Chapter Ten
Phoenix
My aim on her chest, my intent on intel, I gave her one last chance. “How long have you been here?”
Raising an eyebrow, she tried to play off an innocence she didn’t have as she leaned back and brushed off her knees. “Today?” Fearless, she stood.
Movement in the trees on the third terrace caught my attention, and I glanced up.
The wind blew north, the hedge moved south, and the lens of a scope glinted in the sunlight a fraction of a second before I saw his sniper system.
Barrett M107 semiautomatic.
Leupold Mark 5HD scope.
His sights on me, the sniper issued a warning. “Drop your aim, or I drop you.”
No time to tell him he should’ve saved his breath and taken the shot, I glanced at the incoming helo.
Converging on our position, the Sikorsky came in low and fast.
Door open, M4 aimed, Helios jumped out of the helo.
Piloting the Sikorsky, Ares peeled off and headed for cover behind the three-story main structure on the top terrace.
Moving in on the sniper’s six, Helios yelled over the rotor wash. “Stand the fuck down!”
Cursing myself for not seeing this coming, not considering the woman could be a diversion, my aim trained on the sniper, I caught the woman’s telegraphed movement before she made it.
She turned toward the sniper.
Holstering my Sig, I grabbed her.
Helios sent a double tap, I threw the woman over my shoulder, and a firestorm broke out.
I ran.
Traversing the terraces, aiming for the helo, resigned that I wouldn’t have a live subject to interrogate after Helios was done unloading, I hit the grounds adjacent to the villa on the upper terrace as Ares touched down.
Throwing the woman into the back of the helo before jumping in after her, I secured the door and gave Ares orders. “Lift off. Head toward the boathouse.” Grabbing the woman around the waist, I tossed her into a seat.
The fight in her from when I first threw her over my shoulder came back. Except this time, she didn’t kick me in the stomach or punch my back.
With a practiced self-defense move, the heel of her hand shot out, aiming directly for the center of my face.
Grabbing her wrist before she made contact, I jerked her arm down. “Hit me again, and I’ll restrain you.”
“You’re breaking the law.” Leaning forward, she spat her next accusation out like I gave a damn. “This is kidnapping.”
“Trespassing, squatting.” I yanked her seat belt tight. “Coups et blessures volontaires.” What the fuck did she think would happen when she violated my privacy? “You didn’t have a problem breaking the law when you trespassed on my property.”
“You weren’t even there!”
Ignoring her outburst, I threw a PNR headset on her, climbed into the pilot seat, then grabbed the aviation headset and hit the mic. “Taking the controls.”
“You have the controls,” Ares replied.
“Dropping you at the boathouse.” I glanced at Helios’s Stoner Rifle wedged against the seats before I angled the helo east. “Take the SR-25. Use the tender. Dockside approach. Then clear, canvas, recon. ID the body before disposal and get back to the ship.”
Her voice came through the headset. “There’s not going to be a body, not unless it’s that asshole who jumped out of the helicopter and started shooting.”
I switched off her mic. “She knows who this is. I want an ID, Ares.” I’d been expecting company today, but not a sniper.
He grabbed the rifle. “Roger that.”
“Canvas the entire property,” I warned.
“Lima Charlie,” Ares confirmed. “Transponder’s engaged. Paragon’s two miles out, drifting.”
“Copy.” Bringing the helo down less than half a klick from the boathouse, I glanced at Ares.
“You weren’t on surveillance duty.” I saw the sniper before the helo descended.
If he’d wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have issued a warning.
I had the situation handled. Now I had a potential cluster to deal with while I was on a timeline.
Private estate or not, sound traveled, and Helios had an unhealthy antipathy toward suppressors.
“You blocked our cells,” Ares countered, opening his door.
The woman yelled. “I want my backpack!”
Neither of us acknowledging the trespasser, Ares exfilled, and I got us back in the air.
She didn’t last the seconds it took to get us a mile out over open waters. “So that’s how you’re going to be? Silent and authoritarian?”
Noting her choice of words, along with every other damn thing about her, I piloted back to the Paragon and landed on the helo pad.
Resigned or stunned quiet by the sight of the ship, the woman didn’t comment as I shut down the engines. Then I got out, opened her door, and unbuckled her harness.
She still didn’t speak when I grabbed her waist again, this time to lift her out of the helo.
Eyes wide, too trusting, she put her hands on my shoulders. Then she looked across the decks, and I saw it.
Awe.
At over two hundred and thirteen feet, the Paragon was inconsequential to the ocean. But she made a sight when you stood on her decks.
“Wow.” Still gripping me, her attitude forgotten, I almost didn’t hear the little trespasser’s whispered reaction before the wind took it.
Almost.
Capturing her wrists and removing her hands from my shoulders, I dropped my hold on her right as a gust hit the decks and tossed her hair into her face.
She swayed on unsteady sea legs.
My hand landed on her hip, sunlight glinted on her gold barrette, and the little trespasser laughed.
Then she looked up at me.
A foot shorter, her eyes reflecting the color of the ocean, she smiled without reservation.
For a split second, I forgot she was a woman who hadn’t flinched at gunfire.