No Stranger to Danger (17 page)

A moment ago it was just sex—raw, brutal, beautiful sex—and she had every intention of still walking away with her heart intact.

But, she realized, the moment she had turned with the Dos
Equis
in her hand a week ago and saw the man at her kitchen table—her heart was destined to be torn into a thousand pieces again.

"I loved you!" she cried, shaking in both anger and grief. "You have no idea how much you hurt me before. You tore my world apart, and when I thought I'd mended it back together, you tore it apart again."

Logan didn’t say anything to stop her venting. He just held her, and after awhile Mara grew tired and her voice hoarse. She sniffed back her tears, struggling to wipe her face, but she had cried so much, scarcely was there a dry spot left on her. Her eyes stung, and her head hurt. She had come to that point where she wasn’t sure where her tirade had begun or where she had meant to end it.

So she stopped.

She listened to the slowing patter of rain on the roof and Logan's heart. She allowed herself to sink into his body, his hard warm body cocooning her against him.

The last thing she remembered was Logan tenderly running his fingers against her hair and planting a kiss just above her ear.

****

He didn't have a family. He didn’t even have but a handful of memories of his parents and younger brother who died in a car crash when he was eight. He had gone to live with his grandparents after that, until they, too, had died and then one family member after another—aunts, uncles, older cousins—had all passed him along as an unwanted burden no matter how well he behaved or how much he tried to please them.

When he turned thirteen he had been shipped off to a boys’ home, and there he spent his next few years wondering what he had done to deserve this life. When he turned eighteen, he joined the Army and left all that behind. There he had found a family of brothers who wanted him, who needed him. He excelled for once. He went to the Green Berets and then Delta Force.

That was when Mara had come along. Beautiful Mara.

Logan looked down on her sleeping in his arms and gently kissed her temple, receiving a nuzzle of her face against his arm in return.

He could never forget the first time he saw her on the beach. He would admit it only now, but he had been shy. Maybe that came from his childhood, or the lack of a real childhood. The lack of ever being wanted or fitting in.

Mara had walked up to him on that beach, the sun gleaming down on her hair and kissing her tanned skin. Those deep brown eyes had met his, and he'd been stuck in time for a moment. She asked him if he had seen her dog, had to repeat her question twice, blushing and laughing because she thought he was teasing her.

The same shaggy brown mutt lost on the beach that day was the same one that had lived with them in their first apartment after they'd gotten married. That dog had eaten every shoe he owned, but Mara loved Chance and so he had never said a cross word about him.

That stupid dog had brought them together, and a year after they married, it died. They had buried him together near the beach they'd met on.

They had done many things together—almost everything. When he was home, that was.

Once the CIA turned an interest in him, he had felt himself falling. He had been slipping for a long time. Not away from Mara, but into something he couldn’t control and didn’t fathom how to. He knew he would be gone for a long time, and he knew Mara wanted—needed—certain things.

Things he couldn’t provide.

A tidy little house with a picket fence, a couple kids, and a steady routine. A life that wasn’t constantly lived apart phone call to phone call and the occasional Skype chat.

He had hidden his demons the best he could. The last thing he wanted was to be the cause of the bright happiness in her eyes fading.

He'd shielded her all he could, and when she'd become unhappy with their life together, he'd done the only thing left—he’d let her go. Inside, he had never managed to sever the bond between them. In a way, somewhere buried deep down in the muck that was his soul, he still considered Mara
his
. He had never been able to stay home and give her the relationship she needed, and it took a long time for him to realize that while he loved her, he was also afraid of losing her.

He had held her at a distance the entire time, and that hadn’t been fair. She wanted a family and children, but he wasn’t so easily persuaded to give her that because of the way his own childhood had gone.

Mara was the closest thing to real family he had ever had, but when he gave her up, at least he knew he was doing the right thing. He had loved her then, and he still did now.

Logan gazed down on her sleeping in his arms, and he shuddered to think of the danger he had placed her in by retaining his love for her—and that one simple photo.

What would he do to keep her safe?

He'd left. And that hadn’t worked.

He'd killed. And that wasn’t enough.

He would give his life to keep her safe, if that's what it took.

His arms tightened around her as he rested his head back, content to sleep upright if only he could only hold her a little longer.

Chapter Eighteen

0700 hours, Sunday

Outside Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

And then it all came flooding back. The night before, the angry hot sex, the tender sex, her ranting … and now this. When had she fallen asleep?

Mara lay there a moment, paralyzed at the thought of Logan holding her, of the thought he might disappear again. But he was asleep. He was still here now. She relaxed and let his warmth seep into her.

His body was not what had woken her though, she realized.

Mara coughed all of a sudden, and the single cough spiraled into an uncontrollable fit. The fit sent her to jerking herself upright in bed and became so bad she choked on the stinging air hitting her throat.

She gasped to pull in oxygen and found the air to be thicker than a moment before. Mara sniffed, looking around them in the master bedroom. A cloud of hazy smoke pooled at the wooden ceiling above.

"Oh, God!" Mara said, reaching behind for Logan, only to find him propped on one arm behind her already.

He set upright, surveying the room, and then with a press at her back he urged her to get up. Once she was off him, Logan came from the bed quickly and stooped, collecting her clothing and tossing her clothes to her from where they had fallen off the end of the bed. He quietly went into the bathroom, and by the time Mara slipped into her boots and bent to tie them, he came from the other room fully dressed, his sidearm in his hand.

"Pull your shirt up over your nose," he said quietly. "Come on." He coughed into his arm as he crept across the room, opening the door, clearing the area and then looked downstairs. "It's clear." He motioned for her to follow.

Together, they hurried down the steps, and Mara took up one of the other guns from the living room and pulled the slide back.

Logan crept to the dining room window, keeping low and out of sight.

Mara watched as he looked out and cursed under his breath. He crouched down low and pulled the strap of his bag under the window.

He made a hand signal at her, motioning at the outside.

Mara's eyes flared. Conyers's men were here.

"Don't cross in front, so they won't see you," he said.

She watched in horror as he readied them to go. "How many are out there?" she asked.

"Three that I could see. You know this place better than I do. Any good ideas how to get out?"

Mara bit her lip. "The basement. There's a window."

Logan started that way, though the kitchen. Mara stayed close and low. Logan paused at the set of steps that led down into the small basement where the furnace and water heater were.

Logan pushed Mara ahead and followed closely. As she went down the stairs she caught a peek of him watching behind, assuring no one came up on them unexpectedly.

"What are we doing?" she asked when she reached the cement floor. A soft white light came through the single, oblong window at the top of the wall and washed the room in morning brightness. On the outside, the window rested almost even with the ground.

"Well," Logan paused, pushing past her to the window and pulling himself up to look out. The muscles in his arms bunched at pulling his weight. Mara watched, waiting. Logan eased himself back down and reached to push the window out. "We're getting out of a burning cabin," he said.

Mara half growled. "Spare me the obvious. What is the plan
once
we are outside?"

"There's no one on this side that I see, so let's hope for the best," he said. "Just stay close." He motioned her to him as he stooped and pulled a small gray-colored box from his bag.

"I have to go first?" she asked, coming to stand in front of him as he stood.

"You'll need a boost." He pressed a button.

Mara went to her knees as the explosion on the back side of the cabin rocked the place to its foundation. She covered her ears until the sound was gone and looked frantically to Logan. He pulled her to her feet and toward the window.

His fingers wrapped around her hips, and he hoisted her upwards.

"Quick, while we have the advantage of the distraction," he said.

Without the barest moment to contemplate what might be waiting for her on the other side of the window, Mara caught onto the sill and looked out, then pushed the glass outward. There was no one, and so she began to pull herself out, the hinges scraping her back as she lifted herself and squirmed all the way through. Mara pulled her legs under her and slipped up, as close to the house as she could manage. Luckily, there was a shrub on each side of the window, and she peered through one side and then the other, assessing the side of the cabin.

No one. They probably would not suspect this side of the house, as there were no other windows or doors. In fact, they may have missed the basement window altogether, as low to the ground as it was.

Logan poked the end of his black bag out the window, and Mara took it with both hands. It was heavy with gear and took her a moment to budge all the way through, but at last, she managed and pulled the go-bag across her knees.

She took care to keep an eye out the entire time, listening to the sounds of their new friends on the other sides of the house. She could hear the crackling above, growing louder than a moment before as the roof swept into higher flames.

Those bastards were burning her family's vacation home.

Fury and vengeance washed through her, and she puckered her lips in a scowl, the side of her nose twitching with anger.

Finally, Logan came through the window, his head and shoulders hoisted up, and using only his arms, he dragged himself through. With the size of his torso, he barely fit.

He did not miss her angry look as he rolled to his side and pushed himself to his feet. Mara did not miss the ease at which he took the situation. As though it were only another day.

No big deal.

Waking to bad people trying to kill them, burning her family's cabin with them inside.
Eah
. No biggie.

"They'll get what's coming to them," he whispered as he stood and took the pack from her, slinging it onto his back and bent to take his weapon and Mara's hand.

Logan stilled and scanned the area. He motioned her to be quiet and pointed to the woods about thirty meters from where they stood. Mara nodded. She trembled, but she nodded. They were going to dash for it and hope for the best.

Logan had his weapon at the ready and he mouthed,
One, two
. On three they both hit the lawn at a sprint, Logan allowing her to go ahead slightly so he could cover the back.

As they hit the tree line and their steps crashed through the fallen leaves and twigs she could hear men in the background calling out, coming in their direction. Panic began to swell with the nearer they came.

"Just keep going," Logan said. "Nothing we can do now. They've heard us. We're ahead. Let’s keep it that way."

His words were reassuring—and at the same time, they weren’t. They might be ahead of the men in steps, but they were still well within range of any gunfire. And almost as though her thoughts had cued their assailants, a barrage of gunfire sprayed into the woods to their right.

Mara let out a tiny cry and pushed forward harder. She had never run so fast or dodged so many branches. After a few minutes, she stopped caring that every tree she passed tore at her skin and clothes, how her hair streamed around her, or that her legs were tiring already. She stopped hearing the shouts and the gunfire. Logan's shallow breathing behind her, his heavy footfalls, that was all she heard. As long as he was still breathing, still beside her, that was all she cared about. To hell with the rest.

And then, almost as quickly as it had begun, Logan was pulling her up and yanking her to the side, into a grove of heavy brush. He was pulling her to him and shaking her, speaking to her. Mara tried to focus, and it took a minute, but his words droned in.

"Be quiet," he said. "Breathe." He pulled her against his chest and rubbed her back.

They were down on their knees huddled in the middle of a dense brush thicket.
When did we go down on our knees?
she wondered. She listened to his heart.
Be quiet,
he'd said
.
Had she been screaming the entire way and hadn’t known it? It was possible, but she had thought herself braver.

A lot braver.

She clung to Logan's arm and whimpered, forcing back tears.

The crunch of a single set of steps came in their direction, fast, as though someone ran at them. But as he came closer, the man slowed. She assumed it was a man by the heaviness of his footfalls.

He stopped, and Mara peeked past Logan's shoulder through the brush. She didn’t move anything but her eyes. The man following them stood directly over the thicket. He was still, watching and listening.

Logan reacted like a coiled snake waiting for its prey. The exact moment the man looked down onto them, Logan's hands were at the sides of the man's face and Mara heard the snap of their assailant's neck.

It was that quick.

She blinked. Stunned.

Logan turned to her and reached down to pull her up. "I'm sorry," he whispered, cupping her face.

Mara wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him as he lifted her out of the brush and swung her legs into a clearer path.

He dropped his hands to her waist, patting one side. "We have to keep moving."