No Stranger to Danger (7 page)

There was a pause.

"Only once. In a simulator." Logan pulled back on the controller, and the plane rocked as it lifted off the ground.

"In a simulator?" The words tumbled from her lips as she passed out.

****

It was hours later when Mara picked herself up out of her seat and looked around, at the clouds and morning light spilling through the glass. She blinked at the bright light and then self-consciously wiped at her face and palmed her hair before straightening in the seat to turn to Logan.

He glanced at her and grinned before he turned back to the controllers.

"How long was I out?" she asked over the hum of the plane.

"A while," he said, amused.

Mara glowered at him.

"
Aaand
, where are we going?" Her stomach gave a lurch, and she weakly pressed her face to the glass on the door and looked down. Below spanned sandy-orange desert that dipped and swelled, the open expanse dotted with the occasional palm. "
Where
are we?"

Logan looked at the gauges. "Well, I had planned to make it to Dakar and land just before there in a field or something."

"Dakar?" Her mind lurched now. She had heard of Dakar … where was Dakar? Her mind scrambled. The answer was in there somewhere.

Logan turned to her. "I'd say you look good, but…" He grimaced. "Are you all right?"

Mara looked down on herself and scowled. She looked a hot mess after being drugged and smuggled into another country. She had been threatened, hit, terrorized.

"Considering the circumstances, I'll put it this way—I'm still alive." She gave him a sharp look from under her lashes. "But, thanks. You look like shit, too, Logan."

She still couldn’t believe this was happening, that Logan was sitting beside her.

How was she supposed to feel right now?

Besides terrified.

Logan looked at the gages and turned to glance out the window, at the area below the plane. His brow drew tightly together, a frown forming and cracking the dried blood at the cut on his bottom lip.

Mara sucked in a breath.

"What now?" she asked.

He shook his head.

A
ding
sounded in the cabin, and Mara swiveled in her seat to look around with wide eyes. "What was that?"

"Fuel light. It's been doing that for a while." Logan looked down out the window again. "Guess here is good."

"What?" Mara asked, concerned. "Here's good for what?"

The engine clunked, and Logan winced.

"Maybe here was pushing it just a bit," he said.

"Oh, shit." Mara put a hand to her forehead, and as if on an afterthought, grappled to find a seatbelt. There wasn't one.

When her stomach began to rise into her throat at the free-fall feeling of plummeting to the earth in a plane, she started to scream. "Oh-my-God, oh-my-God, oh-my-God!"

"It's
gonna
be okay," Logan shouted to her as he pulled back on the controller. "Delta Force, remember?" He pointed to himself with his thumb.

Mara looked at him wildly. "In that simulator, did you practice crash landing?"

Logan shook his head and grinned. "Nope."

"
Oooh
," Mara whimpered and threw her head between her legs and puked.

Chapter Seven

0800 hours, Monday

Somewhere in the Sahara, between Timbuktu and
Mali

The last thing Mara remembered was puking her guts out. She blinked, looking at the sun from across whatever it was that she was lying on, something soft, gritty, and warm. She opened her eyes to dazedly watch as a scorpion scuttled across orange sand.

Sand?

"
Aagh
!" Mara lifted herself and scuttled, too, in the opposite direction of the black, eight-legged, pincher opened, and stinger readied three-inch long monster. She rolled, unsteadily coming up and gaining her feet as the creature wandered out of sight.

Mara stumbled before she tossed her hair back out of her face. "
Uugh
." She gave a shudder and began to brush at her dress and hair, sand falling from her as she assured herself there were no scorpions clinging to her anywhere. She sighed as she fingered the rip in her dress along the top of her right thigh. Suzanne was going to kill her. Mara lifted her hands to cup her breasts, pressing them in so she could look down the front of the bloodstained dress.

Mara did a little turn where she stood in the dip between dunes. "Logan! Where are you?" she called. A rush of wind scattered her hair, and she grabbed it to keep the wavy mass in place.

No answer.

"
Oooh
, no! He is dead! He has to be dead," she said to herself as she stumbled barefoot in the hot sand toward the plane a few yards away, leaning on one wing by a grouping of palms.

"Logan!" she shouted again, lifting a hand to cup her mouth.

The white plane had turned orange from the dust particles clinging to it in the open desert. The engine smoked, and a small plume rose into the hot air to disappear.

Mara held her hand up to shield her eyes.

What in the hell was she going to do if he was dead?

She was stuck in the middle of God-only-knew-where—

"Oh, shit," she breathed, and planted a hand to her chest in relief as Logan appeared from behind the tail of the aircraft. Mara took a breath and stomped forward, prepared to give him the earful she had been longing to give him for five years.

Mara trudged through the sand to him. "Are you crazy?" she yelled.

He lifted a brow at her. "A little."

"You could have killed us. What the hell are we going to do now?" Her eyes fell to the plane at Logan's back.

"So the landing was a bit rough," he said.

His charm didn’t amuse her in the least. "Logan," she said with warning. If he did not clarify a few points this very moment … she was on the edge of explosiveness.

Logan turned halfway around, nodding in the direction of a hill. "We got lucky. The
Azalai
salt-trade route is right over that dune and just so happens
Tuareg
traders are coming this way." He tilted a coconut up to his lips. The
shemagh
wrapped around his head covered the top of his head to his neck, but the rest of his face was slightly red already.

Mara glanced down at her arms. Her fair skin was starting to bake, too. She looked to the sky. It wasn’t even noon yet. Why in the hell did she ever have to meet this man? He had caused her nothing but grief.

She watched as his throat moved as he drank, followed the sweat that trickled down an unshaven jaw, down his neck, and bled into the black t-shirt clinging to his chest. Mara swallowed, her mouth falling open just a little.

God, she hated him.

Why did he have to look so damn hot?

Her eyes fell further down him, to the khaki tactical pants and the holster strapped around his thigh. Five years wasn’t long enough.

He lowered the coconut, and Mara looked away as he continued. "I spotted some men with camels about three
klicks
to the north coming our way." He shrugged. "Must be them. I don’t know of any other sons of bitches who would be out in the Sahara with a
bunch
of damn camels." He looked back toward the dune.

"
Klicks
," Mara mouthed. What the hell was a
klick
? She looked at him incredulously a moment. "
So
, we’re
 
going to steal camels now?" she asked with a bit of confusion. Mara scratched her head and turned toward the dune.

Logan scoffed and shook his head. "No. We’re going to ask for a ride in exchange for the drugs I found on the plane. If we’re lucky, they will take us as far as the next village. Coconut?" He handed a second one out toward her.

Mara snatched it, first checking to see that he had opened it for her. He had. She drank from the coarse shell, then tossed it to the side when it was empty. She tromped through the sand after Logan, her feet sinking and making her feel heavy and awkward as she followed her ex-husband to the top of the dune where he went down, going flat on his belly in the sand. She dropped beside him where he looked over the crest with binoculars, and glanced back to the plane.

"So what is the endgame here? We travel with these—" she gestured toward the man-dress wearing traders riding camels in the distance "—these people to where? Then we go back to the United States and turn over what you have on this Conyers guy and someone will swoop in and catch him?" She plunged her hand though the air, closing a fist.

Logan turned to look at her, one brow rising above the other as he shook his head. "Going to the US is the very last option for me right now. I have to get to Caracas. There's someone there who can help and wants to screw Conyers over just as badly as I do."

Mara looked at him confused a moment. "Where is your team? Shouldn't they be helping extract us from … this?" Whatever the hell
this
was, she still wasn’t sure.

"There is no team. There is me, and there's you," he said.

Mara opened her mouth, but shut it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, and, too, there was the strict policy Logan had always kept. He never really told her anything about what he did, because he couldn't.

"So Caracas, and then? And then what? What about me?" She shook her head and threw her hands into her hair. "
How
are we getting to Caracas? You mentioned Dakar. That’s in … in…" Her hands fell from her hair to come down her cheeks as her mind finally registered the answer. "We are in
Africa
!"

 
He looked at her a long moment, from her hair to her torn dress that rode up to mid-thigh in her sitting position. "Africa," he said and nodded, turning on his side toward her and running a hand up her arm. Gently, he smoothed a finger over the scab on the underside. Logan's brow pinched. "You are along for the ride until I can assure that you are safe, and that means that Conyers no longer has an interest in using you. And then, you go back to your life and I go back to mine."

There was a strange, uncomfortable moment for Mara as her stare locked with his.

A deep hollowness crept up on her and surprised her.

She had never expected to feel that deep, devoid pain again. Especially not because of Logan.

He had hurt her terribly. He had ripped her apart and left her to mend herself—and she had.

Mara jerked herself from his gentle touch and glowered at him, gaining a sharp look.

Logan cleared his throat and glanced away as he lifted himself from the ground. When he had gained his feet, he reached to help her back up. Reluctantly, she slipped her hand into his. When she came to her feet, he let go, and she began to dust herself off again.

Mara gasped at the whack on her bottom, and she swiveled on Logan to find him grinning now.

"Life was always more exciting with me, wasn’t it, sweetheart?" he said, his gaze falling down her.

Mara snorted at him and gritted her teeth as he walked back to the plane and lifted a white cloth sack, tossing it over his shoulder as he started to cross the dune in the direction of the camels.

"Don't think you're going to get out of this without answering a few questions, Logan
Cahil
. You left me." She couldn’t help it, but her voice quivered. She took a step after him. "You mailed me divorce papers without so much as an explanation. Now you expect me to trust you with my life?"

He stopped and turned back to her, hurt of his own shining in his troubled, dark blue eyes. "I know," he rasped. He looked across the desert and cleared his throat. "I can't help that you have no choice
but
to trust me. Now, you coming or not?"

Unfortunately, she really did have no other choice but to follow him.

If she did, she would definitely go for option B.

****

1800 hours Monday

Close to the village of
Zouérat

Mara groaned. Her head rocked against Logan's chest as they followed along behind the traders on the camel offered in exchange for the drugs. Their pace felt like a waddle, side to side, the endless rocking making her stomach queasier by the second.

"How much longer?" Mara asked on a moan, her words rasping on a dry, scratchy throat.

She smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. The last thing she had drunk was the coconut, but that was hours before. Their nomad rescuers had accepted their bribe, but had not offered water once.

"Not far," Logan said low.

One of the men looked back at them suspiciously, as they had every time she and Logan spoke to one another. Mara straightened atop the shaggy brown beast, the bells on its roughly fashioned saddle tinkling more with her movement. She reached up to unwrap the head scarf thingy they had lent her to keep her from burning, and started to pull it from her head.

She really hated to think of the pests that might be living in the scarf, but when she shivered, it was not from the thought. The coolness of night had snuck up on her unexpectedly. And though Logan's body was warm at her back, the glacial aura around him chilled her even more than the desert night.

Mara tugged at the short evening dress hardly covering her legs. The elastic lace of her thigh-high hose threatened to show every time she moved. If not for the hard, muscled legs of her ex-husband pressing against hers, the warmth of his chest seeping into her back, she wouldn’t be able to bear the chill. Mara brought the scarf down to cover across her chest, crossing her arms to hold it in place at the tops of her shoulders.

She turned to face Logan over her shoulder with a softened curiosity. After hours of brewing in her displeasure with him, her feelings had tamped down to mere resentment—for the moment.

"Why didn’t you show up at our divorce hearing?" she asked faintly.

He glanced down at her. "You're not letting that go, are you?" He sighed hard. "I was in Afghanistan. Did you really expect me to show up?"

She cocked her head at him, at the sharp edge in his voice. It was almost as though he blamed her. "I expected
something
after three years of marriage. I didn’t expect for you to leave me with a bunch of other wives waiting for their husbands to come home to them, and instead of mine returning to me, all I got was papers in the mail to sign."

He leaned down closer. "Let's not dredge this up. We have more serious tasks ahead, and I need you focused on the now."

Her spine stiffened. "Oh, no? You don’t want to
dredge
it up? No, Logan, we will
dredge
this up. I am sitting on the back of a camel in the middle of the Sahara desert. I was kidnapped from my home, and my life has been threatened. All thanks to you. I haven’t seen you since you left for Afghanistan five years ago. I expected you to at least apologize, to give me a reason. We were married for three years and never so much as had one serious fight.