Agents Under Fire (16 page)

His lips were as firm as the rest of his body, but gentle on hers, the kiss barely a caress and yet it melted something inside her, relaxing her muscles a little. She found that with his lips on hers, she had trouble focusing on anything else.

She knew he was only trying to distract her. She’d been so panicked he could probably smell her fear. She knew the kiss wasn’t real, but she went with it anyway, because she needed to be distracted.

She breathed in his masculine scent and tried to get lost in that, tried to block out the voices coming from the vehicles.

Jake held himself in place, his lips barely brushing hers. Any movement would have given them away. But somehow that necessary restraint just added fuel to the fire that began to build inside her.

Then, after an eternity, she heard the cars pull away. Jake stayed where he was for another second. His thumb stroked the back of her hand once, twice, before he shifted slightly and pushed up the corner of the canvas. He lifted his head to look out, then sat up after a minute while her heart still raced.

He said something to the small group as he slid out of the cart and helped her up, probably expressing his gratitude.

She simply bowed her head. But she couldn’t walk by Kenneth’s ‘friend’ without a word. “You will leave?” she asked in a whisper.

“
Tomorrow.” A bittersweet smile came onto the woman’s face. “If you sure Mr. Ken not coming back.”

“
We’re sure,” Jake said.

Allison followed him across the road into a double row of fig trees, which they used as cover to move forward, toward the town.

Her feet ached, the least of her problems. She made sure she didn’t limp. Wouldn’t put it past Jake to want to carry her. But it was time that she stood on her own two feet, both literally and figuratively. Even if it
was
nice to know that Jake would be there for her if she needed him.

Odd, how just two days ago she’d thought him wild and unpredictable, while now she believed him to be the most dependable man she knew, certainly one to turn to in trouble. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”

He looked at her. “You saved me this time. Your kindness to a woman you owed nothing saved us both. She helped us because of what you did yesterday. She must have told the others. They kept quiet to protect us, because you gained their respect.”

His approval felt amazingly good.

“
Where are we going?” She asked the safe question, instead of asking about what had happened on that cart between them.

“
I have my car hidden up ahead.”

And sure enough, within a couple of hundred feet, in a clump of thicker bushes, his white Land Rover waited under a large sheet of camouflage canvas.

Not that their troubles were over. She needed to get her passport before they went north to find Kenneth. Once she had him, she wanted to get him out of the country and to serious medical help as fast as possible.

She needed to hurry with him to Kabul, not back here, the opposite direction, where Maddox and his men might be still looking for her and Jake.

But to get her passport, they had to go back to the hotel, which was exactly where the mercenaries would be waiting for them.

* * *

They rode in silence, off road, scanning the landscape for the Humvees. Jake pressed his lips together, trying to forget the taste of her, swearing he wasn’t going to kiss her again.
Oh, hell.
You knew
you were in trouble when you started to lie to yourself.

“
Are you some kind of spy?” Allison asked out of the blue, yanking him right out of his thoughts.

He looked over at her, kept his voice neutral as he asked, “Why would you ask that?”

“
I understand the need for confidentiality. But I would appreciate knowing at least the basics. My life is on the line here. Are you a spy?”

“
Not exactly.” He reached for the small firearm he’d given her earlier.

She deftly moved it out of his reach.

He could probably have stonewalled her at least a little longer. He didn’t want to. Something he couldn’t give a name to had passed between them in that donkey cart. “I’m with the FBI.”

She took a few seconds to process that. “Does your being here have anything to do with Kenneth?”

He didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. “Never heard of him before I met you, but I’m starting to think he was somehow connected to the case I’m working.”

Another long second passed before she put forth her next question, with a tone of dread in her voice. “Is that why you offered to help me?”

He wished he had a different answer to give her. He held her gaze, unblinking, as he said, “Yes.” He wanted to leave it at that but couldn’t. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
He paused.
“Kenneth is dead.”

She drew back as if he’d struck her. Blinked rapidly. Then turned her head from him, toward the window. Her voice broke when she finally asked, “When?”

No helping it now. “He was killed a month after he got here.”

She let her head drop against the headrest and closed her eyes, pain and betrayal plain on her face. The way her chin trembled wrenched his guts. He would have much rather taken a punch in the face than have to look at that.

A long minute passed before her tears spilled over. “Daniel, my first fiancé, died ten months after our engagement. Melanoma, the aggressive type. I don’t know if I would have made it through that without Kenneth.” She covered her face. “I’m like one of those Black Widows.”

“
You can’t think like that.”

“
I should have talked Kenneth out of coming here,” she said on a broken whisper, dropping her hands. “Or I should have come after him sooner.”

“
This is
not
your fault,” he said as emphatically as he could, and reached for her hand, but she wouldn’t let him take it.

They rode in silence through the early dawn. She was in pain, and he could do nothing to help her, had added to that pain in fact by not being honest with her from the beginning.

She seemed to remember that, too, after a while. “You used me.”

“
You were an asset, someone with information I needed. I’m here to complete a mission.”

Her face hardened. “So then the kiss in the cart was to keep me quiet.”

He’d really crossed every line there. Hell of thing was, given the chance, he would do it again. “The kiss in the cart was inexcusable. I’m better trained than that. I know better than that.”

Again, he wanted to take her hand, but now was definitely not the right moment. “I never meant to hurt you, Allison. Please believe that.”

“
I’m not inclined to believe anything that comes out of your mouth. Hope you understand,” she said, sounding infinitely tired.

He would have preferred if she raved and ranted, or even shot him in the kneecap, but of course, she wouldn’t. Because Allison Myers was a lady to the bitter end.

“
We’re getting your passport, then I’m taking you to Kabul. I’m going to get you on a plane out of here. I swear.” The only thing he could do for her now.

She didn’t react.

“
So what are you after here?” she asked after a while. “The XO-ST team? I’m guessing that’s why you went to the compound tonight?”

Best thing would be to tell her nothing. But keeping her in the dark had only hurt her so far. And the XO-ST team was connected to Congressman Wharton via Mitch Wharton who was connected to Kenneth who was connected to Allison. Maybe she knew something or had a key piece of the puzzle without realizing she had it.

“
What I’m telling you is strictly confidential,” he warned.

She nodded.

“
Ten years ago, I was part of a four-man Army team that found Khanbaba’s hidden gold in the old cisterns of Lahedeh. Millions of dollars of worth.”

“
Khanbabas? As in the warlord?”

“
Right. We’d taken some fire. Two medics rushed in to help, bringing the total who knew about the gold to six. The treasure was supposed to be taken off to a museum in Kabul, but the captain of my team and one of the medics, Brent Foley, stole it then came after the rest of us one by one. I was left last. I shot the captain in self-defense. That left me and Foley, who quit the Army by then. He decided to get to me through my sisters.”

“
Is that how Jasmine was hurt?” she asked, impressing him by remembering the name he’d only mentioned in passing.

“
Yes.”

“
How does Foley link to XO-ST?”

“
He needed to get back to Afghanistan to get the hidden gold out. He needed a free pass and looser supervision than in the Army so he joined the mercenaries.”

“
Did he smuggle out the treasure?”

“
With Congressman Wharton’s help.”

Allison paled. “Do you think Mitch had a part in that?” Then her eyes narrowed as she said defensively, “Kenneth would have never gotten involved in anything like this.”

“
I don’t think he did. I don’t think even the congressman knew about the gold, let alone his little brother. The congressman was blackmailed by Foley into sneaking some sealed crates into the U.S. aboard his private yacht. He had no idea what they contained.”

“
Blackmailed with what?”

“
That’s what I’m here to find out. Wharton knows that I, and a few others, know something. He’s not safe until he neutralizes us one way or the other. Which means we won’t ever be safe until we take him down.”

“
Where’s the rest of your team?”

He’d told her too much already. “Let’s keep that on a need to know basis.” He expected her to be mad at him, but she simply nodded.

Lahedeh appeared on the horizon at last. He didn’t want to go in through the north road, which the XO-ST boys would expect, so he went around.

“
It’d help if I knew what Mitch Wharton was doing in this place. We found nothing so far to connect the congressman to Afghanistan other than his brother. Maybe Brent was blackmailing the congressman with something his little brother did here.”

She thought for a second. “As far as I know, Mitch’s business interests are in the U.S. He buys office buildings from the government when they do some token downsizing every couple of years to improve their approval rating. He then rents the same buildings back to the next administration that hires new government employees to improve unemployment figures to improve their approval rating. The congressman sets him up with connections. It’s a lucrative business if you can get it, but to get it you have to be an insider.”

“
Maybe that’s what Brent figured out.”

“
Except there’s nothing illegal in what Mitch does. Unethical, yes. It definitely costs the taxpayers a ton of money, but not against the law.”

Anger and frustration clenched his jaw. He’d driven out on patrols for years in un-reinforced Humvees, gone to battle without a proper bulletproof vest because there wasn’t enough money in the budget, because politicians like Wharton back in D.C. were dicking around, rerouting government funds into their, their friends’ and their families’ pockets.

“
The only strange thing is… I could swear when Kenneth first mentioned it, he said Mitch came here on vacation, not on business,” Allison said. “Which makes no sense. Mitch is an adrenaline junkie. He’s into extreme sports. They don’t have much bungee jumping and avalanche snowboarding here. But he must have hooked up with some businessmen, because he brought in Kenneth.”

Something pricked his instincts, an idea too vague to take solid shape. “Have you talked to Mitch lately?”

“
He won’t take my calls since Kenneth disappeared. I think he feels guilty because he talked him into coming here.”

They finally reached the other end of town and he drove in, stopping in the cover of a delivery truck a block from the hotel. A familiar Humvee was parked up front; two men inside watching the entrance. He spotted a couple of other commandos at key points around the building. Unfamiliar ones, ones he hadn’t seen at the compound.

The rest of the team must have arrived. Just what he didn’t need.

He watched them for a few seconds before turning to Allison. “I’m sorry. I really am.” They were going to have to talk again. But not right now.

He pulled a fake stick-on beard from the glove compartment and pressed it onto his face. “You need to get down.”

He pulled out from behind the truck, drove up to the hotel then into the attached, multi-level parking garage, all the way to the top floor, to the very back. He stashed the laptop under the seat.

Those XO-ST boys had no way to connect this car to Allison or him, so the laptop should be safe there. “Tell me the combination to the room safe. You should stay. Keep out of sight.”