Chapter 6

Chapter

Six

H e needed to get his head out of his ass.

Lying on his back in bed, hands behind his head, Christian tried to sleep, but his brain wouldn’t let him. Like a starving dog on a meat bone, it was on Aliya. Still. Exactly as it had been every spare minute of the last five days, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t get himself to stop.

This wasn’t some half-baked Hollywood movie. Men like him didn’t get the girl. There was no such thing as falling in love or even in striking up impossible relationships, especially not with the kid sister of the man he’d gone undercover to bring to justice. He had a job to do, and by God, he would get it done if it killed him.

It might. He’d known that pretty much right from the moment Dewey Robinson recruited him out of college. There were no guarantees. It was dangerous work.

Keep your mind on what you’re supposed to be doing and off Aliya’s sobbing distress as she’d laid with her face buried in her hands, sobbing while her brother humiliated her in front of him.

He should have left the room.

And abandon her to endure that alone when it had been his fault? For all he knew, his presence in that chair had been the only thing that kept Fariq from raping her.

Maybe he already had.

Maybe Fariq would never have touched her like that at all if he hadn’t been in the room.

God, he wished he’d had the balls to stop it.

Yeah, he’d have got them both killed, but even if he hadn’t, even if by some ludicrous miracle he managed to get them both safely away from this ship, what then? Unless he had the information his bosses at NATO had been paying him for close to a decade to get, not only would they not appreciate him throwing it all away for the sake of Aliya, they’d probably put him on trial for the man’s murder. As bad as Fariq was, they wanted him alive. They wanted the notoriety bringing the world’s worst criminal to justice would win them in the eyes of every other government and every other criminal enterprise. They wanted this man and everyone associated with him shut down. How many people had died, trying to make this happen already? Fariq could bend his sister over his desk and fuck her up the ass in front of him, and they wouldn’t care. Christian’s job wasn’t to save the girl—it was to stop her brother.

All or nothing.

Once and for all.

He still wanted to put a bullet between Fariq’s eyes, yank Aliya out from under his molesting hand, and hold her so fiercely, she’d know she was safe—maybe for the first time in her life.

He’d never look at her again and see Fariq’s spoiled rotten little sister, tainted by all the awful, impotent feelings he held toward the man. He doubted he’d ever be able to look at her and not see the horrified, humiliated, terrified young woman with Fariq’s hand clasped so possessively between her legs.

Fuck it, he couldn’t sleep.

Throwing back the blanket, he rolled to sit on the edge of his bunk, dressed in just his jeans. They were unfastened, which was the only way to make sleeping in pants comfortable. Unfortunately, sleeping out of them was a good way to end up in a gunfight naked or dead while trying to get dressed. Pirates, third-world guerilla soldiers, or the Wild Mustang Security Firm—nobody honored a good old-fashioned time-out, so people could get dressed before an unexpected gunfight.

He glared at the red neon clock display. It was a quarter after two in the morning. Rubbing his face, he stood. Adjusting himself in his pants, he fastened them and tightened his belt, then pulled on a shirt, socks, and shoes. He needed a walk to clear his head.

If the guard was asleep at the security controls, he might try looping the feed long enough to sneak into Fariq’s office and hack his computer again.

The water was calm tonight, the ship mostly dark. The low lights were on, which with the brightness of the waxing moon were still plenty bright enough to see by. It would also make it difficult, although not impossible, for planes or helicopters—Mustang’s favorite method of sneak attack—to spot them. However, from everything he’d seen and heard on the radio, his sister and her friends in that troublesome company were preoccupied elsewhere. Which suited him fine. Every time they came after Fariq, it made his job harder.

Fariq suspected treachery at the drop of a hat. When one got to be as universally hated as he was, a suspicious nature came with the territory. Fariq wasn’t above going after the security firm’s members if he thought it would help him further his own agenda, and every time he did, Christian was stuck. Grin and bear it and try like hell to mitigate the damage while keeping anyone from getting killed.

Like his sister, Finn, was going to hate him when this was over, but that, while not all right, was at least understandable. Whether she knew it or not, he was doing what he had to, trying his best to keep her safe in the process. Wild Mustang was a pain in his ass, but the one thing Christian liked about those roughnecks was how hard they worked to keep their loved ones out of danger. Croft would put a bullet in him without thinking twice, but Christian was glad he and Finn were together. With a man like that watching her back, men like Fariq would never get close enough to hurt her.

Too bad the same couldn’t be said for Aliya.

Leaning on the rail, staring out over the calm seawater, Christian almost smiled. Now, there was an idea. Drop a word here, leak a name and location there… who knew? The Mustangs weren’t above a good ol’ fashioned kidnapping any more than Fariq was. Maybe he could manipulate Aliya into safety without jeopardizing his situation here too badly.

Fariq would spare nothing to get her back.

He ought to just kill the man and go home.

He rubbed his face, breathing the cool air deep into his lungs before letting it out again. He was so tired of constantly living on the knife’s edge of discovery, betrayal—death. He was tired of sleeping with his pants on and a gun always within reach.

He was tired of doing Fariq’s dirty work. He’d come into this job with such high ideals and a need for revenge, but over the course of the years, all he’d done was stay in the shadows, searching for something definitive that would put Fariq in prison if not the hangman’s noose, while doing Fariq’s bidding until he had his own picture on Interpol’s Most Wanted website, right next to the man he hated more than any other human being on the planet.

The man had made him into a monster. He was irredeemable—just one more reason to keep someone as innocent as Aliya far, far away from him.

Soft footsteps from one deck below caught his attention.

Melting backward into the shadows, he trailed along the rail until he was far enough ahead to glimpse over the side and make out who it was.

Speak of the devil. Barefoot, with heels in her hand, Aliya crept along the rail, her pink sundress rippling around her hips and legs as the breeze caught the fabric. Cool as it was, she was wearing a white sweater, and her hair was pulled back in a long, thick braid.

Wherever she was going, she was sneaking to get there. Watching curiously, that put Christian flat up against the dark wall under the outer stairwell, just seconds before she came up the stairs from the floor below. She passed within feet of him, the moonlight catching the curves of her soft brown cheek as she peered down the length of the yacht behind her, then glanced up the next flight of stairs. No one was out here, and the only people scheduled on the overnight shift were the three men who handled ship security, the deck pilot, and the guards stationed directly outside her and Fariq’s bedrooms.

How had she got past them, and what was she trying to do?

Every pitying, protective feeling he’d been harboring toward the girl vanished as he watched her take the rail in her small hand. Biting her lip, she looked hesitant and more than a little nervous. If she was doing what he suspected, she was an idiot. She also wasn’t half as nervous as she ought to be.

Images of her meeting her contact, taking in her hot little hand whatever he’d handed over, was very much in the forefront of his mind as Christian watched her slip up the next flight of stairs.

Shoving off the wall before he realized what he was doing, Christian fell into silent step behind her. She paused at the top of the stairs, and he knew she was looking toward the window of the control room, where the guard was at his desk. He only had to look up to see her.

Her shoulders relaxed, and he could all but hear the shakiness of her breath as she gathered her courage, then crept from the stairwell down the hall toward Fariq’s office. Didn’t she know about the cameras?

Reaching into his pocket, he palmed the remote he’d made and clicked the button, hacking into the security recorders. Every monitor on the other side of the security glass blipped as the cameras jumped back twenty minutes and recorded the previous twenty minutes over again. It wasn’t a foolproof hack, but unless something happened tonight to give Fariq a reason to review the tape, no one would ever know it had happened, and in three days’ time, the file would be automatically deleted.

In the meantime, it gave him twenty minutes to see what she was up to, catch her, and scare the shit out of her in the hopes she might decide never to do it again.

She went straight to her brother’s office. The lights were off, but that was a trap, and he was astonished she didn’t know it. Fariq had everything wired with hidden cameras. The only other person who knew where they all were was Christian, and only because he’d hacked into the video feeds and reprogrammed them with the same wireless hack he’d just used. With the remote in his pocket, he could go anywhere on the ship and keep himself off the security recordings. It would be harder trying to keep Aliya off as well, especially if he didn’t know when she was sneaking around.

Oh, for crying out… He barely kept from clapping a hand to his head. She was using Fariq’s keycode to get in the door.As if that wouldn’t trigger another of Fariq’s security logs. Christian disabled that, too, using his remote to bypass the code and let her in. The door clicked open, and the minute she slipped inside, he was out of the shadows and striding down the hall.

At least she was smart enough not to turn his office lights on, but by the time he reached the door, she was at Fariq’s desk, his laptop powering on, and consulting notes on a scrap of paper.

James Bond Super Spy she was not, and if he didn’t nip this in the bud right now, she was going to get them both killed. She didn’t hear him come into the room, but he made sure she heard it when he closed and locked the door behind him.

At the sharp click of the latch, she snapped around, her dark eyes huge on her guilty face.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

She jumped up from her brother’s office chair so fast, she knocked his laptop to the floor.

It broke, but she didn’t even look at what she’d done, staring at him. God knows she was right to be scared, but she was scared of the wrong thing.

“What have you done?” He came around the desk, more concerned with the laptop than her. First rule of being a spy—don’t break what you’re trying to crack into.

Aliya bolted for the door.

The inevitable consequences of the broken laptop took an abrupt backseat to what would happen if she took off running from this room in a blind panic—to both of them.

He caught her while she was fumbling to get the door unlocked.

She didn’t scream, he’d give her that, but she fought, and it was beautifully dirty. He spun her around, slamming her against the door, hoping to calm her down, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“Relax…” was all he managed before she slammed her knee up between his legs, scoring a direct hit that dropped him to the floor. It was hard not to admire the hell out of her, but if she kept this up, he wouldn’t be able to do all the nasty, sexual things he wanted to do to her.

She tried to get the door open again, but he held onto his cock and balls with one shielding hand and her belt with his other. Refusing to let go, he kept her smashed too close to the door to get it open.

She was really starting to panic, yanking, twisting, and hitting the door. Anyone patrolling outside couldn’t help but hear it.

“Knock it off before you get us both killed!” he panted through the pain.

Remarkably, Aliya froze. Facing the door with her hand on the latch, she reluctantly turned just far enough to see him.

“You? It’s you? You’re the one who’s supposed to keep me safe?”

Keep her safe? Right now, the only thing keeping him from throttling her was the fact he couldn’t get his legs to stand. He clutched himself and through gritted teeth.

“There’s nobody here keeping you safe. Who the hell told you that? That dickwad agent I saw you meeting in Morocco?”

Her jaw dropped. “No, Dewey Robinson. He said the agency is watching me and will always keep me safe. It has to be you!”

He pushed himself to his knees. He was going to throttle her—right after he throttled all the bastards who had told her that.

“No one,” he said darkly, “is watching over you. And Dewey was a jackass for trying to recruit you. You’re going to get yourself killed! Frankly, princess,”—cupping his aching balls, he glared up at her—“you’re going to be really fucking lucky if I’m not the one who kills you, and I do mean right fucking now.”