Tripp

by Irish Winters

  She was definitely under close guard. Two armed men followed behind her. When she slowed, bent over and rubbed her bare foot, one shoved the butt of his rifle into her back. Which, oddly, raised the hackles between Kruze’s shoulder blades into dinosaur stegosaurus plates.

  When she fell to her knees, those plates stiffened more. Even high on the hillside like he was, he could hear the ugliness in their voices. He didn’t know their language, but he knew by the tone that they were mocking her. Calling her vile names behind her back.

  His harsh opinion of the American woman changed—a little. She was still an arrogant piece of entitled ass, and for sure, she had no business being in this war-torn part of the country. Her ignorance had put her life—and now his—at risk. Damn the mentality that made foolish, entitled American princesses like her.

  A single glint created a tiny prism inside the outer ring of his binocs' lens. Kruze shifted his view to the opposite side of the canyon. Well, what do you know. A robed man stood across from Kruze’s position, the long rifle in his hands also aimed at the caravan below. The guy was probably after the reward on Banks’ head, a lucrative offer in any part of the world, but especially here. Whoever he was, he’d be everyone’s best friend by nightfall—if he made the shot, and if he could prove he and he alone had killed the American journalist. Which meant he’d be after some kind of trophy. That red scarf would do. Or her head…

  “Shit,” Kruze hissed. He flattened to his ledge, needing to stay the course, save the girl, do his hero thing, then get the hell out of there.

  He had two choices. Plan A: Shoot the assassin before he got a shot off and killed Princess Banks, or fire into the caravan to create a distraction. But even if those worked, there was no guarantee Banks would take advantage of it and run for her life, or that she’d get away if she did. These mountain people weren’t stupid. The lived on what they hunted, for hell’s sake. They’d run her down in no time, might even beat her for causing trouble.

  Steadying his rifle scope across the canyon, Kruze opted for the direct approach: Shoot the motherfucker. One round ought to create enough distraction to separate Banks from her marching buddies. Getting down this side of the canyon in time to rescue her would take a couple minutes, though. She might not have that kind of time.

  Plan B it was. Instead of taking out the assassin first, he called out to the men below, pointed to where the assassin now hunkered down, and yelled, “Turkish Army! Hadi! Hadi!” Which he hoped meant hurry, hurry.

  That put a wrinkle in things. The brave assholes below scattered and took up defensive positions. The assassin ducked down and recalculated. Kruze grabbed the opportunity is distraction provided, clutched his rifle over his head, and slid down the nearly vertical face of his side of the canyon. A loud cry went up below, but no one fired at him. That was nice.

  He landed boots first, then pointed up at the precise lookout of the assassin, and yelled, “Shooter!” His Turkish wasn’t good; his Kurdish and Farsi weren’t much better. But most Kurds knew enough English to understand what he was trying to help them. They reacted as any targeted gang would. The assassin got one more shot off, but it went wild, as every rebel soldier in that convoy peppered his location with enough lead that they knocked a small landslide loose.

  Kruze took advantage of the fog of war. In three quick steps, he grabbed the flustered American woman by her hand, ripped that stupid red scarf off her head, tossed it to the dirt, threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, and ran in the opposite direction.

  “What? Wait. No, stop! I can’t leave.” She wanted to argue? Now?

  “Shut the hell up. I’m here to save your stupid ass. Stop kicking!”

  He didn’t plan to go far, just needed to get to the last vehicle in this roughneck convoy before that rockslide buried them all alive. While the rebels were busy being heroes, Kruze hurried to get Banks out of sight. Once they noticed she was missing, they’d come unglued. But they’d also expect her to run in the opposite direction. Kruze didn’t plan on being that kind of stupid. He tossed Banks to the ground beside the last vehicle, a square-fender jeep that looked like it’d been in WWII.

  “Get under here and shut-up,” he ordered.

  She stood there blinking at him like a… a woman.

  Kruze stepped into her personal space, towering over her, and still breathing hard from that slide down the mountain. He was damned if he was going to take any lip.

  That did the trick. Mizz Banks tugged her skirt up and dropped to the ground, then flattened her body, and scurried on her hands and knees beneath the undercarriage. While she rolled over and shifted her backside into one of the ruts, Kruze tugged his blanket, which was plenty ratty and dirty, from inside his camouflaged jacket and climbed down with her. Before Banks could pitch another hissy-fit, he rolled onto her much smaller, narrower body. A less than ladylike grunt ground out of her. He shook the blanket out as far as he could, given the restricted space under, then tossed one end of it over his legs and pulled the other end up until it covered his shoulders and head. And her.

  By the time he’d finished, Kruze was on his belly and face to face with Mizz Brianna Banks, breathing the same air. She whimpered when his full weight mashed her into the dirt. Well, too damned bad.

  “Shut it, Princess. I’m only here to get you out of the country alive, not marry you.”

  “Th-thanks for helping me,” she whispered. Banks almost sounded sincere. That should’ve altered his opinion, but it didn’t. Journalists just like her had made his brother Chance’s life a living hell for too damned long and in too many ways. They’d known nothing about the details of his covert op into South America, less about Kruze and Chance’s mother’s death, which had happened during the same time. So what’d they do? They’d invented, hypothesized, and outright lied, created sensational, twisted tales full of so much crap, that Chance had come damned close to committing suicide. He’d lost most of his SEAL team on that op, and had nearly lost his life. America’s press corps thought they could say whatever they wanted under their first amendment rights? Well, Kruze had news for them, this woman in particular, and it started with a vehement effing F-off!

  By the time he was through remembering why he detested journalists, Kruze was flaming pissed all over again. Gawddamnit, yes, he was the emotional middle brother of Scarlett Sinclair’s three boys, and he’d struggled with the shortcoming all his life.

  But like his friend Julio had taught him to do, Kruze forced his mind and soul back to zero. Breathed in. Breathed out. Tried like hell to let the past go, to forgive and forget and—yeah, not happening. Not only no, but hell no. He’d never forgive the press for their lies or his mom for not telling him she was dying of cancer. Or Chance for wanting to kill himself after he came to in the hospital and found out he’d lost everything. What a fucked up month that had been! How was a man ever supposed to get over all that?

  Didn’t matter how much Kruze had tried, he plain didn’t know how to let those sorrows and grudges go. He’d adored his mom, still did, and he would always idolize his older brother. Losing his mom had been gut-wrenching, but losing Chance at the same time? That would’ve been the cruelest blow. Kruze didn’t know how to get back to the man he’d been before Chance had almost pissed his life away. Didn’t know if he wanted to. Pagan, the youngest Sinclair, seemed to have found a way to deal with those betrayals, but Kruze didn’t know where to begin.

  In the still of his mighty struggle to zero his anger, Kruze’s mind settled on the sensation of the much smaller heart pounding against his belly. The journalist’s heart. Odd, that the steady thump of this foolish, selfish woman’s blood flowing through those chambers grounded him in the middle of a nightmare situation that could still get them killed. Yet it did. There was something familiar to this moment, something tugging at the back of his memories. He almost felt—better.

  No, gawddamnit. Kruze shrugged that notion aside. Miss Brianna Banks was nothing to him. She was
n’t brave, surely wasn’t any kind of patriot. She was a user, a prima donna of the highest magnitude, some rich man’s privileged daughter. All she’d wanted when she’d sneaked into Turkey was a sensational story that would sell. She wanted to be famous.

  He might block his thoughts and opinions, but Kruze could still smell the sweet, musky scent of her body, the perfumed oil in her straggly hair, and her fear. Red scarf or not, arrogant or just plain stupid, Banks was awash with panic. She was breathing hard, scared for her life. She damned well should be. She’d brought this shitstorm down on herself. His job was just to get her dumb ass safely back to America. He didn’t have to like her to do that.

  The Earth quaked. Then roared. What now? Kruze ducked his face into Banks and lifted his arms over her head, shielding her from the furious cloud of rocks and dirt suddenly pummeling the convoy. The landslide had arrived. Thick dust and all sizes of rocks battered everything in its way, like a dry ocean wave, make that a tsunami. Kruze could barely breathe. The landslide’s throaty roar turned into bouncing thunder that grew closer and closer until—

  BANG! BOOM!

  You have got to be kidding me! A boulder as big as a gawddamned house—an American house, not the hovels these poor mountain people lived in—landed square behind the convoy. It nearly kissed the rear gate of the jeep he and Banks were hiding under. Holy shit! Talk about one helluva close call. A yard nearer and it would’ve crushed the jeep and them with it.

  Shock waves from the impact shook the ground. Kruze worked his jaw to keep his eardrums from blowing out, even as he stiffened his body and enclosed Banks in as much safety as he had to give.

  When the thunder ceased, so did the shooting. Smaller rocks continued to rain down on the convoy. Kruze guessed the rag-tag army was hiding under the rest of the vehicles if they were smart. At last, the rockslide slowed to a trickle of bangs, thuds, and hisses, then stopped.

  With his entire body still wrapped protectively around Banks, Kruze cocked his head to better hear what was going on beyond what had proven to be the perfect hiding place. More yelling. More bellowing. But the noises sounded crazy-happy instead of pissed, angry, or hurt. A roar went up and shooting recommenced—until some guy with voice, as deep as that growling landslide, started singing a somber, respectful song. The yelling and shooting ceased as quickly as it had begin. Given the diversity of dialects, Kruze didn’t understand everything word being sung, just ‘Pesnê,’ their word for praise.

  Well, I’ll be damned. They’d killed the assassin, and now, these simple mountain people, as rude and cruel as they could be, were praising Allah. The reverent song lasted for all of five minutes. Once it ended, the rebels circled the massive rock that could’ve crushed Kruze and Banks to death.

  “I’m scared,” Mizz Brianna Banks whispered, her breath a soft warm feather that didn’t feel half bad when she huffed into the hollow of his sweaty neck.

  Kruze retracted his arms from around her head and his hands from her face. “Deal with it,” he growled quietly, his elbows now tucked to his side and his hands flat to the dirt. He was ready to push up and away. Any minute now…

  “They stopped shooting. Why don’t we make a break for it?”

  “Because here is safe; out there is certain death. Keep quiet.” These guys would expect them to run. Kruze didn’t intend to be that kind of stupid. He wasn’t moving until he was sure he and Banks could get away without being seen or shot in the back.

  Kruze was all male. A former Navy SEAL, he’d seen combat in some of the world’s worst places. He was bigger boned, thicker muscled, and a helluva lot heavier than the dainty, entitled celebrity mashed beneath him. He was one of America’s baddest badassed warriors, by hell, and he could be a mean son of a bitch when the situation demanded. He’d faced death too many times to count, and he’d ended every HVT he’d ever been ordered to hunt. He’d survived the harshest weather, in the worst places, and the worst kinds of disasters known to man. He wasn’t made to fail.

  But he wasn’t immune to the soft, feminine curves against his belly and thighs, or the tender brush of this woman’s breasts against his much harder chest muscles, with every breath she took. Or the quivering tones of pure terror in her voice, and that heart, its beat so loud he was fairly certain it was climbing up her throat. He’d seen terror before, in the eyes of men, women, and little kids without hope. Brianna Banks was each of them all over again, her pride and ego stripped away, willing to do anything to survive.

  If she were alone, she’d probably think she stood a chance running from those men out there. She’d bolt. Which proved yet again, she had no business being this deep inside Turkey’s Eastern Anatolia Region. Do-gooders like her should’ve stayed home where they belonged. Because, when they didn’t, once they’d overstayed their welcomes—if they’d ever been welcomed in the first place—some unfortunate SEAL team received orders to retrieve the idiots. And sometimes those men died. For what? The life of a journalist who’d turn on them as soon as there was money to be made in the press? Kee-rist! When would people learn?

  Growling, Kruze forced his focus back on the endgame of getting Banks out of his life and himself back to the States. He’d been down this road before, and because this woman was who she was and did what she did for a living, he didn’t care if she was scared or not. She should be.

  Inhaling a deep, quiet breath, he wondered how long their reprieve would last. Not long. He’d no more than exhaled, when one of the rebels yelled, “Americans!” Every fighter around that rock scrambled in all direction to find him and Banks. More bellowing. More gunfire. Ouch. Damn it. A ricochet caught Kruze’s left biceps. High. Just skimmed the meaty muscle near his shoulder joint; nothing to worry about. He’d treat it later.

  It was all the boots pounding past their location that concerned him now. He and Banks were literally hiding in plain sight. It’d only take one sharp-eyed man or woman to spot them and raise an alarm, maybe kill them both where they laid. Yet Kruze knew the jittery nerves of an army under attack, especially after a boulder the size of Rhode Island landed where it had. These guys were hyped-up on adrenaline and fueled by religious zeal. They fanned out in all directions and up both sides of the canyon. Again, not a good time to make a break for it.

  Fortunately, enough rocks and dirt had blocked one side of the Jeep, enough to provide a quantum of cover. Kruze shifted his hips, aware that his thigh holster might be digging into the trembling body beneath him, but not caring one bit if it was. He knew he was being an ass, but he refused to baby Banks. She’d asked for this, well, hello Karma. She was going to get precisely what she’d had coming to her.

  Turkey was off limits to United States civilians due to its high level of terrorism, arbitrary detentions, and, oh, guess what? Increased risk to Americans! Wanna bet Banks hadn’t checked with the US State Department before she’d trotted her privileged ass across whatever border she’d breached to get here? Journalists! The bane of every active duty soldier, airman, sailor, and Marine. Probably Coasties, too.

  Planning how to get her out of this country alive, Kruze watched out both sides of the jeep’s undercarriage as far as he could see. By the time the ragged rebel army returned from their futile search, they were still agitated but also hungry and tired. The few women in the convoy had set up camp, and delicious aromas wafted from the landslide-free side of the road.

  Most of the dust from the landslide had settled, the sun was gone, and night had fallen. In developing countries like Turkey, electricity was not readily available everywhere or to everyone. The farther a man got from the cities, the fewer amenities. In mountainous altitudes and narrow canyons like this one, the sun went down extra early, night was a helluva lot darker, and it would only get colder.

  Not that Princess Banks was cold yet. She couldn’t be, not wedged under him and into the rut like she was, not with his massive body providing enough body heat to melt ice and keep her warm. But they couldn’t stay where they were much longer.
Hiding in plain sight was only good in small doses. Plus, the miracle of the boulder still attracted plenty of attention. Too soon, these wild men would start drinking and dancing around that big rock, praising Allah with gunfire and song. Therein lay the real problem—how to get the hell out of Dodge before this op turned into a bigger clusterfuck than it already was.

  He doesn’t remember me. After all these years, he’s forgotten that night in Paris. The revelation shouldn’t hurt, but it did. Of all the men in the entire United States who could’ve, should’ve been sent to rescue her, why on earth did it have to be Kruze Sinclair? Not that Bree cared. He’d certainly had no trouble leaving her before, and she’d bet her bottom dollar, he’d do it again.

  About the Author

  Irish Winters…

  …is a best-selling author who, when she isn’t writing, dabbles in poetry, grandchildren, and rarely (as in extremely rarely) the kitchen. More prone to be outdoors than in, she grew up the quintessential tomboy on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin, spent her teen years in the Pacific Northwest, but calls the Wasatch Mountains of Northern Utah, home. For now.

  She believes in making every day count for something, and follows the wise admonition of her mother to, “Look out the window and see something!”

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