Bare Nerve (5 page)

“I don’t know if we’re going to get him alive,” Justine said. “He’s not going to want to end up in prison like his brother.”

“That was my thought, too. Andreev isn’t going to go down without a big fight. What kind of weapons did you bring?” Anna asked.

“I got everything I thought we could use, and I upgraded our body armor. Andreev will have cutting-edge technology. I want to know what he’s selling so we have an idea of what he’ll have. I know he has armor-piercing bullets. Can you find out what else?” Justine asked. Justine always made sure they had enough weapons and ammo on a mission.

Though they all carried their own handguns and spare clips, there was always a need for more weapons. Justine also made sure they had the tiny two-way radios they used to communicate with each other when their BlackBerry smartphones weren’t usable.

“Justine, do you know if they’re using the same communications tools we are?” Charity asked.

“I think so. I talked to Lazarus, and we did a quick test. I think integrating our teams’ communications will be easy to do. I’m not sure how well either of us is going to be able to work with each other, however. They’re pretty much used to just working with men. And I know none of us are that keen on dealing with so much testosterone.”

Anna had to laugh at the way Justine had said that. It was true, though. The three of them worked well together because they were all similar deep inside. They didn’t trust easily, they never gave up, and they all knew they were the very best at what they did.

“We’ll figure it out as we go along. I think it will be better to divide up mission objectives so we each work separately,” Anna said.

“That won’t work,” Jack said, coming up behind her.

Anna noticed he had three of his men with him. He fourth was still at the rear of the plane on his mobile.

“It was just a thought. Hello, boys, I’m Anna Sterling,” she said, introducing herself to the men.

“This is Hamm MacIntyre, J.P. Fields, and Harry Donovan,” Jack said. “Over in the corner on the cell phone is Kirk Mann, and the man talking to the pilot is Tommy Lazarus.”

“Nice to meet you all,” Anna said.

They all nodded. “I think we’re ready to get in the air. We can discuss the op in the plane.”

“I agree,” Charity said.

Anna listened to the conversation with half an ear while she typed in the names of Jack’s team members. She sent a message to Sam from her BlackBerry and asked him to confirm the spellings.

Sam confirmed it and sent her a file with the information he’d used to make the decision to hire the Savage Seven. But Jack had introduced only six men, she thought.

“Who’s the seventh in your group?” she asked when the conversation around her ebbed. All the men stopped and looked at her. It was unnerving to have that much attention trained at her at one moment.

Jack finally said, “Armand Mitterand. He was killed a little over a year ago.”

“I’m sorry you lost one of your team,” Anna said. “Why haven’t you changed your name or replaced him?”

“Because he’s irreplaceable,” J.P. said. “He was one of a kind. And we kept the name to honor him.”

Anna nodded. She realized these men were all a bit like Jack. Rough around the edges and loyal, it seemed, at least to each other.

What that meant for this mission and them working together, she wasn’t sure, but she added Armand’s name to her list. By the time they landed in Europe for refueling, she’d have answers to most of her questions.

She only wished she could as easily figure out the new feelings she had for Jack Savage. But men were something she’d never understood. And men like Jack…well, she freely admitted she’d never really met a man like Jack before.

Maybe that was why he was throwing her for a loop. She had no way of knowing who he really was or, for that matter, what she wanted from him.

Lust was easy and not really worth this much angst, but she knew she wanted more from Jack than his body. She wanted…Oh, damn, she wanted him to be the man she kept getting glimpses of.

The man who could be so much more than a savage. The man who could wake her up inside.

J
ack and his men were tense on the flight to Algiers. Because of diplomatic problems, they’d have to land in Morrocco and illegally cross the border. That wasn’t a problem for his men—they were used to flying under the radar. But the women of Liberty Investigations didn’t seem like they could go anywhere unnoticed.

He wondered who Sam Liberty was that he would assemble three totally hot women to kick ass. There was a certain diabolical madness to that thought. That he’d find women who didn’t look like they’d ever done anything harder than apply their lip gloss and train them to be lethal weapons….

Yet the masculine part of him couldn’t believe the women were truly weapons. Especially Anna. He’d held her in his arms, and that had screwed up his thinking because now when he looked at her he saw sex bunny instead of trained operative.

The petite Justine wasn’t as deceptive as the supermodel Charity. There was menace in Justine’s eyes that belied the dark-haired, pixie-featured sweetness of her appearance.

“If you’re planning to charm your way through our team, I have to warn you Charity isn’t available.”

“For what?” Jack said, glancing up at Anna as she slid onto the padded seat next to him.

Anna leaned around him, blocking his view of the other woman. Her long blond hair swung forward, and he inhaled the sweet floral scent of her.

“For dating. She’s engaged,” Anna said.

“Thanks for the info,” he said, pitching his voice low so it didn’t carry further than Anna. “But I’m not interested in her.”

“Then why are you staring at her the way a starving man stares at a steak?” she asked, arching one eyebrow at him.

“Why do you care?” he asked.

She shrugged, the motion delicate and feminine, and he knew he was out of his element with this woman. He had no business flirting with her, none at all. But he’d be damned if he was going to stop.

“I don’t,” she said. Then she looked him straight in the eye. “That’s not true. I care because I can tell you are distracted, and in our line of work distracted leads to mistakes, and mistakes are costly.”

“I am distracted, Ms. Sterling, but not by Charity or Justine. I’m distracted because I’ve spent my entire life working with men, and I have no idea if you women are going to be able to keep up.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re too good at this not to have done your research.”

He shook his head. “That’s the distracting part. I do know what the three of you are capable of. I’ve heard the stories and read the mission recaps Sam forwarded to me, but I can’t reconcile that information with what I see.”

She leaned back in the seat, crossing her arms under her breasts. She was wearing a very refined, conservative blouse that buttoned down the front. It was feminine but not sexy at all, so there was no reason for him to suddenly need to adjust his legs to make room for his erection.

That little gap between the buttons of her blouse wasn’t meant to entice him, but he was enticed nonetheless. There was an innate sexiness to every move Anna Sterling made, and nothing he did to resist her made a difference. He wanted her.

“That makes no sense,” she said. “Your guys—”

“It’s a totally different kettle of fish,” he said. “Men are expected to be tough-asses.”

“They are? Where is that written?”

“It’s not a law or rule of thumb, Anna,” he said. He liked her name and the way it sounded on his lips.

“What is it, then?” she asked, her voice softer now, not combative like it had been before. She leaned a bit closer to him, and it was all he could do not to reach out and touch her.

He wanted to caress the softness of her skin and just let that feeling sink in to him. He’d never had a soft life, and yet it was something he sometimes craved.

“It’s instinct. Men have been protecting their communities since the dawn of time.”

She shook her head. “Women have been doing the very same thing, just in a different way.”

“That’s my point. If you told me you’d be keeping the home fires burning, I’d get that, but your team is telling me you’re going to ride shotgun, and I know you’re capable of doing that, but my brain is saying, ‘Hey, buddy, that’s not right.’”

She smiled at him. “That’s chauvinism. I’m not sure if you got the memo or not, but it’s dead.”

“I must have missed that one. In the places where I’ve been, it’s not dead.”

“Well, I’ll just have to make sure you change your thinking.”

“How are you going to do that?”

She shrugged delicately. “I think I’ll keep my plan to myself for now.”

“You do that,” he said, leaning over. He wanted to kiss that sassy mouth of hers.

“Savage,” Kirk said.

He turned away from Anna and glanced toward the middle of the plane where his guys were all seated. Kirk was frowning at him. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Kirk thought he was distracted.

Fuck it,
he thought. Anna Sterling was more than a distraction, and he needed his head in the game. They’d been tracking Andreev for more years than he wanted to count. The man was one of the most dangerous in the world. A merchant of death who sold his weapons to whomever had the money, sometimes prolonging conflicts by years and adding to the death count in places where genocide and rebellion were the standard.

Jack pushed to his feet and walked to to his men. He needed to remember where he belonged, and it wasn’t next to the softness that was Anna.

“I don’t like this,” Justine said as Anna joined her and Charity at the front of the plane. The Liberty Investigations jet had a desk area in the front of the plane, a general sitting area toward the middle—where the Savage Seven were camped out—and a bedroom/shower suite in the back.

“What don’t you like?” Anna asked.

“Them,” Justine said. “There’s just something unsettling about all those men on our plane.”

Anna agreed to a certain extent, but if it weren’t for her distracting attraction to Jack Savage, she’d almost like having the other men around. They were changing the dynamic of her team. Making her and the others more of a unit than they had been for the last two assignments.

She missed her friends, and while she didn’t begrudge them their newfound relationships, there was a part of her that had feared their team would never be the same again.

“It
is
different, isn’t it?” Anna asked.

“Change is good,” Charity said.

“I guess,” Justine said. She was grumpy by nature and didn’t necessarily like a lot of men.

Anna’s BlackBerry beeped, and she glanced down at the screen to see that the program she’d written to notify her of Andreev’s moves was alerting her.

“Be right back,” she said and went to her desk. She sat down and pulled up the program.

Given the jump start Andreev had on them, she expected to find his signal in North Africa. But instead she noticed the cell phone she’d bugged had stopped in Paris.

“What’d you find?” Charity asked.

“Andreev’s stopped moving. His signal is in Paris,” Anna said. She started typing to pinpoint his exact location. Jack and his second in command, Kirk, walked over to her desk.

Anna didn’t look up but kept her fingers moving on the keyboard.

“He stopped at Charles de Gaulle. I’m not sure what terminal he’s in,” she said—really to herself.

“Can you access the airport security cameras?” Kirk asked.

“Yes,” she said. She ignored the others as Hamm, too, joined them. She accessed the airport security system using a master code all international security people used.

“Can one of you find me the flight numbers that have just landed and which one he might be on?”

“I’m on it,” Kirk said.

She accessed the CCTV system and pulled up the multi-camera view. It was complex, and it took her a moment to orient herself with the airport she’d flown in and out of many times during her life. Finally she identified terminals one, two, and three. Terminal one was undergoing major construction right now, so she minimized those windows. She wished she’d put the GPS tracker on Andreev’s smartphone. Ticked off at herself for not thinking of adding that feature, she was determined to find Andreev and apprehend him before he got to Africa, if they could.

“Justine, contact Sam and see if we have any operatives at Charles de Gaulle. Maybe we can nab Andreev there….”

“I’m on it.”

“There are two flights he might be on,” Kirk said, “They both landed in terminal two. One is Air France flight AF49, which is in terminal two-A. The other is a Delta flight Air France…. Never mind, they’re the same flight. So it should be two-A.”

Anna zoomed in on the terminal Kirk had indicated and Jack crowded in behind her on the left as Charity moved in on the right. Anna could see the passengers disembarking from the flight Kirk had indicated.

She hit a button to record the video they were streaming and then maximized the window so she could zoom in on the passengers. Charity held next to the screen a photo of Andreev as they’d last seen him.

Anna felt the tension in everyone as they watched, searching though the crowd. She didn’t see anyone who fit Andreev’s body image. She didn’t bother searching for someone who had his looks. Andreev hadn’t evaded capture as long as he had by being stupid, so she knew he’d have a disguise.

“I wish we knew how he moved,” Charity said.

“Me, too. I can’t quite figure out if that was him or not.”

“Where?” Jack asked.

Anna pointed. He was huskier than Andreev had been when they’d seen him last.

Jack put his hand on the desk next to hers and leaned over her. His body heat wrapped around her, and for a moment she closed her eyes to try to deal with the dizzying sensation of Jack.

“I’m not sure. We have some film of him from eighteen months ago that’s kind of grainy. We can compare it.”

She nodded, and he leaned back.

The new dynamic isn’t working
, she thought.
Jack is too much of a distraction.
It didn’t matter that he was making Anna and Charity and Justine up their game at the same time that this stupid attraction was making her crazy.

She’d never been distracted by a man before. Why him?

“Anna?”

“Yes?”

“I said Sam has two agents at the airport. Just send them the video clip, and they’ll detain whomever we identify,” Justine said.

“I’m on it.” She forwarded the clip. “Anyone else?”

“I thought this guy looks a bit like him,” Charity said.

Anna sent the next clip to Sam, and then she looked at Jack.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy but…that woman,” he said.

She watched the movements of the woman and had to agree that something wasn’t right with the way she was moving. Anna sent it on to Sam.

“Now we wait. And watch the tracking signal.”

Anna sat back in her chair, realizing she might have been wrong about Jack and his team. They were actually good to work with, and though she’d never find it easy to trust mercenaries, she was starting to trust them.

And that didn’t bother her as much as she thought it should.

Sam’s agents detained and interviewed all three suspects, and none of them were Andreev, which was frustrating not just to Jack but to the entire team. His men were on edge, unused to inactivity or the quiet background chatter of the women.

They usually used the travel time to a mission to build up their aggression. They bonded by slinging insults and curses at each other, and usually there was at least one bare-knuckled fight on the flights.

But the presence of the women was keeping his men in check. And Jack wasn’t sure how long it would be before one of his guys went off.

Anna signaled him, and he left his spot in the plane to go to her.

“We’ve lost the signal on Andreev’s phone. I think he ditched it,” Anna said. “Charity is tracking private-plane and commercial flights from Paris to see if we can pinpoint where he’ll land. We still think Morocco is the best bet, and we’ll be going with that.”

“When did you decide all this? This is a joint venture.”

“I’m aware of that. We just got the news and made the decision. If you want us to drop you somewhere else, we can do that,” Anna said in that haughty tone that set his nerves on fire.

“Because our mission objective is two-fold, I don’t think that option is going to work.”

“Two-fold?”

“Sam hired us to apprehend Andreev and to keep you girls safe.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Girls?”

“Girls. Now, I need to talk to my men,” he said, walking away before he did something stupid like kiss her again.

Jack wasn’t too surprised that they’d lost the tracking signal. Andreev had survived for a long time, and so far the only mistake he’d made was the embezzling thing. He wondered why Andreev had done it.

“What was that about?” Kirk asked, stopping Jack before he reached the rest of the team.