Shoot to Thrill (29 page)

The phone rang, startling her badly.

She grabbed it. “Gregg?” she blurted into the receiver.

There was a pause, then, “Sorry to disappoint you.”

Not Gregg.
Wade.

“But then, it seems I always did,” her ex-fiancé said dryly.

She struggled to switch mental gears. “Self-pity is so unbecoming in a man, Wade. Don’t start. I’m not in the mood.”

Amazingly, he let it drop. “Still no word from Rainie?” he asked.

“No.” The image of the wreckage on the satellite photo swam through her mind, bringing a different kind of bruising to her heart. Before he could sidetrack her, she asked, “Wade, have you heard any reports of a small plane crash anywhere, somewhere in a remote desert?”

There was a long silence on the other end. It scared her.

My God, he knew something! “Tell me,” she ordered past the lump in her throat. “Tell me what you know.”

“That information is classified.”

She wanted to scream. She carefully modulated her irritation to a soft pleading. “Wade Montana, if I ever meant anything to you, anything at all, please
tell
me.”

He hesitated again.

She wasn’t above begging. “
Please.
”

“What will you give me for it?” he asked, his voice low.

Shock permeated her. In all the years she’d known him and his work with the FBI, she had never, not once, sensed a wavering of ethics on his part. Despite their personal problems, she would never have believed him capable of blackmail or taking bribes, or any kind of exploitation of his position as a law enforcement officer.

Could she be misinterpreting what he meant?

“What do you
want
?” she carefully asked. Just to be sure.

“I want you to come down here, to D.C. Be with me for a few days. No, a full week.”

Stunned even further, she felt her jaw drop. “Why?”

“Why do you think?”

She almost choked.
Whoa.
“Let me get this straight. You’ll tell me what you know about that plane crash in exchange for a week of sex?”

He actually chuckled. “Hell, Gina, that would be soliciting prostitution. Which is illegal, last I heard.”

“No shit.”

She waited for him to say something. Like deny it.

After a moment he exhaled. “I just want you to come down for a visit, okay? That’s all. See where it goes. I miss you,” he said, sounding like he really meant it.
Wow.

Her resolve to stay far, far away from him faltered.

Talk about laughable. She’d just come off the most amazing, incredible night—morning?—of sex in her entire life, super-agent Wade Montana included, and she was actually beginning to wax nostalgic for the little prick. Unbelievable.

Not that it was so little—his prick, that was. No,
that
was nice and big. Kind of like his ego.

Which jerked her back to reality. She could visit him all he wanted. It would never work between them because his big, fat male ego wouldn’t let it.

“Fine,” she agreed easily. “Now tell me everything you know.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Swear?”

“Yes, I fucking swear! Now, what have you heard?”

“All right. Supposedly, there was an unauthorized intrusion of Sudanese airspace by a FedEx plane yesterday. Paramilitary border guards suspected it of being a drug transport and shot it down.”

Confusion swam in her brain. “
Sudanese?
You mean as in the country? In
Africa
?” And what the heck? “A
FedEx
plane carrying drugs?”

She suddenly remembered the big “Ex” painted on the crumpled fuselage she’d seen in the SAT photo. And the desert landscape. It all fit. Everything except . . .

Oh, please.
She started to laugh. Relief poured through her.
Africa?
She might have gone along with her friend somehow braving a flight to D.C. Or even Atlanta. But freaking
Africa
? Rainie couldn’t
possibly
have been on a plane for that long without having a serious breakdown. Which meant Gregg really had been lying to her all along.

God. She was so damned gullible.

But it didn’t matter. Because that could only mean one thing. Rainie was still alive and safe. Not crashed and dead in goddamn
Africa
!

“Gina? What’s going on?” Wade now sounded as confused as she’d felt earlier. “I thought you were worried about her.”

“Not anymore,” she said unable to stop the smile from spreading across her face. “You met Rainie and all her phobias, Wade. She couldn’t possibly have been on that plane.”

Still . . . a tiny ripple of uneasiness suddenly went through her. Okay, he must have had a reason for putting her vague description together with a report from such a distant location and coming up with Rainie. “Why in the world did you think that crash had anything to do with her?”

“Other than you asking about a plane that went down in the desert?” he snipped.

“Yeah. Other than that.”

“Because,” he said with an insufferable edge of superiority, “according to my sources, that was no ordinary FedEx plane. It was a covert transport owned by a private spec ops outfit called STORM Corps. But there’s a clincher. You’ll never guess who was onboard.”

Gina’s smile and laughter vanished. “Who?” she asked, cold dread seeping into her anew.

“The same guy you originally called me about. That CIA officer you said kidnapped Rainie. Jason Forsythe.
He
went down in that plane.”

SEVENTEEN

“GO,”
Lafayette urged, waving his MEU 45 at them. “I’m good.”

Kick hesitated, glancing down at Nate, whom he had trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and who now sat on the floor staring back up at him from above his gag. Surprisingly, there was no recrimination in his eyes. Just disappointment. It was almost enough to make Kick believe in his innocence.

Well. Except for the part where he’d admitted taking a bribe from one of the world’s most notorious terrorists. That sort of trumped the innocent thing.

“How the fuck are you going to explain this to the other doctors and the UN guards?” Kick asked Marc for the fourth time. “They’ll never believe Nate is in league with al Sayika. Not in a million years.”

As soon as someone came in to check on him in the morning, all hell would break loose. Along with Nate. They’d think Marc had lost it completely, and section-eight him so fast his head would spin. Leaving Nate free to find a way to contact his terrorist buddies and warn them of the coming shit-storm.

Fucking hell.

“I’ll think of something,” Marc said, seemingly unperturbed. But Kick knew damned well what the odds were of Lafayette making it out of the DFP camp alive, now that they’d shown their hand. Down from fifty-fifty to slim-to-none.

“Get the hell out of here,” Marc ordered. He pointed to the SATCOM in Kick’s hand that he’d liberated from Nate’s office. “Hopefully without the satellite radio he can’t get in touch with them, but there’s no guarantee. You gotta take every minute of lead time you’ve got.”

Which they could only pray was enough to do the job.

Kick gave a short nod, so damn reluctant to leave him. This was likely the last time they’d see each other alive.

Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck.

Marc’s gaze flicked to Rainie, who was standing nervously next to the door, looking shell-shocked but determined. “Take care of him,
cher
,” Marc told her. “He’s gonna want to play hero, that one. Don’t you let him.”

Her mouth quavered into an attempt at a smile. “I won’t. You be careful, too.”

“
Toujours.
”

Kick cleared his throat of a sudden tickle, turned, and strode toward the door. He grabbed Rainie’s arm and just before hustling her out, looked over his shoulder. “Semper fi,
mon ami
,” he said softly.

Marc’s lip curved. “To hell and back, man.”

KICK’S
mind was going a million miles an hour, trying to figure a way out of this mess. He felt like hell leaving Lafayette in that position, but under the circumstances there was little choice. He didn’t even want to
think
about Nate. He should have slit the man’s throat there and then, saved everyone the trouble and anxiety of keeping him alive. But Kick just couldn’t do it. He needed an explanation first. A reason for his friend’s betrayal.

But nothing had changed his mind about Rainie. He had no intention of taking her along to watch him eliminate his mission target in cold blood and then call in an air strike to cook the rest of abu Bakr’s fledgling martyrs, praying the mothers didn’t find and kill him first. Which was all too likely.

She wouldn’t understand the need for their deaths, even though they were vicious terrorists actively planning to blow up hundreds of innocent people within the week and would end her life in a heartbeat without an inkling of remorse or guilt. And if he got dead, that’s what surely would happen. All of it.

Rainie was too good a person to be involved in this no-win situation. And it was all his doing. Hell, he might not deserve to live, but she damn well did.

“Tell me,” she said, prying her fingers off the dashboard, which she’d been white-knuckling since rousing Eduardo to unlock the gate so they could exit the camp in their hastily stocked-up Jeep. Ever since, she’d been watching Kick like a hawk.

He stifled a series of yawns.
Damn
, he was tired. The good news was, that blended in with all his other miserable physical issues so it was impossible to distinguish one symptom from the other. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me what I need to do to help you.”

He jetted out a breath. “You need to get the hell out of this goddamn country and go back home,” he muttered, bringing the Jeep to a stop at the edge of the cultivation and trying to decide whether to go north or south along the Nile road. North would take them to Wadi Halfa and the Egyptian border. South would take them down to Dongola and the closest airport.

“For once we’re in agreement,” she said grimly. “Unfortunately that’s not possible until this mission is over and done. So just fucking tell me what I need to know so we can get on with it.”

Right. Like
that
was going to happen.

North or south. North or south. Either direction put another two-day delay in his already diminished op timetable. And either way she’d run into trouble because of her lack of passport and travel docs. Sudanese prison was no place for a foreigner. Especially a woman, who would be considered a whore for traveling alone, or worse, having been with a man who just dropped her off with a wave, to face her fate on her own.

Sweet fucking hell.

“Hello?”

He turned a sour face to her. “You still don’t get it. I’m
not
taking you with me.”

“Oh, yeah?”

It was the middle of the night and dark as Hades, but he didn’t need to see her face to recognize the pressed-lipped stubborn tone he’d grown so familiar with.

“Yeah.”

Hell, she didn’t know from stubborn. You looked
stubborn
up in the dictionary, his picture was right there under the word.

“So, where are you taking me?”

’Course, it was right there under
clueless
, too.

“I’m working on it.”

“I can see that,” she muttered sardonically, and he realized the Jeep had been stopped at the same goddamn fork in the dirt road for the last five minutes.

“Smart ass,” he muttered back. But it lacked real heat.

“Look, Kick. I understand what you’re trying to do. And I appreciate it. More than you’ll ever know. But just forget about trying to protect me. I know what’s at stake. For real.” She turned to him, her face deadly serious. “Trust me, I’ll never forgive myself if those embassies get blown up and even one person dies because I kept you from doing your job in time to save them.”

He ground his teeth in anger. “Lafayette had no right to tell you about that.”

“He didn’t. Not on purpose. He mumbled some things while under anesthesia. Don’t worry,” she added when he shot her a horrified look. “No one else heard. And even if they had, it didn’t make sense by itself. But with what I already knew, I could put two and two together.”

He didn’t respond. It was a little late for denials, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to add fuel to her fire.

“Anyway, it’s my life,” she said resolutely, “and my decision. I won’t deny I’m scared to death. And believe me, I’ll do everything you say, follow your orders to the letter, so we can both come out of this alive. But I
am
going with you.”

He gave her his special narrow-eyed I’m-in-command-here look, the one that had scared full-grown Marines into obedience. It didn’t even make a dent.

“If you try to leave me behind, I’ll just start walking,” she quietly warned. “Or steal one of those camels you’ve been threatening me with. I’ll come after you, Kick. I swear I will.”

And the hell if he didn’t believe her.

God
damn it.

With a furious exhale, he jammed the Jeep into gear and lurched it into a U-turn, heading back the way they came. West. Past the DFP camp and out into the waiting arms of the desert. Toward abu Bakr’s insurgent training camp.

To wreak revenge on the bastard once and for all. And possibly to die doing it.

Except if Kick died, so would Rainie.

There was no way he would let that happen. So he had only one option open to him. Somehow, some way, he’d have to figure out a way for them both to survive the coming ordeal.

For both their sakes, he had to live.

HIS
heavenly Angel came to him that night.
Thank you, Jesus.
It had been so damn long. Days that had felt like years.

He was so happy he wept all over her. Big, clumsy tears fell from his eyes and plopped onto her sweet, pure, naked flesh, running down between her soft curves to soak into the putrid mattress below.

She sat up on his pallet, her red hair gleaming like a halo, and ran her finger delicately through the moisture on her body, touching it, rubbing it between her finger and thumb. Catching his gaze and holding it, she gathered another of his tears and placed it on the tip of her tongue, visibly savoring the taste.