ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5)

by Glenna Sinclair

  Andre ignored me as I’d known he would. There was no talking in the torture room unless you wanted to confess to whatever they were torturing you for. And then you were dead.

  I’d seen that happen, too.

  I tugged at the restraints on my wrists. Pain shot up one arm, the restraint so tight that I was never going to be able to slip out of it on my own. The other, however, was loose. If I tugged just the right way…

  “Is it dark outside yet?”

  Again, Andre refused to answer. But that question got me a strange look.

  “They’re coming, you know.”

  He shook his head. “Dimitri doesn’t believe you. Not even our own boys know where this house is.”

  “I do. And you can bet I told them about it.”

  “Dimitri was always careful when he brought you here. You don’t know where this house is, either.”

  “You’d be surprised what I know.”

  Andre tilted his head, studying me as if he wasn’t sure whether he could trust what was coming out of my mouth. He’d be better off if he did, but I knew he wouldn’t. They never did.

  “They’re coming. And they’re going to take you out like nothing. Like you never even existed.”

  “Why would they do that, Mina? Don’t you realize what the consequences would be if a bunch of guys just marched into this house and shot it up? They’d go to jail. Ash Grayson and his people aren’t the kind who operate outside the law.”

  “You’d be surprised what a man will do when he’s been pushed beyond his limits.” I tugged at the loose restraint, carefully trying to pull my hand free without alerting him to what I was doing. It wasn’t easy. “You shouldn’t have gone after Rose.”

  “Who’s Rose?”

  “The lady in the house. The one you and your thugs dragged out of bed and beat.”

  “Oh.” He smiled. “She was fun. Thought she could fight the three of us off. I love it when they think they can do that.”

  “She’s still alive, you know.”

  “Yeah. Dimitri wasn’t too happy about that.”

  “And the cop.”

  “That wasn’t our fault. Poor Paul took a bullet on that one. He’s upstairs, bleeding out in the kitchen.”

  “He won’t be the only one in an hour or two. You’ll all have bullet wounds to deal with.”

  Andre shook his head again, turning around to take a pair of plyers from the table. “You have to stop telling tales and get down to the truth, Mina. Dimitri wants to know how you got out of the compound without them knowing you were leaving.”

  “What makes you think they didn’t know?”

  He sat on a rolling stool and came to sit in front of me. “You were waiting for us at the back of the property. How did you get over the fence?”

  “The electrified fence?” I studied his face. “The one you guys tried to climb over and couldn’t?”

  “The same.”

  I smiled. I’d wondered when they were going to make the connection.

  “They let me out, Andre. It’s the only way to defeat that fence.”

  “There’s got to be a way—”

  “David Grayson designed that fence himself. It’s made of a special sort of metal that makes it impossible for idiots like you to defeat it. Why do you think they retreated there when you hit Rose?”

  He tilted his head. “Why would they let you out? Why would you willingly come back here? You had to have known what Dimitri would do when you arrived.”

  “I did. You guys are as predictable as the flu.”

  “You knew Dimitri would ask these questions.”

  “I did.”

  “You knew he would hurt you.”

  I shrugged. “It’s worth it.”

  He studied my face for a long second. “We searched you. You didn’t have a phone. You didn’t even have a wallet. Nothing but that knife.”

  My eyebrows rose. Andre’s eyes widened.

  He ran for the door, the sound of his footsteps pounding on the stairs the only thing I could hear for a long moment.

  I tugged at the restraint as hard as I could, pain slicing through me once again. I was bleeding now, but the blood was helping. It was like a lubricant, helping smooth the way. I closed my eyes, pictured my little boy, and pulled as hard as I could.

  I was free.

  I reached into my shirt and tugged at the tiny electronic bug David had put there.

  It was almost time.

  Chapter 37

  Ash

  We silently moved around the house, each of us taking our assigned spots. I gestured to David and he nodded. It was clear. We were just about ready.

  The house was outside Los Angeles, nestled against a high cliff, just a mile or two off the Pacific Coast Highway. It might seem like a place that could be easily defended, but it had so many vulnerable spots that it was almost laughable. I never would have brought my team to a safe house like this one.

  The cliff was too far back to protect the back of the house. The windows were too numerous. There was no good vantage point, nowhere a sniper could take up a position and cover the entire front yard. And the front door was just that…a front door. It wasn’t reinforced metal. It didn’t have a dead bolt. It was as if these people had simply bought a house and thought the fact that no one knew where it was made it safe.

  It didn’t.

  We were surrounding the house, standing along the front of the house, and no one had noticed us yet. My compound, we would not only have noticed, but we would have taken the intruders out already.

  I stepped carefully up the front steps and approached the door.

  They didn’t have cameras, either. That was a big mistake.

  “Ready?”

  I looked at Jack and smiled. “Let’s do this.”

  Jack gave the signal and his officers rushed the door with the battering ram.

  “Santa Monica Police Department,” they yelled, as they moved aside and allowed us to enter. Immediately, I caught sight of a guy jumping off the couch and rushing toward the stairs. One small tug on the trigger and he was down on the ground, holding his knee.

  I walked up to him and pressed the barrel of my rifle to his chest.

  “Where is she, asshole?”

  A gun discharged above me and another went off behind me. I turned. Jack had his Glock pointed at something on the stairs above us.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded, then moved around me, following his men deeper into the house.

  “Where is Mina Kaufman?”

  “Go to hell,” the guy muttered.

  “You just might.”

  Joss came up and bent to put zip ties on him. In my ear, David said, “There’re five bodies upstairs. One is a child.”

  I made my way slowly up the stairs, moving cautiously. There could be a gunman around any corner. In fact, there was a man sprawled across the top five steps, but he was dead, taken out by one shot from Jack’s gun.

  I felt something slam into my arm as I stepped over the body. Another gunman was in a squat at the end of the hallway. I fired twice, both misses. I moved carefully, aware that Joss had joined me. I hadn’t wanted her to come inside; I’d asked her to stay in the surveillance van with David, but she’d insisted. She was in a vest, as the rest of us were, but that didn’t make me feel any better. She had a baby to get home to; I was going to make damn sure she did.

  We turned the corner at the end of the hall and found ourselves staring at an empty corridor with closed doors on either side. Any number of combatants could be hiding behind those doors. We moved slowly, one person at a time. David was in my ear again.

  “Four bodies in the back room on the left. The child is in the first door on the right.”

  I gestured for Joss to get the child. We had no idea why there was a child in the house, but we needed to get him or her out of the way before things got too crazy.

  I proceeded down the hallway. Before I’d gone more than half the length, gunfire erupted from
further down and around a blind corner. I crouched low, trying to make as small a target of myself as possible. I glanced back just in time to see Joss slip down the stairs with a little girl in a pink nightgown. She couldn’t have been more than three or four.

  “Get the fuck out of my house!” a voice called from around the corner.

  “We’re with the police. We have reason to believe there’s a kidnapped woman in this house.”

  “Liar! You’re Ash Grayson. You think we didn’t know you were coming?”

  “Then why weren’t you waiting for us downstairs?”

  I came around the corner just in time to see someone duck into the room David had indicated to me. I stood and ran in quick, silent steps, stopping just outside the door. I waited, then turned, busting the door open with one good kick. The man I’d seen was on the floor, blood coming from a wound in his chest. I must not have missed when I fired at him earlier.

  Three more men were scattered around the room, each with a gun that pointed at me. But no one fired.

  “I’d put them down before anyone else gets hurt.”

  It was a tense moment. I waited, fairly confident that no one would fire. Even though it seemed as though they had the advantage—four guns to one rifle—I was an expert marksman. And I had a vest on. I’d take out at least two of them before they could get me down. I watched them calculate their odds. The guy on the floor raised his gun and I took him out with one well-placed shot.

  “Put them down!”

  I couldn’t help the sigh of relief when they did.

  I gathered the guns and handed out zip ties.

  “Where’s the girl? Where’s Mina?”

  They weren’t talking.

  “Come on, guys. It’ll go better for you if you just tell me.”

  Two of the men exchanged looks. One stared down at his own hands while the other met my eye.

  “Andre took her to the basement.”

  “Who’s Andre?”

  Another exchange of looks. I didn’t like the way that looked.

  I touched the button on my Bluetooth. “Four in the back bedroom.”

  Then I went in search of Mina. And she’d better be in one piece, or this Andre would find himself much worse off than his counterparts.

  Chapter 38

  Mina

  I heard the commotion upstairs when Ash and the others burst through the front door. I closed my eyes and began to count just as David had taught me. I could hear footsteps, running. There were gunshots, too. I tried not to let the sounds disrupt my concentration. I had a job to do, and I was determined to do it.

  “What did you do?”

  I opened my eyes. Dimitri was moving around the room like an insane man. He had a gun in his hand, but each time there was a noise upstairs, he looked up, this expression on his face that made me wonder if he was about to lose his mind. Surely he’s been in a spot like this before. Why did he seem so panicked?

  “What was in the knife?”

  “What makes you think there was anything in the knife?”

  “It was the only thing you had with you when they picked you up. Was there a bug in it? A tracking device?”

  I pinched the tiny piece of electronics between my thumb and forefinger, trying to remember where I’d been in my countdown.

  “What was it?”

  He came over, resting his hands on my wrists as he bent close to me. “What did you do, Mina?”

  “I made sure you’d never touch my baby.”

  His eyes narrowed. His raised his hand as if he was going to hit me. Instead, he pushed away from me and went to the table, snatching up a box cutter.

  “We’ll see how much your boyfriend loves you.”

  He cut my restraints, the one that was still attached to me and the one I’d stuffed my fingers through so that it would look like it was still restraining me. Then he grabbed me up, dragged me up against the length of his body and pushed me toward the door.

  Just a few more minutes. I could hold out just a few more minutes.

  We went up the stairs and into the kitchen. I tripped over my own feet a couple of times, but he kept me upright. He was damn strong, something I should have known but barely remembered. It’s funny how the terrible fades until you almost fool yourself into thinking it wasn’t all that bad. And then you remember just how bad it really was.

  My heart was pounding. I heard more gunfire upstairs.

  A man was lying on the kitchen table, perfectly still. There was a wound in his belly that looked like it was still oozing blood. But I didn’t think the guy was going to make it. He was really pale.

  Then we were moving into the living room. Dimitri had the gun out in front of him. We ran into a man in black—I didn’t recognize him. I’d been so afraid it would be Donovan or Kirkland. Or, God forbid, Ash. But it wasn’t. Dimitri shot him in the head, and the man fell to the floor like a ton of bricks.

  I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

  A few more minutes. I just had to wait.

  We moved through the living room. There were bodies, men lying on the floor with wounds in their legs, their arms. Some were zip tied. Others were unconscious. Or dead. I searched their faces. Some I knew. Some I didn’t. Most were Dimitri’s people. A few weren’t.

  “We’re going out the back door,” he hissed next to my ear. “If we make it, maybe I’ll consider letting you go. After you get my son for me.”

  “Never.”

  He pressed the gun to the side of my head, and my heart stopped. I was going to die. I knew I was going to die. I closed my eyes and lost my footing again, causing us to tumble forward together. Dimitri cursed as he braced himself. We fell hard, my air knocked completely out of my chest.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  He got to his feet quite gracefully, but the gun.

  The gun was under my body.

  I went for it. He realized at the same instant I moved what I was doing. He grabbed my arm and tried to pull my hand away, but my fingers touched the cold steal just a split second before he did. I forced my body to relax. He tugged my arm out, and I pulled the trigger.

  I will never forget the stunned look on his face as he realized what had just happened.

  Then he fell.

  I slid back away from him, the warmth of his blood somehow shocking to my overwrought mind as it splattered over my face, my hands. I scooted on my butt, moving as far from him as possible. And then I remembered.

  I smashed the tiny bug. An instant later, an explosion rocked the house.

  Chapter 39

  Ash

  I felt the vibration of the explosion, as I made my way down the back stairs.

  “Mina,” I whispered.

  “She did good,” Donovan said in my ear. “The charge did exactly what it was supposed to do. If anyone was in the garage, they aren’t going anywhere now.”

  They’d planned it all out. Didn’t bother to tell me until we were on the way to the house.

  “We knew they’d pick her up in a van. The garage and the vehicles are the things we can really control. If anyone gets in there and tries to drive off…we’ll get them.”

  “You had Mina plant explosives in the van?”

  “You know it was the best way to cut off their escape.”

  “But if she sets it off too soon. Or too late…”

  “She knows what to do,” David said. “I explained it to her.”

  “You’re on your own now,” David said in my ear now. “She had to destroy my eyes when she set it off.”

  “Where is she?”

  “The living room.”

  I ran the final few steps, only slowing when I reached the bottom step. She was cowering against the back door, staring at her hands. They were covered in blood, and it only took me a second to figure out why.

  Avdonin was lying on the floor with a sizeable hole in the center of his chest.

  She killed him.

  I rushed across the room. A big mistake. A gun fired behind me, ca
tching me in the center of my back. The blow pushed me forward, but I managed to catch myself. I turned and a man, a blond man, stood just inside the archway coming from the kitchen, his gun trained on me. He was injured, his arm charred as if he’d been caught in some terrible fire.

  “It’s over,” I said.

  “It’s not over. Not until you’re dead.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  He lifted his gun. I fired my rifle, the round smashing into his shoulder, pushing him backward. He fired, but his round went wild. Then Mina spoke, rising slowly to her feet. I moved in front of her as the blond put her in his sights.

  “Dimitri’s dead, Andre. It’s over.”

  The man’s wild eyes moved from her to the body on the floor.

  “It’s never over. We’re too many. We’re too fucking smart for this bullshit.” He stared at her, something like awe in his eyes. “How did you do it? This house…no one knew. The records, the bills, none of it was connected to us. How did you know?”

  And then the awe left his eyes. He fell, his forehead exploding.

  Kirkland was behind him, his gun raised.

  It was over. I lowered my gun and heard another shot, this one coming from the stairwell. One of the fools from upstairs, his hands still in the zip tie. He’d found another gun, and he was charging at us.

  I rushed him, knocking him down just as he fired his gun again. I heard a cry and fear exploded in my head. Mina…all I could think about was Mina.

  Chapter 40

  Mina

  I woke in the hospital. The last thing I remembered was Andre’s head exploding. Then…nothing.

  Ash. I remembered Ash. I remembered fear. I remembered the look on Dimitri’s face as he died.

  I shivered, and warm, strong arms came around me.

  “Ash?”

  “I’m here, babe.”

  I turned into him without opening my eyes, tears already streaming down my face.

  “I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you from the beginning. I should have told you everything the moment I saw you. Should have told you why—”

  “Shh,” he said, running his hand slowly down the back of my head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”