The Impossible Alliance

by Candace Irvin

  “W-wait! There may be someone else. A—”

  “No time. Sorry.”

  He truly was. But he had his orders—and his package. He carried the former engraved in his brain, the latter locked over his shoulder as he headed for the basement’s main corridor. DeBruzkya’s goons would be arriving soon. Even the stash of gems estimated to rival the contents of the main vault at Fort Knox would have to wait for another day. Another opportunity.

  Yesterday morning Morrow had clearly been Hatch’s priority. Today the man was his.

  Unfortunately Morrow opted to struggle. “Dammit, you’ve got to—”

  Jared deliberately clipped the geologist’s head into his shoulder to muffle the rest, relieved when the sudden motion also caused the man to pass out. Right now he didn’t need the distraction. Especially when he rounded the basement corner and spied the two camouflaged goons examining the remains of the outer door he’d blown on his way in. He was about to receive distraction enough as it was. The first goon raised the barrel of his rifle.

  That was as far as he got.

  Two quick bursts from his own submachine gun knocked the men down and swept their AK-47s across the stone floor. Jared shouldered Morrow up the moldy basement steps and into the shadowy night, then dumped the geologist at the base of the ropes he’d left dangling down the wall. Thirty seconds later, he’d attached the risers and hefted Morrow again. The moment he locked his boots into the risers, the man’s body jerked to life.

  “Goddammit, you just can’t leave the—”

  A massive explosion rocked the castle walls.

  Jared blessed Marty and his team once more as he used the rappelling ropes and risers to quickly scale the remaining thirty feet of granite separating him and his living package from the roof. That chopper had damned well better be waiting by the time they arrived. Halfway up, gunfire riddled the night air, along with the length of the castle wall.

  Christ.

  Someone must have discovered the bodies and sounded the alarm. Jared instinctively tightened his hold on Morrow with one hand as he jerked his other to his face, ripping his night-vision goggles off in the nick of time. Seconds later a hundred floodlights exploded around them, illuminating the castle, the grounds, the rooftops and the walls…illuminating them.

  He and Morrow cursed and flinched together. Fortunately the thugs were in the same boat.

  The soldiers recovered quickly, however, because a second spat of gunfire, this one more vicious and closer than the last, riddled the wall. Jared bit back another curse as fire ripped across his left hamstring. Fortunately it felt like a flesh wound, not a direct hit. He twisted his body, instinctively shielding Morrow’s as another spray rent the air.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Another hit. This time, his right biceps. He glanced down to confirm it, spotting the dark stain rapidly spreading across the black fabric of his sleeve. Flesh wound or not, that one stung. He sucked in his breath and forced himself to move past the ache.

  Hand over hand, Soldier.

  Suddenly they were there. Six beautiful inches from the ledge of the roof. His already surging adrenaline must have kicked up another notch, because he no longer felt the pain in his arm or his leg. He could, however, hear the blessed pulsing of a chopper’s blades in the distance. Their chopper.

  Morrow protested as he braced his good arm against the wall to boost the geologist up first. Jared silenced the man with a terse glare as he locked his fingers to the man’s suit belt, not bothering to question why Morrow hadn’t been stripped and placed in a hospital gown. He was too busy blessing the leather strap and the anchor points it afforded. But as he shoved Morrow up, the buckle slipped, then parted altogether. Before Morrow’s body followed, he shifted his grip and gave one last, all-out heave, barely noticing as his right hand slid squarely up between the man’s legs, right smack into his groin.

  Oddly enough, Morrow wasn’t the one who stiffened.

  He did.

  Unless he was severely mistaken, half the world’s diamonds, emeralds and rubies weren’t the only gems that were acutely, inexplicably missing. The good doctor also lacked jewels. Those of the family variety. Either that or Alex Morrow wasn’t a man.

  But a woman.

  Chapter 2

  Of all the ways she’d imagined her cover being blown, this was not one of them. Alex dragged her gaze down to the man whose oversize paw was still locked to the most intimate part of her body, praying with every fiber of her being.

  She needn’t have bothered.

  He knew.

  The irony of Jared Sullivan discovering one of her most fiercely guarded secrets this way scorched the remaining fog from her brain. Ice-cold terror replaced it. Terror that now that he knew the truth, he’d be able to see straight through her and divine the rest. If Sam hadn’t already told him.

  No, Sam wouldn’t have.

  Would he?

  A spray of gunfire ripped her thoughts back to the terror at hand. Bullets tore into the ledge beside her head. Either the thugs that had been chasing them had improved their aim, or they’d managed to close the distance. A swift glance down past Jared’s boots confirmed the worst. One of the men had reached the base of the tower. If his AK-47 hadn’t jammed, her brain would have been seeping through the sieve of her skull by now. The thug cursed his malfunctioning rifle and pitched it, opting to grab the end of the nylon rope and scurry up the wall before his buddies caught up enough to cover him.

  It was a mistake.

  Jared’s hand—MP-5 submachine gun attached—snapped downward as he popped off the remainder of a thirty-round banana clip. She didn’t need to understand the local language, much less catch the thug’s shocked grunt to know Jared had scored a direct hit. She shot a round of thanks heavenward—until she spotted six more thugs bringing up the rear, all armed.

  Jared heaved her frame over the ledge as the squad opened fire. Thankfully the spray was haphazard at best. She reached back over the wall, but from the terse shake of his head, it was clear that Jared didn’t trust her strength. He hooked his right boot up on the ledge as the bullets continued to fly, the men rapidly closing the distance and, unfortunately, improving their accuracy. To her horror, the heel of Jared’s boot hit a crevice in the rock and slipped. She reached over the ledge again, this time ignoring the man’s fierce frown as she grabbed his forearm, pulling with all her might as his boot swung up again. His body cleared the ledge a split second before the next spray of bullets trimmed the granite down by inches.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” She jerked her chin toward the thundering chopper drawing closer and closer to the roof. With no less than three floodlights shining directly into her eyes, she had no idea what model the chopper was, much less which country it hailed from. All she knew was that each pulse of those blades drove a thousand daggers into her ear and straight through her brain. She’d forgive the pilot—as long as he was one of theirs. “Just tell me that bird is ours.”

  “It is.”

  Moments later a sentry on a parapet sixty yards away turned and spotted them. He opened fire as she and Jared hit the roof. Before Alex could draw her next breath, Jared had dumped the expended clip from his submachine gun, locked in a fresh magazine and rose slightly to spray the parapet with bullets.

  The sentry pitched headfirst over the wall.

  Its flight path clear, the chopper ate up the remaining distance. But the moment the bird moved in over the roof, the roar shot off the scale, damned near shattering her eardrum. The pain was so intense she didn’t even notice Jared kneeling again until his kneecap slammed onto her hand.

  “Christ. Sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Please. Just…get me…on that…” She couldn’t finish, much less move.

  It must have shown.

  With no time to cut the rappelling ropes still dangling over the ledge, Jared hooked his arm around her waist and hauled her to her feet. He dragged her toward the chopper, probably chalking up her stumbl
es to her coma—at least, she hoped so. Five steps later she no longer cared. Just as long as he didn’t let her go. If he did, she knew in her soul that she’d dive straight back down to that roof and this time she’d crawl beneath it.

  Anything to get away from that goddamn noise.

  She’d been ruthlessly pummeled by sound before, ambushed by the relentless depravity of a malfunctioning hearing aid—but never like this. Just when she thought she couldn’t take another step—with or without support—a steel cable, complete with twin harnesses attached, spilled out from the chopper. Jared shoved her in front of him, sheltering her six-foot frame with his taller, more massive body as a vicious onslaught of lead chewed up the roof directly behind them.

  The thugs had reached the ledge.

  She felt Jared twist to return the spray. Seconds later several screams punctuated the rotor wash. Jared dragged her to the waiting cable as they died out, but it was too late. The sound waves were ricocheting directly off the flat roof now, their intensity magnified beyond endurance as they slammed back up into her ears. She couldn’t help it; she cowered into Jared’s shoulder, unable to control her body long enough to grab one of the suspended harnesses, much less hook her arms through.

  “Dammit! I can’t—”

  He jerked the cable close and hooked both her arms inside a harness before she could finish, supporting her with one sinewy arm, then the other as he donned his own harness. He clipped the submachine gun with its expended magazine to his web gear and shoved his medical pouch aside as he hauled her against him, this time anchoring her entire body to his as the chopper swept them up into the air and off into the night. There was no escaping him.

  Or the noise.

  But at least that began to ebb as the chopper gained altitude. Desperate to ignore the thunder still hammering in her ear, Alex dragged her thoughts together and forced herself to concentrate on her other senses—on any other sense—finally latching on to the only one strong enough to sear through the pain. Touch. She focused on the iron arms banded about her chest, on the cords of taut muscle welded to her belly and her thighs. On the fiery heat smelting every embarrassing inch in between. Jared Sullivan’s touch.

  Jared Sullivan’s heat.

  Alex gathered her strength and her nerve and lifted her chin, pushing through the noise to stare into those dark amber eyes. Though she’d seen them in person but once before and not nearly this close, that unusual, simmering glow had already managed to work its way beneath her defenses. Since that fateful day, those eyes had managed to gain the power of night, slipping into the intimacy of her bedroom, stoking her illicit desires, setting fire to her resolve. Setting fire to her.

  If only in her dreams.

  So much so that when she’d risked opening her eyes in that damned makeshift hospital cell and found herself staring into this gaze, she was certain she was hallucinating—until he spoke.

  Even now, with the icy wind slicing into the back of her tattered jacket and trousers, with that god-awful racket still reverberating through her skull, that steady amber gaze worked its magic, unnerving her to her very core. But this time, she welcomed it. It seared through the thunder and the cold until, gradually, she was able to notice the rest. This close, despite the camouflaged greasepaint he’d smeared into his face, she could make out the majority of Jared’s striking features.

  The rest she filled in from memory.

  Those stark, dusky cheeks. The clipped lines of his square jaw. The thin scar that teased the center of his chin, puckering the flesh when he forgot he didn’t smile. And those full, dangerously sensual lips. Even with Alex Morrow’s male physique still firmly in place, her fingers itched to reach out and smooth the exertion beading above the upper curve. Startled that the man had affected her so deeply even now, she shoved her gaze up to the black knit cap Jared had donned for the mission. It rode low on his forehead, butting into and blending in with his thick, midnight brows. Brows that matched the long, inky hair he’d inherited from his Mexican mother.

  Was it as soft and silky as it looked?

  She shoved that forbidden fantasy aside as well, but not soon enough. Just like that, she could feel the blistering intimacy of the man’s touch as he’d hefted her over the ledge of the castle roof. Still recall the shocking warmth of his hand tucked firmly between her legs. She made the mistake of glancing into those hot amber eyes once more and knew—so did he.

  Damn him.

  As if the dreams weren’t bad enough. As if hanging here, trapped beneath some viciously bellowing bird in this man’s arms wasn’t worse, now she’d have that humiliating memory to torture her resolve when she least expected it. She sucked in her breath as the chopper pitched suddenly and swerved to the left, then swooped down fast and low. The memory disintegrated. The thunder slammed back. The pain.

  She ripped her gaze through the icy night. As the chopper’s altitude whittled down to a nauseating rotor’s breath, she realized that she and Jared weren’t racing over the tops of a few pine trees, but many.

  A forest?

  The chopper whipped their harnessed torsos and dangling legs between two, insanely close, sheer cliffs before swooping down to hug the rocky riverbed below. Shock punched the breath from her lungs as, once again, the pulsing thunder ricocheted directly off the hardened terrain before lashing back up, lashing into her. It was if some depraved construction worker had locked the steel bit of his massive jackhammer into her skull and slammed the machine into overdrive. Pulse after pulse splintered through her head. Her eyes began to water. She began to whimper. Any moment now she was going to drag her hands up through the filthy mop on her head and rip her ear off.

  She didn’t get the chance.

  Before she could stop it, the darkness flooded in, the cold, the nauseating dizziness. Until suddenly, incredibly, the noise began to ebb. And then there was nothing.

  Nothing but blissful silence.

  His package had passed out.

  At least, he hoped that was all that’d happened.

  Jared leaned forward, automatically shielding Morrow’s body from the freezing rotor wash. From the sudden shift in the chopper’s flight plan, he knew DeBruzkya’s radars had finally started pinging like a bat screaming straight out of hell—especially when the chopper plummeted precariously low, hugging the pitch-black Rebelian terrain in a last-ditch, all-out attempt to remain undetected. He readjusted his grip as the next rise and dip caused their nylon harnesses to shift, locking his arms around Morrow’s now limp body. But as the pilot swerved to avoid another cliff, Jared also knew that despite his iron determination, he was losing his package.

  Fast.

  The next whiplashing turn sealed his fate—and Morrow’s. He didn’t give a rat’s ass how much ground the chopper had been able to cover. He had to get the pilot to set them down. Now.

  He kept his gaze fused to the shadowy terrain, hoping to anticipate the next swerve as he slid his right arm down to hook it around Morrow’s waist. He locked his hand to the man’s—no, make that woman’s—belt before carefully releasing his left arm. The second he was sure his modified grip would hold, he snapped his free hand up and ripped the emergency strobe off his web gear. He popped off a succession of red flashes straight up into the yawning steel belly, then immediately lashed his left arm back down around Morrow. To his relief, the crew chief returned the emergency signal within moments.

  There was nothing to do now but wait. And pray.

  Had he put enough distance between them and the castle?

  Unfortunately the same dense cloud cover that had aided his initial insertion into DeBruzkya’s stronghold hampered him now. He wouldn’t know where they were until they hit the ground and he got a reading from the handheld global-positioning unit. But that was the least of his worries. Right now he needed to find out why Morrow had lost consciousness. From the moment he’d spied the machinery clustered between the beds in that makeshift hospital cell, he knew he was dealing with his worst-case, live-package
scenario. Something or someone had knocked Alex Morrow into a coma. Head trauma or drugs—given their current precarious position, he couldn’t be sure which. Much less who had caused it. But he would. Just as soon as this bird landed.

  The chopper veered sharply again.

  This time he was relieved. The moment those pounding blades changed pitch, he knew they were headed even lower. A quick glance at the shadowy, rapidly closing terrain, confirmed it. The pilot had located a clearing large enough to set them down in—but not large enough to land the bird.

  Moments later his boots slammed into loose rock.

  He let go of Morrow and ripped off his harness, recapturing the woman’s still-unconscious body moments before it hit the ground. He cut her harness loose and scooped her into his arms as the chopper’s crew chief kicked out several extra ammo clips. His battered hamstring and bicep burned in concert as he leaned down to snag the banana clips. He ignored the seeping wounds and carried Morrow into the shelter of the trees. He’d seal the gashes later. Just as soon as he examined his package.

  His army medic training kicked in to high as he tossed the fresh ammo onto a bed of pine needles before laying the geologist’s body out at the base of a tree. Within seconds he’d pulled his rucksack from his shoulders and dumped it along with his weapon, plowing through the ABCs of first aid as he leaned over her and gently removed her old bandages. Airway—clear. He lowered his head until his right cheek grazed the sparse, formerly hidden mustache above Morrow’s lips. Breathing—shallow but mostly regular. He moved on to circulation, automatically sliding his fingers up his patient’s exposed neck to seal them to her carotid artery.

  Damn. Much too slow. Bradycardic and thready.