Dangerously Hot (A Hostile Operations Team Novel)(#4) Read online

  Instead of going out early, they had to wait because of reports that traffic was still snarled at the bomb site, which was on the way to the embassy. And since the embassy was currently in lockdown, very little traffic was getting in or out. They might have a mission, and that mission might require the embassy’s assistance, but no one was getting in there this morning.

  Lucky had a cup of strong, sweet Arab coffee that Kev brought back to the room, and then she showered and dressed in a cotton halter dress before slipping on the abaya and fixing the hijab over her hair. When she was satisfied that only her face and hands showed, she walked out of the bathroom.

  Kev gave her a once-over. He was sinfully handsome in khakis and a white button-down with loafers. She knew he was packing a weapon—possibly two or three—on that gorgeous frame of his.

  “Isn’t that going to be hot?” he said.

  She looked down at the tan garment. “Not too bad, really. And it’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  “It makes you feel safer.”

  She lowered her gaze as her pulse thumped. He knew her better than she would like sometimes. “I think that’s probably obvious.”

  “I understand why.”

  She shrugged. “It’s silly in a way. I doubt he’s out there on the street searching for me.”

  Kev seemed to stiffen for a second, but then he went over to his gear and opened a flap on the backpack where he’d stowed his camera equipment. “No, he’s too busy for that.”

  Lucky wished she could say that Al Ahmad had probably forgotten her, but she knew that wasn’t true. But he had bigger fish to fry right now, so he probably wasn’t thinking about the only person to ever escape him. Much.

  “Kev?”

  He looked up from the camera he was fooling with. He’d had a crash course in using this particular model, a Canon EOS professional model with different lenses and tripods, monopods, and who knows what else. He looked like a very convincing photographer to her.

  Except for that badass I’d-tell-you-but-I’d-have-to-kill-you vibe he had going.

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  His brow furrowed. But he didn’t scoff, and he didn’t dismiss her fears as ridiculous or amateurish. “About what specifically?”

  And this was the hard part. Articulating what she meant.

  She’d felt uneasy since the plane landed, and she knew it was this mission and the enormity of what she had to do. But she’d felt something else, too. Some sense of unease that came from more than just the fact Al Ahmad was here and they were hunting for him.

  She’d listened to the people talking in the hotel lobby, listened to the Qu’rimis and felt their fear and unease as if it were her own. They didn’t openly say the government was failing, but as the military presence grew stronger, they feared it.

  And now the bomb.

  “Everything,” she said. “The Qu’rimis look at us—and by us I mean the people in this hotel—with suspicion and distrust. The people—ordinary, everyday people—will start protesting in the streets soon. Especially if there are more bombs. The entire city could implode in a matter of days if that happens.”

  He closed his eyes for a second. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Al Ahmad knows it too. At a certain point, all the outside help in the world won’t prevent a revolution. We’ve seen it happen in other places too often. Once it begins, our government won’t step in because of the way we’ll be seen on televisions around the world. We’ll be perceived as an Imperialist power, a heretic power come to impose our will on the people. And you know what happens then.”

  “We’ll be pulled out.”

  “And Al Ahmad will live to fight another day.”

  The look on his face was deadly calm. “We can’t let that happen, Lucky.”

  “We might not have a choice.”

  And that was what scared her. Because if they had to go before they got him, she had no doubt he’d do something terrible, something the likes of which had not yet been seen. Something that would leave the world a much worse place than it currently was.

  Kev came over and put his hands on her shoulders. She tried not to let his touch feel so vital, but she couldn’t help the shiver of longing that flooded her in response.

  “The city hasn’t fallen apart yet and the king is still in control. Let’s get you into that school, and then let’s find that bastard.”

  He pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead and then went back to his camera while she stood there with a knot in her throat. And not only because she feared Al Ahmad.

  No, she feared Kev. The way he made her feel. Her emotions were scraped raw in this environment. There was no room for deceit or obfuscation. She feared the way the simplest touch could light her up inside and make her long for so much more. If she’d thought for one moment that a single night with him would ease this longing, she’d been very wrong.

  And that scared her more than anything else could. Because it was clear he didn’t feel the same way.

  ***

  It was midafternoon by the time they got into the American embassy, but they made it in after undergoing a security check and filling out what seemed like a ream of paperwork.

  Kev was on edge by the time they reached the person they’d been told to see. A woman with short brown hair and an easy smile greeted them and took them into an office. Then she left them alone.

  The office wasn’t especially large or interesting. It was lined with bookshelves and a large desk sat at one end. Mini American flags sat on the desk, crisscrossed, and a larger flag stood in one corner.

  Lucky sat quietly with her hands in her lap, but she worried her lower lip incessantly. A nervous tic of hers. They hadn’t spoken since sitting down, but he reached over and took her hand in his. They were supposed to be newlyweds, after all, so he indulged his desire to touch her.

  Her head lifted and her brown eyes met his. He felt the jolt of that gaze all the way to his toes. He wanted to protect her. Wanted to wrap her up in his arms and not let a damn thing happen to her. It was a gut feeling that sat inside him like a ball of iron, especially after last night. Between the explosion and Matt’s news that Lucky’s name had been heard in intercepted chatter, Kev was sick with the thought he might not be able to protect her.

  He knew what it was like to fail at protecting someone, and he simply couldn’t make that mistake again. Not with Lucky.

  He’d lost Marco. He’d lost his mom and sister. He wouldn’t lose Lucky too.

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling.

  He knew she was worried, but he didn’t think she was petrified. Lucky was too tough to be petrified. Still, she had reason to worry. Training to get Al Ahmad was one thing. Actually being in-country and looking for the sick bastard was something else altogether. But it was more than that. It was her knowledge of the facts and how quickly the situation in Baq could change. They were racing against time and they all knew it.

  “Hey, what’s a husband for, right?”

  She laughed softly. “A few things, I think. Dishes, yard work, fixing the car…”

  He arched an eyebrow. “And hopefully a few other, more pleasant things.”

  She dropped her gaze for a second but he didn’t miss the wash of color that highlighted her cheekbones. Why had he said that? Why had he reminded them both about that night?

  Hell, as if he’d forgotten it for a moment. Yeah, it was best they didn’t go there again, but damn, he’d felt things with her that shocked him.

  As if he’d expected anything less. He’d been fascinated with this woman from the first moment he’d met her. And he’d walked away from her when he’d never walked away from any woman in his life.

  If it had been just about sex, he’d have hit it and quit it, same as he always did. Instead, he’d shoved her toward Marco and told himself he was being noble, that he was giving her a better life than he’d ever be able to offer. A better husband.

  He sat there gazing
into her dark eyes and feeling as if he’d been sucker punched. She meant something to him. Something more than he was prepared for.

  And there was no way out, no denying it. He cared. A lot.

  Her brows drew down as she watched him. “You okay, handsome?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, fine. I was just thinking.”

  “Must have been serious.” She squeezed his hand and grinned, and he smiled back though it felt like it belonged on someone else’s face.

  “Everything about this trip is serious.”

  She sighed. “I know. I sometimes wish you’d never found me, but then I also know it’s good you did. I’ll just pretend for a moment like we really are tourists, okay?”

  He wanted to reach out and touch her face, trace his fingers along her lips. But he didn’t. “Whatever it takes.”

  The door opened then and a man came in. Kev stood but the guy motioned to Lucky to stay seated when she started to rise. He held out his hand and Kev shook it.

  “David Capretti.”

  “Kevin MacDonald. This is my wife, Lucy MacDonald.” God, that was strange to say.

  “Hello, Mrs. MacDonald.”

  Lucky smiled serenely, as if she were accustomed to being called Mrs. MacDonald on a regular basis. “Mr. Capretti.”

  They’d agreed she would be Lucy on this mission because Al Ahmad knew that she was called Lucky. It was too unique a name to put out there, especially when they were this close to the Freedom Force’s home base.

  Capretti took a seat and flipped through some paperwork. Kev studied him for a long while, his mannerisms, the precise way he scanned the files. Capretti was former military for certain. Probably CIA, but since he wasn’t their contact, he wasn’t going to self-identify. Just as they’d not identified their affiliation with the military either.

  After a few moments, he found what he wanted. “Ah, yes, we have an opening at the Prince Faisal School for Girls for an English teacher. Does that sound good to you folks?”

  The Prince Faisal School was precisely the one they wanted. Lucky confirmed it while Kev sat silently and waited. Sometimes he hated these games they had to play between the services, but that was the way the government worked. At least they were cooperating these days, unlike in the past when one branch didn’t want to share intel with another. They’d learned the error of their ways, but not before a whole lot of people died.

  “It’s very exclusive, Mrs. MacDonald. Only forty students in the whole school. They’ll rotate through your class in groups of ten, so you’ll need to spend four hours each day teaching. Is this acceptable?”

  “Of course.”

  The man switched into Arabic then, and he and Lucky conversed for several moments that way. Kev wasn’t precisely comfortable with it, but it was her job. What she was here for. And if he needed to know something that was said, she’d tell him.

  The interview finished and David Capretti stood. The door behind them opened and the brown-haired woman walked in again. “Lisa will show you out. Mr. MacDonald. Mrs. MacDonald,” he said, shaking each of their hands in turn. And then his face grew solemn before he added, “Good luck to you both.”

  They left the embassy and filed out onto the street to catch a taxi outside the perimeter of the embassy’s security zone. Kev scanned the area out of habit, but he knew at least three of his team members were close by, watching and ready to leap into action if it was needed.

  He found Knight Rider leaning against a wall. Iceman was down the street, playing with a dog. And Hawk—cool, lethal Hawk—strolled down the sidewalk like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Lucky didn’t see them, and Kev didn’t point them out. “What did that guy say to you?” he asked as they waited for a taxi to pull up.

  She glanced up at him. “He told me about protocol at the school, which echelon of society the students came from, and some general information. He was making sure I could understand the dialect.”

  “You must have passed.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have no accent. He does. Of course I passed.”

  “Why don’t you have an accent?” He’d never thought about that kind of thing before, but of course there were accents in other languages.

  “Okay, it’s not that I don’t have an accent at all—I don’t sound like a Qu’rimi, precisely, but more like a Saudi national. My father left my mother very early, when I was still a baby. Before she met and married my stepdad years later, she had to work a lot to take care of us. We lived in California then, and it was very expensive for a single woman with a child. The neighbors were Saudis, and I spent a lot of time with them.” She shrugged. “That’s where I learned Arabic. The Defense Language Institute perfected it. But that was the beginning. When we moved to Montana, I didn’t forget, though of course I had no need to speak it there. I got rusty, but once you learn something as a child, you’re much more likely to retain it.”

  He didn’t want to think about the things he’d learned as a child. “Yeah, it’s hard to unlearn what you learn growing up.”

  She shaded her eyes as she looked up at him. He knew she couldn’t see his because he was wearing the reflective Ray-Bans. And he was glad of it because he didn’t know why he’d said that.

  “What did you learn that you want to unlearn?” she asked. She was too perceptive not to sense the undercurrents.

  Kev held up his hand as a taxi approached. It began to slow and steer toward the curb, though the driver cut off everyone in his path to do it. Cars honked and people shouted curses in the air. A donkey brayed.

  The taxi jerked to a stop and Kev reached for the door. Then he stopped. She was still waiting for an answer, and he found he wanted to give it to her.

  “Evil,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless. “I learned about evil.”

  Lucky reached out and put a hand on his arm. “Oh, Kev.”

  But whatever else she might have said was cut off when a blast of hot air knocked her against him. They fell to the pavement together, Kev rolling to shield Lucky with his body as the shockwave blew out windows and set off alarms in the street.

  His heart pounded with fear as he waited for a second blast. But it didn’t come and he pushed up to get a look at Lucky. Blood slid from a cut on her forehead, staining her cheek red. The windows of the taxi were gone, which is where she’d gotten the cut.

  “Are you hurt?” he demanded, running his hands over her body.

  “I don’t think so.” She pushed herself up to a sitting position.

  Kev raised his head to look at the taxi driver. The man was slumped over the wheel, his body unmoving. Blood poured from a wound in his throat, and Kev realized that a piece of glass must have sliced his jugular. Poor bastard.

  Hawk bounded up to them, his face creased with worry. Kev gave him a thumbs-up and he knelt beside them, his gaze bouncing from one to the next.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  “Definitely. Iceman and Knight Rider?”

  Hawk looked fierce. “Waiting for the go signal.”

  Kev looked around at the scene. The destruction wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before, but it rattled him in a different way now that he had Lucky to take care of. This wasn’t the life she’d signed up for, and it pissed him off that she had to be exposed to it. That she was in danger because of it.

  Sirens wailed in the distance, and people yelled and cried. He blocked it all out and focused on the woman in front of him.

  “Then let’s go,” he said.

  “We have to help.” Lucky grabbed his arm when he started to stand.

  “We have to go,” Kev told her. “We have no idea if there are more bombs, and we need to get back to the hotel. You’re the asset, and we have to protect you.”

  Panic was a bubble in the bottom of his throat, trying to claw its way up and out. And all because of her. Because she was in danger and he had to protect her.

  She stuck her chin out and stared at him and Hawk both. “We can�
��t leave these people here. Some are hurt, and the two of you have medical training. So do Garrett and Sam. You can’t walk away. It’s not right.”

  Hawk met his gaze and frowned. Kev knew that Hawk was on the same page with him, but she looked so hopeful and determined.

  “It’s too much of a risk.” But Kev knew when he said it that she wasn’t buying into it at all. This was the part of the job that was hard—knowing when you had to leave a situation, and knowing that people were suffering. Lucky wasn’t accustomed to that, and she wasn’t going to be anytime soon.

  She grabbed his hands and held them hard. “What if it were Marco lying there? Or Jim? You guys wouldn’t have left them, would you?”

  Kev’s jaw ached with how tightly he clenched it. I will never leave a fallen comrade. It was part of the warrior ethos and she knew it. “No.”

  Her gaze slid to Hawk, who looked equally uncomfortable. “We have to help,” she said. “At least until the ambulances get here.”

  Kev closed his eyes and swore. Goddammit. “We’ll stay as long as we can, but I can’t promise you it will be long.”

  She shuddered with relief, and he wanted to yank her into his arms and hold her tight just because she was still breathing. Instead, he reached out and wiped the blood off her cheek. “Leave my side for an instant, fail to obey me, and we’re going. No second chances, Lucky.”

  “Copy,” she said, her eyes on his, sucking him in. Goddamn.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lucky was hot and tired by the time they got back to the hotel. Her abaya was sweat- and blood-stained and torn, and her joints ached. She knew why Kev had thrown her to the ground, but that didn’t change the fact it had hurt. She could still see the taxi driver slumped over the wheel, and tears threatened to spill down her cheeks.

  She still didn’t know how she’d managed to talk Kev into it, but they’d helped the people who had been hurt. The guys staunched wounds, splinted limbs, and managed to keep the area from disintegrating before the authorities arrived.