Rules of Engagement (8 page)

They’d spied on him and Katarzyna. Jake had suspected as much, but a fog of red still hazed his vision. He momentarily forgot about his rule of not harassing the opposition. With a hint of contempt, he drawled, “You were a job.”

The regal composure cracked as blood flushed the sharp features of her face. She whirled on Katarzyna and swung her hand hard across the other woman’s face. Katarzyna’s head snapped to one side as the crack of flesh on flesh resounded in the night, drowning any sound she might have made. Jake’s muscles bunched, but he restrained himself. If he reacted, Ilena would only strike Katarzyna again. Or worse.

Ilena’s sudden outburst of violence seemed to calm her down, as if a valve had been opened and the pressure eased. When she turned back to him, she was the Ice Queen once more.

“Since you’re here, I suppose three of my men are dead.”

Jake simply shrugged, allowing her to believe what she would. Ilena always assumed everyone was as merciless as she. Her ruthlessness and willingness to use everything at her disposal, including her body, had made her into one of the foremost illegal arms dealers in the world. Nearly a year ago, he’d been ordered to track down the person who’d managed to elude the other, more traditional authorities, American and international, and had allegiance to none. When he’d learned that his target was a woman, he’d adjusted his game plan accordingly. In the end, however, his game plan had been flawed and he’d ended up being propelled out a two-story window by three bullets that found his chest. He recalled a deafening explosion just before he’d hit the ground and had hoped that meant the end of Ilena Tkachuk. He’d never believed it, though. They’d never recovered her body. All in all, his last mission had been a spectacular failure. And now it was back to make him regret it.

“Enough talk,” Ilena declared, as if he’d been chattering like a fucking magpie. She waved a hand at the guard who didn’t have Katarzyna as a shield and commanded, “Secure him.”

Had he been Ilena, he would’ve ordered the guard to shoot. A double-tap to the head and it’d be done. But Ilena had a sadistic streak she liked to indulge. She was ruthless but still allowed the smaller things to sway her.

The guard started down the porch steps. Jake’s eyes went to Katarzyna—and met hers.

Blood, diluted with saliva, filled her mouth, the metallic taste of it slickly coating her tongue, and Katarzyna swallowed. The scratches on her cheek courtesy of Psycho Bitch’s absurdly long nails stung. However, she welcomed the pain and its head-clearing effects, even if it hurt to think of Jake sharing the intimacies with Psycho Bitch that he’d shared with her.

Katarzyna fought the need to move to relieve the ache spreading across her shoulders. Josef, as Psycho Bitch had addressed him, had kept her hands handcuffed behind her back when he’d arrived to fetch her. He had, however, unknowingly loosened his hold on her as she had gradually taken more of her own weight. Josef had his attention focused on Jake, who was considered the more dangerous of the two of them.

Katarzyna took a shallow breath—and prayed Jake had understood the silent message she’d tried to convey.

Suddenly, she let her body go limp and fall through Josef’s hold and to the floor, landing hard on her knees. Josef jerked. Gunfire erupted, shattering the air. Katarzyna drove her shoulder into his groin and he folded over with a strangled shout.

Above her, around her, pandemonium reigned. There were yells and screams and more gunfire.

Paying the chaos no heed, Katarzyna deliberately fell to her side and lashed out a foot. She caught Psycho Bitch on the side of her knee and heard something snap.

Then there was nothing but whimpers of pain interspersed with foreign curses. Katarzyna rolled onto her knees, the movement lacking in grace with her hands still secured behind her back, and looked around.

Psycho Bitch was cupping her knee, silvery tears streaking down her face, pain and hatred in her eyes as she juggled her concentration between her injured joint and the woman who’d inflicted the damage. Josef was sprawled on the ground, his back against the cabin wall, a mess of blood and flesh and other human tissue where his face had once been.

“Oh God.” The horrified whisper came from her. Despite years of homicide investigations, bile still rose to her throat and she was forced to whip her head away from the gruesome sight or lose the meager contents of her stomach.

However, gross or not, she identified no immediate threat. Loosening her shoulders and arms, she slid her hands under her butt and folded legs. She rolled her shoulders and blew out a sigh of relief. Her hands were still cuffed, but at least they were in front of her now.

She turned her attention to the clearing in front of the building. About twenty feet away, a body was spread out on the gravel, unmoving, a widening pool of something reflecting darkly in the moonlight underneath it. Psycho Bitch’s other guard. She looked beyond the dead body—and everything inside her lurched painfully to a halt. Jake was on the ground, rolling in agony.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Tears stung her eyes as Katarzyna sprang to her feet, scooped up Josef’s gun—because Psycho Bitch was hurt but still conscious—and flew to Jake. She dropped to her knees beside him, uncaring that small, helpless sounds were escaping her throat, and scanned his writhing body. She saw no blood, but the grimace on his face and the breathless gasps of pain were very real.

She dropped the gun, pulled up his shirt with both hands and would have collapsed had she been standing. A choked sob, laced with relief, fell from her lips. She ran her hands over the padded Kevlar vest that covered Jake’s torso. She felt five punctures, two just over his heart. But no blood. Suddenly, almost frantic, she peeled apart the Velcro tabs and explored underneath the vest. Warmth, but no wetness.

No longer writhing in pain from the impact of the bullets, he reached out a hand, found hers and squeezed. His voice raspy and his words choppy, he whispered, “I learn from my mistakes.”

Her tears spilled over. She sat down on her heels, her legs folded underneath her, and pulled his head onto her lap.

“I’ll be fine.”

She nodded, still unable to speak. He was the one who’d been shot and he was comforting
her
. She swallowed and wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

A howl of rage drew her gaze to the porch. Psycho Bitch was glaring at them with murder in her eyes, but that was all she was capable of doing.

Katarzyna turned back to Jake. “You have lousy taste in women,” she murmured to him, faint amusement warring with the tears in her voice.

He squeezed her hand again. “I learn from my mistakes.”

On automatic pilot, Katarzyna unlocked the back door of her townhouse, stepped inside her kitchen and knew she wasn’t alone. She glanced at the white panel beside the door. Her security alarm was deactivated. Without hesitation, she snapped open the thumb break on her holster and drew her sidearm.

In the dark, she moved to the swing door that led to the tiny dining room and living room. Crouching low, she eased the door open an inch, then another, then a few more until she could slip through the opening. From her low position, she swept the dining room and found it empty.

A soft
snick
and light spilled from the living room onto the dining room floor.

She hit the floor, rolled and came up with the Glock held in the standard two-handed grip, aimed at the figure in the living room. She faltered.

“Please put the gun away. I’ve had my fill of being shot,” Jake Duquesne said from where he sat cozily ensconced in her armchair. Golden light from the lamp on the side table washed across the planes and angles of his face.

Katarzyna felt as if she’d taken a fist to the stomach. She slowly straightened up, unable to tear her eyes away as she greedily drank in the sight of him. He looked tired and thinner than the last memory she had of him. Part of her wanted to run to him and throw herself in his arms.

That, however, was before six months of utter silence from him and five months of her trying to keep his memory vague so she could function with some semblance of normality.

That final night in the mountains, they’d waited for what seemed like forever for the authorities to arrive. They hadn’t been the local authorities because they’d arrived in black helicopters that had blended with the darkness and the agents had moved with impressive efficiency. Jake had handed her over to one of the men, who’d bundled her up, debriefed her, made her swear to secrecy and had taken her home. Not the cabin, but home, as in her townhouse in Somerset. She’d been transported to a small airstrip, loaded onto a private jet where her personal belongings had been waiting for her, flown into Somerset and driven to her residence. Her car had appeared in her garage a day later.

In the following days she’d scanned print and online newspapers and watched the news, but not a word of the events that had been seared into her brain reached public attention. Somehow, some way, Jake and the organization that employed him had managed to keep a lid on the violence that had taken place in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Sometimes the need to share, to discuss, to unburden herself made Katarzyna feel like exploding. Those times she went to the gym and took out her frustrations and anger and hurt on either a punching bag or some unsuspecting sparring partner.

And here was the man who’d caused it all, sitting calmly as you please in her home.

Katarzyna slipped her finger from the trigger guard and returned the gun to the holster. “How did you get in?” she asked, her inner turmoil carefully hidden by her blank face. “I just had the alarm upgraded.”

He only shrugged and continued to regard her with a blank expression of his own. Then he rose and walked over to the large window overlooking the darkened patch of front lawn. He fiddled with the drapes, flicked back one panel then let it fall.

Jake Duquesne was nervous, she realized with some incredulity. Who’d have thunk it?

If he hadn’t stayed away for six months she would’ve put him at ease.

“What are you doing here, Jake?” she asked, same steady, emotionless tone.

He turned slowly, first his head, then the rest of him, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he didn’t know what to do with them. He took a step forward then stopped when she instinctively took a step back. Katarzyna mentally berated herself for the retreat. That wasn’t the way to show him that he no longer had any affect on her.

“You haven’t seen anyone in the last six months.”

Katarzyna’s lips thinned. It hadn’t been a question, but a statement of fact. She could thank his interfering cousin for sharing with him that tidbit of Katarzyna’s pathetic social life.

“I’ve been busy,” she said evenly. “I repeat, what are you doing here?”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Neither have I.”

Despite her resolve to remain aloof, Katarzyna squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled sharply. When her eyelids lifted he was still there, stirring up memories and emotions she had tried to deep-six after the first twenty-eight days went by with no word from him.

“Do you want a medal?” she snapped, the anger she had tried to conceal leaking out. “Six months and you expect me to welcome you with open arms?”

His hands balled into tight fists and anger slid into his eyes, darkening them to a pewter hue she recalled only too well.

“Fuck it,” he muttered vehemently and was across the room in three strides. She told herself to step back, to step to the side, to stay out of reach, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. Then his hands were on either side of her head, holding her in place for the mouth that closed over hers.

He didn’t waste time with niceties. His tongue speared into her mouth with a need she shamefully, eagerly reciprocated. He kissed her with a ferocity that stole her breath and any thoughts of resistance. He plundered her mouth, tangling her tongue with his. She clung to him, greedily refreshing her memory of the feel of him, the touch of him, the taste of him.

Six months had felt like an eternity.

One hand twisted in her hair, freeing it of its loose knot, and the other found her backside and pressed her close, closer, letting her feel his arousal. Fire snaked through her body, making Katarzyna dig her fingers into his sides. When he broke the kiss, she made a wordless sound of protest, which then melted into a breathless gasp of approval when he trailed searing kisses along the line of her jaw and down the column of her throat.

He wanted more, but her clothes were in the way. He shoved the corduroy jacket off her shoulders and down her arms. Her button-down shirt lost a few buttons in his eagerness to undress her. The bra he simply pushed down until her breasts popped free and he could apply the wet, hot suction of his mouth to her swollen, aching flesh.

Katarzyna buried her fingers in the thick strands of his hair and arched her back in wild abandon. He let her feel the edges of his teeth on her nipple before drawing back. She fought to keep him in place, but he was simply stronger. As his fingers busied themselves with the fastening of her jeans, he urged her back onto the armchair he’d vacated.