King rolled his shoulders, clenched his fists, and prayed the woman would remain silent. Since he’d told her that he knew who she was, she’d been dead quiet. He didn’t know if that pissed him off or made him deliriously happy. He did know that if she licked her bottom lip one more time, he was going in for another round with the delectable Allie Redding. And that made him nervous.
She squeezed her eyes closed and then opened them, the blue of her irises bright in the falling darkness. “You think you know, but…”
He cocked his head, listening for any noise that would tell him more than that the rain was keeping them company. His head pounding, he rubbed his neck. Fareed Kadar was coming. He was a high-level operative within Boko Haram, so his involvement meant nothing good was headed their way. The terrorist group had direct ties to Dresden’s organization, and King could feel the man’s intent bearing down on them. There were now multiple players in a brand-new game King hadn’t even realized he was playing.
Endgame Ops, Boko Haram, Horace Dresden, and now the CIA. Someone had put Allie Redding in the mix. Did she have a direct link to Dresden or his right-hand man, Vasily Savidge? The possibility settled in King’s gut like a rock. He found himself hoping she didn’t before he shied away from the thought. He didn’t know her from Adam—didn’t know her history or her present agenda.
So basically he could put all his hope in one hand and shit in the other because they’d probably be worth the same thing. This was such a clusterfuck. He’d been looking for an information carrier and was now stuck with the head of the CIA’s daughter. It was looking more and more like he was either responsible for getting her to safety or… Yeah, there was another way he could use her presence.
He couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm. None. Normally, people with connections like hers could be used as a bargaining tool. Not this time. He rejected the prospect before it could germinate. The CIA couldn’t be trusted. They’d settled themselves into the middle of Endgame business and then proven unreliable on the Beirut op. There was a single CIA affiliate he could trust—Rook, or more specifically, Rook’s wife, Vivi. Rook and Vivi were supposed to be in the Ukraine working a lead on Dresden. He’d have to tap them for information later.
King was looking for answers, a lead of his own, and not more problems. Sure as Hell was hot, Allie represented more problems. She sighed deeply, sounding all sorts of put out, which had a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.
What was that about anyway? King never smiled. There was nothing funny about his life—not one thing.
“What are you carrying for your dad?” he asked into the silence. Maybe Director Broemig had a link to Savidge or Dresden. There was no way to know how high the treachery responsible for the death of King’s team members reached. The Piper had told him people in the White House could be involved, so it was a short leap to believe the CIA was as well. Allie’s dad was known for manipulating the entire world to suit his agendas.
King was searching for any way possible to clear her of being associated with Dresden’s operations. When he noticed what he was doing, he frowned.
She lowered herself to the floor, sitting with her chin on her knees, her gaze pensive and drilling into the wall behind King. “I’m not a courier. You’re insane if you think the leader of the largest, most efficient spy agency in the world would use his daughter to carry information.”
Her lips twisted, and the action was mirrored in his gut.
He let a mirthless laugh escape. “You must be basing that hypothesis off the supposition that spooks have a moral compass. I know from experience they don’t. They’ll give up their mother, their firstborn… Hell, they’ll shoot an innocent dog without blinking an eye if it gets them to their goal. Something I’ve learned the hard way, but learn it I have.”
Her eyes widened, and for a split second, King wondered if she really was a simple Peace Corps volunteer, spreading do-gooder cheer all over the world. Then her gaze blanked, her lips flattened into a hard line, and she chuckled, the sound echoing in the room. Moments before, he’d strained to hear anything, but now the sound of her low laugh was strident.
The rain had lulled. It always rained in this fucking country. He hated the rain.
“I’m gonna kick my own ass for asking, but what’s so funny?”
“You used the words hypothesis and supposition,” she said with another deprecating chuckle.
“So?”
“I thought those words might be above your pay grade.”
With her words, the reality came sliding home again. Her father was the director of Spookville. She could be anyone and no one at all.
King went to his haunches in front of her, his body coiled and ready to strike. Several long moments passed until finally she glanced up, meeting his gaze and even tipping her chin up defiantly.
“You have no idea, Allie,” he murmured.
“Okay, I’ll bite. I have no idea about what, King?”
He smiled. “I’m sure there was an insult in there somewhere, but, darlin,’ there’s something you need to understand pretty damn quick… I am the pay grade. And now you’re stuck with me. Give me your satellite phone.”
Her pupils widened and her breathing stopped. If she was a spook, she sucked at it. She might be able to hold her own, but subterfuge seemed beyond her. Oh, except that she’d managed to hide her identity from damn near everyone except the people who’d set Boko Haram terrorists on her ass.
“I-I-I don’t—”
He stood abruptly and stared down at her.
She grimaced, rooted in the side pocket of her cargoes, and slapped the phone in his outstretched hand. He had to fight again to hide his smile at the hesitation pouring from her. He took the back cover off, pulled out the tracking device located in the bowels of the phone, and put the cover back in place.
He handed the phone back, taking a quick look at her face. She stuffed it back where it came from. He shifted, dropped the tracking beacon, and stomped on it.
“Let’s move,” he said.
“Move? Move where?”
He turned and stared down at her lifted face. The heart-shaped contours were silky smooth. The bruise coloring her right cheek made his abdomen clench. He’d felt the slope of her cheek, tasted the curves of her lips, and wanted to again. For some reason, that made the anger rise once more—virulent and stifling.
This woman could take his much-touted control and demolish it. The cost of having to drag her along was one he didn’t want to pay.
“This,” he said as he nudged the broken pieces of the tracker in her direction, “was a tracker embedded in your phone.”
She looked up at him, confusion lowering her brows and darkening her gaze. She bit the inside of her lip, the rounded curve disappearing for a moment.
King almost groaned. Instead, he shifted his body away from her while keeping his gaze locked on her upturned face. He took a deep breath as he fought the panic threatening to take him over. Having men and women under his command who knew the score and had been trained for evasive maneuvers was one thing; dealing with an innocent in a situation like this was another.
Allie hadn’t even disabled the tracking beacon on the phone, which meant that whoever knew about her had been able to track her position with ease. Hell, she hadn’t even realized there was a beacon on the thing. She was definitely no spook.
And he was now responsible for the beautiful woman with the kick-me-in-the-nuts eyes.
“What that means, princess, is that whoever gave you the phone has the ability to track your whereabouts.”
Still, knowledge was slow to dawn.
He sighed. “How the hell do you think Boko Haram found you?”
She shrugged her delicate shoulders, which pressed her rounded breasts against the T-shirt he’d given her. The hardened tips mocked him. King cursed.
“Goddamn it, Allie, if your father could track you, so could anyone else who has the ability to hack into a computer system. Don’t you realize that nothing—hell, nowhere—is truly safe anymore?”
“You’re guessing with no facts. Nobody even knows I’m his daughter—” She clapped a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes.
He heard her words, but the sound of a vehicle pulling up the road in front of the house drew his attention from her to the outside.
“Expecting company?” she asked.
Her tone was hopeful, but the tremble at the end told King she realized they were being hunted now.
“Not this fast. But then I verified you had a sat phone embedded with a tracker and, well, company arriving sooner than anticipated became pretty fuckin’ inevitable,” he said as he moved to the front room and looked out the window.
A single shot broke through the small, foggy glass insert in the door, hitting the wall behind him with a solid thud. Glass cut his cheek, the sting small and inconsequential. “Get down!” he yelled.
He pulled his Kimber pistol from his waistband and took aim. At least six men were pouring from the back of a Land Rover near the gate at the front of the house. Two more got out of the front. King aimed and fired off four shots, taking out the four lead men.
One man dove behind the Rover but continued to pepper the house with shots. Another tracked to the back of the small house. King waited, patience his only claim to virtue, and was able to pick off one more before a muffled scream from the other room had him turning and diving through the doorway. He rolled and came to his feet, weapon trained on the area where Allie had been sitting.
What met his eyes had his blood freezing.
“Kadar says if you give us the woman, we are to let you go,” said the man holding Allie by the hair and pressing a snub-nosed revolver to her temple. “He no want Endgame problems.”
King lowered his weapon as he stood casually and circled to the other side of the room. This put ten feet between him and the man holding Allie. He didn’t look at her face, too afraid her fear, or her bravery, would sway his focus. He needed his control right now. “How about this,” he began. “How about you go back and tell Kadar he can shove his offer up his ass, and that because you let her stay with me, I let you live.”
Sweat poured down the other man’s face, and his smell could have knocked a horse down at fifty paces. His eyes were big and round, dominating a painfully thin face. His hands shook like a junkie needing a fix. None of that was good. The man wouldn’t kill her on purpose, but by accident would leave her no less dead.
The grip he had on her arm had to be painful. King made a mental note to make him suffer for the bruises he was surely leaving on her skin. The men at the Rover must’ve realized King’s attention was divided and were about to break through the door, so his wish would go ungranted. Sadly, this would be a quick kill.
“I go back without her, I’m dead anyway,” the man stammered.
King nodded his head. “I thought you’d say that,” he murmured.
His gaze narrowed to the spot between the man’s eyebrows. One breath, and he tracked the drop of sweat from the man’s hairline down his cheek. Two breaths, and King let his weapon become an extension of his hand.
Between his third breath and the next, he raised his hand and took a single shot.
The man fell back, dead instantly. Allie fell forward to her knees, grunted, and pushed up immediately before reaching for the dead man’s weapon.
“How many rounds?” King asked as he pulled his backup weapon from his boot.
“It’s not loaded,” she replied mournfully, glancing at him, alarm riding her gaze.
“What the hell is up with these dudes?” He handed her his backup Kimber. “You know how to use this?”
She nodded, the motion jerky. His heart beat slow and hard as the urge to comfort her nearly overrode his need to protect her. This woman was dangerous—so very dangerous to his well-being.
“Good. There’s a single room in the back. Get there now. You meet anybody on the way, use that.” He glanced at her, adrenaline flooding his body, making his hearing and his sight sharper. Someone kicked repeatedly at the front door. They’d tried shooting the lock, but it was reinforced and hadn’t broken under repeated attempts.
She didn’t move.
“Now, Allie. You wanna live, right? Get to the room,” King demanded, and something in his tone must have gotten through because she took off.
The door was about to give, leaving him a second to thank whoever was watching over them that Allie had vacated the room. King breathed through his bloodlust and rage. How dare they touch her? How dare anyone try to take her? His emotions were amped up by combat, but in the back of his mind, he acknowledged she’d gotten into a place inside him he’d never known existed. And she’d done it pretty fast.
The door finally crashed in and King fired a shot, felling the man where he stood. He turned and glanced down the hallway before he stepped back into the main room. There’d been eight men total. Seven were dead, and one remained unaccounted for. More were heading their way, he was sure.
He waited, allowing a smile to curve his lips when he heard heavy breaths and footsteps from the direction of the kitchen area. One more shot, one more kill, and King was moving.
He took the same path to the back room that Allie had. Once he entered, he locked and bolted the steel-reinforced door, closing them in and ensuring them an opportunity to get away.
Each Endgame Ops safe house had a war room. Filled with untraceable weaponry and electronics, the room was safeguarded by a retinal scanner and came with a getaway tunnel and a self-destruct mechanism.
“I hear another vehicle coming down the road,” Allie whispered.
“Damn it,” he ground out. He should have heard it.
King placed his eye at the scanner as his mind moved at Mach 1, concocting scenarios for escape and then discarding them just as quickly. He’d have to kill the men pulling up, blow this house to smithereens, and then haul ass out of this death zone. They’d have at least two miles to travel on foot before they could reach the backup vehicle he’d stowed two weeks ago.
In the game of war, nothing was ever fail-safe. He’d trained his men to plan for every eventuality. King had set this operation up himself. They’d received intel eight months ago that Savidge had a courier based in Cameroon. If King had found the courier, he and the courier would already be in that backup vehicle, heading toward the seaside resort port of Kribi.
Once the scan registered, another room opened up, and King turned to Allie. “Anybody comes in here, shoot to kill. Give me two minutes to gather everything we need, and then we’ll head out.”
“They can get in?”
He kept his gaze forward. If he looked at her, he’d feel the need to comfort her, and they didn’t have time for that. “That’s a steel-reinforced door, and these windows are bulletproof. But you should always be ready for anything. I’ve seen you knock a dude out with your head, and I watched you cock that gun like a pro. I think you’ve got this.”
When she didn’t respond, he entered the war room, walking to the far wall. He lifted a shelf that turned over before collapsing into the wall and presenting a control pad. A moment later, a small door in the floor rolled back, revealing an abandoned irrigation tunnel. Dust filtered into the war room as King fit rounds of firepower into a knapsack. He’d been a sniper by trade as a SEAL. It had been mandatory that every Endgame Ops safe house have his preferred sniper weapon of choice, the M110 SASS with AN/PVS-10 Sniper Night Sight. His SEAL teammates had always teased him for using an army-preferred weapon, but those rifles killed really well.
And at the end of the day, that’s what a sniper needed. A killer weapon.
He found the single M110 and broke it down, stuffing the parts into a different knapsack before strapping both packs to his back. He pulled another bag from a compartment and loaded it with protein bars, a first-aid kit, two changes of clothes, and rounds for the SIG Sauer P226 he was about to give her. It was a 9mm with a little less recoil than his Kimber and something she should be able to handle effectively.
“Get in here,” he said.
He smelled her before he saw her from the corner of his eye. He closed his eyes and inhaled. Wildflowers—the scent reminded him of the field behind the trailer where he’d grown up. King shook his head, silently berating himself before he pulled out a headlamp and dropped to the floor beside the hole. He leaned over and shone the light into the opening, searching for any signs of occupation or recent activity and finding nothing but spiderwebs and dirt. The tunnel had been built with the original structure years ago. The idea had been to fill the tunnel with water so the surrounding groves would have water in the dry seasons. Endgame had taken advantage of the existing tunnel and created an escape route by blocking the exterior water access. They had also shored up the tunnel with wood planks.
King stood, grabbed the backpack, and held it out for her. “Strap this on.”
She didn’t hesitate, but she was trembling. He couldn’t stand the thought of her fear.
“They’re coming, but it will take an act of God or some serious luck for them to get in before we’re long gone,” he said calmly.
She glanced up, her gaze skewering him to the spot. Damn, what she did to him with those eyes.
“See that?” He pointed to the hole in the floor.
She nodded.
“That’s how we’re leaving.”
“Of course it is,” she mused as she glanced down. “A dark hole in the ground with creepy, crawly animals and—” She looked up at him again. “Who are you?”
A loud bang sounded from beyond the door, and adrenaline pounded through his bloodstream. He took his backup piece from her, strapped it in his thigh holster, and handed her the SIG.
“No time for chitchat. Safety’s on. Put this in your waistband. I need you to get down that ladder and move to the side,” he ordered.
She stood there, staring at him, lip trembling and calling to everything protective inside him. He did not need this. Not right now. Hell, not ever.
Another bang rocked the small house, followed by the sound of something large battering the door.
“Need to move now, Allie. We gotta get gone,” he informed her as he bolted the door to the war room and set the timer on the explosives under the floors of every room in the house.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“No time. Get in the hole.”
Finally, thank Christ, she started down the ladder.
“There’re spiders and…stuff down here.”
“Stop being a baby and move, woman!”
She cursed—a really raunchy one that had his lips tugging up. He set his watch, pulled his headlamp down, sealed the trapdoor, and started after her.
“We have about two minutes before this entire tunnel is blown to hell and back. A hundred meters in front of us is a steel door. We need to be beyond that point before everything goes bang.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him. She kept up, and he was grateful she did when his watch beeped. They had ten seconds to get beyond the door that was finally in sight. “Move your ass, Allie,” he urged.
He tugged her through the small doorway, pushed her to continue running, and bolted the steel door.
The concussion of the bomb exploding knocked King off his feet. He heard her coughing as dust flew. Clumps of dirt fell between the wooden beams above them, and smoke poured in past the door. “Run!”
In the light from his lamp, he saw her get to her feet and take off like a rocket. They had another hundred meters to go. He overtook her, once again grabbing her hand and pulling her behind him. She didn’t fall, didn’t falter, and basically held her own until he came to a set of wooden steps.
King handed her the rucksack and shrugged off his backpack as he took his Kimber from his waistband. “Stay here,” he told her as he started up the steps.
The door opened into a plantain grove, but there was no telling how much cover they’d have once they exited. Water leaked from the slats of the door above them, forming puddles over the dirt floor. Some drops clung to the thick mat of webs hanging in the corners. In the light of his headlamp, they reminded King of shiny diamonds. He flicked off the light, not wanting any hint of their presence to disturb the field above them. Darkness fell like a hot, smothering blanket.
He hoped the men following them wouldn’t see them fleeing. Maybe he’d get lucky and they’d be too busy dealing with the aftermath of the explosion. It wouldn’t stop the bastards, but it’d sure as hell slow them down.
He stopped and turned to her. “You ready?”
He couldn’t see her in the darkness, but knew she nodded. There was that scent again—wildflowers and some indefinable essence that King recognized was all Allie. He licked his lips, her taste a memory there but also a growing need in his blood.
“Cat got your tongue?”
She made a choking sound, and he didn’t know if she was laughing or crying.
“Better let him keep it,” he mused.
He continued up the stairs, made it to the top, and started to push open the door, but her voice stopped him. “Why’s that?” she asked, and her husky tone made his knees weak.
“Why’s what?”
“Better let the cat keep my tongue…”
He couldn’t see her in the darkness, which was probably a good thing. “Well now, darlin’, better the cat than me,” he teased before he pushed the door open to freedom.