Deceptive Treasures: Slye Temp Book 5 Read Free Page A

you’ve set us up, I’ll kill anyone responsible for harming my men.”  He squeezed his fingers.
    She struggled against him . “Stop. I ... came ... to help.”
    He eased his grip . “Why?”
    Her words rushed out wrapped in fear . “I am part of the network that is helping Pang and Har escape. I came to warn them and show you the way out of the city, but if you do not hurry your men will die ... if they have not been caught already.”  
    Was she telling the truth ?
    He put her down and yanked her arms behind her back, holding them with one hand, and keyed his throat mic to transmit to his team . “The package has a leak. I repeat, package has a leak. Hold position.”
    Dingo’s voice came back . “What’s wrong, mate?”
    “They might be expecting us . Where are you?”
    “Sixty yards from wheels . We haven’t seen any movement around it.”
    Tanner considered her words and told Dingo . “Send someone to recon, but don’t touch it.”
    “Stand by.” Dingo and the rest of the team were half a kilometer away .
    Tanner itched to move out, get out of the center of the damn city, but the op had major flaws right now . The minute he left this building, he had to know for sure where he was going and what he was doing with this captive. There was still time to make the transport, if it hadn’t been compromised.
    Could he unload this woman somewhere between here and meeting up with his team without leaving her in a vulnerable position and without leaving a leak that would sink his mission?
    She’d spill her guts to the soldiers the minute she was caught . Why? Because she was a woman and a scientist.
    That combination had already screwed him once . Literally and figuratively.
    “Where are your men?” she asked just loud enough for the sound to have substance.
    “Where do you think they are?” he countered.
    She drew in a breath and released it in the long, exasperated sigh someone used when counting to ten . “I heard that a truck is waiting for you next to the metro station where Kyonghung crosses Ponghwa.”
    She was right, which didn’t weigh in her favor since only a few people back home were supposed to know that detail .
    Tanner hadn’t liked the setup for traveling hidden in a transport truck since hearing about it, but the only way out of Pyongyang was through a smuggling operation .
    He asked, “How do you know so much about what’s going on?”
    “Pang and Har belong to a secret underground group working to smuggle our people out of here. I help by passing messages that are in code, but ...”
    “You broke the code,” Tanner finished.
    “Yes. Their boss was dragged from his office at our lab an hour ago. Soldiers demanded that he tell them where Pang and Har were. I did not know if he knew, but he started crying and said Pang and Har wanted to defect. He offered to tell them everything. One of the soldiers bragged that he had better tell what he knew and they would compare it to the information they already had. He made it sound as if he knew more about this escape than Pang and Har’s boss. Someone has betrayed them.”
    That could be you, darlin’.
    She twisted to look over her shoulder and Tanner finally saw the face his ninja hid inside a hooded shirt. This was no kid. She had to be in her mid-twenties. The face turned up to his was more oval and narrow than the rounder shape he’d expected. She had a wide mouth instead of a puckered one, a narrow nose and sharp cheeks. In fact, the only thing that hinted at Korean in her blood was her exotic gaze that was too light to be brown.
    Amerasian. A beauty.
    But now he understood why she’d said US military as if she’d been sucking on a lemon. US soldiers had fathered a lot of kids in Asian countries. In Korea, mixed blood with other Asians was a step down from pure blood, but Amerasians? They weren’t even considered part of the Korean population. She hadn’t been simply abandoned by her father.
    He’d marked her as an outcast in a