by Dale Mayer
Anders sat beside Dezi. “Are you heading for bed too?”
Dezi nodded. “We’ll all need to, given the short amount of time.”
With the other men going upstairs, Anders paced downstairs, wondering at his sense of unease. It was a shitty deal that he had to take her to England when she didn’t want to go. He had originally wanted to take her there so he could see England through her eyes. Two days with her was a gift, one he desperately wanted. A reboot of their initial meeting so to speak. He wished he could visit with her now, but that was hardly fair. They both needed sleep.
He headed upstairs to the room he shared with Reyes, who was still out on watch. There were two beds. Anders’s bag had been tossed on the first, Reyes’s on the second. Anders headed toward the bathroom to take a shower, and, when he came back out again, feeling much better, he stood on the small balcony to his bedroom and let in the fresh air. He needed sleep, but he wasn’t tired. Hearing another sound beside him, he turned to see Angel step out on her small deck.
He smiled and whispered, “Can’t you sleep?”
Startled, she walked to the corner of her balcony, nearer him. “When did you come in?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. Reyes is on watch now.” He spoke in low tones but worried all the same. Being outside, their voices were bound to carry on the still nighttime air.
She nodded, her gaze taking in the evening. “It’s so beautiful up here. It’s hard to believe there’s any danger.”
“True, but Nate didn’t shoot himself,” he reminded her.
“And the other men your team caught on the mountain?”
“They were picked up by the police, except for the one Harrison found and tied up.”
“What happened?” Angel asked.
“He wasn’t there when we reached the spot,” Anders said quietly. “Which means one or more of his friends came and collected him.”
“So some of the original attackers are still out there then?”
“They are. I imagine they know we’re here. But, with any luck, our team outnumbers theirs.”
“Will they follow us to England?”
He nodded. “They may follow us to the airport. When we leave in the middle of the night, they will notice.”
She groaned. “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble, so I presume they won’t just walk away now, like I was hoping.”
“I doubt it,” he said with a smile. “But who knows?”
She snorted. “This is so stupid. I can’t believe this is happening. But who gives a shit about what I have to say?”
“The problem is, we don’t want the shooter’s team to get pissy and to decide to kill you as a reminder to your father how they can get at him anytime.” Anders narrowed his gaze slightly. “I’m not sure you see how serious this really is.”
“I know how serious it is,” she said softly. She crossed her arms and leaned against the railing, staring out at the valley below. “It just seems so very distant.”
“And that surprises me,” he said. Standing as close to her as he could get, they were still a good two feet apart between the balconies. Maybe three feet. He figured he could cross that distance easily. But he wouldn’t do it without an invitation. But not here and not now. Remembering the single shooter, he said, “Go back inside. It’s not safe.”
She shot him a look but obediently stepped back inside. Damn it. Then she called out.
“Are only two men out there? I presumed one of those is the one Harrison tied up, and his buddy, the sharpshooter, untied him.”
“Yes, that would make the most sense,” he admitted. “And that would explain why, if they are down to only two of them, they’re not ready to approach the house. They can’t know for sure how many of us are here.”
“I doubt that,” she said softly. “I suspect they know perfectly well that the five of us are here now. But, if they can take out several of you, the odds are still not in their favor.”
“Best you go inside and try to sleep,” he said quietly. “We’ll be leaving early.”
Silence. Then the glass door shut on her side. Good. The last thing he wanted was for one of those assholes to get lucky and take her down.
More likely they’d try for him, to snatch her. Thankfully they were still keeping watch.
No one was getting their hands on her while he was still alive to stop it.
Although her presence might not be here, the look in her eyes and her unasked question hung heavy in the air. He didn’t know what he’d missed, but he felt for sure he’d missed something.
Chapter 8
Angelica woke to a knock on her door. “I’m awake,” she called out softly.
Her door opened, and Anders’s head poked around the frame. “We’re leaving in ten.”
She flung back the bedding. “I’ll get dressed.”
He nodded. “Bring all your bags to the front door.” He closed the door behind him.
She had laid out her clothing the night before and was quickly dressed after a fast trip to the bathroom, where she collected the rest of her toiletries, packed them and, grabbing her bag, walked out. She had a backpack she had left downstairs but had taken her bag of clothes up to her room.
At the front door, she saw the men already loading the gear into the rental vehicle. She stepped out of the cabin and onto the front porch, breathing in the beautiful fresh air. It was still dark out, no sign of the sun rising yet. It felt odd, secretive, to be up at this hour.
She was ushered inside the vehicle, where she sat in the middle of the back seat with all four men around her. She realized they were down to just the one vehicle. One of the guys must have returned the second rental earlier, and she hadn’t noticed it then.
She settled into her place as they set off on the drive. She already knew they were going to a different airport, so it would be a couple hours on the road. And that was okay too. She closed her eyes and let herself relax, enjoying the sway of the double-cab truck, letting her mind settle into another nap. She dozed, woke up, dozed again, and she thought they might still have yet another hour when they took a turnoff and pulled onto a little airfield, a small aircraft ahead. After Anders gave her the go-ahead, she hopped out, looked around and said, “This is a private airfield?”
“It’s a little-known military one,” Anders said. “Rarely used, yet open to the public, so we’re not stepping on anybody’s toes.”
She heard the plane’s engine running as it warmed up. “What about the vehicle?”
“The pilot will be coming back. He’ll return the vehicle for us.”
She nodded, reached for her two bags and followed the men onto the small plane. She didn’t have a problem flying. She enjoyed traveling, and this was certainly an adventure. Without any interruptions, the plane taxied down the runway and was soon high in the air.
The sun crested in the sky, and it was an unbelievably glorious picture down on land. She smiled as she watched the world slowly wake up below her. But quickly they were high above the clouds and soaring north.
She settled in the small plane, and, of course, there was no service, no flight attendants, nothing. She would have loved a coffee, but, barring that, she’d relax and enjoy this leg of her trip. “Is it too early to be happy we escaped okay?”
“Absolutely too early for that,” Anders said behind her. “Too many things could go wrong between here and there.”
She winced. The last thing she wanted was to have anything go wrong midair. Beneath them were miles and miles of very unforgiving land and ocean. Still, it wasn’t a long flight, and, by the time they landed three hours later, she felt much more chipper.
She looked out and realized they had landed on yet another small airstrip. “Do you guys keep track of small unused airports like this?”
“We have them all over the world,” Harrison said. “They are much easier to get in and out of on a regular basis.”
“Especially for smugglers,” she said cheerfully.
“Our fligh
t path has been filed, passport numbers have already been sent in. Nothing secretive about this.”
“Maybe there should be,” she said. She deplaned and stood on the tarmac. Several other small planes were here, one taxiing to take off and two parked to the side. With all the men beside her, they walked toward what appeared to be a small office. There a man checked her passport. She whispered to Anders, “Surely this doesn’t look like a normal customs entry point?”
He shook his head. “No, it isn’t. If anybody has a problem with our arrival, they’ll track us down. We’ve already given them your father’s address. And honestly, with his clearance, we can come in and out of this airport easily.”
“Well, at least he’s good for something,” she said.
As they stepped out the other side, a half-dozen vehicles were parked in the lot. She watched as Anders pointed to a large SUV. “That’s ours.”
She looked at it and smiled. “That looks very government-issue and official. Smoked windows, black body. You could pick that out a mile away.”
“Unfortunately that’s quite true,” he said. “We had hoped we would have something much less conspicuous.”
“Are you kidding? That is what the government calls inconspicuous. To me they are obviously government issue.”
He chuckled and said, “Glad to see you still have some spirit, even though it’s been a trying morning.”
“It’s been a good morning,” she said. “The flight was easy enough, and we made it safe and sound.” Regardless of his earlier words, she hoped it was a smooth trip the rest of the way. “I don’t know how close we are to Carlo’s place, but I presume we still have an hour to travel.”
“Why did you pick that time frame?”
“Because it always seems to take an hour to get anywhere in London,” she said with a laugh. “Between the traffic and the stops I have to make, I’m never faster than that.”
“True, but we’re a long way from London, so have several hours yet.”
As they headed out of the airstrip and onto the main highway, she settled back and thought about the last time she’d been in England. Carlo had been much less than agreeable about her visit, as it interrupted a private session with one of his latest lady friends. Angelica had been hot-tempered at the time and had told him what she thought of him. He’d been equally hot-tempered and had told her that she was a child who needed to grow up. She had decided growing up meant leaving and had walked out of his life.
She hadn’t seen him since. She wasn’t really looking forward to seeing him now either. She highly doubted he had changed. The question was, had she? Enough to be polite? She still didn’t view his lifestyle with any more generosity. It had destroyed her family and her mother. Angelica still felt pain every time she thought about it. Her mother hadn’t moved on in terms of relationships, whereas Carlo seemed to never stop moving on into various relationships. But that was her parents’ problem. Angelica could only do so much.
Anders reached over and double-checked that her seat belt was on.
“What’s that all about?” she asked, wondering what she’d missed.
“We’re being followed,” he said succinctly.
She stared at him and pivoted to look behind her. A big truck came up behind them, going way too fast. “Oh, God,” she said, her stomach dropping like a stone. “There’s no way to get away from him. This road is straight and flat, with no side roads.”
“Yes. And that, in itself, means, once they flip us, all of our lives are in danger. Chances are they’re hoping to extract you alive from the center of this vehicle.”
She shook her head. “Unbelievable.” She leaned forward and spoke to Harrison. “You can drive faster anytime now.” She gazed at the speedometer, already maxed out for the vehicle. “Due to the size of this SUV, I didn’t register the speed we were traveling.”
“Also, once you saw somebody was behind us,” Anders said with a note of humor, “no speed seems fast enough.”
She nodded.
Just then the truck came in even closer. She gripped Anders’s arm as she watched the truck advance on them. But Harrison managed to pull ahead.
“How long can this go on?” she cried out.
“Until one or the other of us makes a mistake,” Anders said, his voice calm as he held her hand in his. “We won’t let them get you.”
She nodded. “I realize you believe that, but you can’t control everything.” He gave her a ghost of a smile, then she saw his teeth.
“Believe me. Even if we go down, we’ll make sure we take them down too.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a great answer. Thank you very much,” she snapped. “I’d much rather none of you got killed.”
“Oh, so you like all of us, do you?”
She glared. “I like all of you. And, no, I don’t like you more than them.”
“Well, of course not,” he said, “because you love me.”
She sighed. “You’ve been almost normal for this last six to ten hours. I was kind of hoping you had given up on that thread of conversation.”
“No, not at all,” he said cheerfully.
Just then their vehicle was bumped. She was pushed toward Anders, but he took advantage and wrapped an arm around her back, tucking her close against him.
“If you’re trying to distract me,” she said, “it’s not working.”
“Really?” He tilted her chin and kissed her.
His lips were warm and searching, seeking a response. She had forgotten just how combustible the two of them were. He’d kissed her during that weekend from a year ago, and that had felt like a major betrayal of her fiancé at the time. She hadn’t given Anders permission back then, but, once the touch of his lips had seared through her system, her entire sense of control had destroyed itself, and she’d found her response something she’d never thought to have. It had been beyond her before to pull back, and, when Anders finally did, she’d been so shocked and so upset at her immediate reaction to him that she couldn’t sort out her feelings for a long time.
This time it was different. She knew he was trying to distract her, and she didn’t think anything could do that now under these circumstances. But she was wrong. The feeling of his hand as he held her neck, massaging gently; the touch of his tongue as he stroked deep into her mouth; the pure possession that focused on her, that said, I’m here for you. It’s just the two of us in this small world was magnetic. By the time he pulled his head away and looked at her lambent eyes, she could feel all her resistance dissipating. “How is it you do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, dropping a kiss gently on her temple.
“Make me forget everything going on around me.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lucky. Because you’re one hell of a crazy package that I can’t seem to forget.”
“You might not have a choice,” she said, “if this asshat gets ahold of me.”
Instantly he lifted her chin again. “He won’t. No way will we get separated again.”
“That just means he’ll take you captive too.” She stared at him. “And that won’t help me. Better for you to escape and for you to find a way to rescue me instead.”
Just then Harrison swore steadily. “Hang on.”
Her heart in her throat, she realized the road ahead was blocked with two more trucks, parked so both rear ends were jammed into the center.
Anders pulled her tighter against him, her knees against his chest, and he whispered to her, “We’ll blast right through them, and their vehicles will fly off the road. Head down. Stay calm.”
And then it was a crash like she couldn’t have imagined. The vehicles, of course, weren’t evenly parked, so Harrison hit first one and then the other. Outside she could hear screams and roars and what she thought maybe was gunfire. She hugged Anders even tighter, burying her face against his chest, but their vehicle didn’t slow down. It barreled forward.
Cautiously she lifted her head and looked behind
her. Sure enough, both of the parked vehicles had been disabled and were on opposite sides of the road, but the big truck still followed them, although slowed a bit by the spinning trucks. She stared at Anders. “That wasn’t very smart of them because now they don’t have their spare vehicles to drive.”
“I’m not sure how ours is either. As long as we’ve still got air in the tires, we’re good,” he said.
“Did I hear shots?”
The look on his face was grim as he nodded. “You did, indeed. I’m hoping nothing major was hit.” He leaned forward to the guys in the front seat. “Are you two okay?”
Harrison said, “I’m fine. Dezi is running the GPS. We need to change our route.”
“Got it.” Anders looked over at Reyes, on the other side of Angelica. “Are you all right?”
The window beside Reyes had shattered. He looked at Anders. “I am, but it just missed me.”
And, indeed, Anders found a bullet burn alongside Reyes’s head.
As soon as Angelica saw that, she unbuckled—against Anders’s protest—and checked out Reyes’s head wound. “That’s incredibly lucky. Just a centimeter, even a millimeter—and it would have taken off your head,” she cried out.
Reyes gave her a lopsided grin. “If I counted all the woulds or coulds or shoulds in my life, I’d have been dead many times over.” His voice was gentle as he said, “However, if you have a handkerchief or something I could hold against the wound to stop the bleeding, that would be good.”
She leaned over the back to the storage compartment behind the last seat and rummaged in her bag. She held up a small washcloth for him. He packed it tightly against the burn on his head.
“It’s not bleeding too bad,” she said. She stared around at all the glass. “Are you cut?”
He shook his head. “No, what I don’t know is where the bullet ended up.”
Angelica turned to look in the direction it had gone, but Anders’s window was also shattered. “It must have gone right through the vehicle.”
Anders said, “Yes, that’s very likely. Which is a good thing. If that bullet had hit directly, it could have taken out all three of us by going through all three heads, depending on what caliber it was.”
