He shifted his sniper rifle to the two North Korean soldiers walking behind Rikki, prodding her forward. They had rifles pointed at her back. Quinn spit the sour taste out of his mouth, along with the mud from the hillside in the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Someone had misinformed the CIA. Rikki Taylor was no rogue operative working with the North Koreans. She was their captive…unless she’d set up this whole scene for cover.
Quinn knew better than anyone about Rikki’s duplicitous nature. But this? Working with the enemy to damage her own government and put her fellow CIA agents at risk?
He had a hard time believing Rikki would endanger agents in the field. Quinn lowered his sniper rifle and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
The trio below him stopped, and one of the soldiers pulled out a bottle of water.
Squinting, Quinn scanned the lush land where the borders of North and South Korea met—a no-man’s-land where hostility and mistrust haunted the verdant beauty—not to mention the scattered land mines. This mistrust permeated his pores, had him doubting his mission, a mission he should’ve refused once he’d discovered the target.
He would’ve had to have come up with a good reason to refuse an assignment from the Navy—even after that untraceable text he’d received. He could’ve tried the truth, but then he would’ve come under suspicion. Then his pride had taken over and he had to prove that he could carry out the assignment, prove his professionalism and dedication.
He snorted softly, and the leaves on the branch tickling his nose stirred. Prove to whom? His old man?
The group on the ground was on the move again, and Quinn took up his position. His rifle weighed on his shoulder like a lead block. His breath came out in short spurts.
Usually before he dropped a target, a deadly calm descended on him. Now, his heart raced and his trigger finger twitched. In this condition he’d be lucky to hit that boulder twenty feet away.
He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and blew it out through puckered lips. He swallowed. He shifted. He braced the toes of his boots against the rock behind him.
Then he refocused. He put Rikki Taylor in his crosshairs for the last time.
Rikki licked her lips, and Quinn could almost taste their sweet honey on his own tongue. She tossed her fiery hair over one shoulder.
Quinn blinked and, in the split second of that one blink, Rikki attacked one of the guards, going for his weapon.
Quinn needed no other proof. He tracked his rifle to the other guard, lined him up and took the shot. The soldier jerked once and dropped to the ground.
Quinn swung his scope back to Rikki’s struggle with her captor, and his heart stuttered. The soldier had possession of his gun, and Rikki had fallen to the ground, out of sight behind a clump of bushes.
As Quinn watched through his scope, blood pounding in his ears, the North Korean soldier shot his weapon into the bushes.
In a fury, Quinn zeroed in on the man who’d just shot Rikki, but before he could even take aim, Quinn came under attack from a hail of bullets.
Taking down the other soldier had revealed his position, and now he was outnumbered and outgunned. He rolled to his back and scrambled down the hillside like a forward-moving crab. He scuttled behind a row of trees and started breaking down his rifle.
Dragging himself up and wedging his back against a tree trunk, he stuffed his gear into his bag and then swung it onto his back.
He lunged forward onto his belly and army-crawled his way through the forest to the tunnel that would take him back to South Korea and the designated pickup point.
What would he tell his superiors? He did end up with mission success. Although it wasn’t his bullet that had done the job, he had neutralized the target—Rikki Taylor.
They’d been wrong. They’d all been wrong. Rikki had not been working with the enemy.
And now that Quinn was responsible for her death, his life wasn’t worth living.
CHAPTER ONE
Sixteen months later
The footsteps echoed behind her on the rain-slicked pavement. Rikki stopped and spun around. Silence greeted her as she peered down the dark, narrow street.
With her muscles coiled tightly, she continued, and her tag-along followed suit. As she began to turn again, the footsteps, two sets, quickened and two bodies rushed her.
The glint from a knife flashed in the night, and Rikki finished her turn with her feet flying. She kicked the assailant with the knife in the gut, and he doubled over, his weapon clattering to the cobblestones.
The other man yelped in surprise and before he could recover, Rikki swept up the knife from the ground and wielded it toward her attacker’s face.
“Get lost, or I’ll slice you from chin to navel. Yu done know?”
The man’s eyes widened so that the whites gleamed like two orbs. His friend groaned from the ground.
Rikki growled, “And take him with you.”
He held up one hand and grabbed his buddy by the arm with the other, dragging him to his feet. “Eazy, nuh.”
“You take it easy and get moving or I’ll call the police.”
The two hapless muggers took off, and Rikki pocketed the knife. The streets of Jamaica, even in the tourist trap of Montego Bay, turned deadly after dark, but Rikki had more to fear in her own country right now.
She slipped into the alley where an orange light swayed in the breeze, sidling along the walls of the ramshackle building. She ducked under a tattered blue-and-white-striped awning and rapped at the window.
A curtain stirred. Rikki stepped sideways into the weak light to identify herself.
A wiry man opened the door and hustled her inside as he poked his head into the alley and looked both ways. “Where’s your ride?”
“I walked from the main street.”
He shook his head. “Dangerous place for anyone to be walking, especially a girl like you.”
Rikki hid her smile behind a covered cough. “I’m okay. Are you Baily?”
“The one and only.” He double-locked the door behind them and twitched the curtain back in place.
“Do you have everything ready?”
“Come with me.” He crooked one long finger in her direction.
Rikki followed him through a single room where an old woman sat in front of an older TV, the blue light flickering across her lined face. She didn’t acknowledge Rikki’s presence or even move a muscle.
Baily shoved a dark curtain aside and waved Rikki into a small room. He pointed to a green screen and said, “Stand in front of that. I’ll get your picture first. Everything else is ready to go.”
As she took a step toward the screen, Baily tugged on her sleeve. “Business first.”
Rikki pulled a wad of cash from her pocket. Those thieves on the street would’ve hit pay dirt with her—well, except for the fact that they’d picked a CIA operative, trained in self-defense and street fighting, as their target.
She counted out the agreed-upon sum, and Baily got to work.
Thirty minutes later, Rikki had a Canadian passport and a birth certificate for one April Thompson. She studied the passport with the Jamaican stamp. “I heard you were good, Baily. These better not let me down.”
“Never had a problem yet.” He cocked his head in a birdlike fashion. “Girl like you in trouble with the Babylon?”
“Babylon?” She stuffed the documents into the manila envelope he’d handed to her.
“De law.” He waved his hands in a big circle. “De system.”
“You could say that.” She stuck out her hand. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
He shook her hand and then yelled, “Darien!”
Rikki jumped, jerking her hand from his grip and placing it over the newly acquired knife in her waistband.
B
aily placed one finger against the side of his nose. “No worries. Darien just my boy. He’ll take you back.”
A skinny young man poked his head into the room, his dreadlocks bobbing and swaying. “Yeah, Daddy?”
“Take this young woman wherever she wants to go. Don’t stop anywhere.”
Darien grinned. “Sure ting.”
After thanking Baily, Rikki followed Darien outside.
He turned sideways and scooted between two of the houses along the alley. A chain clinked and rattled, and Darien pushed a scooter out in front of him. “Hop on de back.”
Clutching her fake documents to her chest, Rikki climbed on the back of Darien’s scooter. He zoomed through the streets of Montego Bay as she shouted directions in his ear over the buzzing sound of the bike.
A block away from the resort, she tapped Darien’s shoulder and pointed to the side of the street.
The bike sputtered to a stop, and he leaned it to one side as if it were a mammoth Harley instead of a putt-putt scooter. Rikki slid off the back and handed Darien a folded bill.
His gaze darted from the outstretched money to her face. “Daddy would smack me in da head if I took that.”
“Daddy doesn’t have to know.” She tucked the cash beneath his fingers curled around the handlebar of his scooter and twirled away. She made a beeline for the resort and didn’t slow her pace until she walked through the front entrance.
“Good evening, Miss Rikki.”
“Hey, George.” She waved her manila envelope and scurried out the side door and across the pool deck, where drunken tourists had gathered for one last nightcap.
The damp foliage brushed her skin, and she inhaled the sweet, heavy fragrance of the white bellflower as she tromped down the path to the cottage. When she was inside, she leaned against the front door, closing her eyes and hugging the fake documents to her chest.
“Did you get what you needed, Rikki?”
Rikki opened one eye and dipped her chin to her chest. “I did. Thanks, Chaz.”
Her stepfather winked. “I’ve been on this island a long time. I know important people in low places.”
Her mother floated into the room behind Chaz, her long gray braid hanging over one shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this, Rikki? You don’t owe them anything, and as far as they know, you’re dead. You and Bella could live here with us for as long as you like.”
Rikki rolled her eyes. “I would go stir-crazy here, Mom. Besides, I have to do this. I have important information.”
“They don’t deserve it.” Mom sniffed.
Bella cooed and gurgled from the other room, and Rikki dropped the manila envelope on a table and hurried toward the bedroom. She leaned over the crib and scooped up her baby girl, holding her close and breathing in her baby-powder scent.
“She’s going to miss you.”
Rikki glanced at her mom, who stood with her shoulder wedged against the doorjamb, and blinked the sudden tears from her eyes. “I’m doing it for her, Mom. I have to get my life back for both of us.”
“Does that mean seeing him?”
“I have to start with him, see what he knows, maybe use his contacts.”
“You don’t have to tell him about Bella. She’ll be safe with us until you can return and reclaim her, reclaim your life.”
Rikki bounced her daughter in her arms, burying her face in Bella’s soft ginger hair. “I’ll see how it goes. I plan to use him to get what I want, and if that means telling him we have a daughter, I’ll do it.”
“He doesn’t have a right to know about her.”
“Lizzie.” Chaz had come up behind his wife and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let Rikki handle this herself…and let her have some time alone with the baby before she has to leave.”
Chaz ushered Mom out of the room and blew Rikki a kiss before shutting the door.
Rikki collapsed in the rocking chair, cuddling Bella in the crook of her arm. As she sang softly to her baby, Rikki let the tears spill onto her cheeks.
She didn’t know what she’d do when she came face-to-face with Quinn McBride—the man who’d tried to kill her and had gotten her locked up in a North Korean labor camp.
The man she still loved.
* * *
QUINN STUMBLED INTO his apartment and made his way to the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. He banged his shin on the coffee table and scowled at it. “Who put you there?”
He yanked open the fridge door and studied the sparse contents as he swayed on his feet. Giving up, he slammed the door, and the condiment bottles rattled and clinked against the beer bottles.
His stomach growled. The taxi driver had refused to wait for him outside the restaurant where he’d wanted to pick up some food, and Quinn didn’t want to get stuck walking home through the streets of New Orleans lugging a bag of food, especially without a weapon at his side.
And he didn’t trust himself with a weapon right now—not in his condition.
He fumbled in his back pocket for his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts. If he couldn’t get to the food, he’d make the food come to him.
His thumb swept past Rinaldi’s Pizza and he backed up. Rikki’s name jumped out at him, grabbing him by the throat. As he hovered over her name, his finger shook, and it had nothing to do with the booze coursing through his veins.
He’d kept her number on his phone and had even called it once or twice just to hear her low, sultry voice caress his ear. But the last time he’d tried to call it, the harsh tones of an automated operator told him the cell number was out of service, and he had no business trying to contact the woman he’d sent to her death.
Dropping his chin to his chest, Quinn smacked the cell phone against his temple. If only he’d shown more restraint out there on the DMZ. He could’ve taken out both of the soldiers holding Rikki. She would’ve responded in an instant, would’ve been able to take appropriate evasive action.
She’d been one of the best damned operatives in the field.
The CIA and Navy had clouded his judgment, had accused Rikki of being a double agent, had sent him there to take her out. If he hadn’t been so damned eager to please his superiors, he would’ve gone in with a backup plan.
He always had something to prove.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He needed to stop playing back the incident in his head over and over every day. Rikki was gone. The CIA was happy. The Navy had sent him out on another assignment, which had allowed him to stuff everything away as he’d concentrated on the mission, and now that he was home on leave, he could erase it from his mind another way—the old-fashioned McBride way.
He hunched over the kitchen counter, bringing the phone close to his face. Avoiding Rikki’s number, he placed a call to Rinaldi’s and ordered an extralarge pizza with everything on it.
When he ended the call, he smacked the phone on the counter and yelled out to the empty apartment, “That calls for another beer.”
His stomach rumbled again as he stared at the fridge, and suddenly the effort required to grab a bottle and twist off the top overwhelmed him. He went into the living room instead and crashed onto the sofa, grabbing the TV remote on his way down.
He clicked through the channels, settling on a true crime show about some cold-case murder, and stuffed a throw pillow beneath his head.
The doorbell startled him awake, and the remote fell from his fingers, which had been dangling off the sofa. He ran his tongue around his parched mouth and swept his wallet from the coffee table.
He peered out the peephole at the pimply-faced kid on his doorstep and swung open the door.
The delivery guy’s eyes popped open as he held out the pizza box. “Your pizza, sir.”
God, he must look even worse than he felt. He handed the kid more money than he should’ve just to compensate for scaring the hell out of
him.
When he collapsed back down on the sofa, Quinn rewound the show, since he’d dozed off during most of it—dozing off being a polite term for passing out stinking drunk.
Before digging into the pizza, he retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge and downed half of it before making it back to the sofa. Three slices later and no closer to figuring out whodunit, Quinn closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the sofa cushion.
This time, the click of a gun near his temple woke him up.
Other than blinking once, Quinn didn’t move one muscle. Then he spread his hands in front of him and said, “Take what you want, man. Wallet’s on the table. Anything you can carry out is yours.”
The gunman behind him huffed out a breath and then purred in the low, husky voice that haunted his dreams, “You sure have gotten soft since trying to kill me, McBride.”
CHAPTER TWO
Quinn jerked forward and cranked his head around. He choked as he stared at Rikki—but not Rikki—behind the Glock. She always did prefer a Glock.
Her blue eyes had been replaced by a pair of dark brown ones, narrowed in rage. Long, straight strands of brown hair framed her face instead of the thick, wavy red locks that used to dance on her shoulders like tongues of flame, tickling his body when they made love.
“Rikki?” He held out a trembling hand and then clenched it, cursing his drunken state. Maybe this was all an alcohol-infused hallucination. “Is it really you?”
She stepped back, wrinkling her nose. “You smell like a brewery.”
Then it hit him. Her presence two feet away sobered him up like a cold shower and a pot of coffee, and his blood hummed through his veins with elation. “How are you here? I—we thought you were dead.”
She took another step back, her aim at his head never faltering. “Yeah, too bad for you the North Koreans wanted me more alive than dead. That shot the soldier took grazed me, nothing fatal, but at least it protected me from the bullet waiting up on that hill—a bullet from a deadly Navy SEAL sniper.”
“I wasn’t going to do it. Why do you think I took out the other soldier? I realized you hadn’t turned traitor the minute I saw you make a grab for your guard’s gun. I couldn’t get a clean shot at the soldier holding you, but I thought you might be able to take care of him yourself.”
Kick A** Heroines Box Set: The UltimatumFatal AffairAfter the DarkBulletproof SEAL (The Guardian) Page 91
