Free Fall

It would be hot as hell over her black pants, top, and bulletproof vest. But a little dehydration was a small price to pay for an extra layer of anonymity.

“Need help?”

She turned and there were those coffee dark eyes again. Static-like awareness snapped when she looked back at the intense gaze that had held hers earlier as he’d lifted his face mask. Except now he was more than eyes and a wet suit. He was a lean, honed man in a pair of fitted swim trunks he must have worn under the diving gear. He was glistening bronze with a body trained for survival anyplace, anytime.

The boat rocked under her feet from a rogue wave. At least she thought it was a wave.

“Uh, no, I’m good. Thanks. You should get dressed. We need to haul butt out of here.” And his current state of undress definitely didn’t qualify as “low profile.”

“I meant, do you need help with the cut on your temple?” He gestured to the left side of her face, almost touching. “You brought along two PJs for a reason, ma’am.”

Her skin hummed with a sting that her brain must have pushed aside earlier for survival’s sake. She tapped the side of her forehead gingerly.

“Ouch!” Her fingertips were stained with blood as murky red as her hair.

“A bullet must have grazed you,” he said with a flat Midwestern accent. A no-accent really, just pure masculine rumble. “Could have been much worse. This was your lucky day, ma’am.”

“Stella.” For right now she could be more than Miss Lucky Smith.

“They call me Cuervo.”

Call him.

Call signs.

No real name from him for now. Understandable and a reality check to get her professional groove back on. “Do I need stitches?”

He tugged a small kit from his gear, a waterproof pack of some sort. “Antiseptic and butterfly bandages should hold you until we can get someplace where I’ll have time to treat you more fully.”

We.

Her brain hitched on the word, the answer to who she would be partnering with as they escaped into the crowd. She wasn’t saying good-bye to him—to Cuervo—at the dock. Irrational relief flooded her, followed by a bolt of excitement.

“Thanks, Cuervo. Blood dripping down my face would definitely draw undue attention at an inopportune time.” She forced a smile.

Still, his face, those eyes, they held her, and while she wasn’t a mystical person, she couldn’t miss the connection. Attraction? Sure, but she understood how to compartmentalize on the job. This was something that felt elemental. Before she could stop the thought, the words soul mate flashed through her head.

And God, that was crazy and irrational when she was always, always logical. Her brothers called her a female version of Spock from Star Trek.

Still, as those fingers cleaned her wound, smoothed ointment over her temple, and stretched butterfly bandages along her skin, she couldn’t stop thinking about spending the rest of the day with him as they melded into the port city and made their way back to the embassy.

Damn it, she could not waste the time or emotional energy on romance or even a fling. Right now, she could only focus on working with the Mr. Smiths and Mr. Browns of her profession. She needed to make peace with her past, then move on with her life. Then, and only then, she would find Mr. Right and shift from the field to a desk job so she could settle down into that real family dream she’d missed out on.

Yet those brown eyes drew her into a molten heat and she had the inescapable sense that Mr. Right had arrived ahead of schedule.

Chapter 1

East Africa: Six Months Later

Five years, eight months, and twenty-nine days sober.

Staff Sergeant Jose “Cuervo” James flipped his sobriety coin over and over between his fingers as he reviewed the satellite feed on the six screens in front of him. If he and the multi-force rescue team around him didn’t save Stella Carson in the next twenty-four hours, odds were his coin would end up in the trash.

The cavernous airplane hangar echoed with the buzz of personnel calling directives into headsets and the low hum from each image on the dozen screens. Techies gathered information for the eight-man rescue team—two Air Force pararescuemen, eight Navy SEALs, and five CIA operatives. The volume on the speakers increased whenever something of specific interest captured their attention about Stella and the eleven college students who’d been kidnapped with her during a foreign exchange trip.

Only one screen interested him. The one showing Stella being held hostage by separatists in some concrete hellhole south of the Horn of Africa. His eyes ate up the image of her—alive—for now.

She wore jeans and a black tank top with gym shoes, looking five years younger than her twenty-nine years and just like the exchange student she was pretending to be. Her titan red hair was half in, half out of a ponytail. A long strand stuck to blood on her cheek from an oozing gash in her eyebrow that made him think of the scratch on her head from the bullet that grazed her the day they’d met. The day she’d saved his ass.

Right now, she was dusty, strained, and bruised. But still keen-eyed, pacing around her cell, nothing more than concrete walls with a pallet and bucket in the corner. A table filled another corner with a scattering of artifacts and relics. Frustration knotted his fists as he held back the urge to reach through the screen and haul her out. To hell with the objectivity and the logic she worshiped.

Usually his job as a pararescueman gave his life focus and stability. But today’s assignment was more than just a mission. Stella Carson was more than an Interpol agent to pluck out of a sticky situation. She was the only woman he’d ever loved.

She was also the woman who’d dumped him four weeks ago.

He prayed to every saint he’d memorized in parochial school that the captors bought her cover story of being an over-privileged student studying overseas on Mommy and Daddy’s nickel. He couldn’t even let himself think about all the atrocities committed against women in this region. He could only focus on willing her to stay alive. God help her if they figured out she was a top-notch intelligence operative with an uncanny aptitude for code breaking.

God help them both if he failed to get her out.

He’d been told little when he’d boarded the plane at his home base in Georgia, only knowing they were being tasked to rescue a kidnapped group of students. Not unusual to keep him in the dark until deeper into the mission. He’d understood the op was covert and their slide into the country would be off the books. Their aircraft looked more like a large civilian charter jet than a military transport.

He damn well hadn’t guessed Stella was one of the captives until he was airborne. He’d almost lost his shit right then and there. Only the burning need to be damn sure they didn’t have any excuse to kick him off this operation kept him from going postal.

At least he’d gotten his rage under control by the time they’d flown into Camp Lemmonier, a U.S. base in Africa, and pulled into the waiting empty airplane hangar. They’d slipped in by pretending to be part of the advance security team for the U.S. vice president’s wife’s upcoming visit. Once inside the hangar, they’d off-loaded their gear—shipping containers emptied and flipped over to be used as tables. The other four CIA agents—techies—monitored two fifteen-inch computer screens each with a massive flat screen above all to feed images from the smaller units.

A Predator unmanned surveillance drone sent pictures from outside the compound and relayed thermal imaging of individuals inside. The craft, flown by remote control, had also released a smaller reconnaissance craft—the ultimate “bug.”

Nanotechnology made it possible to fly in a miniscule spy vehicle that looked like a fly or spider, a nano air vehicle or NAV. The miniature drone didn’t have the distance capability of the Predator, but the maneuverability was unbeatable. The minute size provided the ultimate disguise, sending back visual and audio feed via satellite. Even though other countries knew of the existence of the technology, it wasn’t like they could swat every fly and stomp every spider.

The lead CIA agent on their extraction team—a craggy-faced dude calling himself “Mr. Smith,” surprise, surprise—clicked the controller in his hands and shifted one of the smaller screen images to feed into the larger wide-screen above the rest.

“This footage was made yesterday at zero-eight-hundred when the Predator spy drone successfully deployed NAVs for an inside peek.” Smith hitched the dusty leather belt, his dark shirt and pants well-worn and generic looking as his four identical workmates. “We were lucky enough to make contact with Agent Carson.”

The screen captured her eyes narrowing briefly as she stepped closer to the minute surveillance device. She nodded, just a tiny dip of her head that she knew she was being watched and somehow she’d decided the eyes were friendly. Yet, she didn’t give anything away to the pair of scared students huddled in the corner with an unconscious third on the floor in front of them.

Mr. Smith zoomed in so close Stella’s freckles came into focus. “Once she knew we had eyes in the room, she fed us information like a pro.”

Jose leaned forward, elbows on his knees as his eyes zeroed in on his favorite freckle, the one just below her ear where he’d discovered she liked to be kissed the day they’d flown to Queen Elizabeth National Park. He could almost taste her skin even now, watching her on screen.

She walked to a corner and stared up at what appeared to be a regular surveillance camera to keep watch over prisoners. “We need medical supplies in here,” she shouted, her husky voice reaching through the airwaves to grip him right around his heart. “Do you hear me, people?”

The operative fast forwarded through her pointing out two injured students and three more devices in her dank concrete room; each step took her past piles of ancient pottery and stacks of other stolen pieces of art. “She alerted us to the location of the cameras in the room and the students throughout the building—as best she could.”

Her pacing slowed beside a stack of ancient tribal masks. “You can’t just lock all of us away.” Her fingers skimmed along a gold gilded antiquity. Drawing their attention to the room’s storehouse of stolen historic treasures? “I’m no good to you if I die before you even get to torture me for answers.”

Torture.

Rape was rampant here.

Mutilation of women was commonplace.

Bile burned the back of his throat as a hole threatened to crack open his chest. What had she been through during her three days of captivity? Jamming the fear to the back of his brain, he focused on using his training to help her. He wouldn’t be any good to her if he didn’t hold it together.

His eyes flicked to other screens, images of the rest of the rooms, one in particular. Chains hung from the ceiling. Knives glinted in a line on a nearby table. A battery with cables lay too damn close on the floor. The semiconscious man being carried between two guards appeared alive.

Jose forced himself to assess the young man medically. Pararescue training included extensive schooling as a medic and no doubt those skills were needed for this mission. The wide screen filled again with Stella’s image, the time stamp at the bottom showing the footage had come in late yesterday afternoon.

“Hello?” She waved her hand in front of one of the bad guy surveillance cameras. “Your guards are due back in a half hour anyway to bring that watery soup you call supper… Oh yeah, and you call it breakfast, but no actual lunch because we shouldn’t eat enough to have any energy. Instead of your sunrise/sunset buffet, I’d rather have a bucket of water and antibiotics.”

Mr. Smith froze that frame, leaving the smaller images running in both past and real time now, offering two Stellas to watch in addition to the full screen close-up of her pale face with keen green eyes. “Notice, she told us the guard’s schedule—or at least the part we can expect. Sunrise and sunset. We can infiltrate at that moment, when we know where the guards will be. It’s better to face the certainty. You’ll be going in just before dusk as they take her supper tonight.”