Hedley threw him in the Huey, turned and yelled at the others behind them. The chopper’s blades whipped everything around them—trees, grass, palms. Seconds later, they were loaded, and the chopper lifted off, banking to the left into the inky darkness. Zane shifted where he was lying on the chopper’s floor and glanced out the open door down to the compound below, alive with flames and billowing smoke.
It looked like the world was on fire. One simple extraction had gone violently wrong. His gaze strayed to Humbolt’s lifeless body.
Nausea rolled through his stomach. He dropped onto his back again, stared up at the Huey’s ceiling, and worked not to lose his dinner. Somehow, he clawed himself free of his helmet, dropped it on the floor, and focused simply on sucking air into his suddenly-too-small lungs. It took several seconds before he realized someone was screaming his name over the whir of the blades. His gaze shifted to the side where Ryder held a sat phone out to him.
“Says they want to talk to you!”
Zane took the phone and pressed it to his ear while Stone cut through his fatigues and started work on his leg.
“I need a tourniquet!” Stone yelled.
Hands moved in unison. Blood spurted. Someone tied a strip of cloth or rubber—or, holy fuck, that felt like metal—across his thigh. Pain returned with the force of a Mac truck moving at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Zane gritted his teeth to keep from screaming just as the familiar voice said, “Sawyer? You survived?”
He knew that voice. He recognized the breathy cadence and the use of his CIA alias. But more than anything he understood the sound of victory.
Juliet.
In that second, he knew. He knew just who’d fucked their mission and why.
“How—?”
“How is not important.” Her voice hardened. “It’s the why you should really be concerned with. But then you know the why, don’t you?”
He pushed up to sitting even though Stone pressed against his shoulder with one bloody hand and hollered at him to lie down. The pain in his leg morphed to a blinding red, which erupted behind his eyes. “When I find you—”
“You won’t. I trained with the best, and I never lose.” He could almost see those amber eyes of hers when she was in black ops mode, hard and cold and as soulless as any terrorist. No wonder she’d made such a good operative. She was just like them. A venomous black widow, waiting to strike.
The phone went dead in his ear before he could respond. As dead as Humbolt on the floor beside him. Zane dropped back to the ground with a groan. The cell fell from his fingers to roll across the floor. And as they flew over the jungle and Stone packed his leg wound, Zane vaguely heard their medic tell the pilot to haul ass or they were gonna run out of time.
But he didn’t care. As his vision blurred and darkness threatened, only one thing revolved in Zane’s mind. Only one goal remained.
No matter what it took, no matter how long, he’d find her. He’d find her, and he’d make her pay.
Order EXTREME MEASURES here.
And don’t miss the other stories
in the Aegis series:
SINFUL SURRENDER
FIRST EXPOSURE
ACAPULCO HEAT
(in the Bodyguards in Bed Anthology)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before topping multiple bestseller lists—including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal—Elisabeth Naughton taught middle school science. A rabid reader, she soon discovered she had a knack for creating stories with a chemistry of their own. The spark turned to a flame, and Naughton now writes full-time. Besides topping bestseller lists, her books have been nominated for some of the industry’s most prestigious awards, such as the RITA? and Golden Heart Awards from Romance Writers of America, the Australian Romance Reader Awards, and the Golden Leaf Award. When not dreaming up new stories, Naughton can be found spending time with her husband and three children in their western Oregon home. Visit her website here.