8 Hearts Beat As One: A Romance Anthology

by Gray, Elena; Lee, Taylor; Gould, Jonathan; McCracken, Kelli; McCray, Carolyn; Scott, Amber; Charles, Ann

  Rebecca looked up at Brandt, ears squealing in protest. “This isn’t random, is it?”

  * * *

  How Brandt wanted to lie to the woman he loved. To tell her everything was going to be all right. That they weren’t the targets of a concerted and well-orchestrated ambush meant to mimic the Mumbai attacks. That this wasn’t the Knot’s last, grand attempt to wipe them from the face of the planet.

  But he loved her, so he couldn’t lie to her. He just shook his head and helped Rebecca to her feet. Brandt went to get them moving but she paused.

  “Hang on just a second.” They didn’t really have a second, but he waited as she kicked her high heel against the stairwell concrete. Finally the heel broke off. She repeated with the other shoe. “Okay.”

  Again, he wasn’t sure if he should be proud of her, standing there in her torn and bloody dress, or feel sad for her that this was her life now.

  “What are we waiting for?” she asked.

  Yeah, on second thought, he was just pretty damned proud. He took point as they rushed back down the stairs, hitting a logjam of people that poured out onto the second-floor landing, slowing their descent. Brandt went to follow the crowd done to the ground floor but Rebecca pulled him toward the door.

  “Our room is toast,” he said, confused on why she was obsessed with the second floor again.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  And he did.

  She rushed past their burnt-out room, took a sharp left, then went down a hallway and took another left. It wasn’t until they were nearly in the room that Brandt realized that they were headed to the hotel’s business office. What could they use here? An emergency fax? Nevertheless, Rebecca burst into the room and started pulling wiring out of the electronics.

  Gunfire sounding from outside was met by answering screams. The Knot was advancing on their position. They had very little time to make it out of the hotel before the gunmen breached the hotel.

  “Hon?”

  Rebecca opened her laptop and plugged a cable into a port. “Like the lights, the Knot’s knocked out phone reception, including our sat phones.” Brand pulled his phone from his hip. Sure enough. Only interference. “Along with all Wi-Fi.”

  He didn’t doubt her. But that still didn’t answer why they were here.

  She pushed back a stray lock of blonde hair. “I’m hoping I can find a cable modem. A separate line I can patch into. One that they hadn’t thought to cut.”

  That was his girl, always thinking.

  “Bingo.” Smiling, she typed rapidly. “Let me fire off an email …”

  And by fire off an email, Rebecca meant sending a highly encrypted message to the E-Ring. Ever since Belgium, Rebecca and the Pentagon had been BFFs. Basically, if Rebecca was sending a message, you could bet it was about a threat to National Security.

  * * *

  Rebecca typed in the third security code. She understood why the enhanced vigilance but when under fire it would sure be nice to have some kind of 9-1-1 code. Once the final key was accepted, her computer bloomed with real-time heat-seeking satellite imagery.

  It was a riot of yellow and oranges as people fled the hotel, fanning out into the street. Green and blue images didn’t move, marking the dead bodies as they cooled off. Then there were the dots moving in a slow and methodical pattern toward the hotel.

  “Nine total,” Brandt said, mainly talking to himself. “Four creating a noose from each side with one left over for RPG duties.”

  By the way his eyes scanned the reading, Rebecca could tell he was memorizing the pattern of the assault. However, she had other concerns. Like how far away was back up? Not the Indian police, but back up that knew how the Knot worked and could stand up to them. Rebecca sent an email asking if Brandt’s team was in the region before she turned her attention to an even more pressing concern.

  Like how the hell the Knot found their room on the third floor? It seemed highly unlikely the Knot were taking potshots and just happened to hit a room she and Brandt occupied. And after the gaggle in the stairwell it would have been impossible to tell which heat signatures were theirs versus guests of the hotel.

  Quickly, she made a small screen in the corner for Brandt with the heat-seeking readout as she pulled up other feeds from the satellite, trying to determine what, if anything, made her and Brandt’s signatures different.

  “We probably should be moving,” Brandt suggested, and she couldn’t agree more, but something in her gut wouldn’t let her leave. For an ancient society, the Knot loved their technology. How many times had the Knot outflanked them in Paris, Hungary, and Turkey?

  “Let me just check the last feeds,” Rebecca said as Brandt shouldered the gear, getting ready to head out.

  Feeling his urgency, Rebecca flipped through the various feeds, infrared, motion enhancement, and ultraviolet so quickly she nearly missed the one that only had a few small blips, not the hundreds on the other screens. Scrambling back Rebecca brought up the isolated feed. Sure enough two brightly glowing objects were on the second floor, within the business center.

  “What the…?” Brandt breathed out.

  There were two other blips downstairs, but that was it. Four blips total. No wonder the Knot had known where they were.

  “It’s Gamma radiation,” Rebecca explained as she checked the feed’s source. “They are tracking us through Gamma.”

  It seemed impossible, but here was the proof positive.

  “But how the hell did they paint us?” Brandt asked. “I’m not an expert but that crap doesn’t last long. We had to be tagged within the hour.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “More like fifteen minutes, and at these levels …”

  She couldn’t say it. How could they have been at dinner one minute and not only radiation-tagged, but poisoned as well?

  “At these levels?” Brandt pressed gripping his gun. If only bullets could fix their problem.

  “Within an hour, if we don’t find some way to decontaminate ourselves…”

  Again, she couldn’t finish. As an expert in DNA, Rebecca knew all too well what radiation could do to the delicate strands of nucleic acids and the horrific long-term consequences that this much Gamma could do.

  Then a light flared on the smaller heat-signature window. That would be an RPG being fired. Rebecca grabbed her laptop. Brandt urged her under the desk as the second floor was rocked by another explosion.

  Luckily, the business office was located in the back of the building, so the rocket didn’t penetrate that far. However, it would only take a few more rockets would eventually break through into the office.

  A ding brought Rebecca’s attention back to the computer. An email awaited. She scanned the text, feeling her heart sink even further. “Lopez and the rest are at least three hours out.”

  Brandt seemed to take it well, but the look on his face registered the fact that they probably didn’t have three minutes, let alone three hours, to get out from under this mess.

  “Well?” Brandt asked her.

  “Well, what?”

  “What do we do next?”

  They couldn’t run. The Knot would easily track them via the Gamma signature. They needed to decontaminate themselves, but they needed to get to a hospital for that. Which, of course, meant running, which they couldn’t do. And with no tangible back up on the way? No sniper hidden away? No crazy Latino able to shoot faster than the speed of sound?

  Tears stung as she answered, “I have no idea.”

  * * *

  Brandt didn’t accept that. Rebecca was in shock. It was hard sometimes to remember that the scientist was a civilian. He guessed it was one thing to get shot at, but quite another to be radioactively poisoned. Had Brandt been on active combat duty he would have had iodine tablets, but close protection duty? It was the one thing he hadn’t packed. Although, with the Knot still running around he obviously should have.

  He gripped Rebecca’s shoulders. “Babe, you gotta pull something out of the hat here.�
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  She shook her head though, tears streaming down her face. If defeat had a look, it marked Rebecca’s face.

  “You got us out of Rome,” Brand reminded her. “You can get us out of this.”

  Again she seemed capable of was to shake her head.

  The time for coddling was over. “Damn it, Rebecca.” Her lip quivered but he pushed on. “You’ve got that big brain in there. Use it.”

  Her eyes flickered back and forth across his features. Then they flickered to the screen as another RPG hit, rattling the doorframes. The Knot was getting closer to breaking through and they knew it. The men outside moved with certainty, tightening the noose even tighter. Each second he delayed was a second that shaved percentage points off their chance of escape, radioactive tagged or not.

  Then that slow expression of a dawning idea transformed Rebecca’s bleak features into radiant confidence.

  “The champagne.”

  Brandt frowned. He loved it when she went all super smart on him, but it usually also left him in the dark. “Not following.”

  Rebecca pointed to the two dots on the first floor. He hadn’t realized it before but they were positioned at their dinner table.

  “They put the Gamma in the champagne,” Rebecca hurried as her words seemed to catch up with her brain. “That waiter that kept topping us off. That’s how they painted us.”

  “I’ll buy that, but how do we counteract it?”

  “You aren’t going to like,” she stated as she gathered up her gear.

  “When do I ever?”

  As the third RPG hit the building, shaking debris from the ceiling they pushed off from the business offices and down the stairs. How he would love to take the alley and made a sprint for it, but with the radiation cooking his belly, they had to make the smart play and that was Rebecca’s play.

  In her ragged and soot stained dress she led them back down to the dining room. The place was trashed. Both from the car bomb and from the panicked flock of diners. Now it stood eerily empty except for the bodies on the floor. Brandt had to relax his trigger finger. He would just have to avenge them by taking out their murderers. The Knot. An organization that proclaimed they were doing God’s work, but turned out to just be butchers, killing innocent people to carry out revenge against Rebecca.

  He checked his corners as they made their way to the table with their champagne flutes. The enemy shouldn’t be here yet, but at the pace they were accelerating, it could be at any moment.

  With shaking hands, Rebecca poured champagne from their glasses into glasses from another table.

  “Um, hon?”

  Instead of answering, she handed him two flutes. “Put those toward the entrance.”

  Brandt didn’t bother asking what in the hell she was doing. He asked her to use her big brain and now he just needed to follow where it led. After several such rounds of strangely precise, strategic flute placement, Rebecca went to the aquarium and began pulling tubing.

  Yes, the aquarium. Okay, now it was time to question her genius.

  “Babe, those gunmen should be here. Like now.” That was if they stuck to their pace. Their only hope was if the Knot was as confounded by Rebecca’s behavior as he was and had slowed their entrance.

  She scooped up a big handful and black material from the aquarium’s filter and said without a trace of hesitation, “Eat up.”

  * * *

  Rebecca urged her dripping wet hand to Brandt. They didn’t have much time.

  “I am not eating…” Brand said, his face scrunched in disgust. “Fish crap.”

  “Yes, you are, along with the activated charcoal.”

  To prove to him it might be gross but essential she downed a mouthful of the gritty black material herself. And it did, in fact, taste like fish crap.

  Brandt’s eyes narrowed as he scooped some of the material into his hands. “As in activated charcoal that will absorb and neutralize the Gamma radiation?”

  “Yep, that’s the activated charcoal I am talking about.”

  The high surface area of the active charcoal made it ideal for absorbing and negating all kinds of toxins. From the ammonia in fish urine to drug overdoses to natural gas leaks, activated charcoal was the filtration substance of choice. And this was no different. Radiation could be trapped by the same mechanism as heroin.

  Was her solution perfect? No. Would it absorb enough to save their lives and mask their presence? She hoped so.

  “I am never eating fish after this,” Brandt said, choking down the last handful.

  She gulped down her last grimy bite, then turned on the sink and poured the last of contaminated champagne down the drain. In a single moment all four signatures should have winked out.

  With any luck, the only blips on the Knot’s screen should be the carefully placed champagne flutes. The sound of the door clicking open sent them both to their knees behind the restaurant’s bar.

  The first gunman came in, gun blazing. Brandt shot once, downing the man. His accuracy and steely nerve reminded her once again why she needed to recruit ex-military for her grad students.

  The next two gunmen must have seen what happened to their comrade and entered much more slowly. The only sound of their approach was the crunching of broken glass under their boots. Brandt crept down the bar, cocking his head. Listening to the footfalls, waiting until the opportune time to shoot. Which, for Rebecca, would have been like right now. However, she didn’t rush Brandt. She might have figured out how to mask their Gamma signature and forestall radiation poisoning, but now it was up to Brandt to get them past the ten, now make it nine, well-armed men.

  She watched Brandt’s bicep tense and covered her ears as he sprang up, shooting a spray of bullets. One man fell so close that Rebecca could see the assailant’s surprised look as the light left his eyes. Gulping, she scooted closer to his hand. He hadn’t been only carrying a weapon. He had a small-screened device as well. Rebecca reached out and snagged the handle, pulling it from his grasp and sliding it across the floor as more assailants entered the room.

  Brandt led them further down the bar as she studied the Gamma readout. She and Brandt weren’t showing up. Rebecca held back tears. The activated charcoal was doing its job. Only the champagne glasses, each titrated with an aliquot of concentrated poison flared red on the screen. She had placed the flutes in pairs scattered around the restaurant as decoys. The assailants had to focus on those areas, leaving Brandt free to pick them off. Or at least that was the plan.

  Brandt glanced over his shoulder when she wasn’t right on his heel. Rebecca showed him the Gamma read out although he didn’t seem nearly as pleased as she would have thought.

  “Where’d you get that?” he whispered.

  “From the gunman and—”

  “Is it heavy?” he demanded.

  “Well, yeah, but it’s a complicated piece of—”

  Brandt didn’t even let her finish. He grabbed the device and like a grenade slung it up and over the bar. The thing exploded as it flew halfway across the room. Screams echoed off the walls as one gunman, his full body on fire, ran past them, through the cracked window and into the street.

  Rebecca’s hand shook. Another moment, and that would have been her. Brandt aimed to the street and put the man out of his misery. Shots came from the other side of the restaurant, driving them back under the bar. Then the gunfire died down as shots carried from the back of the restaurant.

  “They’re pulling back,” Brandt said.

  “That’s great.” Again, Brandt didn’t look all that pleased. “Right?”

  * * *

  Wrong.

  He grabbed her hand. “You’ve got to run when I say.”

  “I don’t—”

  The sound of an RPG cut Rebecca off. The men hadn’t pulled back because they were giving up. The Knot had pulled back so they could use a much bigger weapon.

  Brandt rose from a crouch, drawing Rebecca with him. Without hesitation they ran through the broken window, past
the still burning car that served as the first bomb and out into the street. They charged right into the path of the rocket, ducking as it sailed over their heads and smashed into the restaurant, setting the place afire.

  He didn’t stop them there. They raced across the street and toward the source of the RPG. Clearly, the projectiles were coming from one of the Taj Mahal’s minarets. Not as clear was how well-armed the assailant was besides the RPG launcher.

  At last check from the satellite feed, The Knot had committed their personnel to the hotel. They must have felt confident they could pinpoint Rebecca and he’s position through the Gamma signature. They had left the RPG operator unprotected. It was that kind of arrogant thinking that had taken them down in the first place.

  Luckily, Brandt never assumed an operation would go according to plan, because in his experience, it never did.

  Just like operation engagement. He had the ring in his pocket and a boatload of guns upstairs.

  Bullets chewed up the street behind them. The remaining gunmen had regrouped and unfortunately Rebecca’s yellow dress was about a good a tag as the radioactivity had been. They reached the towering main gate to the Taj complex but it was closed. It was, after all, a little after tour hours.

  The gate structure was massive itself, giving them precious cover behind one of the large turrets. Brandt glanced up. The retaining wall was only ten feet high.

  Brandt grinned at Rebecca. “You ready to do some climbing?”

  She ripped her dress, creating a slit up to her thigh in answer. They were in luck that the gate structure itself was not only massive, but elaborate as well. There were low decorative walls, long overhangs, and lots and lots of footholds in the brick itself.

  Teetering on the edge of the low wall, Brandt cupped his hands. A grappling hook would have been nice, but he didn’t think to bring one. Again, with the Knot on the prowl, a mistake.