Falling Hard Read online

  “Oh no. It can’t be.” She moved around West but he caught her before she opened the door.

  “Who the hell is that?” he asked in a rough whisper.

  She looked past him to peek through one of the cracks in the wall then sat back down again. “It is.”

  As intel, that explanation sucked. “You need to use more words.”

  “Raheel Najam.” She bit down on her bottom lip.

  West picked up on her nervous energy but still had no idea what he was dealing with here. Since he had more than one problem at work, he needed specifics to at least handle this one. “Who exactly is Raheel Najam?”

  “He works with someone I know.” She kept up the biting thing, tapped her foot against the floor . . . ran through an entire repertoire of panicked gestures.

  He finally pressed a hand on her knee and got her to stop moving around. “Lexi?”

  “A friend of a friend?”

  Much more of this and his head would explode. “Are you telling me or asking me?”

  “You don’t get it.” She knocked into his shoulder as she stood up again. “This is bad.”

  As she turned, he caught her shoulders and forced her to face him. “Why?”

  “The friend he’s a friend of is in the Pakistani army. So is this guy.”

  That should have been confusing. It scared the hell out of West that it wasn’t. “I can’t believe I followed that explanation.”

  “Do you need assistance?” The male voice called out again, this time only a few feet from the door. “There’s a problem at the clinic and I’ve been looking for you.”

  That’s the part West didn’t get. Skardu was about twenty-five miles long. While an American woman might stick out among the two thousand or so people who lived there, they’d been tracked.

  “I’m fine.” She yelled the answer then put a hand over her mouth.

  West nodded to let her know her answer sounded fine. Last thing he needed was her getting plowed under by a new wave of panic.

  “I’m here to help,” Raheel yelled.

  Of course he was. The bastard. The familiarity ticked West off and he refused to think about why.

  West watched the guy move around out there instead. “Exactly how well do you know him?”

  “I told you.”

  She had a habit of saying words and not telling him much, which annoyed the piss out of West. “Not really.”

  “Stay here.” She gave his arm a squeeze then buzzed past him.

  “Don’t—” He started to follow then shrank back so he wouldn’t be immediately visible to anyone in the yard. He’d have to storm out there, and when he did he wanted the element of surprise on his side. Easier to fire a killing shot that way. Though if they had been tracked, Raheel had to know he followed two and not one.

  The brief wait gave West a minute to control the explosion of rage inside him. The woman had meandered her way to here from the clinic, but now, when she wanted to move, she darted out of his grasp at record speed. It was good to know she could move when needed. Problem was, she stood outside and he was inside.

  West went back to looking through one of the cracks. Saw her rush up to the stranger. A man in uniform. An olive green jumpsuit with a belt and a gun strapped to his upper thigh. A visible gun. The patch stood out even from this distance. What looked like a yellow 5 and a picture of a mountain.

  West recognized the insignia of the Pakistani Army Air Aviation No. 5 Squadron, otherwise known as the Fearless Five. The elite team of helicopter pilots that specialized in mountain rescues and could fly up to 20,000 feet. Total badasses. Not the guys he wanted to hunt down and eliminate. He would but he’d be pissed about it.

  She didn’t touch the man but seemed to bow her head as she approached. “Is something wrong?”

  This Raheel kept glancing over her shoulder toward the shed. Right past her. “There’s an issue.”

  “What kind?” With him she sounded deferential, not belligerent.

  Smart woman.

  Raheel gestured toward the front of the property. “I know you have someone with you and you both need to come with me.”

  She was not taking even one step with this guy. West silently started a countdown in his head.

  “Why with you?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Now isn’t the time for questions. We can fix this but we have to leave now.”

  Raheel reached for her and West lunged. He slammed open the door and flew past Lexi. Not giving the guy time to recover from the surprise, he rammed the heel of his hand right at the guy’s neck. One shot and the guy’s hands went to his throat. A guttural rattle escaped his mouth but no other sound came out.

  West landed a second shot with his elbow. Hit the guy right at the back of the neck, and he dropped in a motionless sprawl in the dirt.

  Lexi stared down at the prone form then back up at West. “What did you do that for?”

  Not exactly the grateful reaction he expected. “The guy touched you.”

  “And your plan is to kill everyone in Pakistan who touches me?” She sounded appalled by the idea. The way she screwed up her lips in a look of distaste didn’t seem good either.

  “He’s not dead.”

  Her eyes widened and her head shifted forward. “What?”

  West wasn’t accustomed to having his judgment challenged. From the snap in her voice he half expected her to flag down the nearest Pakistani army truck and have him arrested. Which made him wonder what this guy meant to her. “Raheel is only unconscious.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “You lost me.” Not a surprise since she’d been doing that to him almost from the second they met.

  “You keep injuring people but not finishing them off.”

  She was angry he didn’t kill the guy? “For a sort of doctor who is not really a doctor you have a fixation with seeing people die. You also have a tracker on you.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  They didn’t have time for him to give her the long explanation or pretty up the words. “Where did the men in the clinic touch you?”

  “They didn’t.” She tried to step back from him.

  West caught her before she could get very far. “Lexi, think. Walk through every movement. Did either of the men touch your back or—”

  “Just my arm.”

  That’s all he needed. As gently as possible he moved his hands over her arms. It only took a second. There by her elbow. A small black square. High-tech and very effective. Someone had been tracking her movements—their movements—and he wanted to know why.

  “Ow . . .” She lowered her head, knocking it against the side of his as she rubbed her arm. “What is that?”

  “Looks like your clinic visitors saw you as a threat.” Maybe they wanted her to get away. The other possibility was that someone knew he and Josiah were on the ground and on the move. West hated that option because it meant a mole or a break in the communication trail somewhere. Both very bad options.

  “How am I going to explain this?” She walked around in a circle, muttering about “idiots” and rubbing her forehead.

  None of that clued him into whatever was happening in that head of hers. “When, what, and to whom?”

  “To borrow your staccato delivery, injured army guys, trackers, you.”

  He had no idea what the staccato thing was about, but he did need to make one thing very clear. “You won’t because you will not be here.”

  She stopped and glared at him. “No, you’ll be gone and I’ll be here, which is the problem. I’m thinking attacking Raheel is going to make the clinic break-in story harder to sell.” She blew out a breath and went back to circling. “Damn it.”

  “You’re not staying.” He caught her at the next turn and lowered his head until she gave him eye contact. This was too important to skip over or let her think she had a say. “Lexi, you know that, right? There are two men from our team working outside of Skardu. We’ll pass you of
f to them and they’ll get you out of here and back to the United States while Josiah and I investigate your claims.”

  They went deep with a two-man team on this operation. Even with the climbers coming in and out, foreigners stuck out in Pakistan. They could disguise a lot but not their lethal nature. Four guys with a military look roaming around would raise questions, so he and Josiah had to handle this one alone. Most of Delta team stood ready nearby to pose as climbers preparing for a July expedition on K2, but they wouldn’t take the risk unless necessary. Until then they stayed connected and talked via the communication system—the comm—that tied them all together in-country through their watches and tiny receivers.

  “Investigate my claims?” She didn’t pay attention to anything but West now. “You’re saying you don’t believe me?”

  “You, or your dad . . . someone, made a pretty serious charge about weapons being moved around up here.” The details still didn’t make sense but West would get them later.

  “That was me.”

  “Fine.” Knowing her stubbornness, she probably had managed to pretend her way through this, which was quite something in light of the intelligence community firepower aimed in her direction at the moment. “You think we’re going to get the intel out of you—”

  “Out of me?”

  “—then leave you behind?” He stopped because her brown eyes had gone almost black. Looked like her rage matched his, and could, even on his worst days.

  She lifted her chin. “I’m ignoring that for now except to say my job is here.”

  She was a smart woman, and the fact they were spending two minutes on this subject with an unconscious guy sprawled between them made West’s head pound. “It was. Not anymore.”

  “I hate everything about what you just said.”

  “Okay.” To keep from drawing even more attention West linked his hands under Raheel’s arms and dragged him into the shed. Didn’t tie him down. Didn’t need to. Unless Lexi drove him insane they’d be long gone by the time the other man woke up.

  She pointed a finger at him. “One final time because I feel the need to have the last word: I’m staying here. My work is here.”

  Conscious or unconscious, the woman was leaving Pakistan as soon as he could get her safe transport out. “No.”

  “You can’t just say no.”

  “Watch me.” He was done with this topic and he was sure as hell finished standing out in the open. The rendezvous spot was compromised. That meant one thing. He slipped the small silver disk in his ear and tapped the button on his watch. “Scatter.”

  Her eyes narrowed. They did that a lot when he talked. “What was that about?”

  “New orders.” The comm and the satphone in his pocket were the only options for staying connected to his team. “We need to find somewhere else to hide before the next set meet-up time.”

  “I thought that was now.”

  “We missed this window.” West conducted a quick search of Raheel’s pockets. He came up with a few folded papers and a wallet. He left the latter. “From what this guy was saying, it sounds like someone found one of the bodies I’ve left lying around and—”

  “Nicely done.”

  He almost smiled at the load of sarcasm in her voice. “You need to work on your gratitude.”

  “Or you could listen to me and follow me to the hiding place I was going to suggest. This way.” She held the door open and motioned for him to come back outside. “Trust me.”

  The last time someone said that to him, the day ended buried in a pile of ice and snow. “For the record, I’m not big on trust.”

  She turned and started walking. “Yeah, well. You’ll need to work on that.”

  4

  CLUSTERFUCK. THE word summed up the day so far, and it was just after ten in the morning.

  Ward Bennett turned away from the wall of monitors lining the Warehouse and watched Tasha Gregory, the love of his life, the woman he lived with and his boss at Alliance, walk into the room. The swing of those hips. The slim-fitting tank top and dark utility pants. He could watch her move all damn day.

  Good thing her office sat a building away in Liberty Crossing, the official home of the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia, or he’d break their business-personal separation vow. She had a corner office and a big title. And an ass that made him wild. The combination of her fighter instinct and that face had him going under from the first time he met her.

  She stopped right in front of him and picked the file out of his hands. Didn’t open it, but took it away without so much as blinking. “What do we have?”

  “A mess.” He could give that answer almost every day and have it be correct. That’s what happened when you chased human garbage for a living and didn’t have too many rules outlining how you should do it.

  He fucking loved this job.

  She flipped the file open and started scanning. “You’ll need to be more specific.”

  Since the information in her hand had nothing to do with the men currently on the ground, he put a hand over the page. “West gave the scatter command. He and Josiah separated and are underground. We have radio silence at the moment.”

  “And the doctor?” Tasha looked up, kept going as if he’d never interrupted her. She was a woman who knew how to stay on task no matter what. “Where is he?”

  And there was the newest piece of interesting intel. “She.”

  Tasha’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

  Yeah, he had her attention now. He could tell in every line of her body. In her sharp focus. “Apparently the good doctor’s daughter found her dad’s alarm code and passed the intel exactly as the doctor had been trained to do.”

  “Difference is, the doctor regularly passes intel. He’s on the payroll, so how did his daughter get his codes and his contacts?” Tasha shook her head. “Palmer knows better than to share. We use codes for a reason. No one talks directly with him and nothing can be traced back to his clinic.”

  Ward knew she was venting, but still . . . “I’ve actually read the briefing file.”

  “The daughter could have messed up and ruined everything.” Tasha swore under her breath. “Got herself or our men killed.”

  But Ward knew what Tasha really hated. Someone without clearance and out of their control figured out the go command that got the intel to the right people and eventually on Alliance’s radar. How that happened was a good fucking question, and he didn’t even have a bad answer for her. Dr. Palmer would need to explain his sudden oversharing issue once someone dragged him off Everest.

  Ward had another worry and knew Tasha did, too. “You think this is a setup.”

  She nodded before he finished the sentence. “Could be.”

  With other teams, lesser men, he’d be worried. Not this group. Not with Josiah at point and West on mission. They could probably unseat a long-standing government without even working up a sweat. Ward just hoped they didn’t try that with Pakistan.

  He wasn’t ready to sound that alarm but he’d keep a close watch and send in resources if needed. “West is going to question this woman.”

  “West is the one with her?” Tasha’s hands went to her hips and her head started shaking. “Do we think that’s a great idea?”

  She clearly didn’t. Ward was at about fifty/fifty on that one. “He’ll keep her safe.”

  With a flip of her wrist she threw the file, sending it through the air to land on the corner of the desk behind him. “I was talking about the part where he might scare her to death.”

  Ah, yeah. That was totally possible.

  “But she’ll be alive, won’t she?” Ward leaned against the nearest desk, ignoring the movements of the administrative team around the room and the rumble of conversation as the rest of Bravo team, led by Ford Decker, walked into the weight room.

  Tasha rolled her eyes. “I’m sure that will be a great comfort to her when she’s curled in a ball in the corner.”

  Coming from the woman who on
ce drugged him and tied him to a chair, the comment struck Ward as amusing. “Since when do you care about an asset’s feelings?”

  She smiled. “Never.”

  “That’s my girl.” She was. In every way. And so damn competent.

  Tasha pushed for the setup of Alliance after she—as an MI6 officer—and Ward—as a CIA operative—clashed on a job in Fiji. She’d decided the U.S. and the UK should share resources and work together, off the books and without all the confining rules of either agency . . . so Alliance was born.

  Now, Ward was just about to break their private agreement and tell her how hot she looked in that shirt when Harlan Ross walked up. He was Ward’s co-administrator of Alliance and until very recently a lifetime MI6 officer. Together they took care of the day-to-day operation from the Warehouse, a building on the far side of the locked-down intelligence compound that housed Alliance.

  The Warehouse sat surrounded by big gates and armed guards, with all the high-tech security gadgets of the main building. But there was no question that Alliance qualified as the bastard child of the intelligence community. Almost no one knew of its existence, which meant few rules and little accountability, but also no rescue when things went to shit.

  Good thing they only hired the best. People who walked into danger knowing, without flinching, they might never walk out again.

  Harlan held out a note to Ward. “Pearce is at it again.”

  Now that Ward knew who the message was from, he could ignore it. He intended to do just that as he balled the paper in his fist. “I say we just shoot him.”

  Tasha snorted. “You should have done that when you had the chance.”

  “Now you tell me.” If he had to do it again, he would. Put a bullet right in Pearce’s forehead and end the motherfucker and all the grief that went along with him.

  Jake Pearce, the piece of shit former agent who tried to single-handedly take down the entire U.S. intelligence network with a toxin set loose in Liberty Crossing. After a lifetime of service he turned and justified the betrayal by arguing that he needed to clean out the community. But his motives were much more basic than that. Greed and hate.