Rescue Me

Rescue Me

By

Cherry Adair, Lora Leigh, Cindy Gerard

Contents

Cherry Adair - Tropical Heat

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Lora Leigh - Atlanta Heat

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Cindy Gerard - Desert Heat

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

RESCUE ME

"Tropical Heat" copyright © 2008 by Cherry Adair.

"Atlanta Heat" copyright © 2008 by Lora Leigh.

"Desert Heat" copyright © 2008 by Cindy Gerard.

ISBN: 0-312-94842-5

EAN: 978-0-312-94842-9

Printed in theUnited States of America

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition / July 2008

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published bySt. Martin 's Press,

175 Fifth Avenue,New York ,NY10010.

Tropical Heat

CHERRY ADAIR

Chapter One

Huren

CongoBasin

Central Africa

The brilliant lights of the operating room glinted off the scalpel being held to Doctor ElizabethGoodall's slender throat.

Flat on his belly in the main air-conditioning duct directly above them, SamPelton aimed hisSig Sauer between the soldier's expressionless eyes. The state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar operating room wouldn't have been unusual if it had been in a large hospital in a major city anywhere in the world. But this OR was smack in the middle of the jungles ofCentral Africa .

"Obviously I was brought all this way for a reason," Beth was saying a little desperately. "Just tell me
why

. There's no need to threaten me with the scalpel." When she got nothing more than a blank stare, she dragged in a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. "Who's in charge? You?" she asked the guy with the blade.

Yeah. I'd like to see the asshole in charge, too
, Sam thought, watching them through the small holes he'd pierced in the metal duct. This top-secret compound, deep in theHuren jungle, belonged to PresidentSiphoNkemidilm . What was so damn urgent that he'd had a prominent physician kidnapped from a bustling metropolitan hotel and flown thousands of miles to his hidden compound?

Something big. The compound was crawling with heavily armed,camo -clad soldiers. More of them than had been reported here a week ago. It didn't bother Sam that there were twenty trained soldiers in residence. Twenty to one weren't insurmountable odds. He had an arsenal of weapons on him and a heavier pack, fully equipped, concealed several clicks away in the jungle. Another smaller pack was hidden just outside the compound. He was loaded for bear, with skills and determination to use either his weapons, or whatever else was at hand. Whatever it took to expedite this rescue mission.

One of the men shoved a handful of blue fabric at Beth's mid section. It drifted to the floor as she made no move to accept it, and instead, glanced around the brightly lit room without moving her head. "Does
anyone
here speak English?" she asked with admirable calm.

They didn't. Or pretended they didn't.

Her red-gold hair, pulled up in its customary simple pony tail, wasdisheveled , and her amber freckles stood out in sharp relief on her pale skin. Her eyes flickered between the man holding her at blade-point and the three stony-faced, AK-47-wielding soldiers flanking her.

Two more uniforms were stationed at the door. A seventh man, presumably theanesthesiologist , stood hunch-shouldered and mute at the head of the operating table, clearly trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible.

Wasn't going to save his sorry ass. Sam was ready, willing, and freaking able to blow the place to smithereens at the first opportunity. Once he had Beth. Once she was safe. Dropping down now, guns blazing, while personally satisfying, might get her killed. That was a risk he wasn't willing to take.

The son of a bitch with the scalpel at her throat would be the first to die.

They'd snatched the wrong doctor.
His
doctor, goddamn it. At least that's what Sam believed. Beth was a general practitioner, and while he, and the entire town of Brandon, Montana, thought she was extra special, as far as he knew she didn't have any more skills than the several hundred other GPs in attendance at the symposium she'd been attending in Cape Town. He suspected the tangos thought they'd snatched plastic surgeon Lynne Randall. And the second they realized their mistake, Beth would be dead.

And before they killed her she'd be begging to be dead
faster
.

He had to get her the hell out of here
sooner
than ASAP. People said SamPelton didn't have a nerve in his body, that ice water ran in his veins. But right now he was as scared as he'd ever been. Everything was different about this op because Beth was in thecenter of it.

Scalpel-dick jerked his head, indicating that one of the men pick up what Sam presumed were scrubs.

The pulse at the base of Beth's throat pounded her stress level, yet she still refused to accept the clothing.

Her sangfroid was remarkable. But that was Beth. Always cool, calm and collected.

That's it. Keep your head, sweetheart I'm right here.

Ignore the scalpel indenting her skin, Sam told himself savagely. Ignore the way her fear, and the stark white lights, leeched all thecolor from her face. Ignore the smudges under her eyes. Ignore the rapid pulse hammering in the hollow of her damp throat.

Ignore, God damn it, the fucking scalpel pressed to her carotid.

To do his job, he had to block Beth from his mind. Since he hadn't be able to do that for the past two years, it wasn't easy. He managed to do it anyway.

She swallowed hard, and the scalpel left a razor thin line of blood on her neck. Right where Sam had been craving to kiss her for months. And that was the
last
fucking time he'd resist the impulse to kiss her.

As soon as he had her out of here, and it was safe enough to do so, he was going to kiss Beth like she'd

never been kissed before. To hell with restraint. To hell with waiting.

Instead of freaking out, she reached up and gently tried to push the man's hand away from her throat.

With the slight shift in angle, the thin blade cut a red line between her thumb and forefinger. She cried out, making a big production so all the soldiers could see the blood.

Christ. Had she done that on purpose?

There was much frantic debate inHureni as they tried to figure out what to do. Her injury clearly scared the crap out of them. They'd wanted to scare her, they had no problem cutting her in small increments, but the injury to her hand had them in a panic. Beth had called their bluff.

She curled her fingers tightly into her palm, then cradled her bleeding hand against her chest. Blood stained her skin, shocking and redder than any blood Sam could remember. Maybe because Beth's skin was so pale. Hell. Maybe because this was Beth.
His
Beth.

Using every bit of control and all of his training, he clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. He might not be killing any of them, but he was counting the minutes and choreographing every move.

"I'm not resisting," she said, her voice, to someone who had studied her for months, slightly uneven. "I'm not fighting. There's no need to hurt me again. Call whoever's in charge and we ca—"

Her words were cut off with a choked scream as the man grabbed her hair, using her sassy ponytail as a handle, yanking her head back, leaving her arched throat naked and vulnerable.

Light glinted off the blade as he yelled his displeasure, his angry spit splattering her face.

Sam's heart did a double tap as the scalpel carved another thin red line on the smooth skin, this time her cheek.
Three goddamn strikes and you're out, dick. Cool it
, he told himself, almost jumping out of his skin with the need to act.

Now.

But his training told him that while the guy was cutting Beth, the cuts were small and not life threatening.

Not to Beth. To the guy making them, it was a death sentence. The son of a bitch wasn't going to kill her, Sam rationalized, sweat beading his brow. The grunt with the scalpel wasn't high enough up the food chain for one thing, and for another, someone had brought a doctor here for a specific purpose.

Hopefully he'd find out the who and why before scalpel-dick got any more aggressive with that blade and he was forced to kill him sooner rather than later.

Intel had reported thatNkemidilm wasn't in residence. He was off with his troops fighting theMallaruzi on Huren's western border.Huren was also in the middle of a bloody, and extremely violent, civil war. The body count was sky high.Nkemidilm was a megalomaniacal sadist and was fighting with damn well everyone in
and
out of his country. He'd trained inRussia , his army carried American-made weapons, and he had absolutely no regard for human life. His allies were no better.

The cold air blasting around Sam did nothing to cool his temper nor did it dispel the fear churning in his gut as he watched the tableau beneath his hiding place.

Nervous perspiration made Beth's creamy skin look dewy, touchable. They'd let her remove the jacket to her black pantsuit, and her long-sleeved pink blouse was halfuntucked , sticking to her skin and

smeared with dirt and blood. Even mussed she was sexy. She should be back home in Montana in her small clinic, dispensing suckers to damp-eyed kids and wearing the all-encompassing white coat of her profession. And giving him a hard time.

He'd tried talking her out of attending the medical symposium inCape Town when they'd "accidentally"

bumped into each other at the bank two weeks ago.South Africa was a country in flux. Not safe for tourists just yet, and counted as one of the most dangerous places in the world. Yet in spite of, or because of his warnings, she'd gone anyway.

Who'd taken Beth, and what the hell did they want with her? No. Not
Beth
. Doctor Lynne Randall. All Dr. Randall, safely sequestered in a localsafehouse , could tell them was that Beth had gone upstairs to pick up some notes for her. Beth had been snatched moments after entering Randall's room.

Thank God his people in theCape had been smart enough to squash the story from the press. None of the bad guys knew they'd kidnapped the wrong woman.

"If no one in charge is coming, then I'm—"

One of the soldiers answered inHureni . Sam didn't speak the language, and clearly neither did Beth.

Just her eyes moved as she addressed theanesthetist standing across the room. "Do
you
speak English?"

He gave her a blank stare and her attention returned to the man with the blade at her throat, who was still yelling at her. "I have no idea what you're saying," she told him crisply, raising her voice just enough to get his attention. Her hand must hurt like hell, but she wasn't paying it any attention.

Scalpel-dick yelled louder, inches from her face. Louder didn't mean she could comprehend him any better.

The door opened and he shut up like a tap being turned off. The rest of the soldiers in the room snapped to, straight-backed, weapons at the ready-attention. Sam already had theSig aimed at the potential new danger.

His heart skittered.

Shit.

The Butcher
.TauThadiwe .

The terrorist was currently on every country's Capture Dead or Alive list. Six feet seven inches of solid muscle, with skin thecolor of dusty ebony, and currently dressed, unselfconsciously, in a short white hospital gown. Flip-flops snapping on his enormous feet, he strode into the room surrounded by a phalanx of soldiers.