khalia.”
“But if the police storm the place the hostage takers will kill him! Aisha’s father is probably their only source of income. They might starve this winter without him.”
“You’re not going,” he repeated, his tone making it clear he would tolerate no further argument.
“You said we had to make it look legit,” she shot back, her voice ringing with frustration despite her obvious fear and fatigue.
“Yeah, to make them think you’re going to comply with their demands. I brought you so we could find out what we need from the kidnappers, buy time to update the authorities and let them get a plan together to take these guys down. Which we’ve done. Now we’ll get close enough so I can verify we’ve got the right place, but not close enough for them to see you. Because you’re bait, not a sacrificial goat. Big difference.”
Hunter’s instincts were already buzzing, telling him they were being watched. He kept their route erratic to make them a more difficult target, zig-zagging along the streets. He could feel the eyes on them, people staring from windows or alleyways as they passed. Any one of them could be an informant. Any one of them might have a bead on them with a weapon right now. And if there were any snipers in position, he’d just have to hope the shadows were thick enough to hide them.
Chapter Thirteen
Khalia’s heart clattered against her ribs as Hunter finally slowed to a walk.
“Stand tall and look straight ahead, like you belong here,” he whispered.
God, she was having trouble catching her breath, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. It went against every instinct to do as he said instead of constantly looking around to scan for threats, but she knew he was right. Giving off that sort of nervous energy would only look suspicious and make her stand out more. Right now the only things giving her the courage to see this through were having Hunter right next to her and feeling the strength of his hand around hers. Wanting justice for her father and putting her own life on the line to see it done were two very different things.
The map on her phone showed the address as being just a few blocks from where they stood. Here amongst the back alleys and quieter residential streets the night seemed hushed and ominous. The narrow street they were on was dark, lined on both sides by rundown buildings that stretched three and four stories tall. Lines of drying laundry hung suspended between houses, casting eerie, swaying shadows below. The hot, muggy air smelled of cooking food and the underlying stench of rotting garbage.
Her breathing slowed, though her heart kept beating a frantic rhythm the closer they got to the target location. Hunter stayed deep in the shadows cast by the buildings, hiding them from any curious or hostile eyes. It made the back of her neck crawl to think that someone might be following them. She tightened her grip around Hunter’s hand and he squeezed back in silent reassurance. He wouldn’t lead her into danger and he wouldn’t let her down.
Partway up the street he tugged her into a little alcove tucked beneath a boarded up door and pressed her back against the peeling plaster wall with one arm, positioning himself in front of her. “Put your phone away,” he whispered, staring out into the dark alley.
The map showed them to be a block and a half from the target. She quickly dimmed the phone and shoved it into her pocket beneath her robe, worried that she might have drawn unwanted attention to them with the illumination from the screen.
Hunter kept her pressed to the wall and leaned forward to peer around the corner. He searched up and down the alley before speaking again. “Stay put. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He was leaving her here? Without thinking she reached out to grab his arm, then caught herself and forced her hand down. She was being ridiculous. As long as she stayed still it was likely no one would even see her.
With one last look about, Hunter darted around the corner and vanished from view. Suddenly everything around her seemed more sinister. The shadows were deeper, the darkened windows in the buildings across the alley staring down at her like suspicious eyes, the scuttling sound of what she assumed had to be rats searching for food was overly loud to her pulsing ears. Doubts began to creep in. What if they were in the wrong place? They were already suspicious that this entire thing was a setup, so they had to assume the kidnappers were manipulating them into a bad situation.
Her T-shirt stuck to the skin between her shoulder blades and her palms were damp. When she heard someone coming toward her from the opposite end of the alley she barely resisted the urge to peek. Instead she huddled deeper into the cover the alcove provided, hardly daring to breathe until the man passed with a huge basket slung over his back. He didn’t even look her way.
“Hey.”
She jumped and swallowed a cry. Hunter stood at the edge of the building and she hadn’t even heard him coming.
She grabbed onto the hand he reached out for her. “It gets busier from here and I don’t want to leave you this far back. We’ll go up another block and I’ll check again.”
She licked her dry lips. “How much time left?”
“Six minu
tes.”
God.
She hurried after him, anchored by the firm grip of his hand. He’d been right, the neighborhood got much busier the next block over. The moment they turned the corner she could see lights on in some of the upper floor apartments and people moving around inside. A few people walked on the street ahead of them but so far no one else was following. Someone might come by at any moment though. She was careful to stay in the shadows, making sure she followed Hunter without looking around or changing her posture. At the end of the block he led her to another hiding spot behind an abandoned wooden cart.
“Okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” she answered, the word barely carrying over the still air.
“We’re less than a block away now. We’re just going to go a little farther to check it out quick and come straight back. If they’ve got eyes on us I don’t want you exposed, so hug the walls and stay where it’s darkest.”
She nodded, wanting to just get this over with and get the hell out of here. She fell in step behind him.
They were partway up the street when a sharp bang up ahead broke the relative quiet. Then frenzied shouting. Hunter froze. She drew up short behind him, holding her breath. She stayed where she was, ears straining, alarmed when Hunter whirled around to face her. In the dimness she made out just enough of his face to see the rage in his expression.
“What?” she whispered, heart flying into her throat.
“The Paks jumped the gun,” he said tightly.
No. She opened her mouth to ask if that meant what she thought it did when a thunderous boom rent the air. Khalia cried out and hunched into a ball as the horrendous wall of noise ripped through the night, the pressure of the blast vibrating against her ear drums in a relentless wave. Glass shattered in the buildings around them, the ground shaking with the force of the shockwave.
A bomb.
In the seconds that followed, a vacuum of silence blotted out everything but the roar of blood in her ears. She felt the pressure of Hunter’s hands around her upper arms, the urgency in his grip as he hauled her to her feet. People were flooding out of their homes in their sleepwear, yelling and gesturing toward the blast, their expressions filled with anxiety.
