“Yeah? Why yesterday?” Ewan turned to face the path, setting off at an easy, steady pace that would not too easily wind him. He couldn’t deny the rising thrill of anticipation inside him, and only some of it had to do with this plan they’d put together.
Nina jogged beside him, keeping pace. “Because today I’m too busy.”
“I love how you banter.” Ewan lengthened his stride, but slowly, easily. He needed a good, long run for the sake of how it would make him feel, but there wasn’t any point in running himself ragged if nothing was going to happen today. “Not many women can keep up with me.”
“Yet, you don’t like one who can overtake you,” she said, pushing faster to get ahead of him. She turned, running backward to face him the way he had a few minutes ago. Laughing, Nina made a rude gesture. “C’mon, Donahue. Keep up.”
He did, letting her stay just ahead of him. “You’re wrong about me, you know.”
“Yeah?” She eyed him as she faced forward again. She was barely out of breath.
“Yeah . . .” He, however, had to gulp some air, and that was all he managed to say.
Telling Nina that her strength aroused him was probably a bad idea, anyway. Despite the back-and-forth tension that had been ebbing and flowing for the past few weeks, getting involved with her was only going to cause more trouble than it would be worth. Beyond that, there was the real problem of the threats on his life to be dealt with. He didn’t need to be thinking with his cock right now.
They ran in silence for a while after that, heading up toward the fish ponds. Gravel crunched beneath his running shoes. Ewan lifted his chin and breathed in deeply. Fresh air. Mown grass. A tingling scent of water as they drew closer to the deep, cold ponds teeming with fish. Every sense was heightened.
“Need a break,” he said, even though he could have run for another few miles. He feigned a limp. “Pulled something.”
Nina slowed and turned. “Let me take a look.”
There was no sign of surveillance. Nothing to indicate that someone was heading their way to harm him. Even so, a creeping sense of unease started tapping up his spine, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and bumping his flesh.
Ewan paused in front of the pond’s concrete rim and bent at the waist to rub his calf as though he were cramping. Nina bent, too. Her fingers followed his, kneading the muscle.
With her mouth against his ear, she said, “Something’s coming.”
* * *
Nina wasn’t surprised they’d sent a drone. This one was bigger than the one that had tried to take pictures and way more menacing. It was too far away for her to tell what it was loaded with.
Assess the situation—approaching drone, unknown weaponry, but based on the information they’d leaked to Ewan’s staff and the way it had conveniently shown up right now when there were known vulnerabilities in his security, she was going to assume the worst.
“It’s going to fire on you.” Still pretending to rub the faked injury to his leg, she put herself between Ewan and the drone, a position that wouldn’t do much because the unit was approaching from above. “I’m going to do my best to make sure the hit is deflected onto your torso. You’re going to feel pressure and some tingling that might spread out to your arms and legs, but that vest will protect you against all standard hits. I’ll try to avoid getting hit, myself, but if I do, you keep to the plan. Got it?”
Ewan nodded. She didn’t look at him, keeping her eyes on the drone, but she felt the tension in his muscles. Heard the rapid panting of his breath, sensed the stepped-up beating of his heart.
Nina had told him she was not a strategist, and that was the truth. She reacted to threats. There was no time for anxiety when she was fighting; she moved. Struck. Protected. But this whole thing was more complicated than that, because it relied not only on her skills at defending herself and her client against danger but also on the end result, over which she had no control. Ewan had been the one to take care of the final arrangements. She hadn’t asked him how, exactly, he’d managed to set up the transportation away from his estate, but she knew he’d done it through a series of “back doors” that were supposed to make the entire business anonymous and untraceable. By giving his staff all the information they had about how someone could get to him, they’d both hoped the rest of the preparations would go undetected. There were a lot of “ifs” that they hadn’t been able to control. No time to dwell on them now.
She’d asked Ewan to trust her with his life, and now it was her turn to trust him.
“What if they miss?” he asked under his breath as the drone zoomed closer, so silent they probably wouldn’t have noticed it if they hadn’t been expecting something to happen.
“I expect it’ll try again until it thinks it killed you,” Nina said.
Ewan stifled a laugh as though it were a cough, but his shoulders heaved with it. “Let’s hope it does, right?”
He was laughing, even now? Nina drew a breath that slipped out of her on a chuckle of her own in response as she glanced at him. Ewan Donahue was an enigma to her, blowing hot and cold, serious and then goofy when she least expected it. She wasn’t sure she’d ever quite get a handle on him.
“Is it going to hurt?” he asked.
Nina straightened as the drone came closer. Two small portals in the front opened, dual tubes extending. “Yes. Stunbullets won’t kill you, but even if they have illegal ammunition, old-style bullets, that vest will stop them from getting too deep.”
Incredibly, Ewan laughed again. “Great. Right. Bring it on.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The drone had arrived right on time, proving to him that someone on his team was selling information or was outright involved with any one of the number of organizations determined to end his life. Nina stepped in front of him, drawing her shockgun from the thigh holster and aiming it at the drone. She fired, because they’d agreed this had to look as real as possible, but missed on purpose.
When the drone fired at him, Ewan’s instinct was to duck, to run, but Nina had warned him to stand his ground. He had every faith she would keep him safe, but he had to take the hit in a place where the vest would keep the bullet from causing major damage. If he were running, the hit could get him anywhere.
“Stunbullets,” Nina cried. “Stay still!”
After that, everything happened so fast Ewan couldn’t keep track. Three hard pops hit him in the vest, knocking him a few steps backward. It did hurt, just as Nina had promised, but worse was the spreading tingle of what felt like electric shock running through him. It seized his muscles into tight spasms, forcing his fingers to clench into fists as agony tore through his calves and thighs. His toes tried to curl inside his shoes but cramped instead. He heard his own grunts, animalistic and wordless.
Nina pushed him toward the water. The drone fired again, the bullets heading for their target with a high-pitched whine that wasn’t nearly as bad as a decibel bomb but still rang in his ears, making it hard to hear what she was shouting. Ewan stumbled forward as another series of stunbullets hit him in the back.
One caught him in the upper bicep, beyond where the vest covered. Instant, ripping pain seared through him along with another wave of that electric agony. All his muscles tried to lock up, but Ewan gritted his teeth and forced a step forward to keep himself from pitching onto his face.
From behind him, Nina let out a garbled cry as another burst of stunbullets rained from the drone. Her hands on his back pushed him another few steps toward the pond’s concrete lip. Ewan managed a look over his shoulder. The drone had dropped to just above Nina’s head. While the twin turrets spun, preparing for another round, the window set into the drone’s face clicked and whirred. Taking pictures, making sure he was getting hit, Ewan thought and made sure to screw up his face in an expression of agony that this time wasn’t fake.
Nina fired on the drone again, this time clipping it so that it went spinning upward into the sky before settling and righting itself back in th
eir direction. At the next spatter of fire, she shouted as the stunbullets hit her in the arms and torso. None made it to Ewan this time because she’d stepped between him and the drone, but he jerked as though he’d been struck hard.
The water splashed as he went under. He kept his eyes open, searching the murky green for the sight of the tunnel leading to the other pond. Darting glints of gold and orange tried to capture his attention, but he ignored the fish fleeing his sudden infiltration of their world. Motion was easier in the water, even as his body still reacted to the shock from the stunbullets, and he kicked hard. Heading for the tunnel, his lungs already burning, Ewan stroked through the water as fast as he could.
He misjudged the distance and hit the edge of the tunnel with his shoulder and forehead. He had the presence of mind not to shout and take in water, but the impact jarred him. Dizzy, struggling, he kicked forward again. From far away he thought he heard the sound of an explosion. Nina, shooting the drone as they’d planned. So far everything had gone as they’d expected it to, aside from this—the pain in his head and his muscles going too tight. He was too tired to kick hard and fast enough to get him through the tunnel before he ran out of air.
The water surged behind him. Strong hands pushed him. Ewan swam, helped by Nina who was also kicking. Together, they got through the tunnel and into the small maintenance room in the center of all the ponds, where they both broke the surface of the water gasping and sputtering. Ewan’s left side, the one the stunbullet had hit, had tensed so much he could really only tread water with his right leg, but that was enough to keep his head above the water. Together, they swam to the concrete ledge and clung there, both breathing hard.
“I made sure it recorded you falling into the water, then I let it hit me a few times before I shot it.” Nina’s voice had gone harsh, rasping. Indelicately, she spat to the side with a grimace.
“Did you kill it?”
She shook her head. “No. I let it get away with the footage, which I’m sure they were watching remotely. What’s important is they saw you go under and the drone escaped before it could see what happened to me.”
“They’ll start dredging the ponds,” Ewan said, aware that she was watching him closely. “What?”
“You’re slurring.” Nina gripped his arm and pulled him closer. “Did you hit your head?”
Ewan tried to nod but wasn’t sure he managed. All around them, the water gurgled and whirled as the filtration system kicked on. In this central space, all five of his fish ponds joined up via the tunnels. He pointed at the sixth tunnel, the one that led to the filtration pond.
“That’s the one.” He’d already told her how it was set up to screen out debris, dead fish, and anything else that might find its way into one of the ponds. He tucked his thumb into the waistband of his shorts, tugging.
“You need help. Hold on.”
He kept tugging until Nina took him by the shoulders and forced him to look at her.
“You’re bleeding,” she said and stroked a finger down his cheek. She held it up to show him the crimson stain. “Stop. I’ll help you.”
“I’m going to be naked.”
* * *
“That’s the plan,” Nina said. “Send your clothes through the shredder and have them show up in the filtration pond, have them assume it’s possible you drowned and got sucked into the biodegrading unit. Right? That’s what we talked about.”
“Yes.” He gave her a wide, tilting grin.
“You’re loopy,” Nina said and drew him close. “And cold. We need to get you stripped down and into something else, immediately.”
“You could warm me up with your body heat,” Ewan said and laughed, the sound ringing through the round concrete room even over the whir and whoosh of the filters.
She shook her head, a little amused but more concerned. “Ask me again when you’re in your right head.”
She tugged his shirt off over his head and set it on the ledge, then swiftly and without lingering helped him out of his shorts. She dove beneath the water to yank off his shoes and socks, too. That left only his briefs, which she also removed and set on the pile of clothes. She couldn’t see his nudity below chest-level and had been near him naked plenty of times already over the past few weeks, but something about this felt different.
“I’m sorry.” Ewan’s words slurred a little, not so much that she was alarmed, but enough to show that everything that had happened was affecting him. “I shouldn’t be inappropriate with you.”
Nina cupped his chin in her hands to stare into his eyes, searching for any signs that he was seriously injured. “Your pupils are the same size, that’s good.”
“Are you a doc?”
She laughed as he drew her closer, pressing his body to hers. “I am not. But I can do some basic front-line triage. What you need is to get out of this water and into something warm.”
Ewan’s eyes flashed and she waited for the innuendo, but instead he nodded and twisted in the water to find the metal ladder behind him. In seconds he was up it, bare-assed, standing on the ledge near the hatch to the control room. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to engage her selective sight, so there he stood in all his glory, hands on his hips as though daring her to comment.
Nina stared up at him from her place in the water, but said nothing. With a blink, she engaged the pixelation, though nothing would erase the memory of his body from her mind. Not much ever embarrassed her, but now a thrill of desire curled through her, flushing her throat and cheeks so that she turned away before he could see it.
She gathered his discarded clothes and swam with them to the tunnel he’d indicated, then shoved them into it. The sucking force of the water being drawn down toward the filtration screens and biodegrading unit stole the clothes from her fingers. By the time she turned back around to swim across the space toward the ladder, Ewan had pulled on a cloth coverall he’d snagged from inside the control room.
“Better?” he asked with a flip to get his wet hair out of his face. “Ouch. Scratch it. Head hurts.”
“Be careful. You’ve been through a lot. Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Not faint or dizzy?” Nina climbed up the ladder and shook herself off. Her clothes would dry quickly and her gear was waterproof, so there was no need for her to strip and change.
What if she did have to stand naked in front of him, she thought with another reluctant rush of heat? Would he avert his gaze the way he had all the other times, or would he keep his eyes on her? He would stare, she thought as she watched him. He’d let his gaze linger. He might reach out to touch her, and she might let him.
Ewan put his fingertips to his forehead then looked at the blood on them. “I’m a little dizzy, but that’s it. How long do we wait before we get out of here?”
“We should go now,” she said, dripping in front of him. The water was cool but not frigid, and the room itself was warm, but the look in Ewan’s eyes had sent a shiver down Nina’s spine. Her nipples had gone tight and hard, poking through the material of her shirt.
He saw that. She knew he did. His tongue teased his lower lip for a second or so as he stared.
“The plan worked,” he said.
Nina shook her head. “Until we’re in a safe place, only part of it has.”
“Well, then. Let me get you to that safe place.”
* * *
The maintenance room had tunnels of its own leading to the basements of the different outbuildings, each tunnel outfitted with a small electric cart on a track that allowed for a quick ride from one place to the other. By the time they both settled into the cart’s narrow seat, Ewan’s head had started to throb but the rest of him felt better. He typed in the code for the building closest to the perimeter, a small garden shed that traditionally didn’t get much use. It stored his buzzbike, though, and that’s what was going to get them where they needed to go.
Nina was quiet on the swift ride, and Ewan didn’t push for conversation. Her clothes had dried by the time th
ey got to the shed’s cellar, although the end of her braid still dripped. He sent the cart back to where it had come from and waited while Nina studied the ladder up to the shed.
“I’ll go up first,” she said finally. “Nothing has followed us down here, and I want to be sure there’s nothing waiting.”
He didn’t argue, and in a minute she was leaning into the opening in the floor to gesture for him to come up. Ewan hadn’t been in the shed for years, had barely acknowledged that it existed on his property, but that had all been done to make sure that anyone monitoring him didn’t suspect the building’s importance. Of the dozen or so escape plans he’d implemented and drilled his staff on, the exit through the shed was the only one he’d never breathed a word of to anyone.
“This was smart of you,” Nina said now, standing in front of the small buzzbike. She nudged it with a toe and gave him a smile. “All packed up and ready to go.”
Ewan checked the saddlebags, making sure the gear he’d stowed there was still in place. It was all there, including the GPS disruptor that would keep them from being tracked, just in case somehow one of them or the buzzbike itself had been tagged with a location transponder. He shot a look at her over his shoulder, noticing her grimace.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Nina nodded. “Yes. They got me good, though. I’m going to need something to eat and drink soon. How long of a ride is it to this place?”
They’d agreed he wouldn’t tell her where they were going, in the event something went awry and he needed to get there on his own. No matter how someone tried, they wouldn’t be able to get the information from her. He didn’t want to think about how hard someone would try or what they’d do to her.
“A few hours. There are some travel snacks in the saddlebag.”
“Yum.” She peeked into one, then gave him an eye. “Stale protein bars, hooray!”
“They’re not that stale.”
He moved past her to pluck one out, holding it up to her, then paused at how close they stood. A purpling bruise was starting to show on the curve where her neck met her shoulder, exposed by the line of her shirt. Frowning, Ewan lightly touched it. She flinched.