by Rachel Grant
His hearing had improved slightly, and he hoped hers had too. “I love you!” he shouted. The noxious smoke was filling the bathroom. “Go!”
“No, Curt!” She gripped the edge and boosted herself back into the window. “I won’t leave you.”
A coughing spasm overtook him. Unable to speak, he shoved her back through the window. She fought him. He lifted her fingers from the sill and let go.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. He stepped to the top of the tank and poked his head out the window. He took a deep breath of the cool night air. He rubbed his eyes to try to clear his vision of the black, burning smoke and saw Mara was gone.
SHE HAD TO GET Curt out of the house. She groped around the shattered structure, wiping her eyes, which burned and ached. Her hearing was returning in slow degrees. She rounded to the front yard and caught her breath.
The front of the house was gone. The vestibule and two front rooms—the kitchen above the garage and the adjacent living room had collapsed inward. The remaining structure was shaped like the inward curve of a cresting wave, and from the looks of it, the wave was about to break.
She thought she could hear sirens in the distance, but it could just be the ringing in her ears. Regardless, Curt needed help now.
Headlights appeared up the road. Mara ran into the street and waved frantically for the driver to stop.
Brakes squealed, and the sedan halted inches from her.
“A man is dying in there. I need your car. Now!”
The teenage boy looked confused. “Is this a carjacking? What happened to that house?”
Flames shot out of the crumbling house behind her. There was no way Curt could escape through the front. “Get out of the fucking driver’s seat and give me your car!”
Shockingly, he did.
Mara slid behind the wheel and threw the car in gear. She hit the curb and tore up the neighbor’s lawn, racing toward the side and rear of the burning house. She aimed for the barred master bedroom window.
She didn’t feel the impact. She didn’t feel a damn thing as the sedan slammed into the wall.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CURT USED THE lid of the toilet tank to smash the window, trying to make the opening wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. Black smoke filled the bathroom, and he gasped for air through the window. The walls around him shook ominously.
The house was going to collapse. Soon.
A crash sounded in the next room, loud enough to penetrate his muted hearing. The house rumbled as the walls quaked. Soon had become now. But while the house rocked on its foundation and bits of ceiling rained down, the roof remained above him. If that hadn’t been the sound of the bedroom collapsing, what was it?
With a sharp shove, he opened the bathroom door and got a lungful of black smoke, but two lights cut a swath through the darkness. Headlights?
He crawled through the smoke and paused beside the secretary, still lying belly down on the floor. He checked for a pulse and found none. He skirted around the man, saying a silent prayer for the FBI agent, hoping the man had fared better in the concrete basement than they had inside the house.
He followed the light beams to the wall. Sure enough, a vehicle protruded into the room. He traced the outline of the car, seeking a break in the wall he could slide through, but the opening was no wider than the vehicle that had made it.
His lungs ached for air as he searched for the door handle. At last he gripped it, and muscles burned as he wrenched the battered door open. Inside, his groping hands found warm skin and a woman he recognized by touch. “Mara!”
Nothing. “Mara! Answer me!”
Still no answer. He could see nothing and knew he had to get out of the smoke now, or suffocate. As would she.
The only way out was through the vehicle.
He slipped inside, careful as he climbed over Mara’s unconscious form, terrified she’d been badly injured by the impact. He felt cloth draped on her lap and hoped to hell that was the deployed airbag. He searched for a seat belt crossing her chest and found none. She’d driven into a wall—to save him—without thought for her own safety.
He climbed to the back of the vehicle and, bracing his shoulder against the front passenger seat, he kicked out the rear window. Debris rained into the gap, but there was an opening, with blessed fresh air.
He gripped Mara’s shoulders and tugged her over the seat, across the back, and through the broken window. He emerged into a starry, smoky night, and gathered Mara in his arms.
Following the ruts in the grass, he sucked in deep, rasping breaths of air and headed toward the street, to a group of onlookers. A man broke free from the group and tried to take Mara from him, but Curt gripped her tighter and refused.
He could barely walk, but he’d never let her go.
A safe distance from the house, he dropped to his knees and gently laid her down on the grass. Behind him, the house rumbled. Curt turned in time to see the remaining section collapse.
Sirens wailed as an ambulance and fire truck screeched to a halt in front of him. The firefighters leapt from the vehicle, and Curt called out to one of them, “There’s probably a man trapped in the basement garage. Another is in the master bedroom—but he’s dead.”
The man nodded and began shouting orders to the other firefighters.
Another man crouched in the grass in front of Curt. “You need a medic.”
“I’m fine, but she needs help.” He wiped grit from his burning eyes, and saw the man wore a medic uniform. “She drove a car through the wall to get me out and wasn’t wearing a seat belt.”
The man checked her pulse and shined a flashlight in her eyes. “She’s so small, the airbag probably knocked her out.”
“She’s inhaled a lot of smoke,” Curt added, choking out the last words.
“As did you,” said another man from behind him. He slapped a plastic cup over Curt’s mouth and nose, and cool oxygen eased the pain in his constricted chest.
“Let’s get you in the ambulance,” the second medic said.
“I won’t leave her.” He couldn’t trust anyone with her life. That lesson had been shoved down his throat often enough.
“We can transport two.”
In moments, Mara was on the gurney, and Curt followed her into the back of the ambulance. The door slammed shut, and they wound their way between fire trucks en route to the hospital.
Curt crouched beside the gurney where Mara lay, and held her hand. Glancing toward the front, he could see through the gap between the driver’s and passenger’s seats and out the windshield. Rain had begun to fall, and the lights of the city blurred under the wiper blades.
The medic perched on the opposite side of Mara called out her stats to the driver, who used the radio to relay the information to the waiting hospital.
To Curt, the man said, “Her numbers are solid. It was probably just the airbag. She’ll have a nasty headache when she wakes up, but she’ll be fine.”
His gut clenched, he wanted desperately to believe she was okay. Mara was right; hope was a four-letter word.
“Relax, dude. She’s gonna be fine.”
Curt gazed through the front window again. The city blurred as they shot through town with sirens blaring, but something wasn’t right. Weren’t the hospitals in the other direction?
Mara’s eyes fluttered open. She coughed and wiped her eyes. After a glance at the medic, she found Curt’s gaze and smiled, then did a double take and sat bolt upright. “George? What the hell are you doing here?”
“My boss wants to talk to you.”
Without hesitation, Mara backhanded the man across the jaw. To Curt, she said, “He’s a Raptor medic who works with JPAC.”
Curt launched himself at the man, but the ambulance swerved, throwing him off balance. He hit George with only a glancing blow. The man recovered quickly as the ambulance rocked sideways again, sending Curt into the opposite wall.
George plucked Mara from the gurney. His thick fingers
closed around her throat. “Back off, Dominick. Whether she lives or not is up to you.”
CURT’S GAZE MET Mara’s and silently conveyed a thousand different promises, starting with revenge, ending with love, but most of all asking for trust.
He had a plan. Her job was to play along and not screw it up.
“Dominick, I’ll let her breathe if you put your hands in the air and sit on the gurney.”
Curt did as instructed, and the hands at her throat loosened.
They rolled through the rainy streets of DC, finally coming to a bridge, crossing the Potomac and entering Virginia. George stood with his back to the side panel, Mara stood in front of him, his hands slack on her throat.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked.
“Shut up,” George answered and tightened his grip.
“You hurt her, and you’re a dead man,” Curt’s voice was cold and his body rigid. He was a cobra looking for an excuse to strike, eyes clear with deadly intent.
George got the message, and his fingers loosened. She tried to push away from him, but he maintained a grip, even as he was careful not to hurt her.
“No talking,” George said in a feeble attempt to assert his dominance. Mara had no doubt Curt could safely extract her from George, but they still had the driver to worry about, which had to be why Curt didn’t make a move.
At this point, she was certain where they were headed: Raptor’s Northern Virginia compound, the Raptor facility where they built their fancy toys. The lab, where the smallpox bomb was probably located.
Ironic that Curt had been trying to get a warrant for the place for weeks. If only the FBI knew they were being taken there now.
Did the FBI even know they were missing yet? How long had she been unconscious?
Her head throbbed, and she was so tired she wanted to collapse, but she refused to lean against George. Her knees began to shake. “Please. I need to sit.”
George dropped into the seat beside the gurney and pulled Mara onto his lap. Revulsion swirled in her belly, and she leaned forward, attempting to sit on the very edge of his knees. His arm locked around her belly, and he pulled her firmly onto his lap, her back to his chest. The arm around her waist slid upward, and he groped her breast.
The stupid man chuckled at the rage in Curt’s gaze.
Mara knew Curt was about to strike and jabbed her elbow into George’s sternum, using the momentum to dive forward, out of Curt’s way.
She scrambled to the back of the ambulance, then turned to see Curt lift George by the shirt and slam his head into the panel. He released him and struck George in the face with several flat-handed blows.
George’s blocks were ineffective and his punches never made it past Curt’s lightning-quick reflexes. The ambulance lurched to a stop. Mara’s belly dropped when the driver slipped an arm through the wide gap between the front seats and aimed a gun at Curt’s head. “Stop!”
Maybe Curt didn’t hear him, Mara wasn’t sure, but he kept pounding on George. She threw herself forward onto the gurney, determined to prevent Curt from being shot.
The gun swung in her direction. Curt dropped George.
“Glad I finally got your attention, Mr. Dominick,” the driver said.
Mara met the driver’s gaze. The man smiled. Cold dread spread down her spine. Robert Beck stood in the pass-through to the cab, and his gun was aimed at her forehead.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“GEORGE, GET IN the fucking driver’s seat,” Robert Beck said.
Curt’s heart went into overdrive at seeing the gun on Mara. His mind raced, trying to come up with a reason for the man to keep her alive, but came up blank.
George grunted, shoved Curt back, then swung at his jaw. Curt used the momentum of the blow to pitch backward, landing him squarely between Beck’s gun and Mara.
He straightened on the gurney, tucking Mara behind him.
Beck dropped into the paramedic’s vacated chair while George settled in the driver’s seat. Through the front windshield, Curt saw a road sign and realized they were less than five miles from the compound. Shit. Why Beck hadn’t just killed them as soon as they were inside the ambulance, he didn’t know, but he had no doubt once they were inside the gates, they’d only have minutes left to live.
His cell phone remained in his pocket; he could feel it against his hip. He had no idea if it had been damaged in the blast or even remained connected to Lee. If it was still on, he knew Lee would be locked on to the signal and phoning the GPS coordinates to the FBI. With luck, that stop by the side of the road was enough for agents to catch up.
“I’m shocked to see you risking yourself this way, Beck. This is the sort of dirty job you leave to your operatives.”
“After what you did to Evan, I want to personally watch you both die.”
“Evan had smallpox,” Mara said from behind him. “Did you know that?”
Beck flushed red. “You lie.”
“He did. They ran a cytokine assay on his blood after he died, and found evidence he’d been sick.”
She was blowing smoke. No such tests had been done on Evan’s blood, but he had to admit, her words rattled Beck.
“I had smallpox, and they did the same test on me. We can prove Evan and I were sick with the same strain. You can’t start a smallpox epidemic. No one will believe it was al Qaeda or the North Koreans, or whoever you planned to blame it on. They’ll know it was Raptor.”
“Nice try, but I know the CDC hasn’t done any tests for smallpox.”
“I didn’t go to the CDC. I went to an epidemiologist at a university. He knows everything, and when I disappear, he’s going public.”
Beck laughed. “Ms. Garrett, you’ve disappeared so many times already, everyone will believe you’ve merely gone into hiding again. This time with your lover, who has thrown away his career for you.”
“No one will believe that about Curt.”
“Are you kidding? He’s been acting paranoid since meeting you. I’ve been hearing for weeks how you’ve damaged him. And then there’s what you did to poor Evan. They’ll believe it.”
Sirens sounded behind them. Curt said a silent prayer that Lee had sent the cavalry, but regardless, it was now or never. He had to take down Beck before they entered the compound. The moment Beck’s gaze flicked to the rear window, Curt struck. He smashed Beck’s gun wrist to the side, then pinned him against the bulkhead by the throat. With his free hand, he repeatedly slammed Beck’s wrist into the corner edge of the pass-through until his wrist snapped and the gun dropped.
Beck was a businessman, not a mercenary, and the blows he tried to land with his good hand were ineffective.
The ambulance veered suddenly, then rocked from side to side. George couldn’t stop because of the pursing police cars, so he used the motion of the speeding vehicle to prevent Curt from seizing control. Curt was tossed to the left, forcing him to let go of Beck.
To catch his balance, he grabbed at the bulkhead behind the driver’s seat. Catching a handhold, he pulled himself into the opening between the cab and rear of the ambulance.
George hit the accelerator, knocking him off-balance. Grappling for purchase, his free hand slipped along the driver’s seat base and caught on the seat-belt latch at George’s right hip.
George twisted the steering wheel, again rocking the bulky vehicle side to side. Curt released the handhold and took a swing at his head, but missed as he was bounced like a ping-pong ball in the opening between the front seats.
His grip on the latch slipped, but he caught the attached belt, jerking it tight as he lurched backward. George grunted, and Curt angled forward to see the shoulder belt pressed against the man’s neck.
He gripped the belt tighter and looked over his shoulder to check on Mara. She was right behind him, holding the rail of the locked-down gurney with one hand and Beck’s gun in the other, trained on the CEO.
Curt turned back to George, who hadn’t slowed the vehicle. With the ambulance tilting, sway
ing, and speeding down the interstate, Curt leveraged himself behind the driver’s seat and braced his foot on the bulkhead.
He yanked on the belt, and George shuddered, but didn’t—couldn’t—make a sound.
George slammed on the brake pedal in what must have been an attempt to dislodge Curt. Mara slammed into his back with a grunt.
Thanks to his firm foot against the partition, neither Curt nor Mara flew between the seats and through the windshield. The ambulance came to a stop as George grappled with the seat belt, silently fighting for air.
Curt twisted the belt in his hands, tightening the pressure until the man passed out.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
TWO HOURS LATER, an FBI agent insisted Mara don a biohazard suit to enter the lab. A ridiculous precaution, since she’d already had smallpox. But she did as instructed, and minutes later she confirmed they had located the bomb she’d found in North Korea.
Task complete, she exited the lab and doffed the bulky suit. From there an agent led her to a waiting vehicle, and her heart swelled when she saw Curt inside. She hadn’t seen him since the first minutes after the FBI had taken Robert Beck into custody at the roadside. They’d had to be questioned alone about what had happened in the safe house and in the ambulance.
She slid into the seat and right into his arms. She snuggled against his side in contented silence.
Finally, Curt said, “They found the agent in the garage. He was inside the SUV when the bomb went off. Thanks to the concrete walls and sturdy vehicle, he was trapped but unharmed.”
She smiled. “I heard. I’m relieved.”
“Jeannie’s going to be okay.”
Jeannie had been found inside the compound when the search warrants were served. She claimed she’d been a prisoner, but it would be her word against Beck’s. Mara believed her and feared the woman had been put through hell.
“She’s not ready to see you,” he added.
“I know. We’ll talk eventually.” She sighed and snuggled closer. “I think every part of me aches. I feel like I smacked into a wall.”