Forged in Fire Read online

  His gaze shifted to the front of C18’s waiting area. The bench that Beth Brown had collapsed on was already occupied. He sighed at the sight of the three children quietly coloring beside their parents, but pushed the regret aside. It was a pity there were so many kids booked on the flight, but that cold bitch called necessity didn’t care about the ages of her victims. His gaze lingered on the children’s mother as she smiled and exclaimed over the picture her offspring presented to her.

  Or the sex.

  Russ scowled. Somehow Beth Brown was the key. Her reaction when she’d caught sight of Winters had verged on bizarre. She’d literally stopped in her tracks. Swayed. Almost fainted. But why?

  Winters’ reaction to her had been almost as odd. He’d noticed her the moment she’d arrived, hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her. Yet when she’d finally approached, he’d turned his back on her? A lovers’ spat? Unlikely. Special Operators didn’t turn away from confrontation, even when it came to their chicks.

  And while that kiss had generated some serious steam, they were not lovers. Couples who’d indulged in the intimacy of sex announced their involvement in the most subtle of ways: lingering glances, fleeting touches, a melting of muscles and guards. Beth Brown and Winters hadn’t shown any of those signs.

  Besides, intel on Winters indicated that priests got more action. If he’d been rocking the mattress with some new girl, it would have been brought to their attention.

  Sighing, Russ rubbed his forehead. Maybe he was reading the signs wrong.

  SQT taught caution. The scanning and recon could be simple conditioning. If those fucking SEALs suspected his plans for that plane, they’d have shut the flight down. But according to the reader board, the departure remained on schedule.

  As for Brown, maybe she’d been struck dumb by the testosterone saturating the air. The trio had drawn a good chunk of admiring eyes—both male and female. Maybe she was looking for a vacation fuck, and after 6 months of evolution Winters was ready to oblige.

  Except… Russ caught a flash of wheat-colored hair as Seth Rawlings trailed after his buddies. If Winters’ interest in the woman was some good old-fashioned fucking, he wouldn’t have invited his lieutenants along for the ride. The guy was a Boy Scout, conservative to the core. He wasn’t the type to appreciate a ménage.

  He glanced around. The only person close enough to catch his end of the conversation was the fat cow across from him, but she was deaf, dumb and blind to everything except the pornographic piece of trash she was reading.

  Swearing softly, he stared down at the cell phone. After a moment, he reluctantly punched the first number in the keypad. As each successive number lit the diminutive screen, the muscles of his chest tightened until it felt like Horton the elephant was sitting on his chest.

  The woman’s appearance could mean nothing. But they’d gut him, cut off his testicles, and leave him to rot if things went south because he hadn’t updated them on a potential problem.

  A cultured voice replaced the ringing. “Our agreement was no contact until the plane was in the air.”

  Sweat broke out over Russ’s palms. “You requested updates in the event something unexpected occurred.”

  A pulse of silence fell. “Continue then.”

  “One of our acquaintances has acquired a new girlfriend by the name of Beth Brown. She’s booked on his flight.”

  “There is no Beth Brown on the passenger manifest.” The voice coolly observed. “Which acquaintance?”

  The fingers of his right hand started cramping. Russ relaxed their tense hold on the plastic casing of the phone. “LC.”

  A short, thoughtful pause. “Our intel suggests Lieutenant Commander Winters is unattached.”

  Russ thought back to that kiss. With a frown, he scrubbed a hand down his face. The kiss could mean nothing… or everything. “We may need a refresher course.”

  A hum of agreement echoed down the line. “Do you sense a problem?”

  “LC and the lady disappeared. Five minutes later, his buddies vanished as well.”

  “If such is the case, it’s unlikely to be a lovers’ rendezvous.”

  “Agreed.”

  Cold silence trickled down the line. “Had you removed this obstacle when you were advised, we would not be having this conversation.”

  Russ’s fingers cramped again. Christ, there had been every possibility the team would go wheels-up before the flight departed. Not to mention taking out three members of ST7 would have brought HQ1 down on their ass. It had seemed best to keep Coronado out of the picture until the plane was in the air and on its way down to Puerto Jardin.

  “Taking action too soon would have raised… concerns.”

  “So you convinced us at the time.” The voice chilled even further. “Considerable resources have been expended. We expect a return on our investment.”

  Russ chanced a quick, shallow breath. “The flight remains on schedule.”

  “Make certain it remains that way.”

  The line went dead.

  Russ eased his numb fingers off the phone, and dropped it into a side pocket on the laptop’s case.

  Ten years ago he’d taken the skills he’d honed through the military’s generosity and gone into business for himself. He’d quickly discovered he had a knack for the work. Russ knew his strengths. He was good at what he did. Damn good. Maybe even the best. And that wasn’t boasting. That was an honest-to-God fact. He hadn’t lost an operation yet. Which was why his current employers had sought him out.

  The money they’d offered had been impossible to refuse. The first half of his payment had paid off Jilly’s house, her car, and set up college funds for the kids. The second half would fund his retirement.

  He’d handled jobs for extremists, drug cartels, and organized crime. Christ, he’d worked with various Third World dictators a time or two. Men in power didn’t scare him. There were always exit strategies. You just had to look for them. Nor had he questioned his ability to handle a troublesome employer.

  Until now. Until this job.

  But then he’d never taken on clients like his current masters—rich beyond imagination, political powerhouses and batshit insane.

  Those crazy rich bastards were just insane enough to pull this whole thing off. Their operation had taken months of planning, God only knew how much cash, and enough cogs to run a small country.

  But the test flight had gone smooth as pie, bloody as a coup.

  Russ didn’t doubt, regardless of ST7’s interference, that’d he’d get that plane down to Puerto Jardin as directed.

  And once the plane landed, he'd take his fee and get the hell out of P.J. Assuming his reward for a job well done wasn’t a bullet through the brain.

  * * *

  Zane glanced down, those glittering eyes lingering on her lips. “What’s your name?”

  Her voice caught in her throat. “Beth.”

  She caught herself before her last name spilled out. Her full name would give him the means to track her down.

  His eyebrows plunged and the bones of his face sharpened. “Well, Beth, you keep that up and there won’t be much talking. There’ll be a whole lot of kissing instead.”

  Beth choked and dragged her gaze away. “Keep what up?”

  She wasn’t touching the rest of that, thank you very much.

  “Licking your lip.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn his head and glance behind them, then take a long, slow look around. “Reminds me where I want that mouth of yours.”

  She swallowed a whimper. She seriously needed to get control of this conversation, like now, before her bones dissolved and her brain disintegrated. Or her skin started tanning from sexual heat.

  “Look.” She didn’t stop walking, because she didn’t want to have this dialogue face-to-face. Lord knows, the last thing they needed was more face-to-face time. “I’m not interested, okay? I’m already involved with someone.”

  He stopped so abruptly she was
in mid-stride when he jerked her back.

  “Too bad.” He caught her chin in an iron grip and forced her gaze up. The face staring back was hard, determined. Lethal. “You can fight what’s between us all you want. It won’t change a thing. You’re mine. And sweetheart, you don’t want to bring another guy into this, not unless you want to watch him bleed. I don’t share.”

  “Excuse me?” Beth’s jaw would have dropped if he hadn’t had hold of her chin.

  A wave of intense disorientation swept over her. For a moment she was convinced she was still dreaming. That she’d fallen asleep while reading one of JR Ward’s Brotherhood of The Black Dagger romances and had inserted herself into a dream based on the book. Any moment now he was going to start growling Mine Mine Mine and let loose with some spicy bonding scent. Or flash a massive set of fangs.

  Except… if she was dreaming, wouldn’t he be a jacked-up, massively muscled vampire warrior, rather than the testosterone laden, far-too-alpha—but human—pain-in-the-derriere?

  She concentrated on the hard fingers under her chin, and the sense of disorientation dissipated. Oh no, this was real. And it just went to show that her secret weakness in literary escapism did not translate well into reality. The last thing she needed or wanted in real life was a bonded alpha male. Romantic fiction aside, they were serious jackass material.

  “You’re mine,” he said again, his voice flat, yet in that you-just-need-to-be-reasonable-about-this tone that men had been driving women crazy with throughout history.

  She told herself she shouldn’t even respond to that insane claim, but the words just burst out. “I am not yours. You don’t even know me. I could be married, or a murderer, or a nun for all you know.”

  He snorted and amusement kicked up the edges of that sensual mouth. “We’ll get to know each other soon enough.”

  “I don’t want to get to know you.” She jerked her chin loose. “Crazy, psychotic men are not on my list of possible partners.”

  What in the world was going on with him?

  “Problems, boss?” a dry voice asked from behind them.

  Zane half turned to glance over his shoulder. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said in that calm way of his. “Anything jump out at you back there?”

  “Nothing. We’re not being followed. Rawls is on his way. You find out what the hell’s going on?”

  “Not here.” Electric green eyes narrowed and swept the corridor, shifted to a shallower hall that branched off the main path and dead-ended a few feet past a steel door marked Authorized Personnel Only. He nodded at the posted door. “There.”

  He dropped his arm back to Beth’s waist and steered her toward their rendezvous point. When he tried the steel doorknob, it didn’t budge. “Cosky?”

  Shifting up, he eased Beth in line beside him until their bodies created a barricade, blocking the main corridor’s view of the door, and whatever Zane’s buddy was doing to it. She heard the whisper of cloth rubbing on cloth, followed by the scratch of steel on steel.

  “We’re in,” Cosky said a second or so later.

  He’d picked the lock much faster than Beth had expected. With the way her luck was running, these three probably weren’t even the good guys; she’d probably accosted a trio of criminals. It suddenly occurred to her that she was about to disappear inside a room with three men she didn’t even know, yet for some odd reason she felt perfectly safe.

  Maybe she was the crazy one.

  Zane’s low whistle brought Beth’s attention front and center again, just in time to see the sandy-haired southerner swivel in mid-stride and head in their direction. Zane scanned the airport corridor and waited for an Asian couple to pass. Once the coast was clear, he swung Beth around and pushed her through the open door, following her inside. Someone must have hit a switch, because bright white light exploded all around her.

  They were in a supply closet. Floor-to-ceiling steel shelves stocked full of paper towels, toilet paper, and plastic soap dispensers covered three of the four walls. Against the far wall was a jumbled mess of mops, buckets, brooms, and vacuum cleaners. The interior reeked of industrial cleaner.

  Although the space wasn’t small, by the time Zane’s two friends followed them inside and closed the door, Beth felt claustrophobic. All those huge male bodies seemed to suck the oxygen from the air.

  As the other two settled against the shelves and studied her with sharp, curious eyes, Beth waited for their leader to drop his arm and let her go. He didn’t. When the silence expanded, and he still hadn’t released her, Beth tried stepping to the side, only to find herself hauled back against him again.

  “Boys, this is Beth,” Zane said. “Beth, meet Simcosky and Rawlings.” He glanced down, his hair gleaming like dark chocolate beneath the fluorescent lights. “I’m—”

  It was now or never. Beth didn’t hesitate. “Zane Winters,” she interrupted. “Lieutenant Zane Winters. I know who you are.”

  Dead silence followed. All three men went still. Alert. Zane dropped his arm from her waist.

  “You know my name.” Zane’s tone remained controlled. “How? I’d sure as hell remember if we’d met.”

  “We’ve never met.”

  Simcosky and Rawlings exchanged glances.

  Zane waited for her attention to return to his face. “How do you know who I am?”

  Those green eyes shone with a different expression now. Watchfulness? Suspicion? She couldn’t quite tell, but the hunger was banked. She tried to convince herself the change was an improvement.

  Her arms contracted around her purse, hugging it to her chest. There was no easy way to say it, so Beth just tossed the answer out. “Because I dreamed of you. I watched the three of you die.”

  Chapter Three

  Absolute silence raged for seven or eight seconds. To Beth, it seemed to last forever.

  “You dreamed about us.” Zane’s tone remained level. But his eyes went flat and his face still, radiating skepticism.

  Beth rushed the explanation out. “That’s how I know your name and rank. I heard them in the dream.” She nodded toward Rawlings. “He called you lieutenant.”

  The blond man didn’t look so easygoing now. With his expressionless face and icy eyes, he looked like the warrior she’d instinctively recognized him to be the night before—the kind of man who could kill without hesitation or regret.

  For the first time a flicker of emotion crossed Zane’s face. He frowned, his forehead creasing, but those chilly eyes remained locked on her face. It was amazing; even the heat his big body generated felt banked, as though his suspicions had locked him down physically as well as emotionally.

  “Tell me what you heard.”

  This was good, right? He was asking questions. He hadn’t called her a liar, or told her to up her meds. She studied his rigid face, the frosty gaze, the subtle distance he’d put between them. Yeah, right. Who was she kidding? He didn’t believe a word she’d said. She shifted her attention to his two warrior buddies. Both regarded her with complete blankness. They didn’t believe her either.

  But then she’d known they’d need some major convincing.

  “It was right after the three of you entered the departure gate and settled against the wall.” She thought back, visualizing that moment in the dream. “Your dark-haired friend—” What had Zane called him? Simcosky. That was it. “Your buddy Simcosky said, ‘He agreed to Hawaii, for God’s sake. He’s whipped. End of discussion.’ And then your blond friend slapped you on the back and said, ‘Don’t know what you’re complaining about anyway. At least it’s not some Somalian rat hole. We’re talking beaches, Lieutenant, bikinis. We’ve been stuck in worse places.”’

  The green flecks in Zane’s eyes warmed, and he shifted his attention to Rawlings. “She heard you call Cosky Lieutenant and thought you were talking to me.”

  “You’re not a lieutenant?”

  “Lieutenant Commander.” His eyes turned distant as though he were thinking back to that moment, trying to picture
her there. “I would have noticed her, if she’d been close enough to hear that,” he said after a moment, the comment directed toward his two friends. More of that non-verbal communication flowed between them.

  “I didn’t hear that exchange in the terminal. I heard it in the dream.”

  “Okay. Say I buy this.” Zane turned back to her, his gaze sharpening. “That still doesn’t give you my name.”

  Beth shrugged. “Well, your friends kept calling you skipper, boss or Zane. But I got your last name from your driver’s license.”

  Simcosky lifted his eyebrows. “You dreamed about his driver’s license?” he asked, his voice faintly mocking.

  Beth stiffened, and forced herself to hold his gaze. His eyes were hard, the color of concrete.

  “What I dreamed,” she emphasized, crossing her arms and gripping her elbows, “is that he was dead. They rolled him over and pulled out his wallet. They seemed to be confirming his identity.”

  Another few seconds of that intense, silent communication passed.

  Zane broke the silence. “Who are they?”

  Beth took a deep breath, but it didn’t ease the tightness in her chest. She gripped her elbows harder. “They are the hijackers. The men who take control of the plane and kill everyone in coach.”

  “Hijacking?” Zane froze for a second, glanced at his dark-haired buddy, then rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “You’re telling us you dreamed a hijacking? How are they going to accomplish that? Since 9/11, security at airports has quadrupled. And then there are the passengers. They aren’t as complacent. They band together and act now. Box knives and bombs aren’t going to control an airliner.”

  But there was an odd expression in his eyes. Watchful, rather than disbelieving.

  “They had guns, not box knives,” Beth retorted, squeezing her elbows so hard she knew they’d sport bruises by evening. “And they don’t try to control their passengers, they slaughter them. At least the ones in coach.”

  Zane ran a hand through his hair and frowned harder. Recognition kindled in his gaze. Something she’d said had struck a chord with him.