Chapter 3
Gemma swiped a branch out of her face. Her shin burned like a bitch. She’d scraped it while hurtling over the wall when the bomb went off. She inhaled through her nose and navigated down the mountain, her high heels dangling from her fingers.
Her body shook violently.
A bomb. Holy crap. Charlene had completely misled her. Not once had the details of the agency’s plan been divulged, but then again, they never had in the past either. But bombs? Surely that was something she should have been briefed on. All those people...
Nausea took hold of her insides. She dropped to her knees and gripped her hair with a shaking hand before emptying the contents of her stomach. The fiery acid burned her throat. Tears leaked from her eyes, but she didn’t dare lift the dam. She had to get somewhere safe first. Sucking in several deep breaths, she wiped her face with the hem of her dress. Darn thing was ruined now anyway.
Now that she was under a canopy of trees, the ground was moist and easier to walk on. Sweat beaded on her chest and arms despite the fact that it was almost dusk.
Dusk in a Colombian jungle was a recipe for disaster. Scratch that. A jungle, period, was a recipe for disaster. The night songs of insects and other creatures she didn’t want to identify reached her ears.
The sirens had ceased about twenty minutes ago. Surely all the emergency crews had stopped flocking to the area. She needed to get a cab. At least Charlene’s advice not to drive a rental car to the hotel had been useful. She wouldn’t have made it to the parking lot without being blown up, so skirting down a mountain was the least of her worries. The whizz of cars broke through the screech of birds.
Oh, thank you, sweet Lord.
Relief made the pain that her body had forced away in survival mode ebb back into her muscles. A bed. A meal. And most definitely a bath. She could only hope these things would soften the jagged emotions puncturing her soul.
Dallas.
Silas.
All those people.
She’d been a prisoner too long. Not in the physical sense, but in every other way imaginable. One wrong decision could change your life and all that. Too bad no one had told her that six years ago.
She huffed out a breath and surged through the jungle toward the road. Stopping just far enough from view of passersby, she braced herself on a tree and wiggled her abused toes into her shoes. There was nothing she could do about the mud stains up the back of her dress and the tear in the neckline.
She staggered closer to the road. A car sailed by, honking angrily at her abrupt appearance. Straightening her purse, she ran her fingers through her hair. She’d have to walk a little farther into town to get a ride. At least she had cash.
Summoning the last of her gusto, she crossed the road and walked down a narrow sidewalk—on a steep decline of course. A few shops and businesses came into view. She could make it.
Thirty minutes latershe shoved open the door of her new hotel room and dropped her bag on the minibar counter as if it held a stack of bricks. She reached down and yanked off her shoes. The arches of her feet twanged with pain, almost matching the pulsing headache in full swing at her temples.
Food. Bath. Bed.
Taking only a millisecond to absorb the room’s design—silver wallpaper, gray throw pillows on a crisp white duvet, TV hanging on the wall—she lifted the cordless phone from the receiver on the desk near the bed and hit the little butler symbol.
She ordered the most familiar items she could think of and requested two gallons of water. Entering the bathroom, she flicked on the light. A tub and shower combo ensured her she’d get the most coveted thing on her wish list.
She turned to the mirror. Her wayward, sweat-soaked hair clung to the sides of her face. Her makeup was smeared and dirt marred her cheeks and chest.
Look at you, Gemma. Disgruntled by your appearance when people died today. Died. Because of you.
A deep chasm of pain opened up behind her sternum. She dropped onto the closed lid of the toilet seat and buried her face in her hands.
What have I done?
***
“I don’t givea shit about that right now,” Dallas spat. With the phone pinched between his shoulder and ear, he stalked out of the motel bathroom with a towel around his waist.
Five hours after the blast and he still didn’t feel a lick of normalcy. Maybe it was the concussion. Maybe it was that his hearing had come back swiftly when emergency responders arrived, blaring their noises and screams into the tunnels of his brain. Even sleep hadn’t helped much.
“I don’t have any of my equipment and I need you to find her, Dare. Stat.” He moved across the beige carpet. The lone queen-sized bed called to him, but despite his desire to rest his aching head and muscles, he couldn’t. He needed to know that she’d survived.
Then he’d wring her goddamn neck.
“All right, all right,” Dare said. “I still think you need your head examined again, though.”
His brother’s lack of concern was nothing surprising.
“She’s in the city—Cali. I don’t think she drove from the hotel, otherwise I would’ve seen her on the road. She either took a car or some back exit...”
Or she died.
But he couldn’t go there. Not yet.
Dare sighed. “Did you send a picture?”
Dallas picked up his duffel bag and tossed it on the bed with force. Some of its contents spilled out. “Could you find a little empathy? Christ. I almost died. Gemma could be dead as we speak and you’re—”
“Look, I’m here for you, okay?” A hint of remorse laced his brother’s voice. “I’ve never heard you this unsettled before. If I’d known she was that important I wouldn’t have balked.”
Dallas swallowed down a protest. “Just find her, will ya? Please. And yeah, I sent her photo.” He disconnected and sucked a ragged breath through his nose.
The mystery surrounding the already obscure woman was enough to make his vision waver on a good day. Add in a thump to the head and getting tossed around like a baseball and his nerves were fucking shot.
Dare knew him well. Dallas never lost his cool. Very few things had rattled him in his adult years, and Gemma seemed to be around—or rather not around—whenever these things happened. Either he was uptight hoping she’d show up, despite the random pussy he brought into his bed several nights a week, or bent out of shape because she’d just left and he’d be without her pussy for god knew how long.
What a dysfunctional shitshow he was turning out to be.
He dropped into the desk chair and poured himself a drink from the bottle of rum he’d had sent up. Shoving a handful of French fries into his mouth, he forced his spine to relax into the chair.
Gemma had a strong hold on him, but he couldn’t blame her. It was natural for a man to want what he couldn’t have, and Gemma had made it painstakingly clear that she couldn’t be had for more than a night.
Once he found out for good that she was alive, he’d find a way to move on. After one more roll in the sheets. Just one.
He tossed back the golden liquid and then chomped into his burger. Sharp cheddar cheese hit his tongue, combining with the flavor of grease and pickles. He dove in for more fries and then reached for his water.
He had two missed calls from Lorenzo. Surely he’d heard about the explosion and now assumed the worst. Dallas couldn’t summon the energy to call him back yet, but he punched off a quick text letting him know he’d call soon.
The next big fucking disaster was that his contact wasn’t answering his calls. If something had happened to him... oh, hell. He didn’t have the capacity to go there.
His phone buzzed on the desk. Dare. He lowered the water bottle and swiped to answer.
“I’ve got her.”
***
Gemma squirmed underthe bedsheets. The dark room squeezed around her, pushing the air from her chest. She closed her eyes and focused on the guided meditation coming through her earbuds.
Let go of the tension in your shoulders...
Whoever had come up with this track hadn’t anticipated someone trying to calm down after just blowing up a hotel. Well, she’d been duped into it. But that didn’t matter.
One really, really bad man was dead. Several others were injured. Maybe a few more had been killed. Charlene had assured her earlier that the hotel was already at half capacity and she had a special team that would make the attack seamless. Of course there was always the chance things would go south when someone opened fire, especially with Silas’s bodyguards on standby, hence why she’d gotten out of there quickly. Casualties were supposed to be avoided. Absolutely minimal at worst.
Except Dallas was anything but minimal.
He’d been a lighthouse in the darkest, stormiest years of her life. Almost six years of hell. Six years of not being able to live a normal life. See her family often or start her own. Heck, even hold down a relationship with a man.
Except Dallas.
She’d managed to keep him her little secret. He’d been her one joy, once a year.
Charlene would have robbed her of him if she’d known.
A night with Dallas had given her a year’s worth of pleasure, a lifetime of memories. She’d placed his black-stubbled jaw in a filing cabinet in her mind and only took it out to examine his grin when she needed it most. Not that he’d grinned a whole heck of a lot. Broody, a man holding himself on a short leash, was a more accurate description of Dallas Holmes.
But god, his hands were like heaven. Warm and strong. Those hands had given her something to look forward to. Without the memory of him, she would have sunk into a bottomless pit of despair. Some days she’d wondered if those hours with him had been real. Maybe she’d conjured up the ultimate fantasy hottie to keep herself from going insane with loneliness.
Seeing him today had been a sign.
A reminder that she could reclaim her life. That she had to. At thirty years old, she was done being a slave for an ungrateful team of people who didn’t care if she lived or died unless they needed her the next day.
All that was over.
They could threaten her all they wanted. She wouldn’t cooperate anymore, and the sooner she told Charlene the better. That phone call was for tomorrow.
Removing the earbud out of her ear and taking the soothing sounds of the ocean and seagulls along with it, she flopped onto her back. Turning her head to the clock on the nightstand, she winced. It was 1:02a.m.
She closed her eyes and paid attention to her breath.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Too close.
She snapped open her eyes and jerked her gaze to the door.
***
Dallas rapped hisknuckles on the wooden door of Gemma’s hotel room. Dare had managed to track Gemma through his facial recognition program using the street and hotel cameras. Something Dallas would have been able to do had his computer not been blown up. Thankfully, he had the same equipment safely at home in Seattle.
Soft footsteps sounded near the door, then silence.
The chain tinkled and the door opened a crack. Gemma’s wild, fearful eyes locked on his. Relief filled her face and then vanished. “Dallas. Gosh. You scared me. What are you doing here?”
He placed his palm on the door with more pressure than he should have. “Let me in.” And damn if his temper didn’t rise a notch at the sight of her.
He was done being her boy toy. Done with her enigmatic persona, which used to be alluring and now made him furious.
Her eyebrows snapped low in a formidable glare. “I think you’d better go.”
“Hell no.” He used more force.
She drew her head back an inch, and the muscles in her neck tensed. “Fine.” He let go of the door and it swung open. She stood back. A light pink robe cloaked her frame, stopping just above her knees. The material crossed in front of her chest, exposing her delicious cleavage.
Her hand immediately went to the folds and held them together as if he hadn’t just banged her from behind in a closet six hours ago. Great. Now he was getting the cold shoulder, which meant she’d had her fuck-fix for the year and was done with him.
So much for one last lay. “We need to talk.” He shut the door behind him and removed his shoes. At least she didn’t insist he stay at the door.
She walked farther into the room. Her hair trailed down her back, the strands wet, making them look a couple of inches longer than usual. Her calves and bare feet stirred something inside him. Desire for her that would never die even if he lived a thousand years.
He followed her. His gaze landed on the king-sized bed. The white duvet was tossed back as if she’d just leaped out.
Gemma steered away from the bed and sat at the desk chair. She folded her arms across her chest. “I’d appreciate it if we could do this little chat”—she flicked her wrist—“tomorrow. It’s late and I’m beat.”
“Well, I just about got blown up and I think you have something to do with that. And I’m not leaving without answers.” His veins vibrated with anger.
From the beginning, he’d known Gemma was the guarded type. Suspected she had some kind of sordid past or something that kept her in invisible chains. But he’d been wrong. She’d murdered innocent people in cold blood. It took everything in him not to shake her by the throat.
Her lip trembled. She sucked the plump flesh into her mouth and hiked up her chin. “I—” She shook her head and her gaze darted away from his stare as tears filled her eyes.
His gut twisted. She either didn’t trust him or this whole situation was even worse than he’d imagined. He knelt in front of her. The silky skin of the top of her thigh peeked out from her robe, begging him to stroke it, but he balled his hands into fists.
He wouldn’t touch her again. Not if she was some kind of serial bomber. “Gemma. Did you plant those bombs? I need to know.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, nearly undoing him. She sniffed and pressed the heel of her palm to her lips. “No. They weren’t supposed to do that. I thought...” She launched herself at his chest.
He caught her, somehow managing not to teeter backward. Before he could even process her words, he folded her into his arms. The sickness in the pit of his stomach expanded. She buried her face into his throat. Her tears soaked his neck but he didn’t give a damn.
Never had Gemma showed this kind of emotion. He’d seen many sides—sexy, playful, angry, indifferent—but they all seemed to be a front for something deeper.
She choked on a sob. “I was so scared you didn’t get out. When you showed up at my door, I saw you were angry. I thought you hated me. That—”
“Shhh.” He rubbed his hand up and down her back until her shoulders stopped shaking. She kept her grip around his neck as he stood, walked the few paces to the bed, and sat.
She hadn’t planted the bombs.
That tidbit of information changed everything. His anger dissipated. He’d come here prepared to walk away for good and now there wasn’t a chance in hell that was happening. Back to the once-a-year fuck. Awesome. “Tell me what happened.”
She wiped her cheek with her hand but didn’t pull away from his collar. She snorted. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Work your way backward. How’d you get out of there?” He lifted the still-damp strands that had fallen over her face.
“I was climbing over the rock wall at the side patio when the bomb went off, sending me to the ground.”
He froze. “Are you hurt?” He hadn’t noticed an injury, but that didn’t mean she was unscathed.
“No, I’m fine. It wasn’t too far of a drop.”
“Didn’t you have an escape route planned?”
She chuckled lightly. “I was about to figure that out when you caught me and pulled me into the closet.”
He grunted. “No regrets there.”
Another little laugh met him, and the resistant, stubborn part of his heart melted even more. “What happened before you went outside?”
Her shoulders slumped. He ached to move her away so he could study her face, but the luxury of having her cuddled against his chest was too great to part with.
Silence beat the air. He kept his hand still on her spine, forcing himself not to push her.
“I told them where their target was.” Her small voice held the weight of remorse and doom.
Her admission hit him with the force of a missile. “Target?” The word came out raspy. His windpipe constricted, making his oxygen intake minimal. “Who, Gemma? Who was the target?”
She wiggled. “I’m not sure I should...”
He didn’t push her away, though part of him wanted to toss her off him and pace the room.
He had to cool down. This could have nothing to do with his contact.
Yeah, right.
“I need to know.” His tone came out harder than he’d intended, but dammit he wasn’t going to let her clam up.
A long, deep inhale came next. “You smell like home.”
The sudden change of subject scrambled his brain. Was that a compliment?
“Reminds me of the woods. Hiking. You smell like cedar.”
She liked to hike. He tucked that little fact away and stored it to remember later. A treat he’d allow himself when he could forget his muscle-numbing rage.
Whoever had their talons in Gemma would pay. He’d make sure they never used her again. “Who made you do hellish things?” He shook his head. “Who was your target?”
If he got another runaround answer he’d flip. If she refused to trust him, it would tear him apart.
She pulled away from his throat. Cool air replaced the heat of her tearstained skin. One of her cheeks was rosier than the other from being pressed against him. This close, he could see faint creases of stress around her eyes and a channel of worry in her forehead.
Slowly, she dragged her focus from his shirt to his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He forced his mouth into a wry grin. “Honey. I just about got blown up because of the people you work for. There’s not much you could say that I wouldn’t believe at this point.”
She rolled in her lips. “I work for the CIA. Their target was Silas Hawke.”