Diamonds Are Truly Forever: An Agent Ex Novel 2 (33 page)

He made a note to watch out for German tack strips. If this guy was a Bond fanatic, he’d try that trick. Drew wondered—if Vesper’s kidnapping was a trap for Bond, was this a trap meant for him?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The car surged forward and took a corner too fast. Caught off guard, Staci jolted forward and screamed. A feeble attempt, really, as it was muffled by the skirt of her dress. “I can’t breathe!”

Wrong thing to say. A knife blade slashed the fabric of her skirt, opening an inch-long breathing hole on her left side before retreating.

She took a deep breath and tried to peek out of the hole. From the way her abductor was driving and cursing, someone had to be chasing them. She prayed it was Drew. She had to escape, get out of the car somehow. Through the hole she could only see the right ear of her attacker.

If she could tear the fabric and make the hole in her skirt wider, she’d grab the gearshift and throw the car into neutral or park. That should stop the car.

She grabbed the hole and wrenched at it. Tugged. Wished for a seam ripper or a pair of scissors. Staci struggled with the fabric until she felt faint from using up too much oxygen in her dress bag.

But no matter how hard she pulled and tugged, and bargained with the universe, the fabric wouldn’t give. That’s what she got for buying quality. There was no way to get her arms free and grab the steering wheel.

She had to do
something.
It was either fight or die.

Occupied with driving, her attacker wasn’t paying attention to her cat-fighting-in-a-bag routine. Drew had once told her that anything can be used as a weapon if you think creatively. The pink pumps she wore had spiky heels. Spikes were good weapons. All the better for stomping insteps with. If she crushed his foot and slammed the brakes on, the car behind them would catch them. Assuming it didn’t rear-end them.

Assuming a worse fate didn’t await her with whoever was chasing them.

Drew was too good a driver to be involved in a rear-end accident.

If Drew’s behind us, I promise never to be a backseat driver again.

Her sense of
Thou shall not tell a lie
overcame her. She’d
never
be able to keep that promise.
For a while,
she amended.
A month, at least.
Even that was stretching expectations. Drew drove like a maniac. Right now, she hoped his daredevil driving would save her.

If she could swing her left foot over the gearshift, she’d have him. As she prepared to strike, she prayed she’d be able to find the brake and not hit the accelerator.

*   *   *

Drew followed the bastard into the one-lane paved alley. One false move on the narrow strip sandwiched between warehouses and the river, and they were dead or swimming for their lives.

As he weighed his options, he hoped to hell a car didn’t wander down the wrong way in the one-way alley. And that no other vehicles or snipers ambushed him. If the driver got away from him, Staci was dead. He knew that instinctively. He had to stop that car and hope she survived the crash. It was the only way.

There wasn’t room to come up beside the car and ram it off the road to a stop. He could try to overtake it and ram it from behind, but the cars were evenly matched. The bastard could just as easily brake, crushing Drew’s engine. Drew had no desire to be a tailpipe ornament.

He slapped the steering wheel and cursed. He hated being in the weak position. There was only one thing to do.

Holding the wheel with one hand, Drew balanced his gun on the wheel with the other, willing his breath to slow to a sniper’s pace. The shot had to be precise. He couldn’t chance hitting Staci. He waited for a good, straight, clear stretch of road. He had to take the bastard out before he got to the main road.

Drew rested his finger on the trigger and steeled his nerves as he took aim.

There. There was the shot.

He took a deep breath and held it. Just as he put pressure on the trigger, Staci leaned into the driver and struggled with him.

*   *   *

Staci swung her left foot over the gearshift and stomped on the arch of her kidnapper’s foot as he struggled to push her back. She was working mostly in the dark as she felt for the brake. She slid her leg under her attacker’s, thinking through the configuration of the pedals.

Aim for the second pedal to the left, Stace.

She tapped her foot on the first pedal, felt the second, and rammed it to the floor.
Pedal to the metal!

Her kidnapper slammed her with his shoulder as he cursed and fought to knock her back. There was too little oxygen in her skirt bag. She felt as if she were exercising at high altitude—weak and dizzy, about to pass out.

Somehow she made her trembling, oxygen-deprived leg work and kept her foot on the pedal. The engine raced.
Yes!
She had the brake while her attacker was flooring the accelerator.

Trying not to breathe too hard from either exertion or fear, she swung her right leg over the center console and kicked him, trying to ram her heel into his thigh, Kubotan-style.

He roared with anger and smacked her with his shoulder. She leaned into him, fighting, trying to knock the wheel out of his hands, hoping he’d lose control of his gun. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting, even if she passed out with the effort.

She knocked her kidnapper again with her shoulder.

Suddenly the car swerved out of control. She felt it leave the road and kept pressure on the brake, hoping to slow the car before they crashed. Bushes scraped along the side and undercarriage as their vehicle slammed into something solid.

*   *   *

Drew watched as the car in front of him veered off the road, sideswiped the small rise of hill behind the buildings, and crashed into a tree at slow speed. The guy next to Staci pointed his gun at her. Drew fired off a shot, grazing the attacker’s shoulder. Staci’s kidnapper fired back, climbed out through the driver’s window, and scrambled up the hill, firing as he went until he disappeared. He was gone before Drew could stop his car and get to him.

Staci was held prisoner by her dress, slumped sideways over the right side of the wheel as he approached the car. Her window was closed. He moved uphill to the open driver’s-side window.

“Staci! Staci!” He completely lost his spy cool and sounded like any idiot worried husband off the street who’d just seen his wife abducted at gunpoint, nearly shot, and driven into a tree.

Staci stirred and moaned softly. “Drew?”

He took a deep breath of relief, unnerved by the rush of emotions he felt at Staci’s narrow escape and the way she called his name as if he was the only person she wanted and needed. “I’m here, Stace. Stay calm. I’ll get you out. No one’s going to hurt you.”

The driver’s door was locked, banged in, and jammed against the hill. Clutching his jacket to prevent fingerprints, he reached through the open window, unlocked the doors, and went around to the passenger side. He stared through the passenger window at Staci’s fabulous pair of shapely, naked legs. One beautiful thigh quivered as Staci continued to floor the brake.

Quivering thighs gave him ideas about sex. But Drew didn’t know what turned him on more—her shapely legs or the closeness he felt to her at that moment. Staci’s legs were much hotter than anything his prepubescent fantasies had conjured up about Vesper. And the lace thong panties she wore left nothing to the imagination.

He covered his hand with his jacket, opened the passenger door, leaned in awkwardly across her, and shut off the engine.

“Ease up on the brake, babe.” He gently squeezed her thigh, trying to quell the rage he felt, and be reassuring and calm while wanting to commit murder. “It’s okay. Everything’s under control. You’re safe now. He’s gone.”

“Gone as is in dead or gone as in disappeared?”

At least, that’s what he thought she said. It was muffled by her dress. “Gone as in ran off like a chickenshit after you overpowered him.

“You did great, my brave spy babe. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just shaken.” Her voice trembled.

So was he, much more than he liked to admit. He’d barely been in time to rescue her. A minute’s delay at a stoplight on his way to pick her up and she’d be dead.

“Did you hit him?” she asked.

He looked over at the fresh bloodstain on the driver’s seat. “Just grazed his shoulder.”

“Too bad.”

He unbuckled her seat belt, trying to reassure himself, and her, that she’d really escaped. “Scoot your legs over the center console and I’ll help you out.”

He tossed his jacket over the door and watched as her long, naked legs slid over into the space in front of her, her feet still clad in the platform pumps that made her look like she belonged in a Vegas show.

He tried to untie the dress over her head, but fumbled in the ridiculously awkward position, cursing. “I can’t see what I’m doing. I’ll get this untied after I get you out.”

He slid his arms beneath her and scooped her out of the car, standing, holding her in his arms, cradling her against him.

“Um, Drew, my dress? I feel a breeze on my bum. Get me out of this thing.”

“It’s been a while since you’ve asked me to get you out of your dress. Are you sure?”

“Drew, stop teasing. I’m way too vulnerable like this and it’s hard to breathe.”

Yeah, he knew what she meant. He felt the same way. Resisting the urge to squeeze her butt and take her right there, he set her down and untied the knot in her dress above her head.

He took one last look at her bare bums and the tiny triangle of lace covering her crotch, and, lifting a brow in regret, freed her from her dress prison, pulling her skirt back where it belonged.

Free at last and off balance, she tumbled into his arms, bracing herself against his chest. “Don’t yell at me. I’m so sorry! I fell for a stupid trick.”

“Why would I yell at you, Stace?” His voice caught. “Your quick thinking and courage in the car saved your life. I’m just glad you’re alive.”

She cuddled into him, resting her head on his chest, ignoring his praise. “I was so dumb, so, so dumb. Someone sent me an email ‘from you.’ I knew that wasn’t the instructions you gave me, but I fell for it anyway.” She looked up at him as if he was her hero. “I was hoping you’d rescue me.”

Why did she have to do that? Look at him with trembling lips and lift her face to his?

He slid his jacket around her shoulders, lowered his head, closed his eyes, and kissed her as he pressed her to him, kissed her the way a spy kissed the damsel in distress. Kissed her the way a husband in love with his wife kissed her. Kissed her as if he’d almost lost her and didn’t want to face that again.

*   *   *

Staci opened her mouth to Drew, pressed into him, and kissed him as if she never wanted to let him go. Deeply, with all the aching longing she felt. A thought popped up, rising like a tickling champagne bubble, full of hope and possibility—if Drew forgave her, they could reconcile and have babies.

She wanted to rationalize that the thought of babies was the adrenaline talking. The near-death-experience,
Let’s have sex to celebrate life
response. But that would be a lie. She ran her fingers through his hair.

Drew pulled away and cleared his throat, putting up a mask. She couldn’t read the look in his eyes. She wished she could. Did he feel it, too? That pull to make a life together again?

“We have to get out of here before someone sees us, or your guy comes back with his friends.” He took her arm to lead her to his car.

She stopped him. “My purse and keys. They’re in his car.” She shuddered, thinking how horrific it would be for the kidnapper to have her identity and the keys to her home, car, and life in his possession.

Drew nodded and went to the car to retrieve them for her. As he leaned in and grabbed them from the floor where they’d fallen, a murderous look crossed his face. He glanced at her with a worried look she was certain he hadn’t meant for her to see. He looked … as if he still cared.

“We’ll be late to Mom’s.” Her voice shook softly, sounding as trembling and fragile as she felt. She didn’t want to go to her mother’s. She wanted to go home and ravage Drew or be ravaged by him. She wanted to hold him and celebrate being alive with him. “We’ll have to go straight there.” She hoped he’d pick up on her reluctance.

Drew lifted a brow and pointed to her dress. “How will you explain that? You need to change first.”

She looked down at the hole. She’d totally forgotten about it. It wouldn’t be easy to explain. “The condo’s too far.”

He gently took her arm. “Our house is on the way,” he said in a tone gilded with the greatest aphrodisiac combination ever—longing, lust, and love.

He feels it, too.

*   *   *

Drew checked the security feeds, unlocked the door, and stood back to let Staci into their house. It was good to be home! The house smelled fresh, like the scent from the wallflowers she had plugged in everywhere. The blinds were pulled, but let filtered evening light through, casting a romantic glow across the rooms. Everything was neat and tidy. The wooden entry floor gleamed.