by Elle Kennedy
Inside was another story. Luke heard Sullivan’s distinct Aussie accent yelling for someone to take cover, and then the clamor of bullets clapping out of an assault rifle cracked through the radio. There was thumping, more shouting, another round of gunfire, until second by second the noise died, leaving nothing but the sound of his team’s steady breathing in his ear.
A blur of movement flashed in his peripheral vision. He swiveled his head in time to see a panicked male flying out the front doors in a mad sprint. Brave fellow was attempting to make a run for it, only to get tackled from behind by Ethan, who launched himself onto the runaway’s back, got him on the pavement, and brought a knife to his throat. A moment later, the escapee was hauled to his feet and ushered back into the warehouse.
Luke waited for a report. It finally came when Trevor grunted and said, “It’s done.”
“Angelo?” Luke demanded.
“No sign of him.”
A muffled thud echoed through the frequency, followed by more commotion.
“Son of a bitch,” he heard Trevor mutter, and then a new voice joined the mix.
“Thank God you’re here!”
He didn’t recognize the voice, but the others must have because the radio went eerily quiet. An instant later, Trevor’s low voice said, “Luke, get in here.”
Oh yeah, he definitely didn’t like the sound of that.
With a burst of energy, he abandoned Inga and dashed toward the cable he’d used to scale the roof. He slid down with lightning speed, unholstering his Glock as he raced toward the warehouse. When he stumbled through the front doors, he halted, taking a moment to orient himself. The place was huge, littered with pallets containing crates of coffee with the Premiere Roast logo stamped on them. Forklifts and ladders filled up the space, and as he navigated the tall aisles toward the source of the action, he nearly tripped over the crumpled body of one of the Italian goons. Head shot. He passed three more bodies on his way, two crew members and another goon.
The team was in position by the loading dock, weapons drawn, faces hard as stone. Against one wall, five men were down on their knees, hands tied behind their backs with plastic cuffs. He instantly recognized the driver and the Colombian from the truck. The remaining trio consisted of the third goon and two of the crew who’d been unloading the truck.
No Angelo.
Luke stifled an irritated groan. After all this bullshit, Angelo hadn’t even made an appearance. But why? What possible fucking reason could that bastard have for skipping out on his own business venture?
And why did Luke get the distressing feeling that it had something to do with Olivia?
Tamping down his growing worry, he ignored the five hostages and walked over to Trevor and Kane. Their backs were turned, weapons pointed at a man whose face Luke couldn’t make out. The man in the Yankees cap. As he approached, Kane stepped aside to give Luke a better view.
Narrowing his eyes, Luke studied the man. “Take off the hat,” he ordered.
“I’ve been trying to tell them, I’m not—”
“Take off the hat.”
The cap came off and he found himself staring into a pair of metallic gray eyes belonging to a lanky man in his early forties. He moved his gaze over the man’s face, the square jaw, faint wrinkles around a thin mouth, familiar angular features. Longish black hair fell onto the man’s narrow forehead, and the black wool suit draped over his lean body looked mighty expensive.
Luke glanced at Trevor. “Did I miss the part where you checked his ass?”
The team leader shook his head, amused. “No need to. He just waltzed up and introduced himself.”
“Huh. Well,” Luke said, lowering his gun, “then it’s a pleasure to meet you, Special Agent Dane.”
Chapter 24
“Dane here claims that he’s an innocent bystander,” Trevor said dryly.
Luke studied the DEA agent, taking in the man’s tired features and tight mouth. Dane was looking around the group with a resentful expression on his face, as if he couldn’t fathom why there’d be so many guns pointed at him. Every now and then his gaze darted toward the five men lined up against the wall, but none of them met his eyes—they were on their knees, heads bent as Castle and his men loomed over them.
The rest of the team stood guard by the open door of the loading dock, where the truck had been partially unloaded. A few crates bearing the Premiere Roast emblem were scattered on the cement floor; one had been pried open and a plastic-wrapped brick of matte white powder was visible, sitting on a bed of coffee beans. Sullivan kept an eye on it, though it was unlikely the hostages would spring free and make a grab for the H.
Luke turned back to Dane, assessing, wondering what to make of the agent’s presence amid this incredibly illegal affair.
“He dove for cover when we came in,” Kane spoke up, looking disgusted.
“Because I didn’t want to get killed,” Dane snapped. “My neck’s been on the line from the second I agreed to take this freaking assignment. I begged Lewis to pull me out, but he wouldn’t sign off on it.”
“Is that why you faked your death?” Luke asked.
“It was the only way, damn it.”
“I see.”
“Look, I was in too deep, okay? And these guys are smart. I had enough evidence to nail them on the drug smuggling, but my handler said it wasn’t enough. He wanted more.” Dane made a bitter sound in the back of his throat. “Lewis wanted the entire organization out of commission—drugs, guns, gambling, the whole fucking shebang. He set up a joint task force with the bureau, fucking glory hunter Lewis.”
Luke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Truth was, he didn’t give a shit why Dane was here. He was more concerned with why Angelo wasn’t here. Worry gnawed at his gut as the thought settled in.
“Angelo and De Luca were on to me,” Dane went on, panic lacing his tone. “I pleaded for an extraction, but Lewis refused.” His eyes became wild. “And then it was too fucking late. They found out who I was! Someone sold me out and told them I was a Fed. But I managed to convince them that I’d turned.”
“How’d you do that?” Trevor asked dubiously.
“By proving my loyalty,” Dane said, his mouth set in a fatigued line. “I did shit I’m not proud of, all right? But it was the only way to stay alive. I convinced Angelo that my bosses had sold me out, abandoned me, and that I wanted to be a permanent fixture in the organization. I persuaded him to help me fake my death, told him that if they thought I was dead, the DEA would forget about me and abort the operation. They wouldn’t risk sending in another agent if they thought the outfit had rubbed me out.”
Luke sighed. “Yet here you are, greeting a shipment of heroin with welcoming arms.”
“I was biding my time,” Dane said miserably. “Playing along until I could find a way to skip town.”
Kane chuckled. “And making a nice profit in the meantime, huh?”
“It wasn’t about profit! I was trying to save my own ass! Do you know what these assholes would have done if they thought I was looking for a way out?”
“Bullshit!” a heavily accented voice spat out.
All eyes swung toward one of the hostages, the Colombian with the enraged face. The man jutted his chin at Dane and made a disgusted noise. “This partnership was his doing. He’s been dealing with us for years, and he’s the one who brokered the deal and brought De Luca in on the action.”
Dane’s cheeks reddened. “I did deal with the cartel—I spent two fucking years in Medellín trying to bring those bastards down. It was before I got assigned to infiltrate De Luca’s crew. But I didn’t broker anything.”
“Frankly, I don’t give a damn what went down,” Trevor said with a shrug. “Your buddies at the agency have already been alerted and they’re on their way. You can straighten this out with them.”
Dane nodded grimly. “Fine.”
Trevor turned to Castle. “Put him with the others until the Feds get here.”
Castle haul
ed the agent by the arm, and although Dane followed the mercenary willingly, an unsettling feeling washed over Luke. His gaze zeroed in on Carter Dane’s gray eyes. As the man stared back, time seemed to stand still, and Luke instantly recognized Dane’s expression—it was one belonging to a man who knew he was defeated.
A man who had nothing to lose.
“Wait—” he started, but in the blink of an eye, Dane’s arm shot toward the gun sticking out of Castle’s waistband.
Luke was just raising his Glock when something hissed by his ear. Next thing he knew, Dane yelped in pain and gaped at his hand.
Everyone followed his gaze and stared at the sleek bone handle of the hunting knife lodged in Dane’s palm.
Stunned silence descended on the warehouse.
“What the . . .” Trevor began, then trailed off.
Shrugging off his surprise, Luke turned around to see Ethan lowering his arm.
The rookie met his eyes and offered a sheepish shrug. “I’ve been practicing with Abby.”
There was a soft chuckle from Trevor, a grin from Kane, and a grunt from Castle, who shot Dane a look reserved for terrorists.
“Try anything else and I’ll put a bullet in your head,” Castle snapped. Then, without an ounce of compassion, he ripped the knife out of Dane’s hand, eliciting a pain-laced yelp from the federal agent.
As Castle dragged Dane toward the other prisoners and cuffed the guy, Luke and Kane exchanged resigned looks.
“So . . . guess he was a bad guy after all,” Kane murmured.
“Looks like it,” Luke concurred
As sirens howled in the distance, he holstered his weapon. “DEA’s here. Finally.” His gaze did one last sweep of the warehouse, resting on the crates near the truck. “Heroin accounted for?” he called to Isabel.
“Yeah, and there’s a lot of it,” she called back, rising from the crate she was sitting on. “This might be the biggest seizure the Feds have seen to date.”
He glanced over at Dane, who was fuming on the dusty floor with his hands behind his back. “And to think,” Luke said lightly, “one of their own brokered the deal.” Rolling his eyes, he turned to Trevor. “Can you deal with the Feds? I want to call Olivia and make sure she’s all right.”
“And we need to find Angelo,” Sullivan spoke up from his position by the truck. “I wonder why he didn’t show.”
“Join the club,” Luke muttered.
His eyes met Sully’s across the room, and he knew the Australian was thinking the same thing—whatever the reason for Vince Angelo’s absence, it couldn’t be good. At all.
* * *
Olivia set down her cards on the plastic table one of the nurses had rolled into her mother’s hospital room. Kathleen was sound asleep in the bed. Sedated again, but her coloring looked better, and she’d gone for a long stroll through the oncology wing earlier, with Olivia hovering over her like an overprotective parent. Now they were settled inside the room for the night, and Adam, the soldier who’d been assigned to watch them, had spent the past hour teaching Olivia various card games.
She appreciated the company. The smell of the hospital, disinfectant and death, made her queasy, reminding her of all the days and weeks she’d spent here. Sitting at Kathleen’s bedside, comforting her through the chemo treatments, reading to her while she recovered from the mastectomies, the removal of her lymph nodes, the constant checkups.
This time was different, though. Not just because her mom was here for only one more night, but because this time Olivia wasn’t doing it alone. Luke had been by her side all of last night and most of today, and his presence had been comforting. She was so used to everyone else leaning on her that it had felt nice leaning on someone else for a change. Really, really nice.
“Ready to show me what you’ve got?” Adam’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Oh, right. Two nines,” she said proudly, placing her two cards beneath the five already on the table.
He stared at her in disbelief. “You went all in with two nines?”
She furrowed her brows. “That’s bad?”
“It’s terrible!”
“Then why did you fold and let me win?”
“Because you looked so confident I figured my three fours were garbage.”
“I was confident because I thought two nines were good.” She shook her head in aggravation. “Can we play something else? Do you know gin rummy?”
“Nope.”
She sighed. “Why don’t we just watch TV?”
He paused in thought. “That new chick network plays Grey’s Anatomy reruns on Tuesdays.”
“I won’t even ask how you know that.”
Olivia was then treated to the sight of a grown man with bulging biceps and army fatigues reaching for a remote control so he could watch Grey’s Anatomy. Who knew?
“What, you don’t like this show?” Adam asked when he caught her staring.
“I like it. I’m just surprised that you watch it.”
“I think Meredith is hot,” he replied with a shrug. He glanced up at the television mounted in the corner of the ceiling. “It’s about to start.”
Twenty minutes later, they were engrossed in a particularly gory episode, watching the doctors of Seattle Grace tend to patients and yet still find time to get jiggy in supply closets. During the commercial break, Olivia’s thoughts once again drifted to Luke, and a swarm of questions buzzed through her head. Had the team arrived at the warehouse on schedule? Were they in position, waiting for the truck to arrive? Was Luke okay?
She prayed that they didn’t encounter any nasty surprises, and as she fretfully wrung her hands, she suddenly realized that this was what her mom must have felt like every time Eddie Taylor went overseas.
I can be that man.
Luke’s deep voice kept running through her mind, his declaration that he could be the kind of man she wanted. No, the kind of man she needed. But how was that possible? If she opened her heart to Luke, she’d be in a perpetual state of worry. Wringing her hands as she was now, wondering if he was okay.
She couldn’t live that way. She already worried enough—about her mother, about school, about paying the bills. How could she let Luke into her life, knowing that she would constantly be losing sleep each time he flew off on a mission?
“Do you think they’re okay?” she blurted out.
Adam’s blue eyes twinkled. “You mean, is Dubois okay? Yeah, I think he’s just fine. Those SEALs can take care of themselves, honey.”
“You’re right, he’s fine. My nerves are probably getting the best of me.” She bit her lip. “I’m being silly, aren’t I?”
“Not at all. We always worry about the ones we love.”
Heat spilled over her cheeks. “Love? No, it’s not like that with Luke and me. We’re . . . ah . . .” She trailed off.
Adam grinned. “I stand corrected. You’re so not in love with the guy.”
She was ready to voice another denial when she heard footsteps approach the door.
Adam’s hand instantly lowered to the holster on his hip. A male orderly in green scrubs entered the room, holding a bedpan in his hands.
Adam relaxed.
And then the orderly slid his hand from beneath the bedpan and whipped a gun in their direction.
Olivia didn’t even have time to scream. A high-pitched pop filled the air, and the next thing she knew, a small hole appeared in the center of Adam’s forehead.
She watched in horror as his body toppled off the chair and crumpled to the linoleum floor.
Dead. He was dead.
With a choked sound, she shot to her feet and launched herself onto her mother’s sleeping body, but the tall man bounded forward to intercept her. She opened her mouth to scream but his hand clamped over it, cutting her shriek short. As she struggled to get out of his grip, a second set of footsteps thudded on the floor, and then a familiar voice tickled her ear.
“Hey, babe, fancy meeting you here.”
Chapter
25
Standing outside the warehouse, Luke tried for a third time to reach Adam, and for a third time his call was bumped to Adam’s voice mail. The area around him was crawling with federal agents shouting to one another and barking orders into radios. An entire hoard of Feds was in the process of seizing the crates from the coffee truck and loading the confiscated items into a black van. Across the lot, paramedics brought body bags out on stretchers, rolling them toward the waiting ambulance and coroner’s van.
Luke ignored the commotion and redialed Adam’s number with increasing uneasiness. The former marine’s voice mail greeted him once more. Damn it. Why the fuck wasn’t Adam picking up his fucking phone?
Something was wrong. Luke felt it deep in his bones, in his gut, his heart, his everything. Fingers trembling, he dialed Olivia’s cell number but got her voice mail too. In a last-ditch effort, he called the hospital, but after he’d been connected to Kathleen’s room, the line kept ringing and ringing until he finally hung up in frustration.
“Holden!” he shouted, sweeping his eyes over the crowd. Most of the guys were milling around a pair of SUVs, chatting, smoking, looking bored. The team had no real need to stick around, but the lead DEA agent had insisted that they wait to be debriefed.
Holden extricated himself from a conversation with Sully and Liam and wandered over. “What’s up?”
“Do you have your laptop with you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Is it linked up to the GPS system?”
“Yep. Why?” Holden repeated.
He grabbed the other man’s arm and practically dragged him to the Range Rover. Trevor and Isabel, who’d been standing a few feet from the SUV, quickly walked over. Luke knew his body language was screaming panic attack but no amount of silent reassurances could curb his growing concern.
“I can’t get in touch with Olivia or Adam,” he explained. “I’ve got a bad feeling. A really bad fucking feeling.” He glanced at Holden, who was leaning into the backseat to find his laptop case. “There’s a tracker in Olivia’s cell phone, and one in the necklace she’s wearing. See where she is, man.”