Running Hot (2 page)

“Since you won't talk when I'm being nice—”

“This is you being nice?” He snorted for effect and to cover any noise from behind his back. “I gotta tell you, sweetheart. Your dating etiquette needs work.”

“We'll do this the hard way.” As she said the words, the gun came up again until it aimed at his head.

“Lower that.” At this distance, she should be able to hit some body part he needed, and that was not okay with him.

“Then talk.”

He thought about keeping up the businessman ruse and doing a whole fake panic song and dance, but she clearly didn't buy the cover. No need to act like an idiot and give her even more reason to blow his nuts off. “Give me a topic and I'll babble until your damn head falls off, but put the weapon away.”

“This is your last chance.”

“Who do you think I am?” He slammed his foot against the floor to throw off her concentration as he took one last whack at the zip tie.

“No, we're not doing it that way.”

She sure as hell talked like someone with intelligence experience. He mentally ran through the briefings for this operation. No one came to the island except him and Ford Decker, who was currently pretending to be a wealthy entrepreneur looking to buy a private Fijian island of his own. Up until ten minutes ago, Ward thought by hanging out with Tasha every night he got the better end of this op, but now he envied Ford and his task of sucking up to the idiot resort owner.

The island consisted of one all-inclusive resort and a few bures for the people who worked there. In a space that size they couldn't afford to bring in a team of people. They'd streamlined, and now Ward wondered if they'd gone a bit too bare bones; something else was clearly at play on Maku, and it looked like Tasha might be in the middle of it.

“I'm guessing since you have the gun and the sudden can-kick-your-ass scary-woman thing happening that you're not a regular bartender.” He didn't usually point out the obvious, but he needed to stall for a bit more time.

“You think?”

That was the closest she came to admitting anything. Her background check had been clean. He had her file memorized. A California girl who landed in Fiji after washing out of college in Hawaii. She had the surfer girl look, but suddenly nothing else in the backstory fit as neatly as it once did.

“Look, I don't care who you are. And if you're into weapons during foreplay, more power to you. But it's time to let me go, Tasha. I check out of this place in two days and head back to my boring life. So, I want to enjoy the island before I leave.”

“I'm going to shoot you in the knee in three seconds.” She aimed, and the frown suggested she wasn't bluffing. “One . . .”

“Ward Bennett.”

“Two . . .”

Damn if she didn't look spitting angry and ready to fire. “You forgot one thing.”

“What?”

“Any idiot can defeat a zip tie.” One yank of his hands, and he heard the rip. The tie dropped to the floor, and his arms fell to his sides.

He was up and out of the chair in a second, ignoring the rattling in his head. She jumped back, but he moved faster. He nailed her in the midsection, thinking he'd take her to the floor and question her once he had her pinned down and under him.

She tried to stop him with a knee to the jaw, but he held on. With one hand under her knee, he tugged, and her balance faltered. He started to knock her down when he felt the prick in his shoulder.

That fast, his fingers stopped bending and he lost his hold. Before he could shout, his tongue went numb and his muscles turned to liquid. One second he was on his feet, and the next he slammed to his knees. He could feel his body lean from one side to the other as he stared at the floor, watching the wood slats jump and dance through blurred vision.

Gentle hands pushed him onto his side. Her hair swept over her shoulder and against his cheek as she leaned over him. No matter how hard he tried, how much he concentrated, he couldn't reach out and grab her. He didn't even have enough control over his body to shove her away when her lips brushed against his ear.

“And you forgot that I knocked you out once.” She waved something in front of his face. Looked like a needle. “Lucky for me I brought a second dose.”

The bure started to spin.

“Be a good boy and stay out of my way, Ward.”

Chapter Two

A
S FAR AS
great escapes went, Tasha thought she'd pulled off that one pretty well.

She jogged through the rough terrain, over the tree roots, and dove into the thick groupings of trees. Her hiking boots slid over the fallen branches made wet from the just-after-dawn humidity. After a few minutes of blocking every thought and concentrating on staying on her feet, she broke through the brush and into the small clearing. A beat-up, fifteen-year-old SUV waited for her in the prearranged space by the dock on the far side of the three-hundred-acre island.

She lowered the tailgate and lifted the torn carpet over the floorboard. After a quick press of the code into the lock, she heard a click and the hidden drawer popped open. She scanned the cache of shiny weapons stored inside before trading the gun strapped to her side for two knives. This part of the assignment called for weapons she could hide on her body without tipping off the local police.

There were very few easy afternoons as an officer for the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as Britain's MI6, but Tasha found today especially annoying. She'd lost contact with the other officer on the ground in Fiji, hated the reports coming from the home office about Tigana . . . and then there was the Ward issue.

The guy was a complete pain in the ass. Hot in that one-smoky-look-could-burn-away-your-underwear type of way, but a nuisance. She should have known he'd be trouble when he'd sauntered up to her bar, all tall and sexy and full of self-confidence. Between the full mouth and the muscular swimmer's body, he'd had her common sense flickering.

She blamed too many days on the job. Too much heat. His slim-fitting T-shirts . . .

Thanks to the hottie with the light brown hair and intense brown eyes, she had a mess on her hands. Looked like Ward was not a simple businessman. Not a simple anything. A gun-for-hire maybe.

Just fantastic.

The only way to remove Ward as a threat had been with a mix of sex and drugs. Men fell for that double whammy every single time, but men like Ward only fell once. She wouldn't get that shot again.

But thinking about the big guy dropping to the floor did make her smile. Also made her grab a gun, just to be safe. She tucked it into her boot before closing up the Jeep again. Now came the long hike through the overgrown jungle. This Fijian island, one of more than three hundred excluding the hundreds more islets that made up the country, was more remote than most. Its residents included people who worked at the resort, tourists, and one very nasty dictator with some stolen big guns. The egotistical jackass.

She walked half a mile, baking in the island humidity and generally soaking through her shirt until a chill played on her skin. She'd given up on the rocky trail. More like, it ran out and she took to the brush, using one of her knives to clear a path.

Halfway from nowhere, or so the GPS on her watch suggested, she heard scuffling. She'd ignored the patter and slither of whatever moved around her so far, but this sounded human. Male, human, and loud.

No way was she taking the risk of running into the wrong group of men out here alone. She knew she could take them, but that meant blowing her cover and possibly letting the wrong people know operatives were at work on the island.

She looked around for a place to hide and didn't see so much as a hole to dive into. Ducking down, she peeked through the wooded area and saw heavily armed men walking in the distance about three hundred meters to her left. Men she didn't recognize.

She had only seconds.

Edging her back around the tree trunk, she moved along the ground until she found a branch she could grab. One just out of reach. With her weapons tucked in her shorts, she did a standing jump. On the first attempt, her palm slapped against the rough bark, and she bit back a hiss.

Focusing all her energy, she tried again, this time snagging the branch with the tips of her fingers. One hand up. Then the next. With a deep breath, she lifted her body up until her stomach rested on the bark. Next came the leg swing and the scramble higher and deeper into the tree.

From her position sitting among the leaves, she could watch and maybe drop on any potential attackers. Or wait. Tasha knew how to bide her time. She possessed a wealth of patience and willingness to shoot if needed. But she could wait only so long because Tigana was on the move and Ward was out there somewhere, likely planning his revenge.

She'd almost rather take her chances with Tigana.

W
ARD HEARD THE
footsteps. Not the light touch of a female. No, this thumped with no thought to hiding a presence.

He tried to open his eyes, get his bearings. He remembered the pain in his head from before. Right after he had the thought, the hammering started hard enough to make his eyes cross. Tasha, damn her. She drugged him. Knocked him out cold and left him.

He tried to move his arms and felt the now-familiar tug of a binding holding them behind his back. “Son of a bitch.”

He blinked again and this time spied shoes. Well-worn sneakers, to be exact.

The floor creaked, and Ford Decker's face came into view as he squatted on his haunches next to Ward's head. “Hello there.”

All Ward could manage was a groan. Yeah, a
son of a bitch
wasn't nearly strong enough for this scene. Having a witness, especially
this
witness, made him long to be unconscious again.

“I guess it's a lucky thing you had a tracker on you,” Ford said.

“Yeah, I feel lucky right now.”

Ford's hand hung down between his knees, and he let out a long whistle. “So, how did the date go?”

Instead of answering, Ward closed his eyes again. “Shit.”

“You often end a night of sex tied to a chair? I had no idea you were into funky shit.” Ford snorted. “In fact, I kind of wish I didn't know it now.”

Ward let his senses race. He felt the hard wood under his legs and the floor pressing into his side. The chair. She actually took the time to strap him to the chair. “She did it again.”

It was a message of some sort. One Ward didn't get, but he planned to track her down and ask her.

“Did you say again?” The laughter was right there in Ford's voice.

Yeah, that was just about all the amusement Ward could handle for one day. “Shut up.”

Ford barked out an actual laugh that time. “Oh, I don't see that happening.”

With only one eye open but squinting against the morning light filling the bure, Ward glanced over at his partner on this operation. “You could help me get up.”

“Or I could take a photo.” Ford took a phone out of his pocket as if he intended to go through with it.

“Do and die.” Tied up or not, a chair or not, if Ford walked out of the room with one piece of evidence about this and the shitty night that came before, Ward would take him apart. There were limits on how much bashing his ego could handle.

“Answer this.” Ford picked up Ward's abandoned wallet and flipped it around. “Did you have a good time, or were you so bad she tied you up to get away from you?”

There was only one answer to that sort of question. “Fuck you.”

“That's not really responsive.”

Time to get the assignment back on track and Ford's mind off whatever happened before he walked into this room. Not that Ward even knew the answer. But they did have a problem, and he was clear on at least that much. “She's not a bartender.”

Ford's smirk vanished. “What is she?”

“Con woman. Operative. Mercenary.” Ward tried to lift up, to take the weight off his sore shoulder. “Hell, an actress for all I know.”

“That's a lot of skill sets for one woman.”

He struggled up to his elbow. The awkward position made it tough to break a tie a second time but at least he felt a bit more in control of his surroundings. “I don't know who she really is. Our intel didn't go deep enough.”

Ford shook his head as he jumped to his feet and started walking around the open room, scooping up the contents of Ward's wallet off the floor as he went. “Man, you know how to pick them.”

Turning his wrists, Ward realized the way his hands were bound provided some give. He couldn't slip them out, but it wouldn't take that much strength to rip the tie apart. Especially since Ford didn't seem all that inclined to help perform a rescue.

“She is hot.” The comment slipped out, but Ward decided it needed to be said. Maybe as an explanation for losing his grip. Maybe because he couldn't forget her face.

Ford hummed. “Smokin', yeah.”

“She also carries weapons and, as you can see, went through my wallet.”

“Then there's the part where she dropped you to the ground like a rag doll. You, a complete hardass with hundreds of thousands of dollars of training behind you.” Ford held out the wallet in front of Ward's face. “That's just sad, man.”

Ward wanted to grab it. Would have if he could move his hands. “Did you miss the part where I said ‘fuck you'?”

“It would be easier to take you seriously if you weren't tied to a chair.”

The smartass comment got Ward moving. He shifted his hand, turned, and . . . snap. “There. I'm free.”

Ford shrugged. “Better, but still embarrassing.”

“Thanks for your support.” Ward rubbed his wrists as he sat up.

“You know I plan on telling everyone we know about this, right?”

With his head still spinning and his ego deflating with each passing second, Ward jumped to his feet. “I'll stab you and leave you for dead on the island.”