No Stranger to Danger by No Stranger to Danger (Evernight) Read Free Book Online Page B

had earphones in and stopped lip-syncing at the same time he came to his feet. Choosing not to shoot, Logan slammed the M-9 against the haji's head. The guard's eyes rolled back, and his legs went limp. Logan reached out to slowly, quietly lower the body to the floor, resting the guard's back against the wall of the dim tunnel-like passage.
    Logan glanced behind to see Taj beginning to stir.
    He didn’t pause a second more, reaching inside to take Mara by the wrist and hauling her behind him.
    He looked ahead through the basement to the stairwell.
    There was only one imperative: Save Mara and get the intel into the right hands.
    And there was only one available set of hands with the connections and skill that came to mind—those of Connar MacKall .

Chapter Six
     
    2130 hours, Sunday
    Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
     
    Mara did not know whether to cry, scream, or throw her arms around Logan and hug him for saving their lives—it was one of those or hit him in the face.
    She took him in all at once as he pulled them to a stop at the corner of the dark passage, his arm around her waist, hugging her close to his side. Either to keep her safe or to stabilize himself, she was not sure.
    He looked like death embodied. Tall, rugged, and strong as last she remembered him, but… Looking on him, Mara winced.
    "What the hell happened to you?" she asked, though the words came out less than caring after their less than normal parting. "Where have you been?"Abrasions marred his head and wrists, bruises discolored his arms, and his tactical clothing had been ripped and bloodied. She hadn’t seen him in five years, but there stood the hard, lean soldier who had left on a mission to Afghanistan and never returned.
    The son of a bitch had sent her divorce papers in the mail . Their marriage had been terminated and swept under a JAG lawyer's rug faster than she could take a breath. She blinked back her fury and pain and looked down the empty stone corridor with only orangey lights affixed to the top every ten yards or so, cords running between them.
    Where in the hell am I? she wondered as they moved again.
    "What is all this?" Mara asked, scowling as she turned to look at the surroundings. She stopped behind Logan at the end of a passage, still under the villa the man had dragged her into an hour before, only two corridors away from the basement room they had meant to kill them in.
    They being the scary men she didn’t know, somehow connected with the equally scary man who had attacked and kidnapped her from her home days before—and they were connected with her ex-husband.
    Logan didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge her whispered questions other than to hold up a finger to silence her.
    Exasperated, Mara crossed her arms and waited. Logan turned back to her, briefly glancing over her shoulder, ascertaining that no threat was behind them. He motioned her to stay put, and she gave him a shaky nod.
    He slipped around the corner, and after a moment, she heard a scuffle of feet and the beginnings of a shout, but then the sound died off and she heard a thump as though something heavy hit the cement floor. Mara instantly slipped to the corner and began to look around, but stuck her head into Logan's chest.
    She gasped at the contact and jerked back, reaffixing her scowl.
    "Come on," he said. "There's an exit that way." He pointed to where he had come from.
    Mara followed him, staying well behind his back, and went up a short stack of stairs. It wasn’t until she came around the corner to a short landing that she noticed the two bodies sprawled together in front of the exit Logan had spoken of. She allowed him to drag her along by the elbow and carefully tiptoed over the bodies. She stepped in the hole where the unconscious man's arm curved out at his side, and again stepped in the space between tangled legs. A quiver ran up her as she stopped beside Logan, glancing between him and the men.
    Logan eased the door open just a bit and peeked out. Mara