A Dangerous Tryst (The Inheritance Book 3) Read online

  “I can’t help it.” Between breaths, she realized that all the shooting had stopped. When they reached the edge of the foliage, Madalina glanced back. She didn’t see or hear Damon and Brandon, and looked at Cole’s face to see if he was as concerned as she was. His features had gone a little more waxy, the skin more pale. He concentrated all his attention ahead to the field, to the left and right along a skinny paved road for signs of trouble. No matter how she worried about the brothers, Madalina realized she needed to get Cole inside the plane and get his injury treated. He might think he had only a flesh wound, but his pallor said something else.

  “All right. It’s as clear as it’s going to get. We’ll go straight past the building to the jet,” Cole said, breaking cover after a quick glance her way. He held his weapon down at his side, as if reluctant to put it away.

  “I’m ready. Let’s go,” she said. Relieved that there were no fences around the small terminal or the airport in general, Madalina darted into the open at his side. If she’d thought crossing the road was bad, it was nothing compared to how vulnerable and exposed she felt here. There wasn’t a tree or bush to duck behind if more bullets rang out. It was just open land to the terminal, to the hangars and runway. She ran for all she was worth, breath puffing past her lips.

  There was no turning back now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Cole felt each step as if anvils were weighted to his ankles. Sluggishness overpowered whatever adrenaline had carried him this far, threatening to buckle his knees and bring him straight to the ground. What saved him was determination and the knowledge that his body would continue for a while yet before giving in. He wouldn’t collapse until he was both mentally and physically spent.

  He knew because he’d been shot before. Minor wounds, thankfully, but just as draining, just as debilitating.

  One foot in front of the other. Don’t stop. Just a short way to go. At some point he holstered the gun. He needed the extra pump action of his arm to help propel his forward motion.

  “Just a little farther,” he heard Madalina say, as if from a distance. As if she knew his energy was beginning to wane (which was an understatement).

  Rounding the end of the terminal, Cole put in a third and fourth effort when he glimpsed their jet sitting on the tarmac. He said, “Run ahead and get the pilot and copilot to start the engines. Get them to open the door.”

  Madalina didn’t quibble. She darted forward, dark hair flying behind her like a banner, and waved her arms to get the pilot’s attention.

  The door opened in anticipation of their arrival.

  He watched Madalina stop to wait at the bottom of the steps, and urged her on with a gesture. Charging up the stairs in her wake, he lurched inside, falling into the first seat he came to. He experienced frustration at the way his vision wanted to darken at the edges and how weak his body felt. Madalina’s voice came to him as if in a haze, talking about bandages and first aid. Her tone was not to be trifled with.

  Realizing he was losing consciousness despite his best effort to remain alert, Cole had one last thing to say.

  “If Brandon and Damon aren’t here in ten minutes, tell the pilot to take off without them.”

  “Tell the pilot—but Cole . . .” Madalina abandoned her questions about Damon and Brandon in favor of appealing to the copilot for a first-aid kit. “I need something to clean a wound. And I need bandages.”

  First things first. She wasn’t going to do anything but see to Cole’s injury. He’d slipped into unconsciousness, which shouldn’t have worried her as much as it did. She didn’t think it was a mortal wound, but he had pushed himself and probably lost a lot of blood during the last sprint to the plane.

  The copilot, a late-thirtysomething man with a serious face and gray just starting to color the black hair at his temples, handed her a white box with a big red plus sign on it. His name tag read HERNANDEZ. “Here you are, ma’am. Do you need help?”

  “I think I can manage, thank you.” Madalina accepted the kit and flipped open the lid. “If I can’t stop the blood, we might have to call for an ambulance.”

  “You want to delay takeoff, then? Thaddeus said to get you all in the air as soon as possible. I notice two of your team are missing,” Hernandez said.

  “They’ll be here,” Madalina replied, unwrapping a stack of bandages. “Give them a few more minutes.” She didn’t want to make the decision to leave Brandon and Damon behind. They would make it in time. They had to. Right then, she needed to focus on Cole.

  Tucking a few thick bandages in front of and behind the entry and exit point, she then used a roll of gauze to tightly secure the bandages in place. “If you can get Thaddeus on the phone for me, that would be great,” she added. Thaddeus would surely tell her to wait for Brandon and Damon despite the risks that Lance would catch up.

  Hernandez pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. Madalina pressed the back of her hand to Cole’s forehead. His skin felt cool, clammy.

  She didn’t like it at all.

  “No answer, ma’am.” The copilot ended the call after getting no response.

  Madalina rose to her feet and marched to the small kitchenette beyond the seating area. The faint crack of gunfire gave her a moment’s pause. Darting a worried look at one of the small windows, she got back to business and rinsed her hands. She said, “Thanks. Can you keep trying? Brandon and Damon should be here shortly.” Using a hand towel, she dried the wetness from her fingers and returned to Cole. Should she call an ambulance? Wait until Damon and Brandon arrived? It struck her then that Thaddeus had probably set up a meeting with the Chinese agents and that they needed both dragons. Damon had the other.

  Unless there had been an exchange when she wasn’t looking. Madalina crouched next to the seat to feel Cole’s thigh pockets. Sure enough, she felt the outline of both dragons. Cole must have decided at some point that he might get split off from his brothers and had wanted possession of the artifacts to take to the Chinese agents.

  “Cole. Cole, wake up,” Madalina said, leaving the dragons in his pockets for now. “Can you hear me?”

  Cole did not stir.

  She rifled through the first-aid kit and found a small package of smelling salts.

  “I have Thaddeus on the line,” Hernandez said, handing the phone over.

  Madalina set the package down and took the phone with a murmur of thanks to the copilot. She’d never talked directly to Thaddeus before but had heard his resonant, deep voice over Cole’s speaker several times. “Thaddeus, it’s Madalina. Cole’s been shot.”

  “How bad?” Thaddeus asked. He sounded extremely businesslike, the syllables sharp and concise.

  “A through and through on the shoulder. I’m trying to stop the bleeding right now and have smelling salts here in the hopes it’ll rouse him,” she replied, crouching next to Cole again. “Should I call an ambulance instead?”

  “What does Damon think?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Damon and Brandon aren’t here. We had to split off from them during the fighting.” Madalina snapped the package to activate the contents and waved the smelling salts under Cole’s nose. He immediately jerked in his seat and swerved his head away from the scent. “Hang on; the salts might have worked.”

  Thaddeus went quiet in her ear as she set a hand on Cole’s other shoulder. “Cole? It’s Madalina. Wake up.” She stifled an uneasy noise as Cole slumped in the seat and did not fully regain consciousness.

  “Is he awake?” Thaddeus asked.

  “No. It roused him for a second, but didn’t bring him all the way up.” Madalina set the salts aside for the moment. “I think we should change the plans. He needs medical attention.”

  “Hold tight. I’ll bring the medical attention to you,” Thaddeus said.

  Madalina heard clicks and beeps and then Thaddeus speaking rapidly to someone else on another line. She couldn’t quite make out the words.

  “Ma’am,” Hernandez said, walking back to the seat f
rom the open door, “we’ve got gunshots. Not too far from the airstrip, I think.”

  Madalina borrowed one of Cole’s less colorful curses and rose to her feet.

  “Anything wrong?” Thaddeus asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Make your arrangements for medical care for Cole, and I’ll call you back in a minute.” Before Thaddeus could protest, Madalina ended the call and handed the phone to Hernandez. She made her way to the door but stood to the side, out of the line of fire. With her luck, someone would be shooting in their direction and she’d wind up like Cole. If Hernandez said there was gunfire close by, she believed him. Sure enough, she detected the sharp crack of a gunshot not far from the airstrip.

  Dammit.

  Leaning back, she kneeled onto a seat so she could look out the window. The foliage surrounding the airstrip hid the shooters’ identities, so she couldn’t tell if it was Damon or Brandon—or Lance and his men. If it was Lance, and he’d somehow gotten around Damon and Brandon—or he’d shot them and left them for dead—she wouldn’t know until it was too late. The one thing she couldn’t allow was for Lance to attack the plane. He might shoot the tires out or punch bullets through a window, preventing takeoff.

  Or he might storm the plane, discover the dragons, and kill everyone now that he didn’t need her anymore. Any or all of that could happen.

  A steely resolve settled into the pit of Madalina’s stomach.

  There was one other alternative. One that Cole probably wouldn’t approve of. The more she thought about it, the more she decided it was the only route to take. Someone had to make a stand, right here, right now. She tamped down fear and nervousness to do what needed to be done.

  Drawing on inner strength, on her determination to protect Cole while he was vulnerable, she stepped back to Cole’s seat. Reaching across his body, she liberated one gun, then the other. She discovered he had no more extra magazines—he’d given them to Damon and Brandon earlier—and stood to face the copilot. She tucked one gun into the back waistband of her pants and said, “Do you have any weapons on the plane? I’m going to need them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  We have a service revolver and a few magazines,” Hernandez said. He went straight to the cockpit without further prompting and returned shortly with a black handgun and three clips of ammunition.

  Madalina checked the magazine of Cole’s other gun, satisfied to see there were plenty of bullets left. “Thanks, Hernandez. If a doctor doesn’t show up shortly, or Brandon and Damon or I aren’t back in twenty minutes, take off, find the nearest big city, and land. Call for medical attention, then call Thaddeus and tell him what happened. He’ll arrange for Cole’s care from there. As far as I know, though, he’s got a doctor en route. So be on the lookout. Obviously, if someone approaches and is armed or looks dangerous, don’t let him in. It’s probably not the doctor but someone we desperately need to avoid.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hernandez said. He didn’t so much as blink when she bent to kiss Cole’s forehead, then headed for the open door.

  Resolved to do this her way, she descended the stairs to the tarmac and broke into a run for the tree line. Out here she could hear the crack-pop of gunfire much easier.

  And Hernandez had been right—it was close by.

  Keeping a gun in each hand, with a third tucked in her waistband, she homed in on the direction of the gunfire and entered the woods perhaps twenty yards from where she thought the action was taking place. She couldn’t tell if Brandon and Damon had Lance’s men pinned down, or vice versa.

  It didn’t matter. She meant to put an end to this once and for all. She wasn’t leaving here without Cole’s brothers, wasn’t leaving them to die in a forest half a world away from home. Sometimes a girl had to do what she had to do, and this was the moment she needed to step up in a big way and help. The weapons training and self-defense lessons were only part of the equation; the rest was mental, overcoming her own fears and insecurities to engage in a battle she wasn’t sure she could win. Cole had been supportive and encouraging, even in the beginning, when her aim had been questionable and her physical endurance weak. She wanted to prove to herself that she could take on what used to seem impossible—and emerge victorious. It was a matter of pride, of stubborn determination.

  Damon and Brandon wouldn’t have hesitated to come to her aid if the circumstances were reversed.

  Slinking through the trees, she used the thickest trunks for cover, edging closer and closer to the gunshots. Unnerved at the inability to tell which way anyone was shooting, she spent an extra few seconds orientating herself and listening for movement in the brush. She didn’t want to become an accidental casualty.

  Tucking another gun into her waistband so she would have better control of the revolver, she double-checked to reassure herself that the safety was off and, as quickly and quietly as possible, crept over to another trunk. The gunshots had died down, making it difficult for her to home in on the exact location of the shooters.

  Copying the stealthy way she’d seen Cole move when he was on the hunt, Madalina moved from the tree to a thick bush, then on to another tree. She paused to listen often and took extreme care with every footstep. Snapping twigs and crunching leaves would be a dead giveaway. So far, so good.

  Then, carried to her ears on an errant breeze—whispers. Straining to hear, she attempted to decipher whether it was Damon, Brandon, or Lance’s men. The words didn’t quite take shape, the voices too low to recognize. She couldn’t be sure the whispers came from the brothers, which was a problem.

  She would have to get closer.

  Crouching, she rounded a bush and picked her way cautiously past a stand of thinner trees toward a cluster of plants with broad leaves. She did not have Brandon’s ability to creep over rough terrain like a ghost; despite her best intentions, a twig snapped beneath her shoe, causing her to hesitate when the whispers abruptly stopped.

  This time when the whispers resumed, she determined that she was perhaps ten feet away from her adversary. The voices came from around the other side of the bush, beyond a tall, looming tree. And she knew, finally, that these men were not Brandon or Damon. Even in whispers, she could now discern the difference.

  It struck Madalina as she was about to whip around the last tree and confront the enemy that she’d successfully outmaneuvered some of the most hardened fighters she’d ever seen. Men capable of dealing with these circumstances, trained to remain alert and cautious. In the half second that realization set in, the consequences and reality of her predicament caught up to her; she hadn’t crept up on them at all. The men had heard her and lured her closer, setting a neat trap that she hadn’t seen coming.

  Not until it was too late.

  Almost too late, she amended, dropping into a crouch and swinging around to aim the gun at the man she knew would be there. A rush of adrenaline spiked her heart rate, made her clutch the weapon a little tighter.

  Lance, bloodied and grimy, with a deadly gleam in his eyes, had a gun leveled at her. His aim had been chest high before she’d crouched suddenly, and she decided it was the fast motion that made him pull the trigger. The bullet whizzed over her head. She pulled her trigger, too, aiming for his kneecap. There wasn’t time to contemplate what had just happened. To consider that she’d had a near miss and had automatically fired back.

  Behind her, someone screamed. A masculine shout of agony. Madalina made the connection in less than a second: Lance’s bullet had hit one of his own men. At the same time, Lance threw his head back and released a primal noise of pain. He managed to hang on to his gun, and without thinking further about it, Madalina rose from her crouch and kicked Lance’s gun to the ground. Spinning, heart racing a thousand miles an hour, she confronted another of Lance’s team. Julian. She easily remembered him from the house in California.

  “Don’t,” she said as he raised his gun. “Or I’ll do to you what I did to him.”

  Julian hesitated. The hesitation was his undoing. From the
nearest tree, Brandon emerged and brought the butt of his gun down on the back of Julian’s head. When Brandon shifted his grip and brought the muzzle up, he froze, eyes wide, as if he hadn’t been expecting to see her.

  “Madalina?” Brandon said, sounding bewildered.

  The tense moment passed. Her finger eased on the trigger, and she straightened her posture. Her muscles had been tight, poised for a fight or more shooting. “Yes. I came to see what the problem was. Wanted to make sure you and Damon were all right. I was worried Lance and his men might get past you and attack the plane.”

  It sounded strange even to her own ears. She was checking on them. How ironic, when Brandon and Damon were ten times the fighters she was. The strange sense of calm that had gripped her during the confrontation abruptly turned into a case of after-battle jitters. Her insides felt like jelly.

  “We knew something was up when they stopped firing,” Damon said, appearing at her side. He hooked an arm around her shoulders to give her a tight squeeze. “Where’s Cole?”

  “You took a hell of a chance,” Brandon said, flashing Madalina a typical boyish grin before turning to secure Julian, Lance, and a third man that Lance had shot when she’d ducked. He was the one, Madalina realized, who’d screamed.

  “I had to. Cole’s on the plane and I can’t wake him. We need to hurry. Is it safe to go?” she asked, glancing into the brush in case Lance had more men with him.

  “It should be. Lance split his group, left the others back at the station to keep the officers contained until this is over. We haven’t seen any other shooters or been shot at from a position other than this,” Brandon said as he gathered all the weapons from Lance and his men. “We are almost out of ammo, though. Your timing couldn’t have been better.”

  “I told the copilot to take off if we weren’t back in twenty minutes. We’re cutting it close.” Madalina thumbed the safety on and turned to charge back through the forest. They could call Lance’s position in once they were airborne, get him and his men some help. Madalina didn’t want to add murder to her résumé, even if she’d been shot at first.