“Damn it, Allie, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?” Gray Broemig growled into the phone.
Allie closed her eyes and sighed. “I didn’t get myself into anything. I was headed home, and the damn plane was hijacked.”
A rough breath sounded in her ear, and her heart melted. Her father was a worrier by nature. A big, tough-assed worrier. Would he have been the same if her mother hadn’t been killed?
Probably.
“I need you to listen to me, Allie. Pay attention,” her father demanded.
“I’m listening,” she said and couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice.
“No sass, young lady,” he said.
“I’m twenty-seven, Dad, not six.” Allie winced when she said it. She’d been six when her mother died. Because of Allie.
The man across the table from her sat stoically, like an immovable mountain, listening to every word she said.
“The man who has you, has he mistreated you in any way?”
She glanced up at King. Been a pain in her ass? Yes. Kissed the breath out of her? Definitely. Made her forget McDonald’s fries? That’s a check. Mistreated her? “No.”
King smirked and she looked at him quizzically. The muscles of his arms flexed, almost as if he was holding himself back.
“Allie, his name is Kingston McNally. He’s a former SEAL who decommissioned to work for a private entity that is involved in some rough stuff. He’s dangerous.”
“I figured that out, Dad. The dangerous part anyway,” she told her dad as she locked gazes with King.
He inclined his head as if to say, Go ahead and find out the truth. I’ll still be me.
And she knew irrevocably he would. Because underneath that dangerous exterior lay a core of honor. She’d recognized it from the moment he’d pushed her head down on the plane.
“Allie, he and his group are fugitives of American justice. In the eyes of the law they’re no better than criminals. They embroiled their country in an international incident with Lebanon. But he’s my only hope of getting you home. I need you to listen to him and do exactly as he says, you understand?”
She nodded, still looking at King.
“Allie, do you understand?” her father asked impatiently.
“Yes, sir.”
King’s eyes flared at that. Huh, he liked hearing her say sir. Kinky bastard. He didn’t give her much, but she was learning to read him. He wouldn’t appreciate knowing that.
“I’m making everything at my disposal available to him. This is serious, Allie. I don’t know that he’s a good man, but he’s the man for this job.”
Her dad had just gone from warning her about King to giving him the all clear for making sure she stayed alive. Her head spun, but she said, “I hear you. I’ll make his job as easy as possible.”
“Get home to me, Allie,” her father said brokenly.
She would have spared him this if she could. But how could she have known terrorists would be gunning for her? “I will.”
“Give the phone to him.”
Allie handed the phone to King. He said two words, “Will do,” and then disconnected and handed her the phone.
Allie placed it back on the table.
King took the phone, dropped it on the floor and, with a quick stomp, decimated it. Her heart stuttered. That phone had been her last contact with her dad.
“I’ve got you, Allie,” King said in a hard voice.
She nodded and breathed in deeply.
“It’s time for answers now,” she said in an equally hard tone.
“What do you want to know?”
She narrowed her gaze on him, taking in the wide breadth of his shoulders, the muscles of his arms, the firm cut of his jaw. “I heard Dad’s version… Care to share yours?”
“Not particularly.”
She slammed a hand on the table, trying to control the anger rushing through her but finding herself incapable of it. The action hurt, but she pushed through it.
King looked impressed before his face blanked. “Okay, I’m a SEAL who decommissioned from active duty to join a private security agency. We worked for the good guys—hell, we are the good guys—but we were betrayed. As a result, my team and I are doing our best to take down the entity responsible.”
She stared at him, assessing his tone and the look on his face. Her gut said he wasn’t lying. His actions spoke of a man used to protecting.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “Ask.”
“I don’t have to,” she returned evenly.
“You’d be the only one, and I’m starting to doubt your sanity. Do you normally trust every Tom, Dick, and Harry that pops into your life?”
She cocked her head and fisted her hands on the table. “I don’t actually, which makes my instinctive trust in you an aberration.”
That shut him right up and lightened her mood dramatically.
“So I’ll ask again—who are you?”
He pushed away from the table and stalked to the window. She could sense the demons riding him. But this was important. Her father wanted her to blindly trust this man who’d admitted to killing his father and being a criminal in the eyes of the American justice system. And the truth was, she already did. That did not mean she liked the thought of being used as a pawn in whatever war King was waging. She wanted to make sure her eyes were wide open, and that meant knowing his motivations.
“I’m a hunter. A killer.”
Oh, he took her heart with those words and fisted it tight in his hands. “Aren’t we all to some degree?” she countered.
His head swiveled, and his green gaze was bright in the low light of the hut. He didn’t say a word but stared into her eyes. She had the uncanny feeling he was trying to read her thoughts, see deep into her soul, so he could determine whether she was telling the truth or playing him.
Finally, he turned back to stare out the window. “In some form or fashion, yes, we are all hunters and killers. None more so than me. It’s what I was raised to be.”
She shivered, and he must have sensed the movement because he walked to the bed and brought a blanket back. Always, he was taking care of her. From the moment she’d jumped into his arms from the plane until right now—it was as if he refused to allow anything to hurt her.
Her heart cracked. She didn’t want to break the silence because she sensed he was about to tell her more, so Allie folded her hands in her lap and waited.
“I’m on a mission to destroy the people responsible for the deaths of several members of my team.”
“I’m going out on a limb here because I know jack about your past, but surely, if they were soldiers like you, they knew the danger. Who were you working for?”
“Endgame Ops.” He spit the words out, as if the taste of them in his mouth was abhorrent.
Something niggled at the back of Allie’s mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that name, but damn if she could remember where or in what context. “Sanctioned?” she asked.
He shook his head. That wasn’t good. Allie was her father’s daughter and had always had an ability to ferret out secrets and angles. She wished she had a secure Internet connection and a way to access it so she could do her own searching. Because something about Endgame Ops rocked her foundations.
“You have to realize that on paper, Endgame offers protective services. We work for organizations rebuilding war-torn countries. We keep their people safe. In reality, that’s a cover. We operate in the black, taking missions our own government won’t. None of our missions were sanctioned. That allowed us to act with anonymity, and we were able to deny our government’s culpability in any of our actions. I trained men and women to be the best soldiers they could be, and I led them into the darkness of covert ops. I was a killer by birth and a leader by design.”
Of course he was a leader. She’d recognized that the moment she’d seen him. Okay, maybe that had come later—after the mink-brown hair, the high-and-tight ass, and that chest. Good Lord, she wanted to fan herself right now. The man had a way with her hormones.
“So what happened?”
“I really shouldn’t tell you this,” he muttered.
“But you will,” she singsonged. “Because you trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone. You’d do well to remember that,” he replied through clenched teeth.
That hurt, but she refused to be cowed so she waited. She’d change his mind.
His shoulders tightened, but he didn’t look at her. “We ran an op in Beirut a year ago, an incursion operation. It went belly up. Our helo crashed, and several members of my team were caught and murdered. Endgame Ops almost came to an end.”
“God, you are so stingy with information.” She sighed loudly before she followed with, “And?”
“And I’ve spent the last year trying to hunt down the ones responsible.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“To destroy them.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that.” Well, wasn’t that simple then? She snorted and he turned to her, disbelief on his face. “Are you a one-man army now? Or do you have help?”
His lip quirked at the corner, and her heart thudded heavily. What this man did to her with the tiniest of movements was a hazard all its own.
“I have help.”
“That’s good then,” she responded with a grunt of her own.
“Why would you care?” he asked silkily.
“It isn’t your turn to pump me for information, buddy.”
He came back and sat across from her. His seriousness conveyed itself startlingly well. His face went hard, and his intent stroked her skin. “You were on that plane. Why?”
She rested her jaw on her fist. “I told you I was headed home. I’ve been in this country for two years. I missed home. Plus, things were heating up here. As you can tell, Boko Haram is becoming entrenched in Cameroon. Nigeria is fighting a constant war with them, and they’ve spread their wings.”
“Did anyone know you were heading home?”
“If you’re turning this into an inquisition, can you at least grab me a bottle of water? I’m dry as the Sahara,” she groused.
He did as she asked, and as he bent to retrieve the bottle from the bowels of the fridge, Allie looked her fill, almost groaning at how his khakis stretched over that amazing rear end.
“I know you’re looking at my ass,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice.
“I so am. When I’m better, I’ll turn around often so you can do the same. I’m totally willing to return the favor.”
He snorted. “What if I don’t want to look at your ass?”
“You don’t want to go there with me.”
“No?”
She cleared her throat and lowered her voice as deep as she could. “‘You’ll not only look at me that way again, Redding, you’ll do it while I’m buried inside you, riding us both to release.’”
He stilled, threw back his head, and laughed. It was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen or heard.
Then his face blanked when he looked at hers. “Don’t,” he said suddenly, harshly.
She met his gaze, wondering what he was talking about.
“Don’t make this harder on me,” he repeated roughly.
She glanced away, afraid she’d burn to cinders at the look in his eyes. “Sorry. I don’t want to make anything harder than it already is.”
He handed her the water. “It’s pretty fucking tough. My neck is itching, and it’s time to get moving. I’ll give you tonight to rest up, but we need to head out soon.”
Allie drank the water and breathed heavily. She was sore, but healing fast. She would survive. She’d made it through a bullet’s grazing kiss, anything that came after was child’s play. Right?
“I didn’t tell anyone I was heading home. That’s always been the way it is. I buy my tickets and head home—no notice, no nothing. I’m always careful. I’ve been taught to watch my six and take the unknown into account, but I’m not a soldier. I’m a caregiver. So those things come harder to me. I didn’t notice anything unusual. I had one of the villagers drive me to Douala, was a little late arriving, but everything was fine. You know, until the bullets started flying.”
He gazed at the table, his index finger making circles in the condensation from his water bottle. “Six people, including me, knew I was in Cameroon, and I was only here because I was expecting to meet a courier.”
“Meet, as in kidnap?”
“You say to-may-toe…”
Allie raised an eyebrow.
“How long ago did you reserve your flight?” he asked.
“Two weeks. I called my dad from the satellite phone when I arrived—”
The same sat phone with the tracker embedded in it. His head snapped up. “Wait, you said nobody knew, but Loretta knew. I heard her say she thought you’d be gone by now.”
There were some things Allie would never doubt. Lo-Lo’s loyalty was one of them. Just like she knew Kingston McNally would never willingly harm her. Some things just were.
“It’s not Lo-Lo. I don’t know how anyone found out, but it wasn’t from her. Maybe they were tracking my cell phone. You said that was a possibility.”
He rubbed a hand down his face. He’d said it before, and it bore saying again—she was too damn trusting. The look on his face spoke of his doubt. His mind tickled with the possibility that Loretta was involved in this somehow. “I told your father I’d get you home, but he’s got a leak somewhere. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Somebody has put you smack-dab in the middle of this. You say it isn’t her. Okay, but I’m not willing to trust her any farther than I can throw her. For shits and giggles, let’s say it isn’t her. That means someone besides Loretta knows who you are, what you are to him, and they’re using you to do one of two things: get to your dad, or get to me.”
“I didn’t even know you existed until a few days ago. Why would anyone think you’d be swayed by putting me into play?”
“It’s not you, it’s what you represent” came his hard reply.
Allie clenched her fists tight. She was getting angry, and that wouldn’t help anything. “What do I represent?”
“A link to the man I was told you were handling information for, and through him, a link to Horace Dresden.”
“And why is that important?”
“Horace Dresden and Vasily Savidge are the ones who killed my teammates in Beirut.”
Fear tripped through her. “I have never been a courier. So why would the person setting all this up think you’d keep me so close after you discovered I had no link to Dresden?”
“Because you’re also a link to the CIA,” he said roughly.
She sighed. “I know I’m a bit slow, but why is that important?”
His gaze was on her, but his mind was somewhere far, far away. “Because it was CIA who betrayed us and gave Dresden the heads-up we were coming in Beirut.”
He stopped there, and she could have screamed in frustration.
“And?”
He got up and began pacing, his big body and long legs eating up the tiny hut in a loop. “There is no and. The less you know, the better off you are.”
Frustration had her gasping for breath. No sudden moves, Allie. You might hurt yourself. Or him. “You just said you have no idea what their true motivation is for using me. The thing about that whole statement? They’re using me. So I’m all up in this whether you, me, or Gray Broemig likes it or not.”
Anger rushed through her and she stood suddenly, the need to move and expel the sudden excess of energy overwhelming. She began to pace.
“Stay in your seat, woman.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she returned. “I want the truth, King.”
“I work in the black, Allie. I do things other people refuse to do so that in the end, the greater good is met.”
“What does that mean? Spell it out,” she demanded. Her heart was in her throat. She knew what it meant…
He sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “They obviously thought I’d be willing to use you to get what I want.”
Her disbelief was tempered by her meager knowledge of how black ops worked. “And are they right?”
He looked at her, his green gaze intent. Would he be truthful here and now? There was a lot riding on this. She trusted him, even though she doubted her sanity to do so.
“No. I won’t use an innocent to do my dirty work.”
Relief poured through her, making her momentarily weak. “Thank you.” It was all she could say. His answer meant he believed her—she wasn’t an operative and had no idea how she’d been pulled into this mess.
He crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance. “I can’t tell you Endgame business. You know too much as it is now. I won’t put you in more harm than you’re already in. Trust me, knowing Endgame business gets people killed.”
“What about you?” she whispered, stopping in front of him and giving in to the urge to touch him. She stroked a finger down his stubble-roughened cheek.
“I can take care of myself.” Their gazes locked, and she heard everything he didn’t say. He was constantly in danger. It surrounded him like a mantle. She hadn’t noticed that hard edge when she’d first seen him on the plane. Truthfully, she hadn’t been able to see past the instant lust.
And she knew then she was getting nothing else from him today. “I’m tired. If we’re leaving tomorrow, I need to rest. Can you tell me where we’re going?”
“I won’t know until we get there,” he replied.
Evasion—he was a master at it.
“Nice. Great answer.” She was the one crossing her arms over her chest now. “I don’t like being kept in the dark.”
“You can’t tell what you don’t know.”
Ahh, the flip side of being innocent. Apparently, she wouldn’t know plans until they happened. His words made her shiver, but she walked to the bed and lay down gingerly. Soon they’d be on the move. She needed the rest if she wasn’t going to slow them down.
“I’ll wake you when it’s time to go,” he told her.
“Can you at least tell me why we can’t hit the closest U.S. base and send me home on a military plane?”
He shook his head. “I promised your father I’d deliver you home personally. Until he knows who the leak is, nowhere but with me is safe. The man responsible for my team members’ deaths has access to U.S. installations worldwide. I won’t risk you by trying to get you home easily.”
“And yet you say people are gunning for you and your men,” she reminded him.
“I can protect you, Allie. Trust me.”
She glanced up, sleep teasing her. “I do.”
He turned away, and she thought she heard him murmur, “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond, unsure what he was apologizing for. She breathed in deeply, knowing that for right now she was as safe as she would ever be.
Because she was with him.