by Paige Tyler
He stripped off his camo overshirt and threw it across the room, so he could get down to serious business.
He blocked most of her strikes with his hands and the others with his shoulders, biceps, and thighs. He sure as hell felt them, but he got the feeling she wasn’t hitting him nearly as hard as she could.
His plan was to lure her in close enough to get his hands on her. That way, he could put her down without being forced to throw a serious punch. She might be agile as hell, but if he connected with anything real, he’d break something. His best bet was to get his hands on her and pin her to the floor so he could end this stupid game.
That was easier than it sounded. Ivy was faster than lightning and could twist her body into a pretzel to get out of his grasp. He had her in a perfect jujitsu take-down position several times only to have her spoil it by not going down like she should have. He even planted his knee in her stomach and yanked her backward with him in a throw that should have landed her hard on her back, groaning in pain. Instead, she turned the move into some kind of gymnastic flip and came down as softly on her feet as if she stepped off a street curb.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the two training officers taking notes as they watched. Kendra was actually smiling. Landon clenched his jaw. What a couple of asses.
On the other side of the room, Ivy spun around to face him. Eyes narrowing, she ran directly toward him. He automatically braced himself for another blow, but at the last second she darted to her right, jumping at the wall and rebounding off it like she was an extra in some Jackie Chan movie, then ricocheting back at him, her right leg coming around in a roundhouse kick.
Instead of getting out of the way like any sane person would have, he moved closer, getting underneath her swinging leg and grabbing her shoulders. He avoided her foot, but ended up taking a knee to the left side of his rib cage. It hurt, but it got him inside her defenses. He was going to get a grip on her, and this time she wasn’t going to get away.
That’s when he realized her kick had only been a distraction. He’d been so busy watching her feet he hadn’t even noticed her open hand coming toward him. He did a double take. She was going to slap him? His mind registered surprise for half a millisecond before her hand angled down to sweep across the front of his T-shirt.
Landon felt the fabric tug and swore he heard a ripping sound. He even felt a sting. But he ignored it. Tightening his grip on her shoulders, he spun them both around, letting the momentum from her rebound take them down to the floor.
He twisted at the last second, taking the impact of the floor on his right shoulder before yanking her to his chest in a bear hug. If he’d been trying to kill her, he would have crushed a hell of a lot harder. Instead he squeezed just enough to let her know he could hurt her if he wanted to.
They came to a stop with him on his back, Ivy pinned to his chest. She didn’t fight him, simply laid there with her face close to his neck, breathing deeply. Landon couldn’t help but notice how soft her body was against his, and how nice it felt to have her on top of him.
His cock noticed, too.
Shit. This was going to be embarrassing.
“Okay, you two,” Todd said. “I think we’ve gotten everything out of this demonstration I intended.”
It took a moment for the words to register—probably because all the blood had left his head to rush to another part of his anatomy. Landon reluctantly loosened his hold on Ivy. He waited for her to get up, but she stayed firmly planted on top of him, which alarmed him. He thought she would have jumped up the moment he released her. God, he hoped he hadn’t hurt her with that take down.
He gently tilted her chin up with his fingers. “Hey. You okay?”
Ivy blinked at him, her beautiful eyes filled with something that looked almost like wonder. Then she gave herself a little shake. “I-I’m good. You?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Good.”
She gazed at him for a moment longer, then quickly pushed to her feet. She crossed the room to slip on a pair of flip-flops she had left there. When she turned back to him, her face was the perfect mask of composure he’d seen when he first walked in.
“No hard feelings, I hope?” she said as he stood. “That’s just the way the DCO likes to introduce me to my new partners. I don’t know why.”
He knew why. The DCO realized the fastest way to get a man to appreciate the talents of his female partner was to have her kick his ass. At least she hadn’t done it to him.
“Not at all,” he said. “I suppose we can call this match a tie.”
Her lips curved. “You think so?”
Reaching out, she flicked his shirt with her fingers, then turned and walked away.
Remembering the bizarre open-handed swipe she’d given him across the chest, he looked down to see four diagonal tears in his T-shirt. He pushed the material aside, frowning when he found four identical scratches on his chest. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he got scratched by a cat—a big cat. They weren’t deep or bleeding, but there was no mistaking what had made them—fingernails. Ivy’s fingernails.
Not exactly standard-issue hand-to-hand combat technique. He got the feeling nothing about this place was standard issue. Especially his new partner.
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Mac looked left, then right, then darted across the street. She couldn’t believe the SWAT team didn’t have anyone covering the back door of the building, but there wasn’t a cop in sight. Maybe they weren’t the hotshots everyone made them out to be.
She was just about to grab the handle when the door burst open.
Mac barely had time to gasp before a man with a baseball cap on backward and a chest full of tattoos lifted a big rifle and aimed it at her. Her heart stopped. Instinct told her to run—or at least scream for help—but before she could do either, a black-clad SWAT officer in tactical gear dropped from above and knocked the thug to the ground with some kind of martial arts chop to the back of his tattooed neck.
She stared at the man lying unconscious on the ground, then at the cop before looking up to see a rappelling rope swaying back and forth against the side of the three-story building. How the heck had he dropped down fast enough to do that?
Mac opened her mouth to identify herself, but the SWAT officer closed the space between them in the blink of an eye and slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. She automatically reached up to grab his hand, but then froze as she locked eyes with his. He was wearing his ski mask, so all she could see were those eyes and a small amount of smooth brown skin around them. It had to be Mike Taylor or Jayden Brooks, the only two African American members of the team. Since she hadn’t seen Brooks go in, it had to be Taylor. But for the life of her, she didn’t remember his eyes being a shocking shade of gold in his personnel file photo.
Movement caught her attention and Mac darted a quick look to her right to see two uniformed officers appear out of nowhere. When had her SWAT savior called them?
“Get them out of here,” the golden-eyed man said softly. “And keep her quiet.”
And just like that, one of the uniformed cops wrapped his arm around her waist from behind and picked her up, putting his hand over her mouth when Taylor pulled his away. She watched helplessly as the other cop grabbed the unconscious gunman and heaved him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then ran toward the front of the building. When she looked back, the SWAT officer was nowhere to be seen. Where the heck had he gone? If all the guys in the tactical unit were this fast and powerful, she could imagine why Marvin thought they were on something. Nobody should be able to move that fast.
Her captor followed his partner, running down the alley with her like she was an unruly kid in a movie theater. She was so shocked she
didn’t even struggle, and by the time she thought about it, they were at the SWAT operations vehicle. The minute he planted her firmly on her feet and took his hand away from her mouth, she whirled around to chew him out for manhandling her and was amazed to discover he was the same uniformed cop Dixon had spoken to earlier. Had the SWAT commander seen the news van and told the cop to keep an eye on her? But that was impossible. No one had eyesight that good.
The officer reached around her and opened the door of the operations vehicle, then motioned her in.
She’d about had enough with the caveman crap for today. “I’m not going in there.”
“In here, or in the backseat of a cruiser until this is done,” a deep voice said from inside. “Your call, Ms. Stone, but make it quickly.”
The cop raised an eyebrow, gesturing with one hand toward the open door, and the other across the street where his cruiser was parked. Well, she’d wanted to get an inside look at how the SWAT team operated.
Mac ignored the hand the cop put out to help her and tried not to stamp her foot as she stepped into the vehicle.
“Please close the door, Officer Danner,” said that same deep voice.
The door slammed shut, making her jump.
Mac pushed her sunglasses up on her head and surveyed the inside of the huge vehicle. The three men she’d seen earlier were eyeing her curiously. Gage Dixon, on the other hand, wasn’t paying attention to her at all. He stood with his back to her, his focus locked on the computer monitors attached to the far wall of the vehicle. All six screens were on, but the images on four them were moving and changing so fast it made her dizzy to look at them. It took her a moment to realize she was seeing live feeds from cameras mounted on his men’s helmets. Funny, she hadn’t seen one mounted on Taylor’s.
Who the hell was she kidding? She hadn’t noticed much of anything besides his big muscles and seriously mesmerizing eyes. He might have been naked for all she knew. Nah, she would have noticed that. She never missed a naked man.
But the four moving cameras meant Zak had been right—there were more than three SWAT officers in there. There were four. Not that four seemed like enough to her, either. She’d want like fifty or so to do the job.
The other two screens were stable, showing the inside of the building from two different angles. Mac took a step closer to get a better look and saw people lying face down on the floor. At first she thought they were dead, but then she picked up movement.
She surveyed the inside of the operations vehicle and was disappointed to see it was nothing more than an RV without all the good stuff that came with it. That wasn’t to say it was empty. There were racks for equipment, racks for weapons, and racks for radios, computers, and cameras. There were even two whiteboards and a corkboard. A rather detailed drawing of the exterior of the building had been drawn on the whiteboard. Double red lines marked what looked like entry points.
Mac glanced at Dixon and the other men. They were all staring at the monitors. Figuring this was her chance to pick up some intel, she slid her hand into her back pocket for her camera.
“Please put your camera away, Ms. Stone,” Dixon said.
Mac froze. Damn. Everyone turned to look at her—well, everyone except Dixon. He was still glued to the monitors.
She pushed the camera back into her pocket. How the hell had he known what she was doing?
Dixon reached out and thumbed a switch on a box near the monitors. “We just got audio from the room where they’re holding the hostages.”
The sound of quiet sobs and pitiful moans—punctuated with a whole lot of shouting for the hostages to “Shut the eff up!”—filled the operations vehicle.
When the hostages were only silent, black-and-white video images, it had been possible for Mac to distance herself from the fact that the people lying on the floor—most of whom were women—were real, live human beings with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, boyfriends and husbands, maybe even kids. And that they were scared to death. But now it was impossible to remain detached. Mac edged closer, holding her breath without even meaning to. One of the gunmen weaved in and out of the hostages, kicking them in an attempt to get them to move…somewhere. Most of the women just curled up in the fetal position and cried harder, which only seemed to infuriate the guy kicking them even more.
Cursing, he grabbed one of the women by the hair and dragged her out of the camera’s view. The woman’s terrified screams echoed through the speakers, chilling Mackenzie to the core. She’d seen a lot of violence in her line of work, but that didn’t mean she was used to it. She covered her mouth with her hands to keep from shouting at Dixon to tell his damn SWAT team to do something to help. She was a journalist. She was supposed to stay neutral in every situation and just observe. But it was damn hard when she knew that thug in there was moments away from killing that poor woman—or worse.
“Shit, this is bad,” the hostage negotiator said. “Those animals are on the edge and ready to go over. If your team is going in there, they’d better be quick.”
Dixon didn’t answer, but just spoke softly into the mic he was wearing. A moment later, he turned to the man from the power company. “Are your people ready?”
Hard Hat looked nervous, but he nodded. “When you say the word.”
Dixon turned his attention to the uniformed officer. “I know you were hoping we wouldn’t have to do this, but I need to get my people in there.”
The man didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Do whatever you have to do. Just be careful. There’re a lot of hostages in there.”
Mackenzie wasn’t sure in a case like this who got to make the call as to when SWAT went in. But regardless, Dixon had smoothly put the lieutenant in the decision loop, making sure he didn’t step on any toes he didn’t have to. She’d used that trick herself a few times in the past to keep herself on people’s good side, even when she could have trampled all over them. He was pretty smart for a big, muscle-bound trigger puller.
Dixon threw a glance at Hard Hat. “On my mark. In three…two…one. Now.”
At the SWAT commander’s signal, Hard Hat said a single word into his radio. All at once, every screen on the wall went black. For a moment, Mac thought the SWAT vehicle had lost power. Then she heard screaming over the speakers and realized they’d cut the power to the building.
Half a second later, gunfire erupted.
Mac couldn’t see a damn thing on the monitors except the occasional bright orange flashes that reflected off the walls.
But while she couldn’t see much, she could hear plenty. Women screaming, men cussing, the thud of heavy stuff hitting the floor. And interspersed between all of it, the growls of what sounded like a pissed-off SWAT team. Man, these guys really got fired up when they went in. It sounded as if they were ready to tear the place apart. Maybe that was what Marvin had meant when he said they were on something. Right now, she couldn’t care less about her story. She only prayed the hostages made it out of this in one piece, although she couldn’t imagine how that would be possible. Not with all that gunfire.
But as fast as the shooting had started, it stopped.
Mac stared at the pitch-black screen, straining her eyes for something—anything—that would tell her if the hostages were still alive.
Gage pressed his index finger to the small bud in his right ear as if listening, then he turned to Hard Hat. “Flip on the power.”
The monitors trained on the interior of the building lit up, but not the ones connected to the SWAT officers’ helmet cams.
Mac sagged with relief. The women were huddled together in the center of the room, clearly traumatized but alive. Three men were on the floor nearby. They were still moving, but it didn’t look like they’d be going anywhere. One member of the SWAT team was covering the downed bank robbers, while two others moved among the women checking for injuries. Mac didn’t see the fourth member of the SWAT team. He must be dealing with the other thugs out of the cam
era view.
“Copy that,” Gage said into his mic, then glanced at the lieutenant. “Scene secure. Five suspects down, four WIA, one KIA. No hostages seriously wounded, but a few got trampled in the panic.”
Four bad guys wounded, one dead.
The lieutenant looked as relieved as Mac felt. “I’ll get in there with some uniforms and paramedics, start getting everyone out.”
He brushed past her at a run, slamming the door of the operations vehicle behind him. A few moments later, Hard Hat and the hostage negotiator left as well, leaving her alone with the SWAT team leader.
Curious despite herself, Mac moved closer to the man so she could see the monitors better—or at least that was the excuse she was going with.
She watched in silence as police officers and EMTs rushed into the room to take custody of the bank robbers and give first-aid to the hostages. Dixon’s team fell back, disappearing out of the camera’s view.
Only then did Dixon take off his headset and turn to face her. “So, Ms. Stone. Did you get what you were looking for?”
This was the first time Mackenzie had seen Gage Dixon this close up. Saying he was gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover it. With his dark hair, chiseled jaw, and sensuous mouth, he was downright devastating. She was especially captivated by his eyes. They were the color of dark honey. Or maybe fine whiskey. Either way, it was too easy to get lost in their depths.
She gave herself a mental shake and forced herself to look away, if just to catch her breath. “What are you talking about?”
He smiled at her in a way that made her wonder if he knew how off balance he had her. That bothered her—she was used to being the one who put other people off balance.
“It’s obvious you’ve been snooping around for a story,” he said.
“When your man grabbed me, you mean?” She shrugged. “That was a complete accident. I got turned around and ended up back there.”
He chuckled. “Right. Just like it’s a complete accident that your unmarked news van has been parked outside my SWAT compound for the last two days?”