Page 331 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

“Hey, you found her,” a merc called from the shadows.

Christian shot him. That he regretted it almost immediately was something she could feel in every tense line of his body as he watched the other man fall. The man was her brother’s. If he knew they were trying to escape, he would have tried to stop them. Aliya knew that, so Christian certainly had to have known it as well. He’d been a spy in the company of these mercs for years, and somewhere along the way, the lines must have blurred. He’d just been forced to shoot a friend.

Turning sharply, Christian carried her to a car, opened the door, and set her down gently in the driver’s seat.

“Look at me.”

Shifting her stare from the closed garage door directly in front of her to him, Aliya waited while he checked her eyes and her pulse.

“Princess,”—he hunkered down beside her—“your back is infected, and you’re in shock, but I need you to do something for me. It’s very important.”

“Okay,” she agreed, heat throbbing everywhere she touched the seatback. It hurt a lot, but she was strong and would do whatever he needed her to.

“Take this.” He put a cellphone in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “I’m going to activate this and open the door. When I do, I want you to drive as fast as you can up the road one mile. Just one mile, then stop. People in a helicopter will pick you up.”

“A helicopter?” she echoed. “What, the one firing on us?” She wasn’t so sick that she couldn’t follow that. “Wait.” Startled, she suddenly realized something else. “You said, me, not us.”

“I’ll be coming right behind you,” Christian promised. He cupped her face, stilling her objections, although not her confusion. “I have to do one thing first, then I’m going to come for you. I’ll always come for you. I promise.”

She couldn’t for the life of her think how, but her thoughts were so confused. She nodded.

“What’s the plan?”

She looked at him, shivering as she drowned in waves of sweat-inducing heat.

“Drive fast, one mile, then wait for the helicopter.”

“Good girl.” He tapped the phone in her hand, and it began ringing, then buzzing in a series of computerized fax-like sounds before the red light near the cell’s camera began blinking. “Don’t drop that, no matter what.” He shut the door, and she gripped the steering wheel tightly in her free hand.

She was about to leave him behind. Tiny kernels of cold panic began eating away at the heat in her belly.

“I’m right behind you. Trust me. That big bed where you want to be tied down is waiting for us.”

She nodded, swallowing hard and starting the car.

“I’ll find you,” he promised as he hit the switch, raising the automatic garage door. “Go. Go!”

The phone in one hand, she jerked on the gear stick the way she’d seen her brother’s driver do, stomped on the pedal that made the engine rev, and promptly ran into the black vintage Jaguar directly behind her.

“Forward,” Christian said helpfully, then pointed to the open garage door and the bright sunny landscape laid out ahead of her. “That way, Princess.”

Shifting gears, she hit the gas again, and this time did exactly what she was supposed to. She drove as fast as she dared, very nearly running over someone at the gate when he tried to get her to stop and didn’t stop. She was so dizzy, and although she’d seen it done hundreds of times, she’d never driven anything in her life. The car hardly wanted to stay on the road. Worse, she had no idea how far she’d actually gone when she finally stopped. Black smoke rising in the rearview mirror was all she could see of the fortress.

He was coming. Christian was coming.

Shutting off the car, she sat in the quiet, half-off the road, staring out over the Spanish countryside, wild-flower fields on her right, a grassy cliffside overlooking the dark ocean waves on the other.

Christian was coming.

She was so hot and so tired. Hugging the phone to her chest, the red light at the top blinking rhythmically, she closed her eyes. Just for a minute. Just until he and the helicopter caught up with her.

Any minute now.

Any minute…

Chapter

Fourteen

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