AMBUSHED (2 page)

All he could do now was push the tile back
into place and pray nobody came tumbling down on the heads of the
guys with the UZIs. The space was tight, hemmed in by wiring and
support structures. He and Elizabeth were jammed together as
tightly as if they’d been sleeping together in a bunk bed.

He’d left a small crack along one of the
horizontal channels, enough for him to see down and spot a bit of
dust from the crumbling tile edge lying on the desk.

Would one of the terrorists see it?

Had he trapped himself and Elizabeth? He
pictured the ceiling tiles dripping with their blood before he
pushed the vivid image out of his mind. Quietly he eased his gun
out the holster and held it in one hand.

As the other hand brushed hers, he clasped
her fingers. She held tight to him, then went stock-still as two
men stepped into the room. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see
much. Both were dark haired. One was tall, the other short. They
both wore jeans and tee shirts. But the most notable fashion
statement was the UZIs they carried.

Jordan’s heart pounded as they searched the
office. When they didn’t find anyone, one of them made a harsh
sound and began speaking in Arabic. The other answered. Too bad
Jordan had never studied the language.

After a few moments, they left, and he heard
doors in the corridor opening again.

“I wish I knew what they were saying,” he
whispered.

“They’ve cleared the lower floors. They
think we’re up here somewhere so there’s only a minimal guard in
the garage.”

The answer jolted him. He’d read the
briefing folder on her. He knew she’d lived in the Middle East with
her oil executive father, but most Americans never had much contact
with the locals. “You speak Arabic?”

“Yes. Dad had everyone in the family learn.”
She laughed. “That’s how I got into trouble. I heard Kishwar and
his buddies talking at the gym. They thought nobody could
understand them, but I did. He’d set the bombing for the next day,
so the FBI didn’t have time for a sting operation.”

“But you came forward.”

“I had to.”

“You’re very brave.”

“I’m scared spitless. Can we make it to the
garage?”

He’d been wondering the same thing. Now he
answered, “We have to try.”

He climbed down to the desk, listening
intently before reaching up and helping her down. On the floor,
they clung together for heartbeats, before he eased away and
cautiously peered into the hall. It was clear.

They sprinted for the stairwell and eased
inside. When he didn’t start down, Elizabeth brought her lips to
his ear and asked, “Do you hear something?”

“No. It’s my sixth sense kicking in. My
sense that trouble’s coming. I think someone’s below us,” he
whispered.

“Can we take another stairway?”

“We know guys are searching the hallway. We
were lucky to get out of there.”

“Can we go up?”

“We’d be trapped.”

“What are we going to do?”

He considered their options. Earlier he’d
thought gunfire would draw the terrorists. Maybe he had no choice
now.

“If one of them is below us, we have to take
a calculated risk. You’re going to flush him out, and I’m going to
take advantage of that.” In a barely audible voice, he told her his
plan.

They both started down, moving as silently
as possible, Jordan with his weapon ready, Elizabeth crackling with
tension beside him.

They saw no one, but the farther they
descended, the more he
knew
one of the terrorists was in the
stairwell. Hopefully, only one.

On the landing above the bottom, Jordan
squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “Now.”

She deepened her voice and shouted in
Arabic, “The woman’s on the loose. Get up here.”

Startled, the man darted into view, craning
his neck up.

Jordan shot him in the face, and he toppled
sideways.

They both raced down, Elizabeth averting her
eves from the gore and Jordan stopping to scoop up the UZI as they
passed.

At the door to the garage, he paused,
listening. Once again he heard nothing, but he was still feeling
jittery.

Cautiously he stepped into the shadowy
garage, scanning the open space.

Two terrorists materialized from behind
parked cars and began shooting. Jordan returned fire, even as he
heard the clatter of more automatic weapons. Behind the terrorists,
Emma Richards and Cole Marshall were shooting.

The bad guys went down, and the Decorah
Security operatives rushed forward, sweeping their weapons in all
directions, prepared for trouble.

But the garage was clear of the hostile
combatants.

Jordan hustled Elizabeth past the disabled
Town Car. They blinked in the sunshine but didn’t stop moving until
they had rounded a barricade of police vehicles, with Richards and
Marshall guarding their rear.

Frank Decorah was waiting for them, standing
ramrod straight, a trim man in his early fifties, turning the gold
eagle coin he always carried over and over in his hand. The staff
called it his “worry bead.” But not to his face.

“Good job,” he said to Jordan. “I knew you
were the right man for this assignment.

Before Jordan could answer, another man came
charging up.

He was blond, in his late thirties, athletic
and dressed in a dark suit. “FBI special agent Lee Overhouse. We’re
getting you out of here.”

They were escorted to an SUV and taken to
FBI headquarters a few blocks away for debriefing. In a comfortable
conference room, Jordan laid down some ground rules.

“We’re a mess,” he said. “Both of us want to
take a shower. And change our clothes. I’m sure you’ve got
something we can wear.”

Agent Overhouse probably didn’t like the
delay, but he complied.

“Thanks,” Elizabeth said to Jordan when they
met again in a conference room a half hour later, both wearing FBI
sweatpants and tee shirt.

As they ate sandwiches and drank coffee,
they told the agent what had happened.

While Elizabeth was finishing up, Jordan
called Frank Decorah and made some requests.

Fifteen minutes later, they were back in
another Town Car.

As they buckled their seat belts, Elizabeth
glanced at him, her expression tense, and he wondered what she was
going to say now.

“I’m exhausted,” she murmured.

“Understandable.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes. Was she
hiding something from him or just worn out? The question made his
stomach knot. When he’d thought they might not get out of the
building alive, he’d told her they were going to talk. Now he was
cursing himself for making the offer.

They sped north out of the city. When the
car finally stopped and the driver cut the engine, Elizabeth sat up
and looked around in surprise. “This isn’t the safe house. Where
are we?”

“A farm in Western Howard County that
Decorah owns. I wanted to take you somewhere you could relax.”

She peered at the Victorian cottage set in
landscaped grounds. “This is a farm?”

“It used to be. Now it’s a fortified
guesthouse.

They climbed out, and the driver unlocked
the front door. “I’ll be in the auxiliary quarters,” he said.
“We’ve got three other men here tonight.” He looked at Elizabeth.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Thank you,” Jordan said to the driver,
thinking they might be safe, but he had plenty to worry about.

He led her into the house, through a front
hall to a comfortably furnished parlor.

They both stood awkwardly in the middle of
the room.

“You should get some rest,” he said.

“Not until you make good on your
promise.”

Before he’d absorbed the shock of her words,
she stepped forward and pulled him into her arms. Cupping the back
of his head, she brought his mouth to hers. Their lips met in an
act of spontaneous combustion as they exchanged a hot, frantic
kiss.

When they finally broke apart, they were
both breathing hard.

“I guess you’re not the man of stone you
pretend to be,” she gasped.

“Jesus. Is that what you thought?”

“What was I supposed to think?”

“That I was doing my job.”

She stopped the conversation again with
another kiss that damn near emptied his brain of blood.

“You’re reacting to almost getting killed,”
he managed to say.

“Damn right. And to you,” she whispered
against his lips, “We’ve been through hell today. Now we’re safe,
and we can do anything we want. Anything we both want.”

“Elizabeth.” He whispered her name, just a
puff of breath against her lips. She seemed to drink in the
syllable.

“I assume there are bedrooms here,” she
murmured. “Maybe we should find one.”

She linked her hand with his, leading him
down the hall to a room that was probably charming. All he saw was
the bed–and Elizabeth.

When she reached for him, he surrendered to
what he had been feeling for weeks. Gathering her to him, he kissed
her with a desperation that he was helpless to deny, plundering her
mouth, feasting on her, absorbing her sweetness.

As the kiss broke, she stepped back and
reached for the hem of her tee shirt, pulling it over her head and
tossing it away before unhooking her bra and sending it to join the
shirt.

His breath caught as he looked at her.

He tore off his own shirt, then pulled her
close, almost gasping at the feel of her breasts against his
chest.

“Oh, Jordan. Oh.”

He sensed her vulnerability, and his own.
And this time when he kissed her, it was with a gentle
possessiveness that was no less urgent than the whirlwind of
passion that had swept over him before.

His hands moved over her naked back, down
her ribs; and she did the same, touching, stroking, sending little
currents of sensation through his body.

She drove everything from his mind except
the need to get closer to her—as close as he could get. When he
eased away so that he could get rid of the borrowed sweatpants, she
followed suit.

She grinned. “Nice of them to give us
clothes that are so easy to discard.”

They were both naked when he pulled her into
his arms again, his erection pressing against her middle.

Before he lost the ability to stand, he
brought her down to the surface of the bed. Gathering her in his
arms, he bent to press his face against her breasts.

She cradled her hands around the back of his
head, stroking his hair as he took one taut nipple into his mouth,
hungry for the taste of her and hungry to feel her arousal. When
she cried out at the wet, tugging pressure, he felt a wave of
gratification that staggered him.

He slid his hand down her body, dipping into
her moist warmth, parting delicate folds so that he could stroke
her, feeling her arousal surge.

She opened her mouth against his shoulder,
her teeth worrying his hot flesh. “Please, I want you inside me
when I come.”

He wanted that too. Shifting above her, he
moved between her legs–then buried himself in her warmth.

With a thrust of her hips, she took him
deeper inside her, the power of the moment stunning him.

He raised his head, looking down at her,
seeing the passion and the wonder on her face. His first time with
her. And it should be his last.

He banished that thought, focusing on this
moment out of time as he silently acknowledged how much he’d wanted
her. He struggled to keep the pace slow, but it quickly became
urgent, demanding.

He felt her nails digging into the slick
flesh of his back, felt her body convulsing under him, around him,
taking him over the edge with her.

When the storm had swept past, he shifted
his weight off of her, holding her in his arms.

He knew what he should say. She beat him to
it.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to give up the
job of guarding me.”

“I should.”

She kept her gaze on him. “Are you going to
tell me why you think so?”

“Because of a mistake I made two years ago.”
He swallowed, needing to get it over with now–so she’d know why he
was going to leave. “I was on a covert mission for the CIA in . .
.” He stopped. “The country doesn’t matter. My partner and I were
posing as a married couple, but she and I got too close. It made us
careless. We walked into an ambush, and she didn’t make it out
alive.”

“Jordan, I’m so sorry.”

“I made an error in judgment.”

“Are you taking all the blame?”

He dredged up an honest answer. “No. But . .
.”

“You’ve paid a high price.”

“I resigned from the agency. I might have .
. .” He shrugged. “Ended up as a security guard somewhere, but my
old boss recommended me to Frank Decorah.”

“I’m so glad he did.”

“Frank’s a tough old ex-Navy seal. You
probably don’t know he lost a leg in the service.”

“No.”

“The point is, he beat some sense into me.”
He laughed. “Well not literally. But he gave me a purpose again. I
was determined I wasn’t going to screw it up. And that meant not
putting you in danger by doing anything besides sticking to
business.”

“Thank you for telling me. It explains a
lot.” She swallowed. “There are things you don’t know about me,
either. That I grew up in foreign countries and always felt like a
stranger at home. Or that I took the easy way out and stayed away
from relationships. Then I met you, and everything changed. I hated
that you were keeping your distance.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“I know that now. Thank God. Even when you
didn’t say much, I knew you were dedicated to your job and
honorable to the core.”

“Maybe you’re reading me wrong.”

“Of course not.” She laughed. “Emma Richards
agrees with me.”

“You talked about me?”

“Yes. She thought I’d be good for you. We
discussed ways to break through the wall you built around
yourself.”