Under the Wire: Bad Boys Undercover (10 page)

After a few minutes of walking, Caleb stopped with his back against the wall of the office building next door. “Other than planting the listening devices, what did we gain?”

That had been Caleb’s job. She got Niko riled up and ticked off his watchdog while Caleb pressed tiny black dots smaller than the size of mints in strategic places, like just inside the door and under the lip of the desk. He’d eventually find them but she didn’t need to ghost him forever, just for now.

“We know from Reid that the expedition is in trouble. Niko isn’t going to share information, but he is going to act and it’s going to be fast.” He would hate that she knew anything about his business and try to close that loop.

Caleb leaned his head back against the wall. “You think the expedition is part of some renewed plan for regime change in Russia?”

She didn’t know what was going on in Niko’s messed-up brain, but she knew if he was involved with this, they were in trouble. “Possibly.”

Caleb turned his head and looked straight at her. “So, now what?”

“I gave Reid the coordinates for a place to hide out. That will buy him some time while we work.”

Commuters and tourists passed by on the sidewalk. A car horn honked as an especially loud car raced by. Caleb never looked up. He kept his gaze on her. “Doing what?”

With her team scrambled, and her needing to work under the radar until she figured out what was happening and who she could trust, she’d depend on Caleb and his special expertise. “It’s time we put those hacker skills of yours to work.”

“I’m not a fan of that term.”

“Call it whatever you want, but your job is to help me piggyback whatever satellite, video feed, or intelligence—regardless of which country it comes from—we need to get me eyes on the ground.” In the meantime she’d start working on their covert travel plans to Russia.

Caleb smiled. “You’re not even giving me a challenge.”

“Let’s see if you think the job is so easy an hour from now.”

T
HEY WALKED
for about half a mile, skimming a line of trees and using boulders and whatever other natural barriers he could find to partially hide their presence. A straight path would have been faster, easier. This way qualified as smarter, but even Reid had to admit that he was ready to sit down.

The way his shirt stuck to the skin around the open wound, pulling and tugging, almost guaranteed a fresh surge of blood when he tried to rip the material off. Just what he needed. Getting shot twice in one day didn’t even qualify as a record for him, but then this wasn’t supposed to be a dangerous mission.

“We need to stop.” Cara did it right after she said it. Stood out there in the open as if it didn’t matter who stumbled by.

So much for subterfuge and trying to keep the tactical advantage. He was about to point out their lack of both when her eyes narrowed. Her hand went to her throat as a sudden wariness washed over her.

His instincts flipped to high alert. “Are you okay?”

She rolled her eyes, a feat she was annoyingly good at. “You, not me.”

“Do I look like I’m having a hard time walking?” The idea of showing any weakness ticked him off. His side was killing him and his shoulder ached, but he thought he was doing a pretty good job of covering those issues. Wasn’t dragging behind. Didn’t press his hand against his side, though that would have stemmed some of the thumping there.

Clearly Cara just didn’t appreciate the male ego and feeble attempts to preserve it.

“You’ve been shot twice,” she said, as if he didn’t know that.

He waited for her to continue, but she stopped and resumed staring. “Typical day at the office for me.”

“Don’t go all super alpha moron on me.” She pointed to a pile of three rocks and then headed over to the area before he could argue. “Come with me.”

No question her initial confusion had passed. The haze cleared. Hell, she’d even gotten over what he originally suspected was a concussion and flipped right to the bossiness ordering-him-around part of the program. The hot part.

Some men might be intimidated by strong women. He was not one of them. He loved that she didn’t take his shit. He just wished she’d wait until they got to their intended destination before unleashing her stubbornness.

“We need to keep moving.” He reached out to catch her arm. The move pulled along his side and had him wincing. The only good thing is that she was too busy rummaging through her backpack to see it, so he fell back on reason. “The coordinates Tasha gave me will put us at a cabin. We can regroup from there.”

Cara’s head shot up as the paper from the bandage wrapper crinkled in her hand. “How exactly does Tasha know about some obscure cabin in the middle of the Ural Mountains?”

“It’s her job to know.” Cara just stood there, but Reid didn’t have any other intel to add. “That’s really my answer.”

“It’s not a helpful one.”

He leaned back against the rock. An edge jutted into the middle of his back but the warmth of the stone eased some of the tightness in his tense muscles. “She has contacts everywhere. Even now she’s arranging for a supply and weapons drop. Talking to her people, who talk to other people, who arrange to get us things.”

“Like an army of guys so we can fan out and find the rest of my team?” Cara tugged on the bottom of his shirt as she peeked up at him.

Reid bit back a hiss of pain as his material stuck to the skin around his wound. The ripping sensation vibrated through him but he fought to keep his voice steady. “You’re saying I’m not enough?”

Her hands froze in midair. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”

That sobered him. He dealt in death and blood every day. Hell, he practiced how to escape from being tied up and submerged underwater. How to bury a body on the run. He chose this sick life. For some reason, it kept finding her.

He took her cold hand and rubbed it between both of his. “I’m sorry about Cliff.”

“This job . . .” She blew out a long breath but didn’t continue.

Reid lowered his head, trying to get her to meet his gaze. “What?”

“Office politics are not my thing.” She slipped her fingers through his.

He didn’t understand where she was going with this, but he went along. “I bet.”

“There’s a presumption that I don’t have to work hard. Like, that I was born with math and science knowledge. As if it’s part of my genetic makeup or something stupid like that.” She treated him to a sad smile. “Then there are the whispers about how I’m sent out on fieldwork because the team needs a token woman.”

The one thing working for Tasha drove home for him was that women could kick ass. He might be stronger but she could outthink and outplan him, and that was saying something. “Geologists aren’t very evolved, are they?”

“It’s not a geology thing. It’s more of a group dynamic where the people in charge have old ideas.”

Reid read between the lines. “But not Cliff.”

She let go of his hand. “No, he got it.”

The pull away. Not this time. He reached for her again. “Come here.”

He wrapped his arms around her. Lifting the injured one sent pain surging through his side, but when she rested her head against his chest, he didn’t care if his muscles went numb.

For a few seconds the only thing that mattered was the weight of her body. The way she sank into him. Her hair had the hadn’t-been-combed-in-weeks thing going on. She still wore the ripped pants, even though she’d grabbed a fresh Henley back at the compound and threw that on.

She’d never looked better. She’d probably smelled better, but that kind of crap didn’t matter much to him. Not as long as she was alive. Now he had to keep her that way.

Just as his mouth went to her cheek, she pulled back. Put a few feet of distance between them. Cleared her throat. Basically threw up every emotional wall between them. In a flash she morphed from soft and open to all business.

“Let me check your injuries.” She lifted his shirt again. Acted as if the tear along his side was the most interesting thing in the world.

The moment came and went, leaving him with a familiar kicking in his gut. She shut down, pushed him
out. The cycle of hot to cool left him reeling. But this wasn’t the time to argue it out or debate her communication skills. He needed to be on top of his game and get her out of the danger zone before they could dissect every moment of their fucked-up relationship.

Until then, if she wanted to stay serious and on task, he’d give her that. “You have two minutes.”

“Fine.” With minimal supplies, she cleaned the wound. Patted and disinfected. Poked until he suspected the jabbing went beyond actual medical assistance.

He refused to squirm. Concentrated on keeping watch instead. “If you insist on doing this—”

“I do.”

“Then I’m going to use the downtime to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course you are.”

He could hear the smile in her voice but didn’t let it sidetrack him. “Tell me about this expedition.”

She peeked up at him for a second before returning to whatever she was doing that seemed to cause more bleeding than it stopped. “The cover is the documentary.”

“On that old hiking incident.” He now had heard more about this dead hiking group than about her real reason for being here. That wasn’t annoying or anything.

“Right.” She stepped back and frowned at his side. “The bullet went through but you need stitches.”

“No time.” He gestured at her backpack and was surprised when she handed it to him. Before she could change her mind, he pulled out the packet of sealing powder. “Use this.”

She stared at the envelope but didn’t take it. “Do you want to die?”

“Not especially.”

“Then stop fighting me.”

“You’ve been in the field for your work. I’m sure the medical person who comes along has some version of this.” He turned her hand palm up and put the sealant package there. “It will form a scab until we can get somewhere safe and take a closer look.”

“No one shoots anyone while I’m in the field.”

He decided not to remind her about the last two days. “Just do it.” He met her glare with one of his own. “And keep talking about the real reason you’re here.”

After some head shaking and general mumbling, she applied the powder to his skin. It immediately mixed with the blood to close the wound. But she kept dabbing. “We were conducting other experiments while we’re here. They—”

“Who is ‘they’ in this context?” he asked, because that struck him as a pretty integral piece of information.

She shrugged. “Someone like you. Covert types.”

That really didn’t help him at all, but he wanted her to give him whatever intel she had, so he stopped after one question. “Ah, I see. Go on.”

“There was a lot of activity at an old work camp way up north in the Urals. The place is icy and desolate. It’s one of those camps that’s not supposed to exist and certainly isn’t supposed to be active now, but there was a lot of in and out. Trucks and personnel.”

With the adrenaline rush gone and the tension ratcheted down to nonlethal levels, his muscles started to burn. He leaned hard against the rocks behind him in an effort to conserve energy. “Military.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Armed men protecting scientists.”

Not the answer he expected. And he hated that. “What?”

“The camp-that-wasn’t-supposed-to-exist appeared to be a place to conduct experiments. Then it blew up. A month later word leaked that an entire village of Nenets died.”

He knew a little about the region. Enough to get by when an assignment called for him to travel to Russia, but that word didn’t jar his memory. “I don’t understand.”

“An ethnic group indigenous to the northern Urals, near the Arctic area of Russia. Mass deaths without explanation. Russian authorities blamed it on some sort of delayed reaction to a meteor strike from 2013.”

He remembered something about the meteor strike and all the destruction. He’d been undercover in Germany at the time, but that sort of news played everywhere. Splashed on the front page of every newspaper.

Still, the explanation raised lots of red flags. “That sort of delay doesn’t sound even a little believable.”

She pocketed the empty packet. “I still need to sew this up.”

He twisted a little to get a better look but stopped when he felt his skin tug and pull. “It’s fine.”

“I’m the one with the doctorate, so I decide.”

Talk about convenient. “Your degree isn’t in medicine.”

“As between the two of us, who gets to be called doctor?”

“That’s a terrible argument.”

She shot him a triumphant smile. “It’s also a winning one.”

“Once the powder seals there is a whole process before you can stitch me up. You can’t just grab a needle and start ripping into my skin.” That was sort of true, so he went with it. “Keep talking about the expedition.”

“They—and by ‘they’ I’m still referring to some sort of intelligence type like you—worried Russia was developing a new weapon.” She pocketed the rest of the medical supplies and zipped up her backpack. “Something that has a lot of people who do what you do for a living very scared, which was why I agreed to take the position and come up here and run some tests.”

Tasha hadn’t briefed the team on any of it. One more reason mandatory time off sucked. Now they’d have to double-time it to get caught up and set the network in
place to investigate all of these allegations. He hated being out of the loop and one step behind.

Then there was the issue about the source of the intel. Someone hired this team. The “they” Cara kept referring to. Likely some idiot at the CIA who thought endangering untrained scientists was a good way to get the needed intel.

He’d yell about that later. Right now he had to pull the rest out of her. With her practical nature and adherence to rules, she didn’t exactly volunteer information. “Go on.”

“Specifically, I’m here to check for radioactive materials, any indications of chemical weapons.” She wrinkled up her nose. “The usual.”

“Shit.” That was some rough stuff. Just hearing about the possibility sent a new flash of energy pumping through him. No time to recuperate and analyze. They needed to move . . . and that meant keeping her on the ground with him until he could get the needed new samples. Bringing another geologist in from the U.S. didn’t make much sense when they had one standing with them on Russian soil. But that didn’t mean he liked the idea. “Why did you have to be chosen for this task?”

“I’m going to ignore the part where that sounds a little insulting.”

He hadn’t even realized he’d said the words out loud. “I didn’t mean you weren’t qualified.”

“This area, all of the Urals, is sort of a geologist’s playground. It’s rich in coal and minerals. Gold, precious metals, oil. You name it.” She crossed her arms in front of her. “I’ve been here several times. Spent a lot of time in and around Perm, a city to the south. That experience got me on the team.”

Reid had been scanning the area during their entire talk. He took a second and looked over the top of the rock pile. A new attack could come from any direction. But the firmness of her tone brought his attention zipping right back to her. “You don’t need to read your résumé to me.”

“Kind of feels like it.”

There was no way to win that battle, so he didn’t even try. “Did you find any evidence of weapons?”

The answer to that question would determine how much risk he took with her safety. His inclination was to keep that probability as close to zero as possible, which meant limited field time and not one second spent alone.

“It’s not that easy.” She held up a hand as she bit her bottom lip. “Okay . . . I’m not sure how much you know about this.”

He felt a lecture coming on. In this case that might not be a bad thing, since he knew almost nothing about geology. “Talk to me like you’re explaining the science to a kid for the first time.”

“Radiation is all around us. Some of it occurs natu
rally. Some is man-made. Then we have the problem that plutonium plants in this area used to dump radioactive waste into the surrounding rivers.”

“That sounds bad.” But not even a little surprising. Governments thrived on secrecy. The former Soviet Union, with this vast swath of unchartered land along the Urals and through Siberia, had a geographical advantage in the secrecy game.