Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan Page 0,21

fear he’d just wondered about. “And you?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Hanging in. We’ve made this trip before. One foot in front of the other. Piece of cake.”

“Piece of cake, huh?”

Jangles chimed in from in front of Eleanor. “Now would be a bad time to let us know you’re claustrophobic.”

“You never asked,” Eleanor said and Heath didn’t miss the tremble in her voice. “And besides, I didn’t think I was until now.”

Heath slung the strap of his weapon around to hang on his back and reached out to rest a hand on Eleanor’s side, squeezing as they continued through the tunnel. At the pace they were moving at, they had a good twenty to thirty minutes to go. They needed to keep her calm through this.

“Remember that cave in the Philippines?” Zip chimed in.

Jangles groaned. “No, I don’t. In fact I do my damned best not to remember those caves. Ever.”

“What happened?” Eleanor asked.

“We had a little down time in the Philippines so Zip schedules this caving expedition,” Heath said, ignoring how damned good it felt to have his hand on Eleanor as they moved in the dark. “Only he decides to go with this discount tour operator because, as he put it, we know what we’re doing so what does it matter if our tour guide does?”

“Oh no,” Eleanor said.

“Oh yes.” Heath laughed at the memory. “The guy got stuck head down in a crevice. He was wedged so deep it took us three hours to get him out of there.”

“Probably not the best story for the moment,” Duff said from behind them.

“I’m okay with it,” Eleanor assured him and Heath could hear the strain had left her voice. She was handling this and he had so much damned pride for her. She’d been incredible through all of this. “You guys got him out?”

“We did,” Jangles said. “Made for a lovely vacation.”

Zip snorted. “There’s no other way you’d rather spend your off time.”

It was true, Heath thought. They had all loved the challenge. A body isn’t made to be upside down for so long, so the guy had been in real danger. It had been a race against the clock to get him free using only what they had in their packs. They’d had to chisel a pulley system into the walls of the cave and ease him out inch by inch with ropes.

“Aksan and his cousin have a lot of people going through this tunnel?” She asked.

“Not so many that they get caught. They charge enough for it to pay off any patrols that do come by, but they keep the traffic light. They make it cost prohibitive to keep it that way,” Merlin said.

“So Uncle Sam is paying a fortune to get me to Kazarus?”

Heath and the others laughed and Heath answered. “Discretionary Mission Funding.”

There was laughter in her voice when she answered. “That sounds good and vague.”

“Perfect. That’s the way it’s supposed to sound,” said Zip.

Ahead of them Merlin signaled for silence and they all went quiet as they continued the trek through the dark.

As they moved through the space, Heath kept his eyes trained on Eleanor and cursed himself six ways from Sunday. He was going to hell.

Because as they snuck through a dark tunnel under the border of two nation states, he was thinking about her body. He was thinking about how soft she felt under his hand. He was thinking about how good her silhouette looked even through his night vision goggles and how much he wished they were alone in the dark, and not in a tunnel.

Yeah, he was going to hell. He grinned. Might as well sit back and enjoy the trip.

Chapter 9

Eleanor didn’t realize how worried she was about her team until she saw them all waiting by their vehicle at the rendezvous point two miles out from Demir’s compound. They stood by their vehicle on the side of a road surrounded by rocky outcroppings and shrubs. White, blue, and yellow wildflowers dotted the landscape and if she wasn’t feeling on edge, she would be happy for the chance to take in the view.

She hoped they wouldn’t be there long. She felt exposed.

“You’re all okay?” She asked for the third time.

This time, her assistant Beth laughed at her, as did the other three people going into the negotiations with them.

“We had a gorgeous drive down the coast. It was beautiful,” Beth gushed.

Eleanor forced a smile. She’d seen the coastline of Turkey before and knew how breathtaking it was. She’d been surprised