She shrugged. “You obviously need the help, my friend.”
Friend. Relief flowed through me. I realized how badly I had wanted to believe she was indeed my friend. That she wouldn’t hate me for binding her to me. I really was going soft.
She reached below her feet and pulled out her laptop. Or, should I say, Derrick’s laptop. “I’m going to see what else I can find. See if there are pieces that fit together now that we know more.”
Just like that, the conversation was done. Ivan tipped his head at me, gesturing for me to come to him. I slipped past Rachel, who was already buried in the computer. Ivan scooted over to the window seat.
“She doesn’t understand what you mean about her replacing this Calvin dude.” He dropped his voice low enough that there was no way Rachel or Antonio could hear him.
“She’s not stupid. She knows.”
“From what little I know of her, she wouldn’t be so nonchalant if she understood she was bound to you for eternity. It would be akin to me binding you to me. You two are peas in a pod, wild as they come and not eager to be tied to anything or anyone.”
“You couldn’t bind me to you.” Of course that was the first thing I denied. Of course. He grinned.
“You sure about that?”
I scrambled backward and into the aisle.
Unable to keep still, I paced the jet from the cockpit to the service galley and back as the hours passed. More than once the captain told me to relax, throwing a grin over his shoulder. Finally it seemed he’d had enough. “We’ve almost reached Istanbul. Will you tell Victor? And sit down.”
I leaned into the cockpit and put a hand on his shoulder. “Re-route to Arbil, Iraq.” He stiffened under my hand and I increased the compulsion, drawing on my reserves. I hadn’t fed in a full twenty-four hours, and was running out of juice.
The captain nodded, but the co-pilot looked at me and shook his head. “Take your hand off him.”
Rather than comply, I dropped my other hand on his shoulder. “Be calm. Do as your captain says.” The co-pilot slumped a little and then gave a quick nod.
“You’re the boss.”
I stood, watching over them as they overshot the Istanbul airport, ignoring the air controller’s pleas to turn around and land.
Which is why I saw the telltale sparkle of a rocket headed our way as soon as we crossed the border into Iraq.
“Fuck.” I grabbed two of four parachutes from behind the captain and co-pilot as they struggled to turn the plane around, a move I knew would not work in time to avoid the rockets. I ran into the cabin and threw a parachute to Ivan. “Take the limo driver.”
I grabbed Rachel and hauled her to her feet. “Time to go.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
I slipped the parachute on her back and buckled it up. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
Everything seemed to pause. I glanced at Ivan, who’d put the parachute on and grabbed Antonio by the arm. “You want me to let him drop?”
I shook my head as I turned back to compel the pilots to put on their parachutes.
And the world around us exploded.
Rachel reached for me and I grabbed her around the shoulders as we were flung from the plane. The scream of metal tearing apart was accompanied by bright flashes as the fuel lines erupted all around us. The dark night was lit up as we tumbled through the air. And I couldn’t seem to do anything but stare and remember the previous plane crashes I’d survived. The people I’d lost.
The one I’d failed to save. He’d been my companion before Calvin.
“Lea, snap the fuck out of it! When do I pull the cord?” Rachel’s voice cut through the mind-numbing memories.
I craned my neck back to see how high up we were. We dropped through a cloud, the moisture slapping us in the face as the fluffy dark obscured my vision.
“Now?”
“Not yet.”
I wrapped my legs tighter around her waist and leaned back so I could see better. A flicker of lights in the far distance. “Still too high. Another twenty seconds at least.”
“Where are Ivan and Antonio?”
“They’ll be fine.” I didn’t know that for sure. They could have been caught in one of the explosions and totally fried before they had the chance to free-fall. But if anyone would survive, a werewolf would.
“Fuck.” She bit out the word.
The wind ripped around us, battering at our clothes. Above us, bits of plane fell in burning chunks. “Hang on.”
I angled my body to change our trajectory. A piece of metal sliced the air right where we’d been. Rachel’s body shook and her eyes were wide, but she held it together remarkably well. Better than I could have hoped for jumping out of an exploding plane.
“Pull the cord.” I tightened my grip on her and she yanked the cord. The parachute popped up above us, billowing and snapping our headlong fall into what felt like a sudden stop.
My grip on her slipped and I grunted as I scrambled to re-adjust.
I ended up with my legs wrapped tightly around her hips, my arms around her shoulders and neck. We were pretty much nose to nose.
“I like you and all,” she said, “but this is a bit much even for me.”
I grinned, a giddy sense of relief flowing over me. “Imagine the position the boys are in.”
She burst out laughing and I joined her.
For the moment we were alive, and that was worth celebrating.
Even if we both knew it was likely to be cut short.
CHAPTER 20
RACHEL
The parachute slowed us down, but the ground still hurtled toward us. Between the pitch black of the night and Lea’s face in front of mine, I struggled to see how close we actually were.
Then Lea released her hold on me and landed on her feet, dipping into a squat. The parachute was still attached to me, so I was seconds behind her. I landed on my feet and then pitched forward when the parachute deflated behind me. The wind picked up, blowing sand in my face and grabbing hold of the chute, tugging me a little across the gritty earth.
I reached up and unbuckled the pack from my chest, frustrated as my fingers shook.
“Rachel? You okay?”
“Just peachy,” I grumbled, dropping the pack to the earth. “You?” I glanced around to gauge where we were, but all I could see was scrub grass and pieces of plane raining down around us. Shit, this was not good. I dropped to my knees and started pulling the chute toward me.
“Fine.” She walked closer. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to hide the evidence that we survived the explosion. Where are Ivan and Antonio?”
“I don’t know.”
“We need to find them and get the fuck out of here.” I had most of the chute gathered around me and began stuffing it into the pack. The question was where could we hide it? The answer was nowhere. I would have to take it with us. “Where were we when we were shot down? Iraq or Turkey?”
“Iraq.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and switched it on, glad I’d turned it off during the flight from London to conserve the power.
“You planning to make a call?” she asked in disbelief.
“No, I’m using the compass to see where the fuck we are.” I pulled up the app, saying a silent prayer of thanks when the longitude and latitude numbers popped up. “Oh, God.” I patted my hip, not surprised to find my bag wasn’t there. “The computer. All the papers. They’re gone.”
“Fuck.”
“The coordinates for the facility,” I said. “Do you remember them? I can’t remember the exact numbers.”
“Yeah. I’ve got them.” She rattled them off. “30.5 N 47.816 E.”
I entered them into a message on my phone and then powered it off. “Based on our coordinates, we’re fairly close to a town where I have some contacts. We can get supplies and a vehicle from them. We’re too far from the facility to walk, but right now, we need to get your pet and the slime he carried w
ith him and get out of here.” With any luck at all, Antonio had plummeted to his death, but guilt washed in behind the thought. I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted him gone.
“Maybe we can find some of our weapons in the rubble,” Lea said, then pointed to the east. “It looks like a lot of debris landed that way. We might find Ivan and your friend too.”
I slung the pack over my shoulder and started hiking in that direction. “He’s no friend of mine,” I spat out.
“You sure got friendly with him earlier.”
“And you know why.”
“Oh, yes. To get information.”
I spun around to face her, stopping in my tracks. “I needed information and I used what I had at my disposal to get it. I will never let a man deceive me and use me again,” I spat through gritted teeth. “Are we clear on that?”
She lifted her hands in surrender. “Sorry.”
“The asshole needs to go. I say we find Ivan and leave Antonio behind.”
“You know it won’t be that easy,” she said softly. “He will go where we go whether we want him to or not. It’s better to keep him with us so we can watch him.”
“And I say we can’t trust him. I’d rather try to lose him.”
Her chest puffed with irritation. “I am in charge.”
Choose your battles, my father had always said. Just because Lea thought she had the last say didn’t mean she actually did.
After we hiked several hundred yards, Lea called out Ivan’s name.
“Over here,” I heard the pain in his voice.
We found him sitting on the ground, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle. “Complex fracture to my femur.” Spittle shot through Ivan’s gritted teeth. “I couldn’t set it myself.”
Antonio was squatting next to him, looking up at me.
“Why didn’t you set it for him?” I demanded as I dropped the parachute pack to the ground.
“Not my problem” was his harsh reply.
“You know werewolves heal fast, yet you left him like this?” I turned my attention to Lea, who gaped at me in surprise. Probably because I was showing concern for Ivan. “Can you reset it?”
“Yes, but it will take him several minutes to heal enough to walk.” She lowered next to him, her hands already on his leg, feeling for the break.
Fury rose inside me and I delivered a roundhouse kick to Antonio’s chest, sending him flying onto his back.
I caught him off guard, but he quickly recovered, bouncing off his back and into a squat before rising. So he knew how to fight, but I had already suspected that.
He held his hands out at his sides. “You don’t want to do this, mi amor.”
“I am not your fucking amor.” I circled him, and he watched me, wary but alert.
“Not now, Rachel,” Lea snapped.
“Let them fight,” Ivan grunted, the pain cutting his words. “It’s distracting me from the torture you're putting me through.
“Rachel.” My name sounded sexy and exotic in Antonio’s accent, which I was sure was his intent. “I am not your enemy.”
“You are not my friend. My friend would have set Ivan’s leg instead of stalling our escape for several minutes. My friend wouldn’t be stalling, waiting for someone to come pick us up. Who’s coming, Antonio? The U.S.? The Iraqis? Or perhaps some jihadi group?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “That was not my intent.”
A snap filled the night air and Ivan released a sharp cry of pain.
“He speaks the truth,” Lea said, sounding resigned. How would Lea know that? Because of their work for Victor?
“Bull-fucking-shit he does.” I took advantage of the fact that he was looking at Lea and made my move, kicking him in the chest again. The hit landed, but he reacted quickly enough to grab my leg. I jerked free and followed with a strike to his head, which he blocked. He threw a strike of his own, but I ducked and swept my legs under his. He fell to his back, releasing an “oomph” as he hit the ground.
He was setting us up and I’d let him do it. I straddled his waist and held my blade to his throat. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you now.”
“Because you need me.”
“Like hell we do.”
“Not them. You. There is much you need to know. Things she refuses to tell you.”
“That’s between Lea and me.” But when Lea didn’t contradict him, I wondered if he spoke the truth. I didn’t have time for doubts and indecisions.
A slow grin spread across his face. Was it because he saw the doubt in my eyes? Or because I was on top of him again? “Twice now you have held my own blade at my throat. Should you try a third time, there will be consequences.”
“Let him go.” Lea sounded weary as she climbed to her feet.
I swung my leg away from him and stood, but I still held my blade out in a defensive move. “You’re coming with us.”
He sat up and rubbed the back of his head. “That was the plan all along, mi guerrera.”
If Lea was surprised by my change in tactics, she didn’t let on. But I didn’t trust him not to run off and tattle on us.
“How soon until Ivan can move?”
“Another few minutes.” Lea scanned the horizon. “Which way do we go?”
I pulled out my phone and waited for it to boot up. “The village is to the northeast. We can find a place to stay before sunrise.” I paused. “The sun is brutal here, Lea. You’ll barely make it, even with your full gear. If we want to travel by day, we’ll need a transport truck of some kind. You can ride in the back.”
“How far are we from the facility?”
I shot a glance at Antonio, then back to her. I wasn’t sure we should talk about our plans in front of him. “Hard to say. I need a map. I’m sure I can get one in the village. Someone who lives in the area owes me. Once we get close to the village, I’ll contact him. But it might take a day or so for him to get it together. It depends on where he is and what he’s doing.”
“Who is he?” Antonio asked.
I ignored him, keeping my gaze on Lea.
She nodded. “I’m going to see what I can salvage in the debris, then we’ll go.” She turned her steely gaze on Antonio. “She better be completely unharmed when I return.”
He nodded, looking solemn. “You know I will not harm her.”
I considered protesting—I’d just knocked his ass to the ground mere moments ago—but all four of us knew he’d let me take him.
The question was why.
CHAPTER 21
LEA
I found two silver stakes in the debris, the glimmer of metal beckoning to me through the smoke. I stepped over the pilot’s mangled body. I didn’t think he and his co-pilot made it out. A twinge of remorse cascaded over me, and quickly fled. For those who were looking for us, a couple of bodies would help solidify that the crash might have killed us.
I bent and scooped the two stakes up, tucking one into the top of my boot and tossing the other lightly in my hand, feeling the heat of the metal on my skin. “Rachel. Do you still have your stake?”
Through the smoke, I saw her nod and hold it up.
I flipped the second stake toward her so it buried into the ground at her feet.
“Here’s a backup. Just in case.” I turned back to the wreckage. A beat-up bag lay underneath a section of seats. With a tug, I pulled it out. Singed and battered, it had hooked onto the undercarriage of the seats. Inside the bag were Rachel’s notes, her destroyed laptop and a few other odds and ends. I shook my head.
“Rachel, you aren’t going to believe this.” I held the bag up so she could see it.
“No fucking way!” She ran to me and I handed her the bag. “How is this even possible?”
“It hooked onto the seat.”
A low groan brought my head around. Ivan was in a shit ton of pain—it all but rolled off him in waves. I sucked back the saliva pooling in my mouth at the thought of his wounds.
“Can’t you give him...some blood?”
Rachel slung her bag over her shoulder.
“No. I haven’t fed in far too long now. If I give him any, I will be putting myself at risk.”
“Can’t have that, can we?” Antonio quipped. I turned to him, a slow anger building in my veins. Cazador he may be, but he wasn’t really one of us.
My steps took me to him like a magnet drawn to steel. I stopped only when I could feel Antonio’s breath on my face. “I would be able to help Ivan if I could feed.”
He took a step back and pulled a silver stake up. “You could try. I do not think you would like how I taste.”
I grinned. “Well, you can’t be that bad. Rachel seems to like your flavor.”
His jaw dropped and Rachel sucked in a sharp breath. Ivan grunted, and when I glanced his way, laughter sparkled in his eyes. I went to him and helped him stand.
“Come on, wolf.”
He slung an arm across my shoulders and gave me his weight.
It took me a few feet to realize we were the only ones moving. We slowly turned around. Rachel and Antonio seemed to be in some sort of stand-off. I blew out a sigh. We did not have time for this shit. “Rachel, you leading this circus?”
She shook herself and nodded. “Yeah.”
No snappy comeback. Damn, I must have struck a nerve. She got in front of me and Ivan, setting a brutal pace considering I was all but packing two hundred pounds of werewolf. I said nothing about slowing down. We needed cover, and we needed it fast. I called over my shoulder to Antonio. “Think you can cover our tracks?”
“Already done, bloodsucker. Some of us are professionals.”
Ivan let out a low growl that rumbled through me, but I tightened my hold on him until he stopped. “Not worth it. Right now, we can use all the help we can get.” I paused and raised my voice. “Besides, Antonio is a killer, just like you and me, Ivan.” Though Rachel’s stride didn’t falter, her head tipped ever so slightly to one side. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, but I knew her well enough by now to pick up on it. I could almost feel her interest as if it were inside my own head.
“He doesn’t even know you,” Ivan grumbled. “Doesn’t he get that we’re out to save the world?”
Replica (The Blood Borne Series Book 2) Page 12
