Stranger Mine: a Base Branch novel Read Online Free Page A

waste. He stood. “I’m going to release you. Can you run?” Again, no response. Warily, he stepped over a defined ring of dirt piled in a semi-circle around her, like she’d claimed her territory and used the tiny mound as a Do Not Enter sign.
    On his spin around the sparse room he hadn’t seen any place to hide a key, and like the lock on the door, he didn’t have time to search for one. He’d have preferred to use his boot on the U-bolt, but the thing hitched at chest level to the gray brick. He wasn’t that flexible. Ryan pulled his assault rifle from his neck and used the butt as a hammer, ramming the curved metal in a series of vicious down strokes. The bolt proved more difficult than the door handle, bending yet refusing to break. He slung the gun over his shoulder and grabbed the chain with both hands.
    Rounded links grew teeth and gnawed his palms as he heaved heavenward. For once, pumping stacked bars of weights instead of beautiful woman seemed worth the ungratifying effort. The U bent like slow-moving taffy, defying gravity. When he released his grip, red stained the creases of his left hand. He wiped his palm over the only clean spot he found on his fatigues, switched his grip, and tugged the crooked U toward the floor. Finally one side broke away. The jagged, patterned edges scraped the link as he shimmied and jerked it off the end.
    “If it’s too heavy, I can help carry the chain. We have to move. Now.” Ryan shoved his right arm through the strap of the M4 dangling around his neck then crouched within kissing distance of the woman’s gorgeous face to gather the heap.
    The brunt of her bare forehead slammed into the bridge of his nose with blinding speed and instantaneous, brain-numbing pain. He teetered on the balls of his feet and fought the urge to grab his nose. His left hand shot for the wall while his right covered his sidearm. A few hits he could take. A bullet, not so much. His experiences with them hadn’t been all that great, and he’d rather not deal with one ripping his skin apart in the middle of the desert.
    Ryan braced for the next blow, but it didn’t come. She apparently had no damn trouble toting the weight. The tinny chain rattled its way across the room and out the door in a matter of seconds. Urging his eyelids open, his vision met with watery blurs of light. He coaxed the tears from his eyes with swipes of his fists, but new moisture gathered like Stephen Strasburg fans at the end of a Nationals game.
    Screw it. He was on his feet and running before the world presented itself to his hesitant vision. Luckily he’d oriented his brain to the room enough before impact that he knew where the door stood and remembered the drop to ground level. Following the incessant rattle of chains, he reached mid-yard before his sight returned. Sharp copper tang seeped into his mouth and he spat the blood onto the stitch of grass before leaping onto the deck.
    When he reached the open back door, several things struck him at once. Thankfully none of them was a bullet or a forehead. Number one, why was he chasing after a woman who attacked him when he should be high-tailing it in the opposite direction? Two, did he look dangerous? It may sound vain, but based on the reviews he’d collected over his sexual prime, he was a charismatic eye-catcher. Not someone who elicited fight-or-flight instincts. Not from women anyway. Third, if it turned out her loyalty sat with the Sinaloa, would he kill her? Fourth, if he ran like a world-class marathoner, didn’t trip on a land mine and end up critter chow, would he make his damn extraction on time?

5
    “ S hould have prayed for wisdom , amor.”
    Sierra Vega’s voice sing-songed in Piper’s head. She dismissed the harpy drone of her mother’s go-to phrase. She’d heard it enough already. Every time things didn’t go her way. Or her sisters’ way. But hell, why had she prayed to run? Of all things?
    Here you go, genius.
    She thanked her father for