by Elle James
The men waited just inside the bedroom door. Creed paused beside Emma’s bed and opened the drawer he’d seen her pull lace underwear and a foil-packed condom from. While he rifled through, pulling out silky, lacy, skimpy underwear one by one, he slipped his other hand beneath her pillow, his body blocking his hand and arm. He purposely dropped bright, red lace panties on the floor. When the men’s gazes followed the underwear, Creed grabbed the HK380 Emma kept hidden beneath and tucked it into the back of his jeans.
Macias and his men watched the lacy underwear, completely unaware of Creed’s other find.
Once he had the gun hidden beneath his shirt, he squatted lower. “I know it’s in here.” He pulled out another pair of panties, lifted the sock out of his boot, palmed it and shoved his hand deep into the remaining lingerie. “Ah, there it is.” He withdrew his hand and dangled the sock in front of Phillip. “Just like I said.”
Macias snatched for the sock. “Give them to me.”
Creed jerked it out of his reach. “The man wanted me to deliver the diamonds, and you were to come with me. I suggest we go along with his wishes. You’ll get what you came for, and I’ll get Emma.”
Macias’s lip curled back. “I should have killed you.”
“Yeah, well, now you can’t without jeopardizing your trade, can you?” Creed straightened, aware of the hard metal digging into his back. His shirt and the leather jacket he wore covered it, but all it would take was for one of Macias’s men to bump into him, and he’d be caught. He glanced at his watch. “We have exactly twenty minutes to get to the rendezvous point. I hope you know where it is. I get the feeling Walters doesn’t like it when people are late.”
Creed left through the door they’d used to enter and hurried to take his seat in the back of the SUV. He’d stalled all he could and hoped it was enough. One HK380 wasn’t nearly enough firepower to take out an army of terrorists.
* * *
Emma blinked her eyes open to a splitting headache and one eye swelling enough to impair her vision. Her wrists were still zip-tied, but Randy had cut the ties binding her legs so that she could walk inside the empty fish processing plant. A single battery-powered lantern, sitting on what appeared to be a metal case perched on top of a large crate, cast a soft yellow glow in a wide circle in the middle of the room. The place still smelled of fish, though it appeared to have been closed for years, with lacy spider webs filling every corner and a layer of dust covering the horizontal surfaces.
Movement at the door drew her attention. A man turned toward the light. He carried an assault rifle and extra thirty-round magazines tucked into a utility belt around his waist.
Randy stood at a grimy window, staring out.
Emma forced words out of her dry throat and cracked lips. “He’s not coming.”
“Shut up.” Randy remained with his back to her.
“He doesn’t care about me like that. He wouldn’t risk his life to save mine.”
“The man shacked up with you. He’ll be here.”
“Just because a man slept with me doesn’t mean he loves me. Look at you.” She pushed to her feet, working the zip tie she’d damaged while still confined to the trunk of his car. It had to have been compromised. If she wiggled it enough, surely it would break. With only two men in the warehouse, she could figure a way out of this nightmare.
Randy glanced over his shoulder, a sneer lifting his lip on one side. “I only slept with you to get the money I needed.”
“The money you needed to buy the uranium?” Emma nodded toward the metal case. “Is that it? Is that the uranium you’re willing to sell to a terrorist?”
“What do you know? You’re just a dumb nurse from a small town. You were nothing but a means to an end.”
“Maybe so. But I learned from the best liar there was not to trust people.” She nodded toward the window. “I learned what it felt like to be in over my head. And let me tell you. You’re in way over your head with Phillip Macias. He’s an extremist with an army of fanatics at his disposal.”
“Shut up.” Randy turned toward her, pointing a forty-five caliber pistol at her. “I know what I’m doing. Just shut the hell up, or I’ll gag you.” He glanced back out the window, keeping his gun pointed in her general direction.
“Did you use the hospital’s money to buy the uranium?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“It was my business when my former fiancé, whom I’d recommended to the board, stole the money. The least you can do is tell me what you did with it.”
“Yes! I bought the uranium. Are you happy? Now shut up.”
“You realize they’re going to use the uranium to make dirty bombs and blow up Los Angeles and Seattle?”
“I’m not stupid.” He snorted. “I plan to be on the other side of the ocean when they attack.”
“And all the people they kill, the men, women and small children...don’t you feel the least bit sorry for them?”
“There are too many people in this world as it is. As a graduate of the foster care system, I know firsthand. People throw their kids away. They’re better off dead.”
“You were one of them. Do you think you would have been better off dead?”
“Hell, yes! Then I wouldn’t have been beaten by my own mother, farmed out to abusive foster parents, bullied by other kids in the so-called system and forced to run away when I was fourteen to escape it. Fourteen, on my own, on the street. Who cared about me? No one. Not a single damn soul. Why should I care about anyone else but me? They’re better off dead.”
Emma’s heart went out to the kid no one wanted, but she couldn’t discard the ones who still had a chance at a future. “I’m sorry you had a tough childhood, Randy. But taking it out on others won’t make it better.”
“I don’t care what happens to the others. I’m taking my diamonds, and I’m going to sell them a little at a time and live on an island paradise where I can do anything I want, have anything I want by just snapping my fingers.” He snapped his fingers as if to prove his point.
“Those diamonds won’t buy happiness, Randy. It’s not too late to stop this.”
“Emma, you talk too much. Shut up!” He pointed the pistol at her feet and fired, kicking up a puff of dust.
Emma flinched but didn’t back off. “You’re not as hard-hearted as you let on.”
“I killed your dog, and you can say that?” He laughed. “You loved that dog more than you ever loved me.”
Emma swallowed the lump in her throat, forcing back the image of Moby lying on the side of the road, hurt, lost and looking to her to make things right. She wanted to bring harm to Randy for what he’d done to Moby, but so many people’s lives were on the line. She couldn’t think only of herself and Moby.
“You don’t have to do this. There’s still time to turn yourself in. Cut a deal with the feds to hand over Macias. You’ll be a hero.”
“Bullshit. I’d go straight to jail, I would not pass go, I would not collect two hundred dollars. I’ve been there. I won’t go back. Ever.”
“Randy, it’s not too late—”
“Enough! It is too late, anyway. They’re here.” He crossed to the suitcase, moved the lantern to the floor beside it, opened it and clicked a few buttons, the electronic beeping the only noise Emma could hear in the room.
“What are you doing?” she asked, a bad feeling filling her gut.
Randy grinned. “Protecting myself and my investment.”
Chapter 15
When Philip Macias’s two SUVs pulled into what appeared to be a deserted warehouse on a remote road south of Cape Churn, Creed stiffened, a hundred scenarios roiling through his head. At least he still had Emma’s pistol. Macias’s bodyguards hadn’t frisked him or knocked it loose from where it was snugly tucked into the back of his jeans.
Creed suspected, between Walters and Macias, they planned on killing the witnesses. That would be Emma and himself. They’d be considered loose ends. And Macias would give the kill order for Tazer and Nova as soon as the trade took place.
He wouldn’t put it past Macias to kill Walters, as well.
Phillip climbed down from the SUV, pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket and waited for the driver to round the side of the SUV and provide cover for him before he moved forward. The two men in the backseat with Creed got out, one of them jerking Creed with him.
“I’m getting out. I don’t need help doing it,” he muttered, praying the gun wouldn’t dislodge and fall on the ground at his feet. He scooted across the backseat, climbed out as quickly as he could and performed a quick scan of the surrounding area.
Armed guards stood at each corner of the building, semiautomatic weapons aimed at Phillip and his nine men. There had to be more. Walters had gone to a lot of trouble to make this trade; he had to know Phillip Macias would come with enough firepower to insure he got what he came for and possibly leave no witnesses, as was his usual way of doing business.
“Walters!” Phillip called out. “I have your diamonds.”
The door to the warehouse opened and another armed man stepped out, followed by a man Creed recognized from the picture he’d seen hanging on Emma’s refrigerator of her and Walters with the bright red X drawn through Walter’s image.
“Where is Emma?” Creed demanded.
“Ah, you must be the man who’d shacked up with her to get to the diamonds. You’re not much different from me.” He reached inside the door and yanked Emma out to stand in front of him, pointing a nine-millimeter pistol at her temple.
Her wrists were bound in front of her, and her right eye was swollen almost shut. “You shouldn’t have come,” she said through split lips.
Anger boiled up inside Creed, and he fought not to charge across the cracked pavement of the parking lot and choke the man with his bare hands.
Phillip strode forward, his bodyguards moving with him. “I came here to make a deal, not argue over women. Where is it?”
“Show me the diamonds,” Walters said. “And I’ll show you the uranium.”
Phillip handed the velvet bag over to one of his men who walked it across to where Walters stood. His guard stepped in front of him, his weapon pointed at Macias’s man. Macias’s man held out the bag, and Walters’s man took it.
“Open it.” Randy trained his pistol on Phillip.
The man slung his gun over his shoulder and emptied the bag into his palm.
Randy stared at the diamonds, his eyes widening, then narrowing. “That’s only about half of them. Where are the rest?”
Phillip nodded toward Creed. “The girl’s boyfriend has them.”
“I want all the diamonds, or you don’t get the uranium.”
Creed fished the sock full of diamonds from his pocket and held them up. “Let the girl go, and I’ll give you the diamonds.”
Randy laughed. “You must think you have leverage in this situation.”
Creed grabbed the sock from the other end. “Let her go, or I scatter the diamonds everywhere.”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic.” Walters glanced at his watch, then turned to Macias. “You have exactly five minutes to give me all my diamonds, or the deal’s off.”
Phillip’s eyes narrowed. “What’s to stop me from shooting you and your men and taking the diamonds and the uranium?”
Walters shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He glanced at his watch again. “Four minutes, thirty seconds.”
“Or what?”
“I helped you out a bit by assembling the dirty bomb for you, complete with a timer set to go off in—” he looked at his watch “—four minutes.”
Phillip gasped “Are you insane?”
Walters shrugged. “How else was I going to get out of this alive? Your reputation precedes you, and I wasn’t going to be the next moron to fall to your ruthless negotiation methods. All you have to do is give me the diamonds.” He looked from Phillip to Creed. “All of them. I’ll leave and, when I’m well out of range of your bullets, I’ll text the code you can use to stop the timer.”
“How do we know you’re not lying?” Creed asked, his gut churning at how this mission could potentially end.
“I saw him set the timer,” Emma said, her tone flat, the rest of her face pale beneath the dark purple shiner.
“Three minutes, thirty,” Randy said. “It takes time to get out of the parking lot and to text back. I suggest you make a decision now.”
Phillip pointed his pistol at Creed. “Give him the damn diamonds.”
Creed saw no other option. If the bomb went off, they’d all be dead, and probably all of the people in Cape Churn, too. “Let Emma go.”
“You don’t have the choice. Give me the diamonds,” Randy said.
“Give him the diamonds!” Phillip fired a shot at Creed’s feet.
Creed had stalled all he could. His team wouldn’t make it there in time to save them. If he didn’t give the diamonds over and let Walters go, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
“Okay, take them.” Creed slung the sock full of diamonds in the air like a slow-pitch softball, aiming for the guard beside Walters.
As the guard reached for the diamonds, shots were fired from the darkness of the fog. The guard reaching for the diamonds jerked backward, slamming into the wall of the warehouse. The sock full of diamonds plopped against the concrete, unclaimed.
Four of the men who’d come with Phillip collapsed where they stood, two lying still, unmoving, one clutching his chest, moaning, the other trying to lift a shattered right arm and failing to raise his gun to fire back. The two men beside Phillip jerked backward, hit the SUV and slid to the ground.
Creed dropped to the ground, low-crawled to the front of one of the SUVs, yanked the gun from the back of his jeans, aimed the HK380 at the shins of two of Phillip’s men and fired twice, hitting both men. They went down, screaming and clutching their legs. Not knowing how many rounds he had left, he rolled over and pointed his weapon at Randy Walters.
The man wasn’t there, and neither was Emma. The door to the warehouse slammed shut with the two of them inside with an unexploded bomb.
“Cover me!” Creed yelled to his team, scrambled to his feet and ran for the door.
A bullet winged past his head as he reached for the knob, turned it and threw himself inside, tumbling to the side and rolling up onto his feet behind a stack of pallets.
A shot rang out, hitting the concrete bricks over Creed’s head, spitting concrete down over his head.
“Two minutes until the bomb goes off. Are you willing to sacrifice thousands of lives?”
Creed’s eyes adjusted to the limited lighting provided by a single lantern in the middle of the room. It sat beside a silver metal suitcase he assumed contained the bomb.
Movement on the other side of the lantern alerted him to Walter’s whereabouts.
“Give it up, Walters. You won’t get out alive,” Creed warned.
“If that’s the case, we all die.” The man laughed. “And you won’t need Emma.”
“Let her go, disable the bomb, and I promise I’ll get you out of here alive.”
“I want my diamonds,” Walters insisted.
“Fine. I’ll get you out of here with the diamonds,” Creed said.
“How can I trust you?” Walters asked.
“You have the word of a navy SEAL.”
The man snorted. “And that’s supposed to reassure me?”
“Let Emma go and take me as your hostage. I’ll help you get out.” Creed held up his hand with the gun. “I’ll throw down my weapon as soon as you let her go.”
Walters had Emma firmly in front of him, her body blocking any good shot Creed could take. “Throw it down first, and I’ll let her go.”
“Don’t do it, Creed, he’s going to shoot you,” Emma cried out.
“I told you to shut up!” Walters hit Emma across the temple with the butt of his gun. Emma collapsed against him, her head lolling to the side, giving Creed a clean shot at Walters.
Creed aimed the little HK380. The pistol didn’t have enough power to slam the man backward. His hand steady, Creed prayed he wouldn’t hit Emma, and he squeezed the trigger.
Walters screamed, dropped his hold on Emma and fell to the ground.
Creed scrambled across the floor toward Emma. She lay on the fringe of the lantern’s glow, her body still, her eyes closed. He felt for a pulse, found it and breathed a short-lived sigh of relief.
“Creed! Look out for Macias!” A voice shouted from outside.
Someone dove through the door and rolled to his feet into the shadows.
Creed figured they didn’t have much time left before the bomb exploded. Even if they got out of the building and drove away as fast as they could, the bomb would blow them all away and everyone in Cape Churn with them.
Creed grabbed the nine-millimeter pistol Walters had dropped, left Emma lying on the floor, figuring she was better off low to the ground, and moved back into the shadows. Using every ounce of stealth training he’d learned during his stint as a navy SEAL, he stepped carefully, laying his feet down so quietly, he could only hear his heart thumping inside his chest.
A scuffling sound came from his right. He turned, aimed his weapon at the sound and waited for a silhouette to materialize.
Like an apparition disengaging from one shadow to move and blend into another, Macias slipped sideways. Creed squeezed the trigger. The weapon kicked harder than the HK380, but Creed’s hand held steady.