“You got a ship and a plane coming for you?”
“The Reever can carry a maximum of six passengers. And the ship is a freighter with a regular run to Siberia. It has accommodations for a few passengers, and it was just easier for some of us to travel on it. Bad weather sometimes keeps the Reever from flying, but the ship will definitely be here on time.”
When he didn’t say anything, she glanced back again. His expression spoke for him. It was grim, and suddenly she knew why they couldn’t wait for the plane or the ship.
They were never going to make it five days.
Chapter Nineteen
If he’d shown up five minutes later, she’d be dead. That was the thought that lodged itself in Cal’s mind as Gina cast a frowning glance back at him. Bundled up from head to toe like she was, she still made a slender and unmistakably feminine figure against the bleak backdrop of mountain and fog and threatening skies. Her blue eyes were clouded with worry, her cheeks were rosy with cold, and long strands of honey-colored hair had escaped from her hood to blow around her head. Even pressed tightly together as they were at the moment, her lips remained enticingly full. Kissable, he thought as his eyes dropped to them, and he remembered the hot way she’d kissed him before he shook the recollection off. Sexy as hell was his instant assessment of how she looked as she climbed the path ahead of him with long, athletic strides. Beautiful and brave were also in the mix, the beautiful part obvious and the brave because she was still trucking, still making rational decisions after finding her friends dead and nearly being killed herself. Not that any of that made any real difference to any course of action he planned to take. She was under his protection now, and he was going to do his best by her whether she agreed with it or not. He found himself thanking God that he’d listened to his instincts earlier and followed her back to her camp.
“I think it’s time you told me what’s going on.” Her voice was sharp.
That the runway was being cleared bothered him. There was already a ton of muscle here—who or what were they bringing in? Pondering that question, he answered her almost at random. “We’re running for our lives?”
The look she gave him told him that she wasn’t in the mood for even that lame attempt at humor.
“It’s the why I’m interested in,” she said.
He couldn’t tell her. His contract was subject to the rules that governed the highest security clearances, and anyway, the objective of saving her life was to let her keep living it after it was saved. Around the circles he ran in, people who knew too much tended to die young. Their current situation being a case in point. The man he’d killed back there in the camp kitchen—he hadn’t known him, but he knew the type. He was hired help, a paid killer whose allegiance went to the employer with the biggest bank account. The only question was whom he was working for. Whom they were working for. Cal still didn’t know, not for sure. Somebody who could infiltrate his company, get to Hendricks, and do what Cal would have thought was impossible, which was get to Ezra.
When Ezra had fired through that door on the jet, he’d aimed low. The only conclusion Cal could draw from that was that Ezra hadn’t been intending to kill him. Although how Ezra had thought that was going to work out in the long run Cal couldn’t quite fathom. He refused to feel anything—grief, loss, anger at the betrayal—for his erstwhile friend. He had no time for emotion now. Emotion got you killed. He meant to live, and to keep the woman frowning at him alive, too. It was a big job, and he wasn’t going to let feelings get in the way of that.
The fact that he had one gun, a Beretta 92FS semiautomatic pistol with about half a clip in it, only served to make things interesting.
He told her, “You’re better off not knowing.”
Her frown turned into a full-blown scowl. “You know what you can do with that. My friends were murdered today. I was almost murdered today. I think I have a right to know why.”
She stumbled on a rock in the path. He once again automatically reached out to steady her. He let go almost instantly, as soon as it became obvious that she wasn’t going to pitch face-first over a cliff, but not before he registered that the body part he’d grabbed had been her slender upper arm, which he could feel even through his gloves and her parka.
Damn. He was still all too aware of her as a woman.
Which was a complication their situation did not need.
“Well?” she demanded, sounding testy.
In the spirit of throwing her a bone to keep the peace, Cal said to her back, “You and your friends fall under the heading of collateral damage. My plane was the primary target.”
“Why?”
Jesus, she was persistent. “Because of some information we had.”
“What information?” she shot back.
Okay, enough. “Can’t say.”