by Janie Crouch
Roman pushed away from the door. Now they were actually getting some possibly useful information.
“Rico followed this man in Denver? Knows where he went?”
“More than that, man.” Spike’s eyes darted to Roman. “Rico followed him all the way back here to Colorado Springs. All the way to his town house. I wanted to make sure the guy wasn’t a cop or wasn’t working for one of my competitors.”
Brandon looked over at Roman, then back to Spike. “You know where this man lives? Here in town?”
“Yep.” Spike rattled off an address on the south side of Colorado Springs. A group of town houses. “I know he was there as of last night. Rico reported in before I had my lapse in judgment and went to talk to Heather.”
Brandon stopped questioning the man and turned to call in the information to HQ.
“Hey, does this mean I’m free to go?” Spike asked.
“Yep,” Brandon said. “Omega Sector has no further holds on you.”
Roman turned to leave, so he could make it back to Omega Sector to be part of the SWAT team that closed in on Freihof’s town house.
As he was running out the door, he could hear the DEA agent coming and arresting Spike on the other, much worse charges. Spike wasn’t going anywhere but to prison for a long time. He was already yelling about being tricked and the unfairness of it all.
But Roman didn’t give a damn about Spike. He wanted Freihof.
And this time they had him.
Chapter Seventeen
Eighty-eight minutes later, Roman sat in a nondescript van parked half a block from Damien Freihof’s town house. Three members of the SWAT team waited with him: Derek Waterman, the team leader, Lillian Muir and Liam Goetz. All of them were as focused as Roman.
Ashton Fitzgerald, the team’s sharpshooter, sat somewhere on a roof above and across the street from the town house, ready to take a shot if Freihof was positively ID’d and tried to run. Freihof was not going to be given a chance to kill more people by getting away today. Deadly force had been authorized.
Other Omega agents were in the back alley behind the town house and finishing the process of clearing people out of the units surrounding Freihof’s.
SWAT would be infiltrating in less than two minutes.
This situation was why the SWAT team worked together day in and day out with training exercises. Every single person knew what they were supposed to do in these conditions. Knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Knew how to have each other’s back in a firefight without any words needing to be said.
This is what they did.
Everyone, including Lilian, who was barely more than a hundred pounds herself, wore the forty pounds of gear standard for a SWAT team. They all had an assault rifle as well as sidearm, ballistic vest, helmet and various tactical aids that hopefully wouldn’t be needed.
With the size of the town house, it had to be a small team working their way inside. Roman and Lillian would be coming in the back door, Derek and Liam taking the front.
“In order to not give Freihof any heads-up, we’re using ballistic breaching to get through the doors. Move in quickly and watch your six,” Derek said.
That was fine with Roman. Ballistic breaching meant shooting out the locks on the door. It wasn’t the safest method of breaching, but it was damn well the quickest.
“All right, let’s move out,” Derek said, once he’d been given the signal that the area had been cleared of civilians. “I know we all want to nail him in the worst possible way, but everybody stay frosty. Freihof is not our normal run-of-the-mill bad guy.”
The team nodded and moved out of the van, working their way the short distance down the empty block to the row of town houses. Roman and Lillian silently moved around to the back as the others went to the front.
“All’s quiet from up here,” Ashton said into the communication earpiece from his perch up on the roof.
“Everybody ready?” Derek asked.
“Roger that,” Roman said. The other team members echoed his sentiment.
“On my mark,” Derek muttered.
Roman and Lillian nodded at each other. Lillian would shoot out the lock and Roman would kick the door in.
“In five, four, three, two, go go go!”
On Derek’s mark, Lillian shot near the door’s lock and a moment later Roman kicked it in.
Roman’s automatic rifle was up to his face as he turned to one side, and Lillian followed behind him, turning the other way.
“Clear,” Roman said quietly, after he had looked around the kitchen to make sure no one was in there.
“Clear,” Lillian echoed.
Roman tapped her on her shoulder and pointed to the closed door of the pantry. Lillian nodded and they made their way toward it. Roman got into position to open the door and Lillian counted down with her fingers.
Three, two, one.
Roman snatched open the door and Lillian moved in low. The room was also clear. They silently moved to the living room. No one was there, either.
Through their communication devices, they could hear Derek and Liam moving into the bedrooms upstairs. Like the downstairs, no one was there.
“We are completely clear down here, Derek,” Roman said, when he heard Derek and Liam finish their search.
“Yeah, he’s not here, either, but this is definitely Freihof’s place. He’s basically got a war room against Omega up here.”
“Do you think he just got lucky? He just happened not to be home?” Lillian asked, still looking around, as they all were.
Roman moved back into the kitchen. A half-cooked egg sat in a pan on the stove. Roman took off his glove and held his hand over the pan. The oil was cool.
Freihof had left in a hurry, but it hadn’t been in the last few minutes. It hadn’t been because he’d realized law enforcement was clearing the block.
Damn it, Freihof had been tipped off.
“Derek, we’ve got a problem here. Somebody let Freihof know we were coming. He was in the middle of cooking—”
“Everybody out. Right damn now!” Liam’s yell pierced their eardrums. “We just tripped some sort of explosive device and it’s going to blow.”
Roman and Lillian were running for the back door as they heard Liam’s surprised curse as he stumbled down the stairs.
“What the hell?”
“Liam’s down,” Derek muttered. “There was some sort of nerve agent around the explosives that got him when he backed away.”
Without a word, Roman and Lillian rushed back through the kitchen to the stairs. There was no way they were leaving anybody behind, even if it cost them all their lives. They distributed Liam’s weight among the three of them and ran back down the stairs.
Unconscious as he was, Liam’s weight wasn’t insignificant and they were barely out the front door when the entire building blew. The heat and pain seared through Roman’s mind, so similar to what had happened to him two months ago.
The force of the blast threw them all forward, Liam flying farthest of all. The world spun.
“Status! C’mon, you guys, someone report.”
Roman’s senses returned as Fitzgerald’s panicked demands rang in his ears.
“Fitzy.” Roman barely got the word out. He felt like someone was sitting on his chest, making it difficult to draw in air.
“Roman?” Fitzgerald’s voice was frantic, his breathing ragged. “I’m on my way down.”
Roman struggled to get his bearings through the ringing in his ears and the smoke everywhere. He could see Derek sitting up a few feet away with the same dazed look. They gave each other a slight nod, signaling that they didn’t think they were seriously injured.
“Fitzy, ambulance for Liam.” Roman’s voice sounded odd to his own ears.
“It’s already on its way. Good thing we cleared
out those other town houses because the explosion took the units on either side.”
Roman hadn’t wanted to wait. He’d wanted to move in on Freihof before they cleared the other buildings. But Derek had gone by the book, and thank God. Maybe they would’ve caught Freihof if they’d been here ten minutes sooner, but it would’ve cost innocent lives and wouldn’t have been worth it.
Derek dragged himself over to Liam, who was still unconscious. Roman heard a stream of vile curses come from Lillian, just behind him. He crawled over to her through the smoke to find her lying on her side, still muttering every curse word he knew and a few he didn’t.
“Lil, you okay?”
“I’m alive and not brain damaged, so I guess that counts for something,” she said through gritted teeth.
As Roman got close enough to her to see the problem, he blew his breath out in a whistle through his teeth. A shard of glass protruded from Lillian’s shoulder. The part he could see was at least eight inches in length and an inch or more in width. Roman didn’t touch it, knowing that he couldn’t remove the shard of glass without doing more damage than good.
“Hey, you’ve got a splinter in your shoulder,” he said, easing himself closer.
Lillian gave a low laugh. “Yeah, just one more scar to add to my collection. Guess I won’t be wearing any strapless dresses for a while.”
Roman lay down beside her, feeling better now that a full course of oxygen was getting through his system. Unlike the last explosion Freihof had left for him, it looked like Roman was going to be able to walk away from this one.
But not Liam and Lillian.
Roman could hear sirens in the distance. They would be here soon.
“Liam?” Lillian asked through gritted teeth.
“Alive. Breathing but not conscious.” Derek’s voice came through their comm units.
Ashton made it down to them and directed the ambulances as they arrived. Roman just sat with Lillian. She had to be in tremendous pain, but aside from the occasional curse she didn’t complain at all. But by the time they got her onto the stretcher her face was devoid of color. Even her lips were white. She didn’t say anything to Roman as they wheeled her away, still lying on her side, just gave him a small nod.
Liam had been loaded onto the very first ambulance to arrive and taken immediately to the nearest hospital. Until they knew what sort of nerve agent or reactant Freihof had placed on the explosive, Liam would be considered in critical condition.
Both Roman and Derek were briefly checked out, but they’d had enough injuries over the years to know when they weren’t seriously hurt. They both stood looking at the wreckage of what used to be Freihof’s home.
“He knew we were coming, Derek,” Roman said, shaking his head. “He didn’t just get lucky and happen not to be here. He left stuff on the stove top.”
“Someone tipped him off.”
“Exactly. And given the short amount of time between when we got the information from Spike and when we arrived on scene here? That means the mole inside Omega is an actual person.”
Derek scrubbed a hand over his face. “Not some sort of computer leak or something like that. Somebody we know and work with every day is a traitor.”
“And we’re not going to be able to stop Freihof until we figure out who that is.”
Derek muttered a curse under his breath. “Now it looks like we have two deadly bad guys to deal with. Let’s get back to HQ and debrief, and let Steve know what we are thinking. Then we need to get over to the hospital with Liam and see what’s going on. I’ve got to call Vanessa.”
Roman nodded. Calling Liam’s wife, and mother to their three children, wasn’t going to be easy. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be to the worst news possible.
Freihof, and whoever it was he was working with, had just scored another big hit against Omega Sector.
Chapter Eighteen
The day was chaotic at Fresh Starts.
After the late night with Spike’s attack on Heather, Keira had overslept. Maybe because of how good it had felt to have Roman in the bed next to her.
He hadn’t been there when she woke up, but the note he’d left lying on the pillow had made up for it.
Trust me when I say there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here with you.
She only felt like a little bit of an idiot that she folded the note and put it in her pocket so she could carry it around with her all day.
She’d been so thankful to have Roman here last night. She didn’t know how Spike had found Heather or gotten in, but she knew for sure that it would’ve been a much different situation if not for Roman’s presence.
After Keira made a call this morning and Brandon had assured her that Spike was on his way to jail, well and truly out of Heather’s life, Keira was amazed at the difference in the other woman. Heather looked like a weight, a literal weight, had been lifted off her body.
Heather had smiled more this morning than in the entire five months she’d been here. Keira hadn’t known how worried Heather had been that Spike would find her and baby Rachel. She hadn’t asked if Spike was the baby’s father because it didn’t matter.
Rachel was Heather’s. And now no one was ever going to try to hurt either of them again.
Largely thanks to Roman.
Gratitude hadn’t been the reason Keira had allowed him into her bed. She wanted him there, and felt she’d been stupid to keep him out of it for this long, anyway. She couldn’t deny to herself any longer how important Roman was becoming to her.
Not just because of the security he provided for both Fresh Starts and against Freihof, but to her personally. How he made her laugh. How he always seemed to have something interesting to talk about.
Most of all, how he cared. About her. About the baby.
How had he come to mean so much to her in this short amount of time?
Keira didn’t know, but she was no longer terrified of the prospect of having him in her life. Maybe she’d blown the entire thing about his family out of proportion.
She held onto that line of thinking right up until her eleven o’clock appointment walked through the door.
Maureen Weber Donovan. Roman’s mother.
The salon was already pretty chaotic. The glass repair team, fixing the window where Spike had thrown the rock, had left only a few minutes ago.
Keira was running a little bit behind schedule because of oversleeping and, damn it all, hadn’t had time to put on much makeup or do much styling of her own hair.
Definitely not the way she would’ve chosen to face down Maureen Donovan.
When Keira saw the woman walk through the door, glancing around with one perfectly manicured eyebrow raised as if she was afraid to get too close or to touch anything, Keira rushed over to Annabel at the computer.
“Can you pull up the name of my eleven o’clock appointment?” she asked quietly.
Annabel gave her an odd look but did as she asked. “Maureen. New client. Wants a wash and style.” She pointed toward the door. “I’m assuming that’s her over there.”
Keira nodded slowly. “It is. Ugh. I’m running a little behind, and I look terrible.”
“Since when do you care how you look just to style hair all day?” Annabel laughed.
Keira tried to smile. “You’re right. Can you just offer her a cup of coffee or water or something? I’ll be right there.”
She forced herself not to glance in Maureen’s direction as she finished the hairstyle she was working on. Why was the woman here? She had to have known this was Keira’s salon, right?
She finished as quickly as she could without sacrificing quality, and thanked her current client. Then there was no more avoiding it; she had to go see Maureen. Trying to calm the nerves in her stomach, she walked over to where the woman was sitting in the waiting area.
“Maureen,
so sorry I was running late. I had no idea it was you who was my eleven o’clock appointment.”
The older woman gave her what could only be called a condescending smile as they walked together to the salon chair.
“I just thought I would come see where my son has been spending so much time.”
Keira got a whiff of Maureen’s perfume and took a slight step away. It wasn’t that the other woman had too much of it on—she would certainly never make that mistake—but the scent wasn’t appealing to Keira.
“Roman isn’t here right now. He was called back to Omega Sector.”
“I see.” Maureen’s lips pressed together.
Keira wasn’t certain if Maureen was irritated at the mention of Omega Sector or just found being here distasteful in general.
Keira straightened her back. It better not be because of Fresh Starts. Yes, the salon was a little disorganized right now because of all the action in the last twenty-four hours, but Keira was very proud of her place of business.
“What can I do for you today?” She met Maureen’s eyes in the mirror. “A cut? Color?”
Maureen actually laughed out loud. “Oh no, dear. Just a style. That’s all.”
The answer left no doubt that the other woman didn’t trust Keira to do anything permanent to her hair.
Keira didn’t let her irritation show as she breathed through her mouth, not wanting to smell any more of Maureen’s perfume. The expensive brand had never bothered her before, but it was now. “Let’s get you over to the washing station then.”
Keira’s stomach was feeling pretty upset by the time she had walked Maureen just the short distance to the sink. Annabel saw her face and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”
Keira nodded, but her stomach was beginning to riot even more.
“Why don’t you let me do this wash? I don’t mind. Grab a cracker or something if you’re not feeling well.”
Maureen was watching the entire conversation with narrowed eyes. But there was nothing Keira could do. The perfume was making her sick. She slapped her hand over her mouth and made a dash for her office, barely making it to the trash can before she lost the contents of her stomach.