Ignited (Titanium Security Series) (22 page)

Hunter took a right out of the parking lot and hit the gas, weaving his way through traffic to get to the highway entrance. “Pull up the GPS for me,” he said to Khalia. “Once we get to Pesh we’ll need a map. Try and memorize the general layout if you can.” He’d been there more than a few times but he still didn’t know his way around the city well. Place was a goddamn tangle of alleys and crowded neighborhoods easy to get lost in, which also made it the perfect place to hide. No doubt why the hostage takers had chosen it.

Rather than using the vehicle’s GPS, Khalia used her cell phone. The image on screen showed them as a little moving arrow and gave the remaining distance to Peshawar. His main concern now was the clock, which was ticking down too damn fast. The tense silence in the vehicle broke when Khalia spoke.

“So, what’s the plan when we hit the city limits?” she asked, rubbing a hand against the folds of her robe as she enlarged the map and studied it.

“We make the call and wait for further instructions, find out where these assholes are and what they want from us, and make a decision then.” If he was right and they expected Khalia to walk into their trap, they had another fucking thing coming.

“They’re going to target me though, right? I mean, it’s me they want dead.”

A fierce protectiveness rose up inside him at the tremor in her voice, so strong the hair on his arms stood up. “I won’t take you anywhere I think might be a trap, and I’m sure as hell not letting you get close enough to anywhere that might make you a target for anyone. We’ll wait at the edge of the city and let Tom update everybody involved first. By now the local authorities will be starting their own hunt. If there’s any kind of sting set up once we get the location, they’ll handle it.”

She nodded, lips pressed together, gaze still on the map. “Are you going to call the number, or am I?”

“You’ll have to, so they know we’ve complied with that part of their demands. We have to make everything look as legit as possible, in case they have eyes on us somehow.” And he and Khalia would have to hope that whoever was behind the messages couldn’t trace her call to a specific cell tower in Pesh, or they’d be walking targets.

She didn’t answer, turning her head to stare out the passenger window. He hated that he had to pull away emotionally from her, but he couldn’t worry about her that way right now and do his job. Right now was all about putting on his game face and focusing everything he had on the unfolding mission.

The sound of the purring engine filled the interior as he pressed down on the accelerator and merged onto the highway, weaving his way around slower moving traffic. Ellis stayed right behind them in the other SUV.

He drove at a steady clip, well above the speed limit, not caring about the risk of being pulled over and very much aware of the minutes ticking past. Khalia remained silent and tense beside him during the drive and there were no updates from Tom or the others. When they were within a few klicks of Pesh, Hunter handed her his cell phone. “Mine’s encrypted. Make the call.”

Pulling out the number she’d written down, she dialed and put the phone on speaker. She swallowed audibly before the call connected and the phone began to ring.

A man picked up within seconds. “Khalia Patterson?”

“Yes. Who is this?” Her voice was surprisingly steady.

“Are you in Peshawar?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“Just arriving now.” She cast an uncertain glance at Hunter, and he nodded for her to continue. “What do you want?”

“You,” the man said flatly, and Hunter bit back a growl. “You will come to the address we give you, or the hostage dies.”

Only one hostage?

“Who is it?” she demanded and he had to give her points for maintaining her cool when she had to be scared shitless.

“The man whose daughter you rescued today.”

Those big green eyes flashed up to him as she answered, the stricken look on her face punching him in the heart. “Aisha’s father?”

“You have twenty-two minutes from now. If you alert the authorities, he will die. Do not try anything. You are being watched.” The line went dead.

Fuck.
Twenty two minutes to find and verify the location for the Paks, on foot in
this
city? He pulled them out of traffic and put the SUV in park close to a police checkpoint, alerting Gage over the radio. When Hunter opened his door seconds later, Gage was already there.

“Stay here and wait for an update,” Hunter told him. He rounded the hood and took Khalia by the arm to lead her to the checkpoint as he called Tom and gave him the heads up.

The first of three heavily armed policemen took their ID. His face tensed in sudden recognition and he quickly got on the radio to someone. Another officer squared off with Hunter. “You will wait here.”

Like hell he would. If the local police already knew who they were then they knew what was going down and Hunter wasn’t going to deal with any bureaucratic bullshit when so much hinged on this op and Khalia’s life was in danger just by being in the city. Here he didn’t trust anyone outside of his team, including the police and military, because he’d already learned that lesson the hard way. Every potential leak increased the chance of losing the cell.

“I’ve got twenty minutes to find out where they are. Move the hell out of the way.”

The guard bristled at Hunter’s tone and shifted his grip on his weapon in silent warning. “You will stay where you are until we receive further orders.”

Khalia’s fingers bit into his biceps and he forced himself to tone down the aggression. “Let us through, now.” This was fucking insane, and whoever was on the other end of that radio had to know it. He hit a few buttons on his phone and raised it to his ear. “Tom, we’re being hassled at a checkpoint. Get us clearance or we’re gonna miss the deadline.”

“Working on it,” Tom muttered, and disconnected.

They lost three more minutes waiting for the higher ups to grant permission for them to pass through. A supervisor appeared and started firing questions at Hunter. He was thinking about taking on all three of them when his phone buzzed with an incoming text. Instead of a message from Tom, the screen showed an elaborate mathematical equation along with a name, the word
Address
,
and
You are being watched
.

“Shit,” he muttered. The supervising officer fell silent as Hunter passed the phone to Khalia. “Can you crack this?” It was something right out of an engineering textbook, full of confusing brackets, square roots, exponents and all kinds of other fun stuff. The kind of thing it would take an hour and five pages of notes for him to solve.

She grabbed it from him, frowning in concentration as she studied it. “I need a pen and paper.”

“Give her a pen and paper,” Hunter barked at the officers. Face slack with surprise, the man closest to them rummaged through his pockets and came up with a pen and note pad and thrust them at her.

Hunter watched her work, awed at the speed and skill she showed in unraveling the equation under such intense pressure. Her lips were moving, her right hand scrawling lines of numbers across the paper as she used a calculator app on her phone. She flipped the page and punched more numbers into her smart phone, kept going. He shifted his stance, impatient to get moving. Jesus, how long did the hostage takers expect it to take her to answer it?

As she worked, the guards kept arguing with Hunter. Khalia was on her fifth page of the solution when she began scribbling frantically, and Hunter could tell she was getting close. He held up a hand to make the guard shut up, not wanting anything to interfere with her concentration.

“Six hundred ninety one,” she announced a moment later.

“You’re sure?” Hunter prompted.

“Positive.” Her voice rang with conviction.

Hunter grabbed the pad from her and thrust it in the officer’s face, repeating the street name from the text message, and the number Khalia had given. “Where is that?” Khalia was already punching the address into her phone, bless her.

The man pointed to the northwest and shook his head. “Two kilometers. Very crowded.”

“Let us through
now
,” Hunter growled. Verifying the location was critical and they were short on time, especially if the Paks were thinking about making a move before he could confirm it was the right address.

The supervisor relayed the address to whoever he was talking to, then waved them through with a curt nod. “Go.”

Gripping Khalia’s upper arm, Hunter took off in a fast jog and called Tom as he ran to give him the info. “Heading there now,” he finished, and hung up.

Khalia hurried along beside him, checking her phone. “Left at the third street we come to.”

God he loved her brain. He’d never seen anything so fucking sexy in his life as her solving that bitch of an equation under those circumstances. “How the hell did you solve that thing?”

“BEDMAS.”

“What?”

“Brackets, exponents, division, multiplication—”

“Yeah, I got it. Christ, you’re smart.” He shook his head in wonder and hustled her along the uneven pavement, dodging cars and carts and people. Because of Ramadan the city was crowded even at this time of night. Citizens were packing up their market stalls and closing shop for the day. He and Khalia now had only sixteen minutes to make it to their destination.

“They’ve got Aisha’s father,” she said in a shaky voice.

“I know.” He kept up the demanding pace, aware of her panting breaths and the way she began to lag. Slowing his speed to a fast walk, he kept pulling her onward. “We’ll stop once we’re a couple blocks away,” he told her.

“What? We can’t, the time limit—”

“You’re not going to that address, Khalia.”

“But if the police storm the place the hostage takers will kill him! Aisha’s father is probably their only source of income. They might starve this winter without him.”

“You’re not going,” he repeated, his tone making it clear he would tolerate no further argument.

“You said we had to make it look legit,” she shot back, her voice ringing with frustration despite her obvious fear and fatigue.

“Yeah, to make them
think
you’re going to comply with their demands. I brought you so we could find out what we need from the kidnappers, buy time to update the authorities and let them get a plan together to take these guys down. Which we’ve done. Now we’ll get close enough so I can verify we’ve got the right place, but not close enough for them to see you. Because you’re bait, not a sacrificial goat. Big difference.”

Hunter’s instincts were already buzzing, telling him they were being watched. He kept their route erratic to make them a more difficult target, zig-zagging along the streets. He could feel the eyes on them, people staring from windows or alleyways as they passed. Any one of them could be an informant. Any one of them might have a bead on them with a weapon right now. And if there were any snipers in position, he’d just have to hope the shadows were thick enough to hide them.

Chapter Thirteen

Khalia’s heart clattered against her ribs as Hunter finally slowed to a walk.

“Stand tall and look straight ahead, like you belong here,” he whispered.

God, she was having trouble catching her breath, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. It went against every instinct to do as he said instead of constantly looking around to scan for threats, but she knew he was right. Giving off that sort of nervous energy would only look suspicious and make her stand out more. Right now the only things giving her the courage to see this through were having Hunter right next to her and feeling the strength of his hand around hers. Wanting justice for her father and putting her own life on the line to see it done were two very different things.