Hot & Bothered (A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 8) (21 page)

Ryan gave his head a small shake to signify he understood, and Brandy nodded. They dropped the handshake, and Ryan made room for Emily at the table. She went back to the food line to get her breakfast, and Ryan met Brandy’s gaze again. Then he turned to Matt, who was farther down the table.

“Any word from HQ about the hostages?”

“The analysts are studying satellite images of the Lost City from the night the abduction happened. They’re hoping for a trail that leads them to where the hostages are being kept.”

Desert sands shifted, but there could be something from the night the hostages were taken. A heat signature leading in a certain direction perhaps. They could then plot out the coordinates of the path and see where it led.
 

Matt’s gaze met his, then shifted to Brandy. “We’re doing the best we can to find them before tomorrow’s meeting.”
 

He glanced at Emily, who was currently preoccupied with filling her plate and talking to the dude who’d been with her yesterday when she’d gone to meet Mustafa. Ryan had watched that meeting from across the street, his muscles straining with the effort not to go to her side. She’d handled herself just fine—but he didn’t trust Hassan Mustafa or his motives.
 

“She can’t go to that meeting, Richie. It’s too dangerous.”

“I know,
mon ami
. We’ll get it worked out.”

Ryan nodded and turned his attention back to Emily as she strode toward him, a soft smile on her face when their gazes met. His heart flipped and his gut churned with fresh need and possessiveness.

Whether they worked it out or not, he wasn’t letting her go to that meeting.
 

* * *

“Any idea who this Raja could be?”

Emily glanced up at Ian. She was sitting in his office, having her daily briefing and not paying half as much attention as she should to what he was saying. But she had been thinking about Raja—when she wasn’t totally overwhelmed by Ryan, that is.

“Not really. The women I knew weren’t involved in the organization any more than I was. We were wives, nothing more. Not fit for anything other than gracing our husband’s beds and taking care of their domestic needs.”

“No, the Freedom Force has never been a woman-friendly outfit, have they?”

“Understatement. They’d like to take away any and all rights woman have gained in the Arab world. Women should be veiled, silent, and biddable.”

“Yet Zaran taught you to shoot.”

Her grandfather had wanted to teach her. He’d taught Victoria—but then he’d died, and she’d never learned until Zaran taught her.

“I think it amused him. Plus I’m American.” Zaran had let her listen in during his meetings sometimes. He’d liked talking about himself, and it was much easier to do that if she was a witness to his greatness. At the time, she’d felt special. Now she knew it was really all about him.

And she’d never been a witness to any discussions involving terror attacks. She liked to think she would have escaped somehow if that had been the case. No, she’d just thought that Zaran was a revolutionary, an intellectual. Until it was too late and she’d realized that he was fighting for more than Qu’rimi independence.

She toyed with a pen she’d taken from Ian’s desk, flipping it up and down on her leg. “I don’t know that a woman could come from the outside, though, and enter at such a level. It would need to be someone who was already in the inner circle. And I wasn’t privy to the highest echelons of the organization—but I could see perhaps a wife of a powerful man taking control if something happened to him.”

“Supreme control though. That’s pretty astounding.”

“It definitely is. I don’t know who could have accomplished it. I met many of the women, and none struck me as being so cold-blooded they could manage it. On the other hand, when faced with the loss of a lifestyle, who knows what someone is capable of?”

Ian looked thoughtful. “Yes, this is certainly true.” He leaned back on his chair and fixed her with a look that she would have said contained more than a modicum of concern. “So, the rumor is you’re pregnant. Is it true?”

It took her a second to recover. Of course the truth was running rampant around the compound now, but she would have thought Jared would have told Ian right away. Clearly he hadn’t.

“Yes, it’s true.”

“Planning to continue the pregnancy?”

It was a legitimate question, but it stunned her nevertheless. Ian didn’t know what she’d gone through with Zaran—that this baby was not only a surprise, but something of a miracle to her.

“I am. Which means I’ll need to go back to the States soon, I suppose.”

Ian’s dark eyes gave nothing away. “I suppose so… Is Ryan Gordon the father?”

“He is… why the twenty questions, Ian?”

He shrugged. “I’d like to know what I’m dealing with when tomorrow comes.”

“He won’t interfere with the meeting. It’s too important, and he knows it.”

“That’s good.”

Emily sucked in a breath and asked the question she’d been dreading. “Will this be enough for me? Will you clear my name?”

Ian’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t know, Emily. It’s not up to me. I’ll do what I can… but there are no guarantees. I think my contacts expected you to be with us a bit longer. Your knowledge is valuable.”

Her heart thumped. “Yes, and I still have it. Just because I go back to DC doesn’t mean I can’t be useful somehow.”

“I’ll pass that on. But no promises, Emily. I can’t give you false hope.”

Frustration hammered her. “I’ve done a lot. I’ve gotten Mustafa to trust me, and he’s given us good information in the past two months. I would have liked to have gone inside again—but that’s not happening now. Still, I know things about their structure and their communication. I’d appreciate it if you’d stress that to whoever holds my future in their hands.”

The look he gave her was full of sympathy. “I promise you I will.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. There was nothing more she could do, nothing more she could ask for. But it was hard not to know, hard to imagine everything she’d done hadn’t been enough. She put her hand over her belly automatically, wanting to protect her baby. Wanting the best for him or her.

Her cell phone buzzed against her leg, startling her. She fished it from her pocket and looked at the display. Then she looked up at Ian as she answered in the Qu’rimi dialect. He watched her carefully, but she focused on the call, her heart pounding at the voice on the other end.

“You must come today,” Hassan Mustafa said. “They are moving the hostages tonight.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Yes. You must come. And bring my money.”

“Tell me where they are and I’ll make sure you get the money. There’s no time to waste.”

He snorted. “I am no fool, Light of Zaran. You will come to the café in three hours. And you will have my money.”

The line went dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“IT’S A HIGH-TRAFFIC AREA IN broad daylight,” Emily said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

Ryan stood with arms folded over his wide chest, his expression hard and angry. Nick didn’t look much better. The rest of the guys were in full mission-planning mode, so they weren’t nearly as pissed off as her lover and her sister’s fiancé. After Mustafa called, she and Ian had sent for HOT so they could start to prepare for the operation to rescue the hostages. They needed to be ready to go when she got the location out of her contact. They most likely wouldn’t go until it was dark, but they would get into position long before then. As soon as the time was right, they’d descend on the Freedom Force’s hideout and liberate the hostages.

Emily’s heart fluttered with excitement and apprehension. Soon, if all went well, they’d know where Linda Cooper and her colleagues were. And Linda would be reunited with her husband before another day passed.

“I don’t like it,” Ryan said. “He knows we’re planning something, and he threw a curveball to disrupt those plans.”

“Damn straight,” Nick said. “He wants the money. He doesn’t give a damn what happens to the hostages.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I think we can all agree that Hassan Mustafa doesn’t care about the hostages. That doesn’t mean he’s lying. He wants the money. The Freedom Force is moving the hostages tonight, which means no money for him. I think it’s obvious what’s at stake here.”

“We have no choice,” Matt said. “This is the mission, and this is what we’re dealing with. Emily’s the contact. But she doesn’t have to go without backup.”

Ian leaned against the wall in one corner of the room, arms crossed, surveying everyone with interest. “If Emily doesn’t go to that meeting, you guys can kiss those hostages good-bye. Is that what you want?”

Ryan whirled on him. “What I want is Emily safe. Excuse me for not wanting the woman carrying my child to go to a fucking meeting with a greedy asshole who thinks it’s okay to blow up women and children for a cause.”

“He’s not blowing anyone up,” Ian said. “Not today. He wants the money. I’m not sure why this is so hard for you to comprehend. Must be an Army thing. I’ve always heard you don’t have to be too bright to join the Army, but I never realized how true it was until today.”

“You motherfucker,” Ryan growled, taking a step toward where Ian stood.

Nick reached up and grabbed him by the collar, stopping his forward motion.
 

“At ease, you assholes,” Matt said, his voice raised, each word firing into the air like a bullet. “Now’s not the time for this shit.”

Ryan shrugged off Nick’s hand and stood there looking like he could chew steel for breakfast. Emily wanted to go over and touch his arm, assure him it would be all right. But she also wanted to smack him. He’d said he wouldn’t interfere, and yet he’d done nothing except try to stop her from meeting with Mustafa from the minute he’d walked into this room.

He didn’t trust her to do the job she’d come here to do, and it infuriated her. He insisted on treating her like she was the same broken creature she’d been when HOT had found her in the terrorist camp near Ras al-Dura. She wasn’t that person any longer. She hadn’t been for a long time, and he was a big part of the reason. He’d listened to her and given her encouragement—but clearly that encouragement only went so far as doing what he thought she should be doing. So long as she’d been a college student grappling with classes and dating, he’d been satisfied.

He didn’t understand that this was who she really was. That she was tough and capable and that she wanted to be useful in the way he was useful. She
was
tough, even if she sometimes got scared. Who didn’t get scared from time to time? But that didn’t make her a coward. She was finally realizing that.

Ian looked at his watch. “We’ve got two hours. I suggest you stop arguing and get down to planning, or this entire op is going to hell faster than a preacher stealing from the collection plate. I’d rather not have to tell my boss that HOT is one big fucking failure. And I’m sure every one of you jerks would rather dance naked in a minefield than tell Mendez you couldn’t get your shit together and rescue the people you came here to save.”

“We aren’t leaving without those hostages,” Matt said tightly. “You worry about the money and let us take care of the rest.”

“I’d love to… but your boys here can’t seem to get past the idea that Emily’s involved. You try sending someone else in there, Mustafa could run and those hostages will be on the nightly news by tomorrow night. It has to be Emily. He trusts her.”

Ian had other operatives, sure, but none of them had the singular experience of having been inside the Freedom Force. That was what set her apart and what made Mustafa talk to her more than he had anyone else that Ian had ever sent. She knew the proper forms of address and modes of conduct, the way to massage his ego while still getting what she wanted out of him. She wasn’t certain it was a matter of trust so much as comfortable familiarity.
 

She glanced at Ryan. He was watching her with a look of such anguish on his face that her heart cracked just a little bit.
 

“It’s daylight,” she said again. “It’ll be safe. I’ll be in and out.”

* * *

If he’d had a worst nightmare, this would be it. Ryan watched Emily sitting with Ian Black and counting money before they stuffed the five bundles of one thousand hundred-dollar bills into a canvas messenger bag. She was about to walk out of here with that bag, out into the hot, dusty street where she’d make her way to the café near the market again.

Yeah, it was daylight and they could see everyone coming and going from the place, but he still didn’t like it. Emily, the woman he’d made love to last night, the woman who rocked his world and had his baby in her belly, was about to don a full abaya and slip out to meet a terrorist while carrying enough money to choke a horse.

When she finished counting the money, she looked up and caught his gaze. He jerked his chin toward the door. He wasn’t sure she’d go, but she stood and made her way toward it. When she slipped out, he went behind a few seconds later. The flash of her blond hair disappeared up the stairs and he followed, taking them two at a time until he hit the landing and found her standing at her bedroom door. She held it open and he went over and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. She’d gone over to sit on the bed.