Hot Intent (Hqn) (26 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

K
ATIE
STARTED
TO
open her mouth to ask that very question, but Alex shook his head the tiniest bit at her again. That look had entered his eyes. The one they’d had the first night he’d gotten home. The look of a killer. Absolutely chilling calm rolled off him. Oddly enough, it comforted her. Spy Alex was in the house. And she trusted that version of him with her life.

Why didn’t Alex shoot the driver? Although there
was
the whole business of the taxi traveling at seventy miles per hour. If Alex shot the guy, the vehicle would crash spectacularly. Still. They might have a better shot of surviving a crash than whatever their kidnapper had in store for them.

She sat back and tried to memorize the roads, to keep her sense of direction and to stay oriented as to where they were. And above all, she tried not to panic. But it was hard not to. A man had a freaking gun pointed at her. On cue, her shoulder throbbed fiercely, a pointed reminder of how real a threat that weapon posed.

Worse, a sick realization that Alex was not crazy at all twisted and turned in her gut. The darkness did lurk just below the surface of what she knew as the normal world. Just like he’d said it did. And she’d just been too naive and stupid to see it. Or maybe too stubborn.

It wasn’t as if she’d never heard her brothers and dad talking about it. She had willfully chosen to ignore the warning signs of its existence with them, and she’d done the exact same thing with Alex. No wonder he was fed up with her and counting the seconds until he could ditch her forever.

God, she’d been a fool. Only now, when it was far too late, did she finally let go of
her
delusions long enough to realize Alex had had it right all along. And they were both going to die because of her stubbornness and stupidity.

“I’m so sorry, Alex,” she mumbled.

His gaze flickered toward her long enough for her to be sure he’d heard her, but he didn’t acknowledge her apology in any other way. He looked too busy observing the driver and thinking about something. Hopefully, he was devising a brilliant escape plan.

But she bloody well didn’t see a way out of this mess. She had a sinking feeling that this time they would not miraculously elude disaster.

Her entire body started to shake at the idea of dying. It was one thing to consider being in danger in the abstract, from a distance. It was an entirely different animal altogether to be staring death in the face.

Something really, really bad was going to happen to them, and it was all her fault.

The cab drove south for maybe fifteen minutes on the highway and then exited onto a country road headed west, inland and away from the Atlantic coast. The vehicle slowed barely enough to squeal around the corner at the top of the exit ramp, and then it accelerated immediately down a deserted, two-lane road. The driver must be worried about them making a jump for it out the back doors. Not that she would try it at these speeds. She was no trained stuntwoman.

Outside was a mixture of farmland and forest, and human dwellings were becoming sparse. The driver was taking them out in the middle of freaking nowhere. This could not be good.

Who was this guy? And how had he known where to be conveniently available for her and Alex to jump in his cab? He must have been working with whoever had tailed them after they left the library. Which spoke of coordination and communication on a scale that only a bunch like the CIA could pull off on short notice.

The sophistication of this kidnapping was daunting, to say the least. But which one of them was the target, her or Alex? The people who’d been shooting at her obviously wanted her dead, not kidnapped. Did that mean this elaborate assault was directed at Alex?

The obvious culprit was the CIA. They had shown deep distrust of Alex from the beginning and it had only intensified recently. But she supposed this could just as easily be his father attempting to snatch him from the clutches of the CIA. Man, Alex’s life was complicated. She didn’t envy him the pushes and pulls coming at him from all directions. And now his mother was somehow part of the tug-of-war over him. That had to be messing with his head big-time.

The cab slowed abruptly and careered onto a narrow gravel road. The tires skidded and the car fishtailed, taking the slippery surface far too fast for safety. She braced herself and did her best not to become motion sick at the violent ride.

The car turned off the dirt road and onto a barely passable driveway, hardly even a path through the weeds. Crap. Nobody would ever find them out here in the boonies.

The cab stopped in a sunny, weed-clogged clearing in the bottom of a swale. On the rising slopes around them, thin trees cast dappled shade over the undergrowth. No sooner had the vehicle stopped than the barrel of the pistol aimed straight at Katie from the driver’s seat.

“Get out,” the man ordered them. “Slowly. The girl first.”

If she wasn’t mistaken a hint of triumph flashed in Alex’s eyes for an instant, as if to say the driver had just made a fatal error. She didn’t see it, though. She couldn’t seem to peel her gaze away from that tiny, deadly black hole gaping at her face.

“Out!” the driver barked.

She looked over at Alex, and he nodded in encouragement. She fumbled at the door handle and pushed the door open.

“Go out, and move forward,” Alex murmured in Zaghastani. It was a rare dialect spoken only in one tiny region of central Asia. When they’d gone on a mission to Zaghastan last year, Alex had picked up a little of the language, in which she was fluent.

She did as he instructed and stepped out of the cab. She circled wide of the door and moved toward the front of the vehicle. The cabbie tracked her with his pistol, aiming it at her through the driver’s side window, which he’d opened.

“Now you,” the driver snapped at Alex. “No funny business, or I kill the girl.”

What was she supposed to do? Dive for the front of the cab and use the engine for cover? Stand here like the guy’d told her to? Run? Poised on her toes and ready to bolt, she waited and watched for a signal, any signal, from Alex.

He stepped out of the car slowly. But then he moved so fast she barely saw the blur of motion. Alex lunged forward, grabbed the pistol by the barrel and twisted it violently free of the man’s hand all in one lightning-fast attack.

“Get down, Katie!” Alex bit out. The driver’s door started to open, and in the next millisecond, the pistol fired deafeningly, a single shot. A spray of blood coated the inside of the windshield.

“Get in the backseat,” he ordered, already pulling the driver’s door open. He dragged the driver’s body out of the vehicle by the feet as she darted past, leaving a wide smear of blood in the grass. Alex slid behind the wheel and started the engine as she dived into the backseat.

He’d barely thrown the car into gear when a fusillade of gunshots erupted around them. Screaming a little, she threw her arms over her head and plastered herself flat against the vinyl upholstery. Alex swore from the front seat and returned fire.

“These guys are pros, Katie. They’ll kill the car. We’re sitting ducks in here. When I say go, kick open the door you just crawled in and run like hell for the woods. Zigzag. It makes you harder to hit. I’ll cover you.”

“Pass me the driver’s pistol,” she responded in a trembling voice. “Then I can cover you while you join me.”

A hand came over the back of the front seat and she took the weapon from it. All those years of shooting tin cans with her dad and brothers were finally going to come in handy apparently. She couldn’t actually believe she was about to run out into a firefight. But she and Alex were in life-threatening danger. He was outnumbered, which meant he was also outgunned. If she didn’t help him, he would die. They would both die. Determination temporarily overrode her panic. She reached back, staying low to unlatch the door.

“I’m ready,” she reported.

“On my mark. Three. Two. One. Go!” Alex popped up from the front seat and sprayed gunfire at whoever was out there.

She kicked the door open, rolled out onto the ground and to her feet in one motion and then ran like she’d never run before in her life. She dodged randomly from side to side as she went, but it barely slowed her headlong flight. She ran into the trees and dived behind the first good-size fallen log she came across.

Propping the pistol on the log, she trained it on the clearing and searched frantically for a glimpse of the shooters or at least their positions. There. A muzzle flash from across the little valley. And another one from beyond the bullet-riddled cab. That guy would have a better angle to shoot at Alex, so she trained her weapon on him. Disbelief that she was engaging in a gunfight briefly passed through her mind, but she shoved it aside. Alex needed her.

The cab’s front door flew open, and she shot at the assailant behind the cab. She saw a movement there like someone diving for cover, and she shifted her aim to the second shooter. She squeezed off two rounds at that guy until he ducked, as well. She swung back to the first shooter and sent another round in his direction for good measure.

Alex raced from the car much as she had and almost landed on top of her as he dived across the log. She rolled aside at the last minute to avoid being summarily crushed.

The swale went quiet. Carefully, she ejected her clip and counted bullets fast. Seven rounds left. One would already be in the chamber. Eight shots to live or die.

Alex jerked his head at her to follow him and rose to a crouch. She mimicked him and was not surprised when he took off running up the hill. High ground was a sniper’s friend. They reached the top of the rise and Alex paused his headlong dash to crouch between two table-size boulders.

She knew from games in the woods with her brothers that stealth was vital now. Alex leaned close to murmur low and urgent. “This is as defensible a position as we’re likely to find. You’re going to have to cover one direction while I take the other. We have limited ammo, so wait until you’ve got a decent shot to fire. Understood?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t resist adding in a rush, “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. You were right. It’s all real. You’re not crazy.”

“Uh...thanks. Now concentrate. Slow your breathing and focus.”

A strange calm overcame her. Adrenaline was screaming through her blood, and she felt light and weightless. But her mind was crystal clear. Every leaf, every blade of grass, was vividly outlined as she peered out of the narrow gap in the boulders.

Time seemed elongated, each second stretching out around her as she waited. Alex’s presence was warm and steady at her back. They could do this.

“Incoming,” he murmured. “One’s circling to my left. Should come into your line of fire in a few seconds. I’ve got the second guy.”

Her pulse increased even more, and it was already leaping in her veins like rushing rapids. She concentrated on the forest to her right, alert for the slightest movement. Any second now. She braced her shooting elbow on her upraised knee and used the two-handed grip on the pistol that her father had taught her for maximum stability.

There. Was that a shadow in the trees? So jumpy with nerves that she could hardly sit still, she waited a few more heartbeats to be sure. Alex had said not to waste ammo.

Could she do it? Could she pull the trigger and kill another human being? The words she’d heard so many times in her youth held entirely new meaning for her:
kill or be killed.
Her brothers and her dad hadn’t seemed to think it was a difficult choice at all.

An image of sweet baby Dawn’s face flashed through her head. The little girl deserved to have parents. She’d already lost so much in her short life. Katie’s fist tightened around the butt of the pistol. She and Alex had no choice at all. They had to do whatever was necessary to stay alive out here.

The shadow glided forward, moving away from her and slightly right to left. She would have to time it carefully for when the attacker was between trees. She picked a gap ahead of the guy and waited for him to reach it. She drew in a slow, deep breath the way her dad had drilled into her, and held it as the black-clad man stepped into the gap. She squeezed the trigger. The pistol leaped in her hand, startling her. The man fell or dived to the ground—she couldn’t tell which—but from above him on the hill like this, she still had a small sight line to target him.

Alex shot twice behind her, quickly. After her shot, his target must have taken off running.

She’d been a pretty good shot over the years. Assuming this weapon was sighted reasonably true, she could make the shot. She exhaled, held her diaphragm perfectly still, lined up the sight on the black, leather-clad lump and took the shot.

A grunting cry from her target signaled a hit.

Should she shoot him again or save her bullets for someone else? God, she wished she had more training.

“Incoming, your left,” Alex bit out.

She swung her attention and her knee to the left, setting up for another shot. A man burst out of the trees no more than a dozen feet from her, scaring the hell out of her. She fired twice, fast, almost instinctively. The guy slammed backward to the ground, but rolled over. She dived behind the rock as he fired back at her.

She could hear him breathing in ragged gasps. She’d hit him for sure. Making a mental picture of the spot she’d seen him go down and using the gurgling rattle of his breathing as a guide, she rolled out from behind the boulders. She’d expected a small target, like the top of his head, and that was about all the guy gave her. Nonetheless, the shot was at a range of about fifteen feet, and her father had trained his kids thoroughly.

Katie didn’t miss. The top of the man’s head exploded in a grisly eruption of red gore. She glimpsed a palm-size chunk of the guy’s skull fly up into the air, twirling end over end in macabre flight.

She looked back to her right. Crap! The lump of the first guy was gone. “Splash number two,” she bit out. “Number one’s hit but on the move.”

“Got it,” Alex replied tersely. He switched to Zaghastani. “When I say go, do it. You will use your tool.”