Aegis Security 03 - Extreme Measures (3 page)

Fake,
he reminded himself. Whatever he
thought
they’d shared was nothing more than a lie. Just as she was nothing more than a traitor. The lone woman responsible for Humbolt’s death and all the shit he’d been through during the last year.

The red rage of revenge swirled behind his eyes. He pushed to his feet, tossed his paper cup in a trashcan at the edge of the building, and then stuffed his hands into his pockets and headed toward her.

He’d made it half a block before the van exploded into a thousand pieces and a fireball engulfed the street.

The explosion knocked him back to the ground. His head hit the concrete with a crack. Around him, screams and panic rose up to join the smoke and debris raining down. He coughed, rolled to his side, and pushed up to his feet, gritting his teeth at the pain reigniting in his thigh. He’d lost his sunglasses in the chaos, but he barely noticed. All he could focus on was Eve. He wasn’t losing her. Not this time. Not when he was so close.

Squinting to see through the smoke, he searched the sea of running bodies. And caught sight of her on the ground, fifty yards away.

Panic closed in. Panic that she was already dead. That he wouldn’t get the revenge that had been driving him. That she’d never have to pay for what she’d done.

He pushed his way through the crowd. Screams and sirens echoed in his ears, and burning smoke filled his lungs. The heat of the flames singed the hair on his arms as he drew close to the point of impact. Someone knocked into his shoulder, sending him spinning. He stepped on a chunk of cement with his bad leg and nearly went down. Blinding pain shot to his skull, but he pressed on, pulling his T-shirt up over his mouth to stop the smoke from pouring into his lungs.

He felt like he’d been dropped into a war zone. When he finally reached Eve, she lay motionless on the ground, covered in a layer of dust and bleeding from multiple scrapes and cuts across her skin.

He knelt at her side, leaned in close, and listened for her breathing. Hoping, praying.

There!

She wasn’t dead. He checked her body and found—luckily—that the wounds weren’t life threatening. She’d have a hell of a headache when she awoke, and a few of her cuts needed stitching, but she wasn’t dead, just unconscious. Relief rippled through him. Relief and a pressing reminder that they needed to get the hell out of there before the situation changed. Glancing around, he spotted her bag five feet away, covered in soot. He reached for it, then hefted her into his arms.

She was dead weight as he carried her past rescue vehicles now flooding the street, past police and fire crews racing to the devastation. The burn in his leg flamed all over. A paramedic called out to him, motioning for him to bring her to him. Zane ignored the guy and darted behind a burning car lying on its side.

He didn’t doubt the explosion had been for her. As he shifted direction and headed down a side street for the waterfront where he’d parked earlier, he ground his teeth together. Someone was obviously sending her a message. But then, what the hell did she expect after dealing with terrorists and selling out her country? He’d caught her red-handed, and even that hadn’t stopped her. The woman should have known it was only a matter of time before her actions caught up with her and someone put a hit out on her.

Someone besides him.

E
very inch of Eve’s body hurt. She tried to roll to her side but couldn’t. A moan echoed somewhere close. A moan, she realized, that had come from her.

“You’re finally awake.”

Eve stilled at the sound of the voice somewhere close. She tried to pry her eyelids open, but they weren’t working. And doing even just that made her whimper in pain.

Something soft brushed her forehead. A haze had descended on her brain. She couldn’t place the voice, but she recognized it. And she still couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move?

“Don’t try to get up, beautiful. Wouldn’t want you hurting yourself so early now, would we?”

Little by little, her brain came back on line. The haze slowly dissipated, clearing from her mind in wisps and curls. She gathered her energy and was finally able to break her eyelids apart. Pain radiated through her skull, but she focused on the fuzzy orange light ahead. Tried to see through it.

“Always were an overachiever,” the male voice said. “Guess that hasn’t changed.”

Who was he? Why couldn’t she answer him? And why weren’t her arms and legs working? She struggled. Managed to move her foot, just a fraction of an inch, but at least it was something. Footsteps echoed, fading in the distance. Eve stilled, squinted to see more clearly. A dark shape seemed to move somewhere ahead. Then the shape grew larger, and the sound of footsteps increased in intensity.

“Here,” he said. “Drink this.”

A straw pressed against her mouth. Her throat suddenly dry, Eve drew the straw between her lips and sucked.

Juice. Apple.

She moaned at the taste. Sucked again. God, that was good.

The straw was pulled from between her lips before she was ready to let it go. A click echoed as the cup was set down. Eve rolled her head from side to side. Her neck was moving now. And the orange blur was sharpening. The dark shadow in front of her becoming clearer.

“That’s it,” the man said, his voice closer, the heat of his breath sliding over her cheeks. Mint and musk. Those were the scents that bombarded her. Familiar scents. She just didn’t know from where. “You’ve been out for quite a while. Thought maybe I’d been wrong and that I should have taken you to a hospital. Glad to see now that I wasn’t. A hospital would just cause all kinds of problems we don’t need.”

Eve stilled at the bite she heard in his last words. A bite that indicated he was not friendly.

Dread curled in her stomach. She didn’t know where she was, but she needed to get away. Basic instinct told her staying would lead to something bad.

She tried to reach for her gun, only her arms weren’t working. Her legs, yes. Her head, yes. But not her arms. Why weren’t her arms working?

“It amazes me you were this careless, beautiful.” Fingers brushed over her temple, pushing hair back from her face. “After all, you trained with the best, didn’t you?”

Everything inside Eve went cold. Those words were familiar. She tried to focus the blur into a single image. Could only see dark hair, dark eyes, and a fuzzy face. Tried to remember where she’d heard those words before.

“Of course,” he went on, “you don’t work with the best anymore, do you, Juliet? Should I even call you Juliet anymore? No, why don’t I call you by your real name? What do you think, Evie? Think that’ll work? Yeah, I think it will. I think for what I’ve got planned for you, tossing out all the old shit is the best way to go.”

Eve’s pulse shot into the stratosphere. Her hazy vision cleared just as the sound of his voice registered. She sucked in a breath when Sawyer’s—no, Zane Archer’s—face came into view. A tanned, scraped, and extremely pissed Zane Archer.

“You,” she managed in a raspy voice. “How . . . ?”

“How is irrelevant, isn’t it?” His brow lowered, and a dark look crept into his eyes. “What you should be concerned with is the why. But then, you know the why, don’t you, Evie?”

Memories of her phone call to Zane nearly a year before spiraled through her mind. As did the weeks and months they’d spent together on that op in Beirut.

“Some of it’s coming back to you now, isn’t it?” He eased away. Behind him, dark wood beams came into sight. “I have to run out for something. I’ll let you think long and hard until I get back.”

He leaned close again, and she sucked in a breath. Something sharp stabbed into her arm where it was pinned above her head. Metal jingled. His fingers rubbed the stinging spot on her arm, and then his face came into view once more. “This should work pretty quickly.” Before she could turn her head, he slapped duct tape over her mouth. “I’ll be back in a few, beautiful. Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

Footsteps echoed. Keys clinked, followed by clicks. Three.

A door pulled open but didn’t close.

“By the way, sweetheart,” Archer said from a distance, “you look good. Better than I expected. Even banged up, you’re still beautiful. My damn luck, huh?”

The door snapped closed, the sound echoing in Eve’s mind, followed by three clicks again as she was locked in. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here or why she was with Archer, but something in the back of her head told her she needed to remember before it was too late.

She struggled, tried to sit up, still couldn’t. Metal clanked behind her head. Pain raced along her wrists. Her hands were cuffed above, she realized, and . . .

Her vision grew dark along the edges. The wood beams above blurred once more. Her heart raced as she drew deep breaths through her nose and tried to calm herself. He’d drugged her. The son of a bitch had drugged her.

Pay attention to your surroundings. Think, dammit.

She was lying on a bed. The room was big. She could tell from the way sound echoed that it was larger than a regular apartment and that there were no carpets on the floor. Was she in a barn? A loft apartment, maybe? A warehouse?

Before she could decide, darkness spiraled in, and that fuzzy, light feeling that signaled her time was almost up fogged her brain.

She had no idea where she was, but one thing was clear. If Archer was here, it was someplace she shouldn’t—
couldn’t
—be. Her stomach twisted, hard. Considering how much he hated her, she’d be safer with a group of jihad terrorists than she was now with him.

Zane wanted to give the drug time to work. And he needed to get away from Juliet—
shit
, he had to stop thinking of her as that and call her by her real name—before he forgot what the hell he needed to do next.

Evelyn. Eve. Fitting name considering a temptress with the same name had been Adam’s downfall in the Garden of Eden.

His leg throbbed as he leaned against the dreary hallway wall, tugged a bag of M&M’s from his pocket, and ripped off one corner. Shaking a few into his hand, he popped them in his mouth and chewed. Not the pain pill he wanted, but enough. For now. And at least out here he didn’t have to listen to those sex-kitten mewing sounds she’d been making when she’d awakened. The ones that reminded him way too much of the sounds she’d made when he’d been inside her. God knew, the last thing he needed to remember right now was how good that had felt. How tight she’d been. How—back then—she’d been the only thing he’d wanted.

The familiar anger he’d lived with the last year rippled through his veins. He shoved the bag back in his pocket and chewed. Man, he’d been a class-A pussy back then, hadn’t he? He’d fallen for her ruse like a teenager ramped up on hormones. Even with all the training and instruction and the knowledge that he shouldn’t trust anyone. He just hadn’t expected the “anyone” to include his colleagues in the CIA, living in his own fucking house.

His phone rang, and he pulled it from his back pocket without looking at the screen, hit Answer, and pressed it to his ear.

“Archer?” a familiar voice said. “Is that you, you dumb shit?”

Fuck.
Zane tipped the receiver away from his mouth and rubbed his aching forehead. If not bothering to check his cell screen before answering wasn’t proof Eve was fucking with his head again, nothing was.

He was just about to quietly end the call when Jake Ryder added, “Are you in Seattle, you moron? I’m staring at a news report right now that’s got your name written all over it. Goddammit, Archer. Fourteen injured? Are you fucking insane?”

Zane’s temper flared. Of course Ryder, his ex-boss—although technically the guy wasn’t an ex anything since he’d refused to accept Zane’s resignation from Aegis six months ago—would assume he’d had something to do with that little explosion.

“I’m sorry,” Zane said, working not to clench his teeth, “but the party you’re trying to reach is unavailable.
Adiós
.”

“Archer, you son of a bitch, don’t you dare hang up on—”

Zane hit End, powered down the phone, and shoved it back in his pocket. Fuck Ryder and his intel. Fuck Ryder telling him not to go after Eve in retaliation for what she’d done to their team in Guatemala. To Ryder it wasn’t personal. To Zane it was everything.

He checked his watch, knew he needed to give the drugs a few more minutes to work, and moved over to the dirt-streaked window at the end of the corridor. It looked out over the construction site of a waterfront warehouse next door. Thirty feet separated this building from the naked beams of the next, and a tower crane between the two loomed above like an ominous threat. Zane leaned forward and glanced to the end of the building, toward the parking lot beyond, and noticed a man dressed in black, looking from one building to the next as if searching for something. Or someone.

Zane’s already tightly strung nerves kicked up a notch. His spine stiffened as he watched the man take three steps into the construction chaos, look up and around again, pause for several seconds, and then jog back to the street and disappear from sight.

One of Eve’s lowlife partners? The terrorists she’d pissed off who’d blown up that street? Or just a dumbass schmuck who didn’t realize what the hell was going down around him?

Zane waited to see if the dipshit returned, the SIG Sauer cool and heavy where it was holstered at his lower back. When several minutes passed and the guy didn’t return, Zane told himself to stop being so jumpy.

Jumpy, however, had saved his life on more than one occasion, so he didn’t push the incident totally from his mind. He remembered the look of the man. And the location of the crane. And the fire escape on this building. And the empty floors of the one next door.

He headed back down the hallway toward the loft he’d rented, slid the key into the first lock, and turned. It opened with a click. After repeating with the other two, he pushed the heavy steel door open and stepped back inside.

The building was used mostly for storage. This loft was nothing but a wide, empty room consisting of a handful of pillars holding the ceiling up and a bank of windows that gazed out to the parking lot. There was one small bathroom off to the right that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a year, and a table that held Eve’s gun and all the supplies he’d need. There was also a bed. A bed where Eve lay snoozing.

He crossed to the bare mattress and stared down at her. Her head was tipped to the side, resting against her updrawn arm, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling with her shallow breaths. Her face was bruised along one side, and small nicks and cuts marred her perfect complexion, but they didn’t take away from her beauty.

Man, he hated that she still got to him, but even he couldn’t deny the woman was gorgeous. The shoulder-length curly blonde hair wasn’t bad, but he missed the straight chestnut locks she’d had when they’d been together in Lebanon. Had loved to wrap the strands around his hand when they’d made love.

Fucked,
he corrected himself, that familiar sense of betrayal whipping through him the longer he stared at her. There’d been no love on her side. And on his . . . just a stupid-ass fool’s gullibility.

He unlocked the cuffs from the rusted bed frame and brought her arms down by her sides. Her breasts pushed against the dirty, white button-down blouse she wore as he slipped one arm under her back, and the familiar scent of peaches wafted to his nose.