by Dianna Love
It took a while moving so slowly, but they finally reached a spot where both of them could slip into a shadowy area between two stacks of rocks and boulders. It was a tight fit in the narrow passage, but Margaux turned her back on Dragan to watch the jungle while he filled their water bag.
She held the pistol in her non-dominant left hand since her right one was worthless.
The ache in her head kept up a steady thumping. She could be more miserable, but it would take too much effort to figure out how. As bad as it had been back in Atlanta where she’d been stuck in her apartment facing an unknown future, Margaux would gladly take that right now in heartbeat.
She’d screwed up so much. Lost the only contact to the Banker. Got caught. Put this guy Dragan in a jam with her.
The scenery blurred and her head dropped forward. Her arm felt twice the normal size and her body had turned into a human furnace.
“I’ve got the water. You through catnapping?” Dragan asked right next to her ear.
Margaux snapped her head up so quickly, she bumped Dragan who cursed in two languages. Had she hit his nose? Damn. “Sorry.”
His hand clamped down on the shoulder of her good arm. “No big deal. Let’s wash out that cut.”
“I did it last night. Scrubbed the hell out of it. Nothing else we can do unless one of us has some antibiotic ointment.”
“No. Are you drowsy?”
That was concern in his voice. Why was he being so understanding when she’d ruined his opportunity to meet with the Banker? It might even be her fault they’d been captured. That weasel Snake Eyes had screwed her.
She stretched her neck. “I’m wide awake and ready to roll. Now what do we do, Tarzan?”
“Jane moves her ass out of the way so I can take the lead.”
Still squatted, she moved out of the narrow gap. Dragan swept past, low to the ground, almost bent over enough to touch the ground with his hands, but he didn’t. She tried that and fell forward twice so she finally stayed on all fours.
By the time they reached the tree line, her back muscles cried from being bowed over.
Outdoor enthusiasts could have this. She had no desire to do anything close to camping ever again. When Dragan slowed then pushed up to stand, she tried to do the same and started to fall over.
His hands gripped each side of her waist and raised her up until her feet hit the ground.
“I had it,” she groused at him. Why couldn’t she just be gracious and say thanks? Because she’d learned a painful lesson many years ago about being weak.
It was a simple lesson. Never be vulnerable around a man.
The second lesson? Never let one close enough to expose her identity.
But Dragan didn’t know who she was. He was here from Russia, probably traveling on a fake passport. He was focused on getting to the Banker, not turning in some unknown woman to Homeland Security or the FBI.
Or INTERPOL.
She stepped out of his grasp and the world moved around too fast for a moment so she put her hand on the closest tree and leaned in. A bird took flight above her, squawking as it flew and flashing colorful feathers that blurred in her vision. She lifted her knee, bending it in and out, rather than letting on that the fever was getting to her.
“Drink some water.” Dragan pulled the bag out of his shirt, which meant she had to stand on her own.
Margaux tightened her muscles and pushed away from the tree so she could take the bag in her good hand.
Dragan stepped over close and held up a corner for her to drink. She didn’t care. She was thirsty already and any movement of her right arm sent pain streaking down to her fingers. As she drank, Dragan stared down into her eyes and this time she could see gold flecks in brown eyes.
Brown eyes and a big build had been her favorite for a long time. Since, uh, since she left France and Pierre. He’d had brown eyes, too, and with such thick lashes it had almost looked like kohl around his eyes.
Now that she looked close, Dragan had thick lashes.
But Pierre had brown wavy hair, not straight black locks.
She must be getting delirious, trying to see a resemblance between the brooding Dragan and Pierre who had laughed and loved ... until he’d done something very bad.
Dragan zipped the water bag closed and stowed it back inside his shirt.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Aren’t you going to drink?”
“I drank first.” His gaze bypassed her and studied everything around them. From the way he cocked his head, she could tell he was listening for something.
Had he actually drunk water this time?
She tried to think back to when they’d first stopped. He sounded sure. She wouldn’t argue because she couldn’t remember exactly what had just happened. Once he realized the fever was getting to her, he’d suggest leaving her somewhere safe.
She was not staying out in this place alone.
Facing down those men in the camp was preferable to that.
Her gaze wandered over the deep sweat stains on his chest to the machete hanging at his side. When had he taken that?
Did she really want to hack anything today?
No, he could keep the blade and hack away.
His attention came back to her with that frown again. “We’ve got a couple of hours before we get back, and that’s if we don’t run into one of the patrols out looking for us. We can’t return the same way we came. If you need to stop, tug on my shirt. The less we talk, the better.”
“Don’t expect me to give you a reason to slow down. I’ve had all I want of paradise.”
Dragan was still standing all over her personal space. They had plenty of jungle. Back up already.
He lowered his face to hers and said, “Do you ever let go?”
“Of what?” She knew what he was talking about, but she wasn’t going to admit to anything.
“The need to always be in control, to always be one step better.”
Her arm had swollen tight as a stuffed sausage all the way to her fingers. She was alternately cold and hot, and sick of being in this heat. He should consider his timing for psychobabble, especially when she had a pistol within reach. “Do you want to spend today analyzing something you’ll never understand or getting out of here?”
The sucker smiled. Straight teeth that glared white. “I’ll tell you what I want.”
She was not up for this crap. “World peace? A razor? Is it a long list? Because—”
“To hell with that.”
“What?”
“Telling you anything.” He caught her to him and closed the short distance between their mouths. He had a really nice mouth. There was his beard again. She could get used to it on a man who kissed like this one. He was taking care not to hurt her lips that were just starting to heal from being dry. How did he manage to kiss her so tenderly and still turn her insides into a bunch of wobbling Jell-O?
Margaux had never understood why Jane gave up everything to stay in the jungle with Tarzan, but she was starting to get a clue.
She reached up to grab his head with both hands, and when she did, her right arm exploded with pain. She jerked away and gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.
“Ah, shit, Sugar.” He cupped her good elbow, keeping her steady. “Hold on a minute.” He reached around behind him and pulled out the other half of Tattoo’s undershirt that Margaux had turned into a giant washrag, then he fitted two points together. “Can you bend your arm in front of you?”
Yes. The question was if she could do it without throwing up the water she’d just guzzled. She swallowed against the pain coming and used her other hand to guide her injured arm. Lifting it slowly, she breathed in and out fast.
Don’t pass out.
“Hold it there.” Dragan slipped the cloth carefully into position to make a sling and tied the two ends around her neck. By the time he’d finished, her face was covered in sweat that streamed down to drip off her chin.
She had to hold her
arm still for a moment, so she slung her head to one side, trying to get wet hair off her face. If she ever landed in anything remotely close to the woods again, even a park, she’d shoot the person responsible.
Gentle hands cupped her face. She looked up into worried brown eyes.
Déjà vu hit her for a moment. She’d stared into a gaze like his before. Silly brain trying to dredge up old emotions that were better off left locked away.
His fingers moved over her face, wiping away the streaks of perspiration. He smoothed her hair back behind her ears. “Want your hair pulled back?”
Of all the things she might have expected him to say, that hadn’t been one, but she’d love to put her hair in a ponytail to get it off her neck and take one aggravation away. “You got a hair bob in those pouches?”
Humor lit his gaze.
He found her funny? Any other man would have probably pushed her off a cliff by now.
She managed to keep her tongue under control while he reached into a pouch and pulled out a small bag that was held closed with a rubber band. He muttered, “The bag smells like Lurch had a sweet tooth. Probably a rock candy stash.”
“But the pig didn’t leave us any.”
Dragan looked up again, rubber band in hand. Margaux turned and couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped when he lifted her hair high on the crown of her head. He did something that felt like a ponytail then let go.
She didn’t care if she looked like a troll doll.
Dragan stepped in front of her. “Stay close behind and let me know if you need to stop.”
Waspish words sat on the tip of her tongue where she kept them, ready to shut down any man who tried to control her or insinuate she was weak, but she swallowed them this time and nodded. “Don’t slow down until I tell you. Deal?”
“Deal.” He leaned down and kissed her.
“Where did you get the ridiculous idea that it was okay to kiss me whenever you wanted?” Okay, so some snarky comments just couldn’t be contained.
“When I realized you like it as much as I do.” He turned away, moving out before she had a chance to say a word.
Damn him, he was right.
Which was beyond stupid because he had been at the Trophy Room to meet with a man who brokered terrorist deals.
She started walking, following Dragan’s exact path. With each step, she reminded herself that she couldn’t allow this attraction to continue, because if she survived this and got out of here she’d have to hand Dragan over to the FBI.
Right now she couldn’t conceive of doing that.
When had he stopped being the enemy?
CHAPTER 16
“What do you want, Tigger?” Sabrina asked in the general direction of her cell phone that was on speaker and reached for an oversized Atlanta Braves T-shirt she pulled over her head. It hit just below her underwear.
“Didn’t you open the box of ammo I sent you?”
She paused in dressing. “Why are you sending me ammo?”
“To try it out in the field for me.”
“The last ammo I tested for you disintegrated upon impact.”
His squeaky voice got higher when he was defensive. “I told you what caused that.”
“If I’d used that in the field, I would’ve gotten my ass kicked by the scumbag I’d just shot.”
“This is different. I sent you two versions. One to try out on the range and one to use under real time conditions.”
This was the first night she’d been home before midnight and just wanted to sit down and eat, even if all she had was leftover pizza. From two days ago. “I’ll look at it when I’m back in the office.”
“Be sure to read all the information before you—”
She snatched up the phone, “Good night, Tigger,” and punched the end call button. When she stepped toward her chest of drawers to get a pair of sweat pants, two red LEDs lit up the bedroom control panel for her alarm system. There was an identical panel in every room and live web cam feeds to her computer downstairs. Someone had crossed the north boundary line of her property. Her fifty-year-old house sat in the middle of a single acre in East Point, an older suburb of Atlanta.
She’d outfitted this simple, ranch-style house with a security system required by someone with a past like hers.
Lifting her Sig Sauer P226 from the nightstand, she left the lights on in the bathroom and stalked slowly through her dark house.
The lights had been left off on purpose.
Habit of nature. She’d learned as a child running the streets in the Bronx that the safest place was often the darkest.
When she reached the living room, she eased up beside the picture window that faced the front yard and moved the blinds just enough to peer at her front porch. No one there. Every window in the house had been replaced with ballistic glass that wouldn’t stop a heavy artillery attack, but it would slow down the first rounds to give her a chance to escape through an underground tunnel.
She removed a painting from the wall and placed it on her sofa, then focused a camera lens mounted in the wall that gave her a quick view of her front yard. Faster than booting up her computer feed. Trees within fifty feet of the house had been removed and her landscaping would only hide a rabbit.
A man stood in the middle of her yard with his arms on top of his head and a white bag on the ground next to his feet. He wore shirt and pants, but no jacket even though the temperatures were in the low forties.
Not surprising. He’d once braved snow with almost no clothes for a CIA op.
Gage Laughton.
She dropped her head against the wall. Not now.
When she looked up, he was still standing there. Gage would stay that way for hours if he was determined to speak to her.
She put the painting back in place, disarmed the alarm and opened her front door. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Evidently.”
“What do you want, Gage?”
“I brought Thai food. From Surin’s.”
Her traitorous stomach chose that moment to growl.
“I heard that. Can I take my hands down and come inside?”
The last time she’d let Gage inside her home she’d been living in Virginia and he’d just returned from being gone for seven weeks undercover for the agency.
She’d spent the happiest weekend of her life with the man she loved.
That was the last weekend she could remember feeling truly happy.
A week later, someone in the CIA burned her team while they were on an op to bring home a captured CIA agent. Gage was as lethal an operative as they came and he’d been her handler for the agency. He swore he knew nothing about her team being sent into a trap and he’d tried to regain her trust by helping her out a few times since she’d opened up Slye Temp.
She wouldn’t hand over her trust so easily this time.
But he had Thai food. She could always kill him once she was full. “Come in.”
She waited for him to enter before she locked the door and reset the alarm. She’d change the code again after he left. The smell of Thai had her close to drooling since she’d only had two protein bars in fifteen hours. Walking past him, she flipped the switch that turned on lights recessed beneath her wall cabinets.
Gage placed the bag on the island that centered her kitchen. His hands moved with fluid efficiency as he pulled out one container after another. He had skilled fingers he’d used with the precision of a maestro when he’d played her body. The sleeves of his dark green shirt were rolled halfway up his forearms. Jeans still looked sexier on him than on any another man. His hair had been short the last time she’d seen him. Now it was two inches longer. Her favorite length because it allowed the natural wave to show.
He once admitted to having it cut sometimes just for when he came home to her after a long mission.
Had he done that this time?
Was she really going there?
Tonight was not the night to open doors to the past. She couldn’t stand
here and pretend everything was fine when it hadn’t been in so long, and wouldn’t be until she knew who in the agency had screwed her two years ago. “What’s up, Gage?”
He continued to unload food on the island space she used for a table as he spoke. “I told you the Banker was in the states.”
“Right.” That confirmed Margaux had gotten solid intel after all, but she shouldn’t have gone off on her own. Sabrina ran her hand through her hair. Still damp. “Any idea what he’s gathering mercs for?”
“We’re working on it.” He put the white bag on the floor then turned to her. The kitchen hadn’t seemed small the whole time she’d lived here.
Gage had a way of taking over a room without a word.
He stood three feet from her, drinking her in with his silence.
At one time, that would have been too far away, but now it was too close. She’d had a sniper trained on him the first time they’d met after the blown UK op, but he kept chipping away at her, determined to tear down walls she was just as determined to reinforce.
But being alone with him was testing her engineering skills. Her heart was trying to kick down her walls from the inside.
He took a step toward her. A test to see if she’d balk or back away.
She wouldn’t run. Her gaze skipped over the island where he’d placed only one plate. “Aren’t you eating?”
“No.” He took another step, closing the gap to inches.
“Why not?”
He lifted his hand, reaching out to touch her but it stopped in mid motion.
She tensed, wanting to feel those fingers more than a junkie crashing, wanting a hit, and cursed herself for the weakness.
He dropped his hand. “I can’t stay here and not touch you.”
Damn him for looking at her as if she were still his world. If he touched her now, she wasn’t sure she could tell him no. Time had a way of dulling the righteous fury she’d banked day after day.
He waited for a sign from her. That rigid control he held with an iron grip prevented him from seducing her and risking the fallout. And they both knew he could do it, which was why letting him inside had been a mistake.
