An Affair of Vengeance (30 page)

Quickly, he finished eating the
pain
, for the sense of confinement set his nerves on edge. He hated being easy prey. It would just take a single man to block him at the alley’s entrance. On the other hand, he blocked Kral’s escape. The man couldn’t get away without going through McCrea. Things could be worse.

“Here we are.” Kral halted next to a metal door set flush with the side of the building.

“Good.”

With a smile, Kral inserted a key and opened the door. He flipped on the lights, and McCrea followed him inside.

Fluorescent fixtures illuminated the low-ceilinged room and turned his companion’s pale skin mint green. Twenty large wooden crates hulked around the perimeter of the room.

Kral walked to one and rapped his knuckles against it. “These are your babies.”

“The Stingers? Can I see them?”

“See them? What, you don’t trust me?” Kral laughed. “Fine, fine. Look all you want.”

McCrea heaved open a lid and tossed aside a foam pad. A four-foot-long, black missile launcher rested on form-fitted padding. It was real; this was happening. Kral had actually led him to a cache of weapons that was undeniably illegal for him to possess. “Beautiful girl, this one,” he said, and pushed his hands into his pockets with an appreciative sigh.

There he found his cell phone and tapped the keys that would tell Evangeline to bring in the cavalry. If she’d made it out of Kral’s town alive, of course. His stomach turned. If she didn’t come quickly, how long should he wait before taking Kral into custody himself?

“Good, good! I’m so glad you like them.” The little man winked.

A gut-rupturing explosion blasted the silence. Something big flew into the room—the steel door through which they’d entered, folded and thrown through the air like a paper airplane.

McCrea grabbed Kral by the waist and rolled behind a crate. Kral struggled underneath him.

“What is it? Let me go!”

“Shut up,” McCrea snarled, firmed his grip on Kral’s arms, and slid his knee into the man’s back.

Gray smoke churned the air. McCrea poked his head out from his hiding place and strained to see through the haze.

Ten well-armed men wearing black jumpsuits with SOCA’s snarling panther emblem embroidered on their sleeves charged into the room with military precision.

The cavalry had arrived. Thank God. And where was Evangeline?

“We’re over here,” he called.

The silent warriors swarmed around him, guns pointed at Kral.

Kral ignored them. He turned his head and trained his unblinking blue eyes on McCrea. “Traitor!”

“Would you like to arrest this son of a bitch, sir?” One of the SOCA men held out a piece of paper and a pair of ratcheting speedcuffs. “I’ve got the warrant right here.”

“I’d be honored.” McCrea stood, dragged Kral to his feet by his shoulders, and pulled his arms behind his back. He read the arrest warrant verbatim as he clapped on the cuffs. There’d be no procedural errors to keep this madman from seeing trial.

Kral didn’t seem to hear a word. He laughed, high-pitched as a child. “You think you’re clean now, don’t you? Think you’re cleansed of your family’s sins? I’m here to tell you that you’re never clean! You’re never free! You’ll never walk away from me!”

“Watch me,” McCrea muttered. With the madman in custody, he felt strangely removed from his ravings. Kral looked small and inconsequential, standing there in his torn and dusty suit, with his arms clasped behind him. McCrea wanted to shove him into a pit and never look back. “Search him, please.”

SOCA agents grabbed Kral and searched every inch of the man’s frame for weapons. They found two guns and three knives, each of which they placed into its own clear plastic evidence bag.

“He’s clean,” announced one of the men.

“He’s hardly that,” said a female voice that McCrea had prayed he’d get to hear again. “I happen to think he’s dirty as they come.”

“Evangeline.” He turned away from Kral’s spitting fury to see a short, dark-haired woman sauntering through the smoke. No, not sauntering.
Limping
. He sprinted to her side, touched her shoulder, not knowing where she was injured. “What happened to you? Where are you hurt?”

“Well, hello, partner. Just a bruise or twelve. Nothing that could keep me from seeing this.” She leaned into him, putting her mouth to his ear. “And you.”

Screw professional decorum. He took her into his arms, assuring himself that she was really here, that he was really touching her. He squeezed her as tightly as he dared.

“I’m alive,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “And so are you.”

“I know. Now, I know.”

“I told you I could do it.”

“You did.” He kissed the top of her head. “And I believed you. I just didn’t like the wait.”

She pulled away a bit and gave him a grin. “I jumped out of the car long before it hit the bridge. No one came poking around the cart, and I rode it all the way into town. It was all pretty convincing, wasn’t it?”

“A little too convincing. I thought I would die when that car hit the bottom of the ravine.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

He couldn’t resist kissing her. She tasted sweet. “You didn’t have to come, you know. I would rather have met you somewhere safer. Where are you hurt?”

“I wanted to see you as soon as possible. My hip and elbow are a little worse for wear from that jump, but I wanted to see this done with my own eyes.” She looked past him, and her face tightened.

He turned to look at Kral, handcuffed and kneeling on the floor. Four men aimed rifles at his head. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he still glared at McCrea.

McCrea turned back to Evangeline, angling his body to block Kral’s view of her, though he’d certainly already noticed her. “Yes, but now he knows you’re alive.”

“I don’t care. I’m not afraid. It’s the beginning of the end for him, anyway.”

“You whore!” Kral roared from behind them. “You lying, cheating—”

McCrea took the six steps to the man’s side in seconds and smashed his fist into the side of his face. “Watch your language around a lady.”

The man who’d given him the warrant shrugged. “Shame about that blast, sir. Sent the suspect reeling.”

“Sure did,” another SOCA agent said. “Landed right on his face, didn’t he?”

Kral looked up, spitting blood. “No one betrays me! I’ll have your head splintered on a spoon before this is over, brother!”

“I don’t recall having a brother.” McCrea nodded to the men holding Kral’s arms. “Feel free to tape his mouth shut.”

He turned to see Evangeline staring at Kral.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’d have done it myself if I had more than half a body to work with over here.”

“But then you’d deny me the pleasure of defending your honor. Again.”

“That’s right.” She beckoned him closer. “Mason is a minute away.”

“How’d SOCA end up taking the lead on this one?” he said, back at her side. “I expected you and Mason to lead a team of CIA paramilitaries in here.”

She shrugged. “It turns out that the CIA doesn’t want him, not even after I showed them the photographs I took, although they gladly copied the information. They’re not interested in prosecution even after all this. Just intelligence. I guess we were lucky Mason convinced Langley to let me take it this far. Besides, I thought it was best if you got the kill. He’s your trophy.”

“Thanks, but you were the one who gathered the evidence.”

“We’re partners. It’s a team win.” Smiling, she reached for his hand. “You deserve it, anyway. You’ve been working on this for longer. I’m just happy it’s over. We did it.”

An inconspicuous middle-aged man in a black suit walked through the busted doorway. Mason’s cool blue eyes flickered across to the captive before he walked to McCrea and shook his hand.

“You!” Kral screamed, his voice breaking. “I knew it was you! I
wanted
it to be you!”

Mason ignored him. “Glad to see you alive, McCrea. Good work here. I assume your team has things under control?”

Damn, but it felt good to be firmly on the right side of the law, for once. “They do.”

“Do you know him, Mason?” Evangeline asked. “He sounds like he knows you, and he’s staring at you like you just stole his firstborn.”

“He’s mad. Don’t believe a word he says,” Mason said.

Kral stumbled past, an officer on each side. His eyes were livid. Pink spit foamed from his mouth as he cackled, seemingly to all three of them, “You! You’ll die for this! Your—”

The paramilitary officer behind him swiftly punched him in the kidney.

“Sorry ‘bout that, mate. Just got a bit tripped up, there. What was that you were saying?”

Kral sputtered, wordless but still glaring at the trio left behind as he was dragged like a rag doll out the door.

“I think I’ll go, too,” Mason said, giving them each a thin-lipped smile. “I’ll see you both soon.”

“Sure thing,” Evangeline said, and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder before he exited out the broken doorway.

“What does he mean, he’ll see us soon?” McCrea asked, glad to be finally alone with his woman. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

She leaned back to give him a lopsided grin. “He made me an offer. Us, really. You and me.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, it seems that our agencies like what we did and think it’s useful for the two branches to continue working together. So, Mason and your commander came up with a way to make it happen. They want us to run a new unit. A collaboration. Based in Glasgow, of course.”

“Glasgow?” Home. She was offering to bring him home. “But what about your home? Scotland’s a long way from America.”

She bent her arms around his waist and caressed his back. “Home is a relative term, more of an idea than a place. For me, it’s about people. And you’re my people.”

“I’m your people,” he mused, and kissed the top of her head, letting her cloud of soft, dark hair tickle his nose. “I like that. I like having people. But
people
is plural. You have something you need to tell me?”

She laughed. “I wouldn’t know yet if I did.”

“Ah, of course, but that’s a damned shame.” And it was, he was shocked to realize. He would have been happy as a clam to learn that she was pregnant with his child. “Well, we need people. Any chance I could convince you to help me make more? A few wee ones, perhaps?”

She laughed and poked him in the ribs. “A few wee ones? How many is a
few
, exactly, in your language?”

“I imagine it’s the same as it is in yours.” He led her out of the broken doorway, taking care to help her over the freshly bombed transom. “A few, as in more than a couple, less than several. I’d say three is a good estimate. Shouldn’t be too hard to pop out.”

She gave him a wry look, and linked arms with him as they walked together down the narrow alley. “It’s not as simple as popping them out, you know. There’s a little more to it than that.”

“Oh, I think I know how it goes.” He smiled. “I know how it starts, at least.”

“That’s hardly the toughest part,” she snorted but rubbed his shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. Who says we can’t have it all? The cottage by the lake, a couple of kids, and our own international crime-fighting agency?”

“Have it all?” McCrea cocked his head. “You think you might really want it all?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Certainly. I do.”

“I do, too.”

The phrase reminded him of something very specific, something he’d never imagined for himself. Could he really propose such a thing here, now? But they’d reached the end of the dark alley. The sunlit market buzzed with life. A fresh, unfamiliar feeling bloomed in him.

Yes, now. And forever.

He pulled her into a blade of hot yellow sun and dropped down to one knee. “You do? Any chance I can get you to repeat those words for me sometime soon? Like, say, around Christmastime, in a lovely Glasgow church, in front of the minister, wearing a fluffy white dress?”

Evangeline smiled. Sunshine made her hair sparkle as if it held a million black diamonds. “As long as the minister is, as you say, the one wearing the fluffy white dress, my answer is yes. Because I’m thinking more along the lines of sleek red charmeuse for me.”

“I have no idea what charmeuse is, but as long as that means you’ve agreed to marry me, then I’m a happy man.” He kissed her hand, loving the feeling of her skin against his lips.

Her laughter trilled like birdsong in the clear air. “I have. I will. And I do.”

I
WOULD BE LOST
without the networking, education, and research opportunities provided by the Romance Writers of America, especially by the Kiss of Death, Golden Network, and Maryland Romance Writers chapters. Without the encouragement of my RWA friends, particularly Stephanie Dray and Christi Barth, I’d simply not have sold this novel. Likewise, my fellow ‘09 Golden Heart finalists in the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood have been there for me every step of the way; my love to you ladies. My patient agent, Jill Marsal, deserves my most heartfelt thanks. Kelli Martin, who is a most talented editor, has been not only eagle-eyed and market-savvy, but also warm and welcoming. As the editor who gave me my first shot, she has my eternal gratitude. Special appreciation is due for the additional editorial assistance provided by Shannon Godwin and Victoria Wright, as well as the amazing cover designed by the artists at CreateSpace. I couldn’t have asked for a better home than Montlake Romance.