Under the Wire: Bad Boys Undercover (4 page)

That didn’t make sense, she knew, but there were protocols. In the event of an emergency, she needed to contact specific people, none of whom were Reid. But he could get the call out since she hadn’t been able to raise anyone on either the satellite phone or radio back at the main camp. If he waited around until right before reinforcements came, she would not be upset about that.

Reid treated her to a second exhale. This one longer and more dramatic. “That’s a ridiculous suggestion.”

Parker made a face that suggested she wouldn’t find a partner in him on this one. “It kind of is.”

“You don’t get it. This expedition is not . . .” Everything depended on her silence. Her team might need rescuing, but then again, silence might buy their freedom. She had no idea which choice to make.

She’d waited, in hiding, for the attackers to come back. For her to pick up some stray sentence that might explain what was going on and how much danger surrounded them. She’d tried to trek to their main installation that first day after waking up alone and terrified, but the buffeting winds and what she suspected was a head injury stopped her. This morning she’d made it there only to find the buildings cleared and abandoned . . . except for those hidden notebooks.

“Cara?” Reid skimmed his hand over her arm. “Finish the sentence.”

“The expedition is not on the books. It is top secret and it’s clearly gone sideways.”

“Good thing we specialize in the not-supposed-to-be-happening type of situation.” Parker walked a few steps away and started playing with the phone.

With Parker’s attention drawn away from the silent surveillance he’d been conducting, Reid took over. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even move. He just became more . . . aware. She couldn’t explain it. But she sensed the exact moment when he flipped from intently listening to her to focusing on the area around them.

The strange covert tag team approach should have surprised her, but it didn’t. From the second she saw them climb over the crest of the hill, she sensed they were in sync. Two men cut from the same mold. Parker, younger with darker hair and a bit less of a regimented feel to him. Reid, hot, lethal, and a constant diversion from everything she should be thinking and feeling.

Which brought her zapping back to reality. She wanted their expertise, but Reid could not do his usual rush-in-and-take-over job. “You can’t be here. Hell, I’m not supposed to be here.”

“And we’re going to talk through all of that, but not right this second.” Reid spun around and glanced at Parker. “Anything?”

Parker shook his head. “We seem to be in a dead zone, and I don’t know why.”

“I was having a problem with . . .” Reid glanced at her. “. . . other equipment earlier.”

Parker kept fiddling with the phone. “That’s not good news.”

“Keep trying. We need to figure out if this is a normal technical blip or if something else is going on. Either way, we’ve got to get word to headquarters and arrange for an exfiltration for Cara and technical backup for us.”

Ignoring the part where she was not leaving that way, with her research open to being stolen, Reid’s orders qualified as the exact wrong way to handle this situation. The Alliance would swoop in and take over. Break her cover and possibly further endanger her missing team and the true reason for the expedition.

Maybe that was fine, and someone could tell her that, but until then she had to comply with the requirements given to her. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t help in another way. In a way that was much more important.

She took a step forward, putting her body between the men. “Instead of staying here or going to the main compound, you could investigate what happened to my team. That could be a violation of some oath I took, but at least you wouldn’t be messing around with the research.”

Being a good six inches taller, Reid looked right
over her head to Parker. “Good point. We’ll need intel on the area and expedition parameters.”

This side of Reid she remembered all too well. She grabbed his arm and yanked. Anything to get him to listen. “I’m standing right here, telling you there are limits on what you can see. Hunting for people, protecting them, is fine. I’m saying that has to be fine.”

This time Reid spared her a quick glance. “You don’t get to make assignments.”

Air refused to fill her lungs. She tried to drag enough in, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Not when they stood this close. It had been that way from the start for her. “I’m not stupid. The idea of having a few guys with guns around here right now sounds pretty damn good.”

A look of satisfaction crossed Reid’s face. “Then we’re agreed.”

“Almost.”

He eyed her up, ending the visual tour with a frown. “When you stumbled out here you were ten minutes away from going into shock.”

“Not anymore.” Determination and more than a touch of anger fueled her. The fuzziness that threw off her equilibrium slowly lifted.

But the details of that night refused to gel in her mind. She’d walked through every minute she could mentally grab and tried to connect it to anything. Remembered the wind and the tent. Cliff getting out his knife. Then the world went black and she awoke hours,
possibly a day, later. Somehow she’d survived the exposure to the cold. Animals. The attackers.

None of it made sense.

“She does look better,” Parker said.

Reid shook his head. “I don’t care.”

That was it. The one commanding comment too far. “You are not in charge here, Reid.”

“Oh, boy,” Parker said as he mumbled something about her tone.

“And you are in charge?” Reid’s voice had gone deadly soft while he looked at her. “Is that what you’re trying to say? Because you look a mess, and last I checked this is not your area of expertise.”

She had no idea what she was talking about, but she knew they needed to work all of this out before he called in the rest of his team with rocket launchers and missiles and whatever other weapons they had in their possession.

If she wasn’t careful, something already awful could turn into an international nightmare. Escalate into an unsolvable political problem. “It’s my expedition.”

Reid opened his arms wide at his sides. “Then where is everyone? Why aren’t the comms working? Why didn’t you check in with Caleb?”

Smartass
. “Those are points I need to figure out.”

Parker held his thumb over a button on the phone. “You were attacked.”

“Something like that.” One of the many things she’d
lost during whatever happened was the expedition satphone. But she still knew how they worked, and she feared Parker was inching closer to making the call Reid wanted him to make.

Reid went back to studying her. Treating her like a target he needed to interrogate. “I don’t understand that answer.”

Parker nodded. “While you two work that out I’m going to keep trying to make that call to headquarters.”

Each one was more stubborn than the other. She had no idea how to break through to them. “Listen to me. Seriously, we need to comply with my protocol on this.”

Reid pulled her in closer. With his hands on her elbows and the heat of his body rolling into her, he stared down. “Say something that will explain why you’re dancing around all of this, asking for help with some things but not others. Holding on to rules that don’t matter right now.”

He was right. There was no use playing games. She could put this in language he would understand. “The Russian government thinks this is a privately funded expedition. An investigation into the Dyatlov Pass incident for a documentary.”

Reid groaned. “I had never heard about this so-called incident until a half hour ago, and now I’ve heard it twice.”

“It’s famous.” At least she thought so.

“Told you.” Parker dialed then tried again. “Like Yetis.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughed, but when Parker didn’t laugh with her, she sobered. “Wait . . . you know Yetis aren’t real, right?”

“Parker believes in many things that will make your head implode,” Reid said in a voice filled with amusement.

Parker scoffed. “Just because she’s some fancy science type.”

“You mean doctor.” She put her hand in front of the phone and forced him to look up at her. She had full use of her mind and body now. She could probably kick if she had to. “A geologist.”

“A doctor geologist.” Parker nodded. “I guess I should have known.”

These two had a habit of using a certain tone, sort of a know-it-all type thing. She knew she should chalk it up to their job choice and being at the center of all that danger, but it made her back teeth slam together.

That and he’d hit on a subject guaranteed to tick her off, depending on what he said next. “Meaning?”

Parker froze. “What did I do wrong?”

Reid actually smiled. “She’s not a fan of the ‘Asians are good at science and math’ assumptions people make.”

“I didn’t know you were . . .” Parker’s eyes opened wider.

And there it was. Her biggest pet peeve. Having a Chinese mom and a Caucasian dad sometimes left her in this nether world, one where neither side rushed to embrace her. Some of the older guys at work—the ones passed over for field assignments in favor of her—mumbled about her being a “token,” and that was some of the nicer stuff she’d overheard.

“Don’t I look it?” she asked, prepared for him to say the wrong thing.

Parker still hadn’t moved. “I’m afraid to answer that.”

She continued anyway. Might as well make all of this clear now. “No tiger mom. Neither parent is a scientist or math genius.”

“I’m not sure what’s going on.” Looking hunted, Parker glanced over at Reid then back to her. “Look, I was saying I should have known you were a doctor because Reid said we were looking for a science expedition. Science, doctor . . . I made the leap of logic.”

With that, her anger deflated. Ran right out of her. Sometimes her defenses rose before she could catch them. “That’s fine, then.”

“Now that we handled that.” Reid nodded at the satphone. “Try explaining again. We need to get assigned to this case and move forward.”

She inhaled nice and deep as she prepared to fight this verbal battle one more time without saying too much. “It’s not that simple.”

Reid held his gun as he looked around the valley. Then his gaze shot to the trees. “It never is.”

She thought about what these men did for a living. How they traveled all over the world neutralizing threats and walking into danger when others ran out. “The expedition is here to investigate the unsolved incident.”

The corner of Reid’s mouth lifted. “But?”

“I’m investigating something else. Me and a few others on the team.” She held up a hand. “And before you ask, I’m not going to spill every detail. But yes, why we’re supposed to be here and why we actually are do not exactly match up.”

Reid pointed at the ground and the broken flashlight by his foot. “You realize whatever you were really doing out here probably caused this.”

“Smooth,” Parker said over a fake cough.

“Yeah, Reid. I get that.”

“And I get that you’re trying to be professional and protect your work, but we’re done. We’re going to arrange for transport to get you debriefed and back to your brother.” She tried to interrupt but Reid only talked louder. “Parker and I will secure this scene . . . stop shaking your head at me.”

“I can’t leave yet.”

Reid stared at her but this time the harshness around his eyes softened a bit. “Your team. I get it. We’ll find them.”

“It’s more than that.” She couldn’t even imagine where they were and what they were going through. If she let her mind go there, bile rushed up the back of her throat and her brain froze. “Yes, you need to find them and make sure they’re safe, but there’s also sensitive data I need to recover.”

Reid frowned. “From?”

“Our facilities.” Having a security crew get here probably violated some contract she’d signed before coming to Russia, but she never agreed to die for this job. She’d take the risk and apologize later.

Parker joined in the frowning. “What are you saying?”

“We have a site more than a mile from here. It’s the main campground.” She knew that was just the start. Once Reid started picking away at the details, she’d likely tell all. This undercover stuff clearly was not for her.

“Why are we just finding that out now?” Parker asked.

“We’ll get to that later,” Reid said. “Let’s go.” His jaw tightened and his voice dropped even deeper. “And do not fight me on this, Cara. This is what we do. We minimize damage, and we’re going to try to do that here.”

Right
. They were experts and did this sort of thing as routinely as she collected soil and mineral samples. If there was ever a time to trust that expertise, it was
now. She couldn’t win this battle anyway. He had the guns, the connections, and the muscle. And the idea of having a bodyguard sounded smart right now.

Before she could answer, Reid tried again. “I came to help, Cara.”

“Which is why I’m letting you stay.” How good he looked, how the steady thump of her heartbeat kicked up whenever he turned that intense gaze on her . . . those things made her think she should go. She’d never had much of a defense against him, and she needed to find one now. “Don’t make me regret the decision.”

“Trust me.”

“You said that to me once before.” And she’d paid a steep price for listening.

His gaze narrowed. “This time actually try doing it.”

R
EID IGNORED
the voice inside his head that said to rush her out of there, onto a plane and back to her brother. Anything to keep her safe and out of the middle of a mystery that could end with more missing bodies, or worse, a few dead ones.

First they had to retrieve whatever she found so damn important she was willing to risk being shot over it. He bit back a barking yell at her over but only because he understood the need to secure sensitive information at all costs. But that was his job, not hers. He didn’t like the lines merging and blurring.

Since he’d never been great at outarguing her, he decided to focus on speed. With Parker’s help they’d performed a quick search of the debris field, set a few triggers to tell if someone else came through after them, then took off. All that while trying to ignore the churning in his gut and the rolling tension that ran his blood cold at the thought of Cara being hurt or in danger again. He could tolerate a lot, but not that.

After the campsite was photographed from every angle and was as secure as they could make it in these conditions and with limited equipment, they headed off. Skimmed the line between the trees and the open land. The path left them less exposed as they stumbled over tree roots and rock piles.

Their boots crunched against the ground and fallen, scattered leaves. Now and then they’d see something from the campsite and Cara would bend down to grab it. He’d bundled her in his warmer jacket and now she filled the pockets with whatever she decided she had to keep.

Despite the sense that doom might come closing in, Reid tried to keep his walk at a steady pace. For him, it was almost like standing still, but he didn’t want to shake Cara up any more than necessary by jogging the distance to the cabins, as she called them. She might have pulled back from the edge of shock, but he hadn’t had time to check her for injuries, and wasn’t fully convinced she’d escaped whatever happened with only bumps and bruises. One trip or overturned ankle could start her on a severe health decline.

Never mind that she’d regained her spunk, and sure had no trouble broadcasting all over the Russian countryside her decision to dump him. That fucker still stung. Yeah, the affair had been quick and his marriage proposal faster than what most might consider normal, but he asked because he’d meant it, and the fact that she never seemed to get it pissed him off.

She’d walked away, moved on and limited contact with him. Well, at first limited then cut it off completely. But here they were, back in the same cycle. Her work put her in danger, which put her under his protection.

He shouldn’t give a shit about what she’d been doing or the lack of contact. He’d moved on. He’d had sex during the last sixteen months and learned a valuable lesson about proposing marriage. That particular act would never happen again. The whole commitment, love crap clearly wasn’t his thing. The final text message from her on his phone telling him they should “take a break” served as a constant reminder of how much he sucked at it.

Parker pulled even with Reid, letting Cara venture out a few steps in front of them. Parker’s constant surveillance of the area never ceased, even as he leaned over and dropped his voice lower than usual. “You’re making growling noises.”

That was nothing compared to the running commentary in his head. “Fuck off.”

Parker laughed. “Yeah, clearly you’re fine.”

“Something is going on here and I don’t know what it is. I hate not being in control of a situation.” And not knowing what she was thinking didn’t help.

She hadn’t run rogue. For the most part, she listened to directions. She didn’t strike him as the kind of person who sought out danger, but it sure did keep finding her, and he could not get a handle on why. She
was a geologist, not an undercover agent. He wondered if she truly understood that.

“Uh-huh. The ‘situation’ is the problem.” Parker buried what he’d said under what sounded like a fake cough.

Reid knew ignoring his friend wouldn’t help. Parker would just pick away, dropping comments until he started talking. Not that they could have a normal conversation right now anyway. Not with their attention on the area around them and the need to listen for any sounds, any movement.

“Just say whatever you’ve been holding in so we can get back to work before the FSB hunts us down.” And there was no question the Russian security service would close in soon. The successor to the old KGB handled everything from border control to terrorism threats to general surveillance. Sneaking into the country put them firmly in all of the FSB’s target areas.

Worse, the FSB had contacts everywhere. A missing expedition, legitimately investigating some old case or not, wouldn’t go unnoticed. People talked. The Alliance not even knowing to look for them left them stranded and on their own. Reid could handle that but he didn’t want Cara in the middle.

“Engaged?” Parker asked in a near whisper.

Loud or soft, the word scraped across Reid’s already raw nerves. “Not anymore.”

Seeing her again carved him inside out. The sight
of all that blood had hit him first. The torn clothes touched off a blinding fury at the thought of her being in trouble. Then instead of unraveling, which anyone else in her situation would have done, she grew stronger. She’d gained her equilibrium and started meeting his verbal shots with some of her own. That’s when he’d really gone down for the count.

He’d tried several times over the slogging months since she left him to adjust the image he held of her in his mind. Chip away at his attraction to her. But no such luck. That round face and those intelligent eyes haunted him.

Seeing her again, he realized her self-confidence hadn’t faltered. She wasn’t one to back down from a verbal battle, and though he pretended that annoyed him, he actually loved that side of her. The energy. The way she threw herself into her work and enjoyed her off time with equal pleasure.

She fed on fresh air and craved the outdoors, just like he did. The bedroom, sweet damn the things she liked to do in there. The urge to strip her bare and throw her on the bed pounded on him the entire time they were together. There wasn’t a moment when he hadn’t wanted her. Fast up against the wall or slow and savoring every taste. Often he’d set the pace. Other times she’d seduce him merely by walking into the room and throwing him one of her sexy smiles.

The kissing. The touching. She could wear a body-
skimming dress that made his eyes cross one minute and dig in the dirt the next. And that tight body, toned from hiking . . . so fucking hot.

The good and bad memories collided in his head, knocking against his personal promise not to get lured in a second time. He fell for her once and that proved to be one time too many.

“I sense the breakup wasn’t your choice at all.” Parker lifted his hands in front of him, which just happened to be in the direction of Cara’s ass. “I mean I get it. She’s way hot.”

Reid let his gaze bounce down, tour over her, for just a second. Then the frustration of her choices snapped his festering anger right back into place. “Find another topic.”

“Yeah, I can see why you’re getting all weird and stuff.” Parker made a big show of exhaling and sighing. “At least this bit of history does explain your pathetic dating life for the last year.”

That struck Reid as too much. Yeah, he didn’t have a parade of women in and out of his door, but they didn’t run screaming when they saw him either. “I do fine.”

“Remember that I live next to you and see everything.”

“Gentlemen.” Cara stopped so fast they almost ran over her. She spun around and glared them both into silence before they could grumble about the interruption to their conversation. “I am not deaf.”

“Okay.” Parker made the word last for three syllables.

“Do you think you’re talking in code? Because I can hear you.” Her gaze switched from Parker to Reid but the severe frown never let up. “Every last stupid word.”

Parker turned to Reid. “She rebounds from injury pretty well.”

“Unfortunately, she’s had some experience,” Reid said, knowing better than to take his gaze off her when she hit this level of fire-spitting fury.

Parker frowned. “About the last time you needed the help of a super clandestine, no-one-knows-who-we-are organization usually reserved for hunting terrorists and madmen—care to fill me in?”

Slowly her shoulders fell. Some of the stiffness left her muscles as she turned around and fell into place between them as they started walking again. “A kidnapping. It was a wrong place, wrong time thing.”

When Parker glanced down at her as if waiting for more, Reid jumped in. “You don’t realize it, but you just described half of our assignments.”

“Ah, I get that.” Cara took a folding knife out of her pocket and passed it back and forth between her palms. “While on a government assignment in Egypt, a co-worker saw something she wasn’t supposed to.”

Reid stared at Parker over the top of Cara’s head. “The ‘something’ was an assassination attempt on the Egyptian defense minister while the guy was trying to
eat dinner in a dark, out-of-the-way restaurant with his mistress.”

“Damn.” Parker whistled, just as he usually did when faced with rough information. “That’s some shitty timing on your friend’s part.”

“No kidding,” Cara muttered under her breath. “Armed men followed her back to her temporary apartment, the one she happened to share with me at the time, and then windows exploded. Literally. Reid, here, flew through one.”

“We’d picked up chatter about the plans for the attempted hit and were already on the ground. Bravo Team intervened but got pinned in the gunfire.” Reid knew Parker didn’t want the details, so he skipped those and went right to the heart of the mission. Bravo Team rushed in. Delta, Parker’s team, provided backup. Parker could get all of that from the cryptic sentence. “The result was a three-day standoff until we fought our way out.”

Cara opened her mouth, looked like she wanted to argue, but then snapped it shut again. “That’s the highly abbreviated version that ignores the high body count, the unbelievable terror, and all the lies in the media about a neighborhood evacuation due to a gas leak or some stupid thing, but yes.”

They walked in silence for a while after the intel drop. Parker continued his surveillance. Looked ready to accept all he heard and let the conversation go. But
no . . . “Did you propose between magazine reloads or wait until all the bad guys were dead?”

Reid had sensed the amusement and still couldn’t avoid it. “Shut up.”

“We got away,” Cara said, “and he played bodyguard for a few more days until we received the signal it was safe to come out of hiding, that the people involved in the assassination were caught.”

Now there was a pretty way of saying it. Reid remembered a lot of blood, too. “She means dead.”

Parker nodded. “Got it.”

“Right, that was the G-rated version. The one I can think about without wanting to hurl.” She cleared her throat. “After that, he proposed.”

“And you said yes. You seem to forget that part.” She certainly backed away from the answer fast enough. Not that Reid remembered the details, except that he could recite every word of every conversation between the time she said yes and the time she walked out.

He’d assessed and reassessed everything he did and every sentence he’d uttered to figure out where they’d taken the left turn that ended it all. Sixteen months in and he still didn’t have a damn clue where it all went wrong. He’d been spinning up, ready to tell the team and figure out the safety parameters they could put in place in light of her research, and needed time in the field. All while she was stamping her get-out-of-relationship-free card.

“We had a whirlwind few weeks then it fizzled,” she said in a softer than usual voice.

That’s not how he remembered it. He was about to launch into a lengthy explanation of how she pulled back and started with the “highly emotional situations never work for a romance” lectures when they rounded the bottom of a hill and were confronted with signs of life . . . sort of. “Buildings.”

“What?” Her head snapped up and her gaze followed his.

“I think we’re here.” Parker pointed.

Since she looked ready to run toward the structures, Reid slipped his hand under her elbow. “Stay behind me.”

“No arguments there.” And for once she didn’t. She slid back, using his shoulder as a shield, and slipped her finger through his belt loop. “You get to be in charge of this part.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

He nodded to Parker. “Swing out to the left. We’ll follow along this side.”

He reached back and touched her hand to let her know they were ready to move. They walked the length of a football field to get to the huddle of four small nondescript white buildings. All single story and boxy. The buildings sat in the middle of an open field with more mud patches than grass.

The two structures in the middle looked to be larger and connected, with limited windows. A small shed stood off to one side. The door to the structure, maybe twice the size of an outhouse, stood open. The wind lifted it and banged the handle against the wall every few seconds, with the broken lock hanging open.

Other than the steady knocking and the rustle of trees, Reid didn’t hear any other sounds or see any signs of life. He couldn’t even imagine why someone would put buildings out here, so far from anything and standing right in the shadow of the grim-looking mountain looming behind. There were hiking trails in and around parts of the Urals, but not here. Not on this side of the mountain, which consisted more of rocky outcroppings than anything else.

With slow steps, careful not to give away their location to anyone who might be lurking nearby, or to trample on something that could trip a wire, they made their way to the closest edge of one of the free-standing buildings. Reid pushed Cara back against a building and edged alongside of the window. Peeking in, he saw a similar scene to the one out in the campground. Papers everywhere. Smashed laptops. Add in clothing strewn across the floor and broken furniture, and they’d stumbled over something more than a burglary.