Chapter 15

Chapter

Fifteen

R eid laid on his side, willing himself to go back to sleep. He and the mercenaries had been picked up by the Wild Mustang group. He had been flown back to the States to be debriefed. That had to have taken some serious clout to get him away from NATO. The mercenaries, on the other hand, were currently cooling their heels with NATO at an undisclosed location while Reid tried to get everything sorted out. The watch encircling his wrist told him it was only three a.m. The sun had yet to make its appearance over the eastern horizon, and his cock throbbed in need.

Where was Aliya? Why hadn’t she tried to contact him? Why was NATO trying to keep her from him? He closed his eyes and thought of the last time they’d been together.

H e’d spread her legs wide and allowed his cock to brush the petals of her sex. It had taken her a while to become comfortable in her own skin to revel in the sensations and emotions his touch forced her to feel. She’d begun to crave both his love and his discipline. She was so perfect for him.

“Christian,” she’d sighed as she tilted her hips at the perfect angle, her labia swollen and glistening with her wild honey that tasted of jasmine.

Leaning over her, he thrust inside in one long, hard move, and she muffled a strangled cry as she came just from his possession. She hadn’t asked for his permission. He grinned. He’d make her pay for that later, but for now, he began to move inside her. She was tight but slick and oh so needy.

Sliding his hands under her ass, still warm from her earlier spanking, he fucked up and inside her. Picking up his pace, he’d watched as her emotions played across her face. The wonder and joy she experienced each time she climaxed for him were like crack cocaine—addictive and dangerous.

He fucked deep and hard as her body stiffened in anticipation, and she clung to him. Releasing one of her bottom cheeks, he wrapped his hand around her throat, his thumb pressing gently on her windpipe, not enough to damage but enough to exaggerate her excitement.

Aliya writhed beneath him as he drove into her. He ground his pelvis into her, sending her over the edge as he lost control and flooded her pussy with cum. Her pussy clamped down, milking every last drop from him. He collapsed on her, catching his breath as he felt peace wash over them both.

“ C hristian,” a decidedly masculine voice said as he felt a hand on his shoulder. “I hate to wake you, but we need to talk… we think Fariq may be alive.”

Reid was immediately awake and moving. He pulled on his jeans and grabbed a shirt, following Croft up to the meeting room. Billy Crofton had been a revelation. He was his sister’s fiancé, and Reid realized quickly the men of the Wild Mustang team were all the dominant partners in their relationship. It had been a bit disconcerting at first to know his sister submitted to Croft’s authority, but he had never known Finn to be happier. Croft had proven more than able to keep Finn safe, even though she didn’t always appreciate it.

The main men of the team, plus Avery, Finn, and Zara, were gathered around the table.

“Croft says you think Fariq may be alive,” Reid said.

“That can’t be,” an agitated Avery said. The fierce helicopter pilot was certain she had shot him down. “I don’t miss. I saw that bastard’s chopper go down in a ball of flames… with Fariq inside.”

“Settle down, Avery. No one is doubting your prowess.” Thom was the IT specialist, and Avery’s fiancé and Dom. His tone was gentle with an underlying strength Avery responded to.

“Any chance he could have had a body double?” Noah Taylor asked.

“A body double?” Finn questioned, reaching for her brother’s arm and giving it a squeeze.

“It’s the only possible explanation,” soothed Zara, Noah’s fiancé and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. “Ghazil says Fariq reached out to him.”

Reid nodded slowly. “He does have a body double. I saw him at Marshan. If Fariq’s alive, Ghazil would be someone he’d contact to spread the word. I have to go back.”

“Are you crazy?” Finn said.

“No, but I have to go back. Regardless of the risk, I have to go.”

“There’s a woman, isn’t there?” Noah asked softly.

“A woman?” Zara cried. “What the hell makes you think it’s a woman? Maybe it’s his job, maybe he sees it as his duty, maybe he just wants revenge for what that bastard’s done.”

Noah turned slowly in his chair, leaned over, and silenced Zara with a dominating kiss.

“There’s always a woman when men want to do really stupid things.” Noah turned back to Reid. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“It’s complicated…” Reid started.

Noah laughed. “The best ones always are. Who is she?”

“Aliya, Fariq’s sister,” Reid said softly.

Croft whistled slowly. “Complicated doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“Does she know about you?” Noah asked.

“Yes…”

“Does NATO know she knows?” Mac, the head of the team, asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Reid nodded slowly. “The bastards recruited her. Her handler is dead, and she’s on her own. She can’t survive against Fariq. I have to…”

Finn reached across to her brother. “We have to?—”

“There’s no we, Finn,” Croft interrupted. “You and Zara are going to stand down.”

As both women started to protest loudly, they were cut off by their respective fiancés, stifling their outbursts with commanding kisses. Reid noted the differences between the two. Croft’s was a long, lingering exploration of Finn’s mouth, coaxing her to yield and soften to him. Noah’s, on the other hand, was commanding and passionate, demanding Zara quiet and submit to him. He thought if it was Aliya, his would land somewhere in the middle.

Mac chuckled. “Most effective way I know to shut them up. But don’t worry, Reid, we’ve got your back. We’ll get your girl.”

“ W hat do you mean you don’t have her?” Christian said, appalled. He’d left the headquarters of the Wild Mustang team at the behest of NATO, making the trip to join the mercenaries. He now sat in a NATO debriefing room, where he’d been whisked the moment they’d landed.

Two agents from NATO sat across from him. One who looked both old enough and competent enough to have earned every one of the stripes and commendations on his dark blue dress jacket. The other was dressed in rumpled camo, looking fresh out of whatever transport had brought him here, most likely at the behest of General Markoff himself.

Clenching his jaw twice, the man in camo replied, “I mean, Aliya Abdal is not being held at this location.”

“What location is she being held at?”

“None as far as I’m aware. Believe me, Mr. Reid, we have no reason to hide her from you.”

Setting the aside cup of coffee he’d been provided, so he didn’t accidentally spill it all over either one of them when he erupted out of his chair in a full blaze of temper—something he already felt perilously on the verge of—Reid scooted to the edge of his chair, rubbed his face for calm, and tried again.

“I called you. I called the Mustangs in the middle of their initial attack on the compound. Aliya had a GPS tracker on her. It had her exact location. You can’t tell me you didn’t get that call.”

“Nobody got that phone call.”

“Don’t tell me that!”

“Mr. Reid?—”

“I said don’t fucking tell me that!” Vaulting out of his chair, he planted his hands in the middle of the table, leaning over them both. He didn’t even look around when the door opened, and the two guards who’d been stationed on the other side of the no doubt two-way mirror directly behind him rushed in. They only stopped because the higher-ranking officer held up a staying hand.

Reid pointed directly at him. “I said, don’t fucking tell me you don’t have her. You had one job—get her to safety. That was it. I did everything else! I’ve been in hell for years because of you people. The one time I need something from you in return, you fumble the fucking ball? Get me a goddamn helicopter.”

Oh, Jesus. Fariq hadn’t been blowing smoke out his ass. He really did have Aliya and most likely Finn as well. His knees almost went out from under him. He had to find them. Right now. Before Fariq…

“Sit down, Mr. Reid.”

Reid shoved away from the table so hard, he knocked his chair over. The soldiers behind him grabbed him, and he erupted. In one murderous punch, he knocked one man flat on his back, which immediately brought two more charging into the room from the outer hallway. They grabbed him, slamming him facedown on the table. No matter how he fought, they pinned his arms behind him, and he couldn’t get free.

“Mr. Reid, please,” the older officer finally sighed. “Something somewhere regrettably broke down, but the plain fact of the matter is, Fariq Abdal stands to hurt and perhaps even kill a great many people. I am responsible for the safekeeping of more than just one woman. To be perfectly blunt, the things you have done, both with and without your handler’s knowledge and our consent, put you in a very precarious position. We are willing to overlook a great many of your transgressions but only because you have provided us with information that will make it worth our while to do so. Locked in your head, I’ve no doubt, are one or two important kernels left to add. We’re going to take you for debriefing. Whatever you can tell us will be taken into account and may be used to lighten the sentence passed down at your trial. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I understand I’m getting fucked for serving the greater good.”

“You may have entered his employ with the intent of serving NATO, but there are things you’ve done we never would have sanctioned. There’s a price to be paid for that. I’m sorry about the girl, but you need to think about yourself right now and exactly how many years you want to spend making little rocks out of big ones in Leavenworth.”

“He’s going to kill her,” Reid growled, cheek crushed to the table.

“Like I said, it’s regrettable. These fine soldiers are going to take you to the chopper. If it’s any consolation, I can tell you the Wild Mustangs have located Fariq and your sister on his yacht. Now, I’ve seen the surveillance pictures, and I’m almost positive there was no other woman on board. They’re on their way now to get her. If you cooperate, I am willing to send the Mustangs a message. If they have time, perhaps they can rescue your friend, Aliya, as well.”

Heaving off the table, Reid glared at both officers before giving in and allowing the soldiers to ‘escort’ him from the room.

Fariq was with Finn. On his yacht.

Only Finn was on board?

No, not possible.

Fariq might be pissed at him, but he would never go after any woman over Aliya, not even to get revenge on him. The man was nothing if not stubborn and obsessed.

Finn might well be on the yacht, in the middle of wherever, but she wasn’t with Fariq. She was with the body double.

The Mustangs were going after her with all their fury and all their firepower, but she was a distraction. She was the carrot meant to lure them in the opposite direction of the one Fariq was running. Why had he eschewed their help? He’d been so confident NATO would have Aliya. Damn, he’d fucked up… badly. If he couldn’t make it right, Aliya, and perhaps his sister, would pay the price.

So, where was Fariq going? Where would he feel safe enough to lick his wounds, deal with Aliya, and recoup?

There was only one place he could think of off the top of his head—a small complex not too far from the fortress, only a hundred miles or so. Fariq had liked the gardens and the remoteness. Although the villa itself had been far too small to suit any other need, he’d bought it. Would he remember Reid was with him and knew its location?

Probably.

Aliya was the carrot, that other building was the stick, and it was waiting to hit him just as soon as he arrived.

He just had to get there.

Seething, every bit as angry at these men, supposedly on his side, as he was with Fariq, he played the cooperative prisoner as he was frisked yet again and his hands cuffed. In front of him, so he could help himself up into the plane. As far as jets went, it was small, comfortably fitting himself, his escorts, and the pilot. Wherever they were taking him, they wanted to get there fast. That suited his needs.

It also suited his needs that the aircraft was only fitted with eight seats in the back, two rows of two seats, side by side. He took the inside, next to the window. One soldier escort sat down next to him, and the other took the seat directly in front of the first.

“I honestly expected a man of your reputation to put up more of a fight,” the guy in front scoffed over his shoulder.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

The man next to him snorted. “You’ll be eating your own teeth if you try.”

Making himself comfortable, Reid waited. There was no cockpit in small aircraft like this, so he had a full view of the pilot, a man who looked only vaguely familiar, as he cleared their takeoff with the tower and taxied to the runway.

Emboldened by the position of power he thought he had, as the engines powered up and they began to move, the first man said, “I’m curious, how many of our guys do you think you’re responsible for killing?”

“Directly,” Reid challenged, “or merely by association?”

“Funny man. That’s fine. You’re going to need that sense of humor in prison.”

Both agents leaned back in their seats as the pull of takeoff’s gravity seized them. Reid moved to the jostle of the wheels losing contact with the ground, then they began to ascend. The pull wouldn’t last long, but it was all the distraction he needed to take them both by surprise.

He hit the man beside him, his elbow breaking the guard’s nose just as the strong pull of gravity began to ease, and before the other could turn around, he had the man’s gun in his hand, the weapon cocked and aimed at the first guard’s head.

The second guard grabbed his seatbelt but frozen when Reid said, “Move, and you can add another life to that tally you’ve got going in your head.” To the pilot, who’d snapped around in surprise, he added, “Don’t say a word. Just keep going.”

With a nudge of his gun, he moved both escorts to the other row of seats. Uncuffing himself, he had one cuff the other—hands behind his back; he wasn’t stupid—then put his own cuffs on the other. Disarming them both, he made his way to the pilot.

“I’m going to give you coordinates, and you’re going to take me there.”

“Okay,” the pilot said evenly.

“After I disembark, you’re going to take off, then I expect you to place a phone call. Give me your cell.”

After only a slight hesitation, the pilot handed it over, and Christian quickly entered the number. Blinking twice, the pilot studied it, his eyebrows quirking in puzzlement.

“You want me to call Noah?”

The source of the man’s familiarity suddenly made sense.

“You’re a Mustang. Junior?” he guessed.

“At your service… unfortunately.”

“Don’t worry,” Reid told him. “So long as you don’t do anything stupid while I’m still on the plane, I won’t hold anything you do afterward against you.”

Junior set him down exactly where Reid told him to. There wasn’t a single weapon left anywhere on the plane when he disembarked. He had them all, tucked in his belt, in his boot, and everything he couldn’t use, tossed into the grass before he slammed the door, smacked it twice, and with a wave of the handgun he’d borrowed, ordered them to take off again.

He saluted the glowering soldiers as they scowled at him through the window as the plane took off again. Fields made for bumpy takeoffs, but Reid didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about their comfort. Unless they wanted to land on the highway a few miles south of here, this was the only place within miles they could set the jet down. By the time they turned around, he’d be long gone. He didn’t care if they circled overhead to try to follow where he went. His only hope was Fariq would be so occupied doing other things, he neither heard the engines nor noticed the aircraft.

Unless, of course, those “other things” involved Aliya.

He couldn’t afford to think about it, but it was already pervading his thoughts as he took off running across the field in the direction of the villa. He prayed he still had time. He prayed she was there at all.

If she wasn’t, he didn’t have a clue where Fariq might have taken her. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. Once the Mustangs got here, their promise to help be damned, he already knew they’d take him captive again for sure.

He wasn’t going to get another chance.

F ariq sat low in the cigarette boat, his American baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, watching the impressive aerial display above him. Hmm… he had underestimated the beautiful, golden-haired pilot of the Wild Mustang Security Firm. Had he known about her prowess in the skies earlier, he might have recruited the curvy blonde. His cock had hardened the first time he had been introduced to her. It would have been interesting to have a woman with her lethal skill set underneath him as he plowed what he was sure was a nice, tight, American pussy.

Allah be damned, the girl had cost him a bundle this afternoon.

He had watched as her Sikorsky helicopter had fired on his own smaller one, sending it and his body double into the Mediterranean in a ball of fire. She probably knew how expensive the machinery was, but he wondered if she had a clue the cost of having a lackey surgically altered to look like him. It had been expensive but well worth it if it bought him even a few weeks to regroup and rebuild.

Fariq thought with the immediate threat of the helicopter negated, the American pilot would turn tail and head back for safety. When she turned her guns on his yacht, his beautiful floating fortress, it was as though he could hear his Swiss accounts being robbed. The crew, instead of staying to protect his property, scrambled into lifeboats. He would see that they, and their loved ones, were all put to death.

The pilot fired mid-ship, and he could do nothing but watch as the yacht and the last of his organization was destroyed. Circling the wreckage, Avery made sure both the yacht and the chopper were sinking to the bottom of the sea.

No doubt about it, Christian Reid had cost him dearly—his helicopter, his yacht, and his sister’s innocence. Fariq meant to see him pay and had the only bait he needed to lure Reid out of the safety of the shadows. Both Reid and Aliya would rue the day they had betrayed him.

A liya fought for her life with everything she had. The problem was she didn’t have anything left to fight with—no weapons, no strength. She could barely keep her eyes open, much less her unfocused gaze on the hands that held her down. There were two she could see—Fariq’s men both, holding down her arms, cutting the clothes off her back, while a third watched, appalled while she was held facedown on a wooden table in a dining room she didn’t recognize.

“Jesus,” the third man said, his eyes roving over her in naked pity.

“Just fix it,” her brother said, his cold tone washing over her from somewhere she couldn’t see. All she had to do was lift and turn her head, and she could change that, but she didn’t have the strength even for that.

“Let me go.” Her teeth kept chattering. She burned, hot pain igniting in her back when the man moved in close enough to touch her, cold scalding her everywhere else. “Let me go!”

“She’s gone septic. This woman needs a hospital.”

“Can you treat her?” Fariq asked.

“With what I have?”

She screamed when he prodded her back, scalding her with fire with every touch. Over the violent chattering of her teeth, she heard and recognized the metallic click of a handgun being cocked. The man froze mid-torture.

“I said,” Fariq repeated, “can you treat her, Doctor? Or was bringing you here a waste of my time?”

“I can disinfect the wounds, set her up on an IV drip, and give her antibiotics.” Even over her pain, Aliya heard the steely undertone in the doctor’s voice when he bravely—stupidly—stared her brother down and said, “But if she doesn’t get proper treatment at a hospital, I don’t give her even a fifty percent chance of surviving what you’ve done.”

Weakly twisting her arm, she tried to pull from the grip of the man holding her hands pinned to the table. “Let me… let me go…”

Her eyes began to drift shut. Hearing the gun uncock startled her awake again.

“Fifty percent is better than none,” her brother replied. “Do what you can. She can take the IV drip while she’s tied up in the courtyard. If she dies… well, he’ll still come the minute he sees her. It’s Reid I want, and I don’t care what it takes. You take him alive. Oh, and Doctor? No sedatives or painkillers. She’s earned every agonizing minute. I want her to feel it.”

Clenching his jaw, the doctor said, “I’ll need my bag.”

The heat in her back was already dying into dull throbs now that he was no longer touching her. Aliya was helpless to look away as Fariq brought the doctor his kit. Taking it from him, the doctor pulled a chair up to the table and set it on the seat. It might have been the fever, but when he bent to check the pupils of her eyes, for just a moment, she thought he caressed her hair.

What minute comfort that gave her vanished when the first thing he pulled from his bag was a syringe. After sorting through his supplies, he filled it from a labeled vial.

“Antibiotic,” he told Fariq. “One of two she’ll need.”

“Stick her as many times as you like,” her brother replied. “You don’t even need to be gentle.”

Except the doctor was gentle. She barely felt the pinch as the needle went in.

“Second antibiotic,” he said, filling a second syringe.

“How very sterile of you.”

Again, when the doctor touched her for a moment, Aliya could have sworn he gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze just before she felt the prick, and a warm rush swept through her, dulling the pain away to nothing.

She caught her breath at the sudden weighted heaviness that pulled at her, followed by blessed relief.

“I am not a torturer,” the doctor said flatly, dropping the now empty syringe on the table. “If you want me to treat her, fine, but I won’t help you hurt anyone.”

Realizing what had happened, Fariq tsked first, then laughed. “Goddamn it,” he said mildly. “I do so hate being disobeyed.”

Drifting in a haze of drug-induced euphoria, Aliya didn’t even jump when she heard the gunshot or the heavy thump when the doctor hit the floor.

T his was too easy.

The thought kept running through Reid’s head as he made his second circle of the villa. All the lights were on—inside though, the house looked dark as a tomb. Someone was definitely home, but it wasn’t until he glimpsed the flick of a lighter igniting the cherry tip on a cigarette in a dark corner of the porch, he knew for certain Fariq was here. For just a second, as the man had inhaled, he’d caught enough of his features to recognize him before the front door opened, and two more men came out, dragging a third by the wrists.

After so many years, Reid knew a corpse when he saw it. The man was dumped in a corner of the courtyard, then the other two went back into the house, leaving the man hidden in the shadows to smoke his cigarette while, supposedly, keeping a lookout for intruders.

One man in the courtyard, two in the house, plus Fariq, Aliya, and anyone else he didn’t know about. So far, that gave him potential five-to-one odds.

Failure wasn’t an option, but potential four-to-one was markedly better. That’s what he got when he crept into the villa behind the smoker, who stood with his back propped against the doorway. Where were the motion detectors and security cameras? Obviously, this place had never been outfitted to be an even halfway effective safehouse, which worked in his favor. Reid got within six feet of the smoker before the other noticed him. Six feet wasn’t ideal, but close enough, the other didn’t have time to shout or to get his gun up before Reid had him in a chokehold.

It wasn’t quick and only got quiet once the kicking stopped, but no one came out to investigate. Not even after the smoker kicked the side of the house twice. He didn’t particularly want to kill the man, but the smoker would have shot him if he’d had the chance, and Reid couldn’t afford to have him waking up to join with Fariq against him in the fight yet to come. He didn’t relax his grip on the smoker until the man went limp against him.

Leaving the body where it fell, he didn’t go in through the front door. He found a second-floor balcony to scale and entered the villa through what might have been a bedroom, though there was no furniture.

His steps made little sound as he crept into the hall beyond. He hadn’t been able to see any interior lights due to a combination of heavy drapes and boards on the windows, and the only well-lit room was on the ground level, tucked up under the stairs and down another hall.

“I don’t suppose either of you gentlemen knows how to insert a saline drip?”

That was Fariq, and there were at least two other men with him. Why the hell did he need a saline drip?

He’d never felt the urge to run hit him stronger. It hurt—physically hurt, a punch through his gut that stabbed up into his chest—not to get to her right now. He moved along the wall toward the stairs, craning to see into the foyer below him. Every nerve on edge, straining to hear just a whisper of her voice, but she didn’t say anything, not a single protest or hint of a struggle. He couldn’t even hear her moan, but he did hear the sudden crash of something heavy being thrown and scattered across the floor.

“Do you want me to find another doctor?”

“Oh, I doubt you’ll make it to the car,” Fariq scoffed. “Enough time has passed. I expect our guest will be here any minute.”

Furious intent moved through Reid, twisting around the cold left inside him from that punch-stab of his own wayward emotions. He never should have touched her. Everything that had happened to her was because of him. Yet the idea of not having touched her or not knowing the sweet, sensual peace to be found between her thighs was unthinkable.

Lie down with dogs, and you’ll wake up with fleas, or so his grandmother used to say. Well, he’d been ‘lying down’ with Fariq for years now, but never had he felt the biting of all his misdeeds as he did now. He wasn’t a good man. Even his own people at NATO wanted nothing more to do with him. Aliya was paying the price, but not for much longer.

He crept past a darkened doorway, his eyes locked on the foyer, making his way to the head of the stairs as quickly as absolute silence would allow. His gun was in his hand, and his thoughts were solely on what he had to do.

He was a bad man. He was going to do whatever it took to get her out of here, and when the Wild Mustang boys arrived, finally—finally—she would be taken somewhere she would be safe. He didn’t care about prison. He didn’t care if they hanged him. Bad men deserved bad endings, but not Aliya. She’d been through enough. Finn wouldn’t care. He was her brother, and she would ensure Aliya’s safety.

He edged slightly out from the wall to pass a decorative table and was just feet from the top of the stairs when the floor creaked. He looked down, but that sound had not come out from under his foot.

Shit.

Snapping his head around to look toward the doorway of the dark room, he’d been too stupidly distracted to check out, he had just enough time to make out the shadowy figures of two men and the butt of a rifle coming right at him before it hit him in the face.