Absolution (20 page)

Currents of pleasure zinged over her skin, the ache in her body increasing. As though he sensed it, Luke’s hands caressed her through the satin nightgown, over her stomach and hips to her thighs, moving lower to where the hem kissed her bare skin.

She wavered at the tingling sensation his fingertips wrought. Her body craved his touch, her clitoris throbbing, begging for attention. Emily gasped at the erotic caress as his fingers slipped beneath the edge to tease the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, higher, moving slowly toward where she ached so badly, to her flesh slicked by the lubricant and her arousal.

“So good, Em,” he groaned, surging gently beneath her, filling her perfectly, stretching and caressing the delicate nerve endings inside her. She parted her thighs more, leaning back as she opened, her eyes drifting closed as the incredible, unexpected pleasure built. She hadn’t thought she’d want this, but now she was desperate for it.

His fingers trailed higher, so close. Inches away from where she was dying to be touched. “Luke...”

He would take care of her. He wanted to. She was already so aroused one touch was all it might take for her to come.

“Yeah, open for me just like that,” he coaxed.

She was trembling, caught in the spell they’d woven, frantic for his touch and the unbelievable pleasure it would bring. Her internal muscles clenched in anticipation and he sucked in a breath, his jaw clenching, almost there—

Someone knocked on the door.

Emily froze, a cry of denial locked in her throat.

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Please say she’d imagined that sound.

Then, “Luke?” The loud whisper was muffled by the door.

A mortified gasp came out of her. Luke’s hands tightened on her hips, but she yanked them away and slid off him. His head snapped toward the door with a frustrated growl while she frantically straightened her nightgown and backed away from the bed.

“
What
?” he snarled, yanking the sheets over his lap. The knob turned and Bryn stuck her head in.

“Sorry, but I can’t find Emily. She’s not in her room and she’s not downstairs—”

“She’s right here,” he bit out.

A shocked silence filled the room. Even in the darkness Emily saw her friend’s eyes widen when she noticed her standing by the bed. “Oh, God,” Bryn cried. “Sorry.” Then she disappeared from view and shut the door fast.

Luke flopped down onto his back and rubbed a hand over his face with an aggravated sigh. Looking over at her, he gave her a rueful smile. “Any chance we can pretend that interruption never happened and pick up where we left off?”

It took a moment for his words to register through the haze of mortification because all the blood had rushed out of her brain into her face.

Feeling like an idiot, she crossed her arms over her lopsided chest and stared at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He lifted an arm in invitation, the muscles in it rippling as he moved. “Come back over here and I’ll make you forget—” He didn’t get the chance to finish because his cell phone rang. His arm hit the bed with a thud. “God
dammit
,” he snapped, rolling to his side to grab it from his nightstand. For the first time she noticed the gun laying there, and had no doubt it was loaded.

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She swallowed as he checked the number during the third ring. It stopped, presumably going to voicemail, but she already knew their time together was at an end. People didn’t call at this time of night—morning, rather—unless it was urgent.

Luke’s eyes were full of regret when he looked back at her. “Em, I—”

He had to answer the call to duty. “It’s all right, I understand.” Her legs felt wooden as she started for the door. And her heart? She wasn’t sure, but she suspected the crushing sensation in her chest was her heart realizing it was over. She stopped and turned around to face him. She wasn’t leaving like this. Not like a coward.

Instead, she walked over to the bed and cupped his chin in one hand while he stared up into her eyes, then bent and kissed him with all the love and tenderness in her. When she pulled away he grabbed her wrist to hold her there, and she saw the fierce yearning mirrored in his gaze.

A hesitant smile quivered on her lips. It was enough that she’d shown him how she felt, and to know that he wished things were different. “Be careful out there,” she whispered. Because she was on the verge of tears she didn’t give him the chance to reply, but rushed out of his room and down the hall to her own, where she crawled into her lonely bed and let silent tears flow into her pillow.

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Kabul, Afghanistan

“There is a problem.”

Tehrazzi ignored the obvious stress in Abdu’s voice and stared out the hotel room window into the crowded city streets below. A fine dusting of snow covered the ground, nowhere near as much as had fallen in the mountains last night. He was happy to be in a warm room with indoor plumbing and fresh-smelling soap. “And that is?”

“We are risking exposure if we go forward with this. Davis is getting suspicious already. He’s asking too many questions and I don’t think he believes my answers.”

“Imagine that.” It didn’t surprise Tehrazzi in the least. His teacher was the best and, therefore, only worked with the best. For Davis to have attained the position of right-hand-man, he would have to be every bit as formidable as his teacher. Tehrazzi and his men would simply have to act more carefully from here on out.

“What if he finds out about us?”

He suppressed an irritated sigh. Davis would, it was only a matter of when. In a few hours Tehrazzi would board a helicopter waiting to take him to begin the hunt for his teacher. Time was running out. He didn’t have the patience to deal with any more “problems.”

The cell phone on the table behind him rang. He glanced at Abdu for a moment before giving him permission to answer it. The phone was secure. They 161

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couldn’t track his location with it, and though they needed him to draw out his teacher and kill him, Tehrazzi wasn’t naive enough to believe the young go-between wouldn’t sell him out.

No. When he went out of this life, it would be on his terms. His, and no one else’s.

Abdu answered it, and finally said, “What do you want me to do?”

Tehrazzi watched the younger man’s face as he spoke to the contact on the other end. He was agitated, kept running his free hand through his freshly washed hair. “He wants to talk to you,” he finally said, holding out the phone.

Tehrazzi shook his head. “No.” He was far too paranoid to talk to the man personally. Using Abdu as a liaison was as close as he wanted to get. Abdu gave him a long-suffering look and went back to his conversation. When he hung up, his eyes were tormented. “So what am I supposed to do now?”

“Take care of it.”

Abdu ran his hands through his hair again.

“That’s what he just said.”

No doubt. Because the man on the other end of that phone call wouldn’t want loose ends left to trip them up any more than they did. “Everything’s already in place. Now we must execute the operation discussed.”

His choice of words wasn’t lost on Abdu. The man’s eyes flinched, as though he had just realized he was in too deep to get out. Tehrazzi handed him a handwritten note he’d prepared in advance and smiled grimly. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

The decision had already been made for him. And with it, a permanent solution.

****

Absolution

the cruising helo, the stark Syrian Desert spread out as far as the eye could see. Across from him, Rhys checked his equipment one last time.

“Good to go?” Luke asked him over the headset.

He glanced up from adjusting his assault vest, indigo eyes steely with resolve. “Yep.”

“Thirty seconds,” the pilot announced.

Rhys went back to checking his gear, then went onto one knee on the deck to secure the last holster around his left thigh. He was a deadly shot with both hands, but Rhys was obviously concerned about his perceived lack of coordination on his right side and wasn’t taking any chances. As far as Luke was concerned, the only way someone could tell Rhys had been injured was by the scars on the right side of his head. As an operator Rhys was as good as they came, and though he might not be at a hundred percent in his own mind, Luke had absolute confidence in him.

The helo banked and descended fast, the rotors kicking up sand and gravel from the desert floor.

Reaching out, Luke slapped Rhys’s shoulder. “See you at seventeen-thirty if the weather holds.” If not, they could be in for a long, cold night. Or several.

One corner of Rhys’s mouth turned up in his version of a smile. “Roger that.”

The moment the wheels touched down he jumped out and went into a defensive position while Luke covered him from the chopper. Satisfied the LZ

was cold, Rhys took off in a loping run, his long legs eating up the ground, and Luke gave the pilot a thumbs-up.

The pitch of the engine rose to a shrill whine as the pilot pulled back on the collective and took off into the clear, wintry sky. A patrolling AWACS

forecasted possible flurries at the edge of the primary operational area with a chance of high winds, but Luke couldn’t hold off because of the weather. Recent intel that Tehrazzi had been 163

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sighted near his grandparents’ village was perishable, and they had to act before the trail went cold. Plus there was Davis’s call that had cruelly killed any chance of finishing making love with Emily. Bastard.

Davis had uncovered suspicious evidence that Tehrazzi might be on someone’s payroll at the CIA.

Following up on it, they’d found regular, substantial amounts of U.S. currency had been funneled into an offshore account, and carried all the earmarks of how Tehrazzi operated with his other financiers. At first Luke had refused to believe it, but after listening to Davis, he hadn’t been so sure anymore.

Was someone inside the Agency helping him? Wasn’t Miller. He didn’t have the balls to pull something like that. So who else could it be? Jamie had launched an internal investigation this morning, but had given the go ahead for the operation to follow up on the human intelligence report that Tehrazzi was in the isolated Syrian village.

If Tehrazzi was there, it wasn’t to visit with dear old gram and gramps. He’d had his bodyguard decapitate them for leaking Bryn and her father’s location back in September.

Settling back against the bulkhead, the aircraft’s rhythmic vibrations relaxed him while his mind kept busy. This could be it. This might finally be the day he made amends for what he’d done. He shouldn’t let himself think further ahead than that, but he couldn’t help imagining going to Emily with his arms open and the future they could have together. After last night he felt a renewed urgency to finish it so he could get on with living the life he’d denied himself for so many years.

“Three minutes.”

Luke opened his eyes at the pilot’s warning and checked his watch. Once he landed, he had a three hour window to make it to the rendezvous point 164

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outside the village. There he’d link up with Rhys, Dec’s SEALs, and Davis, who was transporting in from Kabul. Until then, they all had to get visual confirmation of enemy targets and relay coordinates for the Air Force to clear out some of the caves with their ordinance payloads. The SEALs had an Air Force combat controller with them, but thanks to their advanced training and skill sets, he and Rhys were almost as proficient in calling in air strikes on enemy positions.

He tugged his scarf up further around his face to shield him from the wind as he made his way over the rugged terrain. Overhead the sky was an ominous gray, the clouds swirling and thickening with the promise of snow. So long as the wind stayed down and he could maintain reasonable visibility, he didn’t much care.

Working his way toward the RV point, he kept out of sight while scanning for any sign of the enemy. Two hours in, the wind had picked up and the first fat snowflakes drifted down. He contacted Sam via the Saber radio, keeping his voice low.

“What’s the status on the weather forecast?”

“Still iffy,” she replied in her calm, melodic voice. “Storm’s starting to affect our visibility from the satellite feeds.”

Wonderful. “I’m coming up on the first cave.

ETA seven minutes.”

“Roger that.”

The wind stung his cheeks above the line of his beard. He thought about donning his cold weather gear, but held off. He needed to keep moving. Just over a click away to the east, the first cave awaited him. Hidden behind a low rock formation, he pulled out his Leopold binoculars to get a better look. From this distance he could only make out the mouth of the cave, but there didn’t seem to be any enemy targets guarding the entrance and he couldn’t see 165

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any smoke that would indicate a warming fire. “Any heat signatures registering?”

“Affirmative,” Sam responded. “Looks like five contacts around what could be a fire.”

“Stand by.” Holding his rifle at the ready, he crept to the base of a small cliff and climbed up to get a better look. Once at the top of his observation post, he pulled out his map and compass to double check the location and took another peek at the network of caves with his high powered binoculars.

The caves here might not be as intricate or large as the ones in Afghanistan, but they could be just as deadly. He verified the bearing on his compass, and Rhys’s deep voice came over the radio earpiece, saying he was in position and then relayed coordinates. Setting his binoculars aside, Luke added his own, then asked, “Anyone heard from Davis yet?”

“Negative,” Sam answered, then Ben came on.

“Cobra team is reporting enemy activity in their sector,” he said. “Team leader has given coordinates for air strike. Aircraft standing by.”

Dec and his SEALs. But it bothered Luke that Davis hadn’t checked in yet. “Copy that. Scorpion One out.” He got busy camouflaging himself amongst the rocks and maintained visual on the target, aiming an infrared laser at the cave’s entrance while he transmitted the coordinates to the Air Force Combat Controller working with the SEALs.