Facing Fire Read online

  Since he had about fifteen seconds to make the life-or-death decision, he ignored the risks. Just like he always did. If she tried to throw him off, she’d be the one landing in the street. Simple as that. Survival was a bloodthirsty game and he’d teach her that the hard way, if needed.

  He watched as she tugged an oversized sweatshirt over her shirt and grabbed a pair of sneakers. When she made a second run for the closet, he stopped her. “Enough.”

  “I need pants.”

  “Not if finding them means you’re going to die in them.” Before she could argue, he slipped the straps over her shoulders and tightened the harness around her waist before clipping it in place. In the next second he had the rope connected and his arm wrapped around her. He waited for the all-clear signal from Mike to step out on the thin ledge.

  “This is—”

  Josiah swung them outside before she could lodge the rest of her new complaint. For a supposed captive she sure did argue a lot. He’d watched her face as determination replaced terror. Hot, he had to admit. And looking at her face kept him from focusing on the rest of her. The photos in the file didn’t come close to capturing her energy. Up close he could name the color of her hair—strawberry blond.

  The cool chill of the night punched against him as he held on. He ignored the street noise below and the street lights highlighting the building’s gothic façade. “Keep those arms around my waist and don’t let go.”

  Instead of fighting him or answering, she nearly strangled him in a full-body clench. Her legs wrapped around his hips and she tucked her head under his chin. Not an inch of air separated their bodies. He was pretty sure she had her eyes closed and thought he heard her praying.

  Not really one to offer up reassurances, he tried anyway. “You’re fine.”

  “I am not fine.”

  The words vibrated against his neck as her hold tightened. He didn’t even know that was possible. She’d clamped down on him with every muscle. Much more of this and they’d be stuck hanging there. “I need my arms.”

  “Fine.”

  But she didn’t adjust her grip. Didn’t seem to care that he basically held both of their body weights as they dangled sixty feet or so above the ground. “I’m going to climb up, hand over hand, so you need to—”

  She glanced up before balancing her face against his chest again. “Not possible.”

  Her faith in his abilities didn’t exactly fill him with pride. “Trust me.”

  “I already am.”

  That sounded better. “Sutton, I need you to calm down. Breathe.”

  “Right.” She gulped in two large breaths. “Shouldn’t we be moving?”

  He should have stuck Mike with this assignment. Would have except there was something about Sutton that made him want to hang close. “We’re waiting for the elevator.”

  Her head shot up again. This time she pinned him with an angry glare. “Don’t talk to me like that. You come into my house waving a gun. People shoot at me. You grab me and climb up a wall.”

  Her anger switched his focus. While she concentrated on hating him—something she appeared to excel at—he started climbing. Pulled them up and out of potential danger in long draws as he used his feet to walk up the side of the building. Not the easiest task but he’d experienced much worse. At least this time he had a rope. He’d done this trick with bare hands and no safety more than once.

  “Are you listening to me?” she asked.

  He really wasn’t. She’d been talking and he’d been scanning the area while listening for sounds of gunfire. He heard the sounds of a struggle and figured Mike was handling the second wave just fine.

  “Almost there.” Not really but he hoped it might placate her.

  “What?” Her gaze dropped and she swallowed. “I’m not looking.” She made a choking noise. “Why did I look?”

  “We’re not that high.” There, he could be comforting, or whatever she called it.

  “You’ve lost your mind.”

  Or not . . . “Any chance you could lower your voice?”

  “I should be screaming for help and for my life.”

  He walked them up the side, in the shadows. Past a window and the older couple sitting side by side on the small couch reading newspapers. Josiah waited until they cleared hearing range to whisper. “I thought you were a PI.”

  She stiffened for a second. “So?”

  “Shouldn’t stuff like this be second nature to you?” He knew her skills didn’t rival his, but she had some.

  He’d seen her gun license and read through the recommendations about her work. People described her as tough and practical. Very focused. He guessed she wouldn’t shut down due to panic. Hell, he’d watched back inside as she morphed from scared to sarcastic in a flash. Made him think he’d have to be careful about believing anything she said or did. Not that he wouldn’t be anyway.

  “I must have skipped the falling-to-your-death class in training.” The hold she used on him suggested this fear, at least, came from a very real place.

  He tried soothing her even though he sensed this fell into the lost cause category. “But you know you’re safer with me than in your flat.”

  “I never said that.”

  But he felt it. She’d relaxed into him. The soft curves of her body melted into his. He tried not to notice the lean legs or press of her chest against his. The scent of flowers that wound around her and the long soft hair. All irrelevant. Distractions only. He needed to bring her in, not feel her up. No matter how much she broke his concentration.

  Whatever her fears and doubts, real or faked, she clung to him. And she didn’t try to knock him off balance. She won points for that. If Benton had sent her, she held back, not quite ready to launch her attack just yet. But Josiah would keep his guard up.

  His muscles burned by the time he reached the upper ledge of the roof. He hooked one arm around the lip as he checked for shooters hiding there. “Here we are.”

  She still hadn’t looked down. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  That would really make this day perfect. “I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

  Not willing to listen to one more argument, he used the arm supporting her legs to push her up. With a hand on her ass, he held her in place while she wrestled to get her arms up on the ledge. One more gentle shove and she went over, falling to safety.

  “There you go.” He vaulted over after her, not giving her a chance to drop him over the side.

  His feet hit the roof and his gaze went wondering. Instead of standing, Sutton lay on her side. There, on the dark roof with her pale legs curled to her chest, she didn’t move.

  He crouched down, half concerned and half ready for battle. “Sutton, everything really is going to be fine.”

  “I know you think that’s comforting, but it’s not.” She sat up and pushed her long hair out of her face. “Not coming from the guy who just engaged in a gun battle in my apartment.”

  “I never fired my weapon.” Seemed like an obvious point to him.

  Danger knocked and they ran, a response that grated against his last nerve. If people shot at him, he shot back and aimed to kill or at least cause enough pain to end the fight with a win in his favor. Racing out of danger struck him as an invitation for more danger. But the order had come down from Tasha that Sutton was to be protected at all costs until she could be questioned.

  Informal rendition. Get her somewhere safe, then extract the information. Neutral-sounding words for the acts he sometimes carried out to gain the needed intelligence. Looking at her now, with her arms wrapped around her raised knees and her face drained of any color, his previous rock-hard belief in her complicity in Benton’s plans wavered.

  She eyed him up. “You can be somewhat obtuse.”

  He’d been called worse. His own father barely spoke to him, and that was before his uncle’s death. “Possibly.”

  “If you let me go, I’ll say it was a random shooting and leave you and the American out of it.�
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  “And then what?” he asked because he had no idea if she understood the danger she’d launched herself into by taking Benton’s file.

  “You and the American go on with your lives, and I go on with mine.”

  After everything—the shot, the climb—she couldn’t still believe tomorrow morning would come and life would resume as normal. Josiah decided right then he’d never understand women. “Wait, who?”

  “In my head you’re the Brit. Your friend is the American.” She looked around but no one else stood on the roof with them.

  That was the plan. They separated and reinforcements moved in. Even now Mike would have battled attackers and be waiting somewhere for a signal to meet up again. The whapping sound of the helicopter blades should cut through the night at any moment. These things, whether they be regular plans or contingency plans or emergency plans, all had been practiced and rehearsed. The Alliance didn’t like surprises but every member could handle a crisis.

  He looked at his crisis-of-the-moment and made a judgment call. “Josiah.”

  Her forehead wrinkled as she frowned at him. “What?”

  “You can call me Josiah.” He reached down to help her up.

  She pushed his hand away. “I don’t want to know your name.”

  Only she would find an olive branch offensive. Once again he thought he’d said something to calm her down when all he really did was wind her up. The cycle kept repeating and he was ready to break the habit. “You’re beyond difficult.”

  “Right back at ya.”

  But the backbone, the underlying sense that she’d try to take him out if she thought she could, didn’t exactly turn him off. Something about the heightened survival instinct appealed to him almost as much as the body and that face. Big eyes, upturned nose . . . freckles.

  “Listen to me.” This time he didn’t give her a choice. He slipped a hand under her elbow and lifted her to her feet before she froze solid to the ground. The woman was going to have pneumonia by morning at this rate. “We need to keep moving.”

  She peeked over the side of the building but quickly backed up into him again. “We are four floors off the ground.”

  He had no idea how she kept getting this simple point wrong. “Five, actually.”

  She sighed at him. Didn’t even try to hide her frustration or seem to remember he was the one in charge. “Again with the counting. Do you want me to throw up?”

  He refused to talk about that possibility. “A helicopter will pick us up and—”

  “I’m not going anywhere else with you.” She took a step away from him. Looked like she wanted to put two buildings between them. “Not in a car, not a helicopter. Not on a bike.”

  For a smart lady she seemed to be missing some obvious facts. “Someone just tried to kill you in your own apartment.”

  She frowned at that. “I thought they were trying to kill you.”

  “Probably both of us, which means you don’t have a choice.” That was an understatement. He had Delta team members stationed in the street and nearby. Josiah stayed connected to it all through the small communication device in his ear.

  She crossed her arms in front of her, closing off. Probably trying to keep warm. “I will scream my head off.”

  “It won’t stop me. Nothing is going to stop me from getting the man I want.” She needed to understand that. They all did.

  For the team this was about international security. The world needed Benton shredded and the pieces buried. With Benton’s newest round of threats they all had something—someone—to lose. People they cared about who now lived under a cloud, just waiting for a bomb to be strapped to them. Josiah had already lost.

  He’d stood just days ago and watched the one man who’d encouraged him to be more than his name be blown apart. For only the second time in his life, Josiah stood helpless, and this time he didn’t have the excuse of being young or untrained. He’d carved a career out of being in control and eliminating threats. All a reaction to being a beat too late to help his mother. But it had happened again.

  This was personal. The Alliance wanted to take out Benton to save the world from his wrath. Josiah needed the guy dead to wipe out the twisted memory of his uncle’s face right at the end. Of the dragging loss that Josiah tried push out of his head so he could keep functioning. Of his most recent failure to protect someone he loved.

  “Tell me what’s really going on.”

  Josiah answered the question she asked rather than the one spinning in his head. “Bane, if he’s your boss or an assignment or whatever. He’s not who you think he is.”

  “The terrorist thing?” She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

  Even in the dark, from a short distance, he could see the goose bumps on her legs. She had to be freezing. He shouldn’t care, but he did. “You sound skeptical but I should be the one questioning you.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Laying out his doubts and all the evidence that pointed to her being a coconspirator didn’t make sense. If she truly was innocent, none of it would make sense to her. And if she wasn’t innocent . . . he didn’t want to think about that possibility. But either way, one thing remained true. “Right now, I’m your best chance at living until morning.”

  She bounced up and down a little on the balls of her feet. Blew on her hands. Even tucked them under her armpits. “I’ve been protecting myself for a long time now and have never needed bodyguards and machine guns.”

  The last comment grabbed his attention away from all the moving and the way her hips swayed and those short shorts rode up her thighs. “This isn’t a machine gun.”

  “Oh my God.” She shot him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding scowl as her hands dropped to her sides. “Is that the point?”

  “Apparently not.” She didn’t like details or deal in facts. Fine, he got it, but she wasn’t exactly the easiest woman to read. Her emotions seemed to bounce all over the place. “For the record, you were more docile downstairs.”

  “I was stunned.”

  He guessed she’d been acting and biding her time. A smart move, if so. “You’re not now?”

  “I also thought I might be able to go along with you and safely get out of whatever this is.” She blew out a long, exaggerated breath. “But now . . .”

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to let me go, are you?” Her shoulders fell as she asked.

  Josiah didn’t see a reason to lie, so he didn’t. “No. Not until I know if you’re a good actress or really innocent.”

  “I’m angry and want to throw you off this roof.” But she didn’t let go of his hands. “That makes you smile? And you think Bane, or this Benton, is the psychopath.”

  This time Josiah backed away. “He’s pure fucking evil.”

  “He’s not the one who threatened me with a gun.”

  Being compared to that Benton asshole sent Josiah’s temper flaring. The heat rose inside him and his usual firm grip on his control slipped. “Only a matter of time since you took his file. Honestly, that was a big mistake.”

  “No kidding.” Her head tilted to the side and that long hair fell off her shoulder. “What do you want from me?”

  “For now, cooperation.” But that was just the start of the list. He needed answers. Lots of them.

  “I can’t go with you.” She shook her head.

  “You’d rather die?” He didn’t bother to mention that the death could be by his hands. If she didn’t work with them, they would have to assume she still worked for Benton. Josiah vowed no one associated with that guy was going to walk away.

  “I have work to do and no guarantee that if I go off with you I’ll come back. Remember the part where I don’t know you?”

  She had an active imagination, but she wasn’t exactly wrong. The Alliance could store people in places they’d never be found again. That’s the ending that faced her if she held out or backed Benton. “I don’t know you either, so it’s up to you.”

&nbs
p; “I’m not a victim.”

  “I never said you were.” This time he held her hand, not her wrist, when he touched her. He rubbed her cold skin with his palms. “Look, Sutton. I do not want to hurt you. If you are who you say you are and just stumbled over this file, if you cooperate and give us what we need, we’ll keep you safe.”

  “We?”

  “I’m not alone.”

  She snorted. “Of course not.”

  “Mike and I are part of a group.” Josiah stopped there. Talking about the Alliance and the work tasked to it couldn’t happen. They worked underground. Most of the people in MI6 and the CIA didn’t know about the Alliance’s existence. Some of those who did resented the Alliance’s ability to operate outside of the law. Josiah couldn’t blame them. Not being bound by the same structure and rules gave the Alliance a lot of room to get a job done, which explained why they’d been so successful.

  Now it was Benton’s turn.

  “Mike is the American?” she asked.

  The telltale sound of the helicopter blades moved on to Josiah’s radar. The helicopter came into view. Instead of coming in, it circled per protocol, scouting the area first. “Yes.” He pointed in the general direction of the sound. “And our ride is here.”

  6

  SUTTON MENTALLY ran through her options. Jumping off the roof was not one of them, unfortunately. That left following Josiah . . . for now. If she could find a way out or a way to break loose from him, she would. Until then she intended to stick close to the guy with the gun since other guys with guns continued to run around the building after them.

  She shifted her weight, trying to warm up against the cold night wind. “Fine.”

  “What question are you answering?”

  The sexy accent didn’t make his sarcasm any less annoying. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You didn’t have a choice.” Before she could shoot a response back at him, he took her hand and started walking. “This way.”

  The walking turned into a jog that they made while crouched low and picking up speed. Her ankle came down hard on a seam in the roof lining and she lost her footing. Her ankle overturned. With her balance shot, she started to fall. Numb and suffering from what she suspected was some sort of adrenaline afterburn, she couldn’t adjust in time. Her body took flight. She would have hit the hard ground but his arms slipped around her. He tugged her up close with his chest pressed against hers.