Read Online Crazy Wild by Tara Janzen - Free Book Online Page B

signed orders from Director Alden himself that says she's ours.”
    Well, the truth finally comes out,
Skeeter thought. Things were definitely moving now. General Grant was the two-star who had created SDF nine years ago to conduct clandestine operations—a bone that stuck in everybody else's craw, especially the CIA's, especially since Alden had taken over.
    “You had your chance in Eastern Europe,” Dylan said coldly, “and you lost her.”
    To Skeeter's surprise, Royce let out a short laugh. “If you think you can hold onto her any better than we did, you're only fooling yourself,” the agent said. “She's smart, dangerously smart, and if Rivera has her, he needs to turn her over now—before this thing gets any more out of control.”
    Dylan shifted his gaze to meet Skeeter's, and she shook her head.
    “We don't know what he's got,” Dylan said, returning his attention to Royce. “But I can guarantee you, if Creed has her, she's not going anywhere.”
     
    CODY'S solo flight through the old library's new construction lasted all of two seconds, but it felt like forever, and even after she landed on the floor and crumpled into a shivering heap, the spike in her adrenaline kept her emotions at full throttle.
    He'd dropped her, the bastard, thrown her over the edge and dropped her, and her heart was never going to be the same. Her right cheek was pressed against the floor, her bound hands stretched out in front of her, clinging to the wood parquet.
    “Are you okay?”
    Damn!
She jerked her head around and found him crouched over her. He must have landed like a cat. She hadn't heard a thing.
    “N-no,” she managed to croak out. She wasn't okay. She was half frozen, and half scared out of her mind, and half sick, and handcuffed for crying out loud.
    “Who in the h-hell are y-you?”
she demanded. With Bruno and Reinhard momentarily out of the way, she felt pretty safe venting her anger and frustration out on wild boy. Discretion be damned. The guy had been manhandling her from the instant they'd met.
    But she hadn't really been hurt, something she knew she wouldn't be able to say if she'd fallen into Reinhard's hands. One of the Germans would have done something to her, just to make a point, just to put her in her place.
    “Creed Rivera,” he said, kneeling down and pulling her up to a sitting position. “Come on. Give me your hands.”
    “R-Rivera?” Yeah, right, she thought, a blond-haired Chicano. No way did he look Hispanic, but she wouldn't forget the name, not if she lived to be a hundred, which was looking damned unlikely tonight. Trembling and shaking, the cold aching all the way down to her bones, all she could do was sit there and shiver—even when he pulled a big knife out of a sheath on his ankle.
    “Cesar Raoul Eduardo Rivera,” he said, lifting the knife to her wrists.
    She blanched, but didn't have the energy to pull away. If he'd wanted to kill her, he could have dropped her when they'd been on the ladder, or just now down into the old library. Or he could have shot her on the roof—or fed her to Edmund Braun. She still hadn't figured out what in the world he'd done to deck the beast, or how he'd done it so quickly. It was a wicked-looking knife, though, the blade long and gleaming in the low light, the tip sharpened on both edges, the handle wrapped in strips of leather. It looked like a knife that got used, a lot, for God only knew what.
    “But everyone calls me Creed,” he continued, and with a single, deft move, he cut through her handcuffs.
    “Who do you work f-for?”
    He sheathed the knife and then took her hands in his. “The government,” he said.
    His hands were warm around hers, and she was grateful, but he hadn't answered her question. She could think of at least half a dozen governments that might be after her, half a dozen governments that probably
were
after her, including her own, along with another half a dozen terrorist groups from rebels in Chechnya to Islamic