Rekindled (Titanium Security Series) (5 page)

Malik snarled a warning and wrenched his arm away, but the drugs in his system were too strong. He swayed, barely caught the bed railing to steady himself before his knees slammed into the linoleum floor with a jarring thud.

The man grabbed him again, his attention on the closed door as he drew a pistol from his waistband. Malik’s gaze locked on the weapon. He prepared to grab it, wrestle it from the man’s grip, but instead he was dragged to his feet again. Malik stumbled after him, hating how weak and disoriented he was. Two steps from the door he heard another barrage of gunfire outside, closer this time. A female screamed in the distance, then came the pounding of running footsteps. He focused on that door, every muscle in his body tensed as he prepared to either flee or attack.

The man holding his arm stood back as the door flew open to reveal four uniformed police officers standing there. The first one took in Malik with a single cursory glance, then barked, “Quickly,” and stepped aside to let them pass. Malik felt as though he was floating as they ushered him out into the hallway. Spatters of blood covered the walls and floor. The bodies of several FBI officers littered the hallway.

“Come on,” the first cop snapped, and hurried down the hall to the exit door at the end.

Malik shuffled along while the others surrounded him like a living shield, weapons drawn. More shots cracked down another hallway to the left. They didn’t slow, didn’t hesitate. Men were shouting over the gunfire, more women screamed. Malik saw the body of the British nurse lying on the floor on her back, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He quickly turned his gaze to the exit at the end of the corridor they were in. His heart was pounding now, most of the grogginess gone. Were they really getting him out of here?

“This way,” the man who’d come into his room said, and pulled Malik through a door on the right that one of the cops held open. This hallway was dim, lit only by the emergency lighting. An alarm started up, the shrieking grating on his tautly stretched nerves. The men hurried him toward another heavy door at the end, carrying him helplessly on an unstoppable tide.

“Where are we going?” Malik finally demanded, still having no idea what was happening. He didn’t know any of these men. Were they taking him to a different location? Maybe Pakistani officials were waiting for him, planning to kill him later. There were too many men around him to overpower, even if he’d been fully alert and had use of both his hands. But why kill all the guards and staff if their aim was to murder him?

“Somewhere safe,” the first man answered, his attention locked on the far door.

Malik had taken four more steps when a tremendous boom shook the building. He instinctively ducked and raised his hands to protect himself, but the men surrounding him didn’t stop. They dragged him onward to that door, ignoring the threat beyond it even as bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling and his ears throbbed from the concussion of the blast. A large bomb. Targeting the building? Something outside it?

At the exit the men formed a protective circle around him and waited. At some unseen signal one cop shoved down on the release bar and threw the steel door open. Brilliant sunshine blinded Malik. He put up one hand to shield his eyes, crouched as the men grabbed him and bodily dragged him outside into the parking lot at the back of the building. Chaos met his stunned gaze. Several vehicles were on fire, some lying on their roofs from the force of the explosion. Dead bodies lay scattered around two SUVs and an unmarked van, the corpses charred and blackened.

“Go, go!” the first cop urged the others.

The detail broke into a jog, keeping him in the middle of the living barricade. More shots rang out behind them, farther away this time. At the other side of the lot, two large SUVs suddenly roared up to the curb. More uniformed cops burst out, weapons drawn.

Malik automatically dug his heels in but the men surrounding him merely lifted him off his feet and kept running toward the vehicles. They shoved him through the open door of a rear passenger seat and jumped in beside him. He’d barely scrambled upright when someone put a hand on the back of his head and shoved his face toward the floor. Doors slammed, the engine revved, and then the big vehicle peeled away from the curb with a squeal of its tires.

“Stay down,” that firm voice commanded beside him. “It’s not safe yet.”

Malik didn’t argue. He kept his head down and struggled to figure out what the hell was happening. These weren’t his men. “Who
are
you?” he snarled.

“I told you, we’re friends. Just stay down and you’ll see everything soon enough.”

Helpless, resenting that, Malik had no choice but to obey. The driver took several sharp turns and drove at a fast clip. They drove for what seemed like a long time—maybe forty minutes or more—before they finally stopped and the doors popped open.

“Okay, come on.” The man released his hold on the back of Malik’s head. He sat up and looked around warily. They were at some sort of a garage. More vehicles were waiting next to a low concrete building. “Hurry. They’ll be following us.” He yanked Malik across the seat and out of the vehicle. His bare feet hit the pavement and he was once again surrounded by a wall of men as they hustled him to a silver cube van parked a few dozen meters away.

They helped him into the back of it, climbed in with their weapons at the ready, and slammed the wide doors shut behind them. There were no windows back here, the only light the tiny line of it that seeped in between the seam in the rear doors.

The man who’d pulled Malik out of the SUV knocked sharply on the van’s ceiling and the driver took off. Once they cleared the lot and got onto the street, the man sighed and leaned back with a satisfied chuckle. He flicked on a slim pen light, illuminating his face. Malik narrowed his eyes, studying him. Savior? Or executioner?

The man’s teeth gleamed in the light as he smiled. “Bashir sends his regards.”

Malik stared at him as the blood roared in his ears, hardly daring to believe it. “What do you mean?”

“He initiated emergency procedures, orchestrated this whole thing from behind bars, right under the Americans’ noses.” The smile widened. “And here you are, safe and sound once more. Once you reach the safe location, you’ll finally be able to take command.”

****

Alex’s whole body was strung tight as Gage drove him and Hunter from the accident site back to the hotel. Having just seen Grace face-to-face and wrapping his arms around her the way he’d dreamed of for so long, being forced to watch her walk away from him again was the cruelest torture. He felt like he was being torn in half. There was the rational, civilized part of him that told him to give her space, time to cool down before they talked tonight.

Then there was the primal, innate part of him that howled in agony at being separated from her again, even for only a few hours. He’d always been careful to keep that part of him locked deep inside where no one else could see it. Until now. Both men riding up front were a pointed reminder of that.

The atmosphere in the SUV was tense, the silence brittle. He saw Hunter and Gage exchange another questioning glance, then Hunter finally turned in his seat to stare at Alex. “So, care to fill us in on what the fuck that was all about?”

Alex let out a deep breath. When he’d come back to the vehicle after Grace left, both the guys had gaped at him like they’d never seen him before. He wasn’t surprised, since they’d seen him reflexively haul her out of that cab and grab hold of her like he was afraid someone might try to tear her from his arms. “Dr. Grace Fallon,” he answered tightly, knowing he owed them that much.

“Uh-huh.” Hunter pulled off his shades, those light brown eyes pinning Alex. “Who is she?”

“A chemical engineer, now working for the U.N. as a chemical weapons inspector.” Alex also knew exactly
why
she was here. He’d made it his business to find out from the moment a source at the NSA had confirmed she was in Islamabad.

Hunter kept staring at him with an impatient “get real” look that said he wasn’t buying that bland description. “She’s more than that.”

Gage snorted. “Way more. Fuck, man, tell us. We want details.”

Obviously she was
more
to him, and anyone who’d seen his reaction to her a few minutes ago would realize it. But he wasn’t going to spill the details to anyone, not even these men whom he trusted with his life. Some things were just too personal, too raw.

Alex bit back a sigh and looked away to stare out the window. “Yeah.” He wasn’t going to tell them that she was the woman he’d never gotten over. The one he’d fallen so fast and hard for that every memory he had of her was permanently seared into his brain. Even four years ago he’d recognized that she was
the one
, the woman he could see himself settling down with to make a life together. Having already been through a bad marriage and a divorce, that stunning revelation had certainly knocked him on his ass.

But just when it seemed like life couldn’t get any better, everything had suddenly gone to hell, and there hadn’t been a single thing he could do to stop it. All this time later, losing Grace was still the biggest regret of his life. One he knew he’d never get over. Now that she was here in Islamabad, he had to make things right, had to fight for her.

When it was clear Alex wasn’t going to say anything else, Hunter finally let it go and faced forward again. The rest of the ride passed in silence.

In his hotel room shower, Alex tipped his head back to let the hot spray of water pour over his hair and face, and groaned in relief. It’d been a bitch of a day so far and he was running on less than a total of six hours’ sleep for the past three nights. The pounding water beat down on him, easing the sore, tight muscles in his neck and shoulders. His mind, however, was another story. It wouldn’t slow down, constantly spinning at a hundred miles an hour. And of everything that had happened over the past few days, seeing Grace was what he kept coming back to.

God, it was so hard to believe he’d been able to look into those beautiful pale aqua eyes again, hold her in his arms after all this time…

Now she was here and he had one final shot. Damn, the mere memory of all those soft curves pressed against him today made his cock so hard it hurt. He braced a hand on the tile wall and reached between his legs with the other. He fisted himself and stroked the rigid flesh, letting his mind take him back to that incredible night they’d spent in each other’s arms in Mombasa, before the attack had shattered both their lives forever.

That single, too-brief night had been the culmination of weeks of intense build-up for them, and it had resulted in the hottest sex he’d ever had. But it had been way more than physical for both of them. He’d never felt so connected to a woman as he had to Grace that night. Her naked body had been soft and giving beneath him as she arched on the plush hotel room carpet of his room and begged for more. The longing and absolute trust on her face as she finally relinquished control to him on that final night together had filled empty places inside him he’d never known existed until her.

Even as he took her he’d understood the magnitude of what it meant. She’d just gotten a legal separation from a husband who hadn’t touched her in nearly a year, and Alex had been working undercover for seven months. They’d been starved for each other. He’d reveled in the way her eyes had gone all hazy as he’d pinned her hands above her head and finally slid into her tight, slick body, making her his at last. Everything about it had been intense. Something primal and untamed inside him had demanded he imprint himself on her, claim her in a way she’d feel forever.

Pleasure swelled as the images rushed onward. Alex squeezed his aching flesh harder, his strokes rough and urgent. Her breathless gasps sounded in his head, the soft cry of surrender coming from her throat as she gave herself to him. His breathing sped up, his muscles tightening as release built deep inside him. But just as he neared the edge, his mind fast forwarded to the night when he’d finally been allowed into her hospital room after the terror attack. The look of betrayal and utter devastation on her face when she’d looked at him was like a knife to the gut. His hand froze around his erection, his breath halted. And just that fast the pleasure disappeared.

Muttering a curse, Alex shoved the image from his mind. He released his rapidly deflating cock and grabbed the little bottle of shampoo from the shelf in the corner. Even though he scrubbed his hair and body clean, there was nothing he could do to wash away what that stricken look on Grace’s face had done to him for the past four years.

He toweled off and dressed, mentally rehearsing what he would say when he met her at her hotel shortly. He’d gone over it at least a dozen times throughout the afternoon, and had changed it that many as well. When he’d seen that car hit her cab today, he’d almost lost it. It’d been his fault; the cab driver had seen the SUV coming after them and instinctively tried to escape, resulting in the collision.

The thought of anything or anyone ever hurting her again made him insane. He’d never reacted to a woman the way he had with Grace. It shook him that he still didn’t know how to control that part of himself. Without even trying she’d brought out every base aspect of his personality, roused everything he kept hidden behind his cool, detached veneer. With her, there was no control, and that’s what scared him. He never lost control. Couldn’t afford to. And yet just by being in the same room with him, Grace managed to reduce him to the primal, territorial animal that lurked in his core. No matter what happened, he had to keep that part of him chained down when he saw her tonight.

Stepping out of the humid bathroom, he heard his phone buzzing over on the dresser. He strode across the room to get it, finalizing exactly what he was going to say to start the conversation tonight. He had to make her listen. Had to make her understand that he’d been more authentic with her than anyone else on earth, even his ex-wife. With Grace, he had no defenses. In some ways it made her more of a threat to him than Hassani had ever been.