White Hot (29 page)

Together they crouch-ran between the railroad containers and made their way back to the ventilation shaft. He lifted the scuttle, and she slipped into the yawning opening without hesitation.

He slid in after her and grasped her arm before she could start down the ladder. “Wait.” He lowered the hatch and pulled her next to him on the narrow ledge. The complete darkness of the narrow space enveloped them like a coffin; the only sound was her shallow breathing. He desperately wanted to put his arms around her. He didn’t.

“Samantha, what I did just now—”

“I know,” she cut in, her voice sounding hollow. “You had no choice.”

She was right. It had been them or the enemy. But that didn’t make killing any more palatable. She must think he was a monster.

She’d be right about that, too.

Still. In the end, what difference did it make what she thought of him?

He’d told her he was falling in love with her, and damned if that wasn’t true—much to his own astonishment. But they were from different worlds and different ends of the earth. It would never work, even if she would want it to. Which, it seemed pretty clear, she didn’t.

And he wasn’t so sure he did, either. They both had too many issues to overcome. And him snapping a guy’s neck right in front of her? That wouldn’t exactly bring out the warm fuzzies in her feelings for him.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

The roll of the ship brushed their bodies against each other, and when they touched he felt a jolt to the soles of his feet. He glanced her way, even though it was too dark to see her. But he felt her presence with every one of his other senses. In the air around her he could smell the womanly scent of her skin…and a musky hint of their lovemaking. He heard her soft intake of breaths, and the way her throat closed around her words when she spoke. He even felt her dismay at him—or was it disgust?—like a living thing crawling over his flesh.

He shook himself, pulled his wits together, and inwardly berated himself for getting so distracted. They weren’t out of danger. Far from it. He needed to concentrate on survival first. There’d be time enough to think about this stuff if they made it off this tub alive.

“We’ve got two choices,” he said. “The smart thing would be to stay in hiding until either the tangos track us down or someone comes to our rescue.”

The thought hung uneasily in the air between them.

“Or?” she said at length.

“We go on the offensive. Try to free the crew and take back the ship ourselves.”

He felt her stir. This had been her objective from the start. “You think we can do it?”

With just four enemy remaining, the odds were getting better, but they still weren’t great. Two handguns against an assortment of assault rifles and submachine guns was hardly an even match. Particularly as the enemy still held the trump card—the crew.

But the thing that bothered him most was, he couldn’t shake the memory of those missing detonators.

“What did the State Department woman say?” he asked instead of answering her. “Are they sending help?”

Samantha sighed softly. “No idea. Ms. Lovejoy didn’t have a chance to say much. Her plane had just landed on the
George Washington
. That’s an aircraft carrier.”

He nodded, surprised, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Yeah. I did an investigation on her once.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, “that’s when all hell broke loose and we got cut off.”

He thought about the implications—and sanity—of the State Department sending an officer to negotiate with Xing Guan’s black-ops team. Christ, and the navy had balked over merely sending a helo to pick him up. Now they were diverting a whole goddamn aircraft carrier? He would definitely have an I-told-you-so for the bean counters.

Frankly, the move smacked of an official cover-your-ass. The media must have somehow gotten wind of the story. Like CNN media. A cargo ship being held for ransom might make the Alaska news, but a Coast Guard cutter hit by a Chinese PF98 antitank rocket launcher would capture international headlines.

Damn, he wished he knew what was going on out there.

The PF98’s rocket hit hadn’t been powerful enough to sink the cutter, but the explosion on the
WMEC 39
’s bridge had no doubt mucked up its controls enough to render the vessel dead in the water. Rescue would not be coming from
that quarter anytime soon unless they came over in rubber rafts. Maybe the aircraft carrier was the closest military ship available to come. But that still didn’t explain the State Department woman.

“You still have the sat phone?” he asked. He might risk another call to get a sitrep.

“Yes, but the housing cracked when I dropped it. I don’t know if it still works. I’m sorry,” she said, sounding ticked at herself.

Damn.
“Well, at least they know we’re still alive.”
For now.
“Any idea of the carrier’s position?”

There was another long moment of silence. “I’m trying to remember if it was listed on our charts.” Her voice thinned wearily. “But it feels like a lifetime since the last time I looked at them.”

Wasn’t that the truth. Hell, maybe even literally. A growing sense of unease tingled Clint’s nerve endings. The imminent arrival of the carrier would complicate things considerably, maybe even force the Chinese’s hand.

“Never mind. They know where we are,” he said.

“So they’ll launch planes from the carrier to come help us right away,” she ventured optimistically. “Won’t they?”

“I’m sure they already have.” How much those planes could do from the air was another matter entirely.

“And if that Chinese submarine really is out there,” she continued, “it won’t dare interfere with us now.”

She sounded relieved.

He wasn’t so sure.

Though by no means secret information, the general public was largely unaware that U.S. Navy SEAL operations were launched not just from helicopters and surface vessels, but more and more from submarines. There’d been evidence for a few years now that the Chinese were building up their own small but well-trained spec-ops force equivalent to the SEALs. The plans in Clint’s possession proved they were aggressively pursuing undersea military strategies. He’d be shocked if they weren’t employing their submarines to launch missions, too.

Clint was acutely aware that Xing Guan’s mission had not changed. His orders were still to recover those same top secret plans or destroy the microcard and him along with it.

Hell, Guan’s operators wouldn’t even need to use those missing detonators. Chinese swimmers could be under the water right now, attaching explosive limpets to the hull of
Île de Cœur
. Problem solved.

“It would be an act of war to attack us,” he agreed neutrally with Samantha.

However, if Chinese SEALs sank
Île de Cœur
with the black-ops squad still on it, who would know? To the world, it would just be another random act of terrorism, this time taking the terrorists down with it.

Not exactly a comforting state of affairs for him and Samantha. Or for the captured crew.

Something in his tone must have belied the direction of his thinking. “We’ll be fine. Right?” she asked anxiously. “We just need to hold out until the carrier gets here.”

“Let’s hope so.”

He felt her turn toward him in the dark. He wished to hell he could see her face.

“What are you keeping from me?” she asked, voice tense.

“Nothing,” he said. No sense in both of them worrying.

“Goddamn it, Clint. Do
not
start lying to me now.” The intensity of her low-spoken admonishment made him wince. He should have known he couldn’t bullshit her.

“All right,” he reluctantly said. “I’m thinking of those missing detonators.” He didn’t even want to consider the submarine scenario.

“The det—? Oh.” Her last syllable was a strangled exhale. “Detonators. How could I have forgotten?”

“I expect you had other things on your mind.”

“My God. You really do think they plan to blow us up.”

He figured the statement was rhetorical.

Anyway, they’d lingered long enough in this precarious spot. “We need to move,” he said, and started to scoot over to the ladder, to get her down from here to somewhere safer.

Her hand grasped his arm. “Clint. What are we going to do?”

“They’re going to try like hell to find me so they can recover that data card. You can’t be anywhere close to me when they do.”

The sentence hung crackling in the air between them.

“You mean
if
.”

“Right.”

She was smart enough to know he intended to let them find him, if that was the only way to save her and the ship.

“Oh, no,” she said, her grip tightening. “You said we’re going to rescue the crew.”

“Not we. I.” How many times did he have to repeat this? “You need to find somewhere protected—”

“
No.
Have you not learned a damned thing about me yet? I am not going to sit idly by and let you—”

“Have
you
not learned a damn thing?” he shot back without thinking. “Because if you ask me, it didn’t work out all that well last time you took matters into your own hands instead of listening to—”

She inhaled sharply. You could almost slice the hurt in the sound. “That’s not fair.”

Shit.
He clamped his mouth shut.
No. Probably not.
But he was frustrated as hell. His game was totally off, and no matter what he did, things were only getting worse and worse. And yeah, sorry, it
was
her fault.

No, not because of the crazy things she did. But because of his own inability to think about anything but her. First about getting her under him, and now about—

Hell.
His concentration was shot, his judgment seriously impaired, and his decisions thus far had landed them in nothing but a fucking huge goatfuck.

And if he didn’t do something pronto, he may be about to get them blown up, too.

He needed to get away from her. So he could do his goddamn job. “This isn’t reconnaissance anymore, Samantha,” he said quietly. “To free the crew it’ll be real bullets and
real blood. I can’t— No, I
won’t
risk you and the—” He swallowed the word just in time.

She went absolutely still.

Three heartbeats went by.
Damn, damn, damn.

Then he felt her warm breath on his cheek.

“You don’t understand,” she murmured in a barely audible whisper. “If anything happens to you, I won’t care what happens to me.”

Clint’s heart stalled on a breath of surprise.

Of all the things she might have said…

He gave up the fight and turned his face to nestle against hers, his nose and cheek brushing tenderly against her skin. “Baby,” he whispered, the echo of longing he heard in his own endearment nearly breaking his heart.
This was so damn unfair
. “You don’t mean that.”

She reached for him in the utter darkness and put her arms around him, pulling him close. She didn’t seem to care that they were perched precariously on a narrow ledge atop a three-story ventilation shaft.

“Yes,” she whispered back. “I do mean it. I just…I needed you to know that.”

“Honey—”

He felt her eyes close, her lashes tickling his cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I won’t take any chances. I want to live. But I want you to live, too, and I thought…”

“Believe me,” he quietly assured her, “I have no intention of dying.” She’d given him a vision of a future he’d never imagined for himself. He wanted to see if it was possible.
If
they
were possible. Despite their differences and the not inconsiderable obstacles in their path.

She hugged him a little tighter. “We’re going to make it through this, Clint.
All
of us. We have to.”

He slid his fingers through her hair and cradled her head in his palm, holding her in place to brush his lips over hers. “I hope to hell we do,” he murmured. “Because—”

Before he could say any more, her mouth covered his and she kissed him. He knew what she was doing, and he loved her even more for it, but she didn’t need to give him an out. He knew what he wanted. More clearly than ever.

Her.
He wanted her with him. He also wanted the baby she might be carrying. And if she wasn’t, he wanted to make one.

They opened to each other, and their tongues met in an aching meld of need. The kiss was long and deep and bittersweet, and filled with emotions he’d never felt from a woman before. Emotions he’d never felt from himself before. Feelings he’d despaired of ever knowing, and which would take a lifetime to fully explore.

His heart swelled with joy at the discovery…and all the while it twisted painfully. If he was right about the Chinese sub out there, they might never get the chance to know that future.

Unfair? No.
Unacceptable.

Anger swirled through him.
Hell
, no. He had
not
found the love of his life just to lose her. Not if he had anything to say about it. Which he did.

It was time to get back to his own mission. Get that microcard to D.C. any way he must. Then tell his boss he was done with fieldwork for good. No more lies. No more bullets. No more cloak and dagger, ever.