Page 5 of Heart of Danger
The woman he’d pulled out of the freezing car had been white-faced with cold, startled, then terrified and with all that, so beautiful he’d taken her for a model. Some airhead, both stupid and crazy because otherwise what the fuck would she be doing on their crap, almost-impassable road at night in the middle of a snowstorm?
Turned out, however, according to her documents, she wasn’t a model, or an airhead, but some kind of a doctor who worked for a major research institution. So that left crazy. What the fuck did she think she was doing?
He’d been about ready to invent some story about being out hunting and being caught in the snow storm and offering to drive her back to Regent, forty miles back down the mountain, when she’d dropped her bomb.
I’m looking for Tom McEnroe.
Mac didn’t do surprise, but that—well, that was a real shocker.
After dropping the bomb, there was no question of driving the clueless, pretty civilian back down the mountain. She wasn’t a civilian and she wasn’t there by chance.
This was one dangerous woman.
A woman who knew where to look for him when the entire US government didn’t have a clue. She was possibly a spy, definitely a threat. And she wasn’t leaving their compound until he knew who had sent her and why and how the hell she knew where to look in the first place.
And he wouldn’t bet on her leaving the compound alive.
“Out,” he said.
Mac trained hard men to do hard things. He trained men he knew perfectly well would be sent straight into lethal danger. They’d stay alive only if he trained them hard and well. Under fire, team cohesion was everything and he was team leader. He was used to being instantly obeyed because hehadto be instantly obeyed. The alternative was death, and not a good one, either.
So his command voice was the voice of God, screamed straight into his men’s ears.
Normally, he moderated his command voice for women. But right then he was mad and suspicious and he wasn’t about to moderate his voice for someone who might be endangering his entire world.
No matter how pretty she was.
Her whole body shrank in on itself at that one barked word, which was the reaction of any small animal to a threat from a larger animal. Hunker down, become small. Then, to his astonishment, the woman straightened up, head high under the hood, shoulders back, visibly trying to give herself courage.
Well…shit.
Mac recognized that.
He knew all about trying to give yourself courage in bad situations. He’d been a prisoner of the Uzbekhi mob for two hellish months in which he’d been kept hooded and uncertain, knowing that at any moment he could have a blade to his throat or a muzzle to the back of the head. He knew precisely what she was feeling because he’d felt it himself.
If she was going to clock out, she wanted to go with her head high. Man, he knew what that was like. Knew it inside out.
For a second, just a fleeting moment, he identified with her, flashed on what this must be like for her. But then it passed.
Fuck that.
He couldn’t afford to let himself feel anything for this woman. She’d come to him. Found him against all the odds. She’d cracked security designed by three men who were the world’s greatest experts and he had no idea how she’d done it.
She was a menace—to him, to his men and to this crazy community they’d gathered around themselves.
“Come,” he said, injecting impatience in his voice.
He had to interrogate her as soon as possible. If this woman, however soft and pale and helpless she looked, turned out to be the tip of the spear of an invasion, he and his men had to scramble. The faster he found out what she wanted, and who was behind her, the better he could defend them.
She swung her legs out the open door, feeling for the ground with one booted foot. At least she’d had the sense to wear woolen pants and boots. Though her legs looked like they went up to her neck, she was only of medium height. Her foot tapped down tentatively, seeking firm ground. Finally, exasperated, Mac fit his hands around her small waist and bodily lifted her out and down to the ground. Like a dancer, she pointed one foot at the ground and seemed to land like some goddamned ballerina.
She felt good between his hands.
Goddamn.
Shocked, Mac took a long step back. He had no business thinking that way. He was a soldier, now and forever. He hadn’t left the military, the military had left him.
At heart he wasstilla soldier, protecting his own, and this woman represented danger. What the fuck did he care if she felt light and graceful under his hands, if she was beautiful, if she was brave? That made her doubly dangerous.
