Under Fire (16 page)

A big black gun was strapped to his waist alongside a knife.

Oh God.

She slipped from under the covers and padded to her small bag quickly in the shadowy room. There was no time for modesty. Still, she turned away from Liam. She whipped the overlong T-shirt over her head and yanked a T-shirt and jeans from her backpack. He stepped up alongside her so quietly she almost yelped—then remembered the no-talking edict.

Silently, he passed her gym shoes and socks. She dropped to the bed and yanked them on. Tying the laces, she realized Disco had never made a sound during this whole encounter. He always, always alerted her to strangers approaching. Her heart lurched until she saw her dog standing just behind Liam. The Lab’s black coat had blended into the darkness.

Now the two of them stood like sentinels between her and whatever waited outside that had stirred Liam to such extreme action. Her stomach tumbled over itself with nerves. It was one thing to lead a search for bodies in the aftermath of disaster. Another to be on the run as her world crumbled around her feet.

Her life was spiraling out of control rather than settling. But she’d brought Liam into this, because for some unknown reason, she trusted him more than anyone. That meant following him now.

Swallowing hard, fully dressed, she turned toward him and nodded.

Liam jerked his head toward the hall without a word, and as she walked through the house, she realized that all the blinds had been drawn. No one could see out—or in. Disco’s nose swiveled left hard and fast, causing Rachel to stop short. She eyed the line of his attention to the living room—and gasped.

Sylvia Cramer lay stretched out on the sofa. With her hands folded over her chest and her upswept auburn hair only a bit mussed, she appeared to be—dead? Liam glanced back at her, his eyebrows pinched together, but he didn’t show the least surprise or interest in Sylvia. Rachel grabbed her dog’s collar, hair rising on her arms. Then she realized—thank God—Sylvia’s chest rose and fell evenly in deep sleep.

Now that was almost strangest of all. The OSI agent just taking a nap? In the middle of an assignment? She checked the clock hanging on the wall over the television armoire and saw it was only three o’clock in the morning. She’d slept only two and a half hours. Bullfrogs sang a full nighttime chorus outside.

Liam held up a hand, motioning for her to stay still. He crossed to Sylvia with steps so silent it unsettled her more than a little. Scooping up the sleeping agent, he carried her through the safe house and back to Rachel’s room. Through the open door, she saw him place Special Agent Cramer on the bed and pull the covers over her. If anyone came in, they would assume it was Rachel.

Okay,
he mouthed to Rachel a second before he wrapped his fingers around her arm, strong, gentle…
insistent
. His eyes spoke louder than any words.
We
need
to
go.

Tugging her attention from the oddly sleeping agent, she padded softly through the house until Liam reached the garage. Opening the door, he revealed two vehicles, both facing nose out, as if preset for a speedy exit. The closest, a nondescript blue sedan, was parked beside a dark blue Suburban with tinted windows. He motioned her toward the latter, on the far side.

Because of the windows? Or the sturdiness? Certainly not because of fuel efficiency, she thought with a hysterical bubble working its way up her throat.

Again, he held a finger over his mouth, reminding her to stay silent. He opened one door, the driver’s side, and gestured her and Disco inside.

Were there listening devices in the house? Were agents at the OSI actually listening for how many doors closed? Although that made sense, since if Sylvia left, she would be alone, so only one door would shut.

Of course Sylvia was asleep inside, so there must not be cameras watching, or someone would already be after them.

What about any other guards outside? Were they all “napping” too?

She climbed inside and across the seat, her knee sliding in her haste. Liam’s steadying hand cupped her butt, and holy crap, the heat seared clear through her jeans. And it was crazy that in the middle of a crisis she wanted to spin around and fling herself against his chest, wrap her arms and her legs around him while she finished the kiss they’d barely gotten to start earlier.

Actually not so crazy, considering she’d been having erotic dreams about him, when she should be too scared to breathe, much less lust. Although even in the middle of this hell, apparently Liam had the same feelings, which made her feel less like a freak of nature for being turned on when she should be worried about the people gunning for her.

Sitting upright, she yanked on the seat belt while Disco hopped into the back. Liam settled behind the wheel and opened the automatic garage door before her belt clicked.

Again, she was sneaking off base and she had no idea why. She reached across and touched Liam’s shoulder lightly, asking silently if it was okay to speak.

He shook his head.

God, how much longer would this silence contest last? Her heart beat so loudly, surely anybody listening in would hear her.

Hours later—or more likely about ten minutes later—Liam pulled into a cluster of palm trees by a vacant outdoor mall. He moved so smoothly, competently. She’d forgotten about his efficiency of movement, nothing wasted, nothing out of sync. Using the illumination of outdoor streetlamps and a flashlight from the glove compartment, he searched the interior and exterior of the SUV, disconnecting wires inside, then sliding underneath the vehicle.

Minutes later he slipped out again, arced back his arm, and threw a fistful of tiny silver disks into a canal flowing between the dead mall and a pathetic used-car lot. Liam leaped the channel and moved among the cars. A temporary plate? Made sense. But what about the etched white letters on the side? He peeled a Maid Service magnet off the defunct service’s Dumpster out front and slapped it on the side of the Suburban over the wording painted on the door—some kind of military designation?

He was frighteningly good at this.

Back in the vehicle, he slammed the car into reverse and back onto the road. “
Now
we can talk.”

She wanted to ask a million different things, but she settled for, “Um, where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet.” His jaw was hard, his muscles bulging with tension.

“That’s not very comforting.”

“I’m winging it here.” His eyes darted, checking the mirrors, sides, front, alert and ready for God only knew what. “Trust me. We needed to leave the base. And I’ll have a plan before anyone even knows we’re gone.”

“What about going to the police? If not here, then how about I place calls to some people I know from when I worked in the D.C. and Virginia area? I probably should have called them in the first place, but I cut so many ties when I left the search and rescue field…” She shook her head, frustrated with herself that she hadn’t thought of the cops and FBI agents she’d met during some of the more high-profile rescues. “Must have been subliminal, that I didn’t think of them. But if you let me use the cell, I can try.”

“Not now, Rachel.”

“Back to the OSI?” In all her multiteam collaborative efforts, she’d never worked directly with the OSI, but their reputation was top-notch. She scrambled for something, anything, her brain still half asleep, her body caught somewhere between that erotic dream and the harsh edge of her dangerous reality.

“Definitely not.”

They couldn’t even trust the OSI anymore? Okay,
now
she was really freaking out.

He drove through the dark and deserted streets. Fog rolled in off the water in a greedy vapor, sucking up the road from sight. It felt as if they were truly alone in the world. Cut off from any source of help.

“What happened back there at the house to tip you off? Why did we have to leave?”

“I would tell you if I could, but you just have to trust me. That’s why you chose to come to me for help, because you trust me.”

True enough. She knew that he would do anything… Anything at all? “Were you given permission to leave?”

He didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself. Their departure wasn’t officially sanctioned and Liam was protecting her by keeping her in the dark on the details.

How would this play out for him at work? Was he risking his career for her? She hadn’t even considered that possibility when coming to him for help. Bile burned her throat along with a hefty dose of self-loathing.

“Let’s call this whole thing off now.” She braced her palms on the dashboard. “I know nothing. You know nothing. Let Disco and me off at the next police station. You go back home and say I snuck away from the house.”

“Not gonna happen,” he said without missing a beat as he drove farther from base and the unconscious agent.

She hadn’t really expected him to go for it. Time for plan B, which probably wouldn’t work either, but she had to try.

At the next stoplight, Rachel reached for the door anyhow and yanked. No luck. He’d locked the doors. Of course he had.

“Damn it, Liam. This is crazy.” She pounded the door with a fist in frustration. “You can’t actually be kidnapping me.”

“I could. But I won’t need to.” He glanced over at her, his eyes intense. He slid a hand under her hair and caressed the back of her neck. “You’re a reasonable woman. You brought me into this because you were out of options. Now either you really trust me or you don’t. Which is it?”

She stared into his eyes long after the red light had gone green. But there wasn’t anyone on the road to honk or protest as they idled in the middle of the road. The strength in his gaze and gentleness of his touch worked together to remind her why she’d gone this route in the first place. As much as she hated to bring him into this mess,
her
mess, they were in it together now.

“I’m with you.”

He smiled. God, how he smiled in a way that creased the corners of his eyes and made her ache to kiss those crinkles. “Good. Because I would hate to have to knock you out, too.”

His words sunk in, icing the warmth in her belly.

“Too?”

He looked away and accelerated through the intersection. “You don’t need to know.”

Frustration stirred. She’d lived independently for all her adult life, and this kind of full-scale control did not sit well, even if he was trying to protect her. “If we’re in this together, how about we talk, rather than me asking questions that go unanswered. Tell me what I
can
know of your plan in progress.”

Steering off the highway, he drove over a narrow bridge. The moon reflected off the marshy water along the barrier island. “We’re going to see one of my team members before anyone sounds an alarm. We should have about an hour’s lead.”

Okay, that was something. Which team member would Liam choose to ask for help? She thought back to the other pararescuemen she’d met during their time in the Bahamas. The team member named Franco had been injured in the Bahamas and transferred out of the unit. So she moved on to… Cuervo, a charmer who wore marathon shirts and a smile. The guy they called Brick, because he was hardheaded but steady. Then there was Data, who’d managed to scrounge up electricity and an Internet connection before most of the specialists sent in. And an eerily quiet guy they’d simply called Bubbles…

They all seemed to have different strengths and she didn’t know any of them well enough to guess. She didn’t know any of them as well as she did Liam… a man she trusted more than anyone. She needed to keep that in mind.

“What can your team member do for us that you and the OSI couldn’t?”

“We have good toys. Sometimes we keep an extra stash of each other’s toys for cases like now when it’s more… expedient that I not return to my own house.”

“Toys?”

“Guns. IDs.”

“IDs? Plural?” She knew he was military, but different forms of identification? A little spooky.

“The kind of search and rescue extractions we’re called to do aren’t always straight-up, in-and-out kinds of deals,” he explained as if detailing an uneventful, everyday kind of career. “Sometimes we need to go deep into hostile country. It can be… well, let’s just say helpful to have a different identity.”

There it was again, in her face, how badass elite his training was and how that placed him in dangerous positions beyond what even she could imagine—and she had a pretty good idea of the risks out there, given her prior work. He could die in a mission next week and she would never know.

Stop.
She forced herself to take it down a notch. Breathe. Focus on the crisis at hand.

“Okay, this may sound like a nitnoid concern, but I’m just me. So if we’re sticking together, your new identity plan has a flaw.” Could he be planning to leave her with his friends while he went off Rambo-style to find Brandon?

“I feel confident I can rustle up something that will get us by until we locate your buddy and find some answers.” He turned onto a sand and gravel roadway leading into a tropical thicket. “We won’t have to fly under the radar for long.”