by Rie Warren
The cold impact sucked my lungs inside out, and I almost blacked the fuck out. Surfacing to drag in O2 to lung capacity, I ducked back under, shuddering from my head to my toes. Night camos and a parka were little protection against the February temperatures of the water.
Searchlights scanned the depths. I knew dive teams would arrive on scene soon.
My fingers felt frozen solid, and if I didn’t get the blood pumping soon I’d drown.
Holding my breath as long as I could, I stroked my arms beneath the water, kicked my legs, found a current and conserved energy. I fought the void of hypothermia, my blood cooling in my veins.
I popped up like an otter, bobbing with just my nose above the water level, breathing hard, but my lungs already felt shrunken.
A search beam buoyed over the lapping waves, heading in my direction. A chopper sounded overhead, adding its bright lights to bedrock and river bottom.
Drown in the water. Get shot in the water. Neither of those deaths appealed to me. I plunged under and propelled toward the shore. Docks. Boats. Ships. There better be a fucking ladder I could grab onto.
A few yards farther on, I dragged myself out. Mist rose from my soaked body. My teeth chattered. My vision blurred. And my shoulder was killing me.
Stay alive.
Keep going.
Get warm.
Get back to Jade.
Jade.
Sixteen
SITREP: My Nads are Frozen
CRAMPS SET IN. MY arms, my legs going numb.
Through sheer determination and obstinate willpower, I broke into a jog, shivering all over my body. The limping run did its trick, beating some warmth back into my body.
Doubling back toward Justice’s warehouse, I half stumbled, half crawled to our last coordinates. Barely escaping the FBI net, I dropped to my knees as soon as I spotted Jade and Madge at the far corner of the alleyway.
Coming at me at a fast clip, Jade jerked me up. “You absolute arsehole!”
“What?” Color me fucking confused and close to blacking out.
“You don’t get to do that! Playing the hero.” She clasped her arms around me.
“Not much chance of that.” My teeth clacked with cold chills.
“Risking your life!”
“Um . . . isn’t that in the job specs?” My icy clothes peaked on my body, and I couldn’t hold a single solid breath in my chest.
“Idiot.” Going soft, Jade pulled me sideways into her lap when she slumped in front of me. “You fucking bastard.”
“Oh . . . oh . . . k-k-kay?” I rattled out.
“I hate you.”
I turned my head in her lap, closing my eyes. “Perfect. Warm me up before I die?”
I think I passed out.
Maybe it was a nightmare.
I hoped it was a nightmare.
Coming to with a rank smell in my nose, I curled against Jade. Awareness hit me with a flash. The garbage bags covering us. Lumpy trash against my back. Detritus all around us in the crowded black space.
“I said get me warm, woman. Not toss me into the gates of hell.”
“Shut up.” Jade muffled my mouth.
I vaguely remembered what brought us to the latest soup sandwich:
“Get. In. The. Goddamn. Dumpster,” Jade growled at me.
I could barely move. No way in hell was I gonna be able to jump into a dumpster. I pretty much flopped against her like a fish in its death throes.
“Bloody hell. Majedah, help me toss him in.”
The woman was probably gonna bury me in trash then ditch me.
“He’s very heavy.” Madge grunted, taking the weight of my legs.
For fuck’s sake.
The side of my head slammed against the metal when they hefted me up and over, but at least the landing was soft. Fetid, fishy, putrefying—and that was when I decided it was a good time to take a trip to la la land.
“Shh.” Jade lifted her hand. “We’re not in the clear yet.”
Giving a jerky nod, I relaxed back into the trash heap. Who knew garbage made such good insulation?
Too bad the smell was enough to make my gorge rise numerous times during the next thirty-minute wait for the all clear.
Jade and I were used to being covered in gore, slime, blood . . . filth. Yet Madge was the one who stoically manned up. With a cautious signal from Jade, she lifted the lid of the dumpster and peered out.
She plopped back into the rubbish, cushioning the lid with a hand. “Good to go. That’s how you say it? What next?”
Only one good thing came from the dumpster dive of the century: Jade and I couldn’t bear to look at each other let alone touch one another—the smell was that fucking bad.
Clean up would come later, after the clear out.
I was less of an icicle by the time we ditched our latest lovely—not—little hidey-hole.
We located a nondescript Toyota to lift. Jade did the honors of breaking in and hotwiring the sedan while I watched with admiration.
“Majedah, can you drive?” Jade scooted into the backseat and left the door open for me.
I lumbered inside and fell against her, hoping for some more babying.
“Do not believe everything you read. Of course I drive.” Madge’s eyes flickered in the rearview mirror. “Which direction?”
I had all I could do to remain somewhat copacetic. I had no thoughts other than sleep and warmth.
“West,” Jade said. “West seems like a good bet.
Madge put the car in gear.
West. West was a good idea. I smiled, but my attempt at speech came out as nothing more than a few garbled words.
I gave little resistance as Jade peeled the wet, stank-ass clothes from my body.
That fucking glacier cold river had done one hell of a number on me.
A hot body slid against mine.
Jade.
She heaped clothes around us—clean and dry.
I felt warmth.
I crashed out.
Hooves thundered across the plain. We herded the great woolly beasts after giving them free range during the blasting, snow-blinding winter.
Riding Kohana, my palomino stallion, I rose up with a yip-yip-yip!
We took only those bison we needed, praying for the animal’s spirit before the sacred slaughter. After the decimation of bison during the 19th century, it was our duty to regrow the population of animals so important to the First Nations.
The sun rayed down, new spring grass trampled under hundreds of pounding hooves. Horse and buffalo. Skilled riders, and the wild beasts we didn’t seek to tame or pen in.
Not like we’d been penned in by the US of A on our own land. Our land they’d tried to steal.
I sat on Kohana, corralling the buffalo that would feed and clothe us through the winter.
Everywhere I looked, Lakota land. Not owned. Shared.
Pride pounded through my spirit.
Life. Earth. Love.
Regrowth.
Rebirth.
I heard Kimimela’s laugh. It rose above rough shouts and low-voiced encouragements. Her brother Mahpee reined up beside me. We laughed with the freedom, our mounts moving through the milling masses.
The laughter ended when the clouds forming in the wide-open western sky turned ominously black. The low hanging specters sped faster than the bison, and the thunder of their hooves was drowned by the booming thunder from the atmosphere above.
The sudden storm brewed out of nowhere.
White jagged lightning lanced from cloudbase to land. Ear shattering electric crackles made my hair stand on end.
The buffalo spooked.
I lifted up in my stirrups. “STAMPEDE!”
My shout was lost in the sound of screaming wild weather, the high-pitched wails, the bawling animals . . .
Flailing against the arms trying to restrain me, I shouted until my voice was hoarse.
“Walker!”
My eyes peeled open. My face snapped around to fin
d Jade, not Mahpee, attempting to hold me down. For one moment I remembered her only as my enemy. Jade Huntington. The Special War Ministry.
I broke free in the enclosed space, scanning around wildly, my fists raised and my heart jackrabbiting in my chest.
Jade. Madge. Friendlies.
Beirut. Mt. Pleasant. Hell’s Kitchen.
The Hudson River.
The goddamn dumpster dive and the FBI and that agent, Jenkins.
It all came flooding back.
Dropping my hands, I slumped into the backseat of the civilian ride, hastily pulling a blanket over my nakedness.
“Fucking hell! What was that?” Jade watched me, pressed against the opposite door.
“Flashbacks. Not the good kind. You know?”
“Involving me?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. But when I came to, when I recognized you . . . all the times we tried to hurt each other—that was there. In my head.” My voice sounded rusty and unused.
Jade’s emerald eyes dimmed and she chewed on her lip. “We really messed each other up.”
“Well, we’ve definitely got history.”
“Not the good kind.” She scooted closer, placing her hand on the side of my face.
“I wouldn’t always say that.” I pulled her palm to my mouth, kissing her hand softly with my gaze on hers.
Then my nose twitched.
My eyes burned.
I dropped her hand like it scorched me. “Jesus fucking Christ, woman. You reek.”
“Well, you certainly don’t smell like flowers either,” Jade smart-mouthed.
Madge snuffed a laugh from behind the wheel of the car.
I sniffed toward the front seat. “Don’t know what you’re laughing at, Miss Middle Eastern Princess. You smell like a fishmonger’s stall, too. Five days after the market closed.”
“That’s Meesus Meedle Eastern Princess to you, Walker.” She purposefully exaggerated her accent.
“Duly noted, your highness.” I rolled my eyes.
I noticed both Madge and Jade had on new duds, and the sky was just beginning to switch from midnight black to shadowy gray. Fields ran parallel to the road, covered in the soft silt of a fresh snow. There wasn’t another car in sight.
Jade handed me a package of wetnaps, already half used. I took them gratefully, although since the two women had obviously performed a hurried wipe down and still like stank three-day-old trash I wasn’t sure what good they’d do.
Beneath the blanket, I cleaned up as best I could then shrugged on some fresh clothes from my pack.
“How long we been on the road?”
“Five hours.” Jade handed me my last burn phone. “And this has been ringing off the hook.”
“Shit. The guys.”
I checked all the voicemails and messages. Apparently Justice had received a distress signal when his digs had been breached. Needless to say, he wouldn’t be returning to his warehouse until shit cooled down. Storm let me know he could jack another C17 if I needed it. Bane—Mr. Cool Hand Luke—had little to say but wanted to make sure my heart was still beating inside my chest. And not a one of them had any clue how the Feebs had found us out.
I shot off encrypted details to all of them about our direction of travel before getting on the horn with Hunter.
He yammered away at me while I devoured a bag of Doritos the women must’ve picked up at a pit stop while I was in Snoozeville.
“You know you have one last refuge, Tonto.”
Thumping my chest to dislodge the Dorito I’d swallowed along with my tongue, I hacked for a moment.
“Rough night, Walker?” Hunter drily asked.
“You could say that.” I coughed again.
“I mean, it’s an idea, right? If the Feds are coming down on you now too?”
Taking a swig of water from the bottle Jade pushed into my hand, I watched the landscape whiz past. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“Yeah. Until you figure out how to get out of this shitstorm in a teacup. A prissy fucking English teacup, I might add.”
I glanced at Jade, glad my phone wasn’t on speaker.
“I’ll be in touch.” I ended the call.
Seventeen
Location: Middle of Nowhere
WE HAD OUR WEAPONS, our bags, and all the dollar bills Madge had carried out of Lebanon for her escape. Jade and I had alternate IDs, and I kept hard currency stashed in various locations around the US and the world, but I didn’t dare go near any of my caches.
That first endless night could not be washed off my skin with a splash and dash. Unfortunately, in order to lay tracks between us and whoever fucking else was after us now, we only managed to perform hasty cleanups in gas station restrooms before continuing the drive.
The three-day journey should’ve been the road trip from hell. I mean, we weren’t conspicuous at all we were?
Nope. Not at all.
A tall Native American dude with hair down to his waist. A Middle Eastern woman who wore solid gold bangles all up and down her wrists.
And Jade. The English Japanese hybrid who could stop traffic with her looks alone. The mile-high legs, the sleek body and perfect curves. The little Monroe piercing and the long black hair streaked with wine-red.
The eyes that captivated, haunted, compelled.
The chick who would not stop flapping her gums.
I had to resort to kissing her silent on numerous occasions during the cross-country trip, not that I was complaining.
We spent our nights traveling—a new jacked vehicle everyday. Daylight hours found us holed up in random, Nowheresville motels. Not the kind that had towel warmers, fluffy white bathrobes, or room service.
We were talking one room dives with spunk-stained quilts and cockroaches taking cover from the cold winter days just like us.
How fucking romantic.
We cut off all outside contact in our cash-only existence. Due to tight finances, we only splashed out on one room for the three of us every time we stopped. That would’ve been a luxury to people on the job like Jade and me, except there was no nookie to be had. Not with Madge in the same room, although she wasn’t stupid. She found plenty of excuses to get more ice, raid the vending machines, wonder if there was a coin-operated laundry nearby.
Too bad both Jade and I were OCD about the woman. Madge went nowhere without a heavily—discreetly—armed escort, and Jade and I took turns doing the honors only to find Madge could care less about ice, soda pop, or running a load of whites through a washing machine.
She wanted to give Jade and me alone time.
Hell, I wanted her to give us alone time. I’d had Jade for one night, and it was just enough to whet my appetite. The way she never backed down, not from a fight, not from me. Her hair spread in gorgeous disarray, falling over my chest in tickling tendrils when she rode me. Her lips parted, my name on the tip of her tongue when she writhed in the wildest, most womanly ecstasy.
Alone time.
That wasn’t gonna happen.
So, the stress levels?
Sky high. With a turbulent forecast in sight.
It may have been the frosty last weeks of winter, but the heat was freakin’ on, and there was little Jade and I could do about it.
At a dive motel in the middle of the day while Madge slumbered away, we’d grab a wild, savage kiss by the vending machines outside our room as cold swirls of snow flurried around us.
Jade swore off Cheetos—and me.
Copping a feel in the back hallway of a truck stop where the parking lot filled with massive eighteen-wheelers and road-weary men and women. Slamming Jade against the industrial-sized washing machine at a strip mall laundromat. Holding hands under the table, out of sight, while a steady stream of Fox Fucking Faux News blared from TVs bolted to the walls.
Jade damp in a towel.
Jade pink-cheeked in a parka.
Jade always on my mind.
We headed steadily west toward the Dak
otas, keeping to the plan and taking turns driving, but neither women knew the exact destination, which kind of pissed Jade off.
The night before our final day of travel when we reached a stopping point in Minneapolis, I busted out the last of my greenbacks and sprang for a suite in the historic Foshay Tower instead of the usual Motel Sticksville.
It was only when I walked across our lush carpeted room and peered out the window that I remembered the significance of Foshay Tower.
I laughed low in my throat at the strangeness of this world.
“What, Walker?” Jade stood beside me.
I looked at Madge. “The Iran hostage crisis in ’81. A massive yellow ribbon decorated this building for the hostages. For peace.”
“So much conflict. So much war. So many lives lost.” Madge’s black eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “It always haunts us.”
Majedah Chehab was no longer a terrorist threat. She wasn’t a political pawn. She wasn’t the sheikah. She was simply a human being—Madge—a person who wanted peace for her own people.
Peace.
I hadn’t had that for too many years.
Didn’t even know if it was possible for someone like me.
I nodded, and Madge dipped her head. Jade touched my arm, her fingers squeezing briefly.
That moment drew us together more than any other. Because we knew what was at stake.
Madge wisely commandeered a room of her own on the opposite side of the suite from the only other bedroom. We didn’t unpack, ready to run in an instant. But when I checked the bathroom attached to the bedroom I wanted to share with Jade, I noticed her toothbrush laid out next to my shaving kit.
Something intense kicked me in my stomach.
Returning to the large lounge, I avoided making eye contact with Jade. To look at her was to drag her into my arms and carry her to the bed, kick the door shut, and make love to her all night long.
I flicked through the room service menu. Meat. Red meat and strong spirits, I needed them.
