Surrender the Dark (21 page)

Eventually the tirade ended, and with a threatening gesture he spun awkwardly on his heel and marched from the tent. No doubt to get his superiors for an interrogation.

Rae fought down the panic, ruthlessly suppressing any emotions. She kept her mind blank and open and immediately began assessing her surroundings for possible means of escape. It didn’t look promising.

Without warning, an image of Jarrett flashed into her head again. Instead of banishing it, she instinctively pulled it around her. She closed her mind and dredged up the sound of him walking behind her, the feel of his
arms around her. She concentrated until she could hear the steady beat of his heart inside her head.

That was what she wanted to go back to. That was where she belonged. That
was
home.

But it was never going to happen. Jarrett’s life and hers were mutually exclusive. Her current predicament brutally underscored that fact.

He’d given her one thing she could keep forever, though. The knowledge that no matter what, somewhere in the world, there was someone who cared. Someone she could trust, totally and completely. Someone who cared if she lived or died. She’d hated him for saying that at the time, but now she clutched his words to her heart and held on for dear life. Her dear life. She wanted more, always would, but this was a damn sight more than she’d ever had before. She wasn’t about to let him down.

It was three in the morning and Jarrett was huddled over a pile of paperwork in the small office of the safe house he’d taken over, near the Bhajuli border. He was about to give up on it, his thoughts persistently on Rae, when his private line rang. Only one person had that number.

He snatched it up on the first ring, but said nothing, waiting for identification.

“Porthos reporting in.”

Jarrett tensed when he should have relaxed. It was Zach. Something, a sixth sense, told him things had gone wrong. “Athos, I copy. What’s up?”

“She didn’t come out.”

No!
His chest squeezed so painfully tight, he couldn’t breathe for a moment. An almost blinding fear threatened to swamp him, and he had to fight hard to keep it at bay. “Get me in,” he ordered. “Now!”

“Whoa, wait a minute, buddy—”

“Get me in there!” he all but roared into the phone.

“She’s only an hour down. I’m going in to check. I know where she is. She knows I won’t leave her there. She won’t do anything foolish, she knows—”

“She doesn’t know jack,” Jarrett stated emphatically. “And neither do you.” He broke off and forced a deep breath in and out of his lungs. The fear was at the back of his throat now and he didn’t dare let it escalate. “She won’t trust that, Zach. She’ll operate on her own, she won’t wait for you. And you aren’t trained to go into that type of situation. You’ll just get the both of you killed.”

“Such confidence,” Zach shot back, then spoke again before Jarrett could erupt. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. But dammit, you’ve already risked too much by coming this close.”

“We covered this in our last conversation.”

“I know, but bringing you in now would be like waving a red flag at these guys.”

“Precisely. They won’t want her if they can have me—”

“No way—”

“Get me in or I’ll come in on my own. Where is she being held?”

Zach gave him the coded coordinates of the encampment.
“I moved in to the second position. I’m three quarters of a mile on the other side.”

“I’ll meet you at position three in one hour.”

There was only a brief pause followed by an even briefer sigh. “I copy.”

Jarrett had the phone halfway to the receiver when Zach called his childhood code name. “What?” he barked into the mouthpiece.

“We get GI Jane out of there, then you damn well hang on to her from now on. I don’t want to play spy with you anymore.”

“My plan exactly.”

Rae squatted forward, grasped the chain on either side of the stake, and pulled with everything in her. One link wasn’t closed as tightly as the others, and with her whole body as leverage, the metal started to bend. It took more time and energy than she thought she had to spare, but when she could get past the pounding of her heart and the sweat that poured down her temples and into her ears, she didn’t hear any approaching voices.

She bent over for a few minutes, huffing at the exertion, trying hard to rally her breath and strength.

Then she froze. Voices.

Her time had just run out.

She quickly pressed the bent opening of the link against the top of pole and pulled with short, sharp tugs. Groans issued through her clenched teeth, but she couldn’t worry about making noise now. She sucked in a deep breath and gave one last mighty heave.

The link collapsed, freeing Rae from the post. Her wrists were still handcuffed and the heavy chain was hanging from each cuff, but there was nothing she could do about that.

She scrambled across the sand-packed floor and flung herself down on her stomach and elbows at the back of the tent. As she squirmed under the flap, fists-first, she heard the voices again and could feel the vibrations of running feet through the sand under her belly. She dug her elbows in and shimmied the rest of the way out, praying no one was standing guard behind the tent.

As soon as her feet were clear, she was scrabbling to a crouch, then she ran as fast and hard as she could behind the row of tents. Her goal was the low dune running along the back of the camp. Less than a mile beyond it lay Zach. And freedom.

But she had to get clear of the camp first.

The first cry of alarm went up when she was still a good hundred yards away from the dune. It looked like a hundred miles.

She ran faster, the ends of the chain dragging between her legs, her wrists burning as the skin was scraped off. Sweat threatened to blind her and she blinked rapidly, mentally cursing the damn sand that made getting traction close to impossible.

At fifty yards out she heard gunfire. At thirty yards a spray of bullets thudded into the sand in an arc to her left. Ten yards out she knew she wasn’t going to make it, but she refused to give in. Sucking in lungfuls of dry, dust-filled air, she ran up the small incline of the dune. Bullets sprayed sand across her back. Expecting to feel
the hot burning slice of lead piercing her skin any second, she dug deep for one last burst of strength and flung her body into a diving leap over the top.

She hit hard and rolled, the chain wrapping around her thighs in a bruising embrace. Sobbing, she frantically tried to free herself. She was half crawling, half dragging herself to the next small rise, clawing at the chain the entire time, when a shadow loomed long and dark in front of her.

Before she could look up, she’d been hauled upright by a pair of strong arms and was crushed against a broad chest. She tried to get leverage to fight her captor, but he was already running. Unaware of what direction he was heading in, only knowing she hadn’t fought this hard to let them get her now, she started thrashing.

“Rae, stop. It’s me.”

Jarrett?
Rae went totally still, her sudden deadweight causing him to stumble. She looked up through the sweat and sand stinging her eyes and blurring her vision, knowing it was a sick illusion, that she’d snapped at some point, probably when the chains had dragged her down.

Still, that didn’t stop her from forcing the one word from her raw throat. “Jarrett?”

His arms tightened around her. “Yeah. Hold on, we’re almost there.”

Another round of gunfire erupted behind them, and she flinched against him, terrified he’d be hit but with no way to protect him.

Then they were over the last rise and Zach was there behind the wheel of a tarp-covered supply truck. Jarrett heaved her into the back and leaped in behind her, covering her with his body. “Move it, move it, move it!” he yelled. Zach already had the vehicle rolling even as Jarrett’s
body was coming down to cover hers. They bounced hard over the desert surface for several minutes without moving, then Jarrett rolled off her.

“You okay?” he demanded gruffly, working as swiftly as he could to disentangle the chains from her legs.

“You’re here,” she said, somewhat dazedly.

“Yeah,” he said simply, looking at her again. “I’m here.”

She slid backward until her back hit the wheel hub. “But … how?” On the tail of the escape, she was having trouble processing all of this information through her head.

“I moved to a safe house just across the border about twelve hours after you left the States.”

That sent her mind reeling even more. “Your cover … If they’d caught you …”

“I didn’t risk the transfer. But I couldn’t stay back there and let you do this alone.”

“But Zach could—”

“I couldn’t, Rae,” he repeated. “I was ten miles across the border. Far enough not to be a threat to the operation, close enough to—” He broke off, turned away for a moment, then looked back at her. “Close enough to get to you if I had to.”

She didn’t know what to say, wasn’t certain what it all meant. “Where are we headed? Is the transport out still on the same schedule?”

“For the most part.”

“The colonel is dead,” she told him.

Jarrett’s expression darkened considerably.

“Assassinated,” she went on before he could speak.
“Yesterday. I was able to determine who was in control and passed the information to his second-in-command.”

“You what?” Jarrett yelled. “I told you not to take risks, I told you to get out if anything went wrong! What in the hell were you thinking?”

Rae couldn’t deal with this. She snapped. “I completed the mission, McCullough, so back off!”

He jerked as if she’d struck him. Then he was crawling over to her, the action made difficult by the jouncing motion of the truck as well as by the fact that he was obviously favoring his hurt leg. He was just as obviously not letting it stop him.

Her hand flew to his chest as he loomed over her. “Oh my God, your leg!” she cried, remembering now for the first time how he’d carried her—run with her!—to safety.

He grabbed her arms and pulled her against him, pushing his face into hers. “I don’t care about my damn leg! Don’t you understand that? And I don’t care about the damn mission.” He fell back when they hit a particularly nasty rut, and she landed in a sprawl across his chest, her cuffed hands and the chains trapped between them.

He reached for her face and lifted his head to meet her eyes. “The way you came over that hill, I thought you’d been hit,” he said, his voice so strained she couldn’t have heard it if she’d been any farther away. “I almost lost it right then, Rae.” His hands were shaking. “I don’t want to be put through anything like that ever again.”

Her eyes blurred, but this time it had nothing to do with sand or sweat. “Jarrett,” she whispered.

His hands tightened and he pulled her even closer, until his breath became hers. “Rae, I came here because I had to. Because I couldn’t let you be alone anymore.” His gaze roamed over her face, then fastened back on her eyes. The power and depth behind his words were underscored by the strength and intensity she found there, the emotion he’d laid bare just for her. “And,” he finished on a rough plea, “because I don’t want to be alone anymore either.”

“Jarrett—”

“I love you, Rae.”

Tears sprang into her eyes, and she gulped a sob down her throat. She burned to hold him, to run her fingers over his forehead, cheeks, and lips.

“I don’t want to be alone either,” she managed between gulps. “Oh God, how I love you.”

His mouth was on hers before she’d finished the last word. He kissed her as if she’d been gone a month, a year, a lifetime, and she kissed him back the same way.

When they finally broke apart, she struggled to get her hands free. He gently pushed her away and leaned over to drag out a duffel bag that had been stowed behind the wheel hub. He scooted up until his back was against the side of the truck and removed a small toolbox. Rae crawled awkwardly to his side and extended her wrists.

He took hold of them, swearing heatedly at the damage done to her skin as he carefully worked on the locking
mechanism. “I’m turning JMI over to my two top operatives.”

Her mouth dropped open, but she was too stunned to formulate a response. She was still reeling from his first declaration. She hadn’t dared allow herself to hope for more. His love was enough.

He looked up at her. “I don’t know if it will be operated in the same way, and frankly, I can’t let myself worry about that. It will go on. I want my life back.” He paused, then said, “I want you.

“I’ve offered my services as a trainer for new operatives,” he hurried on, “but I won’t know what they decide for a while. There’s still a lot to be worked out.” When she remained silent, he bent back to the cuffs. “If they don’t take me on, I’m sure the government will, but I’ll only go as a civilian. As a consultant.”

The cuffs sprang free, and she pulled her hands close to her stomach and began to massage them carefully. Her heart was beating so hard and her blood roared so loudly inside her head, she didn’t even feel the pain in her wrists as her fingers encountered the bloody abrasions left by the rough metal.

“Rae?”

She looked up and was caught off guard by the vulnerability and uncertainty she found in his eyes. She was having a hard time absorbing it all, and all she could manage was, “Yes?”

He reached for her hands, lifted them, then placed a kiss on an unbroken patch of skin directly over her pulse. He looked at her. “Do you think you could deal with that? As an occupation, I mean?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice rough with unshed tears. “I can handle that.” Hope made a big crack in the final wall around her heart, and she fought hard to contain it. “But what happens the first time one of your trainees is hurt or you find out a mission failed because it wasn’t planned properly?” She took a deep breath. “Can you honestly stay out of that end of it, Jarrett? Because I don’t think I could handle having you only to lose you.”

His response was immediate and firm. “Yes. Rae, I won’t ever put you through what I just went through over the past forty-eight hours. I might scream and rant and rave when I see screwups. And I imagine the new directors will get real tired of the letters I’m bound to fire off. But I want my life back. I want a life with you. A family, if you want one too. Nothing will ever change that.”