Heatseeker (Atrati) Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, Cowboy.”
    “Shit, baby, call me Wyatt like you used to do.”
    “No way in hell.” Neil wrenched his arm from Cowboy’s grasp and moved back. “Those days are long over.”
    He fast-marched several feet away and then swung back and faced Cowboy. “And don’t call me baby, asshole.”
    He was going to start hearing the insult as an endearment if his man kept saying it like that. Oh, the anger was there in Neil’s voice, but so was something else, something Wyatt knew the blond computer geek would be pissed as hell to know Wyatt had heard.
    “Don’t scare me like that again, and I’ll consider it.” Like hell.
    “How I handle my assignments is none of your damn business.”
    “You go on believin’ that, darlin’, if it makes you feel better.”
    With an expletive, Neil turned and started through the forest in the direction of the spot they’d agreed to set up surveillance of the road leading to the compound. Cowboy followed, his senses on alert for any danger, since his man seemed a little too upset to be paying the attention he should.

Chapter Three
    R achel woke to intense pain at odds with the sense of safety that told her the gentle hold on her sore wrist was friendly.
    Not willing to trust that sense, she focused on remembering where she was and how she’d gotten there. Memories of being tortured for information in a small dank room flooded her mind as her body tensed in irrational preparation for flight. The exhaustion in her limbs said she wasn’t going anywhere.
    More memories came back: the impossible rescue by a phantom from her past. Had she dreamed it? Kadin Marks wasn’t really here. He couldn’t be.
    Letting her eyes open slowly, she squinted into the low lighting in the small tent she was in and had no trouble making out a man-shaped shadow beside her.
    Kadin?
    Her mind rejected what her eyes told her was true, but his big body was so close, she could smell a long-forgotten if all-too-familiar scent.
    Once she’d accepted years ago that Kadin Marks was never coming back, she’d done her best to forget everything about him. The speed with which sensory memories flooded her now was proof of how difficult—and fruitless—her efforts had been.
    But it was also further proof that last night had happened as she remembered it.
    “Rachel’s captors won’t wake before midmorning. They’ll feel and act like they’re hungover. I found a bottle of their whiskey—seems they like a drink before bed—so they shouldn’t question their condition too much. At least not immediately.” The voice with a Texas twang came over a communications unit beside Kadin’s head.
    Rachel realized that was probably what had wakened her.
    “What bad Muslims, partaking of harsh spirits,” Kadin replied quietly but with sarcasm.
    “It worked to our advantage, anyway. The three glasses next to the bottle indicated they’d all imbibed before bed.”
    “Lucky.”
    “Yeah. And so was Spazz, getting out of there. He decided he wanted to put in a couple of webcams and nearly got caught by the guard getting ready to go on duty.”
    “Webcams?” Rachel croaked. “We’re going to get visual?”
    Kadin’s fingers on her wrist tightened and then loosened immediately when she made a soft sound of distress. “Yes, angel. We’ll find out who the bigwigs are for you.”
    Her heart contracted with an old pain she only wished had been dead as long as her hopes. “I’m not an angel, Ka—Trigger. Not anymore.”
    She was nobody’s innocent sweetheart these days. She had too much blood on her own hands for that. And he wasn’t her Kadin. He was now called Trigger, a soldier who didn’t know the woman Rachel Gannon had become any better than she knew this hardened warrior.
    “You’re a damn fine agent, ma’am,” the Texan who’d been talking to Kadin said.
    “They caught me.” She’d been where she wasn’t supposed to be and hadn’t been able to talk her way out of it.
    She still wasn’t sure why.