Strike Force

by Beth Rhodes

  “Be careful, iubire.”

  She tensed in his arms for a fraction of a second, confusion at his use of the Romanian endearment clear in her eyes. Love washed away confusion, and she threw her arms around his neck. He kissed her lightly and set her down.

  He didn’t want to let her go back. “You better go.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised, watching her tug the hat back over her head as she nodded.

  “I think I love you, Malcolm.” And she was gone, disappearing around the corner.

  He grinned, wishing he’d kissed her one last time.

  ***

  She had the gold piece when she got back to Dimitru’s place later. She set it on the front table, on the black velvet runner he’d meticulously laid out. A spotlight was already shining down, center stage, so to speak. Out of a weird spiteful vibe, and on second thought, she picked the little box up and moved it off to the side.

  The conversation she’d had with the guild’s president hadn’t lasted long, and he’d handed off the valuable as if it didn’t matter a whit to him.

  For the niece of my good friend Albert, anything.

  She’d made sure he would report it to the police. A stolen artifact was definitely something amiss, and she couldn’t have Dimitru suspecting she’d gotten it without stealing. By the time the eleven o’clock news aired, word would be out the gold piece worth twelve thousand dollars was stolen.

  And she would be the primary suspect.

  And her loyalty, her willingness to take one for the team, would be proven.

  Up the stairs, she found Uncle Bert, sitting in bed, legs crossed in front of him, and she smiled as she entered. “Well, you are doing better, aren’t you?”

  “I’m still feeling too tired. But yes. A change of clothes would be nice.”

  “Let me check the wound.” Marie lifted the shirt so she could get to the shoulder, and pulled back the tape and gauze. “It looks too red, Uncle Bert.”

  “It’s going to be fine, Marie.”

  On the back side, the wound looked worse, but even there, it wasn’t bleeding anymore. And he was sitting up, apparently in only a little bit of pain. Well enough to be short with her.

  “I’ll see what I can do about clothes. Hopefully—”

  He squeezed her hand and shook his head, looking at her intently. His warning came through, and she silently reprimanded herself for being so careless as to talk as if no one would hear.

  Someone could be listening, watching.

  She sighed. “Hopefully, I can manage a trip to Macy’s later today. There’s so much to do before a wedding, right? A dress? I’ll get you something while I’m there.”

  “You’re going to go through with it?”

  “And why not? It’s what I’ve always wanted. A chance to use my skills, improve them, and make a living.”

  Uncle Bert frowned.

  “You don’t look pleased. Isn’t this what you always said? You want me to be happy?” She bit at her lip and shrugged. Pretty sure she failed miserably at sounding chipper, she sat on the bed. “Unfortunately, I’m going to be a complete failure at being a wife,” she said, the sentiment heartfelt.

  When Malcolm declared she wouldn’t marry Dimitru—when he’d gone alpha and possessive—she’d seen in him what she felt inside herself. She wanted him, and he wanted her. And she’d never felt more certain she and Malcolm were going to be together for a long time to come.

  “You’ll be richer than Midas, dear. Making up for your failure as a wife?”

  “I can hope.” She smirked at him. He played along with her, knew her thoughts, because he’d raised her. Her heart squeezed. She couldn’t lose him.

  “I need to find Di—Vladimir,” she said, correcting herself to the familiar. If, by some chance, he was listening, he’d want to hear it that way. She got up. The first part of this charade was over. Time to initiate part two.

  “You’ve been like a daughter to me,” he said. “I want you to know—”

  “Stop.” She turned back as tears threatened. “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to”—get out of here—“be fine. Vladimir is going to take care of us.”

  She backed toward the door, not able to break his gaze. It stung. It reminded her of her mother. Her eyes. She thought of her mother often. But she didn’t see her, not like she was seeing her in Uncle Bert’s eyes right this minute.

  He nodded and settled back down as if the exchange had worn him out.

  Marie made her way to Dimitru’s wing and her temporary quarters. Even though she was sorely tempted to stop there and hide out until the FBI came in, she knew she had to play her part, pretend she knew nothing.

  The besotted fool? The greedy whore?

  What the hell was she in this role?

  The lying and conning part of being a thief she’d never done well. Her uncle was good at the con. She preferred going in under the cover of darkness.

  Her thoughts went to the women and then to the drugs. Jiminy Cricket, this guy had balls. She bit at her thumbnail as uncertainty settled beside the anger. She hated the feeling she was being played.

  Did he know of her duplicity? Had she really fooled him?

  It didn’t seem possible.

  “There you are.”

  Marie sucked in a breath and turned. God, she hadn’t heard him approach. So close he could touch her face, he tilted her chin up. “What bothers you? I will fix it.”

  “I don’t know. Melancholy?” Marie patted his chest. “I have acquired the gold. We should plan for next week. And would you mind calling your doctor friend back in?”

  “At this time of night?”

  She looked at her watch. Already after five p.m. “Yes. You have the resources, and if not you, then I do.”

  His eyes lit with intensity and amusement, and creepy-ass desire. He liked when she made demands.

  Her hands shook, and she clasped them at her waist.

  “I will see what I can do.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead. A cold shiver raced down her spine.

  “Until then, why don’t you go eat? Perhaps we will spend the evening getting to know each other a little better. And you can tell me about your plans for this heist on the East Coast. Yes?”

  “Doctor first.”

  This time when his eyes lit, it was with a temper. His hand, so gentle a moment ago, gripped her ponytail and pulled it. “Be careful of this confidence.”

  With false bravado, she said, “Let me go.”

  He trailed the back of his fingers down her neck, drew a line to the slope of her breast, and cupped her. “You’re a small thing, but you’ll do.”

  She smacked his hand away and stepped back. “Hey,” she said, channeling Malcolm’s rage, wanting to spit in Dimitru’s eye. “Don’t—”

  “Ah-ah,” he said in a way she’d only ever heard from a villain in movies. “A marriage for gold and powers beyond your imagination. You want it…or do you?”

  The line of speculation stopped her from backing up, and she drew up against him and peered up. “I’ll get that gold if it’s the last thing I do. Don’t doubt it.”

  When satisfaction lit on his face, she turned and walked away, ignoring the quake of fear rippling through her.

  Chapter Thirty

  Marie woke with a jerk and sat straight up.

  2342 hours.

  The sound of a wail—distant yet distinct—echoed out of the vent next to her bed. She frowned, shook of the last of her sleep, and slid from under the covers. She hadn’t bothered changing out of her black clothes from yesterday’s trip. So she slid her black boots on and tied her hair into bun at the back of her head.

  With a hand on the doorknob, she hesitated. Guard duty? The dogs? Gregory?

  “But you’re marrying the guy,” she said under her breath. “And there’s always the bathroom as an excuse.”

  She made her way to the kitchen. The house was huge, but the ventilation system
was old enough to allow those awful sounds to drift through the house. Creepy.

  Across the kitchen, through another hallway, she came to a halt when the sounds stopped, and Marie looked around. Ahead was an exterior door, utilitarian, steel, with a push bar for opening it. What was she going to do? What would she find?

  Marie slipped out, throwing her bathroom excuse out the window, and held the door as it closed behind her. The back of the house looked more like a warehouse with its loading dock and trash bins. She stayed against the wall in the little alcove. A truck sat off to her left, near the end of the cement platform, and two voices drifted in from the drive. A guard doing rounds. She waited, heard a set of footsteps moving in the opposite direction, and then waited a little more as silence filled the cold air.

  She moved into the open space and skirted the lit area behind the truck, the one with drugs. What would the FBI do with that bit of information? All along they’d been tracking women. Did the women even exist?

  The dark stain on the cement caught her eye. She couldn’t stop the flinch, or the memory that speared through her mind.

  And it made her even more determined. Dimitru had to be stopped.

  After looking behind her, Marie got to the end of the loading dock and found a door back inside. She tried it, and it slipped open.

  The sound of the latch clicking shut at her back sent a shiver down her spine. She was on thin ice and knew it, but something had shifted inside of her when that woman died, when she’d finally been able to look Malcolm in the eye and say, “I love you.”

  I think I love you. It was close.

  When her eyes had adjusted to the dark corridor, she went down a short flight of stairs to another hallway and three more doors. One had a security keypad on it, like the ones upstairs, only this one was lit, as if in use. Had Dimitru activated his security measures?

  Marie stood on tiptoes and peered through the square glass.

  Women. Two guards. She ducked when one moved, turning toward the door. The women. Here already? Dimitru had gotten a shipment of women into his house…

  His house.

  “Holy—”

  She had to call Hawk. Had to get her team in here. Fuck FBI timing.

  The door clicked and started moving open. Marie quickly stepped into the next doorway down and slowly let her breath out as two men exited.

  “There’s a gas station down the road a bit. Grab a bag of chips, too.” One of the guys nudged his partner.

  Marie watched their backs as the door slowly began to close. She looked around for something, anything to shove in the way of the door.

  “Grab your own damn chips.”

  “But you’re going.”

  “Give me money this time, then.”

  Their voices grew louder as the conversation heated.

  “Damn it, Darrell. Don’t be such a jerk.”

  The door clicked closed.

  The sound of shoving faded and the men disappeared out onto the loading docks.

  Marie went back to the door and took another look through the glass. There must be fifteen, twenty women. Dirty, weary, scared.

  Marie slipped out and made her way back through the kitchen, grabbing two bottles of water before she made her way up to Uncle Bert’s room. Even though the main security system was down, she saw her guards and heard the dogs’ claws clacking on hard floors.

  One stood outside her uncle’s door. She nodded to him as she passed by and slipped through, shutting the door with a thud behind her. She rested her head against the door.

  “What is it, niece?”

  She shook her head as feelings coursed through her—triumph, fear…mostly fear. “I need the phone,” she said. “I have to call Hawk.”

  She handed off a water bottle to her uncle, noting he really did look better tonight. His cheeks were ruddy and his eyes were clear. He sat up before he reached for the phone, and it stopped her, made her eyes tingle with tears. She’d thought he was dead, and then seeing him when she arrived, she was sure he wasn’t going to make it.

  Now, she thought maybe they’d have a chance if they needed to run—

  “Futu-i!”

  “Now you sound like Malcolm.”

  His eyes were wide when he looked over at her. “It’s gone.”

  Her stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

  Marie climbed up on the bed, reached down against the wall, and swept her hand along the floor. Nothing. She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the shadowed crevice of the underside of the bed. “Shit.”

  The door opened, and she froze.

  His presence was at her back, radiating waves of temper. “You never should have gotten nosy, my dear.”

  She rose, unwilling to take anything he gave her on her knees.

  Dimitru was surrounded by henchmen, and one of them reached over and flipped the switch. The light struck her pupils, blinding her.

  He tossed something to her, and it dropped at her feet.

  The phone.

  His approach sent fear through every muscle of her body. On his last step, he landed a heel on the phone, crushing it with his heavy boots.

  She winced.

  “But you were never here to join forces, were you?”

  “I want the gold. That’s all.”

  He backhanded her, the crack to her cheek jarring her brain and knocking her back into the chair in the corner.

  “You lie.” He turned to her uncle.

  “What are you doing?” Alarm sent her pulse racing. But anger was also a powerful force, which smothered her fear. “Don’t touch him.”

  “I want the armband, now.”

  “It’s not enough, is it?” she said. “You can’t kill me because you need to marry me. But you want to… You don’t want to share, do you? Your plans for ultimate power come at a price.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps the old legends have been twisted.”

  “Or perhaps you are twisting them now,” she said, the fear turning into something much colder.

  He grabbed her face, no gentle touch this time, and his fingers dug into her jaw. “You’ll come with me now and we will go to the armband.” He shoved her toward the doorway.

  “What about my uncle?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Wha—”

  A shot went off.

  “No.” Marie turned, only to find Dimitru blocking her way. “Get out of my way.” Anger clawed at her, and she kicked and twisted. He held her tightly, too tightly, and her strength left her.

  Dimitru dragged her down the hall. “Walk, scorpie.”

  She tried to get her feet under her, but it was as if her legs had stopped listening. She fought, even as she was screaming inside, to form a thought, to find a way out. Grabbing the railing at the top of the steps, she jerked Dimitru to a stop. “I will go back to my uncle.” Her words sounded too demanding, even to herself. Fucking Romanian princess. What was she doing? Poking the beast?

  The anger had shoved her over the line of reasonability.

  “You don’t make the demands anymore,” he said flatly. “Which is a shame, if you must know. You do make them so well. Makes me want to fuck—”

  “Don’t you use that word.” She seethed with hatred, her fists clenched.

  She was being ridiculous. She knew it. But the word had become his, Malcolm’s and had become something to look forward to, something that brought a smile or gave comfort. She wouldn’t—

  “Feeling prudish all of a sudden?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to kill you myself.”

  This time his fist knocked her against the wall, and she crumpled, struggling to stay conscious. He pulled her off the floor with those bruising hands. She’d barely got her feet under her when they were moving.

  She shook off the fog as he dragged her back to the front door. “Get the car,” he said to Gregory. To another man who stood back in the shadows, he said, “Call Sorenson to come get the women— No. Don’t call. Drive over
there, give him a message.” Dimitru glanced at her. “Your friend is smart, yes? Perhaps he’s got the place bugged.” He looked her up and down. “Yes. I imagine he wouldn’t have let you go as easily as you’ve wanted me to believe. Fool me”—he lifted a perfectly shaped brow—“once.”

  He laughed, his eyes lighting up with some kind of messed-up amusement.

  He gripped her neck. His fingers found her vulnerable point, like an expert.

  The black closed in, almost painlessly.

  And then, in the last second, she felt the prick of a syringe plunged into her arm.

  Shit, she thought, as the world disappeared.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “She’s on the move.” Malcolm stood in front of his computer, tense like a stretched rubber band taken almost to the breaking point. He rolled his shoulders up and back. “Like, in a car, on their way out of town.”

  “Give it a minute,” Hawk said. “Let’s see what direction they take.”

  But a minute felt like an eternity. “I say we go in.”

  “The FBI is working the human trafficking. They’ve got their men down at the river.”

  “Then get the fucking DEA in there,” Malcolm said. “Screw the FBI, Hawk. Something isn’t right. She said as much yesterday. The drugs? Hell, she said she loved me, and that, in itself, is fucking uncharacteristic.”

  Stacy stared at him and then smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  He shook his head. He should have seen it right away. “I know her. It was uncharacteristic.” But she could hate his fucking guts and he’d have to save her, have to get to her, anyway.

  Stacy turned to the computer. “Look. They’re headed west.”

  “Shit, the armband. Once he has the armband, he’ll kill her.”

  Hawk was already moving and speaking into his comm unit, gathering the team back in. “Stacy, Jamie, and I are meeting up with Graham and a representative from the DEA at Dimitru’s estate. Malcolm, go with John and Emily, Craig, and Bobby. I’m getting the FBI on the line. Back each other up.”

  “Yes, sir.” They watched out for each other, FBI or no FBI.

  The Transit van had their usual surveillance equipment along one wall, door at the back and one at the side. Malcolm’s rear rested on more of a pedestal than a chair in the back of the van, and Craig sat in the corner off to Malcolm’s left.