Fatal Honor: Shadow Force International (5 page)

Struggling to breathe under his weight, she shoved thoughts of confessing her love aside and opened her eyes. “Nicolae Bourean, head of the Corsicani clan in Romania. I’m on the run from him. The reason I left you was to save your life. You and I survived that brutal winter in the mountains, and it’s one of my fondest memories, but when spring came, I had to ensure no one knew you and I had been together. It was too dangerous for you. I made contact with Emit Petit, told him where to find you and I left. I had work to do on my case, information I still needed before I could close it out, and I had to go to Nico to get it. Unbeknownst to me, he’d figured out I was MI6. He took me prisoner. I escaped a few weeks ago, but he’s after me. He wants me back. Badly.”

She forced herself not to shiver at the thought of what Nico would do to her if he ever did get hold of her again. Death would be a blessing. “You, Miles Duncan, literally hold the key to my survival.”

After a long, quiet pause, Miles slid off of her, took her gun and stood a few feet away. She couldn’t see him without turning over and any sudden move could cause him to straddle her again. But she felt that solid, unwavering presence of his behind her. A second later, he flipped the wall switch and the bathroom flooded with light.

Charlotte blinked, tried to right the towel as she kept her gaze on the tiles. The rough, dull cotton was askew, barely covering anything but a stripe across her buttocks. Her back and legs were completely bare.

A growl tore from Miles’ lips, raising the hair on the back of her neck.

The scars
. He was seeing the scars that crisscrossed her back and thighs. Nico liked his leather belt, liked his sickle. The welts had left their marks. The tip of his knife as well. Her once flawless skin was now a mess of damaged and disfigured scars.

“Jesus, darlin’.” Miles voice was low, controlled. “What the hell did he do to you?”

Carefully sitting up, she drew the towel around her, hugging her knees and keeping her gaze pinned to the floor. “The cross I put around your neck before I left you,” she said. “Please tell me you still have it.”

He was immobile for a moment, then moved as swift as he always did, bending down and clasping her chin with his big, warm hand.

He lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him.

Their eyes locked and he scanned her face, her wet hair falling in a tangle around her head. His gray eyes were sad, angry, as they searched hers for answers. He gingerly pushed a lock of hair away from her eyes.

His free hand unzipped his jacket, dug under the vest and shirt covering the base of his neck. Her breath caught when she saw him drag out the very thing she was looking for.

Still searching her eyes, he held up the ornate golden cross and let it rock in the air. “I have it,” he said. “It was the only thing of you I did have.”

Light from overhead bounced off the inlaid gemstones, her future sparkling between them.

Chapter Three

_____________________

______________________________________________________

M
ILES’
G
UTS
C
RAWLED
at the scars on Sarah’s—
Charlotte’s
—body. She clutched the towel to her chest, trying to cover them, but he could see a fairly fresh mark on her collarbone.

Her face was devoid of any, and even without makeup, she was quite simply beautiful.

He saw her throat work as she swallowed, staring at the cross. She held out a hand, her gaze meeting his. “I need it back.”

His phone vibrated inside his pants pocket. He’d shut off the ringer, but he recognized the three short pulses of the personalized tone he had for Emit Petit.

Slipping the cross back under his shirt collar, he watched as Charlotte followed his every move. She licked her pale lips and his mind blanked out for a moment.

The things she’d done to him with those lips, that mouth. It was enough to make him hard.

Yet, after what she’d just told him, he had the sick, uncanny feeling she’d only been using him in some personal undercover operation to double-cross her own country.

The phone buzzed again, insistent in his pocket. “I want to hear the whole story,” Miles said, rising and offering her a hand up. He dug the phone from his pocket with his other hand. “Put some clothes on and we’ll talk.”

Snatching Charlotte’s gun from the vanity counter and moving a few steps back to give her room to grab her clothes, he answered the phone. “Yeah.”

His boss’s voice sounded annoyed. “Yolanda Fernandez needs your services asap.”

Yolanda was a West Coast security service client. A thirty-something dynamo who ran her own import company and had been going through a nasty divorce a few months back. Miles had played a hybrid security services specialist and bodyguard to her. “I’m kinda busy.”

“Her ex is at the house threatening her.”

Miles stuck Charlotte’s empty gun into his belt at the small of his back. “Then she should call the police. She has a restraining order.”

“This is the third incident in the past two months. She called the local badges, but no one’s responded yet. You’re only half a mile from her place.”

More like three miles since he was at this rundown motel on the north end of the city.

Charlotte had moved to the vanity where she was playing around with a makeup bag on the counter. She’d secured the towel around her ample breasts, having made no move to get dressed.

A warning bell went off in Miles’ head, and he moved behind her in record time, grabbing her hand out from inside the bag. She clutched a travel size lotion and raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror.

“Come on, man,” he said to Petit, steering Charlotte away from the vanity and toward the other room. “I’m on vacation.”

“You’re on a bender, and I totally get it after what went down in Syria, but I need to know I can rely on you to keep the West Coast Rock Star office running while I work on setting up the Chicago satellite. You said you needed a few months off from Shadow Force and could handle the personal security division out there, so what’s it going to be? Can you keep the West Coast division at top speed or not?”

He had the skills, he had the talent. All he needed was the motivation.

Charlotte had gone over to a suitcase lying open on the bed. Her bra and underwear were laid out on top of the comforter.

She rummaged around inside the suitcase. A telltale zip of energy ran up Miles’ arms. She was looking for something besides clothes.

In two strides, he was next to her, nudging her out of the way with his hip. He ran his hands inside the suitcase, searching, searching…

Nada. No weapons.

With swift movements, he yanked out a pair of jeans and a purple blouse, tossing them on the bed next to her undergarments and pointing from her to the clothes.

“Poison?” Emit’s voice was strained. “You there?”

Petit had rescued him from the foot of those damn mountains in Romania. Had given him a solid job and helped him keep his demons at bay. He owed the man a hell of a lot. Besides, he couldn’t in good conscious strand Yolanda. Her ex was a blowhard, full of self-importance and bluster, but the guy had a mean streak that made him dangerous. “I can handle it, boss.”

“Good, I’m counting on you. Now get your ass over to Yolanda’s and make sure our client is safe from her ex-husband.”

“I’ll take care of it. Tell Rory I found Veronica. He can quit digging around about her.”

Emit didn’t ask who Veronica was, thank God, and they disconnected. Charlotte was staring at him, making no moves to put on the clothes he’d laid out for her. “Please,” she said. “All I need is that cross and I’ll be out of your hair. You never have to see me again.”

That was the problem. He
wanted
to see her again. Traitor or not, he wasn’t letting her leave him again.

“So Romania. That was all a lie, then? You and me. You needed someone to get this cross”—he tapped his chest where the cross lay under his shirt and the flak vest—“out of the country. To keep it safe until you could retrieve it.”

Her eyes went soft. “Nothing that happened between you and I was a lie.”

If it hadn’t been for her, he would have died on that mountainside. She hadn’t known he was going to be there, so surely she hadn’t planned to save him for her own purposes.

Or had she?

Did it matter now? Somewhere along the line, she’d seen a way to get the cross out of Romania. What was so important about it?

He had to get to Yolanda but he wasn’t done with Charlotte. Not by a long shot. “We need to go.”

“I do need to go, but not with you. It’s too dangerous for you to be around me. Just give me the cross and I’ll get out of your life again.”

“You’re coming with me, like it or not. So put on those clothes or I will drag your half naked ass out of here. Your choice.”

Her nostrils flared as she sucked in an irritated breath. “If Nicolae—”

“If Bourean comes anywhere near you,”—Miles moved into her personal space and stared down at her—“I will tear him apart, limb by limb. Let him come. I look forward to it.”

He thought he saw her shiver. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

Snatching the shirt off the bed, he handed it to her. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

She let the towel fall, donning the bra and slipping the blouse over her head. “Where are we going?”

“To help someone.” He moved away to give her some privacy, but there was no way he was taking his eyes off her. He leaned against the doorjamb and cocked his chin at her suitcase. “And quit going after weapons. I know who you really are now and how you think. You’re not getting this cross off of me until I’m good and ready to give it back.”

“But you
are
going to give it back, right?”

He let his eyes drift over her hipbones, her thighs. He couldn’t help himself. She was underweight and there was a haunted look that never seemed to leave her face, but nothing slacked his desire for her. She was a goddamn traitor—the thing he hated most in the world—and even that didn’t turn him off.

Fucked
. He was totally, one-hundred-percent fucked. From the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, he’d been a goner.

She donned the jeans and slid her feet into a pair of shoes next to the bed, raking her wet hair back as she waited for his answer.

Scars and betrayal be damned, he still wanted her. He glanced out the window, checking the area for Bourean or anyone else who might be watching.

“We’ll see,” he said, as he tossed her her jacket and hustled her out the door.

“W
HERE
A
RE
W
E
going?” Charlotte said, jerking her elbow out of Miles’ grasp.

His hair was short now, his body as lean and muscled as she remembered. There was a hardness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. A hardness that took her breath away when he looked at her.

Unlocking the truck, he hustled her into the passenger seat. “To help someone.”

She needed her passport, her wallet, her gun. “Bringing me along will not help them. I’m—”

He shut the door before she could finish her sentence. Skirting the front of the truck to his side, he scanned the parking lot and then hopped in to the cab.

Fluid movements, focused concentration. Just like in the bathroom when he’d studied her naked body from head to toe.

“Nicolae Bourean is after me,” she reminded him. Why didn’t he understand how vicious and tricky Nico was? “MI6 thinks I’m a traitor. Anyone I’m around is in danger.
I’m
in danger. Especially since you’ve left me unarmed.”

He started the truck and put it in reverse. “You don’t need a weapon. I’ll protect you.”

The night was dark and still. He pulled out of the parking lot and followed the access road to the main highway, seemingly unconcerned about her current situation.

Miles was one man. Nico had hundreds of men—ruthless mercenaries—at his beck and call.

They waited at a stop light, silence filling the cab. “What happened after the cabin?” Miles asked. “Where did you go?”

Maybe if she answered his questions, that hardness would leave his eyes. He’d be satisfied and would give her the necklace. “After I contacted Emit Petit to come pick you up, I went to see my handler.”

“How do you know Emit?”

“I crossed paths with him a few years ago in Moscow when an American businessman was accused of spying activities and needed help getting his family out of the country. His wife is a British citizen and so are the children. I was in the area and had been called in to try diplomatic avenues. Those were failing and Mr. Petit arrived with a less diplomatic, but more efficient, solution. I lent a hand in the exfiltration; made sure the wife and kids made it back to London.”

Lights from a car behind them illuminated the cab. Miles’ face was devoid of emotion. “What did you go see your handler about? To tell him you pumped the American sailor for intel?”

“I set your broken ankle and nursed you back to health. I never pumped you for intel.”