Page 11 of Dangerous Liaisons

Chapter Eight

“Get down!” Jesse snaked a foot around the cowboy’s ankle and yanked. He struck the pavement like the Jolly Green Giant.

“What the—” he began as she dropped to a squat beside him.

He tried to get up, but she seized his shoulder and bent toward his ear, catching a whiff of Drakar as she whispered, “There are two left. One has a gun. Don’t move.”

He tensed under her hold. “A gun? Why didn’t they use it before?”

How to explain? It’s likely they’ve been instructed to take me alive, so the head of one of the most secret government organizations in the U.S. can torture me for information that will incriminate him?

“Who knows?” she replied, wondering what he would think if he knew he was their target. No witnesses would be Lanton’s order, which meant, of course, any unfortunate passers-by.

What do you think of fate, Cowboy?

She waited through a minute of silence.

“Maybe they left,” he whispered.

“I didn’t hear them leave.”

“Surely they won’t kill us,” he said.

Jesse snorted. “Right. Stay here.” She started to push up, but he grabbed her arm.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

She grasped his hand and disengaged his hold. “Look, Tex—”

“Cole,” he corrected.

“What?”

“The name is Cole.”

“All right, Cole. Keep cool. I’m going to try to flush them out.”

She rose and listened. A man moaned somewhere near the street-end of the alley. Jesse crept to the building on her right. Hugging the brick, she took one careful step toward the street before the sound of another trigger being pulled back caused her to freeze. A CO2 air-gun spit. She dropped to the ground as a tranquilizer dart snagged her upper arm before it struck the wall and bounced off.

“What the hell?” Cole exclaimed.

Jesse grabbed her arm and felt slick wetness trickling toward her elbow. “Damn.” Depending upon the drug contained in the dart, she could pass out in a second, or in an hour. Cole shifted, and she realized he was rising. “Stay down!” she ordered, and crawled to him. Her left palm came down on tiny pieces of glass. She bit back a cry.

At Cole’s side, she whispered, “Come on.” She fought a stab of dizziness. Halfway between her and the street stood a cluster of dumpsters. “Let’s see if we can make it to those trash bins.”

She rose to a crouch. He followed her example, and they crept to the wall, one painfully slow step after another. A disturbance in the shadows a few feet to her left caught her attention. She leaped forward, hands fisted. The shadow shifted. Jesse punched, hitting a hard mass of stomach muscle. Her opponent fell back a pace. Then he leaped, kicking with his left then his right. He missed her by a good inch and Jesse kicked in a tight arc, missed his jaw, but hit the nose. The thug cried out in unison with Cole’s loud grunt.

She turned and sprinted for Cole. A woman suddenly appeared in her path. Her fist crashed into Jesse’s jaw, snapping Jesse’s head back. Jesse hit the woman in the ribs with a left then a right. Ribs cracked, but the woman didn’t cry out. Leave it to a woman to take pain better than a man. Jesse thrust an elbow into the woman’s stomach and nearly struck her scrawny spine. The woman groaned and collapsed. Her companion had been right. She was a bitch.

Jesse whirled to see Cole jump back from a knife slice at his midsection. The thug drew back to stab. She clamped her hands together and raised them. A wave of dizziness, this one stronger than the last, caused her to clench her teeth. She brought her fists down on the thug’s neck. He jerked, whirled, and swung at her.

She blinked at his blurry form. He jabbed, and dull pain stabbed her outer thigh. Jesse grabbed his wrist, twisted under, and heard the bones crack. The knife clattered onto the asphalt. Cole landed a kidney punch to the man’s abdomen and he fell to his knees. He tried to rise, but Cole kicked him viciously and the man landed on his back with a meaty thud.

Jesse looked at Cole. “Not bad.”

“Let’s get out of here.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the street.

“Wait.” Darkness shimmered like a heat wave through her. “There’s another one.”