Encrypted (38 page)

She patted his arm as another fireball roared from the wreckage into the sky.

“Okay, so maybe not an ‘
A’
…”

* * *

Grant winced against the sun, the throbbing in his shoulder, and their abject failure. Who could have guessed
that
the bitch had an EM gun? A gun that actually shot directional EM pulses? He was seriously going to have to have a talk with the guys in R&D at Langley.

Luckily
,
their work with ionic metal components was pretty damned cutting edge. As his pilot smoldered on the ground next to him, Grant bit down hard on his back molar. He cracked the thin porcelain cap, cutting his cheek. He would have to
have
a good talking
-
to with the tech boys about that
,
too.

As moisture washed over
the
filament in his tooth, it activated the metal, creating an extremely temporary broadcast signal.

“No joy,” Grant said to the air
,
thick with acrid smoke. “The package is loose.” Of course
,
Grant couldn’t hear his superiors back in Washington, not with his earpiece dead, but he could certainly imagine the general mood. Pissed off and scared. “I repeat. The fucking package is on the loose.”

His tongue played with the edge of the cap. Tiny metal fragments floated up amongst the blood. Who knew if they even got that last bit
?
Grant surveyed the dry, barren Mexican countryside.

While the
Federales
would send someone for their downed pilots, Grant doubted very much if they would help him give chase. The CIA had already strained relations with the Mexican government over just the concept of kidnapping Zach to get to the Robin Hood hacker.

Now
,
to know that she’d pulled out an EM gun? They were not going to have
the
cojones
to challenge her. No one did. Except
for
Grant.

One might think
that
after losing four jets, a chopper
,
and a literally half-baked pilot
,
it would have put a damper on his optimism. But Grant just whistled as he headed north.

Round one seldom went to the ultimate victor.

* * *

Zach ground his teeth
,
which didn’t really do anything to ward off the pain
in
his side. However
,
it certainly made him feel like he was doing something. Especially since Ronnie had put him on a “hunk” time
-
out. Or was that what Quirk called it? Either way
,
it galled him to
have to sit on the sidelines as the other three pulled anything functional from the burned
-
out husk of the helicopter.

He watched as Ronnie brushed aside a stray lock as she rummaged through the wreckage. One would think
,
after being tortured and shot down out of the sky
,
that he might be a wee bit resentful of Ronnie.

Lord knew
that
if his
m
other had anything to say about it
, she would say,
“
O
nce trouble, always trouble,” or “
A
lady who puts her elbows on the dinner table is no lady
.
”
And
he would be steaming right about now.

Granny
, however
? God rest her soul
,
she would be saying something like, “
S
uch a dear to try
to
rescue you, no?” or “
I
t’s the effort that counts.”

Yeah
, he usually did fall on Granny’s side. Because how could he be upset with Ronnie? She’d risked her life, Quirk’s, and
,
as
it turned out
,
the pilot’s
—
to save him. How many times did his therapist insist that Zach needed to find out exactly how committed Ronnie was to the relationship
?
Zach was pretty sure
that
taking on the CIA was pretty damn committed. He could hardly wait to tell Dr. Webster.
Not
.

Ronnie lugged a large, charred metallic suitcase over and plopped it down before stretching her back. Under any other circumstances
,
he would have hopped up to give her a hand.

Unfortunately
,
these were extremely
difficult
circumstances
,
as his right kidney throbbed. Literally
,
throbbed
. Instead of rising, he nodded to the pilot,
who was
still in long
johns
and
walking away from the wreckage. “Where’s he going?”
Zach asked Ronnie.

Ronnie lifted her hand above her eyes to shield them from the afternoon sun. “Probably to get a sawed
-
off shotgun.”

“Wait!” Quirk shouted unceremoniously dropping his equipment nearly on Zach’s feet as he rushed after the pilot. “Wait!”

To Zach’s surprise
,
the pilot did stop as Quirk panted the ten whole steps he had to run. “Where are you going?”

“You destroyed a helicopter I’d assembled by hand
.
W
here do you think I’m going?”

“But, but, but,” Quirk
protested
, “
c
an’t you stay for lunch? I think I salvaged some
Brie
and crackers.”

Zach didn’t think
that
the burly pilot looked like
a Brie
kind of guy. So he wasn’t exactly surprised when the pilot turned and continued walking down the dusty valley floor.

“He’ll be back,” Quirk said as he rejoined them.

Ronnie snorted. “Yeah, with a sawed
-
off shotgun.”

“Whichever,” Zach said. “We’ve
got
to get out of here.”

Zach did not like the fact that Grant’s helicopter had gone down just over the ridge. While he hoped fervently that his ex-partner had died in that fiery crash, they couldn’t be sure. And if Zach had learned
something
over the past twenty-four hours
,
it
was not to assume anything.

“Already on it,” Quirk said with a wave of his hand. He popped the locks on a briefcase, bringing to bear half a dozen computers running half a dozen programs that Zach didn’t even know existed. “But I
gotta
say, even if I get our satcom working, we’ve got to wait for us to move into a new satellite’s coverage range
.
T
hen
,
mounting an evac
uation
could take
—
”

“Pay double,” Ronnie announced.

Okay, Zach hadn’t known her
for
long, but paying
double
? That seemed far outside Ronnie’s comfort zone. The expression on Quirk’s face and his inability to respond immediately confirmed Zach’s suspicions.

“
Double
?” Quirk stammered. “Did I just hear you correctly?”

“Pay whatever you have to,” Ronnie confirmed. “I want out of here by nightfall.”

“
Ja
,
mein
Kommandant
,
” Quirk replied.

Ronnie frowned
, and
then turned to Zach. “And now we’ve got some metallic ions to remove.”

Damn it
. He’d forgotten about the plant. He still had a tracking device embedded somewhere in his skin. You would think
that he
could feel a microfilament
,
but with all of his cuts and bruises? Where
didn’t
his body hurt?

Ronnie grinned
,
though
,
as she sat down cross-legged next to him. Was it the glow of the fire behind her
,
or was she just that radiant? Not in the high couture, fake eyelashes kind of way. Hell, she had soot streaks in her hair
,
and it looked like her left eyebrow was half
-
singed off. But she glowed in the kind of way
that
he could imagine waking up to each morning.

If they could make it through this, exactly what other challenge could the world throw at them that they couldn’t tackle? Together? She reached out to check his left shoulder, but he caught her hand instead
,
tenderly pulling it to his cheek.

“Ronnie…”

Instead of easing into him, she stiffened. “Not now.”

“Then when?” he asked.

* * *

Ronnie gulped. There
was
Zach
, l
ooking all doe-eyed at her. His voice
was
thick with passion. Why couldn’t she just lean in and quench a thirst that had been parching her for months? Except…

“I’ve had a picture of this…” Ronnie looked into Zach’s eyes. One was bloodshot
,
while the other was nearly swollen shut. He’d never looked so handsome. “A picture of
us
for so long.”

“Then why?” he asked
,
so close
that
she could taste his cologne.

She simply glanced over her shoulder. The chopper was still aflame, along with dozens of pieces of wreckage. And now
,
a goat
,
of all things
,
walk
ed
across the valley toward them.
Seriously
—
a
goat
.

“And this isn’t it,” she sighed. “It just isn’t.”

Zach leaned back
,
seeming to get it, or he just caught scent of her more
-
than
-
aromatic scent. Either way
,
she went back to checking for the filament. Ronnie fingered her way through his hair. How many times had she dreamed of tugging on these locks?

“Then we need to talk,” Zach said.

“Talk?” Ronnie asked. “Again with the talking
!
We haven’t even had a first date yet, dude.”

Zach cocked his head.
Why did he have to look so damn cute?
Ronnie thought.
It was even harder to resist him in person. At least over the iPod he couldn’t chide her with those crackling eyes.

“Fine,” she said going back to picking through his hair like a groupie baboon.

“Were you serious about helping
to
decode the Hidden Hand’s cipher?”

Ronnie shifted up onto her knees. Between all of the cuts and scrapes and burns, there were a thousand places
where
the tiny wound from the filament insertion could hide.

“I may hate the CIA
,
but I’m not exactly going to let mankind get thrown back into the Dark Ages out of spite.”

Granted
,
she wanted her own island to get far, far, far away from other humans,
but
that didn’t mean she wanted them all gone. Well, at least not the majority of them.

“Then I think
—
”

“Stop,” she ordered.

“But
—
”

“No, I mean stop moving,” she said as she parted his hair at the nape of his neck. “I think I found it.”

There it was.
The tiny punctate lesion.
The only reason she found it
,
really
,
was because it was starting to scab over. All the rest of Zach’s wounds were still fresh and bleeding. She grabbed a pair of jeweler
’
s tweezers from the case next to her and grabbed the tiny end of the filament. Ever so carefully
,
she snaked the metal out from under Zach’s skin.

She held up the bloody fiber that looked more like a spider’s silk than a tracking device. Zach leaned in, tilting his head.