Читать книгу The Impossible Alliance - Candace Irvin - Страница 11

Of all the ways she’d imagined her cover being blown, this was not one of them. Alex dragged her gaze down to the man whose oversize paw was still locked to the most intimate part of her body, praying with every fiber of her being.

She needn’t have bothered.

He knew.

The irony of Jared Sullivan discovering one of her most fiercely guarded secrets this way scorched the remaining fog from her brain. Ice-cold terror replaced it. Terror that now that he knew the truth, he’d be able to see straight through her and divine the rest. If Sam hadn’t already told him.

No, Sam wouldn’t have.

Would he?

A spray of gunfire ripped her thoughts back to the terror at hand. Bullets tore into the ledge beside her head. Either the thugs that had been chasing them had improved their aim, or they’d managed to close the distance. A swift glance down past Jared’s boots confirmed the worst. One of the men had reached the base of the tower. If his AK-47 hadn’t jammed, her brain would have been seeping through the sieve of her skull by now. The thug cursed his malfunctioning rifle and pitched it, opting to grab the end of the nylon rope and scurry up the wall before his buddies caught up enough to cover him.

It was a mistake.

Jared’s hand—MP-5 submachine gun attached—snapped downward as he popped off the remainder of a thirty-round banana clip. She didn’t need to understand the local language, much less catch the thug’s shocked grunt to know Jared had scored a direct hit. She shot a round of thanks heavenward—until she spotted six more thugs bringing up the rear, all armed.

Jared heaved her frame over the ledge as the squad opened fire. Thankfully the spray was haphazard at best. She reached back over the wall, but from the terse shake of his head, it was clear that Jared didn’t trust her strength. He hooked his right boot up on the ledge as the bullets continued to fly, the men rapidly closing the distance and, unfortunately, improving their accuracy. To her horror, the heel of Jared’s boot hit a crevice in the rock and slipped. She reached over the ledge again, this time ignoring the man’s fierce frown as she grabbed his forearm, pulling with all her might as his boot swung up again. His body cleared the ledge a split second before the next spray of bullets trimmed the granite down by inches.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” She jerked her chin toward the thundering chopper drawing closer and closer to the roof. With no less than three floodlights shining directly into her eyes, she had no idea what model the chopper was, much less which country it hailed from. All she knew was that each pulse of those blades drove a thousand daggers into her ear and straight through her brain. She’d forgive the pilot—as long as he was one of theirs. “Just tell me that bird is ours.”

“It is.”

Moments later a sentry on a parapet sixty yards away turned and spotted them. He opened fire as she and Jared hit the roof. Before Alex could draw her next breath, Jared had dumped the expended clip from his submachine gun, locked in a fresh magazine and rose slightly to spray the parapet with bullets.

The sentry pitched headfirst over the wall.

Its flight path clear, the chopper ate up the remaining distance. But the moment the bird moved in over the roof, the roar shot off the scale, damned near shattering her eardrum. The pain was so intense she didn’t even notice Jared kneeling again until his kneecap slammed onto her hand.

“Christ. Sorry, I didn’t—”

“Please. Just…get me…on that…” She couldn’t finish, much less move.

It must have shown.

With no time to cut the rappelling ropes still dangling over the ledge, Jared hooked his arm around her waist and hauled her to her feet. He dragged her toward the chopper, probably chalking up her stumbles to her coma—at least, she hoped so. Five steps later she no longer cared. Just as long as he didn’t let her go. If he did, she knew in her soul that she’d dive straight back down to that roof and this time she’d crawl beneath it.

Anything to get away from that goddamn noise.

She’d been ruthlessly pummeled by sound before, ambushed by the relentless depravity of a malfunctioning hearing aid—but never like this. Just when she thought she couldn’t take another step—with or without support—a steel cable, complete with twin harnesses attached, spilled out from the chopper. Jared shoved her in front of him, sheltering her six-foot frame with his taller, more massive body as a vicious onslaught of lead chewed up the roof directly behind them.

The thugs had reached the ledge.

She felt Jared twist to return the spray. Seconds later several screams punctuated the rotor wash. Jared dragged her to the waiting cable as they died out, but it was too late. The sound waves were ricocheting directly off the flat roof now, their intensity magnified beyond endurance as they slammed back up into her ears. She couldn’t help it; she cowered into Jared’s shoulder, unable to control her body long enough to grab one of the suspended harnesses, much less hook her arms through.

“Dammit! I can’t—”

He jerked the cable close and hooked both her arms inside a harness before she could finish, supporting her with one sinewy arm, then the other as he donned his own harness. He clipped the submachine gun with its expended magazine to his web gear and shoved his medical pouch aside as he hauled her against him, this time anchoring her entire body to his as the chopper swept them up into the air and off into the night. There was no escaping him.

Or the noise.

But at least that began to ebb as the chopper gained altitude. Desperate to ignore the thunder still hammering in her ear, Alex dragged her thoughts together and forced herself to concentrate on her other senses—on any other sense—finally latching on to the only one strong enough to sear through the pain. Touch. She focused on the iron arms banded about her chest, on the cords of taut muscle welded to her belly and her thighs. On the fiery heat smelting every embarrassing inch in between. Jared Sullivan’s touch.

Jared Sullivan’s heat.

Alex gathered her strength and her nerve and lifted her chin, pushing through the noise to stare into those dark amber eyes. Though she’d seen them in person but once before and not nearly this close, that unusual, simmering glow had already managed to work its way beneath her defenses. Since that fateful day, those eyes had managed to gain the power of night, slipping into the intimacy of her bedroom, stoking her illicit desires, setting fire to her resolve. Setting fire to her.

If only in her dreams.

So much so that when she’d risked opening her eyes in that damned makeshift hospital cell and found herself staring into this gaze, she was certain she was hallucinating—until he spoke.

Even now, with the icy wind slicing into the back of her tattered jacket and trousers, with that god-awful racket still reverberating through her skull, that steady amber gaze worked its magic, unnerving her to her very core. But this time, she welcomed it. It seared through the thunder and the cold until, gradually, she was able to notice the rest. This close, despite the camouflaged greasepaint he’d smeared into his face, she could make out the majority of Jared’s striking features.

The rest she filled in from memory.

Those stark, dusky cheeks. The clipped lines of his square jaw. The thin scar that teased the center of his chin, puckering the flesh when he forgot he didn’t smile. And those full, dangerously sensual lips. Even with Alex Morrow’s male physique still firmly in place, her fingers itched to reach out and smooth the exertion beading above the upper curve. Startled that the man had affected her so deeply even now, she shoved her gaze up to the black knit cap Jared had donned for the mission. It rode low on his forehead, butting into and blending in with his thick, midnight brows. Brows that matched the long, inky hair he’d inherited from his Mexican mother.

Was it as soft and silky as it looked?

She shoved that forbidden fantasy aside as well, but not soon enough. Just like that, she could feel the blistering intimacy of the man’s touch as he’d hefted her over the ledge of the castle roof. Still recall the shocking warmth of his hand tucked firmly between her legs. She made the mistake of glancing into those hot amber eyes once more and knew—so did he.

Damn him.

As if the dreams weren’t bad enough. As if hanging here, trapped beneath some viciously bellowing bird in this man’s arms wasn’t worse, now she’d have that humiliating memory to torture her resolve when she least expected it. She sucked in her breath as the chopper pitched suddenly and swerved to the left, then swooped down fast and low. The memory disintegrated. The thunder slammed back. The pain.

She ripped her gaze through the icy night. As the chopper’s altitude whittled down to a nauseating rotor’s breath, she realized that she and Jared weren’t racing over the tops of a few pine trees, but many.

A forest?

The chopper whipped their harnessed torsos and dangling legs between two, insanely close, sheer cliffs before swooping down to hug the rocky riverbed below. Shock punched the breath from her lungs as, once again, the pulsing thunder ricocheted directly off the hardened terrain before lashing back up, lashing into her. It was if some depraved construction worker had locked the steel bit of his massive jackhammer into her skull and slammed the machine into overdrive. Pulse after pulse splintered through her head. Her eyes began to water. She began to whimper. Any moment now she was going to drag her hands up through the filthy mop on her head and rip her ear off.

She didn’t get the chance.

Before she could stop it, the darkness flooded in, the cold, the nauseating dizziness. Until suddenly, incredibly, the noise began to ebb. And then there was nothing.

Nothing but blissful silence.

His package had passed out.

At least, he hoped that was all that’d happened.

Jared leaned forward, automatically shielding Morrow’s body from the freezing rotor wash. From the sudden shift in the chopper’s flight plan, he knew DeBruzkya’s radars had finally started pinging like a bat screaming straight out of hell—especially when the chopper plummeted precariously low, hugging the pitch-black Rebelian terrain in a last-ditch, all-out attempt to remain undetected. He readjusted his grip as the next rise and dip caused their nylon harnesses to shift, locking his arms around Morrow’s now limp body. But as the pilot swerved to avoid another cliff, Jared also knew that despite his iron determination, he was losing his package.

Fast.

The next whiplashing turn sealed his fate—and Morrow’s. He didn’t give a rat’s ass how much ground the chopper had been able to cover. He had to get the pilot to set them down. Now.

He kept his gaze fused to the shadowy terrain, hoping to anticipate the next swerve as he slid his right arm down to hook it around Morrow’s waist. He locked his hand to the man’s—no, make that woman’s—belt before carefully releasing his left arm. The second he was sure his modified grip would hold, he snapped his free hand up and ripped the emergency strobe off his web gear. He popped off a succession of red flashes straight up into the yawning steel belly, then immediately lashed his left arm back down around Morrow. To his relief, the crew chief returned the emergency signal within moments.

There was nothing to do now but wait. And pray.

Had he put enough distance between them and the castle?

Unfortunately the same dense cloud cover that had aided his initial insertion into DeBruzkya’s stronghold hampered him now. He wouldn’t know where they were until they hit the ground and he got a reading from the handheld global-positioning unit. But that was the least of his worries. Right now he needed to find out why Morrow had lost consciousness. From the moment he’d spied the machinery clustered between the beds in that makeshift hospital cell, he knew he was dealing with his worst-case, live-package scenario. Something or someone had knocked Alex Morrow into a coma. Head trauma or drugs—given their current precarious position, he couldn’t be sure which. Much less who had caused it. But he would. Just as soon as this bird landed.

The chopper veered sharply again.

This time he was relieved. The moment those pounding blades changed pitch, he knew they were headed even lower. A quick glance at the shadowy, rapidly closing terrain, confirmed it. The pilot had located a clearing large enough to set them down in—but not large enough to land the bird.

Moments later his boots slammed into loose rock.

He let go of Morrow and ripped off his harness, recapturing the woman’s still-unconscious body moments before it hit the ground. He cut her harness loose and scooped her into his arms as the chopper’s crew chief kicked out several extra ammo clips. His battered hamstring and bicep burned in concert as he leaned down to snag the banana clips. He ignored the seeping wounds and carried Morrow into the shelter of the trees. He’d seal the gashes later. Just as soon as he examined his package.

His army medic training kicked in to high as he tossed the fresh ammo onto a bed of pine needles before laying the geologist’s body out at the base of a tree. Within seconds he’d pulled his rucksack from his shoulders and dumped it along with his weapon, plowing through the ABCs of first aid as he leaned over her and gently removed her old bandages. Airway—clear. He lowered his head until his right cheek grazed the sparse, formerly hidden mustache above Morrow’s lips. Breathing—shallow but mostly regular. He moved on to circulation, automatically sliding his fingers up his patient’s exposed neck to seal them to her carotid artery.

Damn. Much too slow. Bradycardic and thready.

Jared tore through the medic’s pouch at his hips, grabbing his stethoscope with his left hand and hooking it around his neck as he pressed his right to Morrow’s sternum.

Only…it wasn’t there.

If his palm wasn’t still smoking from that blisteringly intimate introduction at the castle’s ledge, he’d have panicked. Instead, he thumped the barrier. Solid rubber. Prosthetic. No doubt designed to flesh out the disguise.

It would have to go.

He grabbed the collar of her shirt and jerked his hands down and apart. Buttons flew off, smacking into pine needles, the tree trunk and his own jaw as the once-white fabric gave all the way to Morrow’s waist. An extremely convincing masculine chest lay beneath, meticulously crafted from broad shoulders and moderately muscled pectorals, right down to the sparse thatch of hair embedded within the shadowy, textured skin. A quick sweep of his fingers assured him it was definitely synthetic skin.

Thank God.

The disguise was so good that for a moment there, he’d wondered if he wasn’t losing ground more quickly than he feared. For all Hatch’s reassurances, where would he and Morrow be then?

Jared crammed the insidious doubts back into their box and locked the lid as he ran his fingers up the right side of the prosthetic chest, locating the row of hooks that sealed the edges of the molded rubber together, as well as the second set hidden along the ridge of her shoulder. He popped both rows almost as quickly as he’d popped the buttons on that grimy men’s dress shirt, biting back an instinctive whistle as he cracked the false chest open and pushed the phony pecs to the side.

Any doubt he had left vanished at the sight.

What lay beneath was definitely all woman.

Generously so. Right down to the stiff nipples crowning the twin ivory swells. Swells that had captured the intermittent starlight filtering through the pines of the Rebelian forest to gleam softly amid the shifting shadows. He ignored his body’s sudden, inappropriate reaction to the sight and leaned down to press the disk of his stethoscope into the upper curve of the woman’s left breast, blocking out the nocturnal symphony around them as he focused on the gradually strengthening heartbeat pulsing through his ears.

Relieved, he withdrew the scope.

He lifted the woman’s shoulders and slipped the stethoscope between the rear of the prosthetic and her equally bare back, timing the rise and fall of her lungs as he evaluated their capacity. Satisfied, he withdrew the scope and hooked it around his neck. But as he settled that mop of matted brown hair into the pillow of pine needles, his fingertips brushed across a row of tiny, tightly spaced bumps tracking up the woman’s scalp, mere millimeters inside the hairline, just behind her right ear.

Stitches?

Possibly the cause of that coma? Before he could lean down close enough to find out, the body beneath his shifted. Stiffened.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He stiffened. Unfortunately he also dropped his gaze. Stared. And damned if he didn’t flush. He ripped his gaze from those taunting swells, hoping the darkness would conceal the damning tide rapidly spreading up his neck. The moment he met the dark-brown fury leveled on him, he knew it hadn’t. He eased his chest up from the woman’s exposed breasts. “I beg your pardon. I was…examining you.”

“Really?”

Given the circumstance, her dry sarcasm shouldn’t have stung. But it did.

Why he even gave a damn what some nerdy, hermaphroditic geologist thought was beyond him. He’d saved the man’s hide, for Christ’s sake. Jared shifted to his haunches as that same geologist sat up and closed the prosthetic over those firm, telling breasts. Okay, he’d saved the woman’s hide. Didn’t that earn him at least one get-out-of-a-faux-pas free card?

Evidently not.

What it earned him was an unobstructed view of the woman’s entire torso as she scrambled to her knees, the false chest swinging wide as she swayed suddenly. He reached out to steady her, but the fury cutting through the coke-bottle lenses that had somehow survived their harrowing flight stopped him cold. He anchored his hands to the ends of the stethoscope at his neck and settled back onto his haunches, ignoring his burning hamstring as he noted the raw edges of the intravenous needle site on the back of the woman’s hand.

She hadn’t been out of that coma for long. It was best not to push her. At least, not until she’d had a chance to regain her balance and her bearings.

The agent in her kicked in sooner than he’d expected, because the moment her balance steadied, she pushed herself.

He watched, ready to grab her if need be, as she peeled the filthy shirt off what turned out to be her own sinewy arms, not the prosthetic’s. She removed the rubber chest and dumped it onto the pine needles, those distinctly feminine curves gleaming amid the shadows as she retrieved the shirt once more. She slid the dingy sleeves up her arms, finally pausing as she hooked her fingers to the shirt’s edges—and the row of missing buttons.

The woman’s muddy brows arched as she lifted her chin. “Been a while, has it, Soldier?”

Damned if the fire didn’t return to his neck.

He thought about apologizing, but he didn’t. There was no way in hell he was telling anyone just how long it had been, much less this woman. Still, her pointed brow succeeded in scoring its second point.

Despite her wobbly balance, he could have turned away.

Before he could answer, she knotted the trailing ends of the shirt around her waist, then brought her hands to her face, peeling off that sparse mustache, then those thick, muddy brows, leaving smoothly arched wisps behind. Dark blond, light brown, he couldn’t quite make out the color. There were too many shadows between them.

Evidently there were still too many angles, as well.

The hard edges of her jaw melted away next as she tucked her fingers inside her mouth and removed a set of temporary dental implants that had obviously been designed to alter the shape of her face. Her cheeks stood out pale and high in the dim light. Without the implants squaring her chin or the fake mustache drawing attention from her mouth, her lips were now full, almost lush.

Jared unhooked one of the canteens from his web belt and set it on the ground between them, knowing she’d be needing it soon enough, just as he knew why she’d decided to pull a Victor/Victoria out in the middle of the Rebelian forest. DeBruzkya and his goons would be tracking two men. She was turning them into one man and one woman.

Not bad.

In fact, damned clever.

That, combined with her increasing steadiness, told him she’d come out of that coma with the brilliant brain Hatch had raved about still intact. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out the pair of work boots. He’d learned years ago that more often than not, a package was imprisoned sans shoes to lower morale and prevent escape. Morrow was no exception. He dumped the boots at her feet and added a pair of black socks.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. I need to get a fix on our position. As soon as I get back, I’ll finish examining you. Then we need to talk.” He waited for her nod, then stood to retrieve the handheld global positioning unit from his jumpsuit as he headed for the clearing. Now that he was reasonably confident she’d survive the night, it was time to focus on other pressing concerns. Like where the hell they were. And how much ground they had left to cover before they arrived at their designated safe house.

Jared fired up the GPS unit as he reached the clearing.

Five kilometers.

His breath eased out. The chopper had ferried them farther than he’d thought, but still not far enough. Morrow might be steady now, but her weakened state had already caused her to pass out once. With this much ground to cover, there was a good chance it would happen again before the night was over.

The original plan had been to have the chopper cleave to the riverbed as long as possible. Three-quarters of the way up the river, the bird was supposed to have slowed just long enough to cut them loose. Then it would have resumed its breakneck speed, eventually veering west to head straight for the Rebelian-Gastonian border, DeBruzkya and his radar twidgets never knowing he and Morrow had been left behind.

All that’d changed the moment Morrow passed out.

Once the chopper was forced to hover, the stalled blip on the scope would have afforded even DeBruzkya’s inept twidgets a chance to pinpoint their modified infiltration site. Jared flicked off the GPS and shoved the unit into his pocket, then lit up the dial on his watch. Twenty minutes had passed since they’d set down. Just about long enough for DeBruzkya to scramble one of his own choppers and send it after them. He had to act quickly.

Jared retrieved his flashlight and lit up the gash on his biceps first. The ragged edges of the wound appeared black beneath the red beam streaming from his mini Maglite. So did the blood clot already filling in the center of the furrow. Even better, there was no sign of the bullet. This one could wait.

He swept the beam down to his left hamstring.

Unfortunately that one couldn’t.

He twisted his torso to get a better view as he lit up the wash of black spreading down his left leg. Damn. He lowered his hand, biting down on a second curse as he probed the gash. The wound was twice as long as the rip across his biceps, but again, no bullet. Nor did it require a tourniquet.

Yet.

He retrieved a dark-green cravat from the first-aid pouch on his hip and stuffed the fabric into the tear in his pressure suit. Satisfied the makeshift bandage would do for the moment, he headed back into the pines, determined to get a look at the bumps he’d discovered in Morrow’s hairline. Not to mention a better grasp on her vitals. He snagged the stethoscope from his neck and raised the flashlight, illuminating her form as he reached her. She finished tying her second boot and stood.

Sweet Mother above. He managed to retain his hold on the flashlight, but the scope hit the forest floor. If his leg burned as he leaned down to retrieve it, he didn’t notice.

Damned near all he could discern was her.

As he’d anticipated, she’d used the water from the canteen to drench that unruly mop of hair. But the slicked-back result drew attention to more than a high forehead and smooth cheeks. Much more. The sleek style combined with those missing dental implants to highlight the curve of her now heart-shaped chin, drawing his gaze straight down her unusually long, graceful neck. Straight into the gaping V in that tatty shirt. All the way down to the knotted tails resting a bare inch above the riveting navel crowning her sleek belly.

“Well? I’m fresh out of lipstick and mirrors. Will I do?”

He must have taken too long trying to come up with a suitable answer. The unexpected awkwardness that flashed through her eyes as she waited killed the sultry effect and—thankfully—his body’s powerful reaction to it. Her tongue slid across her bottom lip as he lowered the Maglite. He recognized the motion for what it was. A nervous habit.

For a split second he was reminded of Morrow, the man.

Carnal sex and awkward, nerdy innocence?

It didn’t make sense. Then again, what part of the entire transformation did? Beyond a copious list of professional qualifications, Jared hadn’t been able to glean much from the personnel file Hatch had provided. But he had discovered that Dr. Alexander Morrow had been connected to ARIES for the past six years. What kind of woman was willing to suppress the essence of her being this completely, for that long? And why?

Dammit, it was none of his business. She was none of his business. He had a patient to heal. An agent to return to active duty. A joint mission to complete. And despite what his mentor thought, he also had a ranch and a life to return to.

For a few years, anyway.

Hatch.

Jared stiffened as the stunning realization slammed into him from out of nowhere—and then from everywhere.

“What’s wrong? Do I look that bad—or are we that far off position?”

He dropped his gaze to the fingers that had made their way to his forearm. Fingers that were long and tapered but also, now that he thought about it, noticeably feminine. He dragged his gaze up to those murky eyes and stared into them, ignoring the growing concern as he searched the shadows that were probably as phony as the rest of her, furious at their boss and furious with her. But most of all, furious with himself.

In the heat of their escape, he hadn’t even noticed the most insidious deception of all.

The lie of omission.

“Why the hell didn’t he tell me you were a woman?”