Touching her was a mistake.

The men hidden below them resumed talking, but he wasn’t listening.

He could remember, as if it were yesterday, massaging shampoo into her hair, the two of them in the shower, water sluicing over her curves, followed by his hands. She’d been ready, had always been ready for him, and he’d lost himself in her, so much so it took his breath away.

Her low gasp brought him back to the present and he realised he had gripped her arm harder than he had meant to.

And although he couldn’t see much in the dimly lit duct where they were trapped, it sure looked as if her eyes were throwing sparks. Well, as long as she was already mad at him…

He dipped his head forwards and took her lips. She was soft and sweet, as mind-bending as he remembered. He had been craving this reunion from the day she had walked away, and he liked to think that now and then she had thought of him, too.

Still, it came as no surprise when she put a hand to his chest and pushed, not even whispering but breathing the words “No. Parker, no” against his mouth.

Like the bastard he was, he kissed her anyway. Because he could.

And felt immensely gratified when in the next second she melted against him.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Parker McCall – This undercover soldier knows how to disarm a nuclear warhead, but when faced with the only woman he ever loved, will he be able to save her as well as the other hostages whose lives depend on him?

Kate Hamilton – Her life is in grave danger when her ex-fiancé charges to the rescue. Through their mad escape, she begins to realise that she never really knew the man. And the new Parker might be more than she can resist.

Piotr Morovich – A known anarchist and mercenary. Is it possible that he’s working for the Tarkmez rebels this time?

Victor Sergeyevich – Former KBG agent who is responsible for the death of Piotr’s father.

Ivan – A Russian embassy guard. Is he there to protect the embassy staff, or does he have another agenda?

Colonel Wilson – Head of the Special Designation Defense Unit.

SDDU – Special Designation Defense Unit, a top secret military team established to fight terrorism. Its existence is known by only a select few. Members are recruited from the best of the best.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author Dana Marton lives near Wilmington, Delaware. She has been an avid reader since childhood and has a master’s degree in writing popular fiction. When not writing, she can be found either in her garden or her home library. For more information on the author and her other novels, please visit her website at www.danamarton.com.

She would love to hear from her readers via e-mail: DanaMarton@yahoo.com

72 Hours

DANA MARTON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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With many thanks to Allison Lyons and Denise

Zaza. And to Susan Mallery for being the

wonderful friend that she is.

Chapter One

August 9, 21:11

A good spy had many tools at his disposal. One of them was the instinctual knowledge of when to run. Parker McCall was running for his life, toward the Tuileries on Rue de Rivoli that stretched parallel to the River Seine.

When he’d been on jungle missions, running for the river was a good idea most of the time, and often the only way out. But right now he was on a street dense with tourists. Jumping into the Seine would do nothing but draw attention to himself and bring the authorities.

He hated Paris. It was the city that had taken Kate away from him.

“Excusez-moi.” He slipped between two businessmen deep in discussion, blocking the sidewalk.

The chase scenes they showed in action movies, where seasoned professionals madly scrambled from their pursuers, knocking over vendor stands and causing all kinds of commotion, were nonsense. When you were hunted, you went to ground. You went quietly, did everything you could to blend in and become invisible, part of the usual tapestry of local life. You ran in such a way that nobody looking at you could tell you were running.

He glanced at his watch again, deepened the annoyed scowl on his face and smoothed down his tie as he moved briskly through the crowd. He was a businessman late for a dinner. And the throng of people who’d seen hundreds of late businessmen rushing through identified him as such and parted in front of him, paying him scant attention. He was swimming through people and he had to be careful not to cause any ripples. Ripples would be noticed.

And his enemies were watching.

He figured at least four men were after him. He had caught glimpses, but mostly he operated by instinct.

They, too, were professionals. Professional killers who moved through the city the way the lions of Africa moved forward in the cover of the tall grass, in a well-coordinated hunt, invisible until they were but a jump away from their prey.

“Excusez-moi.” He stepped around a twin stroller and glanced up at the large M sign a few yards ahead—Le Métro, Paris’s famed subway system. He could try to disappear there or go for the Tuileries and see if he could deal with the men in the garden.

The subway would be packed. This was one of the busiest stations, the one closest to the Musée du Louvre. He could get away without confrontation.

But he wanted more. Information was the name of the game. And right now, the information he needed was the identity of the man who had sicced his henchmen on Parker. He had too many enemies to take a blind guess.

Like New York, Paris never slept. Especially not on hot summer evenings. Tourists and locals filled the streets.

He moved forward and could see the garden at last. He crossed the Avenue du Général Lemonnier and hurried to the nearest entrance. The sixty-three acres of mostly open landscaping that lay before him was enough to make anyone stop in wonder, but he didn’t have the time to enjoy the sight. He planned and calculated.

The lions that hunted him were hidden in the tall grass. At least he didn’t have to worry about the approaching darkness and not being able to see. They didn’t call Paris the city of light—in addition to love—for nothing. It was lit up like Methuselah’s birthday cake.

Head for higher ground. Get a good vantage point. But there weren’t many of those in the garden, so he strode toward the Ferris wheel.

Too late.

A blur of movement caught his attention by the pedestal of a large statue. They’d gotten in front of him. Or at least one of them had. But hunters as good as these four didn’t reveal themselves by accident. Parker had a feeling that he’d been supposed to see that. They wanted him to run in the opposite direction. They were trying to herd him someplace out of sight where they could take him out.

He strode to the statues instead, feinted in one direction and went around the other. He didn’t take the time to look or evaluate. His fist connected with a man’s face in the next second. He caught the guy as he staggered back, then looped the man’s arm around his shoulder, holding his gun against his side, and dragged him off into the stand of trees nearby, away from the curious gazes of passersby. Nobody would be walking off the paved paths today. The ground was muddy from this morning’s rain.

“Who are you?” He was disarming the man as he spoke, confiscating first his gun, then the near-microscopic communications device attached to the guy’s ear. “Who sent you here?”

The man—in his mid-thirties, around six feet, cropped hair—had a swarthy skin tone and that wide Slavic facial type that marked him from somewhere around the Black Sea. He pressed his thin lips together and went for the knife that had been hidden up his sleeve. Parker turned the blade and drove it home. No time for a tussle, to subdue him then get him to talk, although he could have made him talk, given some time. But the others could be here any second.

He lowered the body to the ground and searched the man’s clothes, found no identification. He hadn’t expected any.

One down, three to go. He headed out of the woods.

He’d come to Paris on the trail of Piotr Morovich, a slippery Russian mercenary who’d been discovered to have connections to a Middle Eastern terrorist group his team had been watching. But he’d run into something bigger than he had anticipated. Good thing that handling the unexpected was his specialty.

He moved through the strolling tourists and children playing and reached the Ferris wheel. His tie was off now, his jacket swung over his shoulder, his body language the same as all the other casual sightseers’.

“One ticket, s’il vous plaît.” He scanned the tourists already on the ride. “Merci,” he said, then boarded the Ferris wheel.

The giant wheel turned slowly, taking him higher and higher. But while the others oohed and aahed over the sights, he was watching the people below.

There. One of the men he was looking for was coming down the central walkway. Parker looked even more carefully and spotted another by the fountain. Where was the third? Where would he be in the same situation? Every hunt had a pattern; he just had to find it.

He watched the two men as they looked for him and for their lost teammate who wasn’t checking in over the radio. The four would have formed a U originally, trying to get him in the middle. He looked in the direction of the river. And he found the third man.

He was impatient now for his cart to reach the ground again, keeping his eyes on the men. He would get them one by one, would get some answers.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the display, intending to return the call later. Then he saw the coded ID flashing on the small screen—the Colonel.

“Sir?”

“This evening at 21:03 hours, Tarkmez rebel forces overtook the Russian Embassy on Rue de Prony,” the head of the SDDU, Secret Designation Defense Unit, one of the U.S.’s most effective covert weapons against terrorism, said.

The hundred-plus-member unit did everything from reconnaissance to demolition, personnel extraction, spying, kidnapping and assassinations. Parker himself had done it all. He glanced at his watch—21:25.

“The Russians haven’t made it public yet. They haven’t even notified the French authorities,” the Colonel went on.

He didn’t have to ask how the CIA, from whom the Colonel had no doubt gotten his information, would know this fast. They’d had the Russian embassy bugged for decades. Well, on and off. The Russians were as efficient at sweeping out the bugs as the agency was creative at placing them.

“The U.S. consul was at an unscheduled, informal dinner with the Russian ambassador and his wife. She is in the building, but we don’t have an exact location on her.”

While ambassadors represented the head of their country and there was only one of them, consuls handled visa applications and all the various problems of U.S. citizens abroad, representing their country in general, the position more administrative than political. The U.S. had about a dozen consuls in France.

But Parker had a bad premonition, cold dread settling into his stomach. “Kate?”

“Affirmative.”

The single word slammed into his chest with the force of a.22 bullet.

“Is she okay?” Tightly locked away emotions broke free, one after the other, tripping his heartbeat.

“We don’t know. The Russians are not good at asking for help. It’s possible that they’ll keep the situation secret for several hours, unless the rebels themselves make contact with the media.”

His cart was approaching the ground. Ten feet, nine, eight, close enough. There were times for blending in, then there were times to break all the rules, even if it did draw attention. He lifted the safety bar and stood, eliciting a warning cry from the operator and loud comments and gasps from bystanders. He jumped and landed in a crouch, staying down so the next seat wouldn’t knock him over the head, then sprinted into the crowd.

“What do the rebels want?” he asked, scanning the park for the men. His business with them would have to wait.

“Don’t know yet. Probably autonomy. We can’t offer help to the Russians until they tell us about the problem. Saying anything now would be tantamount to admitting that we have their embassy bugged. Considering the current political climate, the last thing we need is to cause an international incident,” the Colonel said. “Be careful. This has all the makings of a disaster.”

Pictures of news reports flashed through Parker’s mind: the infamous Dubrovka theater siege and the Ossetia school-hostage crises. The Russian elite Alpha counterterrorism troops and their Vymple special forces, like their U.S. counterparts, were known for not negotiating with terrorists. Unfortunately, they were also known for getting their enemies at any price, even at the cost of innocent lives. In the theater siege, 115 hostages were killed, in the school standoff, over 300, many of them children.

Parker popped his earpiece into place, tucked away his phone and broke into a flat run. The men who hunted him would have to wait. The embassy had been taken only minutes ago. There was a small chance that the entire behemoth of a building hadn’t been secured yet by the rebels. The sooner he got there, the better his chances were for getting in.

“Of the few men we have in the area, you’re the closest,” the Colonel said. “And you know the most about the Tarkmezi situation.”

And Parker suspected that the Colonel had also taken his private connection into consideration, knew he would want to be involved. Not that the Colonel would ever admit to personal favors.

“I appreciate it, sir,” he told the man anyway.

Rain began to fall again.

“Do try to remember that this is a minimum-impact, covert mission,” the Colonel said in a meaningful tone.

Which meant that he was to make as little contact as possible, remain close to invisible as he searched for Kate and got her out. He was to change nothing, interact with no other aspects of the situation but those strictly required for the extraction.

“And the other hostages?”

“As soon as their country asks for our help we’ll give it. Our hands are tied until then.”

That idea didn’t sit too well with him. He hated when politics interfered with a mission of his, which happened about every damned time.

“Parker?” The Colonel’s tone changed to warning. “Don’t make me regret that I tagged you for this job.”

“No, sir.”

“Just get Kate Hamilton out.”

“Yes, sir.”

That he would. Yeah, he was still mad at Kate for leaving him. Mad as hell, but he wasn’t going to let any harm come to her. Any Tarkmez rebel bastard who laid a hand on the woman he’d once meant to marry was going to answer to him.

August 9, 23:45

“DO YOU have visual?” The question came through his cell phone. His battery was at twenty-five percent so Parker was rationing his calls to the Colonel. But he had called in to report that he was inside.

He tapped the phone once in response. He was trying to speak as little as possible, wasn’t sure who could overhear him as he docked in the vent system that had openings to the various rooms. One tap meant no, two taps yes.

At least four of the gunmen who had overtaken the building were talking in the room below him. He could hear no one else. If there were hostages in there, they were kept quiet.

“I’m scrambling to get you some backup, but I can’t pull anyone who’s near enough,” the Colonel said.

He understood. His team was specifically created for undercover missions. A lot of the members were built into terrorist organizations, rebel groups around the world or sleeper cells. To pull one at a moment’s notice before his or her job was done would ruin months or years of undercover work.

“I’m going to get someone else in to help as fast as I can,” the Colonel went on.

Parker tapped no. He’d snuck in before the embassy had been fully secured. Anyone trying to get in now would have to fight their way in. And that could mean disaster for the hostages. He could bring Kate out on his own.

Muted pops came from somewhere behind him. He immediately reversed direction.

“Gunshots. Two,” he whispered into the phone.

“I’ll check it out. Contact me if there’s anything else,” the Colonel said and then he was gone.

Those bugs hidden throughout the embassy were still transmitting. From his CIA connection, the Colonel should be able to get some information on what was happening. Parker backed through the vent duct as fast as he could. Since the weather was cool and overcast, the air-conditioning wasn’t on; there was nothing to hide the noise he made. So he didn’t make any.

He had a rough idea of the building’s outline. The Colonel had briefed him on the way over. Since Kate had last been heard near the kitchens, he’d been heading in that direction, surveying all the rooms he could see as he went. So far he’d seen or heard a dozen or so rebels but no hostages.

The gunshots changed everything. There was a better-than-fair chance that the hostages were that way. His phone vibrated. He opened it without halting his progress.

“Bad news.” The Colonel’s grim tone underscored his words. “To prove how serious they are, the rebels just shot Ambassador Vasilievits.”

Parker went faster, crawling with grim determination, one hundred percent focused on the job. Kate had been with the ambassador and his wife at the time of the initial attack on the embassy. He hoped she had somehow been separated from them and had managed to escape the rebels’ notice.

Because if she hadn’t, if the rebels figured out who Kate was, she would be next. They hated Americans as much as they hated the Russians.

He wished he had prepared for more than surveillance before he’d left his hotel late that afternoon and then run into the four men who’d seemed hell-bent on taking him out. He had nothing but his gun and his cell phone with its dwindling battery. Right now he would have given anything for the full tool kit that waited hidden behind the ceiling tiles of his hotel room.

“Any publicity on this yet?” he asked, able to talk more freely having gotten into a section that didn’t have any openings to rooms.

“Nothing. The Russians might not break silence until morning. Their counterterrorism team is on its way. We don’t think they asked the French for permission, but once the team is in place there isn’t much the French can do. That’s all I have.”

They ended the connection, and he kept crawling. When he reached the next vertical drop, he lowered himself inch by inch, stopping when he heard voices ahead. The men were talking in Tarkmezi.

“And if they gas us?” The speaker sounded on edge.

“That’s what we have the masks for,” came the calm reply.

“What if they have something new and nasty? Kill us before we get the masks on.”

“Get it on and keep it on, then,” another guy snapped. “Maybe it’ll shut you up.”

“What do you think’s going on?” The worrywart on the team didn’t seem to be able to stop himself. “I wonder if they are negotiating?”

“When there’s something to know, Piotr will tell us.”

Parker picked his head up at the mention of the name. What were the chances that this was his Piotr? It was a common name, the Russian equivalent of Peter. But his instincts prickled. Could be that this was why Piotr Morovich had come to Paris. And if that was the case, then he hadn’t come alone, something that U.S. intelligence had failed to detect.

“I could go check,” Worrywart said.

“You stay the hell here.”

The men fell silent just as Parker reached the vent hole.

Three Tarkmezi fighters, armed to the teeth, stood among two dozen tied-up hostages who were sitting in the middle of the floor in some sort of a gym, probably set up for embassy staff. He zeroed in on Kate and his heart rate sped up.

Hello, Kate. How have you been? He’d pictured, on too many occasions, the two of them meeting up again after all this time, but he had never imagined it would be under these circumstances.

She looked unharmed and calm. The spring that had been wound tightly in his chest since the Colonel had called now eased. Her hair was different from when he’d last seen her—a classy, sexy bob. He felt a ping of annoyance. Why had she changed? For whom? He had loved to run his fingers through her long, honey-blond hair. She had lost weight, too, but not much, still had those curves that used to drive him mad.

Memories flashed into his mind—hot, sweaty and explicit—and his body tightened. For a second he was transported back to the past, with Kate under him, her back bowed, her silky hair fanned out on the pillow, that soft moan of hers escaping her full lips as she looked at him the way she had always looked at him during their intense lovemaking, straight in the eyes. Man, it used to turn him on.

Not much had changed since, he realized ruefully and shifted in the tight space.

Keeping control with her in bed had always been a challenge. One of the many things he had loved about her. A single touch and all he could think was fast and hard, now, now, now. Slow and easy took superhuman effort. Pleasurable, highly gratifying effort. He pushed that thought as far away as he could. He couldn’t go back there now. Not now, not ever.

One of the rebels moved and blocked her from view.

Come on, get out of the way. Parker gritted his teeth until the man finally moved again.

Kate stretched her long legs without getting up. In her dark slacks, white top and a cook’s jacket, she blended in with the other half dozen kitchen staff among the hostages. Where were the rest? He didn’t see any of the security team that would have guarded the embassy.

He focused on the three rebels. They would have to be distracted and neutralized before he could go in to save Kate. He surveyed the room, noting every detail, including the position of the doors and windows and their distance from each other, every piece of exercise equipment that could be used as a weapon or for cover. He swore silently at the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that lined the walls and made it impossible to sneak up behind anyone.

The easiest thing would be to go in predawn when the guards were ready to nod off, exhausted by their night vigil. But he hated the thought of waiting that long. He wanted her out before the Russian counterterrorism team got here.

He preferred planned and coordinated operations where nothing was left to chance. But those took time. And Kate’s life was at stake. To save her he would do anything.

“Hang in there.” He mouthed the words as he pulled his gun and screwed on the silencer, preparing to make his move.

The Colonel had asked him not to leave any signs—meaning a string of dead bodies—that he’d been there, if he could help it. Well, looked like he couldn’t.

August 10, 00:05

SHE HAD Parker on her mind and that annoyed her no end. Kate Hamilton stared at the floor, not daring to make eye contact with the rebels.

They left the hostages alone for the most, but gave orders now and then that they expected to be followed, a problem since Kate didn’t speak Russian. All the embassy staff did, even the French employees; it was a condition of employment here, just as fluent knowledge of English was a condition of employment over at the U.S. embassy. She was smart enough to copy whatever the others did in response to the commands. It had worked so far, but she wasn’t sure how long her luck would hold out.

“Try something,” Anna, a slightly built, petite young woman whispered barely audibly to her left. She was French and the personal secretary to the ambassador’s wife.

Try something. Brilliant idea. Except that her hands were bound and three nasty-looking AK-47s were pointed in her general direction.

Parker would know what to do. He spoke a dozen languages. And he could always handle tough situations. The way he’d handled an attempted mugging when they’d gone down to Florida for a long weekend came to mind. She supposed he’d had to learn. He visited dangerous parts of the world as a foreign correspondent for Reuters. His continued absence had driven her nuts during their engagement.

She refused to let the memories hurt anymore. She was better off without him.

She pressed her lips together and looked around the room for the hundredth time, trying to figure out a way she could make a break for it and not be shot within a fraction of a second. Okay, Parker. What would you do? The gunshots they had heard earlier didn’t fill her with optimism.

Several embassy guards had been killed within the first few minutes of the attack, as well as the sole civilian-dressed bodyguard who had escorted her over from the U.S. embassy for an unofficial visit with Tanya, the Russian ambassador’s wife.

Tanya had left the dinner table for just a moment to take her two young girls to their nanny when the rebels had rushed in. Maybe they’d been able to escape. The rebels had taken her husband, the ambassador, immediately and herded the rest of the people in here, along with other staff they’d found around the embassy that late in the evening.

It was Anna who had begged the white coat off a cook’s assistant and given it to Kate, warning her not to speak English, not to reveal who she was. And Kate had kept quiet, although she wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. Being a U.S. consul came with a certain amount of respect for the title and the full backing of the American government. Maybe if she’d spoken up, the rebels would have decided they didn’t want to tangle with the U.S. and would have let her go. She shifted on the hard floor. Maybe she should tell them now.

Or maybe not. She still wasn’t over the shock of seeing the bullet rip through her bodyguard’s head. She swallowed and squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think of Jeff as he’d lain there on the dining room floor in a pool of his own blood. He and the sole Russian guard who’d been inside the dining room were badly outnumbered when the rebels had poured in.

“Pochemu tu…” One of the armed men launched into a tirade.

She wished she could understand what he was talking about, what they were discussing. The lanky one seemed to be whining a lot. The oldest of the three ignored him for the most part. The short, pudgy one kept snapping at him, then finally gave up and shrugged with a disgusted groan.

The whiner swung his rifle over his shoulder and walked out the door, letting it slam behind him.

“Two,” Anna whispered.

They were down to two guards. This could be the best chance they were going to get to try something—disarm them, maybe, and get to the phone on the wall by the gym’s door, call for help. Breaking out of the embassy didn’t seem possible. Too many armed rebels secured the building.

She tried to establish eye contact with the chef who appeared to be in good shape, then with two other guys, tall, beefy and Slavic-looking with hard features and dirty-blond hair. They looked alike, possibly related. They seemed to be the largest and strongest men in the room.

Come on. Over here. She fidgeted and managed to get the attention of one of them. She wiggled her eyebrows toward the guards. The guy looked back nonplussed.

Since her hands were tied behind her back, she couldn’t make any hand signals. She kept wiggling her eyebrows and nodding with her head. The guy smiled.

Probably thought she was coming on to him. Did she look like a complete idiot? Apparently so, because he wiggled his eyebrows back.

She stifled a groan and rolled her eyes in a never-mind look she hoped translated. And felt a hand on hers.

She turned slowly toward the other side and met Anna’s gaze. The woman glanced toward the guards then back at Kate with a questioning look in her large blue eyes. Kate nodded. Yes, yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

“Now,” Anna breathed without moving her lips. She took a deep breath then started to cry.

The pudgy guard yelled at her immediately. Anna stifled her sobs and leaned against Kate as if for support. She tugged on the nylon cuffs that held Kate’s hands behind her back. Then came heat. Under the noise of her crying, apparently she had lit a match or a lighter that must have been hidden in her pocket.

Every snarly thought Kate had ever had about smokers blowing smoke in her face at the cafés that supported her French-pastry habit, she took back.

Ouch. Even a small flame could be pretty hot this close. But the pressure of the nylon eased on her wrists, and in the next second she was free.

“Hurry,” the girl whispered into her shoulder and dropped a lighter into her hands.

But then the door opened and the whiny guard was back, carrying a large box, leading with his back. Or maybe it wasn’t the whiny guard. This one looked bigger. But familiar.

The pudgy rebel barked a question.

“Da, da.” The newcomer mumbled the rest of his answer and kept advancing into the room, groaning, bent under the weight of whatever he was carrying. But the next second the box flew at the older bandit, knocking his weapon aside while the stranger took out the pudgy one with his gun. He had enough time to shoot the other one, too, before that one gathered himself.

Her hands were free, but all she could do was stare at the man dumbstruck, unable to believe her eyes.

Parker?

She pushed to her feet and stepped toward him, but he shook his head slightly and severed eye contact as if he didn’t want anyone to know that they knew each other. He spoke in Russian as he cut the plastic cuffs off people then distributed the rebels’ guns to the hostages, who were asking questions at the rate of a hundred per second.

He answered before he pointed at her, said something else in Russian and ripped the gas mask off Pudgy’s belt, then shoved it into her hand. He dragged her out of the gym, closing the door behind them.

“What’s going on?” She followed him down the corridor since he wouldn’t stop. “What are you involved with now?” He looked even better than he had in her frequent dreams of him. Whoever she’d been with in the two years since they’d broken up, her dreams brought only one man to her: Parker.

He couldn’t be here on assignment. That wouldn’t make any sense. “If the press could get in, why isn’t the rescue team here?”

“Later.” His whole body alert, the gun poised to shoot, he moved so fast that keeping up was an effort. He looked like Parker’s action-figure twin: eyes hard as flint, body language tight and on the scary side. Even his voice sounded sharper.

She’d never seen him like this before. Pictures of the last few minutes flashed into her head, the way he had shot those men. He sure hadn’t looked like a reporter back there. She struggled to make sense of it all. Then, as they rushed forward, her gaze snagged on a security camera high up on the wall—not pointing at the row of antique oil paintings but at the hallway itself.

“Can they see us?” She looked around, bewildered, expecting to run into rebel soldiers any second.

“They’re not working. The rebels took out the security system when they broke in. Phones are disabled, too. I already checked.”

Where? How? She didn’t have time to ask.

Voices came from up ahead. No, no, no. A fresh wave of panic hit just when she thought she was already at max capacity for fear. They were in a long, marble-tiled hallway with a single, ornately gilded door they’d just passed.

Parker pulled back immediately and reached for the knob. Locked. He looked around, searching the corridor.

Why didn’t he just kick the door in? She was about to ask when she realized they couldn’t afford to make noise. Good thing one of them had a clear enough mind to think.

The voices neared. Parker let go of her and hurried to an ornamental cast-iron grid low on the opposite wall, pulled a nasty-looking knife and began to unscrew it.

They were never going to make it. She looked back and forth between him and the end of the hallway. Hurry, hurry, hurry. “They’re almost here.”

He got the heavy-looking grid off and laid it down gently, without making a sound. Then he climbed in, legs first. She was practically on top of him. But he didn’t move lower to make room for her. “Get on my back,” he said.

“What? I can’t. It’s—” She didn’t have time to argue. The rebels were coming.

She went in, legs first like he did, feeling awkward and uncomfortable at having to touch him, having to hang on to him, being pressed against his wide back. He was all hard muscle just as he’d always been. She snipped any stray memory in the bud and kept moving. When she had her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as if he were giving her a piggyback ride, she stopped, barely daring to breathe. She wasn’t crazy about dark, tight places.

And they weren’t in some storage nook as she had thought, but in a vertical, chimneylike tunnel with a bottomless drop below them.

But just when she thought things couldn’t get more dangerous, he let go with his left hand and reached for the cast-iron grid to lift it back into place. Boots passed in front of their hiding place a few seconds later, people talking.

The men stopped to chat just out of sight. Oh God, please just go.

They didn’t. They stayed and stayed and stayed. Her arms were aching from the effort. She could barely hold herself. She couldn’t see how Parker was able to hold the weight of two bodies with nothing but his fingers.

An eternity passed. Then another. She distracted herself by organizing her half-million questions about his sudden appearance and his complete personality change.

“Hang on,” he whispered under his breath and moved beneath her.

She barely breathed her response. “I think we should stay still.” No need to take any unnecessary chances, make some noise and draw attention.

“Can’t. We’re slipping.”

All her questions cleared in the blink of an eye, replaced by a single thought. They were going to die.

Chapter Two

Kate braced a hand against the wall and realized at once why they were slipping. The brick was covered with slippery powder. She could make out some cobwebs in what little light filtered through the metal grid. She didn’t want to think of the number of spiders that would be living in a place like this. She put the hand back around Parker’s neck.

He slipped another inch.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please, please, please. She held her breath, expecting a fall any second. How high were they? And what was waiting for them at the bottom? Too dark to tell.

“Parker?”

“Relax,” he whispered; he could probably feel the tension in her body.

She loosened the death grip she had around his neck. Whatever he was doing to save them, he could probably do it better if she didn’t cut off his air supply.

He was slipping even though he had both hands and feet braced on the side walls. But they had a slow, controlled descent; he was able to achieve at least that much. After the first few moments of sheer panic, she unfolded her legs from around his waist and stuck them out, hoping to take some of her weight off him and help to slow them even more. The less they slipped, the shorter their climb would be back to the opening once the rebels moved away.

She succeeded, but only marginally. They were still steadily going down.

At least they weren’t crashing. She concentrated on the spot of light that was getting closer and closer, coming from the next cover grid on the floor below them. An eternity passed before they reached it.

Hanging on to the cast-iron scrolls, Parker was able to halt their downward progress temporarily.

They listened, but could hear no voices from outside.

“Can we get out?” she whispered.

“Maybe.” He waited a beat. “Looks deserted out there. We still have to be careful. I’m sure they secured every floor.”

“They can’t have people in every hallway.” At least, she really hoped they couldn’t.

“They don’t. They’re set up in strategic control positions.” Parker pushed against the grid, his muscles flexing against her.

The metal didn’t budge.

“Want me to get your knife out of your pocket?” she offered, although his pocket was the last place she wanted to be moseying around.

“Screws are on the outside. Can’t get to them.” He made another attempt at rattling them loose without success. “The offer is tempting, but I’ll pass for now.”

She bit back a retort at his teasing. She could and would let things go. She had learned over the years. “What do we do now?”

“Get to the bottom and find another way up.” He didn’t seem too shaken by their situation.

She, on the other hand, was going nuts in the confines of the tight space. “What is this place?” Her muscles tensed further as they began sliding again.

“The building used to belong to some nobleman back in the day. This is where the servants pulled up the buckets of coal from the basement for the tile stoves that heated his parlors.”

“And you know this how?”

He couldn’t shrug in their precarious situation, but made some small movement that gave the same effect.

Their shoes scraped on the walls that were less than three feet from each other, but the old coal dust muted the sound. She let go with one hand again and tried to find support. Carrying their combined weight had to be difficult even for a man as strong as Parker.

“I think I can do this on my own.” She’d seen rock-climbing done at the gym before, how those climbers supported their weight with nothing but the tips of their fingers and toes.

“We came from the second floor. With the twenty-foot ceilings these old palaces have, the drop to the basement could be fifty feet or more,” he said. “You stay where you are. If you slip, you die.”

She was perfectly clear on the hundred and one ways she could die in their given situation. She was trying hard not to think of them, thank you very much. “What can I do to make this easier?”

“Stop moving.”

She stilled and kept silent for a while before she realized she could probably move her lips.

“How did you get in here? Don’t tell me it’s for a story.”

“I quit that job. I work for the government now.”

He always had been dark and mysterious, something that had drawn her to him at the beginning of their relationship but had ended up driving a wedge between them eventually. Mysterious was fine in a sexy stranger. But when you were trying to build a life with someone, there were things you needed to know. There had come a time when she had realized that he was never going to let her in fully.

“You’re a marine?” The U.S. embassy was protected by marines. She had expected them to come after her eventually. But Parker wasn’t part of that team. He was probably too old for enlistment at this stage. She thought the age limit was twenty-eight. He was four years older than her, which made him thirty-six.

“Something like that,” he said, and in typical Parker fashion, wouldn’t elaborate.

She had a few guesses as to why. So her ex was some kind of special commando. “Something like” a marine. A picture was beginning to take shape in her mind. “Did you know I was here?”

She made sure to hold her elbows in, and her knees, although that wasn’t an easy task since her legs were wrapped around his waist for support. She couldn’t hold herself up by her arms alone any longer. On second thought, her brilliant idea of going down on her own might have been overly optimistic.

She tried hard not to think of the countless times her legs had been wrapped around his waist from the other side. Slow breath in. Slow breath out. The stifling air of the stupid coal chute seemed unbearably hot.

“I’ve been briefed,” he was saying.

He? What about the rest of the commando team? And in that moment, she knew without a doubt that there were no others. The embassy wasn’t being liberated. She was. Through some crazy plan, he was here to rescue her, and they were about to leave all those other people behind.

As if she would ever agree to anything as insane as that.

They were just reaching the landing, had to get down on their hands and knees to crawl out, touching each other way more in the process than she was comfortable with. He had always had an instant, mind-melting effect on her. There should be a vaccination against men like him, something that would give the recipient immunity. She’d be first in line at the clinic.

A dim security light burned somewhere, enough to see that they were both black, covered in hundred-year-old soot. He looked like some Greek hero, sculpted from black marble instead of white. She glanced down at her own clothes, stifling a sigh. She looked like an Old West horse thief, tarred and waiting to be feathered.

“Come on, we don’t have much time.” He moved forward, gun in hand. “I came in through the roof, but we’ll see if there’s a way out through here. Maybe some connection to the neighboring building. Like a secret emergency tunnel for the embassy staff.”

She thought of Anna, who had risked her life to melt the cuffs off her, and the kitchen staff who’d risked their lives to conceal her identity. She thought of Tanya and the two small children, and Ambassador Vasilievits, who had been separated from the others by the rebels.

“Did anyone make it out of the building?”

“No,” Parker said without turning around.

He was a dozen feet ahead before he realized that she wasn’t following and turned around. “What’s going on?” His eyes flashed with impatience.

She had a feeling he was about to get even more unhappy with her. “I’m not leaving,” she said.

WHAT in hell?

“You’re leaving, babe, believe me. You’re leaving if I have to carry you.” His blood pressure was inching up. For some unfathomable reason, she didn’t comprehend that every second counted. Odd really, because Kate Hamilton was one sharp woman.

“I’m not leaving the rest of the hostages to die. As soon as someone goes into the gym and realizes what you did, they’ll be massacred.” She was shooting him an accusing look, standing tall like some movie heroine.

Oh, man. She had that stubborn determination in her fine eyes, the same rich green color as the highland forests of Scotland. And he knew from experience that meant nothing good.

“I left them armed.”

No way was he going to stop to have a fight about this with her. He scanned the basement instead, which seemed closed to the outside, the only exit being a staircase that led up to the ground floor. He could see a few spots on the brick walls where at one point in the past there had been basement windows to the street, but they were walled in. And since the building was an old one, the outer walls were close to three feet wide, solid brick and mortar. They couldn’t even dig their way out.

“They are admin staff and people from the kitchen.” Kate wouldn’t let the subject drop. Her full and delicately shaped lips were set in a strict line of displeasure.

“The rebels won’t kill them. They need someone to negotiate with.” He eyed the stairs and calculated.

“They can negotiate with the ambassador,” she countered, backing away from him as he began stalking her. “The rebels have him someplace else in the embassy. He was taken away from the rest of us at the beginning.”

He stilled.

“Parker? What happened to him?”

And when he didn’t respond, she asked with horror in her eyes, “They killed him? That’s what the gunfire was about, wasn’t it?”

He said nothing.

Her tanned hands flew up to cover the lower part of her face until only her big, luminous eyes showed, glinting with moisture. Her shoulders drooped with defeat.

“Tanya…” Her voice sounded as if she was fighting for air. “How about his wife and the—” She didn’t seem to be able to take in enough air to finish the sentence.

“No idea.” He felt remorseful, but undeterred. “We are leaving. Now.”

“No. It’s my life.”

And his breath caught, because that had been the last thing she had told him before she’d left. It’s my life, Parker. I’m sorry. I have to do what’s best. And he had stood there, without a word, without trying to change her mind, and watched her walk away.

Letting her go had been the single most selfless thing he had ever done in his life. He knew she was better off without him. He was darkness and she was light.

But it had still hurt like hell.

He blinked hard, waited for the tightness in his chest to ease. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“None of your business,” she snapped at him. “I’m not going. I’m serious.”

So was he.

“Kate.” The word came out in a low growl of temper. He hated how quickly she could make him lose his cool. He was frustrated that she wouldn’t give him her full cooperation.

She hesitated another long second. Damn. There had been a time when she had told him everything, had laid her soul bare and shared it. Well, the trust was gone now. He should have expected that.

“I am considering adopting a child from Russia. Tanya has two adopted children. I had some questions about the process and the orphanage she used,” she said with a defensive set of her chin and a hint of vulnerability around her.

That wasn’t the answer he had expected. The words cut him off at the knees. There had been a time when he was looking forward to Kate having his children, although he had tried to tell her that the time wasn’t right just yet, that they would probably have to wait a couple of years. He didn’t want to miss anything. He didn’t want to be an absentee father on active duty. Not that he’d been able to tell her that. He’d had to cook up some stupid story about how he needed a lot of time at that point because he was fighting hard for his next promotion.

A tidal wave of regrets slammed into him. He couldn’t think about all that now. He had to get her out of here.

But she wasn’t done fighting yet. “Listen to me. Chances are they would have let the hostages go at the end. Now that you shot their men, they are going to kill the people we left behind. Because of me. I can’t live with that. I’m not that kind of person. I can’t.” There was urgency and desperation in her voice. “Please,” she added with her unique mix of vulnerability and determination.

She wasn’t a delicate woman. She was vivacious. She had lively eyes, a full mouth and a stubborn jawline. She laughed from the heart and cried from the heart.

He still had a crush on her. The realization caught him off guard. That rush of attraction, the magnetic pull. A crush—that was all it was. He imagined there wasn’t a man who could go within ten feet of Kate Hamilton without developing a little crush on her.

He could disarm a nuclear warhead. He should be able to neutralize some leftover attraction.

“Parker?”

She wouldn’t give up. She wasn’t the type. When someone needed help, Kate Hamilton was your gal. She’d charged to the rescue of neighbors, friends and coworkers alike, making time to find homes for strays she picked up on the street. Which made her a fine consul, he supposed, since part of her job was to assist U.S. citizens who ran into trouble here in France. She could manage a problem like nobody’s business.

“Please?”

Those eyes were going to be the death of him. Oh, hell, when had he ever been able to resist her?

He drew a deep breath, recognizing himself for the fool he was. “Okay. I’ll get you out. Once you’re safe, I’ll come back to see what I can do for the others.” And the Colonel was probably going to fry his ass. A freaking barbecue.

“How can you even think about taking only me?” She was outraged and not bothering to hide it.

“Because that is precisely the order I got.” He kept his voice deceptively low, although his blood was fairly boiling.

“From whom?”

He stayed silent.

“Some orders need to be questioned.”

She’d never met the Colonel. “Maybe you question too much,” he said.

“We should go back for them right now.” Her voice had a lot of steel in it.

Something told him Kate had toughened up a lot since he’d last seen her. Or maybe that core of steel had been there all along, and he’d just never seen it because he’d been too busy running from one mission to the next, never having enough time for her, always leaving her behind.

No wonder she had walked out.

He watched her in the dim light and fought against the tide of emotions. No regrets. Not now. He walled off the memories. They could reminisce once they got out of this hellhole.

But first he had to placate her and gain her cooperation. Her cooperation! He was here to save her, dammit. She was supposed to jump into his arms, misty with gratitude. If he’d had more time, he would have spent a moment or two enjoying that fantasy.

“How about this? I’ll neutralize as many rebels on our way out as I can, evening the odds for the hostages whom we are temporarily leaving behind.” Even though a silent exit would have been by far preferable and had been specifically requested by the Colonel. “I’ll do whatever I can for the hostages on our way out as long as it doesn’t put you in jeopardy. That’s nonnegotiable.”

She looked around thoughtfully, as if taking stock of the basement, then back at him. “We bring the hostages down here. They can barricade themselves until help comes. There’s only one entrance to the basement. The rebels might not even find them down here by the time the building is taken back. Nobody gets killed because of me. That’s non-negotiable.”

She was managing the problem.

She was insane. And yet, the plan did have some merit. And damn, but he liked her pluck. Always had. He’d always liked everything about her.

All they had to do was go back up to the second floor where the gym was and make sure the hostages got to the coal chute without being seen. The hostages would come down, Kate and he would go up the two extra floors to the roof. They had to pass through the second floor anyway. Once they were at the gym, they’d be halfway to their destination.

Lightning cracked outside. He thought he heard rain.

“Deal,” he said.

August 10, 01:57

“HOW DID you get in?” Kate asked half an hour later—they’d searched the basement inch by inch to make sure there really wasn’t another exit—pretty happy about getting her way. It wasn’t every day that Parker McCall yielded to someone.

“Through the roof.” He stood at the top of the staircase, pulled out his cell phone, opened it, then swore briefly. “Doesn’t work down here.”

He looked a lot cleaner than ten minutes ago. They had spent some time brushing soot off their clothes, off each other. That had been a picnic and a half. She’d just about jumped out of her skin when he touched her. It had taken everything she had not to let him see that he could still affect her with as little as a brush of his knuckles.

“Through the roof how?”

“From the next building. The rebels heavily secured the main entrances. Can’t get in or out through there without a major fight. They were focused on that when I got here, hadn’t gotten to securing the roof yet. I’m sure that has been done by now, but we’ll fight our way out if we have to.”

Fight. Oh God. She was scared stiff. Although if anyone could get her out of here, it was Parker. Especially this new, military version.

“How many are there?”

“Two dozen, tops. They’re spread out over the four floors. Have to keep the whole building secured. They can’t spare more than a handful for the roof. And up there, it’s pitch-dark—a definite advantage.”

For Parker. She, on the other hand, was afraid of the dark, especially when it hid murderous rebels. Parker looked…almost excited, as if this was nothing but a game.

“Are you going to tell me who you really are?” she asked.

He was Parker, but not her Parker. Not the man she had fallen in love with. This Parker was a lot darker and infinitely more dangerous. He moved with feline grace and constant preparedness. He had shot people without blinking an eye. She still couldn’t process that.

He shrugged.

He’d always been darkly mysterious in a brooding-but-gorgeous kind of way, but now… “You—”

He had his hand over her mouth the next second, his hard body pushing her against the wall, into the shadows as he towered over her. But she didn’t feel threatened, not for a second, never with Parker. She felt protected, but she wouldn’t admit to herself just how much she had missed that. Voices filtered down from above.

They stood motionless, although since the stairs were made of stone, they didn’t have to worry about creaking wood giving them away. But she barely dared to breathe, feeling paralyzed all of a sudden, and unsure if it came from the proximity of danger or the proximity of the man who had the power to liquefy her knees.

Parker ran a calming hand down her arm, which she didn’t find calming in the least.

His skin still smelled the same—well, almost, plus hundred-year-old coal dust. On him, it smelled sexy. His body was still incredible, his lips still just as sensuous. He could still arouse her with a touch. The full-frontal contact was wreaking havoc with her senses.

And she panicked, because in her perfect little world, she had managed to convince herself that she was over him, that if they ever met again, she could walk by him without batting an eye. And here she was, assailed by such a sharp sense of longing it stole her breath away. It took all her willpower not to bury her face into the base of his throat and lap at the warm, smooth skin she knew she would find there.

The voices faded.

He didn’t move.

And she didn’t want him to.

No. Not again. She couldn’t fall for him again. He had never truly loved her. He couldn’t have. He had left her every chance he’d had. He had lied to her about things. She was pretty sure about that. She didn’t want to think how many nights she’d lain awake wondering about where he was.

The two of them together spelled disaster, she reminded herself and pushed him away. Maybe with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

“Easy,” he said, watching her with his usual unsettling intensity, as if trying to puzzle out her thoughts.

Not if she could help it. She stepped away from the wall. “Let’s go.”

He moved away from her with some reluctance. “I’ll pick the lock, you see what else you can find here that we could use.”

She moved around him and set to the task.

The opposite wall of the staircase was lined with metal shelves. He already had a length of inch-wide nylon rope twisted around his waist that he had found, and a small screwdriver in his hand that he had gotten from the giant four-feet-by-four-feet toolbox near the bottom of the stairs.

The basement was used by the Russians as a storage facility. It held everything from broken office furniture to security supplies and crowd-control posts, even a crate of sea salt in one-kilo bags.

She opened an oil-stained box and rummaged through it. “What are we looking for exactly?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said. “Grab anything you think we can use.”

A lot of help he was.

But he was right. When she spotted the flashlight hanging from a peg behind the box, she took it. She was pleased to notice its metal case was heavy enough to be used as a weapon in a pinch. She flicked it on and grinned at the circle of light that appeared on the wall. “Even the battery works. Doesn’t get better than that.”

“Here we go.” He straightened.

The door stood slightly ajar. He had obviously worked some magic on the lock.

“I don’t even want to know where you learned that.”

“Of course you do.” He flashed a flat grin. “You want to know everything.”

“Fine, I do. But I’m not asking. You wouldn’t tell me, anyway.”

His mouth twitched. “Wish we had time to look around some more, but we should probably head out.” He bent his sinuous body into some SWAT-team pose.

Where had he learned that? Of course, she wasn’t about to ask that, either. Trying to pin Parker down was futile. She ought to know.

He pulled the door a little wider, peeked out then closed it again, pulling his gun up and ready to shoot.

She could hear footsteps come their way then fade into the distance.

“Is your name Parker?” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off the weapon.

He tossed her a don’t-be-stupid look that got her dander up, but then he nodded.

“You never were a foreign correspondent, were you?” Bits and pieces fell into place; a lot of things that had bewildered her in the past were making terrifying sense now.

He held her gaze. “No.”

Oh God. “I’ve been so stupid, haven’t I?” She looked away, embarrassed that she had never figured it out. He must have thought her incredibly gullible. She’d been blinded by love and lust. She would have believed anything of him. Not until the very end had she begun to see the chinks in his armor.

“You’re one of the smartest women I know. One of the reasons why I fell in love with you.”

Her heart, her stupid, gullible heart, turned over at his words. But had he really? Had he fallen in love with her, or had he been using her as some kind of a cover? He was a spy or a secret agent or something. He would probably say anything to have her cooperation so he could carry out his current mission successfully. She’d do well to remember that.

But it was difficult to remember anything when he put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. She didn’t need to be further confused by the way his touch had made her feel. She hadn’t been able to forget that, or anything else about him. Not for a single day, not even when she had dated other men.

“We’d better get going,” she said, trying hard to shake off the sharp sense of unreasonable longing that hit her out of the blue.

She needed to think about the hostages instead of Parker. They had to get to the gym before some rebels decided to check on their buddies stuck watching over the embassy staff. Every minute counted. Every minute could save a life.

He nodded slowly before he took his eyes off her and pushed the door open again. This time, the hallway must have been clear, because he stepped outside.

She followed. She had been a guest at the Russian embassy a half dozen times, but had never been in this part, wasn’t sure of the way.

After a moment, Parker glanced back at her and parted his lips as if to say something, but was prevented by the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere above.

Above and to the left. They were just coming to a T in the hallway. There had to be a way to get up there. Kate turned left and took off running.

More gunfire. It lasted longer this time. Long enough to have killed every man and woman in the gym.

“Oh, God, no.” She held the flashlight as tightly as she could, the only weapon she had, and ran faster, her heart beating its way out of her chest.

They had spent too much time arguing over what they should do. And now it was too late.

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