Bulletproof Seal. Carol Ericson

Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Epilogue

       Extract

       Prologue

      The sweat stung Quinn’s eyes and he squeezed them shut for a second—just a second before he refocused on his target. Rikki’s beautiful face swam before him in his scope, her red hair standing out like a burst of flame against the emerald green landscape. Quinn’s hand trembled.

      He shifted his sniper rifle to the two North Korean soldiers walking behind Rikki, prodding her forward. They had rifles pointed at her back. Quinn spit the sour taste out of his mouth, along with the mud from the hillside in the DMZ between North and South Korea.

      Someone had misinformed the CIA. Rikki Taylor was no rogue operative working with the North Koreans. She was their captive...unless she’d set up this whole scene for cover.

      Quinn knew better than anyone about Rikki’s duplicitous nature. But this? Working with the enemy to damage her own government and put her fellow CIA agents at risk?

      He had a hard time believing Rikki would endanger agents in the field. Quinn lowered his sniper rifle and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

      The trio below him stopped, and one of the soldiers pulled out a bottle of water.

      Squinting, Quinn scanned the lush land where the borders of North and South Korea met—a no-man’s-land where hostility and mistrust haunted the verdant beauty—not to mention the scattered land mines. This mistrust permeated his pores, had him doubting his mission, a mission he should’ve refused once he’d discovered the target.

      He would’ve had to have come up with a good reason to refuse an assignment from the navy—even after that untraceable text he’d received. He could’ve tried the truth, but then he would’ve come under suspicion. Then his pride had taken over and he had to prove that he could carry out the assignment, prove his professionalism and dedication.

      He snorted softly, and the leaves on the branch tickling his nose stirred. Prove to whom? His old man?

      The group on the ground was on the move again, and Quinn took up his position. His rifle weighed on his shoulder like a lead block. His breath came out in short spurts.

      Usually before he dropped a target, a deadly calm descended on him. Now, his heart raced and his trigger finger twitched. In this condition he’d be lucky to hit that boulder twenty feet away.

      He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and blew it out through puckered lips. He swallowed. He shifted. He braced the toes of his boots against the rock behind him.

      Then he refocused. He put Rikki Taylor in his crosshairs for the last time.

      Rikki licked her lips, and Quinn could almost taste their sweet honey on his own tongue. She tossed her fiery hair over one shoulder.

      Quinn blinked and, in the split second of that one blink, Rikki attacked one of the guards, going for his weapon.

      Quinn needed no other proof. He tracked his rifle to the other guard, lined him up and took the shot. The soldier jerked once and dropped to the ground.

      Quinn swung his scope back to Rikki’s struggle with her captor, and his heart stuttered. The soldier had possession of his gun, and Rikki had fallen to the ground, out of sight behind a clump of bushes.

      As Quinn watched through his scope, blood pounding in his ears, the North Korean soldier shot his weapon into the bushes.

      In a fury, Quinn zeroed in on the man who’d just shot Rikki, but before he could even take aim, Quinn came under attack from a hail of bullets.

      Taking down the other soldier had revealed his position, and now he was outnumbered and outgunned. He rolled to his back and scrambled down the hillside like a forward-moving crab. He scuttled behind a row of trees and started breaking down his rifle.

      Dragging himself up and wedging his back against a tree trunk, he stuffed his gear into his bag and then swung it onto his back.

      He lunged forward onto his belly and army-crawled his way through the forest to the tunnel that would take him back to South Korea and the designated pickup point.

      What would he tell his superiors? He did end up with mission success. Although it wasn’t his bullet that had done the job, he had neutralized the target—Rikki Taylor.

      They’d been wrong. They’d all been wrong. Rikki had not been working with the enemy.

      And now that Quinn was responsible for her death, his life wasn’t worth living.

       Chapter One

      Sixteen months later

      The footsteps echoed behind her on the rain-slicked pavement. Rikki stopped and spun around. Silence greeted her as she peered down the dark, narrow street.

      With her muscles coiled tightly, she continued, and her tag-along followed suit. As she began to turn again, the footsteps, two sets, quickened and two bodies rushed her.

      The glint from a knife flashed in the night, and Rikki finished her turn with her feet flying. She kicked the assailant with the knife in the gut, and he doubled over, his weapon clattering to the cobblestones.

      The other man yelped in surprise and before he could recover, Rikki swept up the knife from the ground and wielded it toward her attacker’s face.

      “Get lost, or I’ll slice you from chin to navel. Yu done know?”

      The man’s eyes widened so that the whites gleamed like two orbs. His friend groaned from the ground.

      Rikki growled, “And take him with you.”

      He held up one hand and grabbed his buddy by the arm with the other, dragging him to his feet. “Eazy, nuh.”

      “You take it easy and get moving or I’ll call the police.”

      The two hapless muggers took off, and Rikki pocketed the knife. The streets of Jamaica, even in the tourist trap of Montego Bay, turned deadly after dark, but Rikki had more to fear in her own country right now.

      She slipped into the alley where an orange light swayed in the breeze, sidling along the walls of the ramshackle building. She ducked under a tattered blue-and-white-striped awning and rapped at the window.

      A curtain stirred. Rikki stepped sideways into the weak light to identify herself.

      A wiry man opened the door and hustled her inside as he poked his head into the alley and looked both ways. “Where’s your ride?”

      “I walked from the main street.”

      He shook his head. “Dangerous place for anyone to be walking, especially a girl like you.”

      Rikki hid her smile behind a covered cough. “I’m okay. Are you Baily?”

      “The one and only.” He double-locked the door behind them and twitched the curtain back in place.

      “Do you have everything ready?”

      “Come with me.” He crooked one long finger in her direction.

      Rikki followed him through a single room where an old woman sat in front