Enemy Mine Read online

  Darkness descended over him.

  He was tired of the rage, of the anguish, of the longing.

  He let go of his anger and gave himself up to whatever was coming to take him.

  “Johnny…,” the soft, feminine voice called. It was his given name. From a different time. A different life.

  Despite his blood loss, his pulse spiked. “Selena—” How could it be? She was dead. He had killed her, with his own hands.

  “Sí, corazón,” she whispered.

  His eyes fluttered open. He must be in Hell. She was exactly as he’d last seen her. The most beautiful creature on earth. Dark and deadly, with the face of a siren, the voice of an angel. All disguising that she was a heartless, betraying, murderous bitch. She had pushed him to commit an unspeakable act. He hated himself for being like her.

  “I told you the next time I saw you it would be in Hell,” he said, barely able to enunciate the words. “And here we are.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. That laugh had brought him to his knees more than once. Now she was the one who knelt and touched his cheek with her fingertips. He set his jaw, not wanting to enjoy her touch but relishing it anyway.

  “You’re bleeding, Johnny,” she softly said.

  He grasped her hand and squeezed it with what strength he had left. He wanted to hurt her as she had hurt him. She’d destroyed the one beautiful thing in his life. “Are you behind this? Is this your dirty work?”

  “Always suspicious, aren’t you?”

  She smiled. While he could not feel the hole in his chest or any of his other wounds, her smile was like a hot knife twisting in his heart.

  “Go to Hell, Selena.”

  She smiled again, the magnitude of it blinding him. She lifted her clasped hands over her head. The glint of metal caught a sliver of the sun’s straining ray.

  “No, Johnny Boy.” She brought her arms down in a hard motion, stabbing him directly in his broken, beaten heart. “You go to Hell.”

  Selena stood in shocked silence. The last person she’d expected to see here or anywhere for that matter was the only man she would ever love. Because of her, he had been sentenced to death. She had been aware of his escape during transport from jail to prison. It had taken every ounce of will she possessed not to go in search of him. But that would have defeated her original purpose. She was dead to him. For his safety, she must remain so.

  She stared down at the man whom she had caused irreparable emotional damage.

  Johnny.

  He had not moved since she’d injected him. From where she stood beside him, Selena felt his life force, faint as it was, battling the damage to his body. Watching over him wasn’t going to speed things along. She needed to leave. If she did not, her entire mission would be compromised. She was here to hijack that semi, and its deadly cargo.

  Only she couldn’t leave. Not—quite—yet.

  From the moment she’d seen Johnny magically appear on this lonely stretch of road in Kyrgyzstan, long-suppressed feelings had rushed to the surface: regret, fear, anger, and a longing so deep her heart ached. Memories of their two years together swept through her. It had been eight years since she’d last seen him, but it seemed as if an entire lifetime had passed. She could still see the horrific pain and anger in his eyes when in a fit of rage he had tried to kill her. As far as he and the law knew, he had.

  Now, on her quest for the cask Baphomet had spoken of, she had had a bird’s-eye view when the ambush played out, led by none other than Johnny Cicone.

  Before she could recover from the shock of seeing him, he’d gone down, and she’d had to wait for the trailer to start moving before she could get to him. When she saw the carnage that was his body, she had not given her actions a second thought. She had given him her reserve shot of Revive, a combination of blood serums extracted from donors not of the human world. Then, for safe measure, she had injected him with the individual vampire serums she had just collected in Siberia and St. Petersburg.

  It was his only chance to survive, and she owed him that.

  Revive was illegal. If she was caught with even a drop of it on her person, she would be executed on the spot. Nonetheless, she transported the drug and the serums needed to make it for an important man, one who wouldn’t be pleased when she returned empty-handed.

  Joran Cadiz was not a man you failed. She shrugged off his impending wrath. She could always hunt again. It wasn’t the vampire she feared disappointing, it was Señor Balderama, el patrón.

  The head of Los Cuatro, a man with a mission—a mission Selena shared, one Cadiz knew nothing about.

  Joran was her connection to the immortal world she shunned. Los Cuatro was her human connection, in a world she fought to fit into and a cause she believed in.

  It was funny how fate intervened. While she was hell-bent on hijacking the cask Apollyon was after, so was Los Cuatro, but for different reasons. Humanitarian reasons. As a Los Cuatro agent, Selena had come to Kyrgyzstan to locate it and hijack it. But now, because of Johnny, she’d been waylaid.

  She must go. With her powers, she would easily be able to pick up the trailer’s location and do what she had come to do.

  She looked up at the afternoon sun, then back to Johnny. She could do nothing more for him. He’d either live and thrive thanks to the Rev, or he’d die. … She’d given him a chance. She owed him more—but not in this lifetime.

  Off in the distance, the faint but unmistakable sound of a helicopter disturbed the silence. Johnny’s backup? Selena knelt beside her beloved and touched his cheek. It was cold. Her heart stutter-stepped. She prayed to his God that he survived, then brushed her lips across his cold ones. “Good-bye, Johnny,” she softly said, then stood and turned west.

  She sprinted down the opposite crevice to a sleek, black motocross bike, then roared off after the trailer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nikko woke to the sting of frigid air slapping his face and full memory of the ambush and his failure. His body felt light, and—tentatively—he touched his chest. Beneath the ravaged body armor and shredded fatigues, smooth skin. What the hell?

  He bolted upright, realizing he was in no pain. Scrambling to the top of the crevice, he surveyed the carnage and destruction that was the roadside. The bodies of the fallen agents, mercs, and commandos littered the scene. Their bodies were still mangled, bloody messes, while his …

  His body-armor vest. It was in pieces, his jacket blown to shreds. Blood covered his cargo pants and his skin. He poked his finger through the hole in the fabric covering his thigh, then examined the one in his sleeve.

  “What the hell?” He hurried to the nearest CIA agent and touched his chest. His body was still warm. How much time had passed?

  The distant twap-twap-twap of a chopper caught his attention. Should be his extraction team. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Nikko grabbed the M16 from the fallen spook and another from the agent lying next to him. He dug for his satphone, but it was in pieces on the side of the road. He took cover in the crevice and waited. Friend or foe would be determined in less than ten, and he was preparing for foe.

  The sudden vision he had imagined as he lay dying lingered on the fringes of his brain. Selena Guerrero.

  No fucking way.

  He’d been shot up and bleeding, so out of it he’d started hallucinating. He’d killed her with his own two hands! Had been convicted and sentenced to die for her murder! Yet even with his dying breath, she would not leave him alone.

  He looked out over the horizon. He could see for miles with a newfound clarity. Rocks. Struggling flora. The gray, barren colors and textures of the terrain.

  The chopper was getting closer, his hearing so acute he knew it was an American-made Chinook 47. His L.O.S.T. team. They were coming for him. A sudden gust of wind brought the blood scents of the dead with it—the smell so intense, he covered his mouth and gagged.

  Nikko ran, unable to stomach it. His legs carried him swiftly across the hard earth. He easily jumped
over a ten-foot-wide ditch, only realizing what he had done when he landed on the other side. Then he cleared the next one, which was even wider.

  What had happened to him? He felt like Superman. The chopper came into view. Nikko waved his arms until it set down fifty yards from him. He grinned when he saw fellow L.O.S.T. operatives Gage Stone and Dominic “Satch” Satriano hop out and come running toward him. His grin faded as they approached.

  He could smell their excitement and their relief. Hear the hot rush of their blood pumping through their hearts. Shit.

  “What the hell happened, Cruz? We lost you on the satellite.”

  Nikko clasped hands with each man, frowning when each winced in turn.

  “Jesus, Cruz, I’m happy to see you, too, but lighten up,” Stone said, withdrawing his hand and shaking it.

  Satriano shook out the pain in his own hand. For a second, Nikko stared at his hand, wondering whether his near-death experience was fucking with his system, the adrenaline in his veins giving him a high he’d never before experienced.

  “Cruz,” Stone yelled, jerking Nikko’s head up.

  “The Kyrgs set us up,” Nikko said. “The trailer was loaded with Russian mercs. They came out fighting, caught us completely off guard.”

  “You think the Kyrg government had a side deal with the underground?” Satch asked, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know what the hell to think.”

  “Did you tag the trailer?” Stone finally asked.

  Nikko nodded. “Yeah, let’s get a lock on it.”

  They started toward the chopper. “You look pretty fucked-up, bro,” Satch said, tugging at Nikko’s torn vest.

  “Nothing but superficial stuff, I’m fine. They’re messed up,” Nikko said as he slowed, pointing to the downed men. Grim lines etched Stone’s and Satch’s faces. “We can’t leave them here,” Nikko added.

  Satch nodded. “We’ll call Godfather from the helo and get our boys home. The Kyrgs can bury their own.”

  “Let’s get out of here and track that cask,” Nikko said, jogging back to the chopper.

  As the chopper lifted into the air, Satch slid a laptop out from a backpack and booted it up. In seconds, they had the trailer Nikko had tagged on the grid. “Heading due west.”

  Nikko nodded. “There’s only one person with the means, motive, and firepower to maneuver a double cross like this. Vladimir Noslov in Osh. His underground stronghold.”

  “Due west of here,” Stone grimly said.

  “Damn it!” Satch roared. “We lost the signal!”

  “They must have found it and disengaged it,” Nikko said. He grabbed a pair of binoculars hanging from an overhead hook and moved up into the empty copilot seat.

  Fully aware that his vision was superenhanced just like the rest of him, Nikko put the binoculars to his eyes and locked in on the tractor-trailer tracks. He still did not understand the enhancement, but he didn’t question it. All he knew was that it was damn amazing and could help them now.

  He pointed to a sharp turn of the tracks. “They’ve changed direction. Take the compass point due north,” Nikko said to the pilot.

  “How the hell can you see those tracks even with the lenses?” Stone asked, coming up behind him.

  “I just can.” Nikko pointed to the tracks again. “Turn forty-five degrees west. We’re back on track to Osh.”

  Nikko tracked each new turn the trailer made. They kept low, but the farther they traveled, the more aware Nikko was that their airspace was running out. Even though an American base was in the northern part of the country, this area was run by criminal cartels. A low-flying American military chopper was a prime target.

  “Target dead ahead three hundred meters,” Nikko warned.

  “I have a visual,” the pilot said. “One desert-cammie tractor-trailer, coming up hard at twelve o’clock. One hundred meters and closing.”

  “Slow down and bank,” Nikko warned. “They have RPGs.” But even as Nikko said the words, he saw that the back doors to the trailer had been left open. Empty.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The chopper set down and they hurried to the empty hull. Several sets of tire tracks led away from the abandoned trailer. All of them deep. Any one of the six sets could be carrying the cask.

  “Damn it!” Stone cursed.

  “Call in our location, Satch, and have the satellite do a perimeter search for the trailers. They couldn’t have gotten too far. We’ll get locks on them, then track them via satellite.”

  Satriano nodded and sprinted to the chopper to call in the orders.

  “It’s too dangerous for us to split up, Cruz,” Stone said. “We’re going to have to pick one and stay with it while the other five are tracked until we can get more teams assembled.”

  Satch whistled from the chopper, motioning them to hurry the hell up.

  As they boarded, he said, “Satellite images show six trailers, all six headed west.”

  “If we go deeper, we’re begging for trouble,” Stone said. “We’re going to have to back off.”

  “We can’t!” Nikko said. They had come too far. Too many lives had been lost to turn tail.

  “Looks like they’ve got company,” Satch said, watching the screen. “A motorcycle following a mile behind, closing in fast.”

  As the chopper whirled upward and turned west, Nikko’s skin chilled. There was no way. … “Can you go back and see which direction the bike came from?”

  “Stand by.”

  Nikko’s heart pounded in his chest. He refused to believe what his gut screamed was true.

  “From the ambush coordinates.”

  Jesus.

  “We’re entering restricted air,” the pilot warned.

  Satch and Stone looked to Nikko. Unless he wanted to create an international incident, he had no choice.

  “Abort,” he angrily said.

  “We’ll keep tabs on the trailers via satellite. I’m calling it in,” Satch said.

  Nikko yanked his headphones off and threw them so hard they shattered into pieces on the steel floor. His fellow operatives looked as troubled as he felt. Once those trailers hit Osh, even with the satellite tracking, locating the cask would be like looking for a needle in ten haystacks. Running his hands through his hair and then over his face, Nikko shouted, “Fuck!”

  Stone and Satch looked in shock at the damage his temper had caused, then glanced at one another. Stone jerked his chin at Nikko. “You on something?”

  “Something.” Nikko shook his head and looked out the open door toward the mountains. His body still thrummed with a strength and power he had never before experienced a power he knew wasn’t just the result of stress-induced adrenaline. Had Selena been a hallucination after all? And if she hadn’t been a hallucination, neither had whatever she’d injected into his chest.

  He turned back to Stone. “Something happened to me out there. Something weird. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I died and came back to life, but only after someone shot me up with something first. And even worse—”

  “What the hell can be worse than that?” Satch hissed.

  “Being brought back to life by a dead woman.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lost Souls Night Club, South Beach, Miami

  Agitated with her “guest,” Selena paced the small space in her office. “I don’t have it,” she said for the fifth time.

  Miguel Ramos, muscleman and messenger for Joran Cadiz, the half-Dutch, half-Cuban reigning lord of the Miami underworld, grinned like the arrogant man he was. Ramos wielded his machismo like a sword. He liked to draw blood and often did; but while his tactics as Cadiz’s enforcer worked on most souls, they didn’t work on her. In a throwdown, she’d win and they both knew it.

  “What do you expect me to tell Joran? That you lost the serums on the way home?”

  His disdainful sneer made her bristle, but she simply shrugged. “Tell him whatever you want.”

  Narrowing his eyes, he grabbed for her. H
issing like a cat, Selena turned on him, tossing her long, black hair behind her squared shoulders. “Mind your manners, señor. You forget I do more than bite.”

  He stayed in her space, but dropped his burly hands, his gaze wary.

  Good. He wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

  “You’ve been paid,” he pointed out.

  Selena moved around her desk, yanked the top drawer open, and withdrew a corporate checkbook. She scribbled a check, tore it out, and handed it to him. “Consider Joran reimbursed.”

  “Cash isn’t the only way you’ve been paid.” Ramos shook his head and tore the check in half, letting the pieces fall to the floor. “The serums, señorita, or I am afraid I will have to damage you.”

  Selena studied him. He was built to fight. Barely six feet tall, broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with bulging muscles, and mean as hell. She had seen him in action. Although she knew she could best him, she wasn’t in a mood for a fight at the moment. Since her return from Kyrgyzstan, she felt off center. Confused. Anxious.

  Seeing Johnny after all this time had thrown her for a triple loop. Then she had done the ultimate in stupidity—given him the very thing she had been prepaid to deliver to Joran. But what was she supposed to do? Let him die?

  Sure, he’d left her for dead once, and as much as she’d wanted to return the favor, something had stopped her. Something she didn’t want to analyze too closely and certainly not right now.

  She looked sideways at Ramos. With a weary sigh, she said, “Do you really want to do this, Miguel?”

  He peered back at her, then shrugged. “I would rather fight you than return to Joran empty-handed.”

  She nodded in understanding. Joran was not a man you said no to, even when the no came from another. Still, she could not give him what she did not have. “Joran is no fool. He needs me. Besides, how do you think he’d feel if you told him his fast track to the serums had dried up because of you?”