Damn it, she could not waste the time or emotional energy on romance or even a fling. Right now, she could only focus on working with the Mr. Smiths and Mr. Browns of her profession. She needed to make peace with her past, then move on with her life. Then, and only then, she would find Mr. Right and shift from the field to a desk job so she could settle down into that real family dream she’d missed out on.
Yet those brown eyes drew her into a molten heat and she had the inescapable sense that Mr. Right had arrived ahead of schedule.
Chapter 1
East Africa: Six Months Later
Five years, eight months, and twenty-nine days sober.
Staff Sergeant Jose “Cuervo” James flipped his sobriety coin over and over between his fingers as he reviewed the satellite feed on the six screens in front of him. If he and the multi-force rescue team around him didn’t save Stella Carson in the next twenty-four hours, odds were his coin would end up in the trash.
The cavernous airplane hangar echoed with the buzz of personnel calling directives into headsets and the low hum from each image on the dozen screens. Techies gathered information for the eight-man rescue team—two Air Force pararescuemen, eight Navy SEALs, and five CIA operatives. The volume on the speakers increased whenever something of specific interest captured their attention about Stella and the eleven college students who’d been kidnapped with her during a foreign exchange trip.
Only one screen interested him. The one showing Stella being held hostage by separatists in some concrete hellhole south of the Horn of Africa. His eyes ate up the image of her—alive—for now.
She wore jeans and a black tank top with gym shoes, looking five years younger than her twenty-nine years and just like the exchange student she was pretending to be. Her titan red hair was half in, half out of a ponytail. A long strand stuck to blood on her cheek from an oozing gash in her eyebrow that made him think of the scratch on her head from the bullet that grazed her the day they’d met. The day she’d saved his ass.
Right now, she was dusty, strained, and bruised. But still keen-eyed, pacing around her cell, nothing more than concrete walls with a pallet and bucket in the corner. A table filled another corner with a scattering of artifacts and relics. Frustration knotted his fists as he held back the urge to reach through the screen and haul her out. To hell with the objectivity and the logic she worshiped.
Usually his job as a pararescueman gave his life focus and stability. But today’s assignment was more than just a mission. Stella Carson was more than an Interpol agent to pluck out of a sticky situation. She was the only woman he’d ever loved.
She was also the woman who’d dumped him four weeks ago.
He prayed to every saint he’d memorized in parochial school that the captors bought her cover story of being an over-privileged student studying overseas on Mommy and Daddy’s nickel. He couldn’t even let himself think about all the atrocities committed against women in this region. He could only focus on willing her to stay alive. God help her if they figured out she was a top-notch intelligence operative with an uncanny aptitude for code breaking.
God help them both if he failed to get her out.
He’d been told little when he’d boarded the plane at his home base in Georgia, only knowing they were being tasked to rescue a kidnapped group of students. Not unusual to keep him in the dark until deeper into the mission. He’d understood the op was covert and their slide into the country would be off the books. Their aircraft looked more like a large civilian charter jet than a military transport.
He damn well hadn’t guessed Stella was one of the captives until he was airborne. He’d almost lost his shit right then and there. Only the burning need to be damn sure they didn’t have any excuse to kick him off this operation kept him from going postal.
At least he’d gotten his rage under control by the time they’d flown into Camp Lemmonier, a U.S. base in Africa, and pulled into the waiting empty airplane hangar. They’d slipped in by pretending to be part of the advance security team for the U.S. vice president’s wife’s upcoming visit. Once inside the hangar, they’d off-loaded their gear—shipping containers emptied and flipped over to be used as tables. The other four CIA agents—techies—monitored two fifteen-inch computer screens each with a massive flat screen above all to feed images from the smaller units.
A Predator unmanned surveillance drone sent pictures from outside the compound and relayed thermal imaging of individuals inside. The craft, flown by remote control, had also released a smaller reconnaissance craft—the ultimate “bug.”
Nanotechnology made it possible to fly in a miniscule spy vehicle that looked like a fly or spider, a nano air vehicle or NAV. The miniature drone didn’t have the distance capability of the Predator, but the maneuverability was unbeatable. The minute size provided the ultimate disguise, sending back visual and audio feed via satellite. Even though other countries knew of the existence of the technology, it wasn’t like they could swat every fly and stomp every spider.
The lead CIA agent on their extraction team—a craggy-faced dude calling himself “Mr. Smith,” surprise, surprise—clicked the controller in his hands and shifted one of the smaller screen images to feed into the larger wide-screen above the rest.
“This footage was made yesterday at zero-eight-hundred when the Predator spy drone successfully deployed NAVs for an inside peek.” Smith hitched the dusty leather belt, his dark shirt and pants well-worn and generic looking as his four identical workmates. “We were lucky enough to make contact with Agent Carson.”
The screen captured her eyes narrowing briefly as she stepped closer to the minute surveillance device. She nodded, just a tiny dip of her head that she knew she was being watched and somehow she’d decided the eyes were friendly. Yet, she didn’t give anything away to the pair of scared students huddled in the corner with an unconscious third on the floor in front of them.
Mr. Smith zoomed in so close Stella’s freckles came into focus. “Once she knew we had eyes in the room, she fed us information like a pro.”
Jose leaned forward, elbows on his knees as his eyes zeroed in on his favorite freckle, the one just below her ear where he’d discovered she liked to be kissed the day they’d flown to Queen Elizabeth National Park. He could almost taste her skin even now, watching her on screen.
She walked to a corner and stared up at what appeared to be a regular surveillance camera to keep watch over prisoners. “We need medical supplies in here,” she shouted, her husky voice reaching through the airwaves to grip him right around his heart. “Do you hear me, people?”
The operative fast forwarded through her pointing out two injured students and three more devices in her dank concrete room; each step took her past piles of ancient pottery and stacks of other stolen pieces of art. “She alerted us to the location of the cameras in the room and the students throughout the building—as best she could.”
Her pacing slowed beside a stack of ancient tribal masks. “You can’t just lock all of us away.” Her fingers skimmed along a gold gilded antiquity. Drawing their attention to the room’s storehouse of stolen historic treasures? “I’m no good to you if I die before you even get to torture me for answers.”
Torture.
Rape was rampant here.
Mutilation of women was commonplace.