by Cindy Dees
Who, then?
They’d moved in when the Ghost came out of the house. Enemies of the thief’s, perhaps? What did an art thief do to merit such enemies? Had he robbed the wrong man? Maybe stolen something besides art in a former job?
All that came into his mind were questions and more questions. He wanted some answers, dammit! He humped the quarter mile to the moped stand in about a minute. Not long in the real world, but a lifetime when his team was split up and an op was going to hell fast. After determining that the owner didn’t live there, it took him another minute to break a flimsy chain lock on one of the mopeds and hot-wire it. A two-and-a-half minute head start for the Ghost, Kat and the mystery commandos. More than a lifetime. An eternity.
Swearing under his breath, he peeled out of the stand and threw the throttle wide open. The lights of Bridgetown twinkled in the distance and a salt breeze whipped in his face, making his eyes water. He kept his mouth shut to avoid swallowing bugs and confined his cursing to silent epithets in his head.
Far ahead, a line of flashing sirens came into sight, racing down the highway toward him.
“He just turned off the main road,” Kat announced. “Avoiding those cops, no doubt. Turn right after a supermarket sign—green letters on a white background. I didn’t catch the name.” Exertion strained her voice, and squealing tire sounds came over the radio along with her voice.
“Don’t kill yourself chasing the bastard,” he cautioned, his heart in his throat.
“Are you kidding? Offensive driving is a blast. I’d love to do this in the middle of a bunch of New York City cabbies sometime—show them what combat driving really looks like.”
Jeff couldn’t help grinning. She did sound like she was having fun. “Did the van make the turn behind you?”
A pause. “Looks like it. I see a cloud of dust behind me.”
Kat continued to call out turns and mileages over the next several minutes, and he actually started to close the gap between them. Urban driving was as much about maneuverability as it was speed, and his Vespa was extremely nimble.
He spied a pair of taillights partially obscured by dust ahead and yelled into his radio, “I’m approaching the van. Where are you?”
“Just coming into Bridgetown proper. He’s heading straight through the city. He knows we’re back here. This could get ugly.”
He snorted. Like it wasn’t already? Would those men assume Kat was the Ghost’s accomplice and take her out, too? He dared not risk it, no matter how bad he wanted to bag the Ghost. “Pull off the chase, Cobra. Lose the van. Make sure it’s following the Ghost and leaves off you.”
“This may be our only chance to catch the thief! I’m not stopping now. This island isn’t that big. We’ll corner him.”
“And the guys behind you may kill you both. If you get in their way, they may very well shoot through you to get to him.”
“I have been known to shoot back, you know. I’m not defenseless.”
“One-on-six, you are.”
She retorted rather sharply. “I’m a Medusa, not some average infantry grunt.”
He swung wide around a corner, keeping his speed up and drawing a few more yards closer to the van. He supposed she was right. If she were a SEAL or a Ranger, he’d be a lot less worried about that van full of gunmen. She deserved the same benefit of the doubt as her male counterparts. At least that was what his head said. His heart screamed in denial. She was small and weak and female and he wanted her for his own. It was his job to protect her and keep her safe from jerks with guns.
“I stand corrected, Madam Medusa,” he replied reluctantly.
“Watch the left turn in front of the school—you should hit it soon. It’s a greater-than-ninety-degree turn and the road slopes away from you. Take it slower than it looks like you ought to.”
“Roger.”
The word was no sooner out of his mouth than the sound of screeching tires made him look up sharply. The van’s grip on the road gave way as it careened around the very turn she’d just described. It teetered on two wheels and looked like it was going to settle back down onto all four when the right front fender clipped a parked car.
The van went airborne, sailing in a slow motion half roll a good thirty feet through the air. Then the front end hit the ground and the entire van snapped into a fast log roll, flying down the street sideways, flipping no less than six complete revolutions. Debris spun off in every direction. Jeff braked hard, dodging pieces of flying metal, swerving violently in and out among the litter. And then he was past the van.
He looked back over his shoulder and saw a man crawling out through the passenger’s side window. As Jeff opened the throttle once more, he glimpsed the guy in his rearview mirror, limping over to the nearest parked car and smashing the butt of a rifle through the car’s window. Those guys weren’t done for yet. Whoever had survived the crash was going to hot-wire a car and come after them.
“The van crashed. But they’ll procure another car and give chase. Where are you now?”
“Going into a residential area. A slum, actually.”
“Keep calling your turns.”
“Roger,” she replied.
“How close are you to him?”
“I’m practically riding the back of his bike. A hundred yards, max.”
She sounded distracted.
“He just took a right. First street past a crab shack. Red crab legs painted around a name on a white sign. Begins with a W or an M. Sorry I didn’t see more.”
He was amazed she was catching the details she was, what with driving like a bat out of hell, the darkness, and the adrenaline of the chase.
As the neighborhood deteriorated around him, Jeff cursed under his breath. Barbados, for all its wealth, had a few pretty rough areas. He didn’t know whether to fear for Kat or for the locals if she got into a scrape in this neck of the woods. Either way, he emphatically didn’t want her alone. “Can you slow down a little?”
“Not if you don’t want me to lose this guy. And by the way, he’s small in stature. Lean. I’d estimate five foot seven at most, maybe 140 pounds. Great balance. A hell of a motorcycle rider. Black clothes, black ski cap, black gloves. Lemme see if I can get close enough to see his face.”
A pause followed.
“Left at Old Joe’s General Store. Looks like a little neighborhood market.” And then she announced, “Third right after that, maybe a hundred yards past the store. It’s a dirt road. No landmarks or sign. Be careful, it’s narrow.”
Then she said, “He just looked back over his shoulder. Caucasian.”
Even this much information was a major breakthrough for the investigation. But Jeff would rather bag the guy and be done with it.
And then the sound of a gunning engine behind Jeff made him lurch. And swear. Looked like he had the crazy commandos on his tail now. He risked a glance back. They were still well behind him, no more than a pair of headlights in the distance. For now. Bastards were no doubt following the giant rooster tail of dust he was throwing up. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. At least there was grim relief in the fact that now they’d chase him and not her.
Jeff flew down the road, pushing sixty miles per hour, keeping an eye out for the turn ahead.
“He just went up a set of stairs on his bike. I’m going on foot.”
“You can’t catch him on foot!” Jeff exclaimed. “Go around.”
“I can catch him if he doesn’t have a back tire.”
Oh, crap. “Shooting is not authorized, Kat! You’re in a residential area! Chock full of civilians—”
She cut him off. “Too late. I just took his bike tire out. Our boy’s on foot. I’m closing.”
“Don’t engage him. I repeat, don’t engage!” Jeff shouted into his mike.
No answer. Damn, damn, damn!
He slowed to take the next turn, and that engine behind him got a whole lot louder all of a sudden. The gunmen were going to catch him fast at this rate.
There was the first turn. He screeched around the corner, skidding violently. He slammed a foot down on the pavement, saving himself from a nasty wipeout. He righted himself, and accelerated with a screech of tires. Old Joe’s. Old Joe’s. C’mon, c’mon.
There it was. He took the corner way faster than he ought to have. One street. Two streets. Brake. Skid wildly around the third corner…Up ahead he spied their car, parked at an angle across half the narrow street, its driver’s side door open.
He pointed the moped up the steps beside the vehicle, banging up their bone-jarring length. He burst out into an alley. Looked left and right. There. In the distance. A familiar dark, running figure disappeared around a corner. He pointed the moped that way. His back tire was getting soft. Didn’t like that flight of stairs, apparently. Hold together just a few more seconds, baby.
He turned the corner and looked around this new alley frantically. His heart dropped to his feet. Two figures ahead, up high, racing across a rooftop. Crap. The Ghost and Kat were climbing now. He didn’t stand a chance of following them up there. He rode along below them, trying to hear them above the wounded sound of his moped. It was no good. The bike was getting too difficult to control. He ditched it and took off running.
“Talk to me.” He panted into his mouthpiece.
“Heading north,” she bit out. She sounded like she was exerting herself pretty hard.
He made the next turn to head north. He passed a couple of tough-looking locals smoking weed in a doorway, but he went by so fast they hardly had time to react.
“Damn, this guy’s agile,” Kat complained. “He’s jumping gaps.”
“Don’t fall,” Jeff retorted in alarm.
“Huh.”
The alleys got darker and narrower and dingier. He dodged sleeping goats and startled the hell out of himself when he narrowly avoided drop-kicking a chicken, who proceeded to take extremely loud umbrage at being awoken.
All of a sudden, intuition washed over him, certainty as real as the dirt beneath his feet. Kat was in trouble. As the hen squawked behind him, Jeff put on a burst of speed.
“Where are you, darlin’?”
Nothing.
“Click if you’re running silent.”
He waited. And waited. Nothing. Dammit! Even if she’d gone to ground and was hiding, she should’ve been able to ease a hand up to her throat to give him a lousy click on the radio to let him know she was okay.
Purely following his gut now, he slowed to a walk. It was a bitch to control his breathing, but he forced himself to breathe light and quiet. He thought he heard a scuff ahead. He raced toward the sound, pausing in the shadow of a doorway and easing around the corner.
Aw, hell.
He spotted two grappling figures teetering on the edge of a rooftop.
He took off running for all he was worth. “Hey!” he shouted at the Ghost.
One of the figures glanced up, startled. And then…oh, God…the fighting pair overbalanced. And fell, plummeting toward the ground two stories below.
“Kat!” he shouted frantically.
Chapter 11
The Ghost lurched in her grip and it was just enough to throw off the razor’s edge of balance they both wavered upon. Kat only had time to register dismay before the two of them launched into space. The ground rushed up from below. She twisted to take the impact on her left hip and shoulder. But then something massively heavy crushed her, and that was the last she remembered.
“Kat. Honey, wake up.”
She vaguely heard the words. Vaguely registered frantic hands running quickly over her body. She managed a groan.
“Don’t move,” the worried voice instructed.
She exhaled, managing with great effort to form words. “Go get him.”
“To hell with the Ghost,” Jeff snapped. “Can you feel your feet? Move your fingers for me, sweetheart.”
Obediently, she wiggled her fingers, although it hurt every bone in her body to move even that small amount. She took as deep a breath as her battered body would tolerate and released it slowly, exhaling the pain as Hidoshi had taught her, closing it off in a remote corner of her mind, far, far away.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
She squinted up at Jeff. The poor guy looked about ready to puke. “Uh, three.”
“We need to get out of here. Those commandos are still behind us somewhere.”
Before she had time to be startled, he’d scooped her up in his arms and stood up. It was a patently annoying display of manly special operator strength that she could never hope to duplicate. Although, at the moment she was profoundly relieved simply to relax in his grasp and let him carry her. Her head was spinning like a top and her body announced in no uncertain terms that it had had enough.
“You okay?” he muttered.
“Uh-huh,” she managed to mumble back.
“Okay if I run?”
“Maybe not.”
“I’m afraid we need to, darlin’. If you’re gonna get sick, lemme know and I’ll set you down.”
Reluctant humor tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
He grinned down at her. “I don’t generally pick up puking-drunk women. I like them reasonably sober and alert in my bed.”
“That’s right. You go for all that sparkling conversation.”
He laughed under his breath. “No. I just like them conscious and able to scream my name.”
“Picky, picky.”
He must’ve heard her fading, because he murmured, “Just rest. I’ve got you.”
Normally, she’d rebel in no uncertain terms if some guy said that to her. She was beholden to no man, thank you very much, and she certainly didn’t need to be patronized by one. But damn, it felt good to close her eyes and let Jeff carry her swiftly into the bowels of the neighborhood. Where he was going, she had no idea. But he seemed sure of himself. And why not? He was a far more experienced operator even than she was.
Had she really run this far? Or was it just that she felt so crappy now that it seemed to be taking forever to get back to the car?
“There’s that damn chicken again,” Jeff muttered balefully. “He’s lucky you’re hurt or I’d stop and make fryer parts out of him.”
She smiled against Jeff’s powerful chest. He smelled salty, but she detected a sour note of fear in his sweat, too. Had he been scared for her? He’d sounded mostly pissed off at her on the radio earlier. She hadn’t meant to ditch him. It was just the only way not to lose the Ghost.
“I got a look at him,” she murmured. “Not a good one, but a look. Thick, dark eyebrows. Narrow nose. Slight droop to the outer corners of his eyelids. Small mouth. Full lips.”
“Could you pick him out of a lineup?”
She considered the question. “Probably. But he’ll change his appearance if he doesn’t leave the island.”
“True.”
Jeff strode on in silence for several minutes. And then all of a sudden he ducked into a dark doorway and let go of her feet so her body slid down his torso to the ground. He glided left to put himself between her and whatever threat he’d seen or heard.
She knew better than to ask what he’d seen. When he could tell her, he would. She felt the zen calm flow over him that operators were taught when they needed to hide. She mimicked the action, too groggy to know if she’d eliminated the intangible essence of her presence or not.
“Let’s move out,” he breathed over his shoulder. “Nice and slow. You stay behind me.”
She gave one tap on his back to indicate that she understood and would comply. Assuming she didn’t pass out, of course. How long they crept down dark alleys, paused before corners and ducked behind various forms of cover, she had no idea. But she did know she ached from head to foot and the adrenaline of the chase had long ago worn off, leaving her nauseous and exhausted.
These were the moments Hidoshi had prepared her for in all those grueling years of training. She called upon his
legacy now, and upon the legacy of the Medusas that endured any pain for the sake of the team. It was purely mind over matter. As long as she was conscious to will her body to move, she would keep going, no matter how agonizing.
Finally, after an eternity, Jeff murmured, “Here we are.”
“Is it safe to take our car?” she mumbled.
“No. That’s why we’re taking this one. The owner left the keys hanging from the sun visor. I’ll return it tomorrow. But right now, I need to get you back to the hotel and get some painkillers in you.”
How he knew she was hurting, she didn’t bother to ask.
He asked quietly, “Can you climb in?”
Strangely enough, after all the running around she’d just done, the act of bending down to duck into the tiny Peugeot all but made her pass out.
“Allow me,” Jeff murmured as he scooped her off her feet and placed her gently in the passenger’s seat.
Maybe it was the blow to her head that she’d taken in the fall, or maybe it was just her accumulated delirium that prompted her to murmur, “You are one serious hunk, Jeff Steiger.”
He scowled at her. “You picked a hell of a time to tell me that, woman. You’re half conscious and bruised from head to foot, and I can’t do a damn thing about what you just said.”
She grinned lopsidedly at him. “I am a little loopy, aren’t I?”
“Oh, yeah. Let’s get you out of here.” He leaned her seat back for her and buckled the seat belt across her hips. She wasn’t sure which one of them was more surprised by the faint sigh of pleasure that escaped her as his hand ran across her lower belly. Quickly he went around to the driver’s side and started the engine.
“I’ve got to call D’Abeau,” he announced as he eased away from the curb.
