The firefight exploded without warning. A single burst of gunfire became a raging torrent of lead flying faster than the ear could comprehend. Muzzle flashes lit up the night all around him. Automatic weapons spit out their staccato rhythms. A pair of grenades exploded in white starbursts, throwing clods of dirt high up into the sky to rain down around him and on him.

Flares popped overhead, their sulphurous pink sizzle casting the landscape in bright focus. Standard tactic for blowing night-vision and making night-vision goggles useless. He ducked as something whizzed past, dangerously close to his head. Rocket-propelled grenade, maybe. A booming concussion behind him knocked him off his feet, blasting him forward and slamming him flat onto his face again. Damn, that hurt. He rolled and regained his feet in one movement and resumed running toward the barn and Susan. He dropped the rifle into a firing position at his right hip and randomly returned fire in the direction of Ruala and his men.

A hail of bullets rained around him, and he changed course, zigzagging back and forth. But then a second barrage of gunfire erupted and the lead whizzing around him diminished. Suppression fire from the Blackjacks. His guys had gotten position fixes on Ruala and his men from the muzzle flashes of their guns and now were pinning down the assassin and his men. Hallelujah.

An ominous sense of déjà vu assaulted him. It was just like ten years ago. A firefight flying all around and Susan at the middle of it all, in deadly danger. The barn loomed before him. He ducked as something hot brushed his cheek and wood exploded off the corner of the barn at face level. Damn, that had been close.

Only a few more yards to go. And then a flash-bang grenade detonated practically beneath his feet. The blue-white strobe of light blinded him, and the blast knocked him flat on his back. If it had been an explosive grenade, he’d be minus his legs or dead right now. Ears ringing and mostly blinded, he staggered to his feet and stumbled forward, pressing on doggedly for the barn and Susan.

He might just make it after all. The black maw of the alleyway entrance loomed. He dived for it. And landed awkwardly, slamming his shoulder into the hard dirt floor. He rolled up against a stall wall and lay there breathing hard. He was as blind as a baby bird. He squinted, begging his eyes to re-adjust to the dark while he strained to hear anything at all that might indicate the whereabouts of the shadow he’d seen entering the barn.

The alleyway came into focus painfully slowly. Deserted. No sign of the guy he’d seen slip in here. Not good. He crept stall to stall, checking inside each for the intruder. Nothing.

The guy had to be upstairs. Dismay slammed into him, and a string of curses ripped through his head. The trainer’s apartment was a single, spacious room. Susan didn’t stand a chance of hiding from Ruala’s man up there!

For the first time in his career, he very nearly panicked. Only years and years of intense training prevented him from tearing up the stairs, shouting her name. Hanging on to his cool by a bare thread, he glided up the steps, one at a time. The agony of taking it slowly all but killed him. But he managed not to rush headlong into surefire disaster. Barely.

He reached the top of the stairs and stopped, listening. Over the sounds of the firefight outside, he couldn’t hear a blessed thing. He eased down onto his belly and inched his head far enough around the corner to peer into the room.

He’d have roared his rage aloud if it wouldn’t have gotten him and Susan both killed. She was seated on the bed, and one man held a gun to the side of her head. Another man was peering right at the stairs—right at him—through a pair of night-vision goggles.

The man in the goggles spoke in heavily accented English. “Come join us, G.I. Joe.”

His gut fell like a brick. They’d made him. All chance at stealth was gone. With that gun at Susan’s temple, there was nothing he could do but surrender and hope for a miracle to get her out of there alive before they killed her. He’d always known this moment might come, where he’d be out-maneuvered and outgunned and there’d be no way out. He just hadn’t expected Susan to be there, too. A strange calm overcame him as he stood up and stepped into the room with his hands on the top of his head.

Susan moaned aloud when she saw him.

He shot her a crooked smile. “Sorry, sweetheart. My fault.”

“I’m the one who charged outside in the first place. Don’t apologize to me,” she replied.

“Shut up. Both of you,” the man in the night-vision goggles spit out. “Drop your weapon, G.I. Joe.”

He dropped the rifle and held his hands away from his sides.

The silent one frisked him. Rudely and painfully. Bastard.

“Now take off your belt. And your shirt,” goggle guy ordered. “Get down on the floor with your hands behind your back, American.”

Mac knew the drill. He’d done this to other people a hundred times. The silent one slapped a pair of metal handcuffs on him. Mac tested the rigid restraints cutting into his wrists. Standard police issue. With time and a little pain, he could get out of them. But he probably wouldn’t get the opportunity. They’d shoot him first. He eyed the guy in the night-vision goggles, who was alert and wary. The guy’s attention never wavered, and neither did the muzzle of his pistol, which remained pointed at Susan’s head. Which left him no options at all.

The pair put their heads together to whisper to each other. Mac strained to hear them. He heard enough of the two men’s conversation to figure out that these jokers weren’t the brains of the operation. But they were smart enough to realize they weren’t going to walk out of this firefight alive unless they had hostages. He and Susan were the thugs’ ticket out of here.

Sure enough, he was dragged to his feet moments later and shoved down the stairs. Susan slammed into him from behind, and he barely managed to maintain his balance. He half turned to help right her with his shoulder.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Shut up,” goggle guy hissed. He smacked her across the back of the head.

“Quit slapping around the lady,” Mac growled. “Or aren’t you man enough to pick on somebody your own size?”

“Don’t do it, Mac,” Susan murmured.

He should have guessed she would recognize that he was trying to channel the men’s anger away from her and onto himself.

The blow to the back of his head with a pistol butt exploded agonizingly inside his skull. It sent razor-sharp shards of pain shooting through his eyeballs. Had the blow been a little to the left, it would have knocked him out cold. Had it been a little lower, it could have killed him. A gun barrel poked him hard in the ribs, and he stumbled forward once more.

NVG guy snapped at the one who’d clocked him. “Not yet, you fool. We need them to shield us until we’re out of here.”

If only Susan knew the first thing about military tactics. She would know once they were outside and in sight of the Blackjacks to drop to the ground and give the team clear shots at their captors. Howdy and the guys could have them free in no time.

But she didn’t know to do that, and he dared not try it by himself. If he pulled a shooter’s drop, Susan would get shot long before the Blackjacks could get a clear line of fire at her captor.

Mac was startled when Ruala’s men prodded them to the rear of the barn instead of the front. He caught sight of an open-topped Jeep parked outside. Must have been driven back here during the first few seconds of the firefight. He and Susan were shoved into the vehicle. He did his best to cushion her body against his when the Jeep lurched forward. As he expected, the two of them were forced to stand up like rag dolls for the drive across the ranch compound. He flinched every time the vehicle hit a rut. That gun to the side of his head made him damned nervous. It didn’t take a lot of pressure to fire a weapon. A hard jostle of a finger on a trigger…

Fortunately, the gunfight ceased as they made their way toward the driveway. The Blackjacks weren’t going to shoot while he and Susan were being used as human shields, and Ruala probably wanted to kill her himself. The bastard. Mac was surprised when Ruala didn’t take a shot. His own men must be blocking his line of fire to Susan.

Sometimes being as highly trained as he was turned out to be a strange blessing. He knew almost to the moment when the blow was coming just behind his left ear. He even turned slightly at the last second to better position the blow and minimize the risk of brain damage.

His last conscious thought was that he hoped Susan was as lucky if they knocked her out.

* * *

The first thing she became aware of was pain. A sharp ache behind her right ear. Her pulse throbbed through the tender spot with each beat of her heart. The second thing she became aware of was light behind her eyelids. Then, a hard metal chair beneath her bottom. It felt like a standard folding chair. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back with metal bracelets and felt as if they were attached to the chair. Her mouth tasted like stale blood.

Where was she?

She slitted open one eye. Cardboard boxes? She opened her eyes all the way. Tall piles of brown boxes were stacked along the walls. It looked like a storeroom of some kind. It smelled like a basement.

Then it came back to her. She and Mac were prisoners of Ruala’s men. They’d found her underneath the bed in the trainer’s quarters and there’d been nothing to do once they pointed a gun at her but crawl out and surrender.

A careful look around the dimly lit storeroom showed it to be square and spacious. Deserted. But then, a slight movement behind her and to her right startled her. She turned her head carefully in that direction. Her stomach heaved and she barely managed not to gag at the sight that met her eyes. Mac sagged in a chair, his head lolling on his chest. A blue bruise discolored a lump on his left temple, and a trickle of blood had dried down the side of his face.

“Mac,” she whispered.

Nothing.

“Mac!” she whispered more urgently.

He stirred infinitesimally.

“Mac, wake up,” she urged in a low voice.

His eyelids fluttered and then his eyes opened fractionally.

“We’re alone,” she murmured.

His eyes snapped open, alert and wary. “Are you all right?” he asked curtly.

She recognized that brusque tone of voice. He was in work mode. Definitely a good thing in the current situation. She answered him in as businesslike a fashion as she could muster. “Yes. I’ve got a bump on my head, but I’m fine.”

He nodded once. “Any sign of our captors?”

“Not since I’ve been conscious, which has only been a minute or two.”

“They probably didn’t have the manpower to post guards both in here and outside. That’s good news.”

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We get out of here one way or another.”

“How?”

“The first order of business is to get our handcuffs off. Can you wiggle your wrists much in yours?”

She tried to move her hands, and her cuffs rattled musically against the frame of the chair. “No, they’re really tight.”

She saw Mac’s shoulders strain, and a similar metallic clinking sounded. “Okay. I’ve got some room to work in mine. I’ll see what I can do. Look around for any small metal object on the floor or sitting around somewhere. A paperclip or a wire, maybe.”

The light came from a single fixture overhead, and it was hard to see much. She strained to see into dark corners and crannies between boxes. “I don’t see anything like that, Mac.”

“Keep looking. I’ll keep working on these cuffs.”

For several minutes there was silence while she scanned the room and he rattled and strained against his handcuffs.

Susan’s head continued to clear and her thoughts became more logical. And more worried. “Why haven’t they killed us yet?” she asked.

“Ruala probably wants to do it himself,” Mac grunted.

Oh, God. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to do my damnedest to keep the other thugs’ attention on me for as long as possible, then I’m going to hold out as long as I can against whatever they do to me.”

“Like what?”

“They’ll want to get even for all the misery we’ve put them through the last few days.”

She felt sick to her stomach. “I’m so sorry I ran out on you and the guys like that. It never occurred to me that Ruala might come back so soon. God, I was stupid.”

He shrugged. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Hell, it didn’t occur to me, either. I shouldn’t have made love to you in the playhouse and kept you outside so long. My fault.”

“Don’t apologize for that,” she replied. “I’m going to hang on to the memory of it to keep me strong. We have to survive this! We’ve got so much to live for—”

Mac cut across her babbling sharply. “Susan.”

There was something in his tone that made her stop abruptly.

“We’re both likely to die before this night is over. Whether or not you should have left the house or we should’ve made love isn’t all that important right now.”

“But I— We— No!” she stuttered.

“Listen to me.” His gaze bored into her like steel-blue fire. “There’s a chance that Ruala won’t kill you right away. He may want to rough you up or have sex with you. Maybe film you to prove to Ferrare he caught and killed the right woman. Whatever he does, I need you to hold out as long as you can. Time is your best friend, right now. The more of it we can buy the Blackjacks to find and rescue us, the better. Understood?”

“No! No, I don’t understand!” she cried.

He spoke succinctly, with terrible urgency. “Don’t give the bastard any reason to kill you. Draw out whatever he does for as long as you possibly can. Delay him. Distract him. Play dumb. Whatever. Just buy yourself more time. Your life depends on it, Susan.”

She stared back at him. She heard his words, but their import simply refused to sink in to her brain. Blankly she said, “But what about you, Mac?”

He frowned. “I’m a dead man. Just promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive. Even if that means ratting me out. If you tell them I’m with the Blackjacks, that should buy you a good long reprieve. They’ll work me over until they kill me. I’ll hold out for you as long as I can.”

Maybe it was denial of the situation they were in. Maybe it was her need to feel something other than choking terror. Or maybe it was just that she’d reached the end of her rope.

But she leaned forward in her chair, glaring daggers at him. “Mac Conlon, now you listen to me. I am not going to rat you out. Ever! How dare you believe that I would even consider such a thing!”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she kept right on going.

“Don’t you go all martyred and honorable on me! And don’t you dare tell them who you are just to buy me more time. Have you got that? You fight to stay alive, damn you!”

“It’s not about me living. It’s about you getting out of here alive—”

She cut him off. They might not have much more time together. She fought back the tears that rushed to her eyes at the thought. She was going to have her say before he went and got himself killed.

“I love you, you muscle-bound jerk. I even thought we might finally have a permanent future together. But if you can’t bend your stiff spine enough to avoid suicide in the name of protecting me, then maybe you don’t deserve me! Getting yourself killed will prove you’re stupid, not that you love me. Dammit, if you do love me, fight! Live!”

He looked completely broadsided. “Susan, I…”

A noise stopped him in midsentence. She looked up at the source of the noise.

Dear God.

The door at the top of the stairs creaked open.

Ruala was coming.