Blind Ambition (2 page)

“Yes. I have been through this before.”

“If you come to the clinic after dark, I’ll do it. No need to break down the door.” She resisted the urge to glare at Rugby.

Frederick’s lips curled in mild amusement, but he didn’t respond.

She stood and cleaned up her mess, removed the latex gloves she’d donned for the procedure, and washed her hands in the rust-stained kitchen sink. Then she took a deep breath and faced her captor. “Will you let me go back now? I can wear a blindfold or ride in the back of the van.”

Rugby laughed as if her suggestion were ludicrous.

Frederick studied Alexa in silence.

Blood pounded thickly in her ears as she awaited his response.
 

Finally, he rose to his feet with a benign expression on his face. “I understand your father is in the shipping business, Miss Alyssandratos,” he said, his voice easy and casual, as if discussing the weather.

Shock pulsed through her, followed quickly by the crushing weight of despair.

She was never going back to Terre Verte.

DAN MOLINA STEPPED OUT THE front door of his Falls Church apartment and dropped into an easy jog. On his way out of the complex, he tossed Tuesday’s
Washington Post
and its damning articles into the recycle bin parked next to the low-slung brick building.
 

The reporters praised him in one breath and denounced him in the next. Did they think he didn’t care about the cost of his mistakes? In an instant, his private security team at Claymore had wiped out every good thing he’d done as an Air Force pararescueman—a PJ. Every life he’d saved, every risk he’d taken for another, every sacrifice he’d made.

Four good members of his team and dozens of innocent civilians had died in an attack in Afghanistan orchestrated to cover up illegal dealings. If Dan had paid more attention to the signs of corruption, he might have prevented it all.

Somehow he had to live with that. He’d slowly begun to forgive himself, as much as anyone could. After all, he wasn’t the only one who’d missed the signs, and Dan knew from experience how debilitating guilt could be. His only choice was to move forward.

Being out of the news had helped, but now, Colin Di Ferio, one of the assholes under suspicion for playing on the wrong side, was facing a grand jury. So just when things had started to quiet down, the incident was back in the news. He couldn’t escape it.

Not that the hell of that day would ever leave him, news or not. Which was why he ran every morning before the sauna that was D.C. in July made it unwise to be outdoors. All of his mental baggage came with him, but it slowly fell away a piece at a time as he raced along the streets already packed with early commuters.

The thick air was almost cool at this hour, leaving a fine sweat-like sheen over the grassy strip that lined the road. Unwanted images flitted through his mind, but he outran them, focusing on his sawing breath, the pounding of his feet on the asphalt, the strain of his muscles.

The run untwisted his insides enough to make it through another day, and ninety minutes later he parked in the underground garage of the high-rise building in Arlington where his friend Kurt Steele had recently moved Steele Security, a private security contractor that didn’t take government or military contracts, money be damned.

After a brief elevator ride, he entered the office and went straight for the break room, where business manager extraordinaire Tara Fujimoto stood at the counter talking to Scott Kramer.

“Hi,” she said to Dan with a brilliant smile. How did she stay so upbeat with all the shit flying around them?

“Morning.” Dan managed not to grunt as he nodded at Scott.

The former Marine sniper looked more like a surfer dude than a security specialist with his sun-bleached hair, wiry build, and
Wombats
concert T-shirt. He raised his mug in return and then looked at Tara. “I gotta go,” he said, as he slung a backpack over one shoulder and walked out.

She contemplated his exit with a frown.

“Everything okay?” Dan asked.

Whipping around to face him, she nodded. “Yeah. I was just hoping to get him to talk about what’s bothering him.”

Dan snorted. “Fuck that noise. You should know by now that guys don’t talk.”

She pulled a face. “Right. They run, they work, they shoot things, they drink, they flirt. They definitely don’t talk.” Tearing a paper towel from its roll, she wiped scattered grounds into the trash can and put the coffee beans in the freezer. “Why do you think I like working here so much?”

When she reached for the broom, he stopped her. “Do
you
need to talk?”

With a sigh, she leaned against the counter in one of her many bright dresses—this one jungle green—and balanced on crazy tall heels that looked painful but still only brought her up to his shoulder. “About what?”

“You saw the news?” He knew she could handle herself under fire. Literally. It was one of the reasons Kurt had agreed to hire her after she’d quit her old job. But that didn’t stop both men from looking out for her.

Colin Di Ferio had fucked up more than Dan’s life. He’d pulled Tara into the fray, and now her ex-boyfriend-turned-abductor’s facing a grand jury had rekindled old nightmares for both of them.

“Hard to miss the headlines,” she said with a brittle laugh.

Dan paused and really looked at her. She was perfectly put together as usual—a sleek combination of stunning and professional—but dark shadows marred the skin beneath her eyes, and her mouth was tight.
 

“Seriously. How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I thought guys didn’t talk.”

He raised one eyebrow and waited.

She shrugged with one shoulder and examined her shiny red fingernails. “I’m fine. My friends are alive. Colin’s behind bars. Everyone else is dead. Sometimes I can sleep.” Her brown-eyed gaze met his. “You?”

He hesitated. Her stubborn jaw dared him to poke at her tough facade, but she wouldn’t thank him for it. “The same.”

Surprise flickered across her face, but she chased it off with a placid smile. “So we’ll live.”

“Yeah.” He grabbed a mug from the cupboard and poured himself a cup of coffee, adding three sugars to make it palatable. “Let me know if the media gets too zealous. Kurt can assign someone to keep them at bay. Maybe Scott or Todd.”
 

She wrinkled her nose. “No, thanks.” Gesturing toward the door, she said, “Kurt’s ready for you.”

“Great.” He squeezed her upper arm gently. “Hang in there.”

She gave him a tiny salute. “Yes, sir.”

He shook his head and smiled as he walked toward Kurt’s office, his running shoes quiet on the thick carpet.

Kurt looked up at Dan’s quick rap on the doorway and waved him into his spartan gray office with its military-surplus metal furniture. He was dressed in his standard uniform: a black Steele Security polo and khaki cargo pants with running shoes. He’d been a PJ with Dan, but after recovering from the loss of both legs—physically, anyway—he’d started Steele Security. A warrior was a warrior. Kurt might not be fit to fight, but this company gave him a way to stay in the game.

“Seen this?” Kurt asked with a scowl, gesturing to the paper before he waved Dan toward a chair.

“You think having everything rehashed in the news will hurt business?” He took a sip from his mug as he sat, hissing as the coffee nearly stripped the skin off his tongue. “Shit, that’s hot.”

Kurt smirked. “Pansy.”

Dan gave him the finger, then sobered. “Seriously. I can take a leave of absence or…resign if you think it would be best.” Best for Kurt. Not him. He hadn’t wanted to stay in private security of any kind after the nightmare in Afghanistan and its aftermath, but he wasn’t good for anything else.

Besides, he needed the money. And his best friends worked here.

“
Resign?
Hell no,” Kurt said with heat. “Let them talk. Everyone who matters knows what kind of guy you are.”

Dan squirmed. “Thanks.”

His boss waved off his gratitude. “Don’t sweat it. I have a job for you.” He shifted in his squeaky desk chair and slid a folder toward him. “A woman was taken hostage in St. Isidore. Her father contacted me last night.”

St. Isidore.
Dan’s pulse tripped at the mention of the tiny Eastern Caribbean paradise. “I was there a few years ago.”

“After the earthquake, right?”

“Yeah.” He and several other PJs had been part of a four-week humanitarian mission to help with the massive casualties and cleanup. But it was memories of a curvy strawberry blonde and their hot nights together that set his heart racing.

He shook his head to clear out the distracting thoughts. That was years ago. He was over it. Over her. “So what’s the story?”

“Ever hear of Cristos Alyssandratos?”

“The shipping magnate?”

Alyssandratos had made the news last year after security contractors on one of his ships repelled and killed a band of pirates off the coast of Somalia. Not to mention the man made the
Forbes
“400” list every year. He didn’t court the spotlight—and Dan would be hard-pressed to say what he looked like—but most people would recognize the name.

“Exactly.” Kurt sipped from an insulated Aim High coffee mug and tapped the folder. “It’s his daughter, Alexa. Yesterday SIR snatched her in Terre Verte. They’re asking for two million.”

Dan scowled. “What was she doing down there?” St. Iz wasn’t exactly a tourist destination these days, not even for the rich and bored. The recent hurricane and SIR—the St. Isidore Resistance—had seen to that.

“She’s a nurse working for Hygiea.”

“So, not a pampered princess.” Maybe. “Why does Alyssandratos need us? This sounds like something for the SEALs or Delta.”

Kurt ran a hand over his short black hair and nodded. “He doesn’t want anyone to know she was taken.”

Dan’s eyebrows lifted. “To protect her or himself?”

“Probably both. The U.S. has a strict no-ransom policy. Alyssandratos doesn’t want to reward the terrorists for kidnapping her, but he wants to keep the option open in case we fail. He’s had friends go through this recently, and the U.S. government kept them completely in the dark. The man wants more control, especially after the recent failed rescue attempts in the Middle East.”

“How did he find out the rebels have her?”

“He received a ransom request via email from Frederick Jeannot.”

The coffee in Dan’s mouth turned bitter. “Do we know where’s she’s being held, or if she’s still alive?”

Kurt fixed his inky black eyes on him. “According to the digital proof-of-life image, she was alive last night. Apparently, her dad’s investigator hid a GPS tracker in her watch when she started working for Hygiea, but there’s no way to know if she’s still wearing it. I have its current location.”

Dan rubbed the stubble on his chin and sat back. Spotty intel made things riskier, but search and rescue was his specialty. And here was a chance to do something meaningful again. Something more important than babysitting corporate execs and trying to bypass companies’ security to expose their vulnerabilities. And the distraction from the media frenzy wouldn’t hurt. “Just me?”

“We can’t risk a political incident, with their government or ours. One man is easier to explain away than a team of commandos. But I’ll have Jason and Todd on standby, just in case.”

Dan was used to working as part of a team. PJs lived, breathed, and trained together. Someone always had his back and he had theirs. But acting alone gave Steele and Alyssandratos the necessary deniability.

“If you don’t want this one,” Kurt said, “I can give it to someone else. But Alyssandratos asked for you personally.”

Dan’s head snapped up at that. “What?” He frowned. “Why?”

Kurt shrugged. “He said you came highly recommended by that tech company CEO you guarded in Brazil last month.”

Norris
. An arrogant but brilliant man whose suits cost more than Dan’s truck. “All right. You got a plan in mind?” He snagged the folder, skimming through the preliminary intel. “One that will get me back before Mick and Jenna’s wedding?”

He was the best man at the ceremony on Saturday. Kurt was a groomsman and Tara was the maid of honor, and they all had to be in South Carolina by Friday evening for the rehearsal dinner.

“Do it right and you should be back tomorrow. Wednesday latest. And there’s a nice bonus if you get the girl back by Thursday. The St. Isidore airport is still shut down, so you’ll fly into St. Lucia instead. I’ll have a small yacht lined up for you at the marina there, and a contact to pick up weapons. St. Lucia is strict as hell about bringing them in, so you’re going to have to stay under the radar there.”

“When do I leave?”

“There’s an early afternoon flight into Hewannora. You should have plenty of time to get to the docks before dark. Tara will handle the rest of the details.”

“Perfect.” Dan riffled through charts and maps and snippets of intel about SIR rebel camps and sympathizers while he and Kurt hashed out the rest of the plan. Idly, he flipped to the last page.

And stopped breathing.

His body turned to ice at the image of a stunning woman with intelligent blue eyes and honey-red hair that skimmed her shoulders.

“Alyssa,” he whispered as acid pooled in his stomach.
Fuck
.

“Yeah, she goes by Alyssa Drake to protect herself, but her name’s Alexa,” Kurt said absently. He must have noticed something on Dan’s face, though, because he straightened. “What’s up?”

Dan suddenly understood why Alyssandratos had asked for him, and it had nothing to do with Norris’ recommendation.

He shook his head and willed his heartbeat under control, clearing his throat against the sudden constriction. “No, nothing.” He forced a grin. “She’s hot.” A fact that he could verify from experience because he’d known her—intimately—for three of the most incredible weeks of his life.

Right up until she shattered his heart.

The evening after her abduction, Alexa woke in the dark to low voices from outside. Her jail was a block-brick building maybe twice as big as a porta potty, and sporting a similar—though much smaller—hole. The only ventilation came from a four-inch screened gap that ran under the eaves of the high metal roof and let in weak moonlight, but little air to cool her down.