A barrage of bullets had Jonas slamming her to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Her head throbbed where she was certain a patch of hair had been yanked out.
"Scoot through the vegetation on your stomach," Jonas whispered.
Hannah tried not to be a priss. They were about to be shot. She shouldn't be worried about ticks and spiders, but she could think of little else as they eased their bodies forward, trying to find cover.
Sarah had better get her ass in gear and send us some help. Jonas swore crudely under his breath as a bullet hit the ground close to them. To her credit, Hannah made no sound, but it was enough to fuel the already murderous anger in him. He resisted the urge to leap up and fire back. He had to stay hidden. The enemy wasn't certain yet exactly where they were.
All he could do was to try to keep his body positioned in front of Hannah's and protect her until help arrived.
Sarah knows. They've sent Jackson and the others by now and they're out on the captain's walk waiting to send aid. I can feel them, the power gathering in the air waiting for me. Just get those men to come in the forest. I can do the rest.
He stopped her with a hand to her shoulder and leaned over her to put his lips against her ear, not wanting any mistakes. "You want me to draw them to us?"
She nodded. Her mouth was dry, but this was what she was born to do and she was confident in her ability.
"Keep moving back, baby," Jonas cautioned and fired several rounds, more to give away their position and draw the attackers in than to hit someone. He snapped another clip in his gun and continued pushing her forward. "Watch the stream, Hannah. There's a narrow strip of land with a downed log over it. Use that to cross."
That would put the stream between them and their attackers. Ferns grew large and thick on either side of the stream going up the slope leading to the stands of trees. He followed Hannah through the plants, noting where the ground dipped down and where their attackers would have the best cover.
"Here. I can use the water. Find us a place to wait for them, Jonas."
He made a careful sweep with cool, assessing eyes. He'd spent hundreds of hours in this place. It was his childhood playground and he knew every single square inch of ground. He nudged her to the left. "Make for that little slope. Use the ferns for cover, but you can't brush them with your body, Hannah."
Her skin itched and prickled as if a million bugs crawled over her. She was terrified there were ticks in her hair. The ground close to the stream was marshy and wet. She didn't want to think about that as she slid along, using her elbows to propel her. And she hated the fact that any of that was in her mind when they had men chasing them with guns. She glanced at Jonas.
Harsh lines were carved into his grim face. His jaw was set in that stubborn look she knew so well and his eyes were alive with fury. She wanted to be like him. He wasn't worrying about bugs and filth, he was bent on destroying the danger to them—to her. Pride welled up in her.
"There's no one else like you in the world, Jonas," she said softly.
He glanced down at her, his gaze holding on hers. At once his face softened. "I love you, Hannah. I always have."
Her heart gave a funny little flip and her stomach took a dive. "I love you, too." She couldn't believe she was with him. In spite of the danger, there was exhilaration in the moment. She'd spent her life afraid. Stammering. Consumed by panic attacks. Yet she was hiding in the woods, killers on her heels, crawling on her stomach with snakes and bugs like some wild soldier, and she felt strangely elated. And very much loved by Jonas Harrington.
They found a depression in the soft ground right behind several large wide trees. It was a natural fortress camouflaged on three sides by the brush and fallen leaves and twigs around them. Jonas arranged several dead branches with drooping leaves over them so anyone would really have to look closely before spotting them.
"No matter what, Hannah, you keep down." His hand pressing on the nape of her neck made it impossible to do anything else. His voice held a whip of fury.
She was scared, no doubt about it, but Jonas was in fullblown protector mode and the familiarity of it made her feel confident of her own abilities. Jonas had always been there, fighting at the side of her family since they were children, and he was very good at it. She liked the feeling of being partners with him—of belonging.
"You're going to have to let me up long enough to call the elements in, Jonas. We'll need rain to put the fire out so it doesn't get out of hand. And we need the wind and then maybe the fog. I can manipulate the ground and the water if I have to."
He could hear them coming now and the thought of letting her, even for a moment, risk her life was abhorrent to him, but at the same time, he'd be stupid not to give her the best chance. Hannah was her own best chance.
"I'll be careful," Hannah assured him. She raised her head cautiously and peered through the heavy brush. "Can you give us a taller screen? I have to use my hands."
Biting back a protest, Jonas snagged two of the larger fallen branches, both with sweeping fans of needles. He added them to the existing brush around them, making certain the dead limbs looked as if they had fallen there naturally.
Hannah lifted her hands toward the sky, weaving a graceful pattern in the air as she called on the elements to assist her.
Jonas watched her, and even surrounded as they were by danger, or maybe because of it, pride in her swelled in him. He'd always loved to see the natural elegance of her slender body. Her face was devoid of makeup and she looked impossibly young but breathtakingly beautiful and completely unaware of it. As she wove her magic, she was wholly focused on her task, murmuring softly as she moved her hands.
He scanned the surrounding area again. What he wanted to do was crawl out from under cover and hunt the bastards down one by one and shoot them. Another minute—another turn of the key in the ignition—and Hannah would have been killed.
"They're coming in, baby." He shifted subtly, ensuring his body was slightly in front of hers and that he could drop on her if necessary. "Hurry."
She didn't acknowledge him, or shift her attention even for a moment. As always, when Hannah used her gifts, he could feel the subtle buildup of energy. It started as an electrical current around them. The hair on his arms stood up. His ears buzzed with the crackle of power in the air. The tops of the trees swayed gently, a subtle change as the breeze shifted.
He felt it on his face then, a soft touch of fingers, heard feminine voices chanting in the distance, and his mouth curved in satisfaction. Mess with the Drakes and life could get rough.
The splash of water got his attention. If the enemy came in by the strip of water, they might have a chance of spotting them as only the large ferns provided cover.
He sank lower, pressing his hand onto the small of her back and exerting pressure, silently telling her to drop down. "In the stream, Hannah." He sank onto his belly and thrust the gun forward, waiting.
She allowed him to bring her down to her stomach, but she propped herself up on her elbows in order to use her hands as she turned her attention to the long ribbon of stream she could see. The water began to bubble and then slosh back and forth, each wave growing in strength and intensity until the water was rocking well above the sides of the stream. Back and forth, it rushed, gathering strength and power, feeding itself as the speed increased.
Overhead, dark clouds gathered ominously. Veins of lightning edged the clouds, glittering angrily. Thunder rumbled and the morning sky darkened. All the while the water in the stream sloshed back and forth, growing in height with each new wave. The men walking in the creek rounded the corner.
Jonas could see their faces clearly. The shock. The horror. The utter terror. They stood frozen as the wall of water raced toward them, a tower now. The one in the lead yelled something in raw fear and turned, using his shoulder as a battering ram to take out the man behind him. The water hit them full on, slapping them hard, driving them to the rocky streambed, tumbling them with
the force of a mini-tsunami.
At the exact same moment, the clouds burst and dumped the pounding rain. It fell so hard and fast it stung, and reduced visibility to zero. Jonas shifted until his upper body protected her head and shoulders, all the while his restless gaze sought targets.
There was quiet as the rain pelted down and the waves in the stream began to ease without Hannah feeding them power.
"We've got to go now before they recover. We're just playing hide and seek until the others get here." He kept his hand on her lower back, urging her to back out of the depression and move around the thick network of tree roots. "I'm sorry, baby, I should never have brought you out of your house where you could be in this kind of danger. I had no idea we were facing this kind of adversary, but I should have."
Hannah would rather have continued to face them than to run, especially when they were back to crawling. "Why? Whoever this is has manpower and tenacity. He isn't giving up. It isn't a regular hit where they just send one killer." Every time she thought about someone hating her that much, she felt sick to her stomach. "None of this makes sense to me."
"Me either," he admitted. "You just aren't the kind of woman to inspire this kind of hatred. Fantasies maybe. Sick ones even, but not this kind of thing. Now Joley…"
"Don't you say a single bad word about Joley!" Her defense of her sister was swift and furious. "She's a wonderful person."
"Honey, she took down the Reverend on national television. Do you honestly think that his followers, the men surrounding him that benefit from his scam, and the Reverend himself, don't have a hate as big as Texas for Joley right now? She's rash and she's too honest. She says what she thinks. It doesn't matter if she's right. She's like an avenging angel. Put that together with her sexy image and you've got trouble."
He held a low-hanging branch out of the way so she could gain her feet. "Take the right-hand path. That curves back around and starts leading up toward the house. We go up over the slope and then follow the stream back downhill. We'll be able to hear when the rescue squad gets here."
"Tell me about Nikitin. What do you know about him?" Hannah asked. "I wish I could figure out just what his interest in Joley really is. And why won't Prakenskii say?"
"Prakenskii has his own interest in Joley, Hannah, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with work and everything to do with being a man."
Hannah pushed aside several cracked branches, remembering at the last moment, before releasing them, that the movement could give away their position. She stood bent over, feeling helpless and stupid until Jonas took control of the foliage and waved her on.
"The Russians have always had a problem with violent mobsters. They're highly organized, international and very bloody. Along with the Colombians and the Italian mobsters, the Russians are considered the most powerful criminals in the world. You name it, they're into it. And where they really shine is in laundering money. They can take dirty money and make it clean like no one else. Where other organizations have rules about killing cops and families, they don't. They could care less."
"Why is Nikitin rubbing shoulders with celebrities and politicians?"
"He has a clean image. Interpol, hell, every cop from here to Europe and back, knows he's dirty, but no one can get anything on him. He's good at what he does and he likes the image of being a good guy, so he works at it. Boris Tarasov, one of his greatest rivals, wants the fear from everyone more than the celebrity image. We're talking billions of dollars, Hannah. That kind of money buys you a lot of protection. They buy police, government officials, customs, you name it, they have someone in their pocket."
"I don't understand how we ended up getting mobsters after our family. Joley would have said if she'd had a run-in with one of them."
His hand on her shoulder stopped her and she sank down into the cradle of the earth, surrounded by roots and thicker tree trunks for protection. Her heart began to thump hard again. She could hear the approach of the men following them, the whispered voices with their heavy accents.
"You're going to be all right, baby," he whispered against her ear, his lips brushing over the thin lines on her face where the knife had slashed her. "Jackson and the others will be here soon."
"I know." She couldn't tell him she was more worried about him than herself.
Jonas was a man of strong emotions with an equally strong need to protect. Most of the time, Jonas shielded her automatically from his feelings. He'd been doing it for so many years, he didn't think about it. But there were occasions, like now, when his mind was totally focused somewhere else and she was swamped with the sheer intensity of his fury.
There was no other word for it but rage. It rolled off him in waves. His face was a grim mask, his eyes glittered dangerously, and although he sent her a small smile of reassurance when she reached up to try to ease the frown on his lips, it was far from the real thing.
"Jonas, we really are going to be okay," she said. "I know we are."
His dangerous blue eyes settled on her face. Immediately the flow of emotion stopped. "Sorry, Hannah. I wasn't thinking, I should have been more careful." He brushed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. "I know we will be."
"But?" she prompted.
"But they came after you and they're still coming and that's not acceptable to me. At least I know where to go looking now."
The rain slowed to a steady drizzle. Three men moved toward them at a right angle, carefully avoiding the stream, obviously unaware of their exact position, but making a sweep to find them. Jonas extended his gun.
"I'm still feeling strong, Jonas," Hannah said. "The others are feeding me their power. I might collapse after, but right now, let me hold them off as long as I can. We'll save ammunition and they won't know exactly where we are. With any luck, they'll be superstitious."
Jonas shifted again and allowed her to slide out from under him. They moved with care to keep from shaking the brush around them. With the rain falling, it helped to cover any soft sound, but it also muffled the approach of the enemy.
"How many?" Hannah asked.
Jonas shrugged. "More than five. Seven maybe." And that worried him. They wanted Hannah bad. Why? The question nagged at him. Who could hate Hannah? It didn't seem possible to him, but the answer was right there—just out of his reach. He could practically taste it in his mouth, but couldn't quite spit it out. His brain worked fast at computing data, and along with his highly developed intuition, that was the reason he was good at his job. Now, when he needed his ability to process data fast, it seemed to be failing him.
The men were moving through the brush and trees, inching their way, guns drawn. Hannah's hands began their graceful motion, her melody changing, the tone much more earthy.
Near the redwood trees, just in front of their enemies, the ground rippled, moving leaves and redwood needles along with fallen vegetation in a gentle rolling swell.
The men stopped their approach abruptly. They spoke rapidly in another language.
"They think they're feeling an earthquake," Hannah interpreted, her voice distracted. "That the stream acted the way it did because of…" She trailed off.
Jonas glanced down at Hannah. Her concentration was once again completely focused on the soil and vegetation where the enemy huddled whispering together. The rolling swells spread out, reaching toward the group, the waves rising and falling with gathering speed. Above them, the trees shook, and as they looked up, brittle branches cracked and splintered, falling from above them to drive like spears into the ground. The thick branches fell with enough force that they drove deep into the soil. Standing upright, each branch formed a piece of fence so that it ringed the men as the ground continued to pitch and roll.
"I hear sirens," Jonas said. "Another couple of minutes and the troops will arrive." He wasn't good at hiding. He wanted to stand up, and blast away at the men who wanted Hannah dead.
She suddenly leaned into him, her head lolling back on his chest as his arm came up around her waist to sup
port her. Jonas swore softly and began to ease her to the ground. She clutched his wrist.
"Not yet. Wait. Tell me if they come at us again."
Jonas saw the men breaking through the wall of branches, stumbling back away from the area. The swells followed them, but much more gentle now with Hannah's power waning. He sighed. They were going to make one more fast try. He could feel it more than see it.
The men formed a loose semicircle and began spraying the forest with bullets. He flattened Hannah instantly, swearing as the bullets penetrated into their space, digging into trees and the ground around them. He heard Hannah's soft voice. Melodious this time, the notes familiar. Her affinity with the wind was legendary within the family. And the wind answered immediately, leaves rustling as the breeze grew stronger, branches swaying, trunks of trees bending.
Sharp needles shot from the redwood trees, swarming like angry bees, the sound an ominous buzz as they hurtled through the air at Hannah's enemies. The needles penetrated skin, spearing deep, the stings of hundreds of insects on every inch of exposed skin. The enemy turned and fled, running from the forest as if demons were behind them.
Hannah turned her face into Jonas's chest and went limp, her body slumping against his, all energy drained out of it. He sat in the midst of brush and trees, Hannah in his arms, listening to cars start up and the rain fall down. She hadn't panicked. She hadn't fallen apart and clung to him in terror, although he could see it in her eyes. She had fought by his side courageously. The next time she called herself a coward, he was going to shake some sense into her.
Tires screamed on the asphalt drive up by his house and he heard the sound of running. "Jonas! Hannah!"
Chapter Twenty
"THE women need strong, sweet tea," Ilya Prakenskii greeted Jonas as he entered the kitchen. His cool, appraising gaze ran over Jonas, noting the smears of dirt and scratches, the evidence of the explosion. "I felt the surge in power and knew they'd need help. Is Hannah all right?"
[Magic Sisters 05] - Safe Harbor Page 34
