by Tee O'Fallon
Yeah, it did.
“None of it matters if I can’t find her.” Or if she’s dead. “Check in with me in an hour.”
“Will do,” Dom said.
“Gotta go.” Gray ended the call and braked at an intersection jammed with pedestrians. He hit the car’s air horn and people scattered. He blew past the Empire State Building and kept heading east. Time was running out, and something bugged the hell out of him. He still didn’t understand why the Pyramid grabbed Alex. She would do anything to protect Nicky, and the Pyramid knew that. Kidnapping Nicky to force Alex to work for them made sense, but what value was she to them if she couldn’t access police information? Did they plan to kill her all along after she handed over the bogus documents?
No. There had to be another reason. The Pyramid hadn’t tried to kill the janitor who planted the bugs in his and Dom’s office phones. Ironically, the Pyramid seemed to possess a sense of honor. If you paid your debt to them, they left you alone. Even though the bugs had been discovered, the janitor had fulfilled his debt.
Alex, likewise, had fulfilled her debt the minute she handed over the documents. While the documents didn’t reveal anything critical, the Pyramid wouldn’t know that until they reviewed the papers. Based on witness statements, it didn’t seem like they stopped to read them before grabbing Alex.
So what else could she give them? She had no precinct access cards on her, Gray made sure of that, so the Pyramid would have no easy access to infiltrate—
Dammit. Alex worked at the precinct for ten months, plenty of time to acquire knowledge about access and egress doors, security, magnetometers, all part of One PP’s security system. There was no way she would give them that information willingly.
Unless they tortured her.
Gray clamped his hands around the steering wheel to keep from bashing in the window. Horrific visions of Alex in pain at the hands of these psychos lit up his blood. If anything happened to her—if she was no longer in his life—he’d be a shell of a human being. Hell, since the moment she’d been kidnapped he was already spiraling headfirst into the gutter, and he knew why.
He wasn’t just crazy about her…he was falling in love with her.
Gray gunned the car up the street, silently swearing to hunt down every last member of the Pyramid all the way to whoever called the shots. There would be no place in the world they could hide.
Not when he was on a death hunt.
Chapter Eighteen
“Do not doubt that I will shoot you if you try to run.” Fatima pressed the barrel of the gun against Alex’s forehead. She flinched, but Fatima only jammed the gun harder against her skull. Alex squeezed her eyes shut and wondered if she would feel the bullet entering her brain, or if she would feel nothing at all. “Look at these blueprints.”
Alex shook her head. Her insides screamed in agony.
She loved Nicky more than anything in the world, but giving the Pyramid information that would undoubtedly result in the deaths of countless others was not something she could do.
I’ll die before helping these assholes.
“Look at them!” Fatima shoved the handgun into the waistband beneath her sweater. “Pick up that pencil and mark down every entrance to the precinct where armed officers are stationed, and every magnetometer for public access. Make note of how many officers are present at all times and where.”
Again, Alex shook her head. Fatima grabbed the pencil resting on the blueprints and shoved it into Alex’s hands. When she refused to grip the pencil, Fatima clenched Alex’s fingers around it so hard they hurt. “Do it or you will pay the price. The decision is yours.”
Alex clenched her jaw. She wanted nothing more than to tackle Fatima again. Instead, she threw the pencil across the room. For a moment, Fatima stared at her. Then a slow, evil smile turned up her lips. She pulled a cell phone from her pocket and began typing. When she was finished she put the phone back into her pocket. “There, it is done.”
Alex narrowed her eyes. “What’s done?”
Dull thumping from a helicopter flying low over the building filtered through the steady hum of the gas heater. Fatima turned to Abdullah, who was already wiping dirt off a windowpane with the heel of his hand.
“Well?” Fatima shouted.
“A helicopter is hovering near the building.” Abdullah paused as the sound of the chopper grew louder, closer. “It is a police helicopter.”
Fatima said something under her breath in Farsi that Alex couldn’t understand, then began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at the window. “How could they have found—?” She stopped short, staring at Alex, then sized her up from head to toe. Her lips pressed together and her nostrils flared. She stalked over then grabbed Alex’s shirt and ripped it open. She yanked the locator from Alex’s bra and threw it to the floor, stomping it with her boot heel. “You idiot!” She advanced on Abdullah and smacked him on the face with the back of her hand.
The bitch sure likes hitting people.
Even beneath his dark skin tone, Abdullah’s face turned red. He clenched his fists at his sides, not seeing what Alex saw—Fatima reaching behind her sweater where she’d stashed the gun. Before Abdullah could react, Fatima whipped out the gun and fired. Alex flinched at the loud crack that reverberated inside the barn. A small hole in Abdullah’s forehead oozed blood. His eyes were wide, shocked, as he crumpled to the floor.
Fatima turned and walked calmly toward Alex, the gun pointed at the floor. She stopped in front of Alex’s chair. The woman’s face was a blank mask. She began tapping the weapon against her thigh. Then she raised her arm and cracked Alex in the side of the head with the butt of the gun.
Pain splintered in every direction from the blow.
Alex fell off the chair and slammed into the floor. Her shoulder hit first, then her head. She clenched her teeth, willing the pain to dissipate. It didn’t.
Her skull was on fire. Her teeth hurt. Her jaw hurt. When she opened her eyes, all she saw were flashes of light.
The next thing she heard was a tearing sound. Duct tape. Then Fatima gripped her ankles, pulling her legs together. Alex tried kicking out, but Fatima easily bound her legs together with the tape.
“A bullet in the brain is too good for you,” Fatima spat. “Of all my marks, you have been the biggest pain in the ass. You deserve to suffer.”
Through the haze of pain blurring her vision, Alex watched in horror as Fatima grabbed one of the red metal cans and began dousing the wooden boxes and bales of hay lined against the wall. The pungent smell of gasoline burned her nose and throat.
She tried pulling her wrists apart, struggling to free herself from the binding tape, yet knew it was useless.
Alex rolled and twisted her body, trying to rise to her hands and knees. She sucked in heavy breaths. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Laughter echoed from across the room, and she caught sight of Fatima grinning in her direction.
The woman emptied another can of gasoline onto several bales of hay. She rolled up the blueprints and shoved one end through the heater’s grating where they instantly caught fire. She dragged the flaming blueprints over the gasoline-soaked boxes and hay lining all four walls of the barn. “No,” Alex gasped, her eyes already tearing from smoke. “Please, don’t do this.”
Flames began shooting up the walls. Again, Alex struggled uselessly against the tape binding her arms and legs. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
In seconds the smoke was so thick she could barely see. It billowed all around her, burning her eyes and lungs.
She jerked her head left and right, up and down, searching for something, anything. A way out.
But there was none.
Moaning came to Alex’s ears, and she realized it was coming from her own mouth.
Gunshots rang out. Alex screamed, fully expecting her body to be on the receiving end. Through the smoke she saw the laptop on the table, shot to hell. Fatima was destroying all the evidence. The laptop, the blueprints…
Her.
As the flames engulfed the room, Fatima ran toward the door, disappearing in a haze of smoke. Alex couldn’t see but heard the door slam shut, followed by the distinct clicking of a lock.
She was alone, left to die.
Alex started to cough, her lungs filling with gasoline vapors and smoke. Again she tried pulling at her bonds, frantically twisting her wrists to loosen the tape. Her fingers contacted the table leg and something else.
The thumb drive.
She closed her fingers around it and shoved it down into the tiny space between her wrists and the duct tape. A silly act given that she, along with everything else in the warehouse, was about to be burned to a crisp.
All around her, the fire roared louder. Her eyes and lungs burned, and every breath she took was labored and smoke-filled. Coughing, she got to her knees and began crawling, dragging herself along the floor on her forearms. But she had no idea where the door was.
My God, I’m going to die here. Gray, where are you?
At least the smoke would kill her before the flames burned the skin off her bones. Tears streamed down her face.
“Nicky, I love you,” she whispered. “Gray, I’m so, so sorry…I love you, too.”
…
Gray pounded on the horn. The taxi still didn’t budge from where it was illegally double-parked, blocking his path. He hit the lights and siren and the taxi hauled ass.
At this point, he’d lost track of how long he’d been driving or how many miles he’d covered. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Three o’clock. Alex had been missing for nearly three hours.
Every patrol car in the city was on the lookout for her, but only he and four other ground units in Manhattan were equipped with receivers tuned to the frequency of Alex’s locator.
They’d systematically searched east and west, and north and south along the island’s busy streets without hearing a single beep. Another dozen or so units were scanning the streets in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, plus the three choppers on loan for this operation. Every police department in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had been notified of the kidnapping and a BOLO had been issued for the entire country.
Gray knew everything humanly possible was being done to find Alex, but if she was outside the city boroughs it would be as difficult as identifying a specific grain of sand in the desert. She could be anywhere. With the locator’s weak transmission, even if she was in one of the boroughs, it was still a long shot they’d ever get a signal.
Knowing the answer, Gray cued up the mic anyway. “All units come back if you’ve got anything.” As expected, the radio remained silent.
Exhausted as he was, he vowed to drive every street in the city, Long Island, then into New Jersey, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and Delaware if had to. Sleep would be impossible until Alex was safely at home.
Nicky.
He hoped to hell that he wouldn’t have to make good on his promise to find Nicky a new home. In that moment, he knew he could never hand Nicky over to anyone. He’d adopt the boy himself.
Don’t think that. It won’t happen. I will find her.
Gray called Cassie’s cell phone, relieved when she answered. “Sis.” His voice nearly choked. He struggled to say the words. “The bastards grabbed Alex. She’s missing.”
“I know.” The concern in Cassie’s voice came through over the phone. “Dom called me. He thought you would be too busy organizing the search.”
“Which is abso-fucking-lutely going nowhere,” he shouted, then took a deep breath. His sister was only trying to be supportive. “Sorry. For the first time in my career, I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re doing everything you can, and you know it. You’re blaming yourself. Aren’t you?”
He exhaled a frustrated breath. “If only I’d believed her sooner I could have made a better case to IA on her behalf so she didn’t feel pushed into this.”
“That wasn’t your place, Gray. I know how much you care about her.”
“Yeah, I—”
A crackle on the radio caught his attention. “Cass, I gotta go.”
“Intel Forty-six, Chopper Four. We got a hit in the north Bronx, but the signal just died. Location is an old barn. Looks to be abandoned.” The pilot gave the address. “Standby.”
The hell with standing by. Gray slammed on the gas, nearly rear-ending a taxi. He braked then veered to the left and shot toward the West Side Drive uptown to the Bronx.
“Smoke is coming from the building vent pipes, and…we can see flames inside.” The chopper pilot paused. “Dispatch, notify FDNY.”
When the dispatcher complied with the chopper’s request, Gray cued up the mic. “Dom, you get that?”
“On my way,” came Dom’s voice.
“Chopper Four, any movement in or outside the building?” Gray asked, surprised at the calmness in his tone. Adrenaline surged through his veins, and he cursed the building rush-hour traffic blocking his way.
Shooting to the left lane, he hit the lights and sirens, clearing a path uptown. “Move, move, move!” he shouted to no one who could actually hear him.
He blasted past the on-ramp to the George Washington Bridge, still heading north to the Bronx. Traffic was lighter north of the bridge, and Gray pushed the gas pedal to the floor. As he neared his exit, he slowed to keep from flipping the sedan in the sharply curved off-ramp. Once on local roads, traffic lights and residential drivers forced him to ease up on the gas.
“Negative,” the chopper’s pilot finally responded. “Fire’s building fast.”
“Any more hits on the locator?” Gray held his breath, knowing Alex could already be dead.
“Negative. We’re gonna have to get outta here. Smoke’s getting thick. With the shifting wind this old barn could fully ignite any second.”
No, she can’t be in there! But she is. Or, at least, the locator is.
Behind him, Gray heard and saw the first responding fire engines. He slowed at the next red light for oncoming vehicles. Seeing none, he blasted through the intersection. A wisp of smoke trailed overhead. He made the last turn and his heart stopped. The entire exterior of the barn was about to be engulfed in flames. Smoke spewed from every crack. Orange flames flickered behind windows.
Marked units began pouring in from all side streets, blocking off the area. Gray stomped on the gas and drove right up to the side of the barn. He bolted from the car.
“Detective,” a uniformed cop yelled. “Wait. That place is gonna go up any second.”
Ignoring him, Gray tore across the sidewalk and hauled ass up the short, rickety wood stairway along the side of the barn. When he flung open the door, smoke blasted him in the face, filling his nostrils.
Behind him, fire trucks screeched to a halt. Gray barreled through the door into a dark corridor. He coughed as the smoke began clogging his lungs.
An inner door slammed. Pounding feet. Coughing.
Not his.
A woman materialized from the grayness. She raised her arm and pointed a gun at him. Gray drew his weapon, diving for the floor. A gunshot blasted, so close he felt the whir over his head. He fired three times in rapid succession.
A heavy thud sounded through the smoky hallway. Still on his belly, Gray outstretched his arms, preparing to fire again if necessary.
Crouching low, he moved forward. A woman lay on the floor, a gun gripped in her half-open hand. Her eyes were open, unseeing. Three holes marked her chest. He grabbed her gun and stuffed it into his waistband.
A muffled scream came from somewhere inside the barn.
Alex.
Gray pounded down the hall to the next door. He grabbed the latch and pushed against the door with his shoulder. It didn’t budge. He slammed his body against it again and again.
“Alex,” he shouted, “get away from the door and stay on the floor.” He hoped to hell that she heard him because the only way he was getting in was by destroying the lock. He aimed and began shooting up the wood
surrounding the door’s lock. When he emptied the gun’s magazine, he kicked at the door. It gave slightly, cracking, but still wouldn’t open.
Gray ejected the empty magazine and inserted a fully loaded one. He racked in a round then emptied the second magazine into the lock. He kicked at the door again and it swung open. Thick smoke billowed into the hallway. Visibility was down to a few inches.
Gray covered his face with his arm, coughing. With every inhalation, his lungs burned.
Flames licked up the wall, the only thing providing any light. He hit the floor low, crawling on his hands and knees, still gripping his gun. “Alex! Call out if you can hear me.”
Inching forward, he searched the floor, extending his arms in every direction to cover more ground. The butt of his gun bumped against something soft. A body.
For a moment, his heart stilled.
He felt the body with his free hand.
A man’s body.
A bullet hole identified cause of death. He swallowed hard, relieved at the realization this was not Alex.
Gray crept along the floor, which was hot beneath his hands and beginning to burn his knees straight through his pants. Sweat poured off his face and down his arms. All around him, the fire roared like a freight train.
The barrel of his gun bumped against something. A table. To his immediate left, someone coughed, although the sound was muted.
“Alex!” he shouted. “Call out!”
“…here,” she cried.
She’s alive.
But where?
He spun in every direction, trying to get a bead on her location, seeing nothing. “Where are you?” he shouted.
“Under the floor.” She coughed. “Root cellar.”
Gray holstered his gun and ran his hands along the floor to feel for what he couldn’t see. His right hand made contact with something metal and hot.
A ring.
He yanked on it, burning his hand, and pulled up the piece of wood covering the root cellar. He could barely see Alex huddled below him on the cellar’s dirt floor.