Douala International Airport
Cameroon, Africa
Allie feared she wasn’t going to make her flight, and damn but she really needed to be on that plane. She weaved through the throngs of people in the main terminal, dodging hysterically crying children and obstinate old folks, and trying not to knock down anyone else who refused to get the heck out of her way.
“Final call for Air France flight 1701 to Paris, France, boarding now,” the gate hostess said in a lilting, accented voice over the intercom.
Allie was flying to Paris and then catching a flight to DC. Home was eighteen hours away if everything connected properly. She pushed her heavy blond hair out of her face, breathed deeply, and smiled at the woman as she handed her the boarding pass. The woman shooed her through. So close to home. Exhilaration pumped through Allie’s body, a sweet, cooling relief. She pulled her carry-on behind her down the loading ramp. The tick, tick, splat of rain on the dock’s tin roof reminded her that it was monsoon season in Cameroon. She definitely wouldn’t miss the rain. The people were a different story. She’d miss them like crazy. But she’d be back.
She stepped into the plane and nodded at an attendant.
“Welcome aboard, mademoiselle,” the flight attendant said with a smile.
She would miss that too—the sound of French and all the beautiful dialectal diversity in this country. But home called and she couldn’t wait.
Visions of manicures, pedicures, and McDonald’s french fries danced in her head as she practically skipped down the aisle of the 747.
Allie found her seat, lowered the handle of her carry-on, and was beginning to lift it to the overhead compartment when a large, tanned hand covered hers and took the bag.
Shock—that was the word that came to her mind. The man had shocked her, a current running from his hand to hers. Allie shivered.
“Let me help,” a deep voice rumbled. The man had been seated in her row next to the window. She’d noticed him at a distance as she walked down the plane’s center aisle.
Now, she sighed in relief, grateful for his presence as she allowed her gaze to drift up the man’s arm, to his neck, to his…sweet little baby Jesus in a manger…his face.
He was quite possibly the hottest man she’d ever seen. She stood there in awe as she took in his mink-brown, wavy hair. Her palms itched to brush it from his eyes. High cheekbones balanced a square jaw darkened by a five-o’clock shadow.
Her gaze lowered, once again noticing the strong column of his neck and the breadth of his chest, the width of his shoulders. She had the irrational urge to raise her hand and request permission to continue staring at him.
Then she slammed right into his gaze, and Allie almost swallowed her tongue. His eyes were the green of an Irish hillside and his lips, curving at her perusal, begged sin. All kinds of hot, sweaty, lick-me-all-over, then-dive-back-in sin. The thought had her stepping back.
His eyes smoldered before he blinked. That single instant of reprieve allowed her to get her shit together—okay, almost together.
“Thanks,” she murmured as she quickly sat her behind in the aisle seat of her row. She tried to concentrate on breathing evenly. The sexy bastard had stolen the oxygen from her lungs. Allie wasn’t a believer in insta-love, but insta-lust? She’d just become very familiar with that concept.
“We’ll be leaving shortly. Please make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins,” a flight attendant said over the speaker.
To distract herself from thoughts of Mr. Lick-Me-All-Over, who continued to stand in the aisle beside her, Allie focused on her go-to fantasy—McDonald’s french fries. She closed her eyes, imagining the crisp, salty goodness. She took a deep breath, and all thought of french fries disappeared. She smelled evergreens and mint. Her body tightened and she looked up.
“Excuse me,” Mr. LMAO said. The acronym had her snorting, to which he raised an eyebrow.
“Um,” she stammered. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay here?” he asked in a deep baritone that seriously rearranged pieces inside Allie’s abdomen. “If you are, I need to get past you to my seat.”
His hand rested on the seat behind her head, and as she moved so as not to crane her neck, her cheek brushed his hand.
The zing she felt in the pit of her stomach was ferocious. More like a lightning bolt. Similar to the jolt she’d experienced earlier, only way more intense. She really didn’t need intense right now. Fries. She needed fries.
“Uh, well, sure?” She was a mess in the face of all that hotness.
He smiled, which was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen on any man—ever.
“I think what I’m asking,” he began and sighed as if he had the patience of Job, “is do you want the aisle or the window?”
She stared up at him, and his brows lowered. Then it hit her. “Oh! Aisle is fine, thanks,” she murmured as she started to stand so he could sit down.
His face tightened as if he’d argue, but then he brushed by her to his seat and there it was—the holy grail of backside views. She thought she heard angels singing and somebody yelling, “Hallelujah.” Allie shook her head. Her palms itched again, and she rubbed them on her jeans.
She couldn’t sit beside him. Not Mr. LMAO, with his minty, evergreen smell and his Irish eyes a-smilin’. No, no, no…
“Mademoiselle?”
She turned to the attendant vying for her attention. Oh, it was a mighty struggle because while Allie was looking at the attendant’s lovely face, her mind was all over the finger-lickin’ goodness beside her.
“Mademoiselle?” she prompted again.
Earth to Allie. “Yes?”
“Time to buckle up,” she said with a shy smile.
Allie sighed. “Geesh. Pull it together already.”
“Pardon?” the stewardess asked with a raised brow.
“Oh, sorry, not you,” Allie hurriedly assured her.
She took her seat and buckled in, but when her arm brushed against his (which was damn near impossible to avoid because the dude was huge), she burned. Allie jerked her arm away and felt more than saw his chest rising and falling.
The jerkface was laughing at her. Okay, that could totally kick this insane lust in the butt. Please laugh at me some more.
He didn’t, just went stone-cold still. She shivered. The buckle-up sign continued to flash, and the flight attendant began to run through the myriad rules for riding in a plane. Allie drowned it out by thinking of McDonald’s fries.
Yeah, the Golden Arches had some thirty thousand locations worldwide, but not one Mickey D’s had graced the country where she’d devoted the last three years of service. She was lost to the dream of salty goodness, her eyes closed, so the rat-a-tat-tat took her by surprise.
A large hand pushed her head down. “Don’t move!” he bit out.
“Hey,” she objected, but her comment was directed to her knees. She tried lifting her head, but his grip on the back of her neck was solid.
“We’ve got trouble. I need you to keep your head down, ’kay?” he whispered in her ear.
Trouble? Understatement, she thought. Shots fired were a bit more than trouble. Yet still, in the midst of obvious danger, she noticed his warm breath sliding down her neck.
A chill swept through her at another round of rat-a-tat-tat, which was definitely automatic weapon fire. Children and adults were screaming, and over it all, a hard voice demanded that everyone sit down.
Gunshots. Well damn. All her day needed was gunshots. “All I wanted was a mani-pedi and some hot, salty McDonald’s fries,” she muttered.
“What?” the man next to her asked.
Then every thought left her brain as a woman screamed. It was a scream Allie had heard too often—fear. Her instincts kicked in, and she reached for his hand to remove it from her neck.
“I said to stay down,” he urged.
She twisted his hand in a move her father had taught her, and he released her immediately. She’d surprised him with the move. When she lifted her head, her gaze found chaos. At least five men were holding AK-47s and shouting orders to people in heavily accented, broken English interspersed with…Arabic? Oh damn. That was so not good.
“Where is the woman?” one of them yelled as he shoved his gun in the face of a flight attendant.
She screamed, and the man lifted his rifle and shot in the air. The bullet punctured the aircraft, the projectile ripping a hole big enough for rain to begin dripping through. They wouldn’t be traveling in this plane any time soon.
Another man glanced up and down the rows, searching each one.
“The woman with white hair—where is she?” the first man shouted in heavily accented English. “I know she is on this plane!”
Babies cried, women sobbed, and still the men shouted orders in Arabic. Boko Haram, Allie thought. It had to be. Her dad had been worried about that particular terrorist group’s presence in Cameroon. Each of his communications had asked her to watch out for her safety. She had.
The one she’d identified as the leader pulled up a child by her hair. “You have three seconds, white hair, before I shoot this child between the eyes. Three,” he yelled.
“Do not stand up,” the man beside her murmured.
She’d managed to forget about him for a second. Allie turned her head and met his gaze. She heard his warning, felt his intent to protect her. Crazy how in the midst of everything that stood out.
“Two!” the leader yelled.
“I have no choice. They’re looking for ‘white hair.’ Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m the only white hair on this plane,” she whispered a split second before she stood. “I’m here,” she called out.
“Don’t!” Mr. LMAO said and then followed that with a harsh “Fuck me.”
The leader spotted her, and Allie glimpsed evil. His eyes blazed with malevolence. This man was beyond her realm of experience.
“Ah, good. It’s the white hair. What is your name?”
“Why do you need my name?”
The leader’s eyes went flat, and then he calmly turned to the child’s mother and unloaded a single round into the plane beside her head. The child screamed, and the woman grabbed her, pushing past the gunman and Allie as she ran toward the back of the plane. The gunman let her go, then raised his rifle and aimed it directly at Allie. She raised a hand to her mouth to hold back her own scream.
“Allison Redding,” she garbled out. “My name is Allison Redding.”
His brows lowered as confusion tattooed his face. He didn’t like her answer, but as quickly as the confusion appeared, it was gone. “Come to me, Allison Redding,” he demanded.
Allie didn’t hesitate, something telling her that if she did, the man would make sure the next bullet hit someone. The man searching the rows moved back to the leader and stood there, his threat implicit in the way he held his rifle. Hell, there were at least five of them, maybe more in the cabin ahead. Each of them with really big weapons and intent that colored the air black around them.
She came to the leader, stepping very carefully. “What do you want?” she asked the man who’d turned her world upside down.
“Oh, it’s really very simple,” he said. He stared at her with a grin that showed perfectly straight, white teeth. It was macabre how white his teeth were in his dark, gaunt face.
She met his gaze and her stomach rebelled. She was going to lose it. Keep your shit together, Redding. She waited, fear freezing her feet to the spot and her breath in her lungs.
“I want your head.”