Trapped with the Secret Agent (Trapped with Him) Read online

  Despite the heat, she shivered. “I...I’m sorry.”

  “It’s ok. I’d worry if you didn’t freak out.”

  Georgia cocked her head, listening intently to his voice. It was unusual—deep, full-bodied, but with an edge to it that rasped harshly across her nerve endings, making her hair stand on end. He brushed against her. Too close. There wasn’t enough air. Her breathing shallowed.

  Something hit the box with a thud.

  “Ouch.”

  He stopped moving.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, momentarily distracted.

  “Yeah, I hit my head. There’s barely enough room to turn around in here.”

  “D-don’t remind me.” She tried not to think about the space, now even smaller with two people inside. Small, dark, and hot. Too hot. Smothering. The walls closed in and darkness squeezed her chest. Georgia tried to draw in deep breaths to calm her racing heart and the overwhelming need to get out. She needed to move, but couldn’t, Peter’s big body was in the way.

  His arm grazed against hers and she shuddered violently.

  “Are you ok?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” She struggled to keep from screaming, her chest heaving like a blacksmith’s bellows. She couldn’t seem to breathe fast enough. “I’m claustrophobic.”

  “What?” There was a pause. “Shit.”

  Chapter Two

  Georgia tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a moan. “My sentiments exactly.” She took a deep gulp of air to calm herself, and her breasts brushed against his chest. She automatically tried to back up but couldn’t.

  A whimper escaped. She couldn’t stay in this tiny room anymore. She had to get out. Now. Raising her hands, she shoved Peter away with all her might and he smacked against the opposite wall.

  Georgia wrenched at the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She sobbed in frustration, hammering the wood with both fists.

  “Let me out.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “No! I have to get out.”

  Hard arms encircled her from behind. “Calm down. You’re only going to hurt yourself.”

  “I can’t stay in here, I’ll go crazy,” she cried, struggling in his grip. “Let go of me.”

  “I can’t do that.” His voice rumbled next to her ear, his arms like steel bands, unbreakable. “If you make too much noise, those assholes are likely to come back and shoot us just to keep us quiet.”

  That got her attention, and she froze. “I-I can’t. It’s so dark. There’s not enough room in here. I c-can’t breathe.” Her voice rose as the panic threatened to overwhelm her again.

  “There’s plenty of air in here. Just relax.”

  He rubbed her arms, his gentle touch distracting her.

  “Why did they put us in here?” Of all the miserable places to get stuck in, this was the last one she would have chosen.

  “I don’t know. Maybe to keep us handy.”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing good.”

  Silence stretched out with the bony fingers of a long dead corpse, reaching for her, closing around her neck, stealing her breath. She whimpered.

  “I can’t stay in here, Peter. I’ll go nuts.”

  He sighed. “Then we have to get out.”

  He released her, and she felt his body twisting like he was reaching for something above her head. He was so close his breath ruffled her hair. He brushed past her and was suddenly gone.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  “Trying to find another way out of here.” A second later. “Ah ha.”

  “What?”

  “A ventilation duct, I think. It’s got a grill in front of it.”

  Georgia reached up and he pulled her onto the crates. She crawled on hands and knees, following him, until he took her hand and placed it on the wall. She stood and felt along the wall near the ceiling, her arms bumping his. There was a grill all right, but not a big one.

  “I can’t go in there, it’s too small.”

  “It’s this or stay here. Take your pick.”

  Georgia bowed her head. Either choice was bad. The thought of slithering through that narrow shaft, with walls touching on all sides, made her nauseous, but the thought of staying in here was even worse.

  “Ok, let’s try it.”

  “I’ve got to get the screws out of this grill first.”

  Georgia groaned. “How are you going to do that?”

  She heard a soft clinking.

  “The flat end of my watch strap buckle might work as a screwdriver.”

  An overwhelming sense of impending doom washed over her. This was too much. So far today she’d witnessed several murders, been roughed up by terrorists, and was now trapped in a packed storage room with a guy who thought he was MacGyver.

  Maybe it was just a nightmare?

  * * *

  Peter swore as his hand slipped, catching the sharp edge of grill. He could hear Georgia’s rapid breathing next to him and concentrated on getting the screws out. It was just his luck to get stuck in this damn coffin with a claustrophobic woman. Given the current situation, this kind of baggage was just what he didn’t need. Dammit, the last woman who’d depended on him in a life or death situation had ended up dead.

  The last screw fell into his hand and he pulled the grill off, curving around Georgia so he could lay it on the crates.

  “Ladies first.”

  “Where does it go?” She sounded out of breath.

  “Does it matter?”

  She groaned as if she were about to protest but moved closer to the wall. “I guess not.” A pause. “Um, I need a boost.”

  “Right.”

  He crouched down and put one hand on her knee. The hem of her skirt brushed his knuckles. “Bend your leg.”

  She did.

  “Good. Ready?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Peter grunted. “Nope. Up you go.”

  He put his other hand under her thigh and lifted. His palm slipped on the fabric of her skirt, landing under the fleshy part of her behind.

  “Ah!” Georgia’s squawk didn’t sound happy.

  “Sorry.” He adjusted his hold to a less risqué position and pushed her into the duct. She grunted, wiggled, then slithered inside.

  Peter hoisted himself up and squeezed into the passage behind her, sliding along on his stomach. The sound of her labored breathing filled the metal passage, echoing off the thin walls.

  “You ok?” he whispered.

  “No.” Her voice quivered, but she kept going. “It’s so...dark.”

  “I’m right behind you.” He reached forward, his hand brushed something hard, a shoe, and he closed his hand around her ankle. “See? You’re not alone.” He released her and she moved ahead again.

  A soft bang ricocheted around them.

  “Georgia?”

  “I’m ok,” she replied. “There’s a corner here. It turns to the right.” Her voice bounced back softly. “There’s another grill.” That sounded happy. “And light.” Very happy.

  Suddenly, she was gone, no longer right in front of him. He reached the corner and curved himself to get past it. There was some light here. He could see the faint outline of Georgia crunched up by the grate she’d found, waiting for him.

  “It’s another room,” she whispered.

  Peter crawled over to peer through the grill. The room was dark, but not as dark as the black hole they’d just escaped from. He could make out tables and chairs stacked along one wall. The rest of the room was filled with assorted office furniture, but otherwise deserted.

  He tested the metal grate. Screwed in tight. Using his watch buckle as a wrench this time, he twisted the screws out as far as he could then wiggled the grill till the screws fell to the floor. Peter pushed the grate out and slipped through the hole. He set it on the floor and waited to help Georgia down.

  Her feet came first. He grabbed a leg to h
elp support her as she pushed herself slowly out. Her skirt got caught on the edge of the opening and was dragged up around her waist as she emerged. Peter caught her around the thighs, his hand on her behind again. Georgia braced both hands on his shoulders as she cleared the duct and he lowered her to the ground.

  She had a nice ass. Firm and round, like she worked out regularly. Her legs were great, too. Good muscle tone, he could just imagine...no. No, he couldn’t, shouldn’t imagine anything. Damn, what was the matter with him? They were in a desperate situation. His mind had no business dwelling on how good it would feel to have those perfect thighs wrapped around his waist, holding him to her as he—damn it.

  Peter thrust aside his wandering thoughts, took her hand then pulled her along behind him, heading for the door.

  “Where are we going?” Her hand twisted in his palm and he realized she was trying to shove her skirt down those shapely thighs.

  “I need to see what’s happening. Figure out where the terrorists are and what they want.”

  “I just thought of something. What if the terrorists come back to get us and we’re not in that room?”

  Good question.

  “We’ll deal with that if and when it happens.”

  “Oh.” She sighed grudgingly. “Ok. I guess.”

  “Your confidence in me is overwhelming.”

  “Well, it’s not as if you’ve had experience at this sort of thing, is it?”

  If she knew just how much familiarity he had with this sort of thing she’d lose her shit.

  “People who do that kind of work usually end up dead,” he told her as he towed her across the room.

  “How comforting.”

  Peter smiled at her dry tone; glad it was dark enough to hide the expression on his face.

  It was hard to see anything clearly, her features and figure indistinguishable, but the bones of her hand were small. Fragile.

  Focus, man. Focus on the job.

  They reached the door.

  Peter opened it slowly, peeking through the narrowest of cracks. The basement lights were off and though there was little light, he could see the stairs. The room where they were supposedly waiting like two good little captives was visible as well as a large number of boxes. But no terrorists.

  “Come on.” He pulled Georgia out of the room, careful to close the door behind them, and dragged her across the floor.

  “Slow down,” she hissed. “Ouch!”

  “What?”

  “I stubbed my toe.” She grabbed her foot and hopped up and down a couple of times. “Oh, that hurts.” She looked at the offending object. “What’s this doing in the middle of the floor?”

  She put a searching hand over the cloth-covered box and lifted the fabric.

  “Will you quit fooling around?” Peter watched the stairs with growing unease. Someone could come down at any moment. “If we’re going to stay free, we have to keep moving.” Find another way out.

  But Georgia wasn’t paying any attention to him, she was staring at the crate she’d run into. The tarp covering it had slipped. “Is it just me, or does this look like Russian?”

  Peter’s head whipped around. He stared at the incandescent yellow lettering on the crate she’d uncovered. “It’s not just you.”

  He put his hands under the top of the crate expecting it to be nailed down tight. It wasn’t. The lid came off easily, revealing a six-foot chunky gunmetal gray cylinder. Red lettering, numbers and a few Cyrillic symbols covered the surface gleaming dully in the weak light.

  “Shit.” Peter put the lid back down and flipped the cloth back over top of the crate like the whole thing was the largest, live snake ever. Shock encased him in ice for a moment. The next second a wave of super-heated rage freed him, and he had to fight to retain control of himself. “Shit. Shit. Son of a bitch.”

  Those fucking insane terrorist bastards. They were counting on the American government not negotiating. This wasn’t a negotiation. This was something else. A statement the world would never forget.

  “What is it?” Georgia was watching his face with wide alarmed eyes, but he had no time to explain. No time to reassure her. He was pretty sure they were both going to die but telling her wasn’t going to help either of them. The ambassador had given him an order. He needed to follow it as best he could, but this discovery changed things

  “We have to get back into the storage room.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened in shock.

  “Now.”

  Peter grabbed her hand and yanked her after him.

  “Wait a second. What’s going on?”

  Peter didn’t answer, he was too busy trying to work out a solution to this disaster.

  Stupid, suicidal fanatics.

  They were after much more than he first thought, but how much more and how fast was in question. Thousands, perhaps millions of lives were at stake, as well as access to a great deal of Middle Eastern oil. He had to find out. That information was now worth more than both their lives.

  She planted her feet and pulled him to a stop. “Peter, I can’t go back in there. I really can’t.”

  “Georgia, we’ve got no choice. We have to be in that room when they come back.”

  She stared at him, frozen in place for a long second.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice a fearful quiver. “What is that thing?”

  He steeled himself with a deep breath. No one was around, might as well get the screaming over with.

  “A nuclear warhead.”

  Georgia stared at him, eyes gone wide and face drained of color.

  “Oh my God.” Her voice trembled and she covered her mouth with one hand.

  Peter grabbed that hand and using the grip he had on both her hands, backed into the storage room they’d just exited from. “God’s got nothing to do with it.”

  She darted a glance over her shoulder at the shrouded crate before he shut the door. “Why would anyone do this? It’ll destroy everything for miles and miles and miles.”

  “Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of people will die, including a few Americans.” And, damn it, he wasn’t ready to die.

  “But...they’d be killing their own people. It makes no sense.”

  “Terrorism never does.”

  He pushed her up to the hole in the wall and tried to boost her up, but she balked at going inside.

  “Wait a second. Why are we going back? Shouldn’t we try to escape and warn someone?” Her voice rose, telling him panic wasn’t far behind.

  His own pulse was a rapid engine revving in his ears, but no one else was going to show up and miraculously save the day. “Like who? The only man who might believe us is upstairs with a gun pointed at his head. The local authorities are more likely to throw us in jail than listen to anything we have to say, and even if they did, they’d accuse us of lying just to get the American military in here.”

  “Well, we can’t just stand around waiting for the bomb to go off. We have to do something.”

  “We are doing something.”

  “What?”

  “We’re getting back into that storage room.”

  He spun her around, grabbed her by the waist, and shoved her into the duct. He got in behind, pushing her ahead of him.

  “Peter!”

  “I’ll explain everything when we’re back inside, I promise, but we have to get there first.”

  “Fine. But if I go crazy it’ll be your fault.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Story of his life.

  She got around the corner, turning herself so she could enter the room feet first. He followed, dropping to the floor of the too-small space and found himself sandwiched between Georgia and a wall of boxes. She shook like a leaf in a stiff wind.

  “Start talking,” Georgia ordered, her voice quivering. “How could these people get their hands on a nuclear warhead in the first place, and why would they detonate it here?”

  “How they got it is easy.” Peter shifted to one side, trying to find a comfortable st
ance, but moving only put him into solid contact with Georgia’s soft curves. His hand landed on her hip and skimmed over the indent of her waist.

  He swore silently. Now was not the time to be exploring her bombshell body. He had to keep his mind on the job, or they were both dead.

  “Ever since the Soviet Union broke up, all those new little countries—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and every-other-kind-of-stan—don’t have dick for money. Desperate times called for desperate ways to bring in cash, so, warheads occasionally go...missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah, as in ‘oops we’ve misplaced another Kh-55SM cruise missile with a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead and our army is too underfunded to go looking for it’. So, we’d send them a couple hundred million in aid and faster than a magician conjuring a rabbit out of a hat, the missile is found. Of course, every time it happens, the price goes up.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’m a journalist, remember? Sometimes the stories I cover are buried deep in dirt. As for why they would detonate one here, I’m thinking punishment and publicity.”

  “Huh?”

  “Setting off a warhead in a US embassy in a US–friendly country is a means of punishing governments friendly to the USA and encouraging other governments to be less friendly. To have its greatest impact the detonation has to take place with as much publicity as possible.”

  “But the moment they announce they have a bomb won’t the US military try to stop them? They’d send in some commandoes or something. Wouldn’t they?”

  “If there’s time, but I doubt they’ll give us that luxury. I think the terrorists are going to make this look like a standard run-of-the-mill embassy takeover and try to negotiate with the US government until the last moment. Then, when they have the whole world’s attention, they’ll announce that they have the bomb and detonate it before anyone can stop them.”

  Silence.

  Georgia took in an unsteady breath. “You’re telling me this is one giant suicide bomb?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I think.”

  Another long pause. Georgia’s shaking got worse. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  * * *

  A wave of dizziness swept over Georgia and nausea threatened to upset her normally unflappable stomach. She tried to bend over, knowing that if she didn’t get her head between her knees, she’d be out colder than a mackerel on ice.