The Mercenary (14 page)

“Who is it?” Kirk asked.

“One of the men from the mining company.”

“Fuck. We can’t lead them back to the safe house. We need to lose them.”

“I’m doing my best.”

Kirk didn’t say anything else, just turned in the seat and kept his weapon trained on the other car. Laz turned off the lights, weaving through the traffic until they left the other car in the dust.

He pulled into a run-down neighborhood. “Let’s leave the car here.”

“Good idea.”

He sent a text to Savage telling them they’d been hit and were coming in on foot.

He and Laz moved in sync, finding the natural cover provided by the neighborhood. They found a late-model sedan and Laz picked the lock and they climbed into the car. Laz had it up and running in no time. They pulled away from the curb and heard a man yelling at them.

But Laz just kept driving.

“I grew up in a neighborhood like this one,” Kirk said.

“Did you? I grew up in a nice safe suburb,” Laz said.

“Then why’d you turn to this life?” Kirk asked. Because if he’d grown up somewhere nice like Laz’s childhood home, he’d never have wanted to leave it.

Laz laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “I wanted to make the world a better place. Try to give kids like the ones that live here,” he gestured toward the row houses in the distance, “a chance at the good life.”

Kirk nodded and didn’t say anything else. That was part of the reason why he’d gotten into the Corps. That and the fact that a weapon needed to be used. And Kirk had always been a weapon.

A
UGUST
5, P
RETORIA SAFE HOUSE

A
nna and Olivia had spent all day poring over the files and had compiled damning evidence that linked Ray to a group of known terrorists. Each new piece of information they had uncovered had made Olivia realize that Ray’s trying to kill her had been the wake-up call that she’d needed. Getting out of his house was the best thing she could have done.

“Kirk and Laz are in trouble,” Savage said, coming into the room where they were.

“What kind of trouble?” Olivia asked. She hadn’t seen Kirk since this morning and she missed him. She hadn’t thought she could grow so dependent on one man so quickly, but she had.

“I’m not sure. They had to ditch their vehicle. I sent Hamm to the car to see if anyone took interest in it.”

“Is it safe for them to be on foot? Jo’burg after dark isn’t the safest place,” Olivia said. Then she realized who she was talking about. “Sorry. Of course they’ll be fine. It’s Jo’burg that should watch out.”

“They can take care of themselves,” Savage said.

Savage pulled Anna to the side to talk to her alone, and Olivia got up and walked to the window. She hated this place and how dangerous it was. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard of a car being attacked that way. This place was just full of unrest.

How had she ever thought she could make a life here? Even with Kirk by her side, she doubted she’d ever feel safe enough to live here. She couldn’t wait to get back to her civilized world. Manhattan or London. A big city where mugging was the biggest threat, not car shootings or kidnappings.

She knew location wasn’t a guarantee of safety, but she’d feel better in the concrete jungles she knew—way safer than she felt here in this strange land with people she couldn’t relate to.

“Olivia?”

“Hmm?”

“You okay?” Anna asked. Savage had left while she’d been standing there, Olivia realized.

“Fine, I guess. I’m having a tough time dealing with everything that has been happening. I mean, I was planning a wedding, and now I’m in hiding.”

“That’s completely understandable,” Anna said.

“And…I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I think I’m falling for Kirk.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “He’s nothing like the men you normally date.”

“You think I don’t know that? I know that we don’t make sense outside this situation, but I feel like there’s a part of me that is very similar to him.”

Anna came over and sat down next to her. “What part?”

“The loner part. You know, despite my social obligations I really like being alone, and I can tell Kirk does, too. He has this calmness…this quietness inside him that soothes me.”

“It was like that for Savage and me. On the surface, I felt like he was someone I’d never be able to accept or trust, but he is.”

Olivia felt a lot better thinking about Anna. She might be the only woman who understood the relationship she was embarking on.

“Now that we have this information on Ray, what will you do with it? A part of me wants to confront him, make him admit that he’s a scumbag,” Olivia said.

“That would be satisfying, but we will take it to the officials and we’ll have to contact someone from the diamond consortium. They will want to retrieve the diamonds that Ray sold. They only allow so many from each mine into the market each year,” Anna said.

“I know. I hope that doesn’t mean they’ll shut down the mine in Cullinan. There are a lot of workers who rely on their jobs there.”

Anna nodded. “We can try to influence them not to shut it down, but those men answer only to themselves.”

“I know. They are like a dictatorship. Phillip is on the consortium and I know he still has to answer to the board. They follow very strict rules.”

“They also have consequences for breaking the rules,” Anna said.

“Like what?”

“I’ve heard they kill men who steal from them. So if Ray going to jail is important to you, we need to go to the cops first.”

Olivia shook her head. “Why do men think it’s okay to just kill?”

“It’s not just men,” Anna said. “The world is full of this gray area that most people don’t realize exists. But courts can’t necessarily regulate a fitting punishment in some places.”

Olivia realized what her friend was saying and for a minute she felt very naïve and stupid. “I guess South Africa is one of those places.”

“Yes, it is. Here the diamond consortium has to be swift with their reactions when someone steals from them, otherwise everyone would try to do it. And then they’d lose the control they have over their product and their workers.”

Olivia didn’t like it. Didn’t care for this world she’d only been on the outskirts of. She realized that, as much as she cherished her new knowledge and relationship with Kirk, she wanted to go back to not knowing this kind of stuff.

Kirk was tired and irritated by the time they got back to the safe house. He met with Savage and they had determined that they had enough information to have Lambert arrested, which was fine and dandy but he wasn’t really a gathering-information-and-waiting guy.

No one on the team was, and they were ready for some kind of action. But there was none to be found here. Savage had another job lined up for them as soon as this one ended, in the Indian Ocean off Somalia, where pirates were preying on oil tankers, shipping freighters, and luxury boats.

Fighting pirates was exactly what Kirk needed. Today had just reinforced to him that there wasn’t anything that could come out of his relationship with Olivia.

“What are we doing with Olivia?” Kirk asked.

“She is booked on a flight to London this afternoon. Her parents will meet her at the airport. Anna has worked with her contacts there to keep Olivia’s arrival out of the media.”

“That’s good. She doesn’t need that kind of attention,” Kirk said. He had to say good-bye to her. He knew that. But this just made him realize that no matter what he’d been hoping for earlier, she wasn’t going to be his.

“Who’s taking her to the airport?” Kirk asked after a few minutes.

“Anna and I can do it if you don’t want to.”

Kirk looked at his boss and friend and realized the other man knew exactly what he was going through. “I’ll do it. Where is the team meeting up to move on?”

“Freight airport. Laz got us a Blackhawk.”

“How?”

“I have no idea. That boy is magic when it comes to making things happen,” Savage said. “You know, you have time off coming to you. If you want to take a week and go to London no one would say anything.”

Kirk shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Don’t let a good thing slip away,” Savage said.

“I’m not. You’ve just become domesticated.”

Savage looked like he was going to argue, but then just shrugged. “Have I?”

“Hell, yes,” Kirk said.

“Looking for a fight?”

Kirk nodded. “But not now.”

“Why don’t you hit the gym?” Savage suggested.

“I might. Hamm said that the car was gone by the time he got to it, so we won’t know if it’s related to the diamond lies that Lambert has been juggling.”

“It felt random to me. I don’t think they know where we are or even who we are,” Savage said.

“I agree.”

Anna came into the room and walked over to Savage. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and lowered her head to kiss her husband. “I’m glad you are back safely, Kirk. Olivia’s upstairs if you are looking for her.”

“Why would I be looking for her?”

“No reason,” Anna said.

Kirk felt like a jerk talking to Anna that way. “Sorry.”

She smiled at him. “It’s fine.”

Savage looked like he didn’t necessarily agree. Kirk decided it was time to get out of there.

“Later.”

He climbed the stairs, feeling every one of his thirty-seven years. And his soul…so weighted down with all the kills he’d taken over the years. He knew then that Olivia was making him feel this way.

He wanted to come to her a young man with dreams and a clean soul and instead he knew that he never could. Letting her go was the only thing he could do. It was the only way that they would both be able to live and not be disappointed.

He went to the room she’d been staying in and found the door opened. She was obviously ready to go. He should just grab a shower and go back with his team. Pretend he’d never held her in his arms as his own. But he heard the sound of running down the hall.

Olivia put on her running shoes and workout clothes and went to the gym. She was tired of waiting. She felt if she had to sit in one of the rooms downstairs for another minute she’d start screaming and God knows she didn’t think she could stop.

She had to wrap her ankle in an Ace bandage, but then she felt like it was strong enough to withstand her running on it. She really wanted to be outside. To just breathe the night air and find that part of her center that she’d lost.

Anna had told her that the team had enough information to have Ray arrested and it was time for her to safely return to her parents in London. She was glad to get out of here, but she was going to miss Kirk.

She got on the treadmill and ran away from the thoughts in her head. Just focused on the poster on the wall that was a tribute to Shakespeare’s quotes.

She wished she had the freedom to just do what she wanted. Instead she had to deal with the knowledge that because she’d witnessed Ray doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, many lives were in danger. Hers, Ray’s, Kirk’s, Anna’s, her parents’.

That was a heavy burden and one she just didn’t know if she could handle. She knew she was weak and she wondered if that was why she’d always enjoyed writing so much.

The world on the page was so much easier to control than the world she lived in. There were no hard-and-fast rules in the game they were playing with Ray and the dangerous men he dealt with on the black market.

There was no guarantee that things would work out the way she wanted them to. Instead she had to deal with the fact that there was a very strong possibility that this might never be fixed the way she wanted it to.

“Olivia?” Kirk called from the hallway.

“In here,” she said, hitting the stop button and getting off the treadmill.

Kirk came in a minute later. He had several days’ growth of stubble on his face and his hair had been colored darker than his normal shade. He seemed tired to her and she realized that he hadn’t slept last night when she had. She should give him the peace and solace he gave her.

She walked over to him and took his hand in hers. “How are you? Savage said you had car trouble.”

“Fine. I got some information from my contact that shows Lambert killing that man out at the mines.”

“Good,” she said, but she didn’t want to talk about that now. “Do you have to be anywhere now?”

He gave her an odd look. “I don’t think so. Why?”

She bit her lip at how needy that question made her sound. “Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Actually, we have about four hours until we are moving out to go and apprehend Lambert.”

“I could use a shower.”

“Good,” she said. “You go get in the shower and I will get you something to eat.”

“Thanks,” he said. She started to walk away, but he stopped her with both hands on her waist. “I need a kiss first.”

She turned in his arms and went up on her tiptoes kissing him before walking away, but he stopped her. “Forget the food. Let’s shower together.”

She nodded and followed him back to the bedroom where they’d spent most of their time together. They bathed and as they were drying off she realized this was the last time she’d be with him like this.

With a soft cry, Olivia wrapped herself around Kirk’s warm body and didn’t want to open her eyes. She just curled closer to him, resting her head on his chest right over his heart. His heart beat under her ear and she kept her eyes closed, not ready to move on. She knew this was the last time she’d be in his arms. Soon she was going to walk away from him and he was going to let her go.

She curled her arms around his chest as she felt his hands sweep down her back and draw her more fully against his body.

Kirk was the kind of man who could make her feel safer than anyone else ever had, but she knew that was a crutch and she had to figure out how to stand on her own because he had his own life. She’d been falling for him since the moment he’d rescued her from Burati.

His hand tightened on her ass and she lifted her head, looking down at him. He watched her with an intense awareness that made her suspect he might already know more about what was going on in her head than she wanted him to.

“Kirk—”

“No more talking. We both know this is it and I need to be inside you one more time.”

He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and drew her down toward him. His mouth opened lazily on hers and tasted the words that she was trying to get out. She forgot all about talking as he rolled her under his body and covered her completely.

Safety and security swamped her as he wrapped his arms around her, rocked his mouth over hers, and settled himself between her legs. It was too easy to read the expression in his eyes. Too easy to acknowledge that he wasn’t letting her go without leaving his mark on her.

He cupped her head in his hands, rubbing his lips over hers and then licking a trail down the side of her neck to a spot just at the base of her neck. He sucked on her skin until she arched into him, wanting, searching for more from him. He lifted his head; his lips were full, swollen from all the kisses they’d shared.

He brushed his thumb back and forth over her lower lip until she bit on the tip of it and sucked it into her mouth. He continued his trail of licking and suckling kisses down to her breasts. He kissed her everywhere, didn’t leave one inch of her torso unexplored. She was so sensitized from his kissing, she felt like she was going to explode.

Her nipples were tight buds and her breasts felt too full. He scraped his teeth up and down the sides of her breasts and then cupped her breasts in both his hands. He massaged her entire breast with his fingers and his palm.