Free Ricochet by Cherry Adair Page B

was, as she handed him a can of Coke. He gave it to Hannah.
    She frowned at it. “Where did this materialize from?”
    “Hensley went to get it from the plane. Here,” he said gently, taking the can back. “Let me open that for you.”
    She was pretty sure she could open her own damned drink, but right now she couldn’t quite figure out how.
    He wrapped his large, warm hand around hers, lifted it to her mouth. “Drink.”
    Opening her mouth, Hannah let the fizzy, overly sweet soda slide down her throat. He tangled the fingers of his other hand in her hair, holding the back of her head to assist her. She needed all the help she could get. Her brain was going in slo-mo.
    “Drink it all, honey, the sugar will help you feel better.”
    She did so, her fingers curled around his wrist as she drank. She couldn’t fight low blood sugar and Grayson at the same time. Hells-bells, she could barely keep one thought in her head at a time at the moment.
    “You scare the shit out of me, you know that, Tink? Not your fault. But fuckit, you need a keeper.”
    “I really don’t,” she said tartly, moving away so his hand dropped. Drinking the soda helped. A lot. And she felt more lucid by the minute as the sugar hit her system. “I was only supposed to be here a couple of days at the most. I came prepared with enough insulin for two weeks , and a whole bag of snacks and candy for emergencies. I didn’t know I was going to be kidnapped and forced to leave all my belongings on a doomed ship.”
    He brushed her cheek, gray eyes searching her face. “There’s that.”
    Self-conscious, she combed her fingers through the tangled stands of her hair. Her makeup must have sweated off hours ago, and she probably had raccoon eyes.
    Putting her palm on the hard wall of his chest, she gave a pathetically light shove, feeling the tingle of contact all the way up her arm. “You’re in my personal space, and all your spylettes are watching us.”
    “Are you up to IDing the guy?”
    He spoke into his communications device, as he watched her. His eyes made a whole slew of promises of their own. “Bring Deeks to me.” He turned back to her, his eyes focused intently on hers. “What do you want him to say?”
    She thought about the conversation she’d overhead. “‘As you instructed. Exactly thirty minutes from now.’” Which, as it happened, had turned out to be a lot less.
    “You’ll recognize the voice just from that?”
    “Perfect pitch, remember?”
    “There isn’t a damn thing about you I’ve forgotten.” Unflinching, he held her gaze.
    “Then it must be that your sense of direction is out of whack. One would think a guy like you, leading a tough-ass team like this, could find his way home. But then…one would be wrong.”
    “Don’t doubt that I’d find you blindfolded, in the dark, on another planet,” Gray murmured, voice tight.
    She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I guess finding me in my own condo was just too damn easy. Next time I’ll remember to blindfold the groom and have the chapel on a sunless frigging planet.”
    Gray shifted his jaw. “I can tell you’re feeling better.” His voice was bone dry.
    “Getting there.”
    A tall, grim-looking man, with salt and pepper hair and a craggy face, came up to Grayson. “Everyone’s ready, and Deeks is hobbling his ass over here”
    “Good,” Hannah said, grateful for the interruption. “Let’s get this over with so I can go home.”
    “This isn’t over, Tink.”
    “You’re a promise and three years too late, Grayson.” Hannah said tartly. “Just have him say the lines so I can get the hell out of here.”
    #
    Perfect pitch had fuck-all to do with recognizing a voice. Especially when Hannah had been afraid for her life at the time. But she was all he had right now. “Bring over Deeks.”
    The three terrified and loudly protesting ‘investors’, his baby brother included, were demanding their rights. As if they fucking had rights in a foreign country