No Turning Back (14 page)

She opened her mouth to argue, but he stopped her with an upraised hand.

“Grab a shower if you want. There's a robe in the closet. After you've cleaned up and had something to eat you should try and crash for awhile. Once we find out where your cousin is, we'll be moving fast.”

“Okay.” She pulled the strap of her backpack up higher on her shoulder and went into the bathroom.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Ben let out a deep breath. Christ, he was never going to sleep knowing she was curled up in his bed. He'd be up all night remembering how amazing she'd felt flattened against his chest with her head tucked into his shoulder and the hero worship in her eyes when she'd gazed up at him.

“You sure about this?” Rhys asked.

Ben regarded his brother warily. He didn't know what the hell to do next, but he didn't want a lecture right now. “Yeah, why? You got a problem with her staying here?”

Rhys cocked a coal-black brow. “I wasn't the one that thought she was lying in the first place, remember?”

Ben's cell rang a little after midnight. He tossed the radios he'd been checking aside and grabbed it. “Yeah.”

“Got a lead on the hostage location,” Luke said. “Flight leaves from the airfield at oh-six-hundred.”

“Roger that.” He glanced toward the bedroom at the back of the suite. “Sam coming?”

“That's affirm. Bring all the com equipment with you.”

When he hung up, Ben dragged a hand over his face and stared at the phone in his lap. So much for that. Pushing to his feet, he paused. He should tell Sam, but he hated to wake her. Expecting to find her asleep, he was surprised when she answered his faint knock in a clear voice.

He pushed the door open. Sam raised up on an elbow. The sheets fell to her hips, the tank top revealing her bare shoulders and the alluring curves of her high, round breasts. The blood rushed out of his brain and into his groin. He shifted his stance to make himself more comfortable and hide the damning evidence from view.

“Everything okay?” she asked, hair spilling over one shoulder in a gorgeous waterfall of black waves.

Ben pulled himself together. “Luke called, said he has a lead on Neveah. Nothing solid, but it's a start. Our flight leaves at six.”

She sat up a little more, giving him a view of her full breasts as they strained against the thin cotton top. His abs clenched in reaction. Holy hell, she was stunning. Disturbing thing was, the reaction was far more complicated than being merely sexual. He liked her. Admired her. He wanted to protect her and do whatever he could to shield her from all this ugliness.

Whoa. He gave himself a mental shake. Hadn't he just done this? Hadn't he felt the same thing for Bryn a few weeks ago until she'd given him a variation of the “I just want to be friends” speech? Like he needed another dose of that shit right now. What the hell was wrong with him?

You know damned well Sam wouldn't turn you down
.

Whatever. He still wasn't going there.

Sam stared at him with her liquid brown eyes. “So I'm... still coming with you?”

Unfortunately. “Yeah.” He studied her a moment, trying to ignore how erotic she looked stretched out in his bed like that. “Unless you've changed your mind.” Though if she wanted out, he wasn't even sure they'd be able to find a way to make it happen.

“No. If Luke thinks I can help him get Neveah out, then I'm going.” She swallowed. “But I'm— I'm glad you'll be with me.”

Ah, shit. “I can only do so much, Sam.”

“I know. But Bryn did it— ”

“Yeah, and look how well that turned out for everyone involved. She and Dec both get to spend the next year in counseling to contemplate how lucky they are to be alive.”

Sam pressed her lips together a moment, then said in a quiet voice, “Nev's all I've got, Ben.”

No she's not
, he wanted to say.
You've got me
. He managed to choke down the words before they flew out of his stupid mouth. He wasn't sure how she'd done it, but Sam had wormed her way inside him good and tight. That soft, vulnerable expression on her face almost did him in. He almost gave in to the need to sink to his knees next to the bed, take her face between his hands and kiss the unspoken fear from her eyes.

He made himself step back. “Sleep if you can.” His voice was gruffer than he intended. “I'll wake you at five if you're not already up.”

She flashed him a shy smile. “Thanks.”

“Sleep well.” He let himself out, shut her door, and stood there a moment, fighting the urge to go back in and stretch out on top of her. He'd been with enough women to know when one wanted him. She was more than willing.

Would be a dumbass thing to do, though. That was not a complication they needed while they were on this op together.

He made himself turn around and head for a lukewarm shower.

When Ben came back into their room the next morning, Rhys took one look at him and announced, “You look like shit.”

Nice greeting, Ben thought with a glare. “Morning to you, too.”

“Rough night?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nothing too exciting.”

Ben grunted in reply.

“So. How's Sam?”

“Fine. Fell asleep about one thirty.” He knew, because he'd checked on her. “She's in the shower.”

Rhys ran his tongue across his front teeth as though considering the wisdom of his next question.

Ben raised a brow. “Got something you wanna say to me?”

“Everything, uh, okay with you guys?”

His stomach knotted. “Yeah, why wouldn't they be?”

Rhys shrugged. “No reason.”

“Then do me a favor and stop sitting there with that smug, all-knowing look on your face.”

“Smug?”

All right, no one could ever accuse Rhys of being smug. Detached and unfeeling, maybe, but never smug. God forbid he let even that much emotion show through his untouchable I-am-an-island front.

Ben yanked the zipper on an equipment bag shut with barely controlled violence. “You know damned well nothing happened with her.” Or did he? Rhys had split when Sam had come out of the shower. Ben narrowed his eyes. “Is that why you stayed out all night? So I could get it on with her and pump her for information while I was at it?”

“Jesus, calm down.” Rhys dropped his gaze back to the table and resumed cleaning his sidearm. “Luke asked me to do some recon.”

Uh-huh. “All night.”

“Yup.”

Ben wasn't buying it.

Rhys checked his gun over one last time before putting it in its holster. The silence stretched out between them.

Ben was already out of sorts as he stalked over to the window and pushed the curtain aside to gaze down at the streets below in the dawn half-light. His feelings for Sam were nobody else's business, and if anything happened between them, he didn't want it to be front page news for the rest of the team. Not even his brother.

Rhys glanced over at him with a watchful expression. Ben could almost hear the gears turning in his twin's brain, and sighed.

People might accuse Rhys of having as much feeling as a computer chip, but only because he let them think that. Ben knew better. They were tight; always had been, right from the start. They'd had their moments over the years, but even during long separations when they'd served overseas and Rhys had worked off the grid behind enemy lines, they'd still managed to keep in contact. Rhys might be a pain in the ass, but his twin didn't like seeing him suffer. Not unless he was the one dishing out the punishment.

Ben braced himself for the lecture he sensed was coming.

“Listen,” Rhys finally ventured, testing the waters in the verbal equivalent of waving a rag on the end of a stick to find out if the pissed-off Rottweiler would tear it to shreds. “She's going through a lot. You need to give her time.”

“I told you, I'm fine. Let it go already.”

Ben thought again of the “It's not you, it's me” speech Bryn had given him a few weeks back, and was glad he'd walked away from Sam last night. Didn't matter how it was delivered, or in what variation, the end result was the same. Nothing like mortification to wither a guy in his size fourteens. Of course, the evil eye he was giving Rhys was mostly due to the fact he was upset about Sam going to Kabul with them. Rhys couldn't be too thrilled about it either, but there wasn't a thing they could do to change the current circumstances.

“Okay. Just making sure your head's where it should be. Like on the mission and the new threats to Sam's safety.”

Ben cast him an arctic glare over his shoulder. Like he wasn't aware of the situation? If he was so stupid, how the hell did Rhys think he'd landed the job as head of security for Bryn's father? “You know what? You're only six minutes older than me. That hardly qualifies you to be my father. You need to stop trying to be my parent and humble yourself by just being my brother. I can handle myself.”

He might as well have jabbed Rhys with a red-hot branding iron.

“Bullshit,” his brother snapped, eyes sparking. “All my life I've had to step in and finish what you started with your mouth when it flapped before your brain could catch up, and it was usually with my fists.” Rhys hit him with a hard glare. “You know what, little bro? Talk is cheap. You want me to believe you're not the hot-headed punk I grew up defending my whole life? Then
prove
to me you can handle yourself and I'll happily stop riding your ugly ass. Until then, suck it up and take it like a goddamn man for a change.”

For an instant, Ben almost went at him. His whole body tensed, ready for it, but then as he held his brother's glare, his mouth started quivering because he was trying not to smile at the situation. A second later, he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard he leaned against the window frame.

With his anger vented, Rhys grinned back. “What?”

Ben chuckled some more, gazing at him fondly. “Who knew you were capable of stringing all those emotional words together? And how the hell long have you wanted to say that to me, anyway?”

Rhys tilted his head as he thought about it for a second. “Twenty years. Give or take.”

Ben gave another crack of laughter, fished in his pocket for a piece of gum and popped it into his mouth. His jaw worked as he considered the answer. “I deserved that.”

Rhys’ eyes narrowed. “Huh. Never thought I'd hear you say that.”

“Yeah, well, I've grown up a lot. You just never noticed.”

Rhys rubbed his jaw. “Well, shit. If I'd known you'd take it that well, I'd have told you years ago.”

Ben sauntered over and clapped a brotherly palm on his shoulder. “Wouldn't have listened. I'd just have clocked you instead.”

Rhys held out the holstered pistol he'd cleaned. “Here. Take this and go get our girl. I'll meet you in the lobby with the others in five.”

Ben rolled his eyes, but took it anyway. “Yes,
dad
.”

“Bite me, punk.”

With a grin, Ben flashed him the middle finger on the way out the door.

Arriving in Kabul, Davis left them at the airfield and went to snoop around to see if he could dig up any info on the hostages’ location. With the rest of the guys, Sam headed to the clinic where Nev had been taken. She sat wedged in the back seat between the twins, feeling like a midget. And a weak one, at that. Their upper arms were about as big as her thighs. She had to be crazy to take this on.

Yeah, she worked for the CIA, but she wasn't a field agent. She barely knew anything about self-defense or withstanding interrogation, or even firearms. She'd taken minimal training in those things because her bosses had decided she would never need it. And look at her now, heading into one of the most dangerous war zones in the world and about to be dropped into the lap of a terrorist whose name made folks’ blood run cold.

Their driver, a twenty-ish Afghan male who served as an informant for Luke, navigated their vehicle through the dusty, tangled streets.

The poverty was every bit as bad as she'd seen on TV. The markets were ramshackle and the sanitation was third world bad. Children dressed in filthy rags played in the streets. Beggars crouched in the dirt at the side of the road, holding their hands out as people passed by.

“Just up there,” the driver announced in accented English.

Sam craned her neck to see past Rhys’ massive shoulders as the clinic came into view out his window. The concrete building wasn't much to look at, but it was in better shape than a lot of others they'd passed. Situated smack in the middle of one of the poorest areas of town, it was strategically located to serve those in most desperate need, especially women and children. She could almost picture the excited gleam in her cousin's eyes when they opened the clinic the day she'd been taken. Nev had such a big heart. It was so unfair that this had happened to her when she'd only come to help the people of Afghanistan.

The driver pulled up to the building and shut off the engine, and they all piled out. A policeman met them at the entrance to unlock the door. The place was deserted and eerily quiet considering how crowded this part of Kabul was.

The officer unlocked the padlock and let them in.

“The gunmen came in here,” their informant said, gesturing to the shattered wooden front door that sagged on its hinges. “Here, and around back.”

Where Nev had been working.

Sam swallowed and trailed after Luke, hyperaware of Ben's presence behind her. The clinic's interior was surprisingly modern, with new carpeting and a computer terminal set up on the reception desk. Three well-equipped exam rooms and an O.R. were to the left.

Luke ducked his head inside each room, then said, “Where was Miss Adams at the time?”

“This way.” The guide led them down a narrow hallway to the rear of the building, past some sort of staff room to the last door, swung it open, then stepped back.

Sam's stomach tightened as she glanced around the tiny room. Nev had been here. Right here where she was standing, probably working with a patient when the kidnappers barged in and dragged her away. From the state of the room, Nev had put up a fight. The carpet was strewn with papers and equipment. Tongue depressors littered the floor, their glass jar shattered nearby.