Ever since branching out on his own, he had taken huge risks to finish the job, including putting his body on the line to rescue corporate kidnapping victims outside the United States. He’d gotten a reputation for sacrificing his personal safety for the job. People joked that he acted as if he didn’t care what happened to him. Looking back on the suicide missions now, he wondered where his head had been. Loving the work was one thing. Sacrificing his life was another, and he often teetered on the line between.
When he looked at Maura, his priorities shifted. Saving her, getting her out of Hammer’s disaster and helping her see that life existed outside of the lab gave him a purpose. He didn’t know where they went from here or how they would ever get there, but he wanted her safe.
“Maura?”
“We are both going in and both coming out.”
He kissed the inside of her wrist. “Promise me.”
She hesitated. Seconds ticked by with her staring at him. He stared right back. This issue was too important to drop.
“Fine,” she finally ground out between clenched teeth.
The tightening crank in his chest loosened. He needed all of his concentration to make this work, and that couldn’t happen if he had to worry about her trying to rescue him. Sure, he’d only clued her in to half of his plan. Their exit strategy depended on Detective Spanner, but Maura didn’t know that. Liam needed her focused on rescuing herself no matter what.
Liam gave her fingers a squeeze before dropping her hand. “Turn off your phone, pick up your gun and let’s get started.”
Without another word, they moved to either side of the doorway leading to the hallway. When he nodded to her, she performed a final check on her phone then gave him the all-clear signal. As the countdown sounded in his head, he mentally cataloged all the things that could go wrong in the next ten minutes. Then he saw her shoulders tense and eyes close as if waiting for an actual bomb to go off, and he hit the button.
A ripple went through him right before the lights blinked off. The whirring sounds of the building’s electricity stopped and a deadly silence fell over the floor. The darkness inside now matched the black night outside the window. Someone on the street or in a neighboring building would soon notice and the guards, plus any remaining workers, had to be scrambling.
They didn’t have any time to waste.
He turned on the flashlight mounting on his gun. The small beam of light would guide them until the auxiliary power kicked on or someone came hunting them.
“Let’s go.” Liam whispered the command as they slipped out into the dark corridor.
He listened for shouts or footsteps but nothing echoed back to him. The soundproofing between floors would make it tough to sense the enemy until they pounced. The worst trap would be the stairwells, and that was exactly where he needed to take Maura.
She walked with her back plastered against the wall. The gun waved around in front of her until he reached over and steadied it.
“I’m nervous,” she said almost as an apology.
“It’s just your body giving you the energy you need to get through this.”
“Then why am I having trouble keeping my teeth from chattering and my knees from turning to mush?”
“Because you’re human.” He kept up the quiet conversation until they reached the end of the hall. The goal was to distract her while they moved and keep him from calling a halt to this insanity by smuggling her out of there.
When they reached the emergency door, he pressed against the handle with controlled pressure, hoping to keep the noise to a minimum. Didn’t work. In the still ness, the click sounded like he hit the door with a sledgehammer.
Maura winced. “Easy.”
“I’m trying.”
He hung back, waiting to see if anyone jumped out or bullets flew before pushing forward. When quiet greeted him, he peeked inside the doorway. Nothing. No foot steps above or below him. He’d kill for night goggles and heat sensors right now, but the advanced equipment was locked away in his secret safe in his house. He’d only taken what was in reach when he tied up Spanner and left the house. Anything in the safe stayed there for fear of tipping Spanner off to its location.
That meant Liam had to rely on his ears and intuition. He tried to wash his mind clear of anything but focusing on the sights and sounds around him.
They started up the stairs, constantly looking around. He wanted to present a moving target if anyone came running after them. He also stayed on alert, ready to jump in front of Maura if needed. Ready to hit the emergency button and bring Spanner running if everything else failed.
Partway up, the lights flickered back on. Not the bright white flood. No, this was a dim blue glow that came from round fixtures in the corners.
When Maura frowned at him, he filled her in. “Secondary power.”
“The electricity should be out.”
“It is. This is a fallback system run through the generator.” He picked that possibility up from the tech’s system. Seemed the Smithfield folks didn’t trust the security system to remain up and running no matter what.”
“These guys thought of everything.”
That was his fear. “Let’s hope not.”
Stairs thudded beneath his feet as two flights passed without resistance. The stairwell was clear. The only potential threat came from the strange metal lockers on each landing. They looked like walled-in phone booths but when he opened the door, all he saw was a series of cables and a slim shaft that led from the floor to the ceiling. If he had more time to explore, he’d check it out as a potential escape route. Not that he’d fit inside without curling into a ball. The space would never work.
A third flight passed and the silence remained. By the time they hit the landing right below the fifth floor, Liam was convinced they were walking into a trap. No mission ran without snags. With the security devices around this place, this job should have been worse than most. The exact opposite proved true.
No building experiencing an electronic blackout stayed this quiet. Guards should be running the stairs and searching the halls. The fact he could storm up the steps easier now than when he tried to walk in the front door during business hours with a security badge on his belt told Liam what he needed to know. Hammer, or whoever was pulling the strings on Hammer, remained one step ahead.
Liam motioned for Maura to hang back and then in haled as deep as possible before he opened the door to the floor a fraction. From his limited view he saw an empty hallway. Nothing to the right or in front of him.
He glanced back to fill Maura in but she was gone.
He blinked several times, tried to get a grip on the panic racing through him before it swallowed everything. Then the door in front of him flew out of his hand. His head snapped around right as the gun barrel pressed against his forehead.
“Make a move and you’re dead,” said the guard.
Liam recognized the voice from his run-in with security the first time he tried to enter the building. The guy had a huge head and even bigger biceps. This time he wore full tactical gear, which proved what Liam feared all along. They knew he was coming.
“Take it easy,” he said. No need for the guy to get itchy and start shooting.
The guy grabbed Liam’s gun. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
That’s what Liam wanted to know.
Chapter Eleven
Maura sensed the setup right as it sprang. She picked up on Liam’s anxiety. Watched as he steeled his body for the blow that might come when he opened the fifth-floor door. The same shot he was willing to take for her.
No way was she letting him walk into danger without giving him a chance to get out again. As Liam broke the seal on the door, she tiptoed backward, heading for the electrical locker in the corner of the landing. The hiding place would give her an extra second to launch an attack if Liam needed help. In a foreign environment with only the unknown around them, she needed to grab any opportunity that came along.
Fast as
she could and without making any noise, she slipped inside. Her sneakers balanced on the thin rim of metal that edged the otherwise open floor. One shift and she’d lose her footing. With nothing to stop her free fall but a few wires—and she didn’t even know if they would hold her weight—dropping into the hole beneath her would mean plummeting down into darkness. She refused to let that happen.
Stiff cables dug into her back and her shoulders curled in as she tried to make her body as small as possible. This was just one more time when she wished she were a petite scrap of a thing. Instead, she had hips and broad shoulders. It would be the ultimate punishment if her body type caused her death.
Tight and folded, she still took up every available inch of the box. The space made the car trunk seem roomy. Warm air blew up from underneath her but she still struggled to breathe. Rather than panic, she focused all of her energy on the weapon in her hand.
When the door whipped open without warning, she aimed the stun gun at her attacker. At the sizzling zap of the prongs, the big man’s eyes popped wide. She didn’t ease up on the contact after the first shot. She knew better. Three seconds and he’d be writhing in pain on the ground. If she could hold on even longer, then all the better.
Time sped by until she lost any sense of just how much had passed. The man dropped his gun, sending it bouncing against the steps as he flopped first to his knees and then into the fetal position.
With his body on the floor, she could see the guard behind him. He stood in the doorway with a gun aimed at Liam’s head. As the scene unfolded, the man’s body went lax. It was as if his muscles strained to fathom the sight of a woman taking out a two-hundred-and-twenty-plus-pound bruiser.
Liam didn’t suffer from the same hesitation. He smashed his elbow up and into the guard’s nose, snapping the man’s head back and causing the hand with the gun to waver as the other one went to protect his face. Taking advantage of being free, Liam drove his shoulder into the guy’s stomach, pressing him back into the far wall. Already off balance, the guard lost his footing and his gun went flying.
Liam had the weapon in his possession before the man slumped to the floor. A hit across the temple with the end of the gun knocked the man unconscious.
The sight of a bloody nose and cut on the head froze Maura for a second. She watched as Liam searched the man’s pockets and removed his earpiece. Heard her victim roll around at her feet, moaning. She tried to take it all in and get her body going, but she just stood there unable to move for fear her heart would hammer right through her skin.
Liam glanced at her over his shoulder. “Come out of there.”
His abrupt order got her moving. It also sent a wave of fury coursing through her veins. “You’re welcome.”
A pair of handcuffs appeared out of nowhere. “Nice work.”
If he thought that would ease her jumbled thoughts or shaking fingers, he was wrong. “You have your strategy and I have mine.”
“Speaking of that, where did the stun gun come from?”
“Years of living alone.”
The weapon Liam gave her sat snugly against the small of her back. She had no idea how to shoot that one without injuring herself. She did know how to drop a man two times her size by sending a load of high voltage streaming through him. Aim first, apologize later if necessary. That was the motto of her self-defense instructor and she had followed it.
She lifted her leg to step over her attacker. Just as her front foot hit the floor, the man grabbed her other ankle in midair. With a twist, he wrenched her leg. Hard. Pain shot up her knee as he tugged her toward the floor.
“Liam!” She forced the word out.
Her stomach lodged in her throat as her upper body flew without stopping toward the cement floor. She braced for the whack, brought her hands up to lessen the impact.
But it never came. Liam reached out. His strong arm caught her under the arm. She let out a yelp of surprise to match his grunt. As one arm wrapped around her, the other lifted near her ear. She heard the click and soft plug right before the grip on her ankle dropped.
Liam dragged her away and into his arms. His hands traveled over her face and across her shoulders as if checking for broken bones and gunshots. “Are you okay?”
“Not really.”
“Did he touch you?”
“What happened?” She glanced down into the open-eyed dead stare of the man who terrified her not two seconds before. The bullet hole in his forehead told her all she needed to know. The man couldn’t hurt her now.
Liam gave her a little shake, one that forced her stunned eyes back to his face. “Maura, answer me.”
She could barely speak. She moved her mouth but only a whimpering sound escaped. Sure, she’d seen corpses in school. She’d just never watched a life end. Not like this.
“You shot him,” she said as the reality of their actions settled over her. Thanks to Dr. Hammer and the disaster he unleashed, two men were dead. Tom and this guy. She worried the death toll would keep rising.
Lines of stress appeared around Liam’s mouth. “I had to do it. I didn’t know what other weapons he might have, and couldn’t risk letting him grab you, throw you down the stairs, anything.”
Between the pale skin and strain stretching every inch of his face, Liam looked like someone had kicked him in the head. Stunned and desperate, he was trying to convince her that he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. As if that thought ever entered her mind.
She blew out the breath caught in her chest. “Thank you.”
His shoulders fell back to normal height. “Really?”
“I don’t think he planned to shake my hand.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m sorry you had to see that, but—”
She brushed the backs of her hands against Liam’s cheek. “Ever the hero.”
Those green eyes narrowed into slits. “What?”
“Never apologize for rescuing a woman from the bad guys.”
The tension around his mouth lessened. “We’re only alive at this moment because of you.”
She did do that. Used more than her brains to get out of a situation. It was a new sensation and not an unwelcome one. “That’s true.”
“You were pretty impressive for a brainiac lab rat.”
“I have skills.”
“I just never expected one of them to be lethal self-defense moves.” He bent down and searched the dead guy, uncovering a second gun and two knives. “I’m grateful, believe me.”
“Happy to help out.” She blew on the top of her stun gun, showing a moment of bravado she didn’t feel. Her internal organs had turned to jelly. She doubted she’d ever be able to walk up a staircase without a bodyguard and her trusty stun gun again.
Liam treated her to one of his sexy smiles. “Let’s go before their friends come looking for them.”
But that was easier to say than to do. There was exactly one room on the floor, or that’s what she figured from the huge steel door at the far end. A special suite suggested a special guest, one Maura supposed had more protection somewhere inside.
Liam nodded at the bubble on the ceiling. “The cameras are still out. The secondary power source must only cover the auxiliary lighting, but it could cycle and switch some other electronics on. I’d like to be gone if it does.”
“No argument there.”
Liam slipped something into his ear. “This should help.”
“What is it?”
“The guard’s microphone.”
“Hear anything?”
Liam frowned. “No.”
“Isn’t that odd?”
“Isn’t everything about Smithfield Enterprises strange?” He dragged the unconscious guard into the stair well and stepped over him, closing the door behind him.
“The guy will wake up eventually and cause trouble.”
“That’s true.” Liam jammed a small piece of black plastic under the door handle. “This will make it harder for anyone to get on this floor through this entrance.”
<
br /> “What if we need to use it to get out?”
“There’s another exit. No way would the person who designed this jail disguised as an office building only leave one way off a floor. Too dangerous.”
“Then let’s go find Dr. Hammer and drag the weasel out of here.”
“Exactly my thought.”
They made their way to the door. The dark pad of the retinal scanner next to the door reminded her of the disabled security at the lab. The defenses went down right before the place blew up. She hoped they weren’t in for a second round of fireballs.
“You think there are more guards in there?” she asked, more to burn off some of the energy bouncing around inside her than to actually get an answer. She knew the answer.
He tapped on the guard’s earpiece before putting it back in again. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Liam tried the door but it didn’t budge.
“Is it still locked?” she asked.
“Probably just another level of security. Some extra bar that slides shut when the electricity goes off.”
“So, now what?”
“We blow it, of course.” He took a packet out of his front pants pocket. Unwrapping the white paper, he uncovered a ball of putty.
“I’m guessing that’s explosive material.” She didn’t need a degree to recognize it.
He dropped to his knees and smoothed a small glob of the substance over the lock keypad. The phone came next. After some fiddling, he removed a small stick from the side and plunged it into the putty.
Once he set the device, he glanced up at her. “We need to get to the other end of the hall.”
The scientist inside her wanted to investigate the mechanism and understand exactly how it worked. The rest of her, the parts that wanted to live through the next few minutes, didn’t argue. “Okay.”
They hustled to the other end of the corridor. With his finger over a button on the back of his phone, he hesitated. “You shoot at anything that comes out of that room.”
“I got it.”
“No stun guns this time. Actual bullets.”
Night Moves Page 9