The Bodyguard Contract. Donna Young
long will the buyer be out?”
“Half hour, max.” Pain radiated through her ribs from where Novak had shot her. Grimly, Lara rubbed her chest, grateful for her body armor. She’d have a hell of a bruise but not much more.
“How—”
“Later.” Ian patted Novak down, discovering a pen-sized cylinder in his pocket.
“Look what I found.” He tossed the miniature oxygen canister to Lara. “It recycles a person’s carbon monoxide back into oxygen.”
Ian grabbed Novak by the collar. “You knew she was coming?”
“Not me.” Lara answered for Novak, then scanned the perimeter. “But someone.”
A high-pitched whine, faint but distinct cut through the night air.
“Hit the deck!” Ian yelled. The explosion swallowed his warning, spitting it back in a bursting ball of fire and white-hot debris.
Ian dropped Novak midstride and dived into Lara, catching her in a side tackle that sent her flying.
Blast on blast surged over them, raising dirt, shattering the air.
Lara waited for the ground to settle, then shook her head. The after-buzz faded from behind her ears.
“Get off me, hotshot.” Lara wiggled to emphasize her point. “I mean it—” She stopped, felt the slack in his muscles, the deadweight on her back.
“Ian! Oh, God, Ian.” Lara leveraged her shoulder against the ground, then shifted her hips. “Hold on.” Rocks scraped her back, bit into her scalp. But desperation had her ignoring the pain as she worked herself out from beneath him.
Please, don’t let him die. Not because of me. She stripped off his mask. “Come on, hotshot! Talk to me,” she yelled. She pushed at his shoulder and hip until he rolled over. “Come on.” She placed her ear to his heart, heard the steady rhythm beneath her cheek. Relieved, she glanced at his face, tapped it with gentle fingers. “Wake up!”
“I’m up, sweetheart,” he murmured. “So you can stop shouting at me. I’m stunned, not deaf.” Ian groaned, then rubbed the back of his head. “Must’ve caught some flying debris.” Slowly, he sat up, looked around. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”
Novak. An engine revved and Lara swore. The sedan, with Novak behind the wheel, sped off, gravel and dirt clouding the headlight beams.
As she turned back to Ian, she caught sight of the briefcase lying ten feet away.
Lara didn’t waste time on arguing. She grabbed the case, then boosted Ian up using her frame to support his and staggered to where darkness rimmed the site.
“Well,” Lara commented, as she stared at the burning inferno. “This sucks.”
“Who the hell fired that rocket?” Ian asked while he surveyed the fire. With the right coordinates, the launcher could be a mile away.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Neither man would risk blowing up the rig. Not with one boss inside and the other owning the merchandise inside.” Lara shrugged herself out of his embrace and showed Ian the briefcase. “Maybe the answer is in here.”
“It wasn’t worth your life.” Ian half sat, half leaned against a small boulder. Lara curbed the urge to get close again. To feel the reassurance of his body next to hers.
“If you do something like this again, you’ll answer to me.”
“Is that a threat? Because if it is, you’ll have to do better to scare me.” Lara surveyed the area. Only the driver’s body hadn’t been destroyed by the fire. Lara walked over to him and went through his pockets. After a moment, she came up empty.
Ian sighed and shrugged off his gear. “I don’t think anything scares you. That’s most of your problem.” He snagged the infrared binoculars and scanned the perimeter to make sure their company had given up on them. “Our friend is long gone.”
“He’s not our anything.” Lara turned, grabbed the briefcase and stalked away. “He’s my problem.”
“Don’t you even want to know why I’m here?”
“Nope. I’m angry enough that you are,” she snapped, not breaking her stride. “Any time you try to help me with my problems, I end up with worse problems.” Like an unwanted pregnancy. “So do me a favor and just go away, before I kill you.”
“Frankly, Red, I’d thought you’d be more appreciative,” he said, not bothering to follow.
“Why? Because the infamous Orion—” Lara sneered Ian’s code name “—let my one lead go?” She looked over her shoulder. The flames from the fire cast him in an eerie light, making his features all angles, sharp and hollow. “Drop dead.” She turned back and continued walking.
“I let him go to save you.”
“Thank you.” Lara waved a careless hand in the air. “Don’t do me any more favors.” She glanced at the stars. Thought briefly about wishing on one for the first time in her life. Then automatically discarded the idea as nonsense. “Could my day get any worse?”
“If you’re heading for your SUV, you’re wasting time.”
Slowly, she swung back. “Why?”
“It has four flat tires.”
“Four flat—” Definitely worse.
“Good thing for you, I just happen to have a Hummer sitting about a quarter mile away. Interested?” he invited with a lazy arrogance.
“Of all the dirty—” She bit off the words, and for a moment stared into the darkness, forcing herself to draw in three long, deep breaths. Only after—when she’d calmed down a bit—did she answer. “Do I have a choice?”
“No, you don’t.”
Her nerve ends crackled while her mind ran through the complications Ian brought with his appearance. With reluctance, she started back toward him. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I followed you from the church. Then after, when you hightailed it out here.” He paused, considering. “And with no Katts Smeart, or am I mistaken?”
The fact that she hadn’t made his tail irked her more than the flat tires. If she hadn’t been distracted with the baby—his baby… “You’re not. There was a hiccup in the plan.”
“Some hiccup. The desert is a long way from Norfolk and headquarters, Red.”
He’d said headquarters. A muscle twitched in her jaw. “Cain told you about my operation?”
“That’s not all he told me.” The bonfire lit the area, giving Lara clear sight of Ian’s gaze, pausing deliberately on her stomach.
“Cain has a big mouth.” And she’d deal with it later, she vowed. “It’s not your baby.”
“Liar.”
Realizing her hand lay protectively over her belly, she jerked it away, balled it into a fist. “Damn it, Ian. This is exactly why I didn’t want you to know yet.”
“Then you were going to tell me.” Sarcasm saturated the air between them.
His attitude, his problem. She had her own to deal with. “Yes. But only after I had a chance to absorb it and figure out what I’m going to do.”
“You sound like you have a choice.” Two quick, masculine strides ate the distance between them. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his grip flexing with indecision on whether to shake her or not. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Lara snapped back. “Adoption maybe. Considering our lifestyles.”
“Let me tell you something,” he