“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “I’m just rethinking my strategy.”
“Very good, Mr. Anderson,” Smithfield said with some amusement. “I can see why you did so well for yourself following your unfortunate downfall with the police department. Most men would have hid in shame. You started a new life performing the very tasks taught to you by the police force that abandoned you. Very inventive.”
The tactic wouldn’t work. Liam refused to let this weasel’s insults get to him.
“Liam?” One second Maura was across the room and the next she stood right in front of him with her hand on his chest.
The feel of her soothed him. He wanted to share the new information with her, but he couldn’t risk her life. He put his hands on her forearms and gave her a gentle push back.
She noticed immediately. Her eyebrows slammed together as she scowled. “Tell me what just happened.”
“I made up my mind.”
“Fill me in.”
“I’m going to go through the door alone.”
“What?”
“You and Hammer will stay in here. I’ll see if it’s clear in the hall and down the stairs. We can’t afford another run-in with the guards.”
“No way. We are in this together.” She ticked off her reasons, getting more worked up as she went. “You promised not to leave me behind or fall into that macho garbage.”
He knew that conversation never happened. He was prepared to dump her in a safe house at any point. He’d thought about doing it several times and now realized he should have.
“I did?”
“It was implicit when you handed me the gun.”
Did she have to mention that?
He slipped her hands between his palms to calm her back down and stop them from waving in his face. “I need to know there’s a safe exit to get you both out of here before we start.”
“You’re worried about the ambush thing.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s fine but I need to know the plan. You are not doing the lone-wolf thing. You had your chance to run away and didn’t take it. Now you’re stuck with me.”
Her spitfire mode temporarily wiped out his anxiety.
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“You’re not acting like it.”
His hands slid down to her waist. Leaning in, he let his mouth hover over hers. “The strategy is the same as it’s always been. Be ready and move fast.”
She raised up and pressed her mouth against his in a quick kiss that ended as soon as it began. “That’s not much of a plan.”
Cuddling her close served a dual purpose, savoring her touch for what could be the last time and hiding his fingers as they tapped on the top of the stun gun. “We have to adjust as new information becomes available.”
Confusion raced across her face when he wiggled the weapon free. “True.”
He stared at her, willing her to understand something else was happening around them and play along. When she frowned back at him, he kissed her. His mouth traveled over hers, caressing and loving, in a true moment of passion in the midst of a fiery disaster.
As he lifted his head, he slipped the stun gun out of her waistband. Every second of the transfer he hoped she wouldn’t ask why, wouldn’t blow his subterfuge.
Then something warm and knowing sparked in those chocolate-brown eyes. Her stare didn’t drop to her belt and the gun. It moved to his earpiece.
He closed his eyes on a slow blink to let her know she was on the right track. “Do we agree on the strategy?”
“I trust you.”
A wealth of emotion hid behind those words. Every part of her body signaled her belief in him. Her intense stare did not let up. Her fingers tightened on his shirt.
The energy thrumming through her poured into him.
With a brush of his thumb over her lips, he broke the contact. “Have your gun ready just in case.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Dr. Hammer. If she didn’t know the rules had changed up until then, the doctor’s smug smile would have given it away.
“I have one gun and it will be pointed at Dr. Hammer just in case,” she said.
Two. She had two guns and the knife. Liam knew that much. Message sent and received.
With reluctance, Liam pulled away from her, but not before pocketing the slim stun gun. Whoever waited on the other side of the door expected a hail of bullets. They likely wore protective gear to guard against any firepower he might bring. He’d have a few seconds’ advantage before they searched him. In that moment, he’d attack with the weapon they didn’t expect.
“Very touching, Mr. Anderson.” Smithfield’s flat and emotionless tone never changed. It only grew colder and deadlier the more the game progressed.
“Now, move toward the hidden door. Be prepared to surrender the weapon and your girlfriend might live.”
Right. The one thing Smithfield couldn’t afford to do was leave a witness. Liam knew that much.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, after I have a look around,” he said as he walked through the bedroom and into the lab.
“Nicely done, Mr. Anderson. Make her feel secure so she will not be tempted to follow you.”
Every cell inside Liam wanted to swear at the man and tell him to shut up. But he refused to give Smithfield that satisfaction. The man enjoyed the suffering portion of his sport. Liam felt certain of that fact. He could hear it in the endless abyss of the other man’s dark voice.
Leaving Maura alone with Hammer was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He forced his legs to keep going, but his heart remained back in the room, with her.
Right before he hit the door release he touched his thumb against the button on his phone. Despite the phone blackout, the automated text would show up on Detective Spanner’s screen within seconds.
Liam sure hoped the man led with his gut and moved fast.
Liam’s gaze never stopped. He looked at the door from edge to edge and sized up all conceivable problems. Getting back in being the biggest potential hurdle.
He slid his palm against his pants, lowering the phone as close to the floor as he could get it without bending over and putting it on the floor. He let it drop, tried to catch it with the corner of his shoe.
The small click of plastic against cement got lost when he pounded on the door. Let whoever was watching think he was banging, trying to get out. With his foot he covered the phone. It would provide the perfect doorstop, provide just enough space for him to wedge his fingers inside and pull it back open when he needed to get back inside.
Just as expected, when the lab door opened, two guards stood in the hall. One aimed a gun at his head. The other just stood there with a stupid grin on his face. The kind of grin that promised a lot of pain.
“Gentlemen.” The door rumbled shut behind Liam as soon as he delivered the greeting.
The metal clank vibrated down to his feet. It sounded so final. Made him worry the phone trick didn’t work.
The guard with the weapon took a step forward. “Are you the one who killed Paul?”
Liam assumed Paul was the dead guard in the stairwell at the opposite end of the apartment-lab combination. “Yeah.”
“We worked together for a long time.”
“He cried like a girl when I shot him.”
The other guard took a step forward but his friend motioned him back with the gun. “The boss said your death had to look like an accident. A painful one.”
The seemingly unarmed guard smiled then. “But we can do whatever we want to your girlfriend. Think about that while you’re dying, smart guy.”
Liam tried to think of anything else.
Chapter Fourteen
When Liam lifted her stun gun, Maura had gotten the message. The trap had been sprung by the person running Dr. Hammer’s life.
They had to launch an offensive strike or risk being the next set of victims. Fear whipped up inside her at the thought. Her chest felt li
ke a battle waged in there. Every time she breathed in, a harsh lump of air got trapped in her lungs.
Nothing, not even the fear of dying, compared to the nightmare scenarios that ran through her mind while she watched Liam walk away. All she wanted to do was run after him and beg his forgiveness for putting them in this situation. She should have left him alone and figured out the problem on her own. Dragging him back into her life after all these years was unfair.
But she couldn’t regret it, not all of it, not when seeing him and getting to know him as a man sparked something to life inside her.
She had lusted after him with a crush as a teenager, spun wild and grown-up fantasies about him taking her with him as he started his life in another town. The handsome jock with the broad shoulders and infectious smile. He represented everything carefree and open about life.
The exact opposite of her.
She adored her family, but the romanticized version of him that played in her head meant freedom. With him, she could forget about studying and the college decisions that were more complicated than she was prepared to make at fifteen. He was the way for her to hold on to her youth.
When he crushed her hopes, she lost it all. She gave in to the practical side of her and never looked back. For years, she blamed him for the direction of her life. She relished her work but resented it, too. Resented him.
It all seemed so ridiculous now. It was as if the emotional side of her failed to mature and let go while the rest of her grew up. Deep inside, she believed if she piled all of the hurt and responsibility on him, she didn’t have to deal with the pieces of normal life she’d forfeited.
She understood now how unfair she’d been. She judged him for choices he’d made in his twenties and she’d made her entire life, dragging all of that baggage with her and letting it poison the part of her outside the lab. Dan paid the price when she kept them all separate, but so did she. She missed out on getting to know the real Liam.
She saw him now with a woman’s perspective. She counted on his loyalty and basked in his strength. Rock solid, handsome and good. She loved him this time, not as the foolish girl who confused hormones for love, but as a woman who knew the difference.
That’s why seeing him go into the lab with the calm assurance of someone bent on rescuing her one last time nearly killed her. He was prepared to die for her.
“He’s not coming back,” Dr. Hammer said with a chuckle.
Her boss’s newfound confidence was her second clue. He knew who or what controlled Liam. The knowledge filled Dr. Hammer with a false bravado.
“I thought you were pretending to be innocent in all of this.” She held her gun at her side. If she pointed it at his head she might shoot him.
“Smithfield made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Disgust filled her. She had guessed at the cause—money—but hearing it made it real. “You sold out to the highest bidder.”
“NIH couldn’t possibly handle the requests my research will garner. After all I poured into this work, I can’t see it buried and red-taped to death by a bureaucracy that consistently fails to recognize true brilliance.”
“You’ve spent too much time reading your résumé.”
He talked right over her as if she didn’t even exist. “I needed a private firm with significant resources to highlight the findings.”
His ego proved to be his downfall. He was just one in a long line of smart men who got tripped up by his elevated self-worth.
She should have been surprised, but she wasn’t. He was a sad little man with nothing to sustain him but work. Turning over the progression of her life scared her a bit. Except for the overblown ego, she walked the same path, started measuring every part of her life by one aspect.
That would stop today. She refused to follow Dr. Hammer’s lonely and destructive personal path. There was a way to have it all and she would find it.
“You’ve lost your mind and your integrity,” she said, forcing her mind to stay on the conversation and off Liam and what he might be walking into right this second.
“I simply realized that I should be paid for my work.”
“You have half the government and all of the police looking for you. Tom is dead.”
Dr. Hammer’s mouth went flat. “Who?”
She had to count to ten to keep from flying into a killing rage. “The security guard who worked in your lab for years. Remember him?”
Dr. Hammer had the nerve to nod his head, as if sparing one second of thought or one ounce of sympathy for a man who served him without fail was a hardship. “That was an unfortunate part of the deal.”
“Do you hear yourself? Do you understand what you’ve become?”
“I believe you told me at your initial interview that you hoped to be like me one day.”
“Not anymore.” She tried to see into the lab but the door from the bedroom had closed behind Liam, leaving only the makeshift closet. In that moment she prayed that whatever plan Liam came up with, whatever he hoped to do with that stun gun, worked.
“That’s probably for the best. Honestly, I’m not sure you have the dedication it takes to make it in this field.”
Dr. Hammer’s words pricked at her. He wanted a fight, wanted to insult and degrade her.
She wasn’t about to play along. “What about Patricia?”
His half smile vanished. “She is fine.”
“She is running around out there trying to find your supposed killer. The government worried about its precious data but she…” The pieces fell together in Maura’s head. “Wait a second. This is about her, isn’t it?”
“Of course not.”
“The quickie wedding. The sudden interest in your career. The fake outrage that I hadn’t been arrested.”
Dr. Hammer looked everywhere but at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. You being here in this claustrophobic pseudo apartment and not caring about the separation from your young wife.” It was so obvious that Maura wondered how she had missed it before. “Patricia is in on this. Maybe even the mastermind.”
“I think we’ve talked enough.”
The deep male voice had her spinning to face the front of the apartment. Maura’s gun came up with the muzzle pointed at Dr. Hammer’s head. She had no idea if she could pull the trigger, but she sure could act like she would.
“Lower the weapon.” The man spoke as the door between the apartment and the hall swung closed behind him.
He was tall and what some women might find objectively attractive with the dark hair and eyes.
Maura saw a slithering snake.
She knew, but asked anyway in an attempt to stall for time and allow Liam to get back. She also wanted him to hear voices and tread carefully. “Who are you?”
“Rex Smithfield.”
“Untie me.” Dr. Hammer directed his order at Smithfield.
He ignored it and focused on her. “You are trespassing.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to hold me here.”
“Then you may view it as good news that your time here is almost over.”
Ominous. The way this man phrased things, the feral gleam in his eyes. He scared the crap out of her. “Where’s Liam?”
“Dead.”
The word crashed through her, breaking down every wall and knocking the breath right out of her. She wanted to bend over. Scream. Punch her fist through something until it bled.
She forced her body to stay upright and plastered a bored expression on her face. This man would pounce on weakness, so she refused to show him any. “That’s not true.”
“I am afraid it is. He proved very interesting right to the end. One would have thought a man of his back ground would take the easy way out and let you fight this battle on your own. He is, after all, a coward who let a domestic violence victim get killed by her husband.”
The need to defend Liam stole over her before she could stop it. “You don’t know anything abo
ut him.”
“I am surprised you took the chance on him. Seems out of character for you. Dr. Hammer kept insisting you were a pathetic loner without a man. I guess you hid your darker side from your boss.”
“Liam is alive.” She’d know if he were dead. Some thing inside her would wither. She still felt his spirit as strong as she did when he wrestled with Detective Spanner on her behalf.
“He is very dead.” Smithfield seemed to enjoy saying the words. Not that he smiled. It was more that his eyes brightened at the thought of another killing.
“Unless you bring Liam to me, alive and well, within the next two minutes, I’m going to shoot your prize doctor in the head.” She shoved the weapon against the back of Dr. Hammer’s skull to prove her point.
The man panicked. He shifted in his chair and tried to wiggle his arms out of their bindings. “Get her away from me.”
Smithfield remained calm. “You have grown ever more interesting, Dr. Lindsey.”
She let his demeanor feed hers. “And your time is ticking.”
“WE’LL TAKE THE GUN.” The guard grabbed the weapon from Liam’s hand as he spoke.
The dark-haired guard never wavered from his position. Neither let Liam out of his sight, nor lowered the gun. “He has others.”
Liam cataloged the arsenal he had on him. Plastic explosives, a second gun, knives, a razor blade and the stun gun. Chances of these two wrestling them all away before he could use one of them was slim. All Liam needed was an opening.
He kept his eyes on the one holding the gun as the other one did a pat down. He started at Liam’s feet, quickly found gun number two, all the time describing the horrible things he planned to do with Maura once he got her alone.
Liam blocked it all out, had to. If he let the words fester and take hold, he’d lose control. That meant risking Maura, and he couldn’t let that happen.
And he was smart enough to know these two bruisers depended on him to go wild. They wanted him to make a mistake, give them a reason to unload those weapons right into him.
The guard slipped Liam’s knife out of the sheath and threw it on the ground before glancing up at his partner. “Looks like the trespasser came armed for a fight.”
Night Moves Page 12