by J. D. Tyler
He took slow, deep breaths. He’d gotten better about beating down flashbacks, thanks to time and therapy. But he hadn’t been prepared for the sound of automatic weapons firing in a hotel.
Shit. He had to get to Fee, make sure she was safe, but if something bad was going on, he couldn’t help her by walking into it. He’d go through the service corridor and scope out the scene. Having worked that sting here was coming in handy.
He spotted the door to the service corridor tucked between the elevator and the Renaissance ballroom. The back way into that ballroom should be just around the corner.
Walking quietly, checking behind him every few seconds, he crept around the corner.
Two bodies in hotel waiter uniforms, a man and a woman, lay halfway between the corridor and the ballroom’s service door. Blood pooled under them. Greg hurried to check them. Dead.
From double-taps to their chests.
What the fucking hell was going on here?
Muffled thuds and grunts came from behind him. Sounded like a fight going on.
He wheeled to check. A man in black combat gear and a tall woman with a brown ponytail—Jane!—fought as they staggered into view farther down the long hallway. Shit. He ran to her aid.
But he couldn’t just assume she was on the side of the angels. Couldn’t let wanting her to be cloud his judgment.
She took glancing blow to her temple.
To his surprise, she went with it, wheeling into a sidekick to the guy’s gut like someone superbly trained. The guy stumbled backward.
No markings on his gear, front or back. Not official, then. That made the gunfire in a ballroom doubly ominous.
Beyond the battling pair, a combat knife lay on the linoleum. The two were tussling over an AK-47. Law enforcement didn’t carry AKs. Whose was it?
Jane’s hook punch drove toward the guy’s jaw. He ducked under it and grabbed her arm. Drew his free hand back to punch. She threw up a forearm block that had to hurt, then kneed him in the groin.
He made a strangled sound, stumbling backward. Jane jerked the AK away from him. The guy caught her with a diving tackle, and she went down hard.
Shit.
Best guess, the guy was with the shooters, so that made him Greg’s target. Close enough now to make himself heard without shouting and alerting any of this guy’s buddies, he stopped and leveled his Glock.
The guy’s head jerked toward him. His eyes widened.
“FBI. Freeze,” Greg snapped.
Taking advantage of her opponent’s distraction, Jane slammed her open palms over his ear canals, driving in air like a piston. The man yelped and grabbed for his ears. She shoved him off of her and scrambled to her feet.
Greg kept his Glock trained on the guy’s chest. Jane snatched up the AK and pointed it at the prisoner’s face.
“Yell and you’re dead.” Her icy words held no uncertainty, and its lack was beyond odd for the average waitress in this situation. To Greg, she added, “He has accomplices in the ballroom.”
Accomplices? Was she a cop?
Greg risked a glance and caught the hard expression on a face that’d been beautiful in less hostile mode. Her lower lip was bleeding at the left corner, but she didn’t seem aware of it.
The prisoner froze. Must’ve decided not to risk it.
“Who are you?” Greg demanded. “What are you doing here?”
“You’d better let me go, or the people in the ballrooms are dead.”
“He seemed to be checking this corridor,” Jane volunteered. She settled the weapon’s sling over her shoulder without letting her aim drift from the guy. “But nobody came out when we were fighting.”
As though just noticing her bleeding lip, she frowned and wiped the blood away with her jacket sleeve.
“He’s supposed to be a waiter.” Glaring, she added, “No wonder he wasn’t very good at it.”
“You’re both dead unless you let me go,” the man stated. But his voice shook.
“I bet we’re dead if we do,” Jane snapped.
The guy’s fury became resignation and then guile.
“Look,” Greg said, “whatever ace you think you’re holding, this is over for you.”
The man only smiled in response. He shifted his jaw from side to side and bit down hard.
“Burn in hell,” he said, the last word choked as his eyes rolled back in his head. His body shuddered.
“Oh, fuck.” Jane dropped to one knee, her face close to his. A moment later, rising again, she threw Greg a frustrated look. “Bitter almonds. That means—”
“Cyanide. I know.” But how the hell had a waitress come by that information?
The guy’s face was already turning beet red. This was not going to be pretty, but there was no way to save him.
Jane pivoted. Now the AK pointed directly at Greg’s face.
“Thanks, and all that,” she said, “but before we go any further, who are you? Are you really FBI?”
“Yes.” And thank God he’d tucked his creds into his pocket tonight, again because he felt naked without them. He reached for them.
“Nope,” she snapped.
He raised an eyebrow. “I was going for my ID, but if you’d like to just take my word for it…” He shrugged.
“Two fingers,” she said, watching his hand.
He fished out the wallet and opened it. Holding the ID by his face, he said, “Special Agent Greg Reed. Satisfied?”
She peered at his ID before she smiled. Lowering the AK, she added, “Okay. Have to admit I’m glad to see the cavalry. We’d better get this guy tucked away somewhere fast, dead or not, or his friends may suspect there are people here they don’t control.”
She turned to look at the dying man, and her waist-length, black jacket hitched up to reveal a handgun tucked into her trousers.
Greg brought his Glock to bear on her. “Not so fast. Hands up, Jane. Who are you?”
She spun, hands rising to her shoulders, clear of the AK on its sling, and her eyes narrowed. “An ally, or didn’t you notice?”
How the hell could a scowl be sexy?
An irrational surge of lust heated his blood, but he beat it back. Really not the time.
“I noticed,” he said, keeping the apparently dead man in his field of vision. “I just don’t trust your next moves. For all I know, you were in this with him.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Prove it.”
* * * * *
Kelsey glared at the annoying—if gorgeous—Fed. Best not to piss him off, so she kept her hands raised.
Indicating her clothes with the fingers of one hand, she said, “I’m wait staff, remember? I was going to get a fresh tray of drinks when I heard shots in the ballroom and the corridors.”
“You claimed this guy was wait staff.”
“He was supposed to be. And we need to get him out of sight before someone else comes along.”
Agent Reed said nothing, just regarded her sternly. That mouth of his would be hot if it weren’t set in a grim line.
Kelsey blew out an exasperated breath. This was what aliases were for, after all. “I’m Jane Wilson. I don’t have ID on me, other than my hotel one, because we don’t carry it when we’re working.”
“Most waiters don’t carry guns, either. Or fight like they do it regularly. Or recognize the smell of cyanide.”
Crap. “There are these things called gyms. I bet they have them in FBI Land. Besides which, I used to be a cop, but I got tired of being shot at. Ironic, huh?”
Actually she’d been a US Marine, but she wasn’t going to scatter accurate bread crumbs in front of someone who didn’t need to know the exact truth.
Her wry smile had no effect on him. “So you carry a gun while you carry trays?”
Kelsey sighed to cover thinking fast. “Yeah, because I’m now a PI. I was hoping to catch one of those guys in there with his mistress. And yes, I carry a gun because the people I’m tailing often do, and a preemptive show of force cuts off
the whole being shot at thing.”
“Seems an odd choice of jobs,” he said, but he shifted the gun barrel away from her. “You got a license?”
“In my car.” Which would be inaccessible with the hotel under siege. If she had a car. “I drove in because I’m supposed to work until about four in the morning.”
Gesturing to the body behind her, she said, “We should get him tucked away first and debate later. There’s a storage closet around the next corner if that hallway’s clear.”
He said nothing, just frowned and continued to study her.
Kelsey shrugged. “Trust me or don’t, but you have to decide. I can only tell you I’m one of the good guys.”
At last, he nodded. “Okay. For now. But if you make a wrong move, you’ll regret it.”
That tepid trust would have to do. “Let me grab a linen cart so we can move him.”
Dark blue napkins and white cloths from the earlier dinner already lay in the bottom of the cart.
“Can you get his radio while I cover the hall?” Reed asked.
“Sure.” Being told about the smell of death didn’t make it any easier to tolerate now that she was experiencing it. Kelsey’s throat went tight, and she tasted bile, but she did her job, removing Jason’s belt radio and threading the ear bud out from under his vest.
“I’ll take that.” The Fed made a gimme motion with his fingers.
She passed the radio over, and he clipped it to his belt.
He frowned at the ear bud for a second before grimacing and sticking it in his ear.
With a grin, she said, “That’s gross, so better you than me.”
Reed’s wry smile sent a flash of purely feminine heat through her as he commented, “Sooner or later, we all have to take one for the team.”
“I hope that’s the worst either of us takes tonight.” Her hormones would just have to stifle themselves, at least for now.
“Amen to that. The long gun, too.”
She handed it to him. Having him deal with it was fine, except that it signaled his continuing wariness when they needed to work as a unit.
Together they heaved the body into the cart. Reed grunted as though the movement hurt.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Sure.” He drew a cellphone from an inner jacket pocket, turned it on, and frowned at it. “No bars. Is there a phone around here anywhere?”
“Not with an outside line. House phones only. Lots of those, but they’re not much help.” Kelsey pulled her own phone from her jacket pocket. “This is supposed to be in my locker, but I don’t like being out of touch.”
Unfortunately, she also had no bars.
“You push,” he said. “I’ll watch our six.”
And watch her, no doubt.
She held her Glock while pushing the unconscious man down the hallway. Reed followed her.
“We take a left up ahead if it’s clear,” she told him softly.
“First priority,” he noted, “is to find out what the hell is going on and, if need be, get backup.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re going to need it. There was a lot of gunfire at first, and I heard some of them talking about casualties in the kitchen.”
The kitchen. Where her locker, with her backpack, her gear, and the recorder linked to Dorton Keyes’s bug rested.
“Hell,” he muttered.
“Yeah. I’m just glad the shooters went some other direction, or I would’ve been toast before you showed up. And thanks again for the assist, by the way.”
His voice soft, he replied, “You’re welcome. I’ll check the turn.”
As the cart’s front edge neared the intersection, Kelsey stopped, her back to the wall so she could watch both ends of the corridor. Much as she had earlier, her new partner moved silently along the righthand wall to the junction, eying the cross-corridor coming up on their left.
He moved confidently but in absolute silence. The strong lines of his body had a grace in motion that could only come from training. The total effect was unbelievably hot. Kelsey’s mouth went dry.
He signaled her to stay put and slipped around the corner.
Heart thudding, she waited. The seconds seemed to drag by until he returned.
“Two dead farther down that corridor,” he said. “A man and a woman dressed like you.”
Kelsey’s heart clutched on a stab of pain before surging anger pushed it back. Pressing her lips into a line, she nodded.
He beckoned her to come ahead and stood at the intersection, scanning the corridors, while she made the turn.
The closet lay just ahead. But so did the bodies. Grief and fury tore through her again at the sight of their crumpled forms. Gray-haired, kindly Stan and funny, blonde Trina, a grandfather and a bride-to-be.
Oh, yeah, payback’s gonna be a bitch, Kelsey swore silently. But it didn’t ease the pain over those lives cut short.
Or eliminate the need to focus. “You should change clothes with this guy,” she said. “If we meet his friends, looking like one of them might buy us a couple of crucial seconds.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Great minds.” She flashed him a grin he didn’t return. Stifling irritation, she added, “That’s the storage closet, that unmarked door up ahead.”
“It’s got a number keypad,” he commented.
“I know the combination.”
He narrowed his eyes but said nothing.
Opening the door took only a couple of seconds.
They pushed the cart inside, closed the door, and stripped off their passenger’s webgear vest—with plates to make it bulletproof—and his weapons belt.
Agent Reed shed his jacket and holster and peeled off his shirt, folding the discarded garments on a shelf.
“There’s chatter on the radio about having killed a lot of people,” he told her. “I’m hoping it’s a lie designed to bolster their confidence.”
“Let’s hope,” she muttered, eyeing him surreptitiously.
He’d worn a white T-shirt under his dress shirt. The soft cotton clung to the sharply defined muscles in his chest and upper arms but hung loose from what she would guess were washboard abs.
Heat bubbled in her belly. And never mind that he was still very much not trusting her. No harm in looking, after all.
Reed scowled at the sweaty shirt but thrust an arm into it.
“One for the team,” Kelsey reminded him.
He rolled his eyes but buttoned the shirt and shrugged into the vest. His right arm didn’t seem to move as smoothly or as far as the left.
“Something wrong with your shoulder?”
“No.” He stowed his phone, key card, creds, and wallet in various pockets on the vest.
Jason had worn his boots over his waiter pants. Reed eyed them. “They’re too small. I’m betting his pants are, too.”
Her gaze flashed to his crotch, where nothing showed in the elegantly constructed dress trousers. Idiot. She looked hastily to the side.
“We’ll just have to make do, then,” Kelsey said quickly.
She eyed his new outfit. “At first glance, you’ll blend. It’s if they look closer that we’ll have a problem.”
Reed tucked Jason’s sidearm into the back of his pants and holstered his Glock. He looked seriously hot doing it, and Kelsey mentally kicked herself. So not the time.
Experienced agents probably had better hormonal control.
Besides, hot or not, he was FBI. He colored inside the lines, so to speak, whereas she and her Arachnid colleagues happily obliterated those boundaries.
“First priority is finding a phone,” he said.
“We can’t make a decent report until we know what’s going on.”
“Yeah, but we can’t waste any time getting assets headed this way. Phone first.” Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “Or do you want me to pull rank?”
“Why do people never realize asking the question is the same as doing it?” Kelsey frowned, but he seemed adamant.
> “There’s a phone in the kitchen office,” she told him. “There are cameras near it because the supply closet is across from the office. If we can get to the women’s locker room, off the kitchen, I have things that’ll help us check out the ballrooms.”
He cast a worried look back at the ballroom. Why…? Oh. His date was in there. And that little twinge of jealousy could just stifle itself. The guy didn’t even trust her, after all.
Still, she should say something comforting.
Before she could think of anything, he said, “Okay. Lead on.”
CHAPTER THREE
In the Renaissance ballroom, Fee’s ears rang with the sound of gunfire, and her heart thudded madly. “Stay down,” a male voice roared. “We are the Red Mantle. Cooperate, and you will not be harmed. Sit down, shut up, and pass your cell phones forward.”
When she looked toward the sound, the middle-aged man who’d been working at the buffet station stood in front of it, brandishing some kind of big automatic weapon. If he’d had this in mind, it was no wonder he’d acted so weird.
Other waiters were pulling guns from under the long tablecloths of the buffet. And…donning tactical vests?
What the hell?
The buffet guy’s head swung her way. Fee hastily averted her eyes. Whatever was going on, attracting attention had to be a bad idea.
She could still see him, though, out of the corner of her eye. Greg would expect her to observe, to be able to testify.
Greg! He hadn’t come back from the bathroom.
Please don’t be dead. Please be out there somewhere getting ready to kick ass. Please stay safe.
She repeated it like a mantra. He was smart and strong and trained, even if he hadn’t returned to duty yet. He would do something.
Somehow.
The man who’d fired off the burst clicked a microphone on his vest. “Brother Liston. Status. Over.”
“The First Couple have escaped, Brother Kerlan. Three dead on their side, five on ours. We await your instructions. Over.”
The First Couple? But they weren’t due at this ball.
“Make the call we discussed, Brother Liston. You remember what to say, right? Over.”
“Yes, brother. They’ll produce the mouthy bitch unless they want a lot of bodies to bury.”