Darkness Bound

2

A jolt of something sharp and electric sizzled through her, straight down to her toes.

Her first thought was: Holy s**t, that is one scary-beautiful man.

Her next, a millisecond later: Get the hell out of my shot, asshole!

She waved her hand in another frantic “move it” gesture, this time more aggressively. It also helpfully featured her middle finger, the international sign for “you, sir, are a douche.” It didn’t work. Jack groaned in exasperation and shot to her feet. Time to change vantage points.

Just as she was about to turn away, an odd noise arrested her. Over the din of screams and shattering glass and gunfire, she heard a high-pitched roar, a rumbling that accelerated and grew louder, echoing off the buildings. It came from behind her—

Jack turned the opposite direction and didn’t even have time to gasp in horror as a Humvee, mere yards away, barreled down the narrow street toward her.

I’m going to kill that guy.

Stupid. So damn stupid. Almost ten years of being embedded with military units all over the world in the most dangerous war zones and she was going to get flattened by a Humvee because she was too busy staring at some hot guy. Her entire body tensed—

Then she was flying through the air, hit hard from the side.

She landed on her back on the sidewalk with such force all the breath was knocked from her lungs. Her head cracked against the cement. She saw stars. Pain flared throughout her body, and everything went black.

When she opened her eyes again, the hulk was bending over her with his hands flattened on the ground on either side of her head, glaring down into her face.

“Are you oblivious, or just plain stupid?” he snapped. It was more of a growl, pitched low and rumbly, his English tinged with the lilting accent of Portuguese. Normally Jack would have found this kind of voice incredibly sexy. At the moment, she found it—and him—infuriating.

“You’re the one who’s oblivious! What the hell were you doing just standing there in the middle of everything?” She attempted to sit up, and fireworks erupted in her vision. Wincing, she pushed him aside, and brought a hand to her forehead.

“Just sit here for a minute and breathe. You hit your head pretty hard.”

The hulk crouched in front of her with his big hand spread in a determined “stay” gesture, looking at her in that strange way he’d been before. She had an odd, fleeting feeling that he knew her somehow . . . and didn’t like her. She pushed that aside because if they’d met somewhere before, she’d definitely remember.

He wasn’t the kind of man a woman would forget.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said through gritted teeth, willing it to be true. Even though she felt bruises already forming on her shoulders, back, and behind, and there was a worrisome buzzing in her ears and a metallic taste on her tongue, she wasn’t about to let on, especially to the Incredible Irritating Hulk. Who just happened to appear by her side . . .

“How did you . . .” Jack glanced back across the street to the spot where he’d been standing moments ago, and shook her head to clear it. “What just happened?”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You got clipped by that Humvee.”

Across the street the massive dun-colored military vehicle was parked in front of the market, flanked by two more that had just arrived. Uniformed personnel in flak jackets and helmets, with rifles slung over their shoulders, had taken up positions around the cars and were attempting to direct the fleeing crowd. A line of city police vehicles roared up the other end of the street, lights flashing, sirens screaming, and Jack realized she and the hulk were probably about to get caught right in the middle of a firefight with the hoodlums inside the market who’d started the fire.

The question of how she’d landed relatively unscathed in her present spot on the hard sidewalk after being hit by a five-thousand-pound, seven-foot-wide vehicle became instantly insignificant because it was showtime.

Jack lived for showtime.

She grinned, sat up straight, grabbed her Canon—which thankfully had remained in one piece on its strap around her neck—and, as the police cars screeched to a stop and disgorged dozens of armed officers who swarmed the entrance to the market, started shooting.

Then she was flying through the air again, but this time she was being carried. By the Incredible Irritating Hulk, no less.

“What the—put me down!” she shouted, just as a deafening volley of gunfire burst overhead. The stone façade of the building behind them erupted in a spray of pulverized cement as bullets tore through the brick, and she was pelted in the face with glass from the picture window beside it that exploded into a million tiny, jagged shards. Cursing, she turned her head and hid in the hulk’s neck.

The hulk tightened his arms around her and shot forward in a burst of speed so fast it left her head spinning, her stomach far behind.

In a few seconds it was over and she was being lowered to the ground. In the distance lingered the sound of gunfire and shouting. An acrid haze of smoke tainted the twilight sky, first yellow, then shifting, charcoal gray.

Breathless, her legs not altogether onboard with the task of supporting her weight, Jack looked around. It took a moment before the world settled and she regained her bearings. They were in an alley, deserted except for a skinny orange cat nosing through a pile of garbage beside a Dumpster. At the end of the alley were a fire escape and three unmarked doors. The air smelled like urine and rotting trash and the soft, ripe decay of the tropics.

The hulk snapped, “You have a death wish or something?”