Chapter 5
5
Alex savored the way Katie’s body melted against his, fantasizing about how it would feel beneath his in the throes of sex. Gradually, she slid down in her sleep until her head ended up resting on his lap. That brought a whole new wave of forbidden fantasies springing to mind.
The sight of her mostly naked body danced in his mind’s eye, burned on it indelibly. Lord, the things he wanted to do to her. And the sight of her breast with Dawn’s head nuzzling it…he knew that wasn’t supposed to be a sexy thing, but it had turned him on so bad he could hardly stand it. Someday, he wanted to be the one sucking at her breast, bringing that flush of pleasure to her cheeks.
He snorted at himself. Must be some misplaced, infantile need to replace his mother. He always had been a breast man…
…although the sight of Katie’s backside with that strand of lace nestled between her cheeks was enough to make an ass man out of him in no time. Purely depraved fantasies came to mind about what he’d like to do to that part of her anatomy.
Sleep. He needed sleep before tonight. But with his body rock hard and her face inches from his erection, there was no way he was getting any rest. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander deep into the dark world of possibilities if Katie McCloud ever decided she wanted to climb down off her good girl pedestal.
He spent the day spent dozing, helping feed and care for Dawn, and speculating on who had planted both the primary burr in his coat and the smaller, secondary one in Katie’s hiking boot. He hadn’t told her about either one. No need to panic her when their tracker was undoubtedly someone from his checkered past. The list of people who might wish him ill was long and distinguished.
As dusk fell, he broke out more bottles of water and mountain climbers’ energy bars. He and Katie ate quickly, and she topped off Baby Dawn with more of the IV fluid. The baby’s birth weight had been excellent, he estimated somewhere around eight pounds, but the infant would need real food soon.
He waited, until full dark had fallen outside and then asked Katie, “Ready to head out?”
She murmured an affirmative and he heard her coat zip. They had fashioned a cloth sling for Dawn that held the baby securely across Katie’s torso and should make her more mobile. He hoped she wouldn’t need that mobility for tonight’s hike. He knew the general direction and GPS coordinates of where he was going, but he had no idea what the terrain between here and there would be like. He was not optimistic.
The night was ominously dark and silent as they set out. Either the battle was finished in the Karshan valley, or had yet to begin. He feared it was the former, which would mean whoever was tracking him was free to come after him.
He stuck the main burr on a small piece of wood and sent it floating down the only tiny rivulet they came across after they crossed the head of the valley and started down into the next one. The second burr he’d thrown down a deep vertical shaft in the back of their little cave. The hole had been maybe eight feet across and it had taken the rock he’d stuck the burr to many long seconds of falling before it clattered faintly below.
“Can we drink this water?” Katie murmured as she stared down at the trickle of water.
“Not unless you want dysentery and trichinosis.”
“Never mind,” she laughed under her breath.
He filled the water bottles from the stream, popped in water purification tablets, and gave the bottles a good shake. “In a little while, we’ll have drinkable water. It’ll taste like iodine, but it’ll be safe.”
She nodded, and they continued on.
A vast, sloping plane angled away from them on this side of the pass, and he mentally echoed Katie’s sigh of relief when he murmured, “We’re headed across that.”
But the plain was deceptive, crisscrossed by gullies and littered with boulders and dried bushes with vicious thorns as long as his finger. How anyone survived out here defied comprehension.
They’d been hiking for maybe two hours and were making decent time when he heard a noise that made his blood run cold. A motor.
“Get down,” he bit out. They happened to be crossing a small ditch maybe five feet deep in total, and Katie crouched down quickly, looking around nervously. She’d heard it, too.
He passed her the satellite radio and breathed, “If I’m not back in two hours, use the emergency frequency on that to call for a rescue.”
“I’m not leaving you out here,” she whispered back angrily.
“Thanks for the sentiment, but I’ll be dead.”
On impulse, he leaned over and kissed her hard and fast on the mouth. And then he was up and out of the hole. He took a quick fix on a few landmarks so he could find her again and then took off running low and fast, zigzagging across the broken landscape.
The engine cut off abruptly. It sounded like a four-wheel ATV. Someone was so following them. He swore under his breath slid his wicked field knife out of its belt sheath, and crept forward, hunting the hunter.
The bastard was in for a nasty surprise if the thought the do-gooder doctor was an easy mark. His father hadn’t been a top Russian field operative for nothing. Alex, Mikhail, and Sergei had been groomed their entire youths to follow in their father’s footsteps. And that included hand-to-hand combat training from the best—their old man.
It took him only a few minutes to spot the stalker. The guy was good. Excellent, in fact. Moved like a U.S. Special Forces operator but wore native clothing and sported a beard. Trying to blend in, was he? This was a covert mission, then.
Alex picked his spot, perched high on a boulder, and settled in to ambush the bastard as he crept past. Alex had the patience of a panther and waited for the perfect moment to leap. It took almost ten minutes for the guy to draw even with his position.
Plenty of time for Alex to consider the fact that, even if he took out this guy, ten more just like him would swarm out here after him and Katie and the baby. What the hell was he supposed to do out here at the end of the world? Kill them all? Katie and Dawn were depending on him.
He might have been trained by a spy to be a spy, but that didn’t mean he’d ever done this cloak and dagger stuff for real. A moment’s doubt that he could pull this off passed through him.
But then he remembered how thorough his father’s training had been. He shrugged off the doubt, closing it tightly in a little drawer inside his mind. This moment called for calm. Focus. Fear and doubt were counterproductive, therefore, unnecessary.
He weighed all the possible options he could think of to get Katie and the baby out of here alive, rank ordering them in decreasing probability of success. One plan emerged as the clear victor. A plan he hated with every fiber of his being.
He’d spent his whole adult life trying to cut the ties with his father, dammit. He’d even gone to jail to avoid the man’s grasping control.
First things first. He had to take care of this guy on their tail. It was a risk to confront the tracker, but riskier not to. Leaving this guy alive to ambush them at a time and place of his choosing would be the death of all three of them.
While he wasn’t particularly concerned for his own survival, Katie was young and had most of her life ahead of her. And Dawn…she literally had her whole life in front of her. It was weird how deep in his gut the urge to protect an infant ran. Must be some survival of the species instinct.
His target approached, and Alex focused all his senses on the man, his own body coiled to spring. Thought ceased. Breath ceased. Time ceased.
Now.
Alex leaped.
The guy was strong. Fast. As skilled as Alex anticipated he would be. Although Alex had the element of surprise on his side, the stalker twisted violently in his arms and got in a hard elbow to his nose that had Alex seeing stars and hanging on for dear life. He didn’t want to kill the guy. At least not before he forced the attacker to tell him who he was working for.
But crap, this guy was strong! Alex lost his grip and the guy spun, a wicked blade in his right hand. There was no time for elegance. He lunged before the guy could get his bearings and slammed his own knife into the guy’s gut, ramming the tip of his blade up and under the ribs.
The bastard went down, spouting blood everywhere. Jesus. What a mess.
“Who are you working for?” Alex demanded, already sliding his pack off his shoulders.
“Fuck you,” the guy snarled.
Alex pulled out an inflatable, internal pressure bandage. It looked like a deflated condom. Inserted into a puncture wound and inflated, its pressure stopped bleeding from the inside out. It was designed for wounds exactly like the one he’d given his opponent.
“Know what this is?” he asked tersely.
“Yeah.”
“You can have it if you tell me who you’re working for. Otherwise, you’re gonna bleed out in about two minutes. Your choice.”
At least the guy didn’t tell him to fuck off. In fact, the man actually seemed to consider the offer.
Alex counted the seconds in his head. “Sixty seconds or so, left, buddy. You should be starting to feel cold by now. Lightheaded. Maybe even having trouble breathing while blood starts to back up into that lung I nicked.”
The guy was silent but his jaw muscles flexed convulsively.
“I’ve got nothing against you, dude. I’ll even insert the pressure balloon for you. But I need to know who your boss is.”
“I don’t know. I was contacted from an encrypted website. They mailed me a burner phone and send me texts message.”
“Got that phone on you now?”
A pause. A rattling breath.
“If you die, I’m gonna search you and take it, anyway.”
“Pouch. Left hip,” the guy gasped. He was starting to make a death rattle when he inhaled.
Alex opened the pouch quickly and pulled out a cell phone. Not fancy, not crappy. Anonymous.
“Gimme that balloon, Koronov!”
This guy knew his real name?
That narrowed down considerably the list of who might have sicced this man on him.
Alex knelt beside the guy and jammed the balloon into the wound. Unlike birthing babies, he had a ton of experience with knife wounds from working in the prison infirmary. With quick efficiency, he inflated the balloon and blocked the bleeding. He applied a pair of butterfly bandages to hold the wound shut.
“Maybe you live, maybe you don’t,” Alex said briskly. “You waited a long time to play ball with me. Keep it clean and dry. Here’s some tape and clean gauze for you. Rest and drink a bunch of fluids to replace the blood you lost. No strenuous activity for three months, and see a doctor ASAP for real stitches.”
“You shitting me?” the guy muttered.
Alex shrugged as he rummaged in the guy’s hip pocket and came up with a set of keys. “Like I said. It’s nothing personal. If I wanted you dead, I’d have slit your throat when I first jumped you. Nice moves, but the way.”
“Fuck you,” the guy sighed as Alex tucked the phone and keys into his own pocket.
“You’re welcome,” Alex replied dryly.
He estimated the guy had hiked a quarter-mile from wherever he’d stashed his vehicle. It took Alex a while to backtrack to about the right area and hunt around until he spotted the brush-covered lump. But it was worth it as he started the four-wheeler’s engine and headed for Katie and Dawn.
Now they could reach their destination in one night, and maybe Baby Dawn stood a real chance of surviving the fiasco of her birth, after all.
Katie huddled over the baby in panic as the engine came closer and closer and got louder and louder.
Please God, let Alex not be dead . Please let whoever was on that ATV go right on past her and Dawn. Should she use the radio now? Call for help while she still had a chance?
The engine cut off and she fumbled frantically at the radio. Dammit, she should have paid closer attention when Alex showed her how to use it a few days ago.
“Katie!” a familiar voice called out low.
She sagged, nearly peeing her pants in her relief. “Over here,” she replied.
She stood up and, when Alex reached her, threw her arms around his neck and squeezed the stuffing out of him. “I have never been so glad to see another human being in my entire life,” she confessed.
His arms closed around her tightly as she buried her face in his neck.
“How’s the baby?”
“Fine. About ready to eat again. I think she won’t need mother’s little helpers to take the fluid and swallow it this time.”
“Too bad. And your little helpers are not little, by the way.”
Her face heated up and she was grateful for the darkness to hide her blush.
“I got us a ride. Unless, of course, you’d rather walk the last twenty miles.”
She laughed under her breath. “No, that’s okay. Where’d you get the ATV?”
“Took it from its owner.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I hope not. I stopped his bleeding. I give him fifty-fifty odds of making it.”
She shrugged as she threw a leg on the seat behind Alex and settled Dawn in front of her. There was no time for compassion, right now. There was a baby to get to food and warmth, and her own life to protect. She wrapped her arms around his hard waist, savoring the strong, capable feel of him.
“Where are we going?” she asked over the engine noise.
“It’s a secret,” he called back.
They drove for a couple of hours, banging uncomfortably over the rough terrain. But it was a hell of a lot better than walking all this way.
They wound up into the mountains again and followed a one-lane dirt road through another pass. This time, the plain that opened before them as they topped the mountain peak was vast, stretching away as far as she could see. It was to one side of this huge, open plain that Alex guided the four-wheeler.
He paused to pull out his cell phone and use the GPS function to check his position. He took a visual fix on something up in the hills and eased the ATV forward once more. In about ten minutes he stopped and turned off the ignition. “We’re there,” he announced.
While he piled dead brush over the four-wheeler, she looked around and saw nothing but dirt and rocks and looming mountains.
“Where are we?” she finally asked him.
“Follow me.” Alex took off on foot up a steep, but short, hillside. With every step, the expression on his face waxed more thunderous. What about this hillside was making him so mad? Fury rolled off him in eddies and whorls that were practically visible to the naked eye.
He stopped at the base of a giant cliff and she joined him, frowning. A cluster of crude carvings caught the moonlight and cast shadows that were definitely man-made. But they were just lines and dots. She’d never seen the Karshani people use any symbols like that when she’d been around them. Alex ran a hand across them and then his fingers fisted together.
He ground out, “I probably ought to give you a speech about having to kill you if you reveal what I’m about to show you. But, in fact, I doubt anyone would believe you if you told them, anyway.”
Perplexed, she followed him into a high opening in the rocks that was more of a crack than a cave. He stopped, dug out a cyalume stick, and bent it to activate it.
He held it out to her. “Hold this.”
She took the glowing plastic tube and watched with interest as he pulled out his wallet and dug out a scrap of paper. He moved turned to face the wall of the narrow passage, and that was when she spotted the steel door.
“WTF?” she breathed.
He threw her a grim look and proceeded to dial in a five-number combination on an old-fashioned rotary combination lock. He took a deep breath in what sounded like resignation and let it out. As if this was a point of no return for him. He turned the massive handle and pulled.
The door moved a few inches but then stopped.
“Help me,” he grunted.
She put her hands beside his and threw her weight into tugging. Together, they slowly dragged the rusted door open another two feet. Alex took the cyalume stick from her and slipped through the narrow opening first. Katie moved Dawn’s sling to the side and squeezed through the slit after him. She coughed at the dust their feet had stirred up and looked around in the dim green glow.
It looked like a storeroom with wooden crates covered in dust stacked high along the walls. Alex was moving away from her quickly and she hurried after him murmuring, “I say again, what the fuck?”
“Don’t ask,” he bit out.
The far wall came into view. It wasn’t a cave, then. This space was manmade.
She stared as she spotted an old-fashioned metal console with what looked like radio controls mounted in it. Alex sat down in the metal chair in front of it and wiped off the glass dial faces with his sleeve. She moved close behind him and her jaw dropped as she spied Cyrillic letters on the dials.
“This is a Russian place? How on earth did you know about this? And that combination? And about this radio?”
“Later,” he bit out. He stood up and moved to one side of the console. A big, round wheel was mounted there with a foot long handle protruding from it. He grabbed the handle and began turning the wheel slowly. It creaked and groaned.
“Dig in my pack and get me the petroleum jelly,” he ordered.
She did as he asked and pulled out a small plastic container of the goop. Using his finger, he daubed the lubricant around the shaft of the wheel and commenced pushing at it again. The thing turned smoothly and silently this time. He picked up speed, cranking for a minute or so.
“Take over cranking the generator for me, will you?” he asked.
She shed her coat and wrapped Dawn in it, then took over his position at the crank wheel. He sat back down at the console and flipped several switches. A small light came on, dim and flickering in rhythm with her cranking. But as she continued, the bulb glowed brighter and steadier.
Alex picked up a potato-sized microphone and held it to his mouth, speaking rapidly into it… in Russian .
What. The. Hell?