by Cindy Dees
A shot flew well over her head. It had come from behind her and was traveling in the general direction of that now vanished figure. Maybe that was the recently fled assassin sending out a shot to see if it drew incoming fire. Not a bad ploy, actually. Her gaze roamed back and forth, searching for a reaction to the shot. Nada.
Damn, this guy was good!
And she was caught between him and another shooter at her back. It was never good to be the stuffing in the Oreo cookie. It always got licked out first. Her best hope was that neither man would shoot at her in fear of killing his comrade in the cross fire.
If only the Medusas would engage in the fight and take some of the heat off her! Although as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it. As long as they stayed out of this mess it meant they were moving Tom to safety and hadn’t been spotted by the bad guys sent here to kill him.
Of course, it also meant she was probably going to die. It simply wasn’t reasonable to expect to survive a dozen or more heavily armed shooters all firing at her while she had only a handgun and a few clips of ammo to defend herself with.
Oddly enough, she was at peace with that thought. If sacrificing herself meant that Tom would live, then her death was worth it.
Whoa. She was willing to die for him personally, not just for him as the subject to be kept alive? When had that happened? The only people she’d ever been willing to die for were her fellow Medusas. And she’d been through two grueling years of training with them designed to turn them into a unit so tight they were practically a single person. She loved her teammates like sisters.
Good grief. Did she love Tom?
No. Not possible. Okay, possible.
More than possible.
Dammit, a done deal.
Now what the hell was she supposed to do?
As the bullet whizzed over his head, Tom swore yet again at his lack of a weapon with which to return fire. The shooter popped out from behind a tree a second time and sent another round in Tom’s general direction, well wide to the left this time.
Although the ease with which he could pick the guy off if he had a gun registered on Tom’s brain, the thing that captivated him was what the guy was wearing. That was a cop shooting at him. What in the hell were the local police doing trying to kill him? Or was that guy really a policeman at all? Was he using the uniform to mislead the real police? Or was he a mole, like the conference security guard who’d tried to take him out? Not that it mattered either way. The guy was armed and shooting at him. He was in need of killing.
Tom might not have a gun or even a knife, but he had his hands. And the hands of an American Special Forces soldier were lethal weapons in their own right. All he had to do now was get close enough to the guy to use them.
Gazing between himself and the spot where he’d seen the muzzle flash of the shooter’s gun, he mapped a course that would give him the most cover. That open spot with nothing but tall weeds for protection would be tricky to cross, but not impossible. Grimly, Tom eased toward the shooter.
He’d been gliding ahead for two or three minutes when he reached the edge of the clear spot. He took a deep breath and eased a foot forward.
All of a sudden, something grabbed his ankle, wrapping around it powerfully and yanking it from underneath him.
Gunfire erupted, but whatever had his ankle had made him fall so fast and so hard that, before the bullets aimed at him could slam into him, he hit the ground. Panicked, he rolled and grabbed, with no idea if he was about to come up with an armful of python or something even more dangerous.
Paige lurched as something heavy and writhing landed on top of her, flailing wildly. Gunshots erupted around her and she rolled frantically. Anything to get into a different position before the shooter got a bead on her last location!
Something horrifically strong wrapped around her throat and she yanked at it with all her strength.
And then warmth registered beneath her hands. Skin. That was a human arm around her throat. Ah. That she knew how to deal with…assuming she didn’t get shot in the next few seconds.
She rolled again, doing her damnedest to reach the cover of the bush so tantalizingly near. She had to get undercover now or she was going to die, assailant or no.
Strangely enough, the powerful entity attacking her didn’t fight the roll. In fact, he accelerated the movement, flinging her across his body and then back beneath him once. Twice.
Shadows and branches engulfed them.
But that wasn’t much of a relief. She couldn’t breathe, and the arm now lying hard across her throat was terrifyingly strong. She was having no luck budging it. She had only a few more seconds to get this attacker off her before she’d lose consciousness.
Paige jerked up her knee, aiming for a groin. The assailant dodged to the side. He maintained his grip on her, but his arm eased off for just long enough that she was able to draw a partial gasp of air. It wasn’t enough, but the spots dancing behind her eyes retreated momentarily.
Long enough for her to see the face of the man trying to kill her.
Long enough for her to go completely limp beneath him in shock.
Tom was trying to choke her to death?
Before any reaction to that thought could process through her stunned brain, his arm whipped off her neck and swearing erupted in her ear.
“What in the hell are you doing out here?” he bit out under the noise of the mess around them.
“Same thing you are. Trying not to die.”
Bang. Bang.
A flurry of gunfire replied from behind them. The chaos out here was unbelievable. It sounded like several more shooters had converged on this area. Must’ve been drawn by the earlier shots. The hot zone had just boiled over.
Tom’s heart jumped exuberantly in his chest. She was alive. Unhurt. His prayers had been answered. Now to get her out of here in one piece.
But first…to hell with discipline. His arms snaked out and he pulled Paige close to him as he’d been longing to do ever since the shooting started, crushing her against his chest.
Her arms wrapped around his waist in a hug that was only slightly less viselike than his. “Thank God you’re alive,” she breathed against his chest.
“I was a jerk at that press conference,” he blurted. “I was so worried that you’d die before I ever got to tell you I’m sorry and I wasn’t thinking about how what I said would sound to you.”
She laughed silently, her shoulders shaking in his arms. “A squad of assassins is trying to kill us and all you’re worried about is having been a jerk?”
“You agree, then, that I was a jerk?”
“Indubitably.”
“Forgive me?”
She raised her head and rolled her eyes at him. “Good Lord, yes, Tom.”
“There’s something else I want to tell you…” His arms tightened possessively about her, pulling her even closer against him, as if he could will her to feel the truth in the words hovering on the tip of his tongue.
She gasped, “A little air, here.”
Another burst of gunfire erupted, but thankfully not overhead this time. He sighed, loosening his grip on her only fractionally. Now wasn’t the time for it anyway. “Are you really okay?” he murmured. “No heretofore unnoticed gunshot wounds?”
“Nope. I’m fine. You?”
“Fine.”
“Good, then can you let go of me so I can lead us out of here?”
He laughed under his breath. That was his Paige. Feisty, independent and totally focused on the job at hand. He’d loved that about her from the first moment they met and she demanded help getting Takashi Ando’s body off the beach. Never mind that the poor man had been tortured and mutilated and she’d had to look at Ando’s remains.
She popped up and shot at the guy behind them, then pivoted left and shot at the men closing in from the other direction. A new flurry of shots erupted. She dropped to a crouch.
“Stop that!” he exclaimed under his breath. The woman h
ad planted herself between two hostile forces of shooters, and was shooting at both in order to provoke a firefight with herself squarely in the cross fire! Was she nuts? Oh, wait. It was Paige.
She grinned. “Follow me.” She ran a dozen yards with him right on her heels, darting behind a huge tree and using it for momentary cover from the shooters. Tom flattened himself beside her.
“Jeez, Paige. What are you doing out here? Drawing down the whole damned police force on you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Some of them are corrupt. Trying to kill you. Using their uniforms for cover. Gotta get them all shooting at each other.”
Tom threw her a thunderstruck look. He’d been right. She was nuts. Another barrage of gunfire exploded nearby and the two of them flinched simultaneously.
He muttered, “Looks like you’ve succeeded at causing a complete mess. Let’s get out of here.”
“Easier said than done. There are cops everywhere. They’re all shooting at anything that moves.”
It was his turn to order. “Follow me.”
He crawled to their right, perpendicular to what seemed to be the direction of most of the gunfire. Thankfully, Paige came along without argument. They moved for a minute or so. Two exchanges of fire took place behind them, but neither was close enough to make him sweat.
And then he spotted movement ahead. “Shooter. Eleven o’clock,” he hand signaled.
He stopped and Paige eased up beside him, her pistol drawn. God, he envied her that weapon. “I need a gun,” he breathed.
She threw him a wry look and mumbled, “Coming up.”
Before he could open his mouth to tell her not to do whatever foolishness she was considering, Paige was on her feet, up and running…good Lord…directly at the shooter. What in the hell was she thinking? She’d left so fast he didn’t stand a chance of tackling her before she was out of his range.
A barrage of lead pinned him down, and he cursed uselessly at his lack of a weapon to lay down covering fire for her. He could only lie there helplessly and watch as the woman he loved sprinted forward directly into the jaws of death.
“Nooooo!” he shouted.
Chapter 17
The shooter rose up out of a cluster of bushes and took aim at her as she charged him. Several things registered almost too fast for Paige to separate in her mind. The shooter was settling himself into a sniper’s balanced stance. Not wearing a police uniform. But clearly hostile.
She leaped to the obvious conclusion. This, then, was the original shooter hired by Mimi Ando and not one of the second-string cops brought in to assist. Lastly, she registered that there was no way she could bring her weapon into a firing position and get off a shot before this guy buried a bunch of bullets in her.
The most fundamental of all Medusa mantras popped into her head. When you can’t overwhelm them with brute force, outthink them. It was the Medusa way. As women, they often couldn’t bring more strength and raw power to bear in a fight. But they always could be smarter than the other guy.
All of this passed through Paige’s head in less than a blink of an eye. The other shooter’s weapon adjusted slightly as his finger started a squeeze through the trigger.
“Wait!” she cried out. “I work for Mimi, too!”
The finger paused, midpull. A male voice called back gruffly, “Who’re you?”
Right. Like she was going to answer that. “You and me, we’re on the same team.”
The man uttered a foul curse. “Why didn’t she tell me that she had someone else on this job?”
Paige rolled her eyes and planted her pistol-toting hand casually on her hip. She eased her index finger through the trigger guard to rest on the thin metal tongue of the trigger. “It’s Mimi. Of course she hired someone else. Have you ever met a more suspicious woman?”
The shooter snorted and gestured with his chin behind her. “What’s going on back there? Is the target down?”
“Yes. The job’s done.” In a smooth, neat movement, she cocked her wrist and shot from the hip, Old West–style. It was a difficult stance from which to shoot with any kind of accuracy, but the Medusas fired dozens of rounds from all kinds of crazy positions on a daily basis. The shot barely took conscious thought on her part.
Her target staggered back as she continued firing, bringing the pistol up in front of her, cradling its butt in the palm of her left hand. One bullet was rarely enough to kill a man unless a person got lucky and scored a shot in one of a few tiny locations on the human body. And this guy was going down and staying down if she had anything to say about it.
Two more quick pulls of her trigger, and the assassin fell. She sprinted over to him and crouched, verifying that he was dead and frisking him fast. She grabbed his rifle, a large-caliber pistol and a pouch of ammo clips for the gun. But as importantly, she found the small rectangle of his cell phone. She snagged it and took off running as more bullets flew past her far too close for comfort.
She dived behind the tree where she’d left Tom, slamming herself against the trunk as the wood at her back shuddered, absorbing a hail of bullets.
She dropped the pistol and ammo pouch in front of Tom’s nose.
“There,” she said dryly. “Now you’ve got a gun.”
Tom scooped up the weapon and popped to his feet beside Paige, livid. “If you ever do anything that stupid again, I’ll shoot you myself!”
She grinned at him as she flung the shoulder strap of the semiautomatic weapon over her head. “C’mon. Now we can really cause some chaos to cover our retreat.”
“Stop—” he started.
Too late. She was off and running again. And of course, she was headed toward the force of a dozen or more hostiles behind them.
He took off after her. When he caught her, he was definitely going to kill her.
Thankfully she stopped well short of the advancing police line and he met up with her, murder firmly on his mind. Her murder. But before he could reach out to throttle her, she stepped out from behind another tree and let loose a stream of gunfire across the jungle in front of them. Leaves and strips of bark exploded in every direction. She pivoted and sent a similar rain of lead toward the shooters closest to the cottage.
The sounds of men shouting and cursing filled the air, and wild gunfire ensued. Tom ducked along with Paige as mayhem cut loose around them. He gestured to their right, perpendicular to the field of fire. She nodded and took off that way. Dammit, he’d meant for her to follow him, not for her to leave him to trail along behind!
She was as fast as her teammates, even encumbered by a heavy, clumsy rifle, and he had to work hard to keep up with her. The sounds of combat grew slightly fainter as they sprinted away from the gun battle now in progress. No one shot at them as they fled through the jungle toward the main road.
Son of a gun. The two of them might yet live through this night to see another dawn. And if they did, she was dead meat.
Paige’s heart slammed into her ribs painfully. The Medusas were out here somewhere moving east toward the main road. She had to make contact with them if she was going to get Tom to safety. He had to make it out. He had to be okay. If he got hurt on her watch, she’d curl up and die. The thought panicked her so badly she started to hyperventilate. She was forced to slow to a walk, to order herself to breathe in, count to three, and breathe out. Count to three, breathe in. Count to three, breathe out. It took a few moments, but the panic attack passed.
She took off running again. How long they tore through the underbrush, she had no idea. Time had ceased to have any meaning from the moment she first thought Tom might die at the beginning of this whole mess. She spotted movement ahead and screeched to a halt. Tom slammed into her so hard he nearly knocked her over. He cursed under his breath. He sounded none too happy back there.
Raising her rifle and squinting to make out the figures ahead, she took a cautious step forward. Oh, God. Aleesha and Cho were carrying a third person between them.
She darted forward, calling ou
t low, lest her teammates shoot at her and Tom inbound, “It’s Fire Ant and Wolf.”
The threesome in front of her halted immediately. “To me,” Aleesha replied low during a burst of gunfire.
Paige gestured toward Naraya’s limp form. “How bad is she?”
Aleesha replied, “Shattered femur. A lot of blood loss before I got a pressure balloon in the wound. Passed out.”
Tom offered from behind Paige, “Need me to carry her?”
The other women both shook their heads in the negative. Aleesha murmured, “Fire Ant, take point. Lead us to your car. It is out here, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She ejected her nearly empty clip, pocketed it and replaced it with her last full clip of ammunition as she moved ahead of her teammates. She didn’t need to turn and look for Tom. She felt him stalking just behind her, practically treading on her heels. He was sticking to her like glue. Which wasn’t a bad thing. He was an experienced field operative and it was comforting to know he had her back. But more than that, it was a relief to be with him, to know he was safe and unharmed, to have a weapon in her hands and the wherewithal to protect him from danger.
The going was slow, hindered by heavy brush and Naraya’s deadweight. But a few endless minutes later, Paige spotted a thinning in the trees ahead. The road. She signaled back to Tom, who relayed to Aleesha. In a moment, he pointed to the right and flashed her a hand signal to proceed with caution.
Duh. She hadn’t come this far to get him killed now.
If she wasn’t mistaken, her car was a hundred feet or so down the road from their current position.
Abruptly, ominous silence fell in the jungle behind them.
Crap. The police had finally sorted out who was shooting at whom, and her nifty diversion had just petered out. Which meant that the surviving hostile shooters were now free to come after Tom and the Medusas. They had to get out of here now.
