Josh shook Connor’s hand, and Connor pulled him in for a one-armed, manly hug. “Hope it works out for you. If you need anything else on the other side of the border, let me know. And remember—” he winked at Gina “—I was never here.”
Gina threw her arms around the big man. “Thank you so much. We couldn’t have done this without you.”
He took her by the shoulders. “I’d do anything for Josh Elliott. The man saved so many lives, including my own. Take a life, save a life.”
She nodded, tears pricking the backs of her eyes. That’s exactly what Josh had done for her.
Several minutes later, Josh took her hand as they stood side by side watching the dust from Connor’s four-wheel drive disperse across the desert sand.
“It’s just us now.” She pressed the side of her head against his arm.
“Us and—” he walked to their Jeep and lifted a huge case from the back “—this. I’m going to set up now.”
“Should I go with you?”
He pointed to some rock outcroppings in the distance. “We’re going right there. Your father couldn’t have picked a better place for his tunnel.”
“That’s driving distance, especially in this terrain.”
“That’s the point. Nobody can see or figure out what we’re doing from that distance.” He leveled a finger at the rocks.
“What if...?”
He held up a hand. “We’ll work through anything that comes up.”
She swung into the Jeep beside him and they bounced over the uneven ground, heading for a pile of rocks that resembled the discarded building blocks of some playful giants.
Josh parked the Jeep at the base of the outcropping and hauled his sniper rifle from the back. She followed him up and over the granite until he reached a flattop.
“Are you going to be able to get here in time?”
Josh ignored her question, and Gina perched on a rock, watching him pull pieces of his weapon out of the case and set it up on the flat base of the rock. Had he gone through the same motions on a hillside outside her father’s compound in Colombia?
His eye to the scope, he tweaked and shifted the rifle several times before letting out a long breath. “Got it.”
“What if there’s someone standing in the way? What if they notice the trigger wire at the tunnel’s entrance and yank it out?”
“I doubt anyone’s going to be yanking any wires, even if they see them. They’ll take off running before they do that. And I’ll make sure nobody is standing in the way.”
“You do this sort of thing all the time? Set up these types of ambushes?”
“I’m an old pro.”
“How much time?”
“Just enough time to get you up here and show you what to do.”
Gina froze. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to train you to be a sniper in fifteen minutes.”
She blinked. She stood up. She plopped back down on the rock. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m deadly serious.” He held out his hand to her. “Do you really think Vlad’s people or Los Santos for that matter, are going to allow me to leave that tunnel?”
“Th-they’re not going to kill you.”
“Vlad would like nothing better than to kill me.” He cupped his fingers and gestured her forward. “You have to do this, Gina. It’s all set up for you. I’ve done the hard part. All you have to do is pull the trigger.”
“You’re crazy.” She shook her head back and forth, hoping to clear it.
“I’m not gonna lie. The kickback on the rifle’s gonna be a bitch, but you’re a strong woman and you can handle it. If it knocks you on your ass after you take the shot, that’s okay. You just need the one shot, and then you take RJ and get the hell out of here.”
“You mean, after I pick you up.”
“Yeah, yeah. After you pick me up.”
“Josh...”
He took her hand. “C’mon up and let me show you what to do.”
Gina spent the next several minutes with her eye to the scope, her finger on the trigger of the big rifle and a knot in her stomach. Josh actually expected her to shoot the sniper rifle at the trigger he and Connor had propped up between two rocks, setting off an explosion in the tunnel.
And then he expected her to, what? Leave him behind? Knowing his life could be in her hands gave her more courage and determination than she’d ever had before in her life.
After he had her run through the instructions with him for about the hundredth time, she collapsed on a rock and stretched out her fingers.
“I think you’ve got it down. You can do this.” He sat beside her and rested his hand on her thigh.
She glanced down at his hand and trailed her fingers along the corded muscle of his forearm. She wasn’t ready to lose Josh yet. There was too much she had to tell him.
The pressure of her touch increased as a sudden panic rushed through her body.
Josh’s head shifted slightly to the side as he raised his eyebrows. “You okay?”
“Whatever happens today, just know that I love you, Josh Elliott.”
He grabbed her face with both hands and pulled her close. “God, and I thought it was just me who’d fallen in love with you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Josh’s muscles tensed as he spied the headlights in the distance. Nighttime hadn’t fallen in the desert yet, but any minute now it would come on fast like a curtain dropping on a stage.
Gina sat up in the passenger seat of the Jeep. “Is that them?”
“Can’t imagine who else it would be out here,” Josh mouthed the words around the toothpick in the side of his mouth, and then spit it out. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready to see RJ.”
Tugging on her hair, he pulled her close and kissed her hard on the mouth. “This is gonna work.”
“I know. I believe that with all my heart.”
“Then it’s showtime.” He launched out of the Jeep onto the desert floor and called back to Gina. “Two vehicles.”
She exited the car and stood beside him, crossing her arms. “One of those cars better have RJ in it.”
“They passed the rocks where the rifle is stationed.” He rolled his shoulders. One victory at a time.
The two off-road vehicles came in hot, kicking up a dust storm in their wake. The first truck carried a man, standing and pointing a rifle at them.
The knots in Josh’s gut tightened as he spread his arms out to his sides. He’d already disarmed himself, his weapons, except for the sniper rifle hidden in the rocks, displayed on the hood of the Jeep.
A bright white light mounted on the first truck bathed the area in an eerie glow. The vehicles squealed to a stop, and Josh huffed out a breath when he saw a woman lead RJ from the second vehicle.
Gina cried out and rushed toward her son, but the man with the rifle waved her off.
“When we say you can.”
Gina stopped, her arms stretched out before her. “RJ, are you okay?”
The boy nodded, his eyes wide and glassy. Fun time with Diego must’ve ended and confusion had set in.
Josh curled his fists at his sides. This had to work.
A man stepped forward and Josh recognized his voice from the phone call. Yuri. “Where is the tunnel? How do we get to it?”
“Release the boy to his mother now, let them both leave as planned and I’ll take you over. It’s not gonna happen before that and you’ll never find the entrance to that tunnel without me.”
The ringleader nodded to one of his minions, and he grabbed Josh and patted him down. Then the man took the gun and the knife on top of the Jeep and pocketed them. “You won’t be needing these.”
The woman, who had t
o be the one who called herself Rita, said something to RJ and relinquished her grip on his shoulders.
RJ took off like a shot and barreled into his mother’s waiting arms.
She stroked RJ’s hair and whispered to him.
“Take the Jeep, Gina, and get out of here.”
She raised her head and met his gaze. Her eyes were dark pools in her face, but he knew she could do it.
Yuri motioned with his gun. “The tunnel?”
“This way.” Josh didn’t give Gina another look as she piled RJ into the Jeep beside her and made a U-turn, kicking up sand with her wheels.
He didn’t want any of this bunch to realize what Gina meant to him. Hell, he hadn’t realized how much she meant to him until she told him she loved him.
Josh wiped a drop of sweat from his brow and picked up his flashlight. “This way, about a quarter of a mile.”
He scuffed through the sand toward the tunnel Hector De Santos had constructed for the purpose of allowing terrorists and weapons to enter the United States.
Vlad would never give up something this valuable, so Josh put a little insurance into place to at least give himself a fighting chance to get out of here alive...in case Los Santos didn’t follow through.
As he approached the entrance, obscured by the two boulders, Josh turned suddenly to the three men following him. “If Vlad thinks he’s going to have use of this tunnel after you remove these weapons, you can set him straight.”
Yuri narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Before you got here, I videotaped the location of the tunnel on my phone and sent it to my email address. I have an email message set to send automatically in two days, and if I’m not alive and well to stop that message, it will go out to a friend of mine with instructions. You can imagine what those instructions are.”
“What’s to stop you from sending out that message anyway when...if we let you go?”
“Nothing except my word and your word that Gina De Santos and her son will be safe as long as you get what you want here tonight.”
“We intend to get what we want, and Vlad will get what he wants.”
The corner of Josh’s eye twitched. What Vlad wanted was to kill one of the navy SEALs from the team that had dogged him all over the Middle East.
Josh continued to the two innocuous-looking rocks and aimed his flashlight at the entrance, careful to keep the light away from the two rocks that held the trigger box.
“I see it, Yuri. I see how to get into the tunnel.” One of Yuri’s henchmen pushed Josh to the side where he stumbled against the two rocks. Perfect—now he could stand in front of the trigger mechanism, blocking it from view.
Yuri stood back as the man shoved aside one of the boulders, already leveraged to move with ease.
“Watch him.” Yuri ducked inside the tunnel and one of the men followed him, while the other stayed at the entrance with Josh.
Out of the corner of his eye, Josh detected movement by the vehicles. Rita and one other had stayed behind with the cars, but they would be no match for the members of the cartel, intent on getting their drugs.
The man holding Josh at gunpoint hadn’t noticed the commotion yet, didn’t know what to look for in the rapidly darkening desert.
The tunnel interested the guy much more. He cupped a hand around his mouth and yelled, “Are they there? Are the weapons there?”
Yuri called back, “Everything De Santos promised and even all the drugs we gave him...and I’m guessing this tunnel leads straight into Arizona.”
Finally the man guarding him noticed the three figures slipping toward them in the shadows.
“What the hell?” Those were the last words out of his mouth—forever. He dropped in front of Josh, and Josh leaped over the rocks housing the trigger box and started crawling through the sand.
“Hey, hey!”
Someone else shouted in Spanish and a gunshot rang out.
Josh was not waiting around to see who was shooting at what. At some point they’d reach a standoff, and both parties probably figured they’d be able to catch up with him and kill him out here in the desert.
But they weren’t figuring on Gina De Santos.
* * *
PANTING, GINA REACHED the lookout. She’d left RJ snug in the back seat of the Jeep, wrapped in a blanket.
She put her eye to the scope of the sniper rifle, and it framed exactly what it was supposed to frame. She had to stop herself from moving it to look for Josh to make sure he was out of the way.
He’d assured her he’d be long gone, but he would’ve told her that anyway. He was only half expecting to make it out of this desert alive. He was willing to sacrifice himself to destroy the weapons and the drugs, to destroy that tunnel...and to protect her and RJ.
She licked her lips. She planned to get Josh out of here in one piece and it started with one shot.
With her eye pressed to the scope, just as Josh had taught her, she curled her finger around the trigger. The night vision on the scope made everything at the tunnel as clear as day, and she saw two men disappear into what looked like the solid face of a rock. Another man had a gun pointed at Josh. She couldn’t look at that.
All her focus, and the rifle’s, was on the box wedged between two rocks at Josh’s feet. He’d instructed her to shoot when she saw Los Santos on the scene, regardless of where he was or what he was doing.
Fat chance.
The man holding Josh at gunpoint dropped. Two flashes of light flared near the tunnel entrance. She could no longer see Josh’s feet near the two rocks. Did that mean he’d gotten away? Followed the men into the tunnel? Gotten himself shot?
Josh’s voice growled in her ear. Don’t think. Take the shot.
With a sob she braced her feet against a boulder behind her and pulled the trigger of the sniper rifle.
The kickback on the rifle almost ripped her arm from its socket and she stumbled backward, the boulder catching her fall. She made a hard landing on the rock just as the night sky exploded with a red-and-orange cloud.
Staggering to her feet, she gaped at the flames and smoke cascading up to the desert sky.
“Mama!”
Leaving the rifle, she scampered down the rocks to the Jeep and vaulted into the driver’s seat. “Are you okay, RJ?”
“Look. Fireworks.”
“You’re right. Someone set off some fireworks, all right.”
She mumbled a few prayers as she cranked on the Jeep’s engine. Josh had told her to wait here for him after the explosion, and he’d make his way back.
Not one chance in hell.
She flicked on the high beams and followed the well-worn trail back toward the original meeting place, a gun on the passenger seat beside her. If Los Santos hadn’t taken out Rita and whoever else stayed behind, Gina would be ready for them.
And if any of Vlad’s men had Josh in their clutches, she’d be ready for them, too.
Her lights picked out a figure running, the orange glow behind him, the sand dragging down his every step. Holding her breath, Gina slowed down and grabbed the gun.
“Are we going to the fireworks, Mama?”
“Maybe we are, little frog.”
The figure waved his arms and Gina let out a sob as she recognized Josh’s handsome face with the biggest smile she’d ever seen plastered on it. She made a U-turn and then pulled up alongside him.
He’d stopped, bending over with his hands on his knees, gulping in air.
She leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Goin’ my way, SEAL?”
Epilogue
Gina stretched her arms toward the sun and then adjusted her red bikini top. Cupping one hand over her eyes, she yelled toward the pool, “Not so close to the edge.”
Josh, with RJ
on his shoulders, turned and then both of them splashed water at her at the same time.
“You two!” She laughed and tipped up her sunglasses. “RJ, come and eat your lunch.”
“C’mon, big guy.” Josh swam to the edge of the pool, towing RJ behind him. “Time to eat lunch. We can go out again, unless you want to visit the turtles on the beach first.”
“Turtles, turtles!”
“You got it.” Josh lifted RJ out of the pool and placed him on the deck.
Gina patted the chaise longue to her left. “Come and dry off.”
RJ clambered into the chaise longue, pulling a towel around his wet body, and a minute later the poolside waitress delivered lunch.
Gina made sure RJ had everything he needed and then took a sip of her tequila sunrise. She held up the glass to Josh toweling off his hair on the other side of her. “Kind of decadent to have a froufrou drink in the middle of the afternoon.”
“We’re on vacation, and you deserve it.”
Once Josh’s superiors had received his report and were satisfied that the weapons Hector De Santos was once going to deliver to Vlad’s terrorist organization had been destroyed, along with the drugs he’d gotten in exchange for those weapons, they sent Josh on a short leave before he had to return to his deployment overseas.
They’d decided to join Gina’s mother and Tom in the Bahamas, and RJ couldn’t have been happier with the arrangement. For having no father as a role model, Josh had picked up the part quickly.
Josh clinked his beer mug against her glass. “Don’t get too comfortable behind that sniper rifle. My commanding officer just might send you out in the field.”
“Where you’re going.” She smoothed a hand down his shoulder. “I’m going to worry about you.”
“That’s the hard part—for you. It’s almost easier being out there than sitting at home waiting.” He kissed the inside of her wrist. “I hear that all the time from the guys who have partners. Their wives and girlfriends are the ones who do all the hard work.”
“I don’t want you to be thinking about that, about me. I’m going to have plenty to keep me busy, finding a spot for my new bar now that the DEA released my grandmother’s money to me.”
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