Cherry Adair - T-flac 03 (20 page)

She wanted action.

She shot another glare at the empty road. "Where the hell are you, you sneaky son of a bitch?"

The cab driver had let her off half an hour ago. Too bad she didn't speak Spanish. The radio had been on in the car, and the earsplitting Spanish rock music had been blessedly interrupted by what sounded like a news flash. All she'd understood was "
El Presidente
." The driver swerved every time he crossed himself, but didn't speak enough English to explain.

Delanie shifted her sweaty back off the leather seat to lean forward as a familiar battle-scarred jeep hurtled down the road, trailed by a cloud of red dust. It swerved to a stop just feet from the pilot's side.

Kyle threw her a startled and furious glance as he pulled himself into his seat.

"Shut your door," he snarled, slamming his own door, and buckling himself in, almost in one motion. He
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flicked the generator switch, grabbed the throttle, and rolled it to the start position just as his entourage emerged through the trees.

"Damn." They were right on his ass.

"Hi, Kyle. In a bit of a hurry?" Delanie's voice came over the sound of the turbine engine shrieking to life.

She stared out at the police cars, lights and sirens blaring, followed by three canvas-covered military vehicles. "Now what did you do?"

He watched the gauge showing the RPMs slowly rise. "Keep your head down," he said tersely. He was starting a cold engine. It was slow, excruciatingly slow. And damn risky.

And she was not supposed to be here, damn it.

He swore silently.

The five police cars came to a halt yards in front of the chopper, the trucks behind them disgorging Palacios's army. The uniforms sprang from their cars, taking cover as bits of dirt and vegetation, kicked up by the blades, pinged off their vehicles. The soldiers started unloading weapons from the trucks, yelling orders as they scrambled.

Kyle flashed Delanie a quick glance to be sure she was buckled in and had her head down. One out of two wasn't good enough. With one hand, he grabbed her skull and pushed. She swore. He didn't give a damn, just pressed harder so her head touched her knees. "Stay there."

A bullet ricocheted off the Plexiglas on her side. She flinched but stayed down. The cracks spiderwebbed across the window, but it didn't break.

He increased torque on the throttle, turned the inverter switch and went full power, then pulled in the collective, keeping the cold engine there as another bullet pinged against the body of Montero's brand new Tiger.

Kyle kicked the pedals.

With a shudder the chopper lifted. The bullets came fast and furious. The soldiers weren't very good shots; nevertheless, one out of three bullets made contact. He knew they couldn't penetrate the blast-shields or the boron carbide Kevlar, but there was a real danger of someone hitting the fuel tank or one of the MISTRAL missiles.

The men on the ground started running as the chopper made a slow assent. Kyle managed a tight turn away from the vehicles and personnel. The chopper hovered thirty feet off the ground. He pulled back on the cyclic, slowing their forward motion, gaining altitude as quickly as possible. Some smart soldier hauled out a handheld rocket launcher. Kyle didn't want to use the Tiger's firepower. He wouldn't need to, if he could get their butts outta here.
Fifth
with.

The skids skimmed the treetops by feet as they headed north, leaving twenty or so angry, frustrated uniforms shooting into the air. His options were rapidly dwindling as the storm front closed in. With the mountainous terrain and thick vegetation, there were only a few places they could go. Back into San Cristobal wasn't one of them.

"You son of a bitch. You killed him, didn't you?" Delanie strained against her harness, her voice tight
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with anger as she jerked upright from her enforced crouch and put on the headset in front of her the better to yell at him. Her white-knuckled fingers clenched the seat on either side of her hips.

Kyle checked the clouds a hundred feet above. There was no way they'd make it up Izquierdo before the rain hit. Mentally he reconstructed the surveillance maps he'd studied before this mission.

"Oh God," she declared rawly. "Was
that
what your business was about this morning, Kyle? Did you come to town to assassinate the president?" Shaking out a couple of tablets from the bottle clutched in her hand, she shoved them into her mouth and crunched down.

"Of course it was," she answered herself furiously. "You told me yourself you were going to do it, the other night on the patio. Except at the time I had other, more immediate concerns."

"I told you something else a lot more recently." He eyed the oppressive cloud cover, knowing he'd have to land, and soon. Wind buffeted the chopper.

"What?"

The temptation to shut her mouth, one way or the other, was powerful. Unfortunately if he let go of the controls for even a second, the Tiger would immediately attempt to invert. "I told you I'd pick you up at the
cafe
at noon."

"A, I don't take orders very well. And B—" she sent him a fulminating look "—If you'd gone to pick me up at noon you could
not
have screamed onto the airfield at eleven, now could you?" She paused as the chopper dipped in the turbulence. He corrected it while she vented. "I knew damn well you weren't coming back for me, Kyle."

He'd watched her from across the street, through a window on the top floor of the City Hall building.

Two of his operatives had been seated at the table behind her. She couldn't have moved a centimeter without his knowing about it.

Unfortunately, he hadn't known
where
in hell she'd gone, because she chose exactly the wrong moment to get into the cab. The two men seated at the cafe had another job to perform. If she'd stayed put they would have been able to complete running interference when the police and soldiers started chase
and
keep a visual on her. Instead, one agent had tried to tail her, and Darius had been hard pressed to distract the forces on his own. The damn job had almost turned sour because she'd refused to obey a simple order.

"You might as well tell me what—"

The words were bitten off as the chopper jerked violently. He made a quick recovery, pulling up on the collective as they lost altitude.

The Tiger rose briefly. Dipped. Rose and lurched.

He angled toward a clearing he remembered. The sudden thunder of the tropical deluge was deafening as it hit. It was as though a faucet opened overhead. The chopper bucked like a demented bronco. It took all his concentration to touch down.

It was a lousy landing, but they were upright and on the ground.

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For several minutes they just sat there, listening to the timpani of water hitting metal and plastic, to the whine of the blades as they slowed, to the escalating heat of each other's anger. Rain sheeted the Plexiglas. Visibility reduced to a green blur.

He looked over at her, water shadows danced on her ghostly pale face as she stared out of the front window.

"Well, hasn't
this
been a lovely day," she said with unnatural calm.

"A good day," he said through his teeth, "is a day when nobody dies. This has
not
been a good day." He ripped off his headset, the look he gave her scorching. "Listen up, jungle girl, I was trying to protect you from getting your ass blown to hell-and-gone. The least you could do is—"

Out of nowhere, rage consumed her, so intense her vision blackened. Before Delanie realized it, she'd flung off her headset and was out of her seat harness, blindly lunging at him, teeth and nails bared.

"You sick bastard." She slapped him so hard her hand went numb. "You murdering son of a bitch." She tried to rake his face with her nails, then struggled futilely as he trapped both her wrists in one large hand.

"Hey! Settle down, damn it!" Kyle held her bucking body away with one shackling hand.

She heard his seat harness snap open. She snarled, trying to kick his thigh in the confined space of the cockpit. She managed to get a hand free, beating at his upper arm with her fist.

"You killed that man for money, didn't you?" She was almost incoherent. Practically in his lap, she rained blows wherever she could, putting the full weight of her body into it.

Adrenaline shot through her veins in a thundering, vital life force all its own.

"I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I—"

"Delanie—"

"You're a liar and a… a
murderer
." Her voice rose, words coming faster. "And a no-good bastard!"

On some level she knew she was out of control, her hysteria was rising. She'd never heard herself sound like this in her life.

She didn't care.

Tears of rage stung her eyes, exacerbating her anger. She swung again, this time connecting with his jaw.

"Ouch, damn it. That hurt."

"Good," she shouted with relish. "I wish those men had captured you and tortured you to a slow, agonizing death." Each huffing breath was punctuated by another punch. "I wish—" wham "—they'd—"

wham "—shot—you—" wham "—I wish…"

"I get the picture." He'd stopped trying to hold her off. Her fist connected with a satisfying thump to his breastbone and he didn't even flinch.

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Frightened of herself, Delanie flexed the fingers of her right hand before gathering up another head of steam. She could hear her own breathing as it escaped in harsh, uneven pants, rasping painfully from her throat. Emotions threatened to choke her.

"Done?" Kyle asked gently, cupping her shoulder firmly with one large, steadying hand as she paused to drag in a shuddering gasp of air.

God. She was a worse judge of character than either Mom or Lauren had ever been! Despite everything, she'd
cared
about him, wanted to have his baby…

Hurt, and absolutely furious with herself for her own stupidity, she shook her head vehemently, too out of breath to verbalize.

"Yes, you are, sweetheart." He used his other hand to brush a strand of hair off her lower lip. "Yes, you are. Shhh now." He pulled her into his arms. She fell against his chest, all the fight draining from her body in a dizzying rush.

The sudden absence of violence left her exhausted. Resting her damp face against his shirt, she breathed in the scent of danger and pure Kyle that continued to confuse her.

"That's a good girl." He rested his chin lightly on top of her head. "Take a deep breath and calm down."

She felt his hand making comforting circles on her back through her T-shirt, subtly urging her closer. Her fingers clutched at his shirt in denial. She didn't want his comfort, but couldn't seem to move. His arms were strong, his heartbeat steady, his voice a low soothing rumble she felt rather than heard.

He settled her more comfortably across his lap, and her eyes closed as he ran his hand up and down her spine.

This was absolutely crazy, she thought, limp as a noodle, her hitching breath harsh and uneven, her emotions in chaos.

What am I doing
? She made a halfhearted attempt to push away from him.

"Stay where you are for a second, okay?" Kyle's voice was a husky rasp. "There's nowhere to go until this rain stops."

It took far too long for her to pull herself together and regain a semblance of calm. "God, I can't believe I just did that."

"What? Beat the stuffing outta me?"

"No, you deserved that," Delanie said with residual acrimony. "I've never been hysterical in my life."

His chuckle rumbled beneath her cheek. "I'd say after what you've been through in the last few weeks, you've had ample justification." It was impossible to read his expression in the dimness of the cockpit.

"You'd have to be made of tungsten steel
not
to fall apart."

"I did
not
fall apart." She went rigid against him. "I was perfectly in control… For a while anyway."

He arched a meaningful brow. Before she could comment, he slid his hand around the back of her head bringing her up hard against him.

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Then he kissed her.

His lips tasted compelling, tantalizing, provocative.

Deceiving, unreliable, and faithless.

She refused to open her mouth.

After a few moments Kyle lifted his head, his pale eyes enigmatic, his expression bland. She wondered what kind of experiment he was performing now.

"You are nothing if not predictable." Delanie used both hands to push against his chest, then slid off his lap. He let her go, and she wriggled back into her own seat.

"That's it for you, isn't it?" he asked quietly, leaning against the corner between seat and door, observing her through those eerie all-knowing, all-seeing eyes. "You allow yourself twenty seconds of comfort before you have to prove you're Superwoman again. No wonder you guzzle antacids like candy." His gaze was painfully direct. "It must be exhausting. Have you
ever
needed anyone in your life, Delanie, or do you always have to be the one in control?"

"Excuse me all to hell. But it's a woman's prerogative to say no." She gritted her teeth when her breath caught. "And for your information, I didn't
need
comfort. And it ticks me off that just because I'm handy, you assume I'm available for a little recreational sex to fill in the time until it stops raining!" She folded her arms and stared out the cracked side window.

Everything appeared distorted.

"And let me point out," she informed the blurry view of soggy trees and hateful green outside, "you've already
had
more than your allotted quota with me."

A low laugh escaped him. "I had a quota?"

Her blood pressure started climbing again. "Damn it, Kyle—"