Someone shouted in the distance, and they both sprang into action, grabbing their supplies, throwing on still-damp coats, scuffing at the signs of their passage.
Before they took off again, though, she stopped him with a quiet, “Wait.”
He leaned low, his face beside hers an unwelcome reminder of the havoc he wreaked on her hormones.
“They’ll be crawling all over Schink’s Station, right? You sure you want to go back there?”
He reached out and pulled her hood over her head, and though brusque, the move was intimate enough to squeeze something in her chest.
“Sure of nothing, Leo. Except we’re better off moving.” At her quick nod, they set off at a quick pace, side by side. “Got to get to a safe place to hole up. We stay out here, they’ll find us eventually.”
“If we head there, we fall right into their net. You know that, right?”
“Let me ask you this, Leo. What do you think’s happening in Schink’s Station right now?”
She’d wondered the same thing, and no matter what angle she considered it from, the answer never looked good. “They’re killing people, aren’t they?” She huffed out a breath. “Or threatening to.”
“It’s what they do.” He stopped and bent low again, his expression angry enough to border on scary. “My job is to save them.”
“Our job, Elias.Ours.”
***
“Stand down, Deegan!” Ash yelled into the headset to be heard above the din of the helicopter. “Your search is mucking up this operation.”
“Mucking it up?” Even at this volume Deegan didn’t sound happy. Then again, he wasn’t the most expressive bloke. Happy, sad, angry, horny—he probably barked orders in bed the way he did out here in the field. “Far as I can tell, you’re the one who hasn’t caught up with them yet.”
“You’ve lost half your teamandthe target. If you’d let me do my job the way I requested, we’d be halfway home by now, bonus in hand.”
“Halfway home?” Deegan’s laugh was forced, his features wooden. “Like hell. The guy’s too damn slippery.”
“Theguy,” Ash mimicked with a nasal American accent. “What guy do you think we’re chasing? Let’s start with that, shall we?”
In front, the pilot turned to the side, clearly listening in. Deegan—who looked crap after two long nights spent in the wild—wouldn’t like being one-upped in front of his men. Well, fuck him. Ash didn’t care for Deegan’s feelings. What he cared about was his mission.
“You kiddin’ me?” Deegan sighed, shaking his head, and turned to look out the window. “Campbell Turner. Male. Fifty-thr—”
“Wrong. This isn’t Turner. We’re after someone else.”
“The target is here and he’s on the run.”
He pointed at the lake below. “You truly believe you’re chasing an average-size fifty-three-year-old man? Do you? Our bloke’s fit as a fiddle. Hisfeetare as long as my fucking forearm.” An exaggeration, but it got the point across. Besides, thef’s crackled nicely in the headset.
Deegan’s breathing came through, labored and fast, though his face remained stoic.
“Call off the damned chopper, Deegan, stop the air search, and put me down on the western shore so I can do my job…alone.”
“That’s not what—”
“Call her.” This was a gamble, but Ash trusted nothing if not his own instincts.
“What?”
“You heard me. Call the boss. Tell her you’ve fucked her operation. Tell her you lost multiple people, including the one who stepped in a trap and the people you sent into a booby-trapped building. Strange, the bloke in the trap was alive last I saw him. How did he die, Deegan?” The pilot tensed. Poor bastard now knew how likely he was to get out of this alive. Or not. Ash had known the risks when he signed on for this thing. He was quite possibly the only one who understood just how deadly this mission was. That wasn’t a problem for him. “The target’s gone AWOL because of you. Call off the bloody air search and I’ll salvage this mission my way. All right?” He leaned toward the man. “We don’t get the man or what he’s hiding, we don’t get paid.”
Breathing slowly and evenly, Ash leaned to look out of the helicopter’s window at the scenery below. It was best to give men like Deegan the illusion of power.
“How long you need?”
