Femme Fatale (20 page)

He wouldn’t be in this situation if it hadn’t been for me.

Mick raised his hands to protect his eyes from the sun. A short chain glinted between his wrists, revealing handcuffs. Another set of cuffs secured his ankles.

Kylee groaned at the sight of all the damage he’d endured.

Mick showed her a lopsided grin. “I figured I wasn’t exactly a sight for sore eyes, sheila, but I have to admit, I’ve never gotten that kind of reaction before.”

“Creepstof had you beaten because he thought you were with me.” Guilt filled Kylee. She viewed her job as rescuing people, manufacturing get-aways.

“Aye, darlin’.”

“And if you hang around there, the target is going to get the chance to kill you both,” Barbara said.

“Can you walk?” Kylee asked. “Because I don’t think I can carry you.”

“I can walk.”

“Step out and stand with your feet apart.”

Mick did, but he swayed slightly as he moved. When he had his feet apart, leaving the chain between his ankle cuffs lying on the street’s edge, Kylee held the crowbar in both hands and brought the sharp end down on the chain. The links parted with a snap.

“Give me your hands.” Kylee repeated the process on the handcuff chain just as a car screeched into position behind the Moskvich.

“Down!” Mick shouted, shoving a shoulder into her and knocking her away from the rear of the pickup.

Instead of being bowled from her feet, Kylee rolled, the motorcycle helmet grinding across the small rocks for an
instant, and automatically came up in a crouching position. She raced for the motorcycle.

Bullets slammed into the pickup’s rear as Mick took cover on the vehicle’s passenger side. He spotted the pistol lying on the ground and grabbed the weapon. Remaining in a crouch, he wheeled around with the pistol in his right hand, his left hand open and supporting his right wrist as he fired.

Four men occupied the black Trabant fifty feet behind the pickup. The man on the passenger side pirouetted and went down. The windshield broke across the driver’s face in a spray of crimson. Evidently he’d had his foot on the brake, and when he died his foot slipped away. The Russian-made sedan rolled forward. A third man bolted from the car’s rear, but he didn’t go far before the pistol in Mick’s hands blasted him down.

Kylee righted the motorcycle, threw a leg over and used the electric starter to fire up the engine. She slapped the face shield down into place, then dropped the gearshift lever into first with her foot.

“Car Two is in front of the pickup,” Barbara said over the ear bud.

Kylee glanced toward the highway and saw the second Trabant skid to a stop seventy or eighty feet in front of the pickup. Three men boiled out of the vehicle as the reverse lights came on and the driver floored the accelerator.

“Mick!” Kylee yelled.

He rose, blood-covered with a new layer of dust over him. Despite his wounds and his battered condition, he looked inexorable, a man held together by his own strength of will. Bending down over the man Kylee had knocked out, he took two extra magazines from the man’s coat. Still in motion, eyes narrowed against the afternoon
sun, Mick ejected the spent clip and shoved a new one home.

He raised the pistol as he walked, focused on the targets in the other car. The pistol jumped in his hands.

Kylee’s heart thudded inside her chest as she watched Mick coolly shoot one of the men, then turn his sights on a second. No emotion showed in those blue eyes: no anger, no remorse, no fear. He fired at the approaching car, but the driver ducked down and came on.

Watching him was horrible. She felt certain bullets were going to beat him down at any second and she could do nothing to prevent it.

“Mick!” Kylee yelled again.

Then he was at her side, throwing a leg painfully over the back of the motorcycle.

“Can you drive one of these, sheila?” he growled as he wrapped an arm around her midsection.

She felt the heated strength of his arm around her and was surprised at the sense of security that came with it. Despite the danger of the situation, she felt safe and protected. She’d seen him stand up to bullets twice now and never falter. Releasing the clutch and twisting the throttle, she guided the motorcycle forward, front wheel coming up as the Trabant collided with the Moskvich pickup.

“You’ve got a spotter in the air,” Barbara warned over the headset.

Speeding out onto the highway, Kylee glanced up and saw a small transport helicopter in the air above them.

“We tracked the helicopter from the airport only minutes ago,” Barbara said. “It came straight here. The hangar it came from is registered to one of Scherba’s shell companies.”

The helicopter closed the distance rapidly. A man leaned out onto the landing skid with a machine pistol.
Nine-millimeter bullets cracked against the worn tarmac of the highway only a few feet from Kylee and Mick.

Mick fired at the helicopter, missing nearly every time but scoring enough hits on the Plexiglas bubble to make the pilot back off. He swapped magazines, putting his last full one in.

“I don’t think this was the ideal transportation for a rescue,” he growled.

“Not if we were going to stick with the highway,” Kylee agreed. She geared down, watching as the cars approaching her pulled into the ditch to avoid the yammering fire of the guy with the machine pistol.

Then she cut the wheel, powering the motorcycle off-road. She had to muscle the BMW across the rugged terrain, but in seconds she found a game trail that threaded through the trees over the mountainous country. The thick foliage protected them from the helicopter’s spying eyes.

“Not bad, sheila,” Mick said approvingly. “Not bad at all.”

A glow of pride filled Kylee. She felt him lean more heavily into her, instinctively letting his body meld with hers until they almost felt like one. If it hadn’t been for the possibility of bad guys popping out at any moment, Kylee thought she could have enjoyed riding like that for hours.

“So you’re not a thief. You’re a spy.”

Burdened by the packages she carried, Kylee stood in the doorway and gazed across the darkened interior of the safe house. The hideout contained some amenities, but lacked clothing they both needed.

After getting Mick Stone cleaned up and bandaged, which had included far too much exposure to handsome naked male flesh, which had more of an effect on her than
she would have liked, Kylee had gone shopping. That hadn’t truly helped take her mind off the man and his body, though, because she’d thought constantly of the naked male the clothes would soon be covering.

Kylee felt irritated with herself. She’d never thought about a man so much in her life. And the circumstances couldn’t have been any worse. And to top matters off, not only was she off her game, but Mick Stone was definitely not the kind of guy that should have put her there. He was way too serious.

“Maybe you want to speak up a little,” Kylee said. “I think a couple of the neighbors didn’t hear you.” She closed the door with a bang. Wasn’t he used to doing covert work? Didn’t he have a clue what secrecy was all about? She felt irritated at him for that, too. Maybe her thinking about him all the time wasn’t his fault, but possibly blowing their cover and exposing the safe house was definitely his fault.

Mick Stone sat in a chair by the window overlooking the Vltava River. Since his clothing had been ruined, he’d been forced to wear a towel to make some attempt at modesty.

Modesty, however, seemed to be something Mick Stone wasn’t overly enamored of. He’d only put up token resistance to her offer of examining and treating his wounds, and he’d seemed comfortable with his nudity.

Two of the wounds, one at the back of his head and another along his left jaw had required stitches. Versed in medical care from working with her father and her brothers and taking care of herself, Kylee had used the safe house’s ER-grade medkit to stitch the wounds closed.

“My voice didn’t carry that far,” Mick argued.

Kylee dropped the clothing on the couch near the door.

Mick eyed the packages doubtfully. “You bought all that for me?”

“Not all,” Kylee said defensively. “Some. Some of that is for you.” She hadn’t been able to bring any clothes from the hotel with her. “There’s outerwear down in the car. I just couldn’t bring it all up.”

A frown creased Mick’s face. “The clothes I usually buy, sheila, they don’t come in ribboned boxes and packages. I hope you have something in there fit for a man to wear.”

“They were all out of leather and lizard hide,” Kylee replied. “But there was a nice Roman toga I found that will upgrade your Tarzan attire.”

Levering himself up from the chair, Mick grinned. “Oh, and you’re a cold one, aren’t you?” He crossed the room and trailed a forefinger along the line of her jaw. “I love it when a woman puts on that holier-than-thou attitude.”

Kylee whipped her head to the side and tried to bite his finger.

Mick laughed and pulled his finger back. “A croc that moved that slowly back where I came from would starve to death.”

Before he could move, Kylee shot her hand out and flicked his nose with a forefinger. He drew back too late.

“You’re trouble, Kylee,” he growled, putting his hand to his nose. “I knew that from the minute I put eyes on you.”

“Then maybe you’ll stay away.” Although Kylee said that, she kept remembering how his lips had felt against hers. He’d just look at her and she’d feel the burn all over again.

“Trust me, Kylee. If we didn’t need each other right
now, I’d be long gone.” His voice sounded rough enough to almost qualify as rude.

“Trust me,” Kylee said sharply, willing herself to put distance from the disturbing and unaccustomed feelings she was having about him, “we don’t need each other.”

“Sure we do. I don’t intend to let Krystof Scherba get away with what he did to me.”

“This isn’t about you.” Kylee felt a little irritated.

Mick regarded her and nodded. “No, darlin’, it’s not. But getting back a little for what he did to me is a starting point. I knew that Scherba wasn’t a good bloke.”

“Then what were you doing with him?” That bothered Kylee. After seeing Mick in action, watching him take the bullet that could have killed her, watching him kill their attackers without showing any fear, she couldn’t think of him as a bad guy.

He looked away from her, appearing pained and chastened, very much like the young boy Kylee could imagine he had been. “It was a job. That’s all. Just a bloody job.” He paused. “And maybe it was a mistake, too. But it was money and it filled in some dead time for me, and I figured I’d probably be protecting Scherba more from other bad guys than from the good guys.”

“Bad guys? Like a thief?”

He looked at her and smiled a little. “Yeah. Like a thief.” His eyes narrowed forcefully. “And you need me too. I know how to get us into Scherba’s little fortress, and I noticed that you don’t like killing.”

“No,” Kylee replied. “I don’t. I don’t think killing is an answer.” That was one big difference she saw between them.

“Sometimes, darlin’,” Mick said in a soft voice, “it’s the
only
answer. And if you beard Scherba in his den,
then that’s going to have to be one of the answers you’re ready to give. Since you’re not, I am.”

A wintry chill passed between them, and Kylee got the feeling they were standing on opposite sides of an impossible gulf.

Mick broke the uncomfortable eye contact first and started digging through the packages.

Kylee brushed him aside, feeling irritated that she wasn’t getting through to him and wasn’t taking notice of her the way she thought she wanted him to. After all, they were in a somewhat romantic get-away in Prague. The least he could do was pay a little more attention, but he acted as if she was merely a roommate. “Don’t just rummage through those things and manhandle them. Some of them are mine.”

“Thank God.” Mick wore a look of mock horror as he held up a pair of pink bikini panties.

Kylee snatched the panties away and felt her cheeks burn. “Underwear,” she growled. “Not a new concept. Everybody wears it.”

He looked at her blankly. “I don’t.”

Caught off guard, Kylee stared at him.

“Sometimes,” Mick said, straight-faced. “Sometimes I don’t.” He paused and grinned wickedly. “Tonight I will. So you’ll know and not have to wonder, you see.”

“I wouldn’t wonder.”

“You might.”

“Not a chance, mister.”

Mick turned his attention back to the bags. “So what did you think? That I’m a boxers or briefs man?”

“It never crossed my mind,” Kylee lied. “I bought both kinds. Maybe you can wear one of each.” Then she noticed the smell of herbs and tomato sauce filling the room. “What’s that smell?”

“Dinner, I hope,” Mick answered.

Abandoning her purchases for the moment, Kylee walked over to the small stove. Spaghetti sauce simmered in a pan on one of the burners. She raked the ladle through the thick contents.

“I didn’t know we had fresh vegetables,” she said.

“We didn’t.”

“These are fresh.”

“So you’re a thief, a spy
and
a detective. That’s some résumé you’re carrying there.” Mick walked through the room with a pair of black jeans, a midnight blue turtleneck, socks, underwear and hiking boots.

“Where did you get fresh vegetables?”

“I asked the little old lady next door if she would mind stepping down to the market and getting them for me.”

“You asked her?” Kylee had noticed the old woman earlier. The woman looked as though she could barely get around. And she hadn’t appeared to care for Kylee at all.

Mick grabbed his towel. “Couldn’t go down to the market myself dressed like this, now could I?”

“But you went next door dressed like that?”

“
Undressed
like this, you mean?” Mick grinned and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. Then a pained look shot across his face because the movement must have pulled at the stitches in the back of his head. “Yes I did. She didn’t seem to mind. Me being undressed like this even seemed to put a certain spring in her step.”