Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (23 page)

She couldn’t believe he still wanted her. After everything that had happened, had he forgiven her for not telling him about the miscarriage?

She wasn’t sure. But for now, this would be enough.

He set a slow but distinct pace, pulling away then sliding back inside her. It hardly seemed possible, but everything felt more intense than yesterday; maybe because it was all so deliberate. In Niamey, they’d been frantic, and she’d been overwhelmed. Tonight was intentional, as if he was telling her something with his body that neither of them could say with words.

Still, he was holding back. She could feel it when she ran her hands over his shoulders. His muscles strained as she slid her fingers down the center of his back. Stopping at the curve in his lower spine, she moved her palms to pull his hips closer, reveling in his quiet moan as he relaxed then pushed deeper. She didn’t want to be treated like she was going to break.

“You’re not going to hurt me. If we’re doing this, I need all of you.” She hoped he knew she was referring to more than his body.

He nodded and pulled back. Her pulse rate skittered up in expectation. He lowered himself completely on top of her, and she shuddered as if something deep inside her chest had shifted.

She was almost panting, unsure if it was the pace or the sensations overwhelming her emotions. Gasping for air, she spun out of control and shattered into tiny pieces. He came immediately after her with a low groan that no one could hear but her.

His full weight pressed her into the mattress as he kissed the side of her neck and the top of her shoulder. She still couldn’t breathe very well but decided on the spot that breathing was overrated. With bone-deep contentment, she took as deep a sip of air as possible.

“I’m crushing you.” He rolled, pulling her with him so she was sprawled across the top of him. She tucked her head into his shoulder, feeling a deep sense of peace for the first time in ages.

Nick wanted her and was on the way to, if not forgiving her, at least accepting her apology. She was on a Jobaria dig site, and she’d just had amazing sex with a man she’d thought of for years. Life was looking better than it had in a very long time. Everything else faded to the background as she drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Twenty

N
ICK LAY BESIDE
Jennifer, her back snuggled to his chest, as reality hit. What in hell was he doing here? What had he just done?

Thoughts swirled in his head but without the familiar feelings of despair to which he’d become so accustomed. Should he ride back to Ingal tomorrow with Bill and head for Niamey to help Bryan? With the government guards on site, Jenny would be safe here, wouldn’t she?

He dismissed that fantasy with a quiet snort. The Tuareg guards were marginal at best, so her safety was questionable unless he stayed. Right now Nick didn’t trust anyone to protect Jenny, except himself. Still, there was no reason he should be in bed with her, besides the fact that he just wanted to be. At least he wasn’t lying to himself anymore.

He hadn’t stopped reeling from her story of the miscarriage. The grief was a physical pain, like the healing bullet wound in his shoulder. He understood what had happened, or at least he thought he did. Yet, he wasn’t able to let go of the sorrow. He was struggling to forgive her, even as he sympathized with what had brought her to that point.

Leaving himself open to her and to more of that kind of regret and heartache was beyond what he could stand at this point. But he had no business judging her.

His work with the CIA might have all been in the name of national security, but it wasn’t as if he’d been feeding starving children. More often than not he’d been killing people. It was what had driven him to quit—wondering what kind of man he was, wondering if he was becoming as unprincipled as his father and riding that same slippery slope downhill, wondering if there was such a thing as redemption.

He was in no position to judge another person’s motives about anything, least of all Jenny’s. Particularly when he’d just screwed her into oblivion. Was he taking advantage of this situation?

Hell, yes.
Although he figured currently they were taking advantage of each other. Conflicting views of their past battered at his conscience, along with the madness of the present situation.

He pulled her closer, sliding his hand just below her ribcage. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but he knew that he wanted her for more than sex. Despite everything she’d told him, despite the betrayal he’d felt not knowing the truth of their past until yesterday, he still wanted to be part of her life. How that could happen with their painful history, he had no idea.

Yet lying next to her and holding her like this quieted his mind. He wasn’t sure what to call it. He hadn’t experienced peace in such a long time, he’d forgotten what it felt like.

Whatever this new emotion was, he didn’t want to give up the respite. At the moment, he was so freaking grateful to have her back in his life, and back in his arms, that he wasn’t going to dwell on whether or not he was taking advantage of her. But he had a feeling that keeping this sense of tranquility would require payment.

He would have to forgive Jenny, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to do that. To forgive her would mean he’d have to be open to being hurt again, to feeling again. Was this new serenity worth it?

Besides, wasn’t he already feeling again? Being able to turn off his emotions had always been a good thing. For now, there was no need to make a decision about changing that or his relationship with her, one way or the other. The situation was too tenuous, and he was too far from a place where any peace he experienced would be temporary at best.

He turned the LED lantern down to the barest hint of light. Gradually he heard her slip into deep, even breathing beside him. She had the tiniest snore that she’d be mortified to know about, but he found it incredibly sexy. In a weird way, the little snore showed she was trusting him with a vulnerability that wasn’t there when she was awake. A vulnerability that made him want her again, not that it would have taken much.

Low voices and laughter carried across the camp. A night bird’s call echoed in the dark. He knew he should sleep, but something wasn’t sitting right—that gut feeling he’d learned a long time ago not to ignore. It was too quiet. He slid his arm out from under Jenny’s waist and moved to leave the bed.

She stirred, turned toward him, and opened her eyes. “Hey, what’s—”

He held a finger to his lips, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “Something’s wrong. Get dressed while I check things out.”

He was off the mattress and pulling on his clothes as she nodded, her eyes wide. His vision had already adjusted to the darkness. He moved confidently across the floor, grabbing his Sig before heading toward the tent flap. He could hear her moving behind him and decided there was no way he was leaving her, even for a moment. But he needed to look outside and see if he could figure out what was going on.

A cry ripped through the night as he opened the tent flap. The not-so-distant sound was cut off abruptly. He guessed it had come from just outside the camp, but he wasn’t sure. Was it a guard or someone out for a stroll?

He stared into the darkness. He could see nothing amiss. The night was deathly quiet again—too quiet, like all the ambient sound was being sucked out of the area.

A shock wave rolled through the camp. Chaos erupted as the dining tent exploded. At the same time—shouts, screams, and gunfire broke out on the opposite side of the dig site.

Nick’s mind immediately clicked into combat mode. What was happening? Was someone after Jenny, or was this just random violence?

The whole country was a tinderbox of seething hostility more often than not. Still, it seemed entirely too coincidental that the camp would be attacked the night they arrived.

He didn’t have time to dwell on the specifics. He had to assume the worst.
Someone was after Jenny.
He needed an exit plan—yesterday.

He hadn’t seen the entire project site when they arrived, but he had a general idea of how things were set up. He could get her out, if they left immediately and didn’t stop for anything.

Another explosion rocked the center of the camp as one of the storage tents burst into flames. It was time to go.

J
ENNIFER STOOD IN
the darkness trying to get her bearings. She felt as if she’d been drifting, and she’d finally gotten to sleep when Nick woke her. She hoped he was just being overly cautious, but she suspected he wasn’t. Something was dreadfully wrong.

She pulled on her shirt with no bra and dug for her panties in the covers. She was about to give up and go commando when her hands closed over the thin cotton lace. She slid the underwear on and pulled up her shorts. A scream ripped through the night just before a deafening roar that sounded like Armageddon erupting outside.

The reverberation knocked her to the mattress, but Nick was there, grabbing her hand and pulling at her arm until she was standing. Light from the explosion danced along the wall of the tent in a macabre display.

He snatched up their backpacks and helped her put hers on before sliding his onto a shoulder, then he was towing her relentlessly across the camp toward the darkness at the edge of the site. Smoke and flames rose in the night behind them. She glanced back and saw bodies on the ground. She’d seen this scene before, and she flashed to her memories of Tenancingo for a moment with the bodies on the lawn there.

This couldn’t be happening again.

A gush of warm air blew through the camp, pushing smoke and fiery embers from the conflagration into their backs. Nick never slowed down or looked back as they continued rushing toward the outside of the camp and away from the chaos. The smoky haze cast a surreal sense over the entire area.

If only this was a dream.

Nick pulled her beside him into the shadow of a tent. A man she didn’t recognize ran past with a gun. She knew it wasn’t one of the guards they’d seen when they drove in because he wasn’t in uniform. This man was in tribal dress. He stopped a few feet away in the middle of the pathway and pulled the weapon to his shoulder. She stared in horror as he shot a uniformed guard running toward him.

Thinking this was some kind of accident, students and professors emerged from their tents to see what was happening. The man in tribal dress turned to the first two students and took aim on one before Jennifer could shout a warning. One student fell to the ground, and horror rose inside her as the other raised his hands in surrender. Frozen in place, she was too shocked to scream or even protest.

Then Nick was running again, pulling her behind him and heading toward the truck they’d arrived in with Bill. Nick never stopped tugging her along and never offered aid to anyone they passed.

“Stop! We have to help them!” She tried to slow down, clutching at his arm.

“We can’t, Jenny. We’re surrounded, and I think they’re after you.” He pulled her into the darkness cast by another tent.

After me?
That couldn’t be right. They couldn’t be after her. Why would they be?

But something inside her whispered he was right. Too many people had tried to do her harm in the past week for this to be a coincidence.

Two other gunmen in tribal dress ran toward them. Definitely not guards from the project, they were headed for the conflagration and shouting to each other—in Spanish?

Jennifer was so surprised that she stopped running and pulled Nick to a halt beside her. The men spied Nick and Jennifer at the same time. One gunman raised his hand to shoot, but Nick shot first, and the man fell backward.

Oh my God. Had he just killed that guy?

Nick was right. They
were
surrounded. How many were there? Nick changed direction, and this time Jennifer didn’t pull away as gunshots rang out around them.

Screams and shouts echoed in the night air. Bile rose in the back of her throat when she realized the students and professors didn’t have weapons and were most likely being hit with every shot fired.

Nick grasped her hand with an unrelenting grip but kept her behind him, using his body to shield hers. Finally, they were beyond the camp, which was now completely engulfed in flames. Another explosion rocked the sand beneath her feet.

At this point, she couldn’t tell where the blast had originated. Cans of kerosene, cleaning materials for the fossils, and cooking fuel were all part of their supplies. Those items were typically stored in the center of camp to protect them from thieves who might pilfer from supplies stored at the outer edges of a dig.

The attackers didn’t have to set off many explosions after the first few because everything fed on itself. The camp burned and the destruction took care of itself. One deliberate fire set in the right place had been enough to start the chaos. But why? What were they gaining by doing this?

The Spanish spoken by the gunman ruled out marauding nomads. Obviously the tribal dress had been used to hide their identity. The only thing that made sense seemed crazy. Could these be the same men who’d been after her in Dallas, Mexico, and Niamey?

Nick guided her toward the vehicles parked outside the camp. In the firelight she could see the outline of Bill’s truck. Earlier, when they’d been running from the camp, she’d wanted to help people. Now, even though it made her feel like a coward, all she wanted was to be in that vehicle and on her way out of the area. Nick tugged her along behind him, and he was reaching for the door handle on the passenger side when he dropped her hand.

“Nick, what’s going . . .” The question died on her lips. Two gunmen in tribal clothing stood with rifles aimed directly at them across the hood of the truck.

“Drop your weapon.” The man’s voice was heavily accented. God, he sounded like the voice from Angela and Drew’s house. How was that even possible?

Jennifer and Nick did as he asked. Another gunman approached from the opposite direction and motioned for them to back away from the truck.