Savages Recruit (30 page)

***

Meanwhile, not all that far away, Savage’s plane was screeching down out of the sky. Already standing as the plane taxied to its stopping point, he was at the door before it opened. He didn’t wait for the stairs to be wheeled to the plane, instead he simply leaped the distance to the ground. He was more than eager to get on Zora’s tail, he was desperate. Every second wasted fluffing about with stairs and safety regulations was a second in which he could be saving her.

He spotted Brian waiting with a special operations car on the tarmac and ran over to the man. “Do they have her yet?” He asked urgently, his stomach clenching as he braced himself for the worst.

“No sir,” Brian shook his head. “She’s just...” he lifted his arms in the air with a gesture of confused hopelessness. “Disappeared.”

“Really.” Savage’s expression lightened with relief. “I would have thought they would have found her.”

A look of awe had established itself firmly on Brian’s features. “It’s like she’s gone without a trace. One moment she was there, the next moment she wasn’t. The system can’t find her and there are no reports matching her description anywhere.”

“Get in the car,” Savage snapped. “We can talk on the way.” He got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Brian was forced to sprint around to get in the car in time, Savage had the car’s wheels rolling and lights flashing before his 2IC’s rear contacted the passenger seat.

“Nobody just disappears,” Savage pointed out pragmatically as he navigated the labyrinth of the airport with increasing frustration. There were far too many people milling about and getting in the way, and if they weren't careful, one or more of them was going to end up in the front grille. “She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s not magical. Do you think they moved her and aren’t telling us?”

“No,” Brian shook his head. “The entire compound is on high alert.” When Savage continued to look suspicious, Brian elaborated further. “They’ve been taking down walls and tearing out wiring looking for her. Her cell looks like a bomb hit it, they’ve stripped it bare and found nothing. They’re worried, real worried. Some are saying she might have been a spy the whole time.”

“Ridiculous,” Savage snorted, slamming the horn on at the car in front of him, which he considered to be taking an unnecessarily long time to pull over. “She’s just a woman, just a civilian. She wasn’t mixed up in anything until we grabbed her.”

“Then how did she escape?” Brian gave voice to the question of the day. “Nobody has ever escaped.”

“Well now they have,” Savage replied, glaring at the traffic that was flowing like thick syrup. God how he hated LAX. “No place is 100% secure, you know that.”

“But the compound... it’s...” Brain shook his head. “It shouldn’t be possible,” he declared. “Anyway,” he said, finally remembering his original orders and his reason for meeting Savage’s plane. “Hurtzwald wants to see you.”

“Oh I bet he does,” Savage said grimly. “I bet he does.”

Chapter Twenty

To have said that Savage was agitated would have been to make the understatement of the century. He was driving like a man possessed, clenching the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white as he navigated heavy city traffic.

“Why in the damn hell do they make us take those civilian flights,” he growled, knowing the answer to the question already. You could get on a commercial flight without anybody taking any real notice. Millions of people took commercial flights every day and 99.9999% of them were not special agents of any kind. If you wanted to get from A to B without arousing interest and satellite tracking, you got in line, you took your shoes off, you went through the ridiculous body scanner and you flew the friendly skies just like everybody else. The problem was that when you were trying to get out of the airport you got stuck in traffic - just like everybody else. Usually it didn't matter, but on that day, with every minute taking them one moment closer to what he considered to be Zora's inevitable capture and demise, it was maddening.

“How the hell did she do it?” He slammed his hand against the steering wheel and glared out the window.

Brian did not reply. He was sitting very quietly on his side of the car, watching the traffic with a nervous expression on his normally impassive face as Savage swung the vehicle aggressively between lanes.

“I'm going to kill her,” Savage growled. “After I save her, I'm going to kill her.”

A gap opened up in the traffic ahead and he went for it, gunning the engine and briefly accelerating hard enough to push both occupants of the car back into their seats before coming to yet another stop. Horns blared around them, but he didn't care about horns. He didn't care what other people thought, they were lucky he was putting up with them at all. He glanced out his window at the raised grass verge, wondering if there was enough room to drive up on it and save some time.

Fortunately the lights turned green before he could test the theory and the traffic started to flow a bit more smoothly. Brian uttered an audible sigh of relief as they got up to a reasonable speed and Savage seemed to calm down a bit. His relief was short lived however, for not a mile down the road Savage suddenly swore loudly and jammed on the breaks, sending the car to a skidding halt in the middle of traffic.

Brian looked on in horror as his commanding officer wrenched the driver's side door open and leaped out into the road. He then proceeded to bound across four lanes of traffic without paying any attention to the drivers who were forced to slam their brakes on to avoid the large muscular man running out in front of them with all the focused intensity of a greyhound chasing a stuffed bunny on a stick.

Dashing between the deadly hulks of high speed metal that raced by all around him Savage ignored the cacophony of horns and harsh expletives. He barely heard them at all, his mind was focused on something much more important. Just for a moment he'd caught improbable sight of someone very familiar. He was sure it was Zora, just walking along the footpath as if she didn't have a care in the world, as if she were not a fugitive from those who operated beyond the law.

A car hurtled towards him, screeching brakes and burning rubber. It didn't stop quite in time and Savage was forced to make a mighty leap onto the hood in order to avoid being hit by the thing. He missed the drop-jawed look of amazement on the driver's face as he bounded over the car, leaving a large footprint in the alloy.

It was Zora. It had to be her. He'd recognize her anywhere. She'd changed over the months, she was no longer the straggly haired slightly chubby woman he'd first met. She was trimmer now, more toned and her hair had grown out into its natural dirty blonde state. She was walking in the opposite direction, no longer facing him, but he was sure it was her. She still had the slight hunch to her shoulders when she walked, not to mention a scuffing gait that made her look as though she were kicking stones out of the way with every step.

He got confirmation when she turned around to see what all the fuss was about on the road. A few small collisions had ensued in his wake and there were plenty of people screaming abuse at one another. Their eyes locked across the chaos and he saw horrified recognition dawn on her. Her eyes went wide like she'd seen a ghost and she turned and ran, clasping shopping bags in both hands.

Again he was reminded of how far she'd come. In the past he'd have chased her down in a few steps, but she managed to lead him on a bit of a merry chase as she dodged between buildings, using her smaller stature and superior maneuverability to slow him down on the turns. They ran through crowds of shoppers, most of whom seemed dead set on ignoring them completely. That was the paradox of a busy city, you were surrounded by people constantly, but you were also more alone than ever. You could be chased down by an apparent mad man and still people would walk on by, chatting about hats and sipping low fat ice chai soy lattes.

There were limits though, even in LA there were limits. Savage silently willed her to stop running before they caught the attention of a police officer. Almost immediately, as if she'd picked up the thought, she dodged down an alley where a chain link fence set up for the purposes of keeping thieves and beggars out caught her too. She tried to climb it, but her shopping slowed her down and he was on her in an instant. He grabbed her by the back of her shirt and yanked her down off the fence, catching her as she fell.

Zora parted her lips as if she were about to scream, but he clapped his hand over her mouth. “Shut up,” he growled harshly. “Shut the hell up if you want to live.”

Her eyes reflected fear and confusion, but she nodded. He took that as a sign that she wouldn't yell or try to run again and he took his hand away from her mouth. “Are you staying somewhere close by?”

She nodded silently and he shifted his grip from the back of her shirt to clasp her hand in his own.

“Take me there.”

***

Savage did not expect to be taken to the place he was taken. He'd expected another alley or perhaps an abandoned building, something rough and dark and out of the way. The penthouse suite he found himself standing in was none of those things. It looked out over the city and was furnished with two oversized antique mirrors that made the place seem twice as cavernously big as it really was. An unbelievably large bed was also in residence, big enough to sleep four or five comfortably at the very least.

Looking around at the opulence and splendor, he frowned to himself. There was something not right about this. No, there was something horribly wrong about it. He turned to Zora who was smirking broadly at him. “How did you afford this?” He doubted he was going to get an answer, much less a straight answer, but the question had to be asked.

As he'd expected, she simply shrugged. “That's my concern.”

“It's not just your concern, little girl,” he growled. “You have no idea how much trouble you're in.”

“I have some idea,” Zora replied, her eyes growing cold. “But it is irrelevant. I'm not going back to that place. Not ever. If you're here to drag me back, we have a serious problem.”

Savage shook his head with a humorless chuckle. “I'm not here to take you back. They'll kill you if they get their hands on you.”

“Oh.” She looked at him with a curiously detached expression. “Well I suppose that's good to know. Thanks for passing the message along.”

She was angry and he understood her anger. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, but that wasn't a promise he could make. “Zora,” he shook his head. “I'm sorry I got you into all of this.”

A brief flicker of surprise passed through her gaze, quickly replaced with her native cynical skepticism. “Are you?” She took a step back from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're still running around doing their dirty work.”

It was going to be almost impossible to get her to trust him, let alone listen to him. She'd managed to do what he could not – get herself out of the compound. And she'd managed to find funding fairly quickly after the fact. For a brief moment Savage wondered if she was a spy after all. He quickly dismissed the thought as being ridiculous. There was no way she could be a spy. She was nothing but what he'd made her be.

“I'm going to let you go, Zora,” he said, hoping she believed him. “I'm going to try to help you too, but you have to be careful. You have to lay low. You can't do silly things.”

She raised a brow as if she were about to take offense at the notion anything she did was ill-advised. “Silly things?”

“Yeah,” he looked around at the splendor that surrounded him. “Like, I don't know, rob a bank or something.

She snickered and his heart sank. “Zora. Tell me you didn't actually rob a bank. If the police arrest you, they'll hand you straight back over to Hurtzwald and you know how that ends.”

“Who is Hurtzwald? And why would the military kill me? I haven't done anything to hurt them.”

They were both good questions. Savage dodged the first one and answered the second. “You're a pain in the ass, they don't like people being a pain in the ass. You're also an incredible security risk.” He fixed her with a searching look. “How did you manage to escape?”

“Not telling,” Zora smiled sweetly. “I might need to do it again someday.”

“No.” Savage shook his head. “If they catch you again and by some chance don't kill you, you can expect to be under constant supervision. Probably chained to someone day in and day out.”

“That would be awkward in the bathroom,” Zora noted flippantly. She wasn't taking him all that seriously, much to his chagrin. “So will they kill me, or won't they kill me?”

“I don't know.” Savage sighed, feeling very much as if he was wasting his breath. “It was on the cards when they thought you were useless...”

“Charming,” Zora interjected.

“... but you've proved you're not useless now, so I don't know.”

“These people are the worst employers ever,” Zora noted dryly. He watched as she took herself over to the extensive bar and poured herself a double bourbon. “They might promote you, might kill you, might stuff you into an underground cell and never let you see the light of day again. It's like Russian Roulette, but all the chambers are loaded.”

He smiled, the analogy was a good one. “It is,” he said walking over to her and taking the drink out of her hand. “So you're going to have to be careful and not turn back into a lush.”

A flash of anger passed over her pretty features. She did not like having her drink taken away from her, no siree. “Brett darling,” she said with impressive self control. “I don't answer to you anymore. Give me back my drink.”

“Zora sweetie,” he mimicked her tone as he placed the glass on a high shelf away from her. “You've been gone for less than twelve hours and I've already found you.” He leaned in close and lowered his voice to a menacing purr. “Do you really think there's anywhere you can go that I can't find you? Do you really think I can't make you answer to me if I want to?”