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Warrior Without Rules
Nancy Gideon
RULE #1: I'M IN CHARGEWorking in covert intelligence, Zach Russell knew that three basic rules could be the difference between life and death. There was no room for deviation–especially not the Antonia Castillo kind.RULE #2: WHERE YOU GO, I GOHe'd ignored his strict policy once–and the heiress had been kidnapped as a result. So why, after ten years, was he her bodyguard?RULE #3: NOTHING PERSONALAntonia was no longer a timid beauty–and her new no-holds-barred approach to life made their attraction sizzle. How many rules would Zach have to break to keep the headstrong temptress safe?
“Are you asking me to take you to bed?”
Controlling her frustration and embarrassment with obvious difficulty, she told him, “To bed, to the couch, to the shower, on the floor. I don’t care. Just take me away from this dark place I’m in. Unless there’s someone else.”
He was motionless for a long, agonizing moment. His features seemed set in stone.
“No.”
“No, what?” The raw hurting in her voice forced his answer.
“Hell.” He spoke the curse with a soft reverence, the words as gentle as the touch he brushed along the side of her cheek. “No one else.”
She closed her eyes on a sigh and turned her head slightly to press her lips against his palm.
And he was lost. Damn the rules.
Warrior Without Rules
Nancy Gideon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
NANCY GIDEON
Portage, Michigan, author Nancy Gideon’s writing career is as versatile as the romance market itself. Her books encompass genres from historicals and regencies to contemporaries and the paranormal. She’s a Romantic Times “Career Achievement in Historical Adventure” and HOLT Medallion winner and has been on the Top Ten Waldenbooks series bestseller list. When not working on her latest plot twist at 4:00 a.m. when her writing day starts or setting depositions at her full-time job as a legal assistant, she’s cheerleading her almost-independent sons’ interests in filmmaking and R/C flying, or following NASCAR and picking out color schemes for the work-in-progress restoration of their 1938 Plymouth Coupe with her husband. And there’s always time for a hot tub soak under the stars.
To my sister, Linda Dunn, for dragging me from Michigan’s cold winter to soak up the Ixtapa sun, and for Terry and Marsha for help devising outlandish plots, and Mike, with the romantic soul for having tattoos worth their own story.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Prologue
She couldn’t breathe.
The darkness was complete, shutting her away from the world. And from those who’d brought her to the damp, uncomfortable prison. How long? How long had she been in this void of sight, sound and sensation? When had she last heard movement above her?
Had they forgotten her? Had they left her here to die?
Daddy? Daddy, where are you? I want to go home.
Terror clawed up her throat to strangle in a soundless sob. Duct tape sealed out the air just as it sealed in her screams. She tried to grab for precious oxygen only to gag on the cloth they’d shoved into her mouth. Like a swimmer going under, she thrashed against the ropes, against the cloth, frantically, futilely. She was drowning in the darkness. Panic beat inside her as she struggled to escape but the harder she fought, the more desperate her situation became.
There’s plenty of air. Relax. Take it in slowly.
Gradually the fear subsided into a small whimper crouched in the back of her consciousness. She drew in thin streams of dank, life-giving oxygen through her nose.
He wouldn’t let this happen. He wouldn’t leave her here to die. All she had to do was be strong and stay alive.
She took another weak breath and the fright retreated once more. But for how long? How long could she hold on to the fragile hope that rescue would come?
Tears dampened the rough cloth they’d taped across her eyes. She fought them back as fiercely as she fought the hands that snatched her into the panel truck…how many hours, days ago?
Remember. Try to remember. Remember everything so they can catch these criminals and her father could bring them to an ugly justice.
The truck was green. The logo on the sliding doors had been rubbed out, leaving a smear of faded undercoating. She’d paid it no more attention than any of the other vehicles that had passed by until it had slowed and the cargo door had slid open. One minute she’d been standing in line outside the trendy London club, moving with the techno beat, excited to be using her of-age ID for the first time, and the next she’d been jerked off her feet too quickly to cry out in alarm. She’d never seen their faces. Something rough had been pulled over her head. Her flailing hands and feet had quickly been bound. She had lain on the uncarpeted floor of the vehicle, smelling gas and soil and tasting her own fear.
How long had they driven? She couldn’t tell. Terror had robbed her of time and place and nearly of sanity. The roads had gone from smooth and straight to bumpy and full of twists and turns. And finally, they’d stopped. She’d had to pee. The pressure had built into an agony almost greater than her alarm. They’d sat her up, two sets of hard, hurtful hands. The sack had then been yanked off her head. As she’d blinked blindly against the sear of brightness, she’d heard the rasp of duct tape. She’d opened her mouth to scream for help, hoping there would be someone who might hear her?
Help me!
A wadding of cloth had choked back her plea. She’d bitten down, grabbing flesh and bone, grinding until the taste of blood had brought a savage satisfaction. A startled shout and a stunning dazzle of pain had burst inside her head ending that fleeting sense of victory.
The rest had been a blur. Her mouth and eyes had been taped shut, stifling her cries, stealing her sight, sending her into a emptiness so complete, an isolation so deep, it was like death. She’d been carried down, down. The temperature had dropped to a chill against her skin and after an hour or so it had seeped up from the dirt beneath her to permeate her very bones.
They’d left her.
For the longest time, she’d wept in soundless, nearly mindless anguish. Her fear had finally grabbed on to a narrow ledge of clear thought. Then anger.
How could they do this to her? Didn’t they know who her father was?
Of course they did. Why else would she be here?
She dragged herself up off the hard-packed earth to lean back against rough stones, quaking with cold. Even as thirst and hunger and desolation chiseled away at her composure, one truth still held them at bay.
They didn’t really know her father or they wouldn’t have dared take her.
She dozed in brief snatches. In the total blackness, sometimes it was hard to tell if she was awake or asleep. Sleep was better, providing a respite from her misery. The dull ache in her bladder became a merciless roar and finally, awfully, she stopped fighting against it. She wept again, stopping only when her body had no more fluids to spare. She could hear her father’s voice.
Crying about it never solved anything.
Daddy, help me! I won’t cry anymore.
The simple act of drawing a breath scratched along the raw lining of her throat. She could no longer swallow and the very real threat of choking on her gag kept her fighting for that tenuous hold on reality. Take slow, shallow breaths. Just enough to survive until her father came for her.
And when he did, they would be sorry.
She sat up away from the wall. Her cramped muscles shrieked in protest.
What was that?
She strained to catch the sound again.
There. Footsteps overhead. Friend or foe? Rescuer or executioner?
Whimpers pushed against the gag.
A door opened. Footsteps, one set, started down, coming for her. Slow, heavy steps. Not the hurried sound of liberation.
She pressed back against the cut of stone, her body jerking in uncontrolled spasms as she waited helplessly to learn her fate.
She heard breathing, almost as harsh as her own. Then pacing, agitated movements that kindled her own massing fear. A curse. Another. Guttural explosions of fury and frustration.
And then he spoke to her. None of them had spoken to her before.
“That son of a bitch. His own daughter. Can you believe he wouldn’t pay a penny to save his own kid?”
A terror like nothing before it rose in a wave. Powering the surging fright was a tidal force of truth. A truth too terrible to contain.
He wasn’t going to pay her ransom.
His money was worth more than her life.
Chapter 1
Alone figure moved down the hallway, slipping instinctively from shadow to shadow. He made no sound. It was late. Those in the old building slept contentedly, unaware of his passing. He might well have been a cloud drifting across the cool gleam of the moon.
He paused, glancing behind him. He would have to retrace his steps to make sure he hadn’t left a blood trail. Later. For the moment he had only one goal, one destination, and it consumed him.
The key turned smoothly in the lock, admitting him into the darkened room. The scent of furniture wax and fresh herbs almost disguised the overall impression of emptiness. No one was home. No one had been home for a long while.
He crossed the spacious living room without the benefit of light, heading with purpose toward the back of the large third floor apartment. He moved like smoke, like predawn fog, light, almost without substance, even as the toll of the past few months caught at him, threatening to drag him down. He couldn’t afford to hesitate. Not yet.
He turned on one small light. It illuminated the mirror over a pedestal sink and the ghastly reflection it held, of hard features garishly detailed with traces of black and olive green paint. And smears of crimson. He wasted no time reacquainting himself with that grim mask. His attention turned to his right hand and the hasty wrap he’d bound about it. Slowly, he undid the saturated cloth and let it drop into the basin where it rapidly discolored the delicate porcelain. He moved his fingers, allowing a grimace. He’d need stitches.
Moving more gingerly now, with obvious difficulty, he undressed, letting his stale and stained garments remain where they hit the marble tiles. He’d pick them up later. Right now only one thing interested him. He reached to turn the water on full blast. When steam started to billow behind the circling curtain, he stepped over the high lip of the claw footed tub and into the merciless spray. A sigh escaped him.
He stood for countless seconds, letting the heat and force of the water beat the tension and achiness of abuse from his body as it washed the remaining face paint and blood—some of it his, some of it not—down the drain. Finally, because he knew if he didn’t move, he’d be sleeping on his feet, he reached for the fine milled French soap and began to scrub away the layers of jungle soil and sweat. The pleasure was indescribable. At last, when he felt close to human again, he rinsed off in an icy sluice.
Even though he was physically ready to collapse on his wonderfully forgiving Egyptian cotton sheets, he wasn’t finished yet. He had calls to make, a report to write. Mental miles to go before he could sleep. And then he would sleep for days.
Standing naked in the kind glow of the bathroom light, he carefully attended his wounded hand. After the biting sting of antiseptic, he stuck on a couple of butterfly adhesives to hold the edges of the gash together, applied a sterile pad and mummified the damage with gauze. Tomorrow it would hurt as if the teeth of hell were chewing on it but he was philosophical about the pain. Better his palm than his throat. He dry swallowed several pain killers, purposefully not meeting the eyes in the mirror.
It had been a bad past few months. He’d almost forgotten the delights of becoming civilized once again. He pulled on his silk pajama bottoms, enjoying the feel of them against his skin after wearing the same rough, filthy fatigues until they obtained enough personality of their own to demand a seat next to him on the aircraft home. Home, where civilization and the finer things of life awaited him. Where he would decompress and forget the past weeks as if they never happened. No one really wanted the details anyway, just the results. His success rate was nearly untarnished. Which was why his phone wouldn’t remain silent for long. He’d soak up as many pampering luxuries as he could before the next call would send him who knows where, but he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant or remotely civilized. Terrorists were bloody inconvenient that way.
Switching off the light, he padded barefooted back toward his front room via the kitchen, hauling his weariness behind him like Jacob Marley’s chains. Scrooge that he was, he’d managed to miss Christmas again. One of the calls he had to make was to his mother, who knew better than to expect him but did, anyway. She wouldn’t complain. She’d tell him he could make it up to her. She already held more markers than a loan shark. But she wouldn’t complain. She knew why he did what he did. Sometimes that made her graciousness all the harder to bear.
Lights from the surrounding city created a soft pallet of colors upon his parquet floor. He loved the view at night, when mankind slept and the solid, unchanging history of the place seemed to come alive. Maybe he’d just sit awhile and soak up the peaceful ambiance. Maybe—
His gaze narrowed and flashed about the dark front room even as he deftly snagged a thin-bladed boning knife. Without breaking his stride, he continued toward the living room, his step light and now lethal, his body becoming a coil of deadly force.
“Tough night?”
Recognizing the voice from the shadows, Zachary Russell let the air rush from his lungs in a puff of relief. “Tough decade.” He set the knife on the counter. “You took a chance popping up unexpected. How did you know I’d be here?”
“I know people who know people.”
Zach advanced into the cavernous room. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could make out the figure of his friend, Jack Chaney, seated in the deepest shadows near the window. That Jack had been inside his rooms without him sensing it was a testimony to his exhaustion. Of course, he could count the number of men on one hand with skills of his friend’s caliber. He was one of them.
“Come all the way from the States for some of my coffee, did you?” Zach asked.
“If you were making some. Just black. None of that steamed milk or fancy flavored stuff, Russ.”
“You Yanks are so plebeian in your tastes,” he said, quirking his lip at Jack’s nickname.
“We’re just simple folks.”
Zach switched on the light in his huge gourmet kitchen. It was the reason he kept the massively overpriced rooms he so seldom saw. He replaced the knife in the block and set about brewing a fresh grind of beans. The routine gestures and familiar smells were a salve to his battered soul.
