by Cynthia Eden
“No!” the blonde screamed.
She was too late.
There was no going back now.
* * *
CARL SMILED. He tossed aside his phone. “I’ve got my orders. She’s gonna die. I’ll cut her, again and again, and she’s gonna scream for me.”
Tina wasn’t making a sound right then.
“The hell she is,” Drew snarled at the bastard.
Footsteps shuffled behind him. He tensed. Two men, armed. Were they coming to kill him? Let’s see you try.
“They can take you outside,” Carl said, surprising him, “or you can die right here with her.”
Why were they trying to make him leave? That didn’t make sense. Anton Devast was a sadistic freak. He would want to take out everyone in his path.
So why free my sisters? Why try to let me go?
This scene wasn’t adding up to Drew.
Rough hands grabbed his arms and hauled him back.
Tina still wasn’t speaking. She was just watching him with those wide, resolute eyes of hers.
That knife was so close to her throat. If he fought the two men right then, in front of Carl, the SOB could slit her throat while he watched.
No, he couldn’t risk it. He had to pick a better moment to attack. Hold on, Tina. I’ll get you out of here.
That was what he tried to tell her with his stare, but what he said was, “Goodbye, Doc.”
She blinked back tears.
They pulled him away. Shoved him toward the door.
When he tried to turn back, the taller man put a gun to Drew’s head. “Now walk away, hero. Don’t look back. Just go.”
Was Carl already using his blade on Tina? He didn’t hear a sound coming from her.
“There’s going to be no escape for you two,” Drew said, deliberately using the code word because he wanted the EOD agents to swarm. “You won’t be able to just walk out of here. You have to know that’s not going to happen.”
But the men just smirked at him. “Who said anything about walking?”
Drew was directly in front of the main entrance. A few more steps and he’d be out of the building.
Only, he didn’t plan to leave.
“Why just follow orders?” he demanded even as he palmed the small blade he’d tucked beneath his belt. You missed that one on your weapons search. “Why let Devast use you? He’s going to make sure you all die, too. Don’t you realize that?”
But the men started laughing. Drew’s hold on his weapon tightened.
“You don’t really think we’re letting you all go, do you?” the taller guy demanded.
“Ten, nine, eight...” his sidekick began.
Drew tensed. “What the—?”
“Your sisters were wired, Agent Lancaster. Hell, I don’t think they even knew those collars we snapped around their necks were set to blow—”
Drew spun for the door. He rushed outside.
“The EOD agents got them, right? Those guys who are surrounding us? Guess they’ll all go boom soon enough.”
“Three...two...”
An explosion erupted, shaking the ground and sending Drew flying.
* * *
TINA SCREAMED WHEN she heard the explosion.
The knife sliced the side of her neck.
“That will keep those agents busy.” Carl smiled at her. “I’m supposed to take my time with you, so let’s go, honey. Let’s go enjoy ourselves.”
More men rushed inside. They all headed to the back of the building. Carl was trying to haul her that way, too.
More explosions erupted, only this time they were in the building. The detonations seemed to come one right after the other. Devast’s men were destroying everything—and making it impossible for anyone to follow them as they fled through the float graveyard.
Chunks of the old floats flew into the air. A dragon’s papier-mâché head ignited a few feet from her.
“You think Devast didn’t plan this end?” Carl jerked her head back with a painful grip on her hair. “He made sure we could escape—and that we’d take you with us. Mercer will be getting pieces of you sent to him for weeks.”
They were sick. “I’m not...going...” The smoke was rising. Filling her lungs.
Breathe.
They’d taken her inhaler. When they’d searched her at the door, they’d taken her weapons and her medicine.
The smoke made her eyes burn. The flames heated her skin.
The men kicked open the back door. Fresh air blew inside and she tried to take deep, greedy gulps.
But then gunfire erupted. The rat-a-tat sent the men scrambling back inside the building. Tina tried to duck for cover, but Carl wasn’t letting her go.
The back door swung open. A man raced inside. His blond hair gleamed in the faint light. He wore black, and she could see the bulky outline of his bulletproof vest. He had a gun in each hand, and his bullets hit with deadly accuracy, slamming into the men who’d thought they’d had an easy escape.
With the EOD, nothing was ever easy. Devast had underestimated his opponents.
“Stop!” Carl yelled. Tina was in front of him. His human shield. “Throw down your weapons and get back or she dies!”
But the man shook his head. He lifted his guns. Seemed to be aiming—
At me? Yes, he was.
“You aren’t getting away. The EOD doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.” She didn’t recognize the agent’s unaccented voice, but she sure recognized Mercer’s familiar line.
He’s going to shoot me. To take out Carl, she realized the agent would need to get rid of Carl’s protection. Tina braced for the pain.
Before another gunshot erupted, someone slammed into them. She and Carl both hit the ground with an impact hard enough to crack bones. Tina was pretty sure she did hear one of Carl’s bones break, and that savage sound made her heart race faster. The knife had sliced over her collarbone when she fell, and more blood soaked her shirt as Tina rolled away from her attacker.
She pushed up to her knees and saw—
Drew.
He’d come back. She’d known that he would. Happiness and hope fought inside her.
But...his expression was brutal. Wild. He was driving his fist into Carl’s face again and again.
Carl’s head slammed into the concrete, and he stopped moving.
“Come on!” It was the EOD agent. The one she didn’t know. He was grabbing her arms and pulling her up to her feet. “My orders are to get you out of here!”
The flames were spreading. Would more bombs be detonating soon?
“The whole place is going to blow—it’s their distraction. They thought they’d get away while the whole block burned.”
His hold on her wrist was unbreakable.
Drew rose to his feet.
Tina tried to reach for him. “Drew! Come on!”
He looked up at her.
Her heart stopped.
Something was...wrong. Drew’s eyes looked dead. His face was a mask of fury and rage—but his eyes were dead.
“Drew?”
Another detonation shook the building. Cracks ran across the remaining walls and chunks of the ceiling fell, narrowly missing them.
“They were timed to start right after Lancaster went out the door,” the agent shouted. “Come on, we have to move.”
Wait, Drew had gone out and then come back through that hell? He’d walked back into the flames?
Her breath heaved out as she fought to break the mysterious agent’s hold and get back to Drew.
But the agent wasn’t letting her go.
“Drew!” He seemed frozen. He needed to move.
Because Carl was moving again. Carl had just grabbed the knife from the floor. He wasn’t unconscious; he’d just been waiting for his moment to attack. He lunged up and went straight for Drew’s back.
“Behind you!” Tina screamed. The fire was crackling so loudly she wasn’t sure he even heard her. “Drew!”
At the last moment he spu
n around. He grabbed Carl’s hand, stopping that knife before it could shove into his body.
Drew twisted Carl’s hand. Carl howled—she could hear the stark cry of pain rising over the flames—then Drew plunged the knife into Carl’s chest.
This time, when he hit the ground, Carl wasn’t pretending to be unconscious. He was dead.
“Have to do this...” the agent muttered as Tina kept struggling against him. She needed to get to Drew. “Orders...”
Forget orders.
Drew looked up then, staring at her with the eyes that weren’t his.
He shook his head, as if waking up, then he ran toward her. Tina stopped fighting the other agent. She ran with him—and Drew.
The smoke was choking her, her lungs were burning, but she wasn’t about to let the attack stop her. Not now, not when they were home free.
The fresh air was just steps away.
Steps—
“Bomb!” Drew yelled. “Above the back door. The timer’s counting down—”
She could see it. The seconds were showing in a digital red flash. They only had four seconds. Four.
They raced outside. She couldn’t pull in any breath. Her legs just kept going. Escape. That had been their code word. She just needed to—
When the last bomb detonated, the force tossed Tina as if she were a rag doll.
Chapter Eleven
Anton Devast inclined his head. “And then there was nothing left.” He’d been watching the clock on the stark, white interrogation room wall. If Carl had followed his orders, if he’d stayed on the schedule Devast had made for the detonations, then the float graveyard had just blown up in New Orleans.
The whole block would be a wreck.
His chaos. His havoc.
Mercer had his phone out. He was pulling the pretty blonde from the room. Demanding to know the status—
The door shut behind Mercer.
Anton exhaled slowly. It wasn’t the revenge he’d wanted.
But it would have to do.
* * *
“TINA!”
Drew wiped the blood from his eye as he leaped to his feet. His clothes were singed, blisters covered his arms and— Where was Tina?
She’d been in front of him before the last detonation. He’d tried to reach for her, but the blast had torn her away from him.
His gaze searched to the left. The right. Smoke billowed all around him. Tina couldn’t stay in this smoke. It would hurt her.
Maybe that’s why she wasn’t calling back to him. Maybe she was having another attack. The smoke had set it off before, on that runway, and maybe—
“D-Drew...” Just a whisper; a strangled gasp that he heard above the flames.
That gasp was the sweetest sound to his ears. It meant that she was alive.
He ran to her, following that gasp. She was on the ground, struggling to sit up. He shoved his hand into the hidden pocket on his vest and pulled out her inhaler. “Easy, Doc, I’ve got you.”
Always.
She took the inhaler. Her lashes lifted so that her eyes met his.
The fire was still spreading, surging higher and higher. Sirens wailed in the distance.
“I have to get you out of here.” He scooped her up into his arms. It wasn’t about a mission or priorities. He didn’t think it ever had been. It was only about her.
Now, she truly was the only good thing left in his life.
He looked up. The other agent was there—the man who’d come up behind the building and taken out most of Devast’s men. Cooper Marshall. Drew knew the guy by reputation, but had never worked with him. Cooper’s blond hair stuck to his temples, slick with sweat. He had a gun in his left hand. “Get her out,” Cooper barked. “I’ll make sure we’re clear.”
And that no more of Devast’s men had survived to attack again.
Drew held tight to Tina as he raced away from the scene. He’d gotten her out of that inferno. She was in his arms. Safe.
When he’d learned about his sisters—
No.
Drew immediately slammed the door on that thought. Not now. Can’t think of them now. He was barely holding together as it was.
He had to protect Tina first.
Tina, then—
Paige had wanted to stay with me.
His back teeth ground together. His eyes burned.
His arms clung even harder to Tina. He kept running with her cradled against him. The smoke was so thick that he could barely see as he rushed forward.
She had her medicine. She was safe. Alive.
His sisters...
I’m so sorry. He’d failed them. Let them all down. They’d died, because of him.
The sirens were wailing. He could see the lights of an ambulance approaching.
Grief threatened to choke him, but Drew kept running toward that ambulance.
Police were on the scene now. Drew caught sight of Gunner and Logan. They were keeping the local authorities back.
They’d all have to stay back until they made sure there weren’t any more bombs. The rescue teams would be held in a safe zone until the bomb squad completed their sweeps.
He had to make it to that zone.
Just a few more steps...
Made it.
The EMTs reached for Tina. They put her on a stretcher. She shoved their hands back. “Drew—”
“You’re safe.” Ash stained the hand that he slid over her cheek. “It’s over.”
His heart was leaden in his chest. His whole body seemed numb. He’d used his control in the field more times than he could count; locking his emotions away. But this was different—
My family is gone.
Tina grabbed his hand when he would have stepped back. “Wh-what...h-happened?”
The EMTs were trying to work on her, but she kept pushing them away and clinging to Drew.
“Your eyes...” Tina whispered. “They’re wrong...something...happened.”
He didn’t know what she meant about his eyes. Other than the fact that they kept burning as if they were on fire. Drew shook his head.
“T-tell me...”
His shoulders bowed. “They killed my sisters...” He should have known the exchange was too easy. His darkness, his job—it had cost Kim, Heather and Paige their lives.
“Drew!”
His head whipped up at that frantic call. That had—had just sounded like Paige.
“I can...see them,” Tina said, voice husky. Her gaze slid over Drew’s shoulder. “Not...dead.”
He spun around.
Walking through the smoke, he saw Dylan—and his friend was right beside Paige, Kim and Heather.
Alive. All of them were alive!
Drew shook his head. No, no, the explosion—
Paige ran to him. She hit his chest so hard that he took a step back. She was crying and laughing and holding on to him as tightly as she could.
Drew’s stunned gaze rose and met Dylan’s.
“Devast used devices like those collars two years ago, back in Brazil.” Dylan’s lashes flickered. “Those vics didn’t get free in time. I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen again.”
Then Kim and Heather were there. All holding him. All laughing and crying as the smoke drifted in the air.
The ambulance’s siren wailed once more. He looked back. The ambulance’s door had just slammed.
The EMTs were taking Tina away.
He tried to head toward the ambulance, but his sisters tightened their hold on him.
Drew needed to make them understand. “I have to—”
“I thought we were all going to die,” Paige whispered as the tears slid silently down her cheeks. “Is this...is this what you do?”
“You risk your life like this, all the time?” Heather’s face was stark, white. Fear lit her eyes.
He couldn’t answer her. Families weren’t supposed to know about the missions he faced.
Families also weren’t supposed to be pulled into his battles.
&nbs
p; “I’m sorry,” he said, the words rough and rumbling from deep in his throat.
Dylan pressed his hand to Kim’s shoulder. “We need to get you ladies to the hospital. We want you all checked out.”
And the scene wasn’t safe.
Tina’s ambulance had left.
Another ambulance was waiting, its back doors open. The EMTs came forward to help his sisters.
Drew caught Dylan’s arm. “Thank you.”
Dylan inclined his head. “Man, you should know I always have your back.”
He did.
The flames were burning, raging so brightly behind them. More havoc.
The group’s name had come from the destruction they left behind.
Destruction and death.
Only this time there had been survivors, too. Innocent lives had been saved.
Devast wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
No, you bastard, you didn’t know my price.
And Devast never would.
* * *
SWEET OXYGEN FLOWED into Tina’s lungs. The ambulance rolled and bounced as it raced from the scene.
Drew’s sisters had been hugging him.
She swallowed.
They’d made it out alive. The mission was finally over.
Now it was time for her to go back to the life that waited for her.
Time for him to return to his life. His missions.
They’d see each other at the EOD.
She’d remember. How could she ever forget what they’d shared?
“Miss? Miss...are you hurting?”
A tear had dropped down her cheek. Tina shook her head. There wasn’t anything the medics could do for the pain that she felt.
* * *
“WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?” Drew demanded as he slammed his hands down on the nurses’ station desk.
“Sir, you need to calm down.”
“What I need is to find the patient who was brought in! Dr. Tina Jamison! She came in by ambulance two hours ago.”
Two of the longest hours of his life. He’d stayed on scene, needing to make sure the last arm of HAVOC was truly destroyed. He’d gone in on the bomb sweeps, checked all the nearby buildings to make sure they also weren’t set to blow.
They’d used the bomb-sniffing dogs. Gone in and out—searching every possible area. They’d found two more bombs.
The bomb squad had disarmed them with seconds to spare.