No Stranger to Danger (6 page)

Taj
gained his feet first, and Logan gave him a punch that sent him sprawling back into the metal cart he'd put the battery on. The clatter of metal hitting the stone floor filled the small room.
Taj
was out cold and didn’t move, but Conyers scrambled to stand and Logan kicked him in the face and then stepped over him, coming at the two men with Mara.

Both looked ready to shit themselves.

Mara screamed as one pulled her to the side and the other ran at Logan. Logan stooped under the man, lifted him up, and tossed him across the room into a wall. The man slid limply to the floor.

The last haji let go of Mara, and Logan only had to reach out and catch him by the throat as he darted toward the door. He was a small man, and Logan lifted him, squeezing as he brought him to eye level. The man gurgled and squirmed, but after a moment went lax. The man's face was a reddish purple when he at last gave up and went out.

Logan grunted in agony and exertion as he dropped the Arab to the floor. He let himself stumble back into the wall and rested for only a moment before he lifted his gaze to Mara.

"Nice to see you, honey," he rasped.

She gave him a killing look and came forward, tears leaking down her cheeks. She tossed aside a brick he hadn't noticed she'd been holding and slammed her fists into his chest.

Logan grabbed the wall for balance, his head swirling and vision going in and out. He winced, tenderly touching his side where
Taj
had touched the battery cables and grit his teeth to silence his groan. Everything hurt.

But he had felt pain before.

No pain, no gain.

"What have you done?" Mara cried "Why in the hell have I been kidnapped from my home and brought here?" Her chest racked with sobs, and Logan reached out to take her in his arms.

The bittersweet of holding her once again made up for all the pain he had endured—and possibly for what he was about to put her through.

Mara pushed him back with condemning fire in her eyes. "Why?"

Logan let out a hard sigh, his stare falling to the floor where she'd dropped the brick. What she may have thought to do with it startled him a moment. Unprepared to answer her, Logan looked around them at the unconscious, but not dead, tangle of bodies littering the small room. "That's a long story for later. Come, we have to get out of here," he said taking her hand.

Mara jerked back. "I'm not going anywhere with
you
."

Logan stilled and frowned at her. "Do you even know where you are?" At her sudden look of uncertainty, he realized she probably didn’t. She had probably been just as drugged as him and thought she was still in the US. He snorted at that. "You are nowhere safe, trust me." He took her by the arm and turned them toward the door.

"Well, where are we?" she asked on a whisper, wiping the tears from her face as Logan leaned toward the door to listen.

He pulled back at her question and looked over his shoulder at her. He hadn’t seen her in five years, but she was still the same Mara he remembered. Girl-next-door knockout sexy, two-fisted, and—he briefly glanced around her side at the brick again—too bellicose for her own good.

A little five-foot-one woman had no business raising a brick to one of Conyers's monsters. His stare glided to the bluish bruise on her cheek and the cut on her lip. There was little guessing as to
why
she had gotten those.

A savage desire to rip out Raven's throat stirred in his chest.

He had to get out them of here though, and there was not a second to waste. Conyers and his henchmen would be waking up soon, and Logan was reluctant to shoot them for the noise it would make. If they were indeed in
Sha
Amud's
villa, as he suspected, there would no doubt be other guards around.

Logan crossed back over the room, pulled Taj's weapon from the man's leg holster, and pulled the slide back.

"They took my M-9. That pisses me off," he said.

Mara narrowed her eyes at him, incredulous. Her fearful gaze emboldened his resolve.

Logan went back to her and cupped the side of her face. "Stay with me, and I will get us out of here."

She started to shake her head, but switched to a nod.

Logan smoothed his thumb over the bruise on her cheek, and his eyes fell to her mouth for the briefest moment before he moved to the door and paused there. He bent to listen for any movement on the other side. Something tapped wildly, but in no certain rhythm.

Logan frowned, taking a breath and preparing himself, then pushed Mara to the side of the door, out of the way. He motioned for her to stay put and then silently turned the knob. Logan threw the door open, looking left toward the origin of the noise.

The man guarding the room came to his feet in surprise. He had earphones in and stopped lip-syncing at the same time he came to his feet. Choosing not to shoot, Logan slammed the M-9 against the haji's head. The guard's eyes rolled back, and his legs went limp. Logan reached out to slowly, quietly lower the body to the floor, resting the guard's back against the wall of the dim tunnel-like passage.

Logan glanced behind to see
Taj
beginning to stir.

He didn’t pause a second more, reaching inside to take Mara by the wrist and hauling her behind him.

He looked ahead through the basement to the stairwell.

There
was
only one imperative: Save Mara and get the intel into the right hands.

And there was only one available set of hands with the connections and skill that came to mind—those of
Connar
MacKall
.

Chapter Six

2130 hours, Sunday

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Mara did not know whether to cry, scream, or throw her arms around Logan and hug him for saving their lives—it was one of those or hit him in the face.

She took him in all at once as he pulled them to a stop at the corner of the dark passage, his arm around her waist, hugging her close to his side. Either to keep her safe or to stabilize himself, she was not sure.

He looked like death embodied. Tall, rugged, and strong as last she remembered him, but… Looking on him, Mara winced.

"What the hell happened to you?" she asked, though the words came out less than caring after their less than normal parting. "Where have you been?"Abrasions marred his head and wrists, bruises discolored his arms, and his tactical clothing had been ripped and bloodied. She hadn’t seen him in five years, but there stood the hard, lean soldier who had left on a mission to Afghanistan and never returned.

The son of a bitch had sent her divorce papers in the
mail
. Their marriage had been terminated and swept under a JAG lawyer's rug faster than she could take a breath. She blinked back her fury and pain and looked down the empty stone corridor with only orangey lights affixed to the top every ten yards or so, cords running between them.

Where in the hell am I?
she wondered as they moved again.

"What is all this?" Mara asked, scowling as she turned to look at the surroundings. She stopped behind Logan at the end of a passage, still under the villa the man had dragged her into an hour before, only two corridors away from the basement room they had meant to kill them in.

They
being the scary men she didn’t know, somehow connected with the equally scary man who had attacked and kidnapped her from her home days before—and
they
were connected with her ex-husband.

Logan didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge her whispered questions other than to hold up a finger to silence her.

Exasperated, Mara crossed her arms and waited. Logan turned back to her, briefly glancing over her shoulder, ascertaining that no threat was behind them. He motioned her to stay put, and she gave him a shaky nod.

He slipped around the corner, and after a moment, she heard a scuffle of feet and the beginnings of a shout, but then the sound died off and she heard a
thump
as though something heavy hit the cement floor. Mara instantly slipped to the corner and began to look around, but stuck her head into Logan's chest.

She gasped at the contact and jerked back, reaffixing her scowl.

"Come on," he said. "There's an exit that way." He pointed to where he had come from.

Mara followed him, staying well behind his back, and went up a short stack of stairs. It wasn’t until she came around the corner to a short landing that she noticed the two bodies sprawled together in front of the exit Logan had spoken of. She allowed him to drag her along by the elbow and carefully tiptoed over the bodies. She stepped in the hole where the unconscious man's arm curved out at his side, and again stepped in the space between tangled legs. A quiver ran up her as she stopped beside Logan, glancing between him and the men.

Logan eased the door open just a bit and peeked out. Mara watched behind them until she felt his tug on her arm, and she followed him outside into the inky dark.

Quietly and swiftly they made their way around the corner of the sandstone villa, stopping short only for the circle of illumination cast by a security light before they came to the back side. Logan scanned the area, assuring that it was safe. When they were clear, he pulled her with him, blocking her against the building with his body.

Mara peeked over Logan's shoulder. In the back of the main house was a barren yard with a large metal building set far back. There were leafy shade trees planted around a large fountain set between them and the other building.

"What are we doing?" Mara whispered.

"Not sure yet." He motioned her to follow to a tree, and when they came to it, he pulled her against his chest.

Mara immediately balked, but they were on the move again, coming closer to the other building. Tree to shadow to another tree, they made their way over. Logan eased down on his haunches as they came to a stop in the last shadow before a floodlight, at the corner of the building, and Mara sank down behind him. He held the gun he had taken from the man in the room and gripped it tightly.

Mara bit her lip. Two men stood in front of the building's doors.

"Okay," Logan whispered. He turned on his heel toward her, his gold-blond hair falling in front of his eyes before he raked it back. "Stay here, wait for my signal."

She looked at him dumbly a moment.
Stay? Here?
She glanced around her. "What do I do if someone comes?" she whispered urgently, grabbing his arm as he started to move away.

"Then you pick up one of those rocks—" he indicated the large rocks arranged as a boarder around a tree "—and do what you were going to do before with that brick."

"
Wa
—"
Wait
trailed off as Logan disappeared into the shadows. She didn’t see him for a moment, but a second later spotted him again about twenty-yards from the building and two men.

And then he walked out into the bright illumination.

Mara gasped.

The guards sprang at him, but Logan lifted the gun and put a bullet in each of them. Their bodies dropped backwards into the sandy dirt.

Mara clamped her hand to her mouth and stared shell-shocked at the scene.

Oh … shit!

Logan went for the wide doors and gave one a shove. It slid inwards on rollers against the inner wall, and he ducked his head inside. She waited on tenterhooks until he looked back to her, motioning with a wave of his arm for her to come to him.

Mara looked around her before she stood, and with shaking legs, she ran to him as fast as she could barefoot and in what was left of her evening dress. He pulled her inside the building by her arm and shut the door with a bang, securing a lock.

The only light to see by was the dim glow of security lights. Mara looked up and caught the red blink of a security camera turning their way.

"Logan," she said and tugged his arm, pointing.

"Shit," he breathed. "Come on."

He let go of her to hurry ahead, and Mara followed behind him, but promptly skidded to a halt when she saw the small, white plane. Her mouth fell open as Logan pulled the door open and vaulted himself into the pilot's seat.

"We don’t got a lot of time, Mara. Get in," he called from the door.

"
Oh God
," she breathed.
No, no, no.
She despised flying, and she especially despised it when her ex-husband was behind the controllers.

Shouts coming from outside the building prodded her into a run. Mara glanced at the door as it began to rattle and then hurried to the other side.
 
She jumped to grab the handle, yanked it, and began to fumble with the door as it waved in front of her. She caught the glossy metal in her hand and pushed the small door all the way open, grasped upward for anything to pull herself up with as the engine started to wind up in a
whoosh-whoosh
sound.

She grabbed hold of the seat and pulled herself in, her belly dragging over the floorboards until she could bring her knee up to push herself up the rest of the way. Logan reached over and took her by the arm as she struggled into the seat. Mara turned and sat, her eyes gliding over the control panel as Logan flipped switches.

She shook her head in disbelief. Surely this was a dream. Mara turned to him fully. "It has been five damn long years, Logan. Mind telling me, now that we can talk without whispering, why the hell I am here and what this is all about?"

"We're in a little trouble, if you can't tell." He glanced up at her, his stare raking up her legs, over her body to her eyes. "Maybe we should hold this conversation for later?"

Mara tossed herself back in the seat as the plane started moving, and she gripped the leather sides, her heart thumping a little faster—as though the little situation she had just left was nothing now that she was seated in a plane Logan intended to fly.

"There isn’t a
we
anymore.
You
may be in trouble, but that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with me. This—" she stopped to waved her hands animatedly around her "—is your life. You wanted it that way, remember?"

"Do you seriously think that you aren’t in this now, too?" He cut her a look of annoyance.

She turned on him, narrowing her gaze.

Logan sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever." Meaning,
fuck you
.

"The man who had you taken is named John Conyers, and I took something he wants back very badly. He is an extremely bad, dangerous man, Mara, and he will use anything he can against me to keep me from telling his secrets—which is why he brought you here. He wants me dead ‘cause I've caused a colossal hitch in his plans for the US."

"I thought you swore to me you would keep me out of your secret life! How does this man even know about me?" she yelled over the rising motor sounds.

Logan started, but sighed and clamped his teeth, raking a hand through his hair. "He found a photo of you," he called as he turned the plane to leave the building.

A spray of bullets pinged the side of the plane, and Mara screamed, ducking to cover her head as Logan turned the aircraft in a small semi-circle. She dared to peek up over the dash, to see them headed toward the open back of the building that led out onto a short runway she wouldn’t have suspected was there.

They began moving faster.

Another
plunking
of bullets hit the plane, and Mara ducked back down.

She cocked her head to the side, still bent in her lap and glared harder in disbelief. "A
photo
?" She slightly shook her head once side to side. "Where'd he get it?" she yelled over the roar of the engine.

"That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we get the intel I have into the right hands ASAP. To do that, we have to stay alive."

Mara reared back. "We?" She gave him a short laugh. "Not only no, Logan, but a resounding
hell
no. Are you
effin
' kidding me? Take me the hell back home!"

"We are less than a thousand
klicks
north of an active warzone and you think I can just snap my fingers and take you home? No, darling, you're stuck with me 'til it's safe to go back home."

Mara's face fell. Everything inside her fell, too. An active warzone? She stopped to look around them as they left the building, and the mountains in the distance surely weren’t the Smoky Mountains. She scanned the dim horizon and then looked at her ex-husband.

"You got me into this shit, Logan. Somehow, someway, and you are going to get me out of it. It is apparent I am no safer with you than I am at home."

"Just shut up for now, damn it," he yelled. The plane built up speed as they left the backside of the building, bullets pinging into the back of the plane again.

"Whose plane is this?"

"
Sha
Amud's
," Logan said. He turned to face her as Mara felt the plane begin to lift up and he shrugged. "Just some terrorist trying to destroy America. Dime-a-dozen type of guy."

Mara stared at him a moment. "I'm going to be sick," she said, more to herself than to Logan, and gripped the dash as if her life depended on it. "Have you ever flown a plane?"