Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

God, she wished she had the option of fighting back against her ex-husband, fists and brawn and bluster, instead of shadow dancing with insidious threats. He'd never actually struck her, just controlled her, betrayed her body in a way so soul rending she wondered if she could ever recover. And then when she'd dared leave him, he'd hired a hit man to take her out.

Not that the police would help her, thanks to her ex's far-reaching influence.

She wasn't a wilting flower, but she also wasn't stupid. So she'd run. She'd even been willing to move to a hotbed of political unrest in the Middle-Eastern country of Rubistan to stay alive. At least in Rubistan no one thought it might be a nifty idea to kill her simply because she couldn't bear him children.

Visions of her Georgia home chilled the sweat sealing her silk shirt to her skin. Come on, come on, come on. Open the damned box.

The sides closed in with claustrophobic pressure. She shoved away the need to run. For the boys. The precious warm weights beside her who smelled of chocolate and sunshine and dreams she would never have.

The crate tipped. Mary Elise and the children slid, wedging into the corner with the minimal padding of a couple of blankets.

"Tag, go easy there," Daniel called. "Wouldn't want to crack a keyboard now, would we?"

"No worries, sir." A voice sounded beside them as the box jerked to a stop. "I'll treat it like one of my own."

A mechanical drone built. The dim streaks of light faded. The load-ramp shutting? The world faded around her to near black until the ramp clanked closed.

She forced her breathing to regulate. Maybe they needed privacy to open the crate. That made sense. Then they could slip her back off the plane under the cover of darkness. Not ideal. But doable.

Lazy footsteps picked up speed along the metal floor. A final thump sounded on the planked top. "Lock it down tight. Tag."

er 1

Eleven years ago Mary Elise McRae had expected to fill a hope chest for Daniel Baker. But she'd never thought she would fill it quite so literally.

Her body currently folded inside a five-by-five-foot wooden crate, Mary Elise hugged the two small boys closer. The rough-hewn box jostled on the back of the flatbed truck, jarring bony little elbows and knees against her. Hard. Not that anyone dared do more than breathe in the cedar-scented darkness.A lone horn honked along the stretch of desert road in their escape route from Rubistan. The truck jerked to a stop. A goat blocking the way? Or a cow? Either animal slow when Mary Elise needed fast. Headlights from the truck behind them shone through the tiny slits between the boards.

A Rubistanian guard from the embassy tracking them.

She'd heard his voice during the loading onto the truck. Procedure didn't allow him on the U.S. government's vehicle, but those ominous beams sparked fear inside her as surely as if he'd been sitting alongside puffing away on one of those cigars he favored. Would he use this delay as an excuse to ambush them? Cause an "accident?"

The diesel engine's growl increased and the truck lurched to life. Mary Elise exhaled her relief in the stifling enclosure. Only another half hour, max, until she delivered Trey and Austin safely aboard a U.S. military cargo plane. Then she would say her tearful farewells to the two children being smuggled out of this Middle-Eastern hell in the back of Captain Daniel Baker's C-17.

Danny.

His name echoed in her mind amid the grind of changing gears. What would Daniel say when he saw her for the first time in eleven years? If only he had advance warning she would be with the boys, but she'd expected to stay at the embassy, not be in this sweltering crate.

With any luck, they'd be too rushed to talk. She would pass over her young charges. Thank Daniel for answering the emergency SOS she'd anonymously routed through the economic attaché. Then haul butt off the airstrip, back to her tiny apartment in Rubistan's capital, back to her teaching post at the American embassy school.

Back to her solitary life.

She wouldn't let memories of Daniel make her yearn for anything more. She'd worked damned hard for her pocket of peace away from Savannah. Peace bought with the help of Daniel's father. Trey and Austin's father, too. And today she would repay that debt.

"Mary 'Lise?" Austin whispered from under her chin. "Wanna get out. Gotta go."

"Shh," she urged as loudly as she dared. "Soon, sweetie. Soon." She hoped.

Sweat trickled down her neck, caking sand to her skin as Mary Elise willed Austin silent. A crate of computers didn't whisper for a bathroom, after all. Sure, a diplomatic pouch was immune from inspection—a pouch being U.S. government property of any size from the embassy. Totally immune. Unless that "pouch" starting talking.

Her arms locked tighter around thin, preschooler shoulders on her left and the more substantial nine-year-old frame on her right. At least Trey was old enough to follow instructions, his shoulders pumping under her arm with each heavy breath. Little Austin was a wild card.

Bracing her feet against the other side to combat jolts, she suppressed the illogical bubble of laughter. Definitely a card. Wild. Precious. And looked so much like his adult half brother Daniel.

So much like the baby she and Daniel might have had if not for the miscarriage.

Of course she hadn't been able to turn away when Austin had pumped out tears at the sight of the crate. He'd begged for Mary 'Lise to crawl inside with him instead of his twenty-one-year-old nanny, a pale nanny who'd seemed all too willing to bow out.

The truck squealed to a stop. A tiny hand tucked into hers and clutched tight with chubby stickiness. She pressed a silent kiss to Austin's brow.