Dana Marton - Secret Contract

The first obstacle course began with the old tire trap. She stepped into the first and moved forward, lifting her feet high as she ran across the tires, squishing into the mud in the middle.

“Again. Faster,” Tarasov yelled when she reached the end. He did the exercise himself, as he had done everything he expected her to do, always, from the very beginning.

She ran back to the start, her mud-crusted boots adding extra pounds. Her muscles were stiff, still aching from their work the day before.

“Again. Faster!” He was right behind her.

That much yelling couldn’t be good for a person. His blood pressure was bound to go up. Maybe he would have a stroke. There was a thought. She pressed her hand to her side and tried to hide that she was already starting to gasp for air.

He made her run the tires a half-dozen times before he let her move on to the rope. She lunged and caught on with her hands, but her muddy boots were too slippery to find purchase.

She needed long pants. The wet rope scratched her thighs where the shorts she had used in lieu of pajamas left her skin bare—a place she would just as soon not bring to his attention.

He was watching her closely. “Don’t use your feet. Use your arms. Go!”

She glared at him but put one hand over the other, made some progress, wiped her forehead on the rope when sweat rolled into her eyes. She’d worked out in prison. It had been something to do in solitude, passing the time. She’d been in far better shape when she’d gotten out than when she’d gone in. Decent shape, she’d thought. It had taken Tarasov less than half a day to prove otherwise.

“Another ten feet and you’re there,” he called up to her.

Might as well be a hundred. It seemed impossible that her arms would support her that long. She was still tired from her training the day before. She’d had two, maybe three hours of sleep. She had nothing left to give.

In her brief moments of rest, she’d been considering finding a way to break out of the compound, but each time she had pushed the impulse aside. Patience. Training wouldn’t last forever. Getting away would be much easier once she was out of here, in a normal, civilian environment. And whatever she learned in the meanwhile would aid her in escape and evasion later on.

She glanced at the man standing at the bottom of the rope. What would it take to get by Tarasov?

He grabbed the rope next to hers, went up, paused for a second at the top, then effortlessly eased himself down.

He was a damn machine. He was never tired, hungry or upset. If necessary, he’d show her the same self-defense move twenty times in a row.

Getting away from him might prove harder than she had thought—he was even tougher than he looked.

She had always been a sucker for a good challenge.

She looked up, fixed her gaze on the steel bar above and moved forward. Eight more feet to go. Six. Three. By the time she finally touched the cold metal, her arms were shaking.

Now the way down. She lowered herself slowly, one handhold at a time. She was about halfway when she slipped. Still, she caught herself, tried to grab with her slippery boots onto the wet rope, but that didn’t work. She slipped again, this time for good, the rope burning across her palm. She let go in response to the sudden, sharp pain.

She was falling, falling free, bracing for impact.

Then she was caught in Nick Tarasov’s arms. The landing was soft—compared to the hard slam into the ground she had expected, but still it stole her breath for a second or two. She looked up at him wide-eyed, waiting for him to yell.

He swayed for a moment then steadied, and set her on her feet. His light brown hair looked blond in the moonlight. His brush cut hadn’t grown a millimeter since she’d first met him at the prison. He must have found time in between her torture sessions to get away for a cut. Everything about him screamed “commando.” He was raw power and confidence wrapped in black.

“Let me see your hand,” he said, his voice gruff. He was removing a small flashlight from his belt.

“First-aid station?” There was one on the ground floor of one of the buildings. Thank God, she was done for the night.

One eyebrow slid up his forehead. “There is no first-aid station. You’re in the woods. Your team has been taken out.” His voice was cold, matter-of-fact. “A dozen of the enemy are coming up about a hundred yards behind you with machine guns. What do you do?”

Was he for real?

Looked like she had hesitated for too long, because he reached for the hem of the FBI T-shirt she’d slept in and ripped it a few inches up, then around.

“Don’t—” By the time she pulled back, wishing she’d slept in her bra, he was done, leaving her midriff bare. The night air felt cold against the sheen of sweat on her back.

He ripped the ribbon of material in half. “Bandages. You have to learn to think on your feet. Come on, up the wall.”

The plastic “rocks” screwed into the boards were as slippery as the rope had been under her muddy boots. He was coming up behind her, but didn’t pass her this time. Maybe he was hanging out to catch her again if she fell. She gritted her teeth and refused to slip. Her shirt was damp with sweat by the time she made it all the way up and straddled the top.

He sat next to her—wasn’t even breathing hard. “That was good. You’re getting the hang of how to distribute your weight when you reach.”

She’d followed the instructions he’d given her last time. A miracle that she’d remembered under the circumstances.

He was a first-rate hard-ass, a government man, so she disliked him on principle—a sentiment common in the hacker community—but he was a hell of a trainer. She admired skill and knowledge in any form. This guy had it in spades. The bad news was most of the time she hated his guts. The good news was she was getting stronger and better every day.

Thunder clapped overhead.

She looked up, then at him. “Did you know men are six times more likely to be struck by lightning than women?”

One eyebrow slid up his forehead. She could have sworn his upper lip twitched. “Hop into your harness. Down we go,” he said and pulled on a rope that hung down the wall on the other side, putting some muscles into play.

He wasn’t hard to look at. If she had to seduce him to get away from him…She had promised herself to do absolutely anything.

Deep breath.

Maybe not that.

After years of abstinence, the thought of seducing anyone should have felt a lot more exciting. But Tarasov—She would find another path to freedom. The thought of cozying up to the man left her feeling jumpy. He was a live wire. Her sense of self-preservation said to stay away from him.

He probably wasn’t as hot as she was beginning to think, anyway. Most likely, it was a case of even stale bread looking tasty to a starving woman.

It ticked her off that she would find him attractive even while thoroughly disliking him. Wasn’t that abnormal? Weren’t women supposed to be attracted to men to whom they felt an emotional connection? Men were supposed to be the ones who jumped at hormones and visuals.

There wasn’t a micron of a connection between the two of them, that was for sure. They were as different as two people could be. She was a loner, a hacker—antiregulation and therefore antigovernment by definition, one hundred percent intellectual. He was on some kind of commando team, a soldier who jumped to decisions made by politicians, a breed that hadn’t got a single thing right since the Declaration of Independence, and he was a muscle man through and through.

She clipped on her harness and stepped away from the wall. Her thigh muscles were trembling, but she held steady, envying Nick’s graceful ease. A flick of her thumb released the catch, allowing her to slide fast enough to catch up with him halfway down. He hadn’t been going full speed.