Designated Target

by Karen Anders

  The heat didn’t seem to reach her or even begin to thaw the core of her, even though it blasted across her face. She was numb with panic. Terror was really too mild a word to describe the emotion that had taken hold of her heart.

  “Wha-t-t-t are we-e-e going to-o-o do now?” She shivered uncontrollably.

  “Run like hell.”

  * * *

  As soon as he saw the Walmart, he pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned his forehead against the wheel. His throat hurt; his jaw and his shoulder hurt. The adrenaline rush was over, and that left a heavy, lethargic fatigue that ripped at him.

  He needed patching up and sleep. A lot of sleep, but that wasn’t going to be possible for some time, so the next best thing would be caffeine. He knew exactly where they were going to go and no one would know about it but the two of them.

  The safe house had been compromised. How, he couldn’t know. But his only thought was it had to have been insider information. Now there wasn’t anyone he could really trust with the information of their whereabouts. Not even his boss.

  That left only one thing to do. Run like hell, just as he’d told Sky.

  Run and disappear.

  When Vin raised his head and looked at her, she was staring at him, and two things registered in his tired brain. She was scared, so, so scared, and she was a lovely mess, her hair damp with snowflakes glistening and melting in the inky black, her cheeks pale, mascara smudged beneath her eyes—but still so beautiful it was all he could do to drag his gaze away from her.

  Then as he stared at her something soft came into her eyes, and for a moment their gazes locked and the windows in the car fogged. He dragged his attention away.

  Not good, he thought, taking in a deep breath that was full of pain, to his heart, his neck, his shoulder. The look in her eyes made his heart tremble and roll over. It could be that she was just grateful for what he’d done for her tonight. It could be that. He wanted it to be that so he wouldn’t have to think about what that look said to him. Because resisting her was getting tougher. He knew it was the right thing to do. But he’d made a tactical error, a rookie mistake. He’d already kissed her. He already knew what she felt like, tasted like. He was already a goner. The big, bad ex-marine was a fucking goner. “Give me your phone.”

  He wasn’t going to kiss her again, no matter what she looked like, how she looked at him, no matter how poleaxed he felt. Hell, he could hardly breathe, and kissing her wasn’t what this was all about. She was a target. A designated target. She needed protection, and that was his mission, his assignment. Protect and serve. For his duty was all about the navy’s best interest, a life put in his care.

  A precious, brilliant life.

  “What?” she said, snapping out of that dazed look.

  “Your phone.”

  She looked at him but pulled it out of her pocket, setting it into his hand. His gut twisted with the depth of her trust. He pulled his out of his pocket and dialed.

  He pushed the speaker. “Vin! Are you all right? Dr. Baang?”

  “We’re both still alive, but a bit banged up.”

  “You left more than enough bodies in your wake.”

  “I did what I had to do.” His throat tightened, and pressure built on the backs of his eyes. He massaged them with his thumb and forefinger. “Chris, I’m sorry about Miller and Strong. They were good men.”

  “They were good. But you all did your job and protected Dr. Baang. They gave their lives for her safety.”

  Sky gasped softly, and he glanced at her. Her eyes glistened, and she covered her mouth, her face crumpling.

  “Where the hell are you?” he said.

  “Getting her out of Baltimore. Away,” he growled, his voice thick.

  “What? Bring her in to NCIS. We’ll get her to another safe—”

  Anger streaked through him, settling into his gut. “No way, Chris! Someone gave away her position. Someone had to. There were only a handful of people who knew where she was. You need to get someone on that!”

  “Don’t you argue with me, Special Agent Fitzgerald! Get your ass back here!”

  His boss was reminding him who was in charge, but the marines and NCIS had taught him that sometimes disobeying an order was the right course of action. The navy was all about freethinkers, and he was freaking freethinking right now. “I’m ditching the phones,” he said with finality, and Chris swore again. “I’ll contact you when we’re safe.”

  “Agent Fitz—”

  He cut his boss off, quickly disassembling the phone and tucking the SIM card into his coat pocket. He did the same with her phone.

  “You stay put. I’ll be right back.” He gritted his teeth as he shrugged out of his ruined coat, excruciating pain radiating out from the bullet wound down his arm, across his chest and into his back. Throwing it into the backseat, he grabbed his NCIS jacket. They would track the phones here anyway, so broadcasting that he was an agent wasn’t going to compromise anything. Tucking the gun into the holster at the small of his back, he exited the car and headed for the Walmart. Once inside, he dumped both phones and batteries into the trash. He bought prepaid phones, caffeinated drinks, water and gauze bandages. He headed back out to the car, the blowing snow icy against his exposed skin.

  Getting back into the car, he handed her the bag, which she set at her feet, and then he stripped off his coat, his sweatshirt and the T-shirt beneath. “There’s a roll of gauze in the bag. Could you give me a quick field dressing?”

  While she made fast work of wrapping his shoulder, he popped the top of one of the cans and sucked the liquid down, then another one. After she was done, he put his clothes back on and handed her the water. “Drink something. We’ll get food when we get to where we’re going.”

  She took the water and pulled off a bottle. “Where are we going?”

  He turned to look at her, determination like a promise. “Somewhere safe.”

  She didn’t say anything. Another sign that she trusted him.

  She raised the bottle to her lips and took a long swig.

  He downed another can of energy drink and put the car in gear.

  * * *

  When the phone went dead in his ear, Chris swore low and viciously beneath his breath. Vin was going to do this his way. He looked down at the bodies of Tom Miller and Mike Strong. Two good men. This whole thing was a disaster. Then he looked at the two men who were sprawled in the hallway where Vin had left them. There were four more up on the roof being brought down and another one over on an adjacent roof.

  That one had astounded him. A fifteen-foot shot in the dark of night with a handgun.

  Vin was a deadly son of a bitch.

  Chris had been a navy pilot. He had been trained in hand-to-hand, but let’s face it, he rarely had used that in the air. It wasn’t until he got into NCIS that he’d honed that part of his training, but what Vin had done to those two kidnappers... His shots were so precise. The guy with the slugs in him had been tapped right in the heart. The M.E. said his heart was gone. Exploded. But he’d followed up with head shots.

  Thorough.

  He’d picked the right agent to cover Dr. Baang. Had Vin been right? Had someone from NCIS leaked the location? Vin’s account of that was accurate. But still, he hadn’t liked that he’d gone rogue. He’d better call in and update him, or Chris was going to have his lethal ass in a sling.

  He walked down the hall, stepping over the dead kidnapper, and went into Dr. Baang’s room. Her laptop was sitting on top of her bed. He reached down and picked it up. It was interesting that the kidnappers hadn’t snagged it.

  He tucked it under his arm and headed out of the loft and back to NCIS. Once those bodies arrived, his forensic M.E. would be mighty busy.

  DNA, tattoos, dental record
s—maybe they could get at least one hit on one of these guys and see what they were up against.

  What Vin was up against.

  * * *

  Alexander Andreyev wanted to kill someone with his bare hands as the black SUV pulled up to one of their safe houses in D.C. He exited the vehicle, fuming. That NCIS bastard! He wanted a name to go with the agent. He wanted to know who he was up against.

  “Dmitry, find out who that agent is.”

  “Da,” Dmitry said, turning to his computer.

  The agent had taken out seven of his guys, and now he was going to have to get more over here to finish this job. The people who’d hired him wouldn’t pay a dime if they didn’t deliver the woman alive. But finding her was an iffy ploy. He could only hope that she was as predictable as his employer thought she was.

  Or this job was over and he’d have to cut his losses.

  Snarling, he kicked over the coffee table and closed his eyes against the pain in his head. “Get me something for a headache and some ice,” he growled at one of the men poring over a map on the dining-room table.

  Looking at a map wasn’t going to help them find the female scientist.

  This mission had taken months of planning, and the execution had gone like clockwork. He himself had found her hiding in the attic and drugged her.

  But she had been resourceful, and he’d underestimated her. And in the parking garage when he’d had her protector beneath his hands choking the life from him, she’d blindsided him. He wouldn’t underestimate her again.

  He looked at his watch. They had a deadline, and time was running out.

  * * *

  Vin drove through the heavy snow, his shoulder throbbing and a weakness stealing over him. Probably from the blood loss. When the caffeine hit his system, it was like a surge of jet fuel in his bloodstream and it pumped him up. But he knew it was an artificial high from the drinks and the receding adrenaline. By the time the snow let up after about an hour out of Baltimore, his shoulder was on fire. “We’re going to a fishing cabin near Newport, Pennsylvania, on the Juniata River,” he said to reassure her and distract himself from the shooting pain in his shoulder.

  “So we’re going to rough it?”

  “Not quite. I’ve packed a bag for both of us, got a thousand in cash. Marines call it a ‘battle pack.’ We’ll be fine for a bit. Until we can get a lead on these bastards.”

  Staying on I-83, he made Harrisburg, starting to feel light-headed a bit, his shoulder now in agony because of the damaged nerve endings. Crossing over the Susquehanna River, navigating through the maze of the I-81 interchange and ending up on Route 322, he skirted the Susquehanna. They crossed over it again as it split into one of its tributaries—the Juniata River.

  After a two-hour trip, he turned off onto a heavily wooded road and ended up at a cedar-and-glass cabin.

  By then, his wound was burning, sending prickling pain with each beat of his heart, each movement.

  He was moving slowly as he exited the vehicle, meaning to go to the trunk and get their battle packs out, but his knees buckled.

  Sky rushed around the car and caught him as he clasped the door for support. “The bags,” he managed to say.

  “Forget them for now. Let’s get you inside.”

  “The med kit is in mine.”

  “Inside first, Vin. Then we’ll get you taken care of. Stop being a hero for just a few minutes.”

  He grimaced and met her concerned gaze.

  She supported him as they headed to the porch, and his hand trembled as he fitted his key in the lock. He pressed his hand against the doorjamb as she pushed the door open.

  “Wow. This is gorgeous. There’s no roughing it here.”

  “Belongs to a buddy,” he managed. “He’s deployed and lets me use it anytime I want.”

  She helped him inside, and she headed straight to the bathroom and deposited him onto the commode. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I don’t like you going back outside without me to cover you.”

  “What’s going to attack me out here? The squirrels?”

  He leaned his head back against the wall and laughed, feeling as if he was losing it a bit, but unable to let down his guard.

  When he opened his eyes, she was gone, and he tried to stand but clutched at his shoulder as he collapsed back against the tank.

  He closed his eyes again, for just a minute. The soft touch of the backs of her fingers against his face made his eyes pop open. Had he fallen asleep? He couldn’t have. He couldn’t leave her unprotected. He went to rise, but she kept him in place with just the soft touch on his skin.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly. How did she do that, make him breathless? He’d run up stairs today, across an icy rooftop, took out six dangerous men toting semiautos, and here he was, trying to catch his breath.

  Her exotic eyes were assessing him, her expression a bit tight, but not quite so strained as it had been in the loft or on the roof, as if she knew that, for a while, everything was going to be all right.

  Watching her, his eyes went over her face, slowly, settling on her mouth.

  He wasn’t going to kiss her.

  He was so glad he got that straight in his head. So little was straight in his head right now. He was so tired. But they were safe here, and he could rest.

  The sound of water intruded into his thoughts. He turned his head. The water was running from the sink faucet. She had the med kit open.

  She filled a glass that she must have brought from the kitchen and shook out several white tablets from the bottle of painkillers.

  “Take these,” she said softly, a slight tremor in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, falling to his military training as he sank deeper into a dazed kind of sensation, feeling disconnected. Was he crashing or was it her?

  After dutifully swallowing the pills, he closed his eyes again to try to clear his head.

  The feel of the terry washcloth was warm against his skin as she gently cleaned off the blood around a particularly nasty gash. As he opened his eyes, she was close, her eyes so blue, her fingers against his chin, tilting his head so she could get to the blood on the side of his face, right at the curve of his jaw. Her touch was as warm and as her blue eyes. With every breath she took, an irrepressible longing was building inside him, making his chest tight.

  There was a bloody smear at her waist, but he knew she wasn’t hurt. He’d gotten the blood on her. There were several times he’d gotten blood on his hands and then grabbed her. She had blood on her shoulder, too. A handprint—his.

  “You okay?” he asked. He was a seasoned agent and an ex-marine. He had been a scout sniper, saw heavy and unrelenting battle where death stalked him and had seen many men die at his hands. He’d learned how to handle battle fatigue, stress and soul-deep fear and knew how to put all that he had seen into perspective so that it didn’t mess with his head. Even with all of that, he’d been scared down to the bone tonight. But Dr. Skylar Baang was a sheltered, naive and cerebral innocent.

  She blinked several times and gave him a wry look, dabbing antiseptic ointment on each cut, then setting butterfly bandages carefully to minimize his pain. “I’m not the one who’s been shot twice, punched out and strangled,” she said. Her thumb slid across his jaw in a slow, deliberate caress. Did she even know that she was doing that as if she couldn’t seem to help herself?

  “I’m not talking about physically.” Why did he have to get himself on that train of thought? He needed to derail it, but it was too late and the fight was draining out of him.

  He had to wonder what she was wearing underneath that conservative plain white button-down. The hint of blue strap flashed as she moved. That turquoise number, edged in white and lime-green lace, with a matching set of panties and that little lime-green bow
centered right in the middle.

  “I’m okay for now,” she said, hooking her thumb over the hinge of his jaw and tipping his head back. Setting the washcloth down, she reached into the med kit and picked up a tube of liniment. Squeezing out a generous amount onto her fingers, she rubbed it against the tender bruises of his neck in slow, soft caresses.

  “My head hurts a little at the temple where I fell. But I’ll take something for it as soon as you are...ah...handled.”

  “Ha!” He laughed. “Funny, Doctor.” He let his breath go in a heated rush. He shouldn’t have thought about her in a physical way. Damn him.

  Now that they were safe and he was getting tended by her, his thoughts went where he didn’t want them to go. Everything was falling into place in a little bit different order, stacking up to one undeniable truth: he wanted her.

  Chapter 6

  She was in his sights in a way that was impossible to ignore, deep down in his gut, visceral. When he’d opened his coat and invited her inside, it was because she was freezing—all part and parcel of the whole badass-protector thing. Keep her safe in every way. But she’d looked up at him, and he’d suddenly noticed everything about her—the thickness of her lashes and the softness of her breath, the paleness of her skin and the racing of her heart, and he’d wanted her.

  She was off-limits for so many reasons. But he couldn’t seem to bring any of them to the forefront of his mind right now.

  She had shown a lot of courage tonight, and she had saved his life. That bravery and quick-thinking action was the reason he was here right now. His charge had become his guardian angel. That tied him up in knots. Just watching her breathe made his skin hot.

  He was supposed to guard her, not touch her, getting his mouth and hands on her, getting inside her.

  Oh, yeah. Inside her, that was the picture hardwired in his brain all the way down to his groin, short-circuiting his common sense.

  “We need to get your shirt off,” she said, and his heart stalled in his chest. But she was focused on the bloody mess of a wound on his shoulder.