“I think I’m close—”
“You think? You’d better know! We’ve only got one chance. I’m guessing you remember what’ll happen if you fail me.”
“Why all the mind games? It’d be a hell of a lot easier to just go in and get it over with.”
“Are you questioning my methods? Because you’re not indispensable. Nobody is.”
SOMETHING SOFT ROCKED against his side, rousing him. His mouth felt stuffed with cotton and his stomach clenched. Beneath the nauseating smell of mildew and rotten wood, he noticed a sweet, familiar scent.
He tried to push through the drowsiness, but whoever had filled his mouth with cotton had put lead weights on his eyelids. He wanted to turn over, but he was too tired.
The unmistakable supple firmness of a female body rocked against him again. “Eee!”
“Mindy, sugar,” Deke mumbled. “Move over.”
Whoa. A sharp blade of reality sliced through his mental fog. That wasn’t right—on so many levels. For one thing, his tongue wasn’t working, so all he’d managed to do was grunt unintelligibly.
“Eee, ake uk,” she retorted.
What was she saying? Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe he was.
“Okay,” he whispered, smiling drowsily to himself. “You know what happens when you don’t move over.” Anticipating her giggles and kisses, he turned—or tried to.
He couldn’t move.
He wasn’t in bed. He sure wasn’t in bed with Mindy. That hadn’t happened in a long, long time.
So where the hell was he?
More shards of reality ripped through his brain. The flash of gunpowder. The biting sting in his cheek.
He forced his eyes open. It was dark. Totally dark.
Danger! His heart rate skyrocketed and his Special Forces training kicked in.
Judging by the way his head wobbled like a bobblehead doll, he figured he’d been drugged. He clenched his jaw and worked to gather his thoughts.
The gunpowder. The sting. He’d been shot with a tranquilizer gun. Ah, hell.
He bit down on his tongue, using the pain to clear his brain. Giving in to drugs—or fatigue, or torture—in combat rescue missions could be fatal. Not only to the rescuer, but also to the innocents depending on him for their safety, their protection, their very lives.
Before he could help anyone else, he had to assess his own condition. He needed to take inventory.
Blood? No stickiness or wet warmth.
Broken bones? He shifted enough that his arms ached and his legs cramped. No.
Other injuries? Nope. Just the sting from the tranq dart. That and the drug it had delivered.
Location? Somewhere dark and damp.
Position? Tied up—arms behind his back, and gagged. He pushed his dry tongue against the cloth in his mouth. Gagged tight. Then, gingerly, he moved his legs—and nearly fell off the crate.
That explained the cramps. His ankles were tied.
Mission? Not quite as easy. What was he doing here, tied up and drugged?
“Eee!”
Mindy. Her voice ripped the haze from his brain. That was it. He’d come here to rescue her. Novus Ordo had kidnapped her to get to him.
Her soft warmth was close—way too close for comfort. Her shoulder was touching his. Judging by her restricted movements and incoherent mutterings, she was tied up and gagged, too.
He wanted to reassure her, but that would be a waste of breath with the gag in his mouth. So he spent his energy getting rid of it. He rubbed his mouth and chin against his shoulder, not easy with his hands tethered behind his back.
His neck and jaw ached like a sonofabitch, and the skin on his chin was raw by the time the cloth peeled away from his tongue and lips.
His throat was too dry to swallow. “Mindy? You all right?” he croaked.
Her answer was a frustrated growl.
“Okay, okay, just a second.” He scooted closer and twisted until he was leaning heavily against her shoulder.
Another not-so-good idea. But this time it was because he got a whiff of that tangerine bath stuff she always used. He bent his head and nuzzled her cheek, feeling for her gag with his mouth.
Soft, warm, tangerine sweetness. That solved the dry-mouth issue. Her familiar scent made his mouth water and his body tighten in immediate, familiar response. He clenched his jaw and swallowed a groan of frustration. Sex had never been the problem between them.
It sure as hell hadn’t been the solution.
Mindy stiffened at his frustrated moan, slamming his brain with a harsh reminder that this wasn’t old times, it was deadly serious.
But she didn’t lash out at him or try to move away. In fact, she angled her head to give him better access to the cloth that gagged her.
He bit and tugged at it with his teeth until it began to loosen. He tried to hold his breath, tried to ignore the soft, sensual tickle of her hair against his nose and cheek.
After a lot of tugging and nibbling and some extremely uncomfortable brushing of his mouth against her lips, cheeks and chin, he finally got her gag loose.
When he straightened, his head felt clearer, although wherever they were was dark as the cargo hold of a C-17 transport plane at midnight. The only light was pitifully dim and came from a window high above their heads.
The smell of mildew and dirt chased away Mindy’s familiar, evocative scent.
“Basement,” he muttered. They had to be in a basement.
Mindy groaned and wriggled against him.
“Min? Are you okay?” he asked, squinting in the darkness. He could barely make out the silhouette of her face. Her dark clothes blended into a pool of shadows just below her shoulders. “Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Just practically broke my arms when he tied me up.” Her normally husky voice was soft and raspy.
And sexy as hell.
Deke cursed to himself. What a chump he was. After all this time, his ex-wife could still turn him on just by talking.
She coughed. “By the way, thanks for involving me in your little adventure.”
And she could still tick him off.
He took a deep breath and winced when the blast of air sent a piercing ache through his temples. “Here we go again,” he muttered.
“Don’t even try to tell me this doesn’t involve one of your rescues,” she rasped.
“You think I’d put you in danger if I could help it?”
“What I think is that you’ve gotten yourself in over your head again. You’re never going to learn that you can’t save everybody. And even if you could, it wouldn’t fill up that hole inside you.”
Deke grimaced. It was an old argument, and he’d be damned if he let her lead him down that road again.
He raised his gaze to hers and curved his lips in a confident smile, prepared to give her back a smart retort. But even in the dimness he could see the fear that darkened her olive-green eyes. The same fear he’d heard in her voice. It knocked the confidence right out of him.
“Min,