Danger Mine: A Base Branch Novel (11 page)

K
hani fancied
herself impervious to annoying sounds. When Zeke had been a kid he’d steadily built her tolerance for incessant mouth farts and machine gun fire, sirens, and even foul-mouthed rants. The relentless crunch of ice under her boots, however, shaved a layer off her frazzled nerve endings one step at a time. Multiply that by four determined feet and she considered throwing herself down the next ravine they skirted.

“Talk about something?” she begged. Street had been mummy quiet since they’d left the hotel. His silence had given her time to assimilate to the situation at hand and shift to mission mode. For that she’d been grateful.

Now the sun hung low in the sky. The peak they sought took one step away for every one they steadied toward it. Intermittently, swirls of blue marbled in the ice. White, shades of drab, and deeply shadowed black stretched as far as her field of vision. Thick fog mimicked her mood, hanging low and dire.

“Nice ass.”

Her snorted laugh echoed off the sheer slab of ice on their right and tickled her even more. She continued up the incline, painfully aware of the heat increasing between her thighs. At least it fended off the cold. At most it made a detour into Street’s pants, which was too inviting a possibility for her own good. “You say nothing for nearly six hours, and that’s what you open with?”

“Why do you think I haven’t said anything since we started? I’ve been staring at your perfectly-formed keister jostling about. When that thing’s distracting a bloke there’s not room for intellectual conversation. I could tell you all the ways I’ve thought about touching it, kissing it, penetrating it.”

Khani’s chest flushed so hot she feared she might give off steam. She jerked to a halt.

“You thinking about giving any of those a go?” He laughed.

But damn it, she wasn’t laughing. There was no room for laughter between fear and lust. “You take the lead,” she muttered.

“Last time I tried that you didn’t like it and I ended up taped to a chair. Not that I’m complaining.” His boots crunched the ice until they pulled even with hers. A lopsided grin quirked his face.

“Just get in front of me.”

“Oh, you fancy a look at my rear, troop?” He winked. “Still not complaining. You might though. I have kind of a big arse for a chap.” His powerful legs pulled ahead with ease.

At least his round cheeks and thick thighs gave her something else to think about besides her missing brother and the never-ending iceberg. It didn’t do much for her restraint though. She fought the insane urge to unbuckle his pants, shove them down to his knees, and spank his smooth cheeks with her open hand. Again and again. Until he begged her to straddle his hips and ride the orgasm out of him.

They marched on for an hour and a half with her fantasizing about his body in various compromised positions with a diverse assortment of bonds. She pulled off another layer so she wouldn’t break out in a sweat from her mental adventure—it was more exerting than the physical one.

Street cocked his head over his shoulder. “It’s that good, huh?”

“Yep,” she admitted, unable to deny the I-want-to-fuck-you look staining her face.

“I aim to please.” He hiked another few hundred yards, and then pointed at a black spot in the mountain face. “It’ll be pitch soon. I say we huddle into that shallow outcrop and get some sleep. You need it for tomorrow. We don’t really know what we’re up against yet. I could use some too.”

“As long as nothing else has claimed it first.”

They picked up the pace and made it to the shallow cave, though calling it a cave stretched the meaning of the word. It looked more like a pothole in the side of the steep rock formation.

“Looks like you don’t have to run from a grizzly…today.”

“Silver linings, I guess.”

“After you, my lady.” He used a formal Brit accent, extended his left arm, crossed the other over his middle, and bowed low.

She yanked the knitted wool cap off his head as she tucked into the low, reaching space. The ground level stretched probably twelve feet long and about five feet deep. A jagged ceiling hung at her eye level at the entrance, but gradually tapered until she decided to shuck her pack and sit in the far corner.

Street scrubbed his stubbly head several times, and then crawled into the opening. His bulk sucked up the space and all the free freezing air with it.

Her lungs seized. She scrambled to her knees embarrassed and completely unable to stop the anxiety attack that bore on her without warning. She’d been so comfortable around him. So at ease. Too at ease that she’d dropped her guard, the one she constantly adjusted and repositioned to keep anyone from knowing that being trapped in a small space with a man was enough to kill her.

“What’s your call sign, Slaughter?” He barked in command.

Her vision tunneled to his face, but some autonomic system in her brain powered by years of training took over. She heard her raspy voice say, “Lima. Echo. Oscar. Papa. Alfa. Romeo. Delta. One. Nine. Nine. Four.”

“Height?”

She syphoned a breath. “Five-eleven.”

“Weight?”

“One-thirty-seven.” Her throat quit convulsing and she swallowed past the dryness. “You’re not supposed to ask a woman how much she weights.”

Street smiled and leaned his back against the rock wall. “Welcome back.”

Khani collapsed onto her heels and let her clenched fists fall into her lap. Now that she could breathe her chest rose and fell in mad waves. A plastic canteen entered the field of her lowered gaze.

“Drink a little. It’ll help with the head ache.”

She swallowed a few sips and returned the container. “How’d you know what to do? Only two people have ever seen me freak and both tried coddling me.” Her teeth scrapped across her bottom lip. “It didn’t go over well.”

“A kid in one of the foster homes used to get panic attacks. It helped curve the worst of it if he recited inane facts. Multiplication tables. The periodic table.”

“Smart kid. The boys I knew could only recite the names of the players in their favorite football club.”

“Sometimes, if it didn’t subside after the others, I got to that.”

Her gaze lifted to his green eyes and easy expression. “Do you ever feel like the world is shrinking in on you these days?”

“No. Not in a long time.” He shed his pack, took a long swig, and then stashed the water inside. “My world keeps growing.”

“I moved to a different country, across an ocean, and sometimes it’s not enough.”

“The question…” Street stopped, seemed to toy with the words, discard them, and then chuck the new ones. He yanked his sleeping bag from the bottom zipper of his pack, and then eyed her. “The question is, what’s tying you to the past?” His stubbled chin waggled. “You figure that out, and then confront it or set it free.”

Khani considered the answer to that question so attentively that until the zipper of her sleeping bag whined open she didn’t notice Street had retrieved it from her bag. She wiped at her frosty nose with the back of her gloved hand. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Can I have my hat back? I’m freezing my nuts off over here.” His torso disappeared into a puffy winter-camo cocoon, the bottom of which thrashed around as he rubbed his feet together so fast he might start a fire.

She grinned and tossed over his hat. “If you say we could snuggle to stay warm, I’ll punch you.”

“Nah. I was just thinking how good a sewer vent would feel right about now.”

He’d threatened to check up on Zeke if she didn’t talk. Had he? And if he did, what did he know about her past? Her headache, incited by the panic attack, charged back to life, ramming her forehead dead center. The impact rippled across to her temples. Did he know she’d spent too many nights to count huddled next to steam vents, her body wrapped around Zeke’s more susceptible one, trying to stave off pneumonia? Did he know how often she’d prayed for a foster home? Punishments or not, didn’t he know how lucky he was?

“Do you think that’s funny?” she bit.

“No.” He tossed back the top of her bag and motioned her inside. “I think it’s smelly as fuck, but damn warm when you’re soaked to the bone in thirty-eight degrees and you haven’t seen the sunlight in months.” When she stayed frozen the icy rock of his gloved hand wrapped her wrist once again and tugged her forward. “Get in before your lips turn blue.”

Khani tucked her feet into the stuffed nylon, boots and all. She levered her bottom up and wiggled her legs and hips in as well. Warmth collected around her ankles and seeped through her pants, warding off the chill. The position of the sleeping bag had her as close to Street as she’d been on this trip with the exception of the kiss.

She swallowed past the warring emotion he knotted in her throat. “How do you know that?”

Tiny lines crinkled around the corners of his eyes. “Firsthand experience, winter of ninety-five and the five after.”

She probably flashed the not-so-rookie more defined lines on their way to wrinkles, but she couldn't care about that. The shock of what he said resonated. “You would have been seven years old then.”

He chuckled. “Eight and a half. The first winter after I told my fourth foster mum to shove it.”

“Bloody fucking Christ.” She poked her fingers into her beanie, and then tugged at the hair at her nape. A force she hadn’t experienced in a long time swept over her. It weighed a thousand tons and made her want to collapse onto the floor. Helplessness. It zapped her energy and her ability to hold up the wall she’d erected around herself for so very long. Because Street—as much as she—knew the fear and inferiority of being an unkept child.

“Zeke was twelve when we split. I was sixteen. We barely survived and we had each other.” She didn’t complete the thought. He was smart enough to figure it out anyway.

“You had someone to count on,” he nodded. “You also had someone to hold you back.”

Every fiber in her being wanted to deny his words. She’d only whispered them in her head once. It was the weekend. No school. They’d gone without a meal for two days. Things looked so bleak. The sinister thought scribbled itself on a tiny corner of her brain. Guilt had forced her to eat only half of her food at school and save the rest for the following weekend and everyone after. That way she’d never think those awful things about the only person in the world who loved her.

“It was probably easier for me. I didn’t have anyone on my shoulders.”

“Or in your corner,” Khani added.

“Not for a long time, but then…” The sage of his soulful eyes cast to the uneven rock above, without really seeing it. His inspection turned inward for the briefest of seconds. “But then, Father Tommy took a scrapper under his wing, tutored me, and threatened me with the eternal pits of hell, if I didn’t quit pissin’ my smarts away.” A faint smile rounded his lips. “His words, not mine.”

The territory on which she treaded was rugged and unfamiliar, but she stepped anyway. “What about your parents?”

His expelled breath drifted over her neck. One thick brow hiked. “What about your parents?” he asked in a whisper.

All the bravery that had fortified her moments ago vanished. Her open mouth clamped shut and refused even the air in her lungs passage. Why was it so hard to talk about them? They’d haunted her childhood. Why did she hold on to the terror to this day?

Because she knew no other way.

Khani reclined onto the unforgiving ground. She tucked her head into the mummy top and cinched the zipper tight. The roughened ceiling faded with the sunlight. A minute passed in total silence, but for the wind howling at the entrance.

At her left fabric rustled. Then cold silence took hold.

How close they’d been to… What? Honesty. A connection. As much as her heart ached … it was how things had always been. Lone. Cool. Detached. Save for her brother’s love and her love for him. She clutched a fist to her chest and covered it with her other hand. Sleep hounded her heels, but refused to make the kill.

“A bartender heading home from work found me swaddled in a blanket inside a cardboard box on the corner of Studland and King Street.”

She compounded her grip, hugging herself hard enough to steady the heart quaking her entire chest. Desire willed her to wrap him in her arms and hold him tight. Khani rolled, facing the back of the cave, and huddled into the bag. She cursed Street’s cunt of a mother for abandoning him. She cursed him for making her love him. She cursed herself for being too chicken-shit—as Tyler often said—to confide in him.

Khani forced her breaths to steady and low, mimicking the sleep that would surely not take her tonight. The blackness she stared into became the promise of her future, one she’d never given much thought to, one that suddenly looked eerily bleak.

Minutes passed. They morphed into an hour, and then two. Street’s breathing grew long and deep. When she felt certain he couldn't fake the easy snores rumbling in his chest she twisted to face him.

The outline of his forehead, nose, and strong jaw were darker than the grey night beyond. A peace eased the beat of her heart. Whether it was him or the moonlight filtering in, this perspective seemed so much brighter than the solitary back of the cave.

She pillowed her head on her left arm and reached her right outside the envelope of heat the nylon, cotton, and her body created. The icy air prickled the gap that formed between her glove and sleeve. Carefully she lowered her arm around Street’s billowy sleeping bag and held him close.

His chest rose and then settled in a contented breath. She got lost in the rhythm of his breathing and slipped into the sweet oblivion of sleep.

S
treet hadn’t slept
that well ever. That said something. He slept like a brick anywhere. Did it make him a total fanny that the tiny arm of a sexy woman he’d grown to adore worked as the best tonic in the land? Probably—and he didn’t give a shit. He didn’t even care that when he’d yawned like a bear she’d snatched it away as though he might’ve bitten it off.

He stepped back into the cave after relieving himself. Both their bags sat propped against the rock wall, sleeping bags, protein bar packages, and water nowhere in sight. “You’ve been busy.”

Khani leaned again the cave next to her pack, her knees tucked under her chin, arms around her legs in a self-comforting position. She seemed so vulnerable. Closed off, and yet, open at the same time. He’d never seen her anything but on point, which meant on guard. Slowly, a millimeter at a time, she revealed her secrets.

“I want to make it to the beacon in time to plan our next move and execute before nightfall.” She tugged the cap lower on her ears and stood as much as the shelter allowed.

There it was again, a tiny acknowledgement that she’d actually listened to what he’d said. He lifted her pack and she slipped into it without a fuss. His gaze snagged on the silky hair that slid across his bare fingers. He clamped his eyes shut against the hunger that threatened to buckle his knees.

Street cleared his throat. “That shouldn’t be hard. It’s barely light outside, but enough we won’t break our necks.” He stepped back, hefted his pack, and then stepped into the serenity of dawn on a glacier.

They settled into a fast pace with Khani in the lead. Every few hundred yards or so she checked the map and tracker strength, making certain they stayed on course. Street watched the tree line growing to their right and the ridge on their left. If anyone wanted to pick them off, this was the place. They were balls-out exposed. It rankled the hairs on his nape, but there was nothing to be done about it except keep moving.

She did. One foot in front of the other, Khani pushed the tempo. The closer they drew to the pulse of Zeke’s tracker the faster her heels shoved off the crisp ice. Street sensed her reserves slipping.

Four hours after they started hiking, the grade finally flattened and packed snow added a layer of irritation to the hike.

“I can’t believe you two were going to do this for fun.”

“Me either.” She stopped abruptly and stabbed the air. “Look.” The sun crowned the first of four knobby mountains in the distance. Hints of blue sky peeked through puffy white clouds while spindly rays of light glistened off every surface. Were they not standing in the middle of it, the picture would’ve been idyllic. Her aim centered the nearest ridge. “The beacon is coming from the base of that first formation.”

Her face angled in his direction. Sweat shined on her upper lip. Street caught her arm. “Wait.” He clamped the end of his glove between his teeth and yanked it off. As though taming a wild animal he moved his hand steadily toward her face while maintaining eye contact.

The zipper-pull of her jacket flapped with her rapid breaths. Cold skin greeted his warm. He swiped the moisture off her mouth with his thumb, and then licked it off the pad of his finger. “You need to slow down. I know it’s hard, but if you sweat through your clothes, I’ll be forced to strip you, and warm you with my body.” He released her. “We can’t have you succumbing to hypothermia.”

“No,” she breathed, “we can’t. You lead for a while. I won’t be able to pace myself.” Her petite red nose shined against her pale face.

Street’s gaze sharpened on the spot where he’d rubbed away sweat, and apparently, make-up. Tiny scars, almost translucent in the daylight, criss-crossed her skin in a random pattern. Her hand flew to her mouth. His gaze leapt to her wide one.

She dropped her hand, and the action looked like it cost her. “Later, okay?”

“Later.” He nodded, stepped around her, and pushed forward, knowing those scars had something to do with the reason she walled the world off and wondering why. Surely it wasn’t their appearance. They were barely noticeable in the best light and not at all with her cosmetics obsession. Which meant it had to do with receiving the scars and the ones the experience left on her insides.

Oh Khani, how fucked up we are.

The powder thickened the farther they climbed, bogging his big boots. He glanced over his shoulder and found Khani walking literally in his footsteps.

“Quit smiling at me,” she commanded. “It’s easier. This way.”

“Sure, make me do all the work.”

“If you were pounding one out, you wouldn’t be complaining, would you?”

“Nope. But that’s not work, now is it?”

“No.” She shooed him on with her hands. “Now move it.”

Street did his best to keep a pace steady enough to hedge their heart rates, but also fast enough to keep her from stomping him into the snow. As soon as they reached the narrow shadow of the mountain Khani passed him.

Desperation propelled her into a sprint. It was all he could do to keep his arse upright and her from leaving him in the flurries of her pursuit.

She bailed from her pack ten yards from the outcropping. “Zeke,” she bellowed. Black hair whipped left and right in her desperate attempt to locate her brother, despite her earlier words. Her shoulders lowered and she cleared the distance in seconds. “Zeke!”

Khani dove into the snow knees first. Her arms wind-milled. White sailed behind her. All around her. The tip of a large black boot shown horizontal to her frantic form.

Street’s heart crawled up his chest cavity.

Please God, don’t let her have come all this way to find him buried in the snow.

He ditched his pack and raced to her side. Street plowed so much snow with his abrupt stop his knees hit the ice underneath. His hands poised to free Zeke’s body from the frozen earth. He stilled beside Khani and stared down.

A large man in black cargo pants and hiking boots lay face-down in the snow. Frozen blood clotted brown hair. A tattoo on his partially obscured forearm read, ‘Sinner’ in Russian Cyrillic script. SOS stained the man’s wrist. It didn’t add up.

Zeke Slaghter’s military profile only referenced one tattoo. A dagger, the logo for the Royal Marine Commandos, ran up his abdomen, over his left pectoral, and stopped at his heart. Unless he’d gotten the Russian ink long ago and showered in the barracks fully clothed, there was no way he could have hidden them in Her Majesty’s Royal Marines.

Khani roared and gnashed at the snow, her face a mask of rage and disbelief. Her arms gouged at the powder with frantic pulls.

“Stop. Khani.” Street reached out to still her. Her elbow shot out and found the center of his solar plexus. His thumb rubbed at the sting. He choked out, “It’s not him.”

She continued to dig like a woman possessed.

He used his shoulder and drove it into her, bowling her over. Her head sank into the snow inches from the dead man’s shoulder. Street’s legs pinned hers to the ground. His arms knotted hers between their chests.

The heat of her screams blasted his cheek. She thrashed beneath him, her entire body rigid.

“Spasite Ot Syda,” he yelled.

She stilled. Her eyes finally focused on him. “What?”

“Save me from judgment. It’s the tattoo on the bloke’s wrist.”

“What?” she sobbed the word. Her bottom lip quivered.

“That body has at least two Russian mob tats. That isn’t your brother, not unless he affiliated ten or more years ago without you knowing. The ink is old.”

Her gaze cut to the body. No longer fearing her flying fists, he sat back and pulled her up to her knees again. She braced her hands in the snow and panted. The heat of her breaths curled into the day.

He leaned around her and moved the snow off the man’s arm. A cry seeped from her lips. She hung her head between her shoulder blades and yelled, covering her sorrow and relief in rage. The piercing sound faded into the wind.

Street grabbed the man’s belt and flipped him onto his back. A scar ran the length of his face, pulling down the edge of his right eye. He reached into the dead man’s pockets. A set of keys filled the right front and a wallet barely fit inside the front left.

The American license of Zeke Slaughter occupied the first flap of the black leather trifold. No surprise there. They’d probably hoped the body would remain forever hidden in the ice field, but should it surface due to scavenging they’d covered their bases. Amateurs. They hadn’t even fastened the belt around his waist or put the jacket tucked beneath the body on him.

Trenched and mussed snow surrounded the body aside from the mess Khani had created. Beyond the line they’d travelled to get here the snow turned to hard packed ice. No discernible path led to or away from the scene, besides theirs.

“I don’t think Zeke killed him.” She settled onto her heels, and then stood. Her head turned this way and that, taking in the scene.

“Me neither. There are at least six different prints around the body. They probably ambushed him at night and left this lucky bachelor in his place.”

“Damnit.” Khani yanked the crooked beanie from her head and tugged at her hair.

“This is a good thing. They want information from Zeke otherwise he’d be the one laying in the snow with a hole in the back of his head.”

She pulled back on the cap, and then shook her hands out like a fighter getting loose before a match. “Okay. You’re right. They want information. He won’t give it. They’ll torture him.” She said it with trained distance. “They’ll need a place to do it. Some place quiet and out of the way.” Khani spun on her heels with her arms wide. “So where the fuck would they take him from here? They didn’t leave tracks.”

Street walked downhill to his pack, and then carried it to the rock ledge. He hauled the laptop from the recesses. “I’ll redirect an infrared satellite to scan the surrounding area. Your brother is a big chap and this is the middle of freaking nowhere. They couldn’t have gone far. You get ahold of Tucker and give him a heads-up. You’ll want extraction, if not help on the ground.” He set the satellite to work with a few clicks.

“Oh, I don’t want help on the ground. I want every last one of them for myself.”

“Well, tough shit, troop. I’m taking my fair share.”

“He’s
my
brother.”

“And you’re…” He bit his tongue. If he finished that sentence with you’re-my-
anything
, he’d obliterate all the headway he’d made. Though hadn’t he already? Yes, if she ever found out he looked into her brother’s affairs. “…wasting time. Go make the call.”

The heat signature came back with three possible structures. One sat directly north of them, another to the east, and the last to the west. The northern one was closest, and therefore the most logical, but he eased back literally and figuratively. He thought about what he’d learned about the Russian mob and Zeke in the fifteen minutes Khani had given him alone at the hotel.

Top was the head, the leader. Right was the heir to the throne. Left was the enforcer. They divided territories in this convoluted method. A low ranking member of the organization lived south of the heir and the killer, who lived equidistant west and east of their leader, whose home was always north.

Isay and his uncle were south. Stas was north. Which meant in this complicated mess, Grisha would set-up in the west—available or not—he’d make it so.

Street plotted the coordinates on his map, and then stashed the computer in his pack. Khani stood near her bag, hip cocked, one hand on the sway of her waist, and the other on the phone.

He plotted their course and then studied the landforms around their target. A swath of deep crevices yawned between them and the cabin. That, and a shit ton of miles. The structure sat high on the incline of the glacier-fed river with a steep drop down the back to the water below. A small shed stood to the south of the main building. One winding road led in and out of the place. They couldn't make it easy, could they?

With the advance plotted, Street folded the map, and then stuffed it into the pocket on his thigh. He used his boots and shoved loose snow over the body. When it looked like no more than a heap he walked a little way from the scene toward the west, hoping to find some reassurance he wasn’t leading them down the wrong path.

Twice his feet slipped on the incline and slick surface. The third time did him in. Hard and fast the ice met his keister with a smack. He laid on his pack and glared at the sleek shell of frozen water. From the intimate slant, Street noticed more than thirty distinct boot prints. They gouged the roughened ice, leaving behind glossy patches that made walking difficult at best.

“Laying down on the job, King?” Khani extended her hand.

Maybe he’d hit his head on the fall. She’d called him by his given name. His gaze jumped to her face. All the misery that had carved her features with sharp lines had softened into…hope, and something else. He’d seen Khani wide-eyed twice: once in shock at seeing him in DC and once in excitement at his willingness to submit. He’d never seen her smokey gaze wide with what he could only call wonderment. He looked behind him, expecting to see Zeke strolling from the tree line. But only they were crazy enough to be this far up the Alaskan glacier during the melting season.

“I found tracks,” he said dumbly.

“Then let’s follow them.” She wiggled her protracted hand.

It would be safer for him to peel himself off the ice than it would be to accept her hand. But Khani hadn’t made the offer casually. She made it with intent and a meaning that maxed-out every blood vessel in his body.

Street pulled off his right glove. He wrapped his naked palm around Khani’s. “Yes, ma’am.”

She tugged him up without incident, unless he counted the toe-to-toe stare-off in which they tangled. Lust and her delicious mouth charmed his gaze south. He strained every fibrous grain of his self-control and poured himself into her weighted admiration.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

He wouldn’t ask for what. It didn’t matter. She’d dropped another notch of her steel wall, allowed him to peek over the top. “Always.” He nodded and granted her the lead with a tilt of his head.