Free Fall (3 page)

Until they’d crashed. Broken up. Ripped each other’s heart out.

A quick elbow jab to his side brought him back to the present. He looked sharply at his team bud—Tech Sergeant Gavin “Bubbles” Novak—nodding toward the images again. Screen three filled with a male stretched out on the floor, a student beaten to a pulp for information who appeared to be hanging on by a thread.

Stella knelt beside the pummeled student, her hands going to each wound as if to make sure to document every injury for the rescue team watching. Her gaze was so intense.

Something tugged at him, but he couldn’t pinpoint what. From her position, her back to the enemy’s camera, she clearly meant to hide something from her captors watching. She stared up into the bug, her blinking strange, erratic. Was she drugged? He watched closer, searching, slowly realizing…

Holy crap, there was a pattern.

Jose held up a hand, snapping his fingers for attention. “Agent Smith, get a close-up on her face there. Do you see? She’s blinking.”

“Yeah, and your point, Sergeant?”

“She’s blinking Morse code.” The longer he looked, the more certain he became. “Like the Navy pilot captured during the Vietnam War. He blinked ‘torture’ in a televised interview.”

“And you think she’s doing that now.”

“Stella’s a code breaker. You know that from her file. But you wouldn’t know she talked about stuff like that all the time.”

They had talked about it. And that had to be why she’d hedged her bets in trying to get him here to watch the footage. A long shot? Maybe. But her situation called for extreme measures.

Jose sat up straighter. “And there. She’s tapping her fingers, but always away from the bad guy cameras.”

“Tap code? Like the language the Vietnam prisoners used to talk to each other from cell to cell?”

“Right. She’s trying to communicate, to give us as much information as possible.” Damn it. If they’d seen this earlier, the information would already be decoded. Now… “Who knows what else she may have uncovered?”

Mr. Smith scratched his bristly chin. “Weighing the risk of waiting against missing some info she may be sharing, we can’t afford to delay. You’ll go in and we’ll feed her messages to you as we unlock them,” he said with surety, but his forehead creased with concern. “Is your personal baggage with Agent Carson going to present a problem?”

How much did Smith know? The breakup last month had been bad. It had hurt like hell—still did. But it had been quiet as well as permanent. He’d come to grips with the fact he would spend his life without her.

But he could not, would not, accept a world without Stella Carson in it. “I’m as focused as I’ve ever been. I know my job and I’ve been tasked to get
all
the hostages out alive.”

“That’s what I needed to hear.” Smith turned from the image of Stella on the main screen. “Gentlemen, time to roll.”

Jose stole one last look at the only woman he’d ever loved, soaking in what could be his final glimpse of her alive. The door behind her opened again. She pressed her back to the wall. Fast. Her eyes alert.

A captor with hard muscles and harder eyes walked inside, tossing another unconscious student in a heap in the corner. He paused in front of Stella, one lip lifting in a sneer.

“Once we finish with the last of your friends, you are next.”

Jose’s fist closed around the coin.
Bloody
hell.

***

She was next.

Next to be tortured.

Next to be killed?

Time was running out for a Hail Mary rescue. That didn’t mean she intended to go down without kicking in some teeth on her way out of this world. Sure, the local government had asked for international help in dealing with the warlords, but that wouldn’t guarantee her presence would be actively acknowledged. Field operatives disappeared sometimes. It was a hazard of the job. Would these stone walls become her funeral crypt, entombing her here with other dead bodies and priceless artifacts?

The door closed, giving her a temporary reprieve to search the room, to prepare herself and hopefully launch more warnings. When she’d identified the nanotechnology surveillance equipment, she’d allowed herself to hope her messages would get through in time. And if not? She’d relayed as much information as possible. Some might not have noticed her blinking and tap codes, but she’d bargained on Jose remembering their conversations. She’d scrambled for every idea possible to leave clues that she needed him brought in to watch the surveillance feed.

Had he seen her?

Regret chewed her gut over the way she’d ended things, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same. Even if they weren’t meant to be together, she’d hurled horrible words at him and those could be the last she spoke to him. Was there a chance to tell him if he was on the other end of that video feed? Would he recall the good times between them, their exotic dates over to Queen Elizabeth National Park and up into Egypt? Heaven knew she would never forget the sound of his laugh. His easygoing approach to life, the way he cared for the people around him had drawn her to him from the start.

She pressed her hands to her eyes, dizzy from lack of sleep and minimal food. What if she was hallucinating about the whole mini spy drone? Charlotte’s Web up there could be wondering what the hell was going on. And damn, she really was crazy if she focused on anything other than doing everything possible to get out of here. It wasn’t just her life on the line.

She blinked a final Morse code in the direction of “Charlotte.” Details about the guards and discussions she’d overheard, everything possible to protect the rescue team coming in. Would it be enough to help an extraction team before her turn at the inquisition?

She’d taken her fair share of knocks from her three big brothers while playing basketball, football, and pretty much any other sport, because if she didn’t join them, she got left behind. She’d always punched right back. She’d held her own with her fists, fingernails, and whatever else she could lay her hands on. She would do the same here.

Searching for any other possible tools among the stolen artifacts, she continued her rambling litany in hopes good guys were on the other side of that nano spy bug. “If somebody doesn’t send some antibiotics back here we won’t last long enough for you to ransom us off to our country in exchange for whatever the going rate is for students.”

Rambling on for whoever might be listening, she pocketed the preserved jaw of some small animal to use like spiked brass knuckles. The tip of a tusk went in her sock.

Too bad they hadn’t stashed her in the ancient war tools room. Just as she’d expected from the beginning, they were gathering artifacts to sell on the black market to fund their separatist group, headed by a radical warlord. The same group that had recently blown up the American ambassador’s private residence, hell-bent on stirring unrest.

But they were planning something more here, something big. Maybe for when the vice president’s wife came to visit to bring national attention to the plight of women in the region? Stella had made progress with one of the guards by pretending to be a student sympathetic to their cause. But somehow, they’d grown suspicious or been tipped off.

Years ago her mother had tried to help the same people who now held her hostage. Talk about irony. And she was still no closer to figuring out missing details from the day her mother died.

The door opened again. Her stomach plunged. She tucked her ankle behind her other leg, just in case they caught sight of the bulge in her sock. The scariest of her captors—not the sneering bastard, but the man who showed no expression at all, a short lean man who should have appeared harmless but reminded her of a cheetah rather than a lion. Just as fast, strong, and lethal.

Wordlessly, he grabbed her arm in a vise grip and hauled her from the room. Would the surveillance bug follow her? Was she on her own now? How close was help? She had to operate on the assumption she was being watched and that help was on the way.

If she could just stay alive long enough.

“Where are we going?” Down a dank hallway, past the two dead Americans tossed in the corner like sacks of garbage, not even a hint of dignity given to the lifeless hulls that once housed a human soul. She vowed to do everything in her power to make sure their families got their bodies back. “You really don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

She looked up at the camera in the hall. The enemy’s camera. She’d been left alone so far. The captors had gone for the older ones first, assuming she was a junior agent, low-level status, which meant less intel. They’d gone for the big fish first.

Or maybe they hoped the sounds of torture would soften her up, make her break faster.

She couldn’t weaken. Too many people in the field depended on her silence. Names. Lives.

Guilt weighed her down. She’d been selfish to come to this region of the world with her own agenda. She’d accepted the assignment in hopes of uncovering more about her mother’s death in the region fourteen years ago—distracting enough. Then she’d met Jose and her focus drifted even further.

Her eyes shot back to the dead bodies—an innocent student and a CIA operative. Had a lapse on her part cost them their lives? She’d been so damn sure their cover was rock solid. Even when the separatists had taken the group of students hostage, she’d prayed that was their only agenda. That they didn’t know they’d also landed four undercover operatives as well.

And there was still hope they didn’t know about her. How ironic that she’d come here to retrace her mother’s last days and now she was walking in her footsteps in a more literal way. Her mother’s battered body sent home in a box, the cause of death labeled a car accident. And Stella never had the chance to say good-bye, to apologize for sending her mother off that last time by screaming how much she hated her for leaving them again.

So many regrets.

And her most current regret? One of her biggest? The way she’d broken things off with Jose, the man she’d been so certain was her soul mate.

If she thought about him, she would cry, but then maybe that would seem more natural. She’d tried it at first—no luck. But if it bought her time now, then hell, she would try anything.

She envisioned Jose’s shoulders sagging when he realized she was serious about ending their relationship.

Tears filled her eyes in a flash. Using the emotion to her advantage, she looked up at the cold, detached guard. She let the tears roll down her cheeks, allowed all her anguish to show for once.

“Please, call my mom and dad. They’ll pay you anything you want to get me back.”

Her cover story would hold under scrutiny. Her passport traced back to a concocted profile of her life as a pampered rich kid from Florida who lived off of a hefty trust fund, continuing to enroll in college to avoid getting a job. She’d slid right into the group of students. For them, she’d risked bringing Jose into harm’s way, something she never would have done had she been the only one taken. But for the students and for whatever plan these ruthless bastards were cooking up, she had to think like an agent.

Not like a woman whose heart still ached for a man she couldn’t have.

Her captor jerked her to a stop at the end of the hall. The doorway loomed in front of her. And landing on the corner of the frame, a buzzing little fly.

She stared up into what she prayed was help and one last time she blinked…

Warning: Land mines at the camp gates.

***

Stella’s voice echoed in the earpiece of Jose’s comm set as he stood in the open hatch of a C-130 cargo plane. Wind roared through the open portal. Parched earth and thirsty frankincense trees sprawled far, far below. The rebel camp waited.

With Stella inside.

All he needed was the signal to go and he would jump with Bubbles and the SEALs, parachuting into the compound in the twilight, HALO style—high altitude, low opening. The best way to slip in unnoticed. No tipping anyone off by bringing a helicopter too close. The cargo plane would drop them off at thirty thousand feet with an oxygen mask into a free fall. He would wait until the very last possible second to pop the parachute.

Then they would charge the camp on foot.

“Go, go, go!” the loadmaster shouted the command into the mic.

His boots pounded along the metal ramp as he ran to the edge and…

Jumped.

Arms and legs extended, his body split the air, speeding downward. He hurtled through the dusky sky, into utter silence other than the sounds from his headset… more feed from Stella’s surveillance and a low hum of radio chatter from the aircrew. But he only heard the echoes of Stella from the satellite feed.

The command center still ran the feed in the background in a way he could hear her faintly. Listening to her sob tore him apart, even knowing she was acting her role as a terrified student. But the slaps by her interrogator weren’t fake. The punch was followed by a stifled groan.

Then more questions. They didn’t believe her or her friends. Someone was here spying.

And God help her, they were right.

How long could she hold out? He wanted to send her a sign to hang on, to let her know he was on his way at top speed. Wind whipped over him.

Hearing her tortured was a hellish abyss that could suck him in faster than any free fall. Damn it all to hell. He had to think of something, anything else, or he would lose his shit. His mind latched onto an image of her at a squadron party. People hadn’t known they were dating. They’d both been hepped up on accidental brushes and hot glances.

But those times he’d watched her when she thought no one was looking… those times hit him hardest. Such as at that picnic when her eagle eye picked up his teammate Bubbles’s one vulnerability. Hulking big, badass Gavin Novak didn’t like fuzzy things… like the inside of a jacket or texture of certain foods. She’d grabbed a peach and chased Bubbles around the bonfire, threatening to rub it on his arm. Her laughter, her playfulness, all bundled up with her insightfulness made for a compelling, irresistible woman.