“Ah, damn,” she muttered. She rested her forehead against the door. “We’ve had this conversation before,” she said. “Remember how it ended?”
“Bugger that,” he said, his harsh breath stirring the hair at the back of her neck, raising goose bumps. He demanded, “Where do you think you’re going?”
At that she whirled to glare at him, very like that moment at the dock. So close…but not close in spirit, oh not at all. “Don’t even try to play that game,” she told him, taking in the cold anger of his gray eyes and not quailing before it, not in the least. “‘Tomorrow morning? See you then?’ What happened? Aren’t you used to women who can take a fast shower? When were you going to tell me about your little date? Is he bringing drugs for me, or just a new set of handcuffs?”
He came right back at her. “I’m doing my best to protect you, damn it, and that means playing my own people just as much as it means playing you. I might have told you, and I might not have. I wasn’t prepared to make the decision right then.”
“Well, thank you so much for your honesty. Goodbye.” She would have turned, but his hand came off the door and pushed against her shoulder—not quite pinning her there, but making the point.
“Don’t do this,” he said, earnest and angry all at once, and all of it right there on his face, so close to her. “You’re wasting your energy evading me instead of accomplishing anything—”
“—or you accomplishing anything.”
He glared. “Or that. But damn it, I don’t want you out there alone!”
“That’s your problem,” she snapped back at him. “Now let me go, or things will get downright hostile in here!”
He didn’t. He moved in on her, reaching for her. Possessive. Only at the last moment did her fighting brain realize what had happened, and by then her kissing brain was hard at work. By then she’d moved in against him like she’d wanted to since…face it, since those first moments on the dock, fingers clutching his shirt at the shoulders, lips and mouth and tongue busy and happy and thrilling the rest of her body. He cupped the back of her head in one strong hand, protecting her as he pushed her up against the door, capturing her more thoroughly than any MI6 trickiness could ever manage. She didn’t care. She liked it. She reveled in it. Her fingers explored the short, bristly hair at his nape and then the longer hair above his ears, feeling the texture of curl hidden by the cut. She found the hard-cut muscles of his shoulders, had the impulse to tug his shirt free of his belt—and wasn’t quite quick enough. He slipped a hand down the tight curves of her body, down to her bottom, where he got demanding, pulling her in against him as he rocked into her. She groaned into his mouth, startled by the shock of pleasure.
And then he broke away. Resting his forehead against hers, breathing raggedly and with his fingers clenching in her hair with the effort of the self-control, he said, “There, now you won’t be alone. You’ll bloody well take some part of me with you.”
After a stunned moment, a moment when both her mind and her body gasped in response, she gave a laugh as ragged as his breathing. “Don’t tell me—it’s a new superspy technique.”
“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. Can’t fool you.”
She took a deep breath. A steadying breath. A thoughtful breath.
She didn’t think him capable of such fervent deception. Differing objectives, yes—but he’d been up-front about that, even to the point of immediate honesty when she’d confronted his intention to bring in a colleague the next morning. This mission had turned into a confusing muddle of morphing objectives, newly discovered enemies and a frustration of lost time, but of one thing Beth was sure.
He’d meant every bit of that kiss.
And so had she.
Her expression gave him hope. She hadn’t rejected him, laughed at him or injured him. Face flushed, mouth swollen and definitely been-kissed, she considered him. Her lips parted slightly, words she wasn’t quite certain of hesitating there a moment; she licked them and looked away. But…
Still thinking.
All he’d been thinking was about how close she was, and how he didn’t want to let her go. And in how, having little choice, he wasn’t going to miss his only chance to taste those lips. It hadn’t turned out badly at that. Not badly at all. Crucial parts of him still twitched with reaction. He turned away from her, smiling slightly.
Headlights flashed through a gap in the curtains; for all there were three layers, they hadn’t meshed neatly. He reached a hand up to twitch them into place and caught a glimpse of the well-lit parking lot, of several hurried figures tumbling out of a dark sedan. Another look confirmed it; he swore, dark and low.
She understood immediately. “Come with me,” she said, even as she slipped off her flip-flops. Preparing. “This room is no longer secure.” She eased her hand into the sling pack and removed the Sig’s discreet carrying case, belting it around her waist and unzipping the pocket; then she slid into her lightweight parka.
Jason took it in on the move. He reached the desk in one swift stride, jamming the laptop in its briefcase, not bothering with anything else but the Browning and its ammo. Where he’d go from here was almost irrelevant; he—they—had to get out of the hotel first. “Whoever they are, they’re not shy of using up resources to keep track of you,” he grunted, jamming his arms through the shoulder holster straps, double-checking the two ammo pouches to make sure they were occupied even though he’d inspected the rig upon taking it off as a matter of course.
She waited by the cracked-open door, both patient and impatient as he snapped the rig together and settled the Browning in place. Her face held no fear, only alert readiness. She said, “If Egorov’s man is in the CIA as Lyeta said, and the CIA also thinks I shot Lyeta, then the mole would have no trouble committing resources to my capture.”
More information in one casual sentence than he’d managed to pull from her all day. He took it in stride, refraining from comment—although if he’d known the agency and not a smaller wanna-be organization had been behind the earlier foray in the hotel lobby, he would have been more circumspect about bringing her back to the room. No doubt they’d paid off the desk clerks and the concierge and even the bellboys to keep an eye out for Beth’s reappearance. And while he and Beth had been circumspect upon return…
Someone, somewhere, had obviously seen them.
The CIA. Compromised.
If he’d known.
It was an old phrase from an old song.
He tucked it away for another time, accepting that he, too, bore some responsibility; he hadn’t learned the identity of those whose arses he’d kicked so readily in the lobby. He’d concentrated on finding Beth, rightly figuring that they were after her, not him, and wrongly figuring that they would continue to focus on her, not him. But the CIA had the resources to do both.
Obviously.
He made a hasty job of pulling his motorbike jacket on, coming up against Beth’s back as she carefully checked the hallway. “They’re frustrated by now,” she said. “I’m sure they expected to have me before this. They didn’t go straight for their weapons the first time, but I wouldn’t care to assume they’ll do the same in the future.”
“We won’t,” he said, visualizing the hotel floor plan. Like so many of them, the halls wound around themselves in a confusing maze with exits to fire stairs at crucial points. “They can’t cover the elevators and all the stairwells. I say we make for the exit on the other side of the floor and head down. There’s a bizarre lower passage leading to the parking garage from there.”
She glanced back at him, her lips still soft but her eyes hard and ready. Eager, almost. “You know the way?”
He nodded, and she immediately moved aside. “Your lead, then. Time to blow this joint.”
“Lovely idiom. Let’s avoid taking it too seriously,” he suggested, giving a quick glance down the hall in both directions and then moving out at a fast clip. She came behind him, silent on her bare feet and close enough to cover his back,
not so close as to impede him. He realized instantly that in spite of their differences, he could count on her to work with him and not just near him, actively partnering in a way made him grin fiercely. Me and thee against the world.
Once they passed the bank of three brass elevators, Jason picked up the pace considerably, startling several blithe hotel guests who chose just the wrong moment to emerge from their rooms. Beth effortlessly kept pace, flip-flops in one hand, the other ready to dive for the Sig. “Just around this corner,” he said, turning his head just enough so she could hear him.
Just enough and too much, as from the corner of his eye he saw a body in motion. He reacted instantly, diving away but brought up short by the opposing hall wall, still fully exposed—
And this team had come in aggressively, ready to extract what they wanted and kill whoever got in their way. Even from the corner of his eye, Jason had recognized the lump of a sound suppressor at the end of the pistol aimed his way. Heard the sharp double phhut of the gunshot, and jerked at the astonishing burn as metal drilled through his biceps and into the wall, leaving blood splatter along expensive wallpaper. Bracing for a second impact, he scrambled to get out of the line of fire even as he reached for his gun—and then heard a third shot, a strange noise that didn’t quite seem right.
Because it wasn’t a gunshot at all. It was Beth, bounding in with those silly flip-flops, smacking them across the gunman’s fingers, using her momentum to twist around and roundhouse the man’s face with her bare foot, her legs long and lean and wielded with astonishing control. The man’s head bounced off the wall. In the mere instant that he sagged, she snatched his gun, smashing it into his temple and barely hesitating to watch him go down. “You on your feet?” she asked, glancing back only for an instant before riveting her attention on the stairwell they’d been aiming for.
“Good to go,” he said. “Looks like they have more manpower than we anticipated.”
“Looks like they’re not holding back this time, either.” She nodded at the stairs. “These? Or a different set? And I ought to mention that from the sound of it, we have maybe fifteen seconds before someone comes through that door.”
Bloody hell, that hurts! “We’ve lost too much time—this is it.”
“Fine. Leg up?” She gave his arm a quick, questioning look.
He tried to flex it fully, failed, and offered her a quick grimace as he looped his hands together anyway, bending to offer her a stirrup even though he wasn’t quite sure yet what she had in mind. “At least it’s not spurting.”
“None of that nasty jaggedy bone sticking out, either,” she said, using his hand stirrup to launch herself up, and— I don’t bloody believe it!—climbed from his hands to his shoulder and upward to crouch lightly on the stout door-closing mechanism, balancing on one bare foot with just enough room to fit under the extra-high ceiling. Jason eyed her only long enough to convince himself she’d done it, then put his back to the wall just beyond the turn with the Browning in his hand.
Moments later, the doorknob snicked and turned; the quickest of glances showed him Beth, with incredible flexibility and balance, riding the door open with her free foot and jamming the stolen, silenced pistol down on the bald head just coming through the opening. A second man took aim at her from within the stairwell but by then Jason was in motion, squeezing the trigger on a round that slapped the man down. A massive explosion of sound echoed up and down the stairwell.
“Bugger,” he said, and to Beth, “Sorry.”
For the sound would bring the rest of them running, and the three they’d conquered would be as nothing unless they got out of here, now.
“Considering you just literally saved my ass,” Beth said, “I forgive you.” Within the stairwell, the wounded man moaned. She glanced to see his weapon had fallen out of reach and ignored him, keeping her attention on her captive. “Let’s get this guy secured.”
Standard-issue cuffs scavenged from the two wounded men did the trick. Beth leaped lightly from her perch as Jason did the honors, and at no time did the aim of her weapon on the bald man deviate in the process. As Jason pushed the man up against the wall, Beth got right in his face. “Listen up,” she said. “If you’re Egorov’s man, it’s time to back off. You’re blown, and the word’s about to come down—I’d take flight if I were you. If you’re not Egorov’s, then you’re plain old CIA being led around by the nose. Get off my back and start looking within your own ranks for the very poor sniper who killed Lyeta.” And without a second look at the man, she jerked her head at Jason—let’s go—and entered the stairwell.
Jason grabbed his laptop case and followed, but when she looked back at him she stopped short, jamming the silenced gun into her parka and backtracking impatiently to the wounded man. She produced a knife from…somewhere…to cut the man’s suit jacket sleeve off and then the fine linen sleeve of his dress shirt. “You’re leaving a blood trail,” she murmured, splitting the end of the sleeve in two as she approached him.
“Ah,” he said, holding his arm away from his body so she could work. “Your concern touches me to the core.”
She hesitated as she wrapped the sleeve around his arm, glancing up as if in spite of herself, with enough worry in those exquisite blue-green eyes to startle him and, in the midst of gunplay and danger and hard decisions, to touch him. Then she grew fierce, an expression to which he was more accustomed. Doubling one of the sleeve’s split ends back to tie off the bandage, she said acerbically, “Bleed slower. We don’t want to leave them any bread crumbs.”
“That’s better,” he told her, surprisingly chipper. And why not? No more stalking around on her trail, no more trying to outguess her, no more waiting for something to break on this assignment. They’d joined forces, they’d hit action—always his best thing—and damn, they were good together. He gave her a grin and was even more pleased as she returned it with a feral glint in her eye and led the way down the stairs.
With the bottom passage in sight, they heard the stairwell door open several floors above them, followed by the heavy tread of fast downhill footsteps, fast enough to include gaps where the pursuing agents skipped steps and ominous thuds as they jumped to the next landing. “Go,” Beth said to him, already lost in concentration as she steadied her borrowed gun on the railing where it bent to follow the landing and the final tier of stairs before the passage. “I’ll catch up.”
Jason watched her try one angle, then another, and when she opened her mouth to urge him on, he said, “I damn well think not.”
“Which of us is losing blood?” she snapped, choosing her vantage point and settling in. “Which of us is the better shot? Go!”
Jason glanced at the makeshift bandage and found it soaked, found fresh stain seeping back down the heavy material of his shirt. If nothing else he’d be leaving bread crumbs again, and soon. “Sod it all,” he muttered viciously. He gave her a warning look—a don’t get killed look—and headed down the stairs.
He made it only as far as the final landing. As right as she was, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her. He looked up in time to see her take calm and steady aim, carefully squeezing the trigger twice in quick succession and then giving the borrowed pistol a startled look as the slide jumped back and stuck there, the magazine empty.
He’d heard bodies fall, but a third man came on. Beth swore a heartfelt oath and dove for the stairs, jumping the entire flight and lurching forward at the bottom to smack into the wall opposite them. Jason lifted the Browning just in time to drill her pursuer before the man targeted Beth. The man’s wayward bullet hit high on the concrete block wall of the stairwell as he tumbled loosely down the stairs.
Beth wiped the silenced pistol clean of her prints and dropped it on the man’s twitching body. “Five freaking shots in that clip,” she said in disbelief. “Who goes into a firefight situation with a half-full clip?”
“Not you, I’m sure,” Jason said. “Let’s not find out if there are any more of them. ‘Out’ is this way.�
�� But the stairwell swooped around him, and although he thought he’d stayed upright Beth quickly grabbed his good arm, shoving her hip up against his. Deftly relieving him of the Browning, she shoved it back into its holster, grabbed up his abused laptop case, and got them moving. “I’m okay,” he said, unconvincing to his own ears. “Just need a place to sit down.” He glared at the world as he stumbled along, muttering, “What a cock-up.”
Beth snickered. If she was worried about his condition it didn’t show, and he found that oddly reassuring even if she was laughing at him. “Oh, right,” he said, unrepentant. “Different implication for you Yanks.”
“Just a little,” she said, still smiling as they entered the parking garage, discovering no sign of pursuit or surveillance. “Come on, then. I have just the right place. It’s absolutely meant for sitting.”
Chapter 7
Fast food has taken over the world. “Thirty thousand franchises in one hundred twenty-one countries,” Beth told Chandler, handing over a paper-wrapped burger. “Forty-six million customers per day. Now you’re one of them. Eat up, you need protein.” She gave her own burger a skeptical look. “Guess I’m not sure just how much actual protein is in one of these things.”
He sat in the otherwise empty theater with her—front row seats, of course—and automatically took the burger she proffered. In a moment she’d pilfer the theater’s first-aid kit and rewrap his arm, but as long as the food was still warm and he had that pasty, used-up look on his face, they could just sit here in the barely heated auditorium munching burgers and fries. The franchise had been on the way, and she’d sat him down at one of the children’s miniature picnic tables while she ran in to throw rands at them and grab the goodies.
Not that it had been so long since their last meal. But Beth was making up for lost time and Chandler needed to make up for lost blood. Far too much of it. At the moment he just sat there, looking around the dimly lit theater with what was meant to be a practiced eye, but she could see he wasn’t really tracking. She gave him a slanting glance as she reached for her milk shake, and pulled the straw out just far enough to make a series of horrible slurping noises. He started, immediately focusing on her.
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