The Flyboy's Temptation (15 page)

19

H
OPE
KNEW
J.T.
had lingering questions—conflicts, even—but she was too emotionally strung out to tackle them right now.

The trauma of the past forty-eight hours was something she didn't want to face, and J.T.'s arms seemed the safest place at the moment.

Especially when tonight was the night they were raiding Anso's compound.

They all had their pregame rituals, apparently.

J.T. had chosen to spend his with Hope.

She didn't want to read too much into his decision, but she was happy that he was there with her.

The option wasn't available, but if it were, Hope would walk away from this cursed place and forget she'd ever stepped foot on its soil.

Forget about the virus.

Forget about Anso.

Forget about what he planned to do with it.

But she couldn't do that.

Win or lose...it was all going down tonight.

Stop thinking.

Hope willed her brain to shut down, if only for this moment, these precious hours before go time.

“Kiss me, J.T.,” she murmured as he tenderly helped her to the bed. His kisses were soft, almost reverent, and she sighed with pleasure as the sweetness of the stolen moment almost brought tears to her eyes.

They both knew the score—they were destined to crash and burn—but right now there was no denying that the thirst that raged between them was impossible to quench. They would have to ride it out to the bitter end, whatever that might be.

J.T. was her willing servant, kissing, touching, teasing, and yet he lost nothing in the manner of his masculinity as he worshipped her body. She thrilled at the sensual taking, the primal understanding that their bodies were meant to fit together in the most perfect way.

Hope simply drifted—no, plummeted—into utter pleasure, gasping as J.T. plundered her feminine folds, sinking between her thighs, marauding her core with that clever tongue until she was twisting and moaning, losing herself to the terrible sweetness of her climax.

Her chest heaved with the violence of her release as her entire body tingled and tensed as endorphins flooded her senses, blotting out every ache, every lingering fear. For a blissful moment, she was simply a vessel for extreme pleasure and she basked in the glow of that primal explosion.

“I'm addicted to you,” J.T. admitted in a tight voice as he hungrily took her mouth, her own musk clinging to his lips, causing her to flush with fresh desire. “I don't think I'll ever get enough.”

She knew that bittersweet feeling—that inescapable knowledge—and wrapped her arms around him tightly, begging him to sink into her, to impale her with his cock until they were one.

Hope gasped as the feeling of being filled, stretched and taken started a new chain reaction of bliss. Her tightness clasped the turgid girth of his cock, milking him with loving abandon as they worked in tandem, giving to each other to accomplish one goal.

J.T.'s hips flexed as he thrust against her, going balls deep, shuddering with a groan as he withdrew, only to plunge deeper still. His broad shoulders braced him above her with perfect balance and Hope was struck by the sheer beauty of this incredible man.

He wasn't the kind of man you fell in love with, but Hope found her heart stirring. There was far more to J. T. Carmichael than he liked to let on. And it was that private person, the one who gave more than he took and risked his life for a near stranger in need, who was the person she was falling for.

Scared at the implication of such an admission, she clung to him even harder, afraid that she was making an even bigger mistake than creating the world's most dangerous virus.

But soon she could think of nothing more than the feel of J.T. buried inside her and she happily lost herself to the sensation of her inner core swelling with need as she tumbled into another release just as J.T. found his.

J.T. gasped, moaning her name as his wild thrusts slowly stopped, and he rolled to his back beside her. His chest rose and fell sharply as he tried to catch his breath, as overwhelmed as she by the explosive climax.

For a long moment, neither talked. Maybe they both were chewing on the same thought, the same worry, but neither was ready to tackle the conversation because they both knew the answer.

A tear snaked its way down her cheek and she wiped it away, her throat closing with emotion.

“I didn't think of the potential ramifications,” she admitted in a small voice. Her statement could've applied to her work on the virus or the fact that she was falling in love with J.T. and she didn't clarify.

In answer, J.T. gathered her in his arms, but remained silent.

* * *

T
HEY
MANAGED
TO
get the blueprints for the compound through a local Realtor who had connections to the contractor who'd built the house. It took greasing some palms, but they managed to make it worth his while to hand over the schematics.

Teagan and the crew had brought guns and were properly outfitted with enough of an arsenal to invade a small country. That was the upside to their collectively deadly military training—they knew how to handle themselves in a tight spot.

And wouldn't you know it, these crazy bastards actually missed getting shot at.

Kirk hefted his M16 and grinned, looking like a proud father. “Look at this baby. Isn't it a beauty? I call it the ‘terrorist special'—able to mow down entire camps with one mag.”

“I ain't gonna lie—it's a thing of beauty,” Harris admitted, eyeing the assault rifle with envy. “But I'm a traditionalist. Nothing better than a good ole AK-47.”

J.T. preferred the familiar comfort of his Glock. A bullet fired at high velocity, no matter where it was shot from, usually did the trick.

Ricardo had brought his own firepower and he had the look of a kamikaze pilot ready to go down with his plane. The grieving father didn't care if this was a one-way trip, but J.T. didn't want the guy to die. Ricardo was a good man and he deserved answers. God willing, he'd get some.

“Let's go over the plan one more time,” Teagan said, all business. “Kirk and Harris will come with me and we'll take the south flank. Ricardo, J.T. and Ty will come around the north, clearing the way for Hope to get to the lab. This area here—” he pointed to the blueprints “—is the most vulnerable to entry. Chances are since your escape, there are probably dogs and more guards. Try to get in and out as quickly and quietly as possible. Do what you have to to stay alive, but try to limit the casualties. Let's remember, there might be civilians in this place being held against their will.”

Ricardo reminded them, “Anso DeLeon is mine. If things don't go to plan, don't wait for me. I know the score. Whatever happens, just getting my chance to kill the bastard is enough reward. I've made peace with my god. You best do the same.”

“My god encourages me to drink whiskey when I feel the need to confess something and then the feeling passes. Besides, the Almighty can be just as easily found in the bottle of whiskey as he can in a church,” Harris said. “You ought to try it sometime.”

“Leave the man to his beliefs. Just because you've renounced your faith, doesn't mean everyone else has,” Ty said. “Let's hit it.”

“I haven't renounced anything,” Harris disagreed, grumbling as he climbed into the vehicle. “I'm on sabbatical.”

They headed for the deep jungle, taking care to hide the vehicle before they set out on foot to the interior of the compound.

As expected, guards with dogs patrolled the perimeter, but as Teagan had pointed out, there was a place that was not patrolled due to the awkward angle at which the property edged into the dense jungle.

J.T. caught Hope's delicate shudder as no doubt bad memories surfaced. He squeezed her hand silently. No words were necessary.

There were no cameras and the fence was easy enough to scale.

They dropped soundlessly to the ground, except for Ricardo and Hope, whom they had to help up and over. J.T. hated bringing along civilians, as they were often a liability, but Hope wasn't going to stay behind and Ricardo had a score to settle.

The plan was to find a spot inside the perimeter and then wait until midnight to strike. They had the advantage of surprise on their side, but a sleeping household was a more easily contained target.

It was hard for J.T. to sit tight in his hiding spot patiently, but he knew from experience that rushing in half-cocked, juiced up on emotion, was the best way to get yourself shot.

On the last mission, not everyone from his squadron had returned.

Hell, sometimes he still heard Tommy Boy's rebel yell in his mind.

The kid had always been a hothead.

Now he was buried in Arkansas with full military honors, but J.T. was sure his family would much rather have their son back than the useless medal hanging on the wall.

Shaking off the bad memories, he focused on the task at hand.

Deep night fell, and with it, they moved stealthily through the compound, quietly dispatching guards as they went until they could breach the house.

* * *

T
HE
WAITING
HAD
been the worst. Hope wasn't sure how the men had quietly sat like stone statues, waiting for the right time to strike. She'd been about to lose her mind.

Now, as she trailed behind J.T., his silent shadow, she wished she were sitting in the brush again.

It wasn't easy to watch J.T. kill a man, but she tried to remember that it was either the guards or one of them.

And Hope wasn't about to die tonight.

Hope followed J.T. as they headed for the lab, while the others went off in search of Anso, and they reached it without incident. She quickly punched in the code, and the door opened with a soft snick and they went inside.

She immediately went to the cold storage while J.T. covered the door.

She found her travel pack and the special container, but she didn't have time to don a containment suit, as would've been protocol if she weren't stealing the virus from a lunatic.

Hope took care to load the vials into the special container, lock it and jam it into her pack. Slinging the pack over her shoulder, they hightailed it out of the lab to the sound of erupting gunfire.

So much for a quiet in and out.

“I want you to hide,” he told her even as she shook her head vehemently, but he insisted. “I have to make sure Teagan and the guys are okay. I will come back for you.”

“No!” She gripped his arm. “Please don't go.”

“I'm coming back. I just have to make sure that my brother gets out alive.”

“I don't want to separate.”

Hope could hear the panic in her voice, but she didn't care. She couldn't bear the thought of being left alone in this crazy place.

J.T. must've realized she was going to hold her ground and relented with a few choice swearwords, but she didn't care. They weren't separating. Not again.

He didn't look happy about it, but he didn't have time to argue. They followed the sound of gunfire, running across a dead guard here and there, but as luck would have it, four American men came running at full speed in their direction.

They didn't waste time on talk. As soon as J.T. saw them, he skidded to a stop and quickly changed direction, running back to the fence line. One by one they scaled the fence as if it were the easiest thing in the world and then J.T. hoisted Hope up and over with the assistance of his friends.

Within moments they were on the other side of the fence and Hope wasn't even sure how it had happened. The adrenaline rushing through her veins blotted out the fear of being shot. They put distance between themselves and the compound as they ran through the jungle until they found the car they'd stashed and squeezed into the older-model Blazer.

It wasn't until they were driving away that J.T. started talking again. “Where's Ricardo?” But judging by the tone of his voice, he already knew. “He didn't make it?”

“No,” Teagan answered grimly.

“Please tell me one of you killed that son of a bitch DeLeon,” she said, with an uncharacteristically vicious need for revenge. “That man didn't deserve to live another moment.”

“Yeah, Ricardo got him.”

“Well, at least he got what he deserved.”

Before this adventure, Hope had always been more of a liberal, preferring incarceration over capital punishment. Not anymore.

Bad people needed to die.

But what about her? Was Anso right about her purposefully ignoring the true application of the virus she and Tanya had created?

The burden of that question weighed on her shoulders, but the answer scared her more.

Now more than ever, she had to get to the South American lab. “J.T., you have to take me to the lab. We have to get there before we leave this country.”

“I take it our vacation adventure was just extended a little bit?” Kirk asked.

J.T. shared a look with Teagan and nodded grimly. “Gotta finish what we started.”

Grateful, Hope closed her eyes and tried to calm her frantic heart. They would destroy the virus and everything would be all right.

It had to be.

20

K
IRK
AND
H
ARRIS
stayed behind while Teagan and Ty came with J.T. and Hope to the lab. Hope didn't protest the extra people, probably because she knew they were nonnegotiable.

The dirt road was filled with potholes and sections of washboard, which certainly would've deterred the hapless tourist who had gotten on the wrong road, but Hope assured them they were on the right path.

“I memorized the map before I left California. I knew if I ran into trouble, I'd need to know where I was going,” she explained, adding with a slightly sheepish expression, “Another benefit of an eidetic memory.”

“Damn.” J.T. whistled, shaking his head. “I don't even want to know what your IQ is. I might never recover.”

“Are you afraid of smart women?” she asked.

“Only ones I'm attracted to,” he quipped, eliciting a blush on her part.

Teagan rolled his eyes. “Keep it in your pants, Romeo.”

J.T. laughed and Hope averted her eyes, though a secret smile found her lips. God, she was sexy.

An hour on the road and Hope directed them to the gate, giving Teagan the code to punch in. The gate swung open and they rolled through.

“No security?” Ty asked, finding that suspect. “Something doesn't feel right here.”

“It's okay,” Hope assured him. “That gate is electrified. It won't open without the right code and if anyone tries to scale it, they'll fry. So, yeah, don't touch the fence.”

“Good to know.”

They went deeper into the complex and parked in the near-empty parking lot.

“Boy, when you say it's an ultrasecret lab, you aren't joking. The employee picnic must be a real snore,” Teagan said, glancing around. “Are you sure this lab is operational?”

Hope seemed to share his concern. “There should be more employees. C'mon, the entrance is over here.”

She produced a key card from her bag and the door popped open with a soft click.

“The virus storage is on the top level, same as the lab in California,” Hope explained, taking the lead, but J.T. had a weird tingle at the base of his skull that didn't bode well.

He pulled his gun for good measure, and Teagan and Ty did the same.

They took the stairs because J.T. didn't trust the elevator. There was power running through the small complex, but it was a ghost town and that was beyond strange.

Hope slid her key card into the lock and the door opened, but was stopped by something on the other side of the door.

J.T. halted Hope before she could push the door open and directed her behind him. Teagan and Ty flanked him for backup as J.T. pushed against the resistance to open the door.

Hearing nothing but dead silence, J.T. entered the room to find what was causing the resistance.

A body.

Hope stuffed back a scream as she stared at the man in a lab coat sprawled out with dried blood staining the floor.

“Oh, my God!” she gasped, edging away from the blood spill. Then she saw that the dead scientist hadn't been alone. There were two other bodies, another man and a woman, slumped over their stations, staring sightless at the walls. “What happened here?”

“Something bad,” Ty replied darkly. “I say we get the hell out of here before whoever did this comes back.”

“I don't understand... Anso is dead. Who would do this?” Hope asked, panicked. She scanned the room for answers, her gaze desperate. She looked to J.T. “I have to tell Deirdre. There must be some kind of protocol. This room is supposed to be a clean room. There could be contamination.” Suddenly, she lost the panic and hustled to another section of the room.

J.T. went after her. “What is it?”

She opened a closet and pulled out a huge white suit and climbed into it. “I have to make sure that the samples that are housed here haven't been compromised. Stay here.”

“Think again,” J.T. said in a low tone. “You don't know what happened to these people and if there's some dangerous viruses turned loose in that room, you're not going in.”

Hope ignored him and zipped the suit. “I'm the only person qualified to go in there. The suit will keep me safe. I have to know.”

Teagan stopped J.T. “She's right. Let her go. She's the only one who can.”

He didn't care what'd happened here. Dead scientists, dangerous viruses—he wanted to put this place in his rearview mirror, but he knew Hope wasn't going to leave until she knew there hadn't been a breach. “Fine. You've got two minutes and then we're getting the hell out of here.”

Hope pulled the protective cover over her head and walked into the cold storage where the viruses were held.

“I don't like this,” J.T. growled to Teagan.

Ty went to a computer and started nosing around, but came up empty. “Nothing here. Whoever was here didn't much care about what was on the computers.”

Hope reappeared and pulled her cover free. “Someone destroyed the samples. There's nothing left.”

An idea came to J.T., one that was borderline crazy, but considering their options seemed almost brilliant.

“Destroy your samples, too. It'll look like whoever broke in was responsible for everything,” J.T. said, shocking Hope. “It's the best way to come out smelling like a rose in this deal. Otherwise, you'll always worry that someone out there is abusing the virus.”

Even though the plan had been to destroy the samples, Hope suddenly hesitated, turning to him almost desperately. “This is my life's work,” she said, torn. “I mean, not only mine, but Tanya's, too. And it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Tessara. Maybe it's not right to destroy it.”

“No one needs that kind of power,” J.T. said in a low tone. “Especially a company like Tessara.”

Teagan urged them to make a decision. “Time's short, man. Shit or get off the pot—we gotta blow this place.”

J.T. met Hope's gaze.
Please destroy it.
Everything hinged on that one decision.

Hope's mouth firmed as she nodded slowly.

“You're right. This is what needs to happen.” She grabbed her pack, pulled her protective hood back on and disappeared into the cold-storage room.