That was what he told himself, but the truth was he was reaching the limits of his strength. And he was only a third of the way there.
It was almost night, though there was just enough pewter in the sky to clearly see the island, a dark triangular shape in the distance.
Max clung to the side of the inflatable, breathing deeply, staring at the island. He glanced at his hand holding onto the tug rope. It was shaking.
The dog made a soft whining sound, shifted slightly to bring his muzzle close, and licked his hand. The dog wanted Paige back as much as he did. He was wounded—he’d been shot in the head—and yet he was unwavering. He’d jumped into the inflatable without hesitation and had remained utterly still while, underwater, Max towed him. Dogs don’t have good eyesight; the way they make sense of their world is through their noses.
For the dog, Max had suddenly disappeared, and the inflatable dinghy with the uncertain footing simply began moving. It must have been terrifying, but Max saw no signs of fear in the dog, only determination.
He looked down at his hand. The trembling had stopped.
He had his team. He had his mission.
Go.
He slipped under the water again.
“You weren’t very helpful to my men,” Larry said casually. He’d brought a chair to sit down on, not straddling it like the goon had done back at her house, but sitting down properly, one elegantly-clad leg over the other. “They told me. That’s why you’re here.” He tssked. “You made me come all the way over here when it really wasn’t necessary, Paige.”
The hair stood up all over her body and she realized, in a single swooping sensation, that the two men had had orders to kill her. She hadn’t given them what they wanted and they’d understood they didn’t have the technical knowledge to grill her, so they’d just grabbed her and carted her here.
The facility was deserted.
Larry could do what he wanted.
Her life was quite unmistakeably on the line.
“So, Paige. Let’s have our little talk now.” He shot back a cuff and checked his wristwatch. A Patek Philippe, because Larry liked his stuff. “My men in Buenos Aires should be calling at any moment to say they’ve got Silvia. When we’ve wrapped things up here, I can consider this entire episode closed.”
“Are you crazy?” Paige asked, then clenched her jaw. Antagonizing Larry was not smart right now. She made her voice reasonable. “Think it through, Larry. The data Silvia has is unofficial, yes, but it’s hard data. HGHM-1 is a massive failure and will be shut down the instant the news is out. You can’t hide something like this forever.”
Larry smiled, the smile of a parent listening to a young child explaining the tooth fairy. “It doesn’t need to be forever, my dear. There is an end point to this. HGHM-1 is officially a success. News of the fantastic test results will leak tomorrow. GenPlant stocks will soar. My broker is going to leak the news and says the share price will probably increase tenfold. Nowadays it’s really hard to find good investments. Money will pour in. I’ve bought a hundred-thousand shares in the company worth a million bucks, a lot of it on spec. Multiply by ten and you’ve got a cool ten mil, in a week.”
Paige stared at him, frowning. “But—but it’s not a success. Even if—” she swallowed. “Even if you get rid of us and bury Silvia’s data, it will come out sooner rather than later. The figures I saw speak for themselves. Anyone in the company would recognize them and close HGHM-1 right down. It’s just a question of time.”
As she spoke, a sense of relief washed through her. There was no incentive, really, in killing them because there’d be no stopping the process. Killing them would bring him nothing—expose him to huge risk—and that was her best defense.
“Ah, my dear,” Larry said, smiling. “All I need is just a little time. When news leaks out, as it will starting tomorrow—and the share price goes through the roof—I’m going to sell at the top and bail. There’s a job waiting for me at Laster Labs. New job, new life, over ten million stashed safely in Aruba. Life’s a bowl of cherries, sweetheart.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. When the shares tank, as they will, as they must, they’re going to look carefully at all employees who bought and sold big blocks of shares. Insider trading is a federal offense, and—”
“Ah, ah, Paige, my dear.” Larry shook his head. “I’m not stupid. My broker split the purchase up into fictitious accounts, staggered so that there’s no suspicion. My broker also fronted me the money to organize this—” With a flick of his wrist he included the two thugs behind him. “What do soldiers call it? This op.” His lips pursed around the word and made a slight smacking sound on the “p”.
Paige’s head fell back. “You are crazy.”
His smile grew. “Not at all. Sane as they come, and soon to be filthy rich.”
She looked at him carefully, in his casual, expensive clothes. Closely shaven, pricey haircut, fabulous shoes. It would be nice to think that the monster in him showed, but it didn’t. His eyes were twinkling, a half smile on his face. As a matter of fact, he looked exactly the way he had looked at a company mixer when he’d attracted her enough for her to accept a date.
He looked perfectly ordinary. There was absolutely no way to tell that he was willing to kill two people—maybe more—or to let an experiment gone terribly bad continue and have her dog shot, all for money.
“So. Let us begin.” He looked down at his neatly pressed trousers and flicked at an imaginary piece of dust, then looked back up at her, suddenly serious. He blinked, blue eyes pale and empty. And now Paige could see the monster in him. “Paige. My dear. Where is your dear friend Silvia?”
“I don’t know.”
She saw the blow coming but was unable to avoid it, was only able to brace for it.
Larry drew back his fist, punched her on the side of the head, and sent her crashing to the floor.
“Wrong answer, bitch.”
Chapter Nine
Afterwards, Max would have little recollection of swimming to the shore of the island, just one long period of pain and exhaustion while wet. Just like Hell Week, which was a painful blur in his mind, punctuated by a few memories of extreme pain.
Coming up out of surf torture and running with his swim buddy to the grinder—artillery shells popping, smoke from grenades billowing, confusing them. They hardly needed smoke grenades because their breath created clouds of vapor around their heads in the biting cold.
They hadn’t slept in ninety-six hours.
Crushing out a hundred-fifty push-ups, each one so painful he broke out in a sweat, though it was freezing cold and he was wet. Thank God for his combat boots encasing his ankle, because it was swollen, maybe sprained. He didn’t want to look. There was blood on his uniform and he had no idea what from. At the last push-up he collapsed to the ground and rolled over, deliberately pissing his pants just to feel a little warmth on his legs.
“Wright!” One of the instructors placed a bullhorn over his face and screamed. Dougherty. The recruits called him the Antichrist. “Look over there at that bell! Nice shiny bell! Ring it and this is over! Ring it and I’ll personally buy you a fucking room at the fucking Del, where you can sleep for a week on perfumed sheets! What do you say?”
“No, sir!” Max mumbled.
“Can’t hear you, Wright!” the bullhorn roared.
“No, sir!” Max screamed.
He didn’t ring the bell. He’d never ring the bell.
Right now, his movements in the water were slow and he was cold: signs of dangerous exhaustion. He’d known men who had simply passed out in the water from exhaustion and drifted down to their deaths.
Wasn’t going to happen.
He passed the two-mile mark, stopping to come up for air, treading water, and to observe the situation. His injured leg had stopped working. He was advancing almost exclusively with his arms, muscles trembling with fatigue.
He reached into the small dinghy for his waterproof bag and pull
ed out the binocs. They had night vision, and with the press of a button, IR.
He scanned the area carefully, in quadrants, and saw no signs of life around the jetty. If they were expecting trouble, they were expecting it from a boat, not from a lifesaver on steroids.
Another mile to go. But, to be on the safe side, he should make landfall at least fifty meters from the jetty. He saw a little outcropping with bushes where he could hide while getting out of the wet suit and gearing up.
Another mile.
He treaded, waiting.
There was a place inside him. He’d found it during Hell Week. It had been with him on countless missions. He’d lost it when he was blown up and then found it again when he refused to become a cripple.
He needed to find it right now if he had any hope at all of swimming this last mile, when the thought of letting go and drifting down, down, down was so enticing.
That place was still in him, but there was now someone else there, too. Paige.
For the first time in his life, there was another person inside him, as much a part of him as his hands and legs. She was indispensable, his heart. The future, any future without her was unthinkable. It would stretch out forever, gray and flat.
This was the first time he’d ever known fear, real fear. A SEAL wasn’t afraid to die. SEALs were trained to tackle the worst, most dangerous situations. And no matter how hard the training, how excellent the equipment, shit happens, and it happens a lot in battle. Every warrior in the history of the world knows that.
Every single SEAL he knew had in some way come to terms with his possible imminent death. There had been a few who made it to BUD/S, he suspected, who welcomed death, would go forward smiling to embrace it, because they couldn’t even imagine life when they were no longer young and strong.
Luckily, the trainers recognized that and weeded them out. The Teams needed men who weren’t afraid to die, not men who wanted to die.
So if death held no terrors, not much else did either.
Except right now, the thought of losing Paige—that terrified him. Losing the light she brought into his life, that sharp mind that kept him on his toes, that vital essence that was purely her. That terrified him.
Paige was It. He’d dated and fucked for more than half his life. He liked women and they liked him, but he recognized now tha [niz wat his head hadn’t been in the game—his cock had.
There was a connection there between him and Paige that was bone-deep, blood-deep, a connection that, if severed, would be like severing an artery.
And it was the image of Paige, the memory of her kissing his shoulder before falling asleep, how she’d instinctively slow down to accommodate his leg, how she sleepily smiled at his touch first thing in the morning without opening her eyes . . . those were the things that kept him going when his body quit.
He was going to get out of this alive and he was going to bring Paige home.
And, later, after he’d made love to Paige, oh, about a thousand times just to make sure she was really safe, he knew what he was going to do with his life.
He couldn’t be an active SEAL. That was off the cards. But he still had skills, rare skills.
He would never forget the gut-wrenching terror of knowing someone he loved was in hostile hands. That terror would shape the rest of his life. He was going to put his skills at the disposal of those whose loved ones had been kidnapped. He was going to dedicate his life to bringing them home, just as he was going to bring Paige home.
He moved on.
His movements in the water were mechanical, jerky, wasteful, and inefficient. But there it was—a blackness deeper than the blackness of the water right in front of him, rising up out of the ocean.
The island.
A hundred meters, fifty meters, ten meters, five, two . . . his flippered feet touched the rocky bottom and he hauled himself out of the water in the tiny cove he’d detected, hidden from the jetty by bushes. He took two stumbling steps up the rocky shore, pulling the dinghy up behind him, hearing Max leaping out. He couldn’t stand up. He fell to his knees, then toppled to one side.
He woke to Max’s frantic tongue lapping his face. His non-reflective watch told him he’d only been out for a few minutes. He gritted his teeth against the grinding pain of his leg and managed to stand up. His leg was trembling. It felt like he was walking on ground glass. He was overdoing it. He could lose his leg.
Didn’t matter. He could live without his leg. He couldn’t live without Paige.
In minutes, he was out of the wet suit and geared-up. The whole time, Max watched him soberly, sitting on his haunches, waiting for the human to get ready.
The instant Max moved toward the jetty, the dog shifted to his side, keeping pace with him, keeping close. Instinctively, the dog understood teammates stayed together.
Max knew how to meld with the night. He moved like a shadow to higher ground, up above the jetty, waiting patiently after each move to see if he’d been spotted. Hurrying and getting caught wouldn’t help Paige.
He scanned with the night vision binocs and saw two men higher up. One smoking, again.
Bad for your health, you scumbag, he thought. And so’s this.
He went for them.
Even limping badly, it was no contest. They didn’t have a chance. They sucked at being security guards, though they did understand the muzzle of a gun to the nape of the neck. There were two guards, but Max was in a team of two, as well. His brave furry friend kept vigil over one of the guards, face-down in the dirt, paws straddling his head, growling low while Max trussed up the first asshole, then the other. Wrist and ankle restraints. Then good old duct tape over the mouth, and he and Max were good to go.
He took their weapons, disassembled the rifles and tossed the pieces into the shrubbery. Took their sidearms, Beretta 92s, and threw them and the magazines into the ocean.
He snapped his fingers and Max heeled. They both moved forward toward the front entrance of the building.
Max kept his nose to the ground. All of a sudden he stopped, snuffled around, then moved forward purposely.
He’d picked up Paige’s scent.
Max called the dog back softly. He quivered with impatience but obeyed.
Though his leg was on fire, Max painfully lowered himself behind a bush and observed the door and the guards.
The security system was fairly sophisticated but doable.
If this had been a sanctioned op with air support behind him, Max would have preferred to infiltrate by rappelling down onto the roof from a helicopter, but he didn’t have that choice here.
And anyway, Max had been following his nose and had been headed for the door. Paige had walked through that door a couple of hours ago, and so he and his teammate would, too. He had to follow the dog’s lead here.
These guards were a little less Bozo the Clown-ish. They meant business. But then so did he.
He waited, looking for an opening. One of the guards suddenly spoke into a cop-style shoulder mic, swiped a card down the side of the big door, and entered.
Good. So he wouldn’t have to blow the door down.
Ten minutes later, the guard came back, put his head next to the other guard’s head, and said something. They both laughed.
A wave of coldness swept over him. Were they laughing at the idea of holding a beautiful woman hostage? By his side, Max woofed out a very soft, brief growl.
His partner was growing impatient. Fair enough, so was he.
He was tired of being nice. He shouldered the MP-5, gritting his teeth as he tried to find stability on his bad leg. Goddamn it, wasn’t working. It wanted to buckle.
He leaned against the trunk of a big pine and took aim. It had to be a head shot because they had body armor.
Phhht! The asshole with the card dropped as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Max shifted immediately to the second target and dropped him before he realized what had happened to his partner.
Max limped to
the first target and took out the swipe card.
The dog had already bounded to the door, taking an indifferent sniff of the two dead men as he passed. He pointed his muzzle at the door, arrow straight.
Paige was in there somewhere.
There were no biometric data necessary, which was fortunate, though Max was perfectly willing to press a dead man’s thumb against a plate or hold a dead man’s retina against a scanner. They obviously felt that the water was protection enough.
Wrong.
The building wasn’t a commercial building. There was no corporate lobby or even an entrance, really. Just one big corridor that led to other corridors.
This was where Max the dog did his thing.
He leaned down to run his hand over Max’s head and said, in a low voice, “Find her, boy. Find Paige.”
The dog took off, nose to the ground, and Max followed as fast as he humanly could. Pain jarred him right up to the top of his head every time he put weight on his leg, but he ignored it. There’d be time to take care of his leg later, once he had Paige safely home.
He would never have found her without Max. The dog moved unerringly down corridors it would have taken him hours to check and clear.
It was a labyrinthine building, built for work and not for representation. It was also empty. He encountered no one as he followed Max. At each corner, he’d stop, listen, check with his small angled mirror, then lead with his rifle, but all he encountered was air and a dog turned to him, waiting for him to follow.
There was a drumming need in him now to find Paige, the sense that a clock was ticking down. He hurried as fast as he could, shutting out the grinding pain, the drumbeat of his heart loud in his head. He needed to get to her now. Because something was happening now.
Finally, Max lifted his muzzle and stopped in front of a door. It was in the middle of a long, wide corridor with very few doors, which meant the rooms were large.
He put his ear to the steel door and heard faint voices. Male voices. Then a softer voice.
Paige!
Fatal Heat Page 10