Hurt

by Rachel Van Dyken

  Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

  A masculine voice — familiar and different at the same time — spoke softly. “They can’t have gotten far,” it said, and Laila stiffened in response. “I ought to kill you where you stand, just for your incompetence.”

  “We were told the drugs would last several more hours,” another voice, this one high-pitched and obviously nervous, responded.

  “You were told to guard two KTS agents,” the first man said. “To hold them until I could interrogate them. We need to discover what they know about the Circle. Need to know how close they are to compromising it.” The footsteps halted. “And we need to move those girls now.”

  “It’s not our fault—“

  The voices were getting quieter, and Ryker strained to hear. “It damn well is your fault. Your guards were incompetent. Those drugs would have weakened them, and they still couldn’t pull their heads out of their asses enough to hold Ryker and Laila.”

  She let out a little gasp at the sound of her name.

  “But—“

  “Just shut up and find them. Lock down the outer perimeter. Secure the exits.” A beat of quiet. “Now!”

  The voices and footsteps faded away, but that wasn’t what concerned Ryker. No, what worried him was the paleness of Laila’s face, the stiffness of her shoulders.

  “What is it?” he asked softly.

  “It’s not so much what as whom,” she murmured. “It’s Daniel.”

  His mouth fell open.

  Saturday

  Warehouse

  LAILA’S HEART RACED, AND NAUSEA SQUEEZED her throat tight until she thought she might seriously puke.

  Daniel. She’d thought the voice was familiar the moment she’d heard it, but hadn’t known it was him until he’d said her name. There was a certain inflection, a slight emphasis on the “la” part at the end.

  No one else had ever pronounced her name that same way.

  Her eyes slid closed in disappointment for one long second. Then she pulled it together.

  She and Daniel had been in high school together, had gone through basic training in the army at the same time, had both been recruited by KTS shortly after their first deployment. They’d fought together, bled together, and now… now he was working against her, against KTS, working with people who were kidnapping underage girls and forcing them into slavery.

  It had been almost six months since she’d seen Daniel, a year since KTS had let him go. But it had been longer than that since he’d been the friend she’d known.

  He’d changed after their deployment in Afghanistan. Had been quieter, had bottled things up until he’d exploded.

  Which was why he’d received a string of warnings from their commander, write-ups for being too violent, for not following proper protocol and/or chain of command. Which was why he’d been fired.

  And now he was here.

  Laila couldn’t help but feel guilty. She should have tried harder to reach him, should have stayed in contact after he’d been fired.

  The man had taken a bullet for her once, and she’d all but abandoned him.

  Oh, there were plenty of excuses.

  KTS kept her busy. She rushed from one mission to the next, barely agreeing to the requisite few days break the medical staff required. She didn’t always have access to secure lines, was rarely in a position for having enough free time to chat on the phone.

  But Daniel had been a huge part of her life. A brother in everything but blood. Family when her own had been incapable of providing what she’d needed.

  And now he was mixed up in something really, really bad.

  “Laila,” Ryker’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

  The endearment would have normally made her fly off the handle and was very likely the reason Ryker had used it in the first place, given the calculating gleam in his eyes.

  She forced herself to push aside the recriminations and sadness about Daniel and focus on what was important.

  They needed to get the hell out of the warehouse as quickly as possible. The rest of the team — as well as the other KTS teams in the field — were in jeopardy.

  But with the guards locking down the exits and Daniel in charge… her normally infallible nerves were shot.

  Daniel knew her, understood how she would react in a hundred different situations. They’d been on countless missions together, and that meant he had the advantage.

  He would expect her to make a balls-out attempt to break the perimeter and get back to command. Or he would expect that she would know he would think that and—

  Crap. She really needed to slow down and come up with something he wouldn’t anticipate.

  But the more she tried to hash it out, the more she thought of various plans and then quickly discarded them, the more panicked she became.

  “Daniel knows me,” she told Ryker. “He knows how I’d react almost better than I do.” She took a shuddering breath. “I’m not sure what the best course of action is.”

  Her eyes stung. She cursed and brushed an arm across them. She hadn’t cried since the final fight with her parents more than ten years ago, the final catalyst that had motivated her to leave home at sixteen and make her own way.

  This, a betrayal by a person who’d been more family than her own, apparently had turned her into an emotional pile of mush.

  Ryker squeezed her shoulder and stepped back. “The Laila I know doesn’t cry. Spilt milk and all that.”

  Anger, hot and furious, filled her to bursting. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she hissed and shoved him. Hard.

  He barely fell back a step. “What I know is that you need to get your shit together. Big deal. A friend betrayed you. That sucks. Move on, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Her fingers curled into fists, and Laila swallowed down the urge to punch Ryker right in the balls.

  “My shit is together, you jerk.” She strode across the room, finally taking full stock of the space. Her eyes hit on an old-school piece of technology, and she felt a wave of relief course through her.

  She could work with that.

  “Find me a goddamned screwdriver,” she snapped as she bent and flipped over the old ham radio.

  Saturday

  Warehouse

  Trying very hard not to stare at Laila’s ass as she worked.

  RYKER KNEW HE SHOULDN’T HAVE PUSHED Laila so far. Knew that she was hurting, and while his arms itched with the need to wrap them around her, he also knew this wasn’t the time.

  Comfort would have to wait for when they weren’t in immediate peril.

  He bent and pulled off the back of his boot. It was a new piece of technology. This was the first trial in the field, actually. The material was a recently invented polymer, one that was soft and could be molded then hardened to resemble steel when exposed to any liquid — including spit.

  After use, a sharp smack against a hard surface would return the polymer to its natural, more flexible form.

  The technology was beyond Ryker. He’d been impressed that he’d understood as much as he had when Allison, the lead scientist, had demonstrated the freshly installed material on his boots.

  Of course, Allison hadn’t been happy with him when he’d said he’d always enjoyed playing with Play-Doh.

  “Phillips or slotted?” he asked Laila as she fussed with the old radio. He had no idea what she was going to do with it, but his plan had been to shoot their way out. If she’d been able to think of something better, something that wouldn’t result in the pair of them with matching bullet wounds, then he was willing to go with it.

  “Phillips,” she snapped.

  “Got it.” Always good with his hands, Ryker molded the polymer quickly — flattening it out then folding it into an impersonation of the star-shaped screwdriver.

  A little saliva hardened it right up, and he extended it to Laila.

  He loved that she didn’t flinch back from using something covered in spit, t
hat she didn’t hesitate to get dirty when it was necessary. It was both hot and everything he expected in the person who was leading the mission.

  They were in this together. Of course, he’d step up and fill in if necessary, but on this mission Laila was the commander. She was in charge. And though he’d had a hard time following chain of command in his Navy days, Ryker had grown up since then. He could follow procedure… especially when he had faith in the person who was supposed to be leading him.

  So he shut his mouth, handed over the screwdriver, and watched their backs while she messed around with the radio.

  “Thanks,” she said, though the sentiment was hardly filled with gratitude. In fact, if the word had been a dagger — hell, a rusty spoon — he would have been dead.

  “Whatcha doing, boss?” he asked, after walking the perimeter of the room, double-checking that they were safe for the moment. He wanted to lighten the tension even as he kept eyes and ears out for anyone approaching.

  It wasn’t that he’d been intentionally cruel. He’d just wanted to focus Laila when he’d snapped at her to get it together, had wanted to pull her out of the cycle of panic and swirling emotions.

  But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her.

  Or ruin his chances with her in the future. Which, given the look she’d just lobbed his way, might have very well happened.

  “Activating our emergency beacons,” she said, her eyes locked with his, daring him to protest.

  Doubt filled Ryker. “How are you going to do that without having them?” He held up his right hand, pointed at the stitches on his wrist. “Cut out, remember?”

  “I remember.” She rolled her eyes at him. “KTS uses very specific radio waves as our beacons’ signal. If I can isolate one of them on this, then broadcast it…” She shrugged. “…Rachel should be actively searching for them.”

  “Holy shit,” he said. “You are way smarter than me.”

  She snorted but didn’t say anything else, just kept working.

  Ryker stood and took stock of their weapons. Six guns and a few spare magazines. He checked the Glocks and bullets — 40 caliber, 17 rounds — then sighed.

  He much preferred his own gun, a Sig P320. It was sleek, efficient, and felt like an extension of his body. This… this was just cliché.

  Every dumb ass criminal went for a Glock.

  After setting two of the guns within reach of Laila, he walked over to a stack of boxes he figured were worth investigating. Might as well do something while she worked her voodoo magic with the radio, which she had already dissembled into a jumble of wires and plastic.

  Ryker pulled back the lid on the first box and saw that it was filled with MREs. He grabbed a few and shoved them in the pockets of his cargos — just in case.

  Never let it be said he didn’t have the Boy Scout gene.

  The next few boxes held more of the same: MREs, spare clothes, flashlights, and first aid kits. He found a duffle and shoved some supplies in it then opened the last box.

  And cursed.

  Because things had just gotten a hell of a lot clearer.

  Getting Dark, Saturday

  Warehouse

  Staring into a giant box of drugs

  AT THE SOUND OF RYKER’S CURSE, Laila set aside the radio and crossed over to him.

  When she saw what was inside the innocuous-looking cardboard box, she cursed too.

  If she’d held onto any hope that Daniel had been innocently drawn into the circle of human trafficking, it disappeared upon glimpsing the contents of that box. Okay, she knew that it had been a slim hope in the first place, one that was completely ridiculous to hold onto, but it didn’t matter because…

  This sealed the deal.

  “Cocaine?” she asked, picking up the bag of white powder with its distinctive red bull label.

  “Does Cortez sell anything else?”

  Not that she knew of. Cortez was well-known to KTS; he sold in Europe and Asia, and cocaine was his drug of choice.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “This is way bigger than anyone knows. We have to get back to command.”

  Ryker held up a few packages, clear with the distinctive grey C4 inside. “We can always just blow our way out.”

  If she was good with computers, then Ryker was a genius with explosives. And, while it was tempting to blow up the warehouse, the potential evidence inside was too great to risk destroying it. Not to mention—

  “What if they’re holding the girls here?” she asked softly.

  At the mention of the kidnapped girls, Ryker’s eyes went cold, and the features of his face froze into a mask of such hostility that it raised the hairs on Laila’s nape.

  With a nod, he pocketed the supplies. “Good point,” he murmured. “No explosives—“ He pulled out a survival knife that must have been in one of the boxes, its blade gleaming in the steadily diminishing sunlight. “—but I sure as hell hope Daniel gives you the chance to use this.”

  “Me too,” she said and took the knife from him. The handle felt right as she grasped it. “Thanks.”

  “Some girls want flowers. Others, survival knives.”

  Laila grinned then felt it fade at the tug in her heart. Somehow Ryker had managed to wriggle his way inside the organ again, and, though the thought scared her, it was also filled with an aw factor she was hard-pressed to ignore.

  “And thanks. You know… for earlier?” For pulling her back from the edge, for making certain she didn’t freak out like a rookie on her first mission.

  Ryker’s eyes softened. “Anytime, Laila.” He stared at her with such sincerity that their past seemed very inconsequential.

  So much time had elapsed; they’d both acted stupid.

  She’d jumped in with both feet, hadn’t protected herself, and then had been hostile when she’d been hurt.

  He’d been a jerk. He’d also owned up to it.

  Which went a long way toward soothing her feelings.

  Laila couldn’t allow herself to be drawn completely in again, of course. She needed to hold onto a part of herself, protect that last little bit of her heart.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends.

  If she just could ignore the way her pulse raced any time he touched her. If she could ignore the way her body seemed determined to remember that fabulous night of sex.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ll finish with the radio, and then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  He nodded, snagged a bag of the coke, then shoved it in the duffle he’d somehow found.

  Damn, he was resourceful and hot and competent and…

  She was working on their exit strategy from a potentially combative and highly dangerous situation.

  So it was time she got her ass in gear.

  With an inward sigh, she moved back to the radio and got to work.

  It took about fifteen minutes to get the radio reconfigured and their signal broadcasting. She let it run while she and Ryker nailed down their plan.

  Based on their previous location and their flight through the warehouse, they had a good idea of the building’s orientation with relation to the waterfront.

  They’d signal a rendezvous for KTS on the south side of the building, closer to the tourist traps, with the hope they could blend in easier.

  On the east side they would plant one of Ryker’s improvised explosives — he’d spent some quality time with the C4 while she’d worked on the radio — and, in that location, the detonation would be directed away from the warehouse and out toward the bay.

  It wasn’t a hundred-percent risk-free, but it was the best they would get.

  “Good,” Ryker said after they’d quickly hashed it out. “Dusk is approaching.“ He gave a nod toward the decreasing light coming in through the dirt-covered window at the top of the room. “Let’s move.”

  Dusk Saturday

  Warehouse, East side

  RYKER’S INSTINCTS WERE JUMPING. He’d slipped out between two guards as they’d patrolled the exter
ior and placed the explosives between two dumpsters, hoping that the thick metal would direct the blast forward and up — away from any potential innocents.

  Distraction was what they were after. Not injuries.

  Well, he wouldn’t sneeze at an opportunity to shoot Daniel, but he recognized the need to capture and question the former KTS agent.

  Still, that wasn’t what had his gut churning. There was something off. He and Laila were professionals, experts at blending into the shadows.

  But so was Daniel.

  It was too easy, getting past the guards to proceed with their plan. Which either meant that the drug and trafficking ring was incompetent or understaffed — unlikely in an operation of this scope and size in Ryker’s opinion — or there was more going on here than he could anticipate.

  He checked the wires one more time before grabbing the detonator. It was a crude device, requiring him to be in the vicinity of the makeshift bomb in order for it to go off.

  Hopefully not too close, though, he thought, and checked the remote one more time. Ryker really didn’t want to lose a finger… or worse.

  “We could just make a break for it,” Laila murmured as they pressed close to the building, and she swept her gaze through the open door. “Not wait for KTS and get the hell out.”

  The hallway was clear, and they stepped inside. It was darker and took his eyes a few moments to adjust.

  “Might be safer,” he agreed as he pulled the door closed.

  “But if there are any girls…” Laila trailed off and started in the direction of their rendezvous with KTS. “…we have to get them out.”

  A click made them freeze.

  “I don’t think so.” Daniel’s voice was hot with anger. “Those girls are already sold. The checks cashed.” He took a step toward them, materializing out of a particularly shadowed part of the corridor their eyes must have missed as they’d adjusted to the change in light. “This is my biggest deal to date, and I won’t let you ruin it.”