by Debra Webb
Dakota kept his head hanging down. After they’d finished playing, Byrd’s associates had dragged him to the critical decision unit and dumped him into a chair. He’d only been semiconscious for part of the journey. Even now he felt somewhat disconnected and lethargic but he was aware of the goings-on in the room. The longer he could keep that knowledge to himself, the longer it would be before he was secured.
“I gave him a few volts to keep him manageable. He’ll live.”
Bastard, Dakota spat out silently. A few volts. Yeah, right.
Truth was, the jerk was right about the last. Dakota had been through those “management” sessions plenty of times when he’d been a resident of this hellhole. And he’d lived.
“Move him to the examining table and secure him.”
Hands grabbed Dakota and hauled him to his feet. He lolled his head, relaxed his body completely, leaving his weight to drag against their efforts.
Pounding on the door almost made Dakota flinch.
“Dr. Byrd, there’s an emergency that requires your attention.”
This voice was new. Dakota listened as he was heaved onto the examining table.
“I am not to be disturbed,” Byrd snarled at the newcomer. “I’m certain you can handle any problems with the patients. Now get out.”
“Sir, it’s—”
“Damn you, Byrd, what have you done?”
Another new voice. This one mad as hell. Dakota fought the urge to open his eyes. The two tasked with his security had apparently stopped to watch the show. Maybe he was about to get a lucky break.
“What’re you talking about?” Byrd demanded.
“She’s missing,” the newest one to arrive said. “Victoria is not in her room.”
Dakota resisted the urge to smile. Lucky had done it. She’d found her boss and made a run for it. Damn, he was impressed. He hadn’t been sure she’d had it in her. Any time now Keaton would breach the compound and drive both Lucky and the head of the Colby Agency out of here. Good. Mission accomplished.
“That’s impossible,” Byrd roared.
“Find her or our deal is off. And you know what that means. I will destroy you.”
Silence thickened in the air.
“Come,” Byrd said. “You stay with him.”
The rush of footsteps combined with the fading angry demands of the man who’d announced Victoria was missing proved too much for Dakota to ignore. He had to take the chance and look.
Only one member of security remained in the room with him. The guy shut the door. Dakota closed his eyes and waited for his approach.
The guard straightened Dakota’s right arm and prepared to fasten the strap around his wrist.
Dakota made his move. He came up with his left fist, connecting solidly with the man’s jaw. The guard stumbled back. Dakota jumped to his feet and plowed into the guy, ramming him against the wall.
They tumbled to the floor in a heap of plunging fists and butting heads. Dakota took a blow to the jaw and got his head banged against the floor, but he managed to head-butt the guy’s nose. That gave him the upper hand for a split second. It was all the time Dakota needed. He pinned him to the floor and manacled his hand before he snagged his weapon. Dakota pressed his forearm against the guy’s throat.
The guard flailed, held out longer than Dakota had expected. But eventually he surrendered to the lack of oxygen. Dakota let up on his throat rather than finishing him off. All he needed was him unconscious.
Dakota relieved him of his high-tech walkie-talkie. While he was at it he grabbed the guy’s badge in case he needed it for getting through a door. He checked the corridor and headed for the exit. The research rooms and critical decision unit were behind a set of security doors marked Authorized Personnel Only. Once through those doors he could be at the tunnel in three minutes flat.
He hesitated at an intersection of corridors. Two nurses were seated at the desk. Dakota waited long enough to confirm that the two were deep enough in conversation for him to move. He made the move and headed for the exit doors that stood between him and getting out of here. If he was damned lucky no one would be on the other side.
He swiped the badge’s magnetic strip across the scanner and the doors opened.
The corridor was empty. Evidently all of security was attempting to track down Victoria Colby-Camp.
The walkie-talkie crackled. He held it close to his ear and listened. The gate guards were calling in a security breach. A blue pickup had just crashed through the gates, escaping the compound.
Lucky and her boss were out of here.
Dakota shook his head. The lady had definitely proven a hell of a lot more resourceful and stronger than he’d first concluded.
More squawking on the walkie-talkie warned Dakota that his escape had been discovered and that security had been sent after the escapees in the blue truck. The next warning made him smile. The male escapee, Gage Eaton, was now suspected to be driving the truck; he was armed and dangerous.
Eaton…the name Dakota had been born to.
He clenched his jaw and kicked the echo of history from his brain.
He would never be that pathetic person again.
The final stretch of corridor lay between him and the door to freedom.
Then it opened.
Dakota halted dead in his tracks. He palmed the weapon he’d borrowed from the guard. Then he saw the person who’d opened it.
“Malone?” What the hell?
She jumped, clutched at her chest. Then she flung herself at him. Her arms went around his neck. “Oh, God, I was afraid you were dead!”
Dakota stiffened. “I’m fine.”
“Thank God,” she muttered into his chest. “I was so worried.”
He couldn’t help himself. His arms went around her. “It’s okay.” What the hell was he doing? They didn’t have time for this.
She abruptly drew back and looked up at him. “How did you get away?”
“Never mind that,” he snapped, pulling free of her touch. She made him want things he never expected to want again. “Why aren’t you with Victoria?” Malone wasn’t supposed to be here. Getting out was going to be tough enough without his having to worry about her.
“Never mind that,” she smart-mouthed, using his own words against him. “How do we get out of here?”
For sure they weren’t getting out right now. Security would be crawling all over the place.
He grabbed her hand. “We have to lay low until the heat settles.”
“Why can’t we—”
She didn’t get to finish. He hauled her back through the door she’d just exited.
He considered their limited options. Heating and cooling units, industrial-sized laundry equipment.
There was just one place they might be safe.
He lugged her over to the row of carts filled with soiled linens. He emptied a cart. “Climb in.”
Still obviously confused, she didn’t argue. Once she was in the cart, he moved some of the dirty laundry to the next cart. Then he climbed in with her and pulled the rest of the laundry into the cart with them.
“We need to be buried.”
“Better to be buried with cotton than dirt,” she muttered as she helped him to pull the sheets and towels over them.
“Now we wait.”
She sighed. “How long do we have to wait?”
“Until we have another option.”
The more time that passed with Byrd’s people unable to locate their prey, the more lax the security would become. Eventually someone would decide that Dakota had indeed escaped in his truck along with Victoria Colby-Camp and an unidentified perpetrator. Then he and Malone could make a run for it.
Except that wouldn’t stop Byrd.
Fury heated in Dakota’s veins. He wasn’t leaving this time without putting a stop to the madman’s so-called research. Last time Dakota had been a kid. Saving himself had been his only priority.
Not this time.
“They hur
t you.”
Malone’s statement dragged him back to the immediate situation. They’d had no choice but to cram and curl their bodies into this thing. She’d faced the back of the cart while he had snuggled up behind her. Until she’d spoken he had been able to ignore the way her bottom felt nestled against him.
His brain and body homed in on the wrong details, like how firm yet soft her body felt, the way her heat seeped into him. Still, he managed to say, “What about you?”
“The uniform kept me out of trouble.”
“Good.”
She wasn’t finished with her questions. He felt the tension in her body.
“What you did,” she began softly, “kept me safe and gave me the opportunity to save my boss.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry you had to go through…this.”
He didn’t need her sympathy. What he needed was to get the hell out of here and she had complicated that strategy. “You were supposed to leave with your boss. What went wrong?”
“Nothing went wrong.”
She was annoyed now. Her body had stiffened as if being this close to him made her all the angrier.
He pressed the issue. “If nothing went wrong, why are you here?” He didn’t need her going soft.
“I came back for you,” she said tightly. “Your contact was just going to leave you here. Someone had to rescue you.”
He laughed a low, hollow sound. “You believed I needed rescuing? I was on my way out when you got in the way.”
Malone attempted to put some distance between them. It didn’t work. “You told me what they did to you before. I didn’t want that to happen again.”
He opened his mouth to say something sarcastic and cutting but all he managed was, “Too late.”
She didn’t say anything to that. Good. He didn’t need her sympathy or her misguided heroics.
“I know how that feels.”
Why didn’t she just give it a rest? He needed to focus on the current situation. Listen for the enemy.
“My father beat me and my mother every time he got frustrated at work or ticked off at one of his drinking buddies.”
She said the words so softly that he’d had to huddle closer to hear. He didn’t want to listen but couldn’t help himself.
“All those years.” She let go a heavy breath. “She never once tried to stop him or tried to run away. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t fight back. If not for herself, for me. What kind of mother doesn’t at least try to protect her child?”
When she got old enough she protected herself. He hadn’t known the details but he’d read about the shooting when he’d ran a check on her. Hearing those details, Dakota’s respect for Malone deepened despite his best efforts not to feel anything at all. That usually wasn’t a problem for him.
“One day I’d had enough,” she continued, her voice distant and barely audible. “So I got that shotgun he liked to scare us with and I shot him dead.” She made a soft sound, almost a laugh. “Funny thing was, everyone thought I did it for my mother. The local newspaper called me a hero for saving my mother from a drunken abuser. Truth was, I was saving myself. I wasn’t going to let that no-good piece of dirt hit me ever again.”
Dakota had been there, too. Only, when he fought back his mother had sent him here. Looked like he and Malone were two of a kind. Hell of a thing to have in common.
There were comforting words he could have said to her after such a painful confession. But he couldn’t stop rolling over the idea of just how differently they had turned out. Similar childhood tragedies. No one to count on but themselves. Yet they were as different as day and night now. He’d seen firsthand the extremes Malone was willing to go to for her boss. She’d worried about her colleagues at the Colby Agency. She genuinely cared about others. Dakota had lost that. He hadn’t cared about anybody in a long, long time.
Maybe he no longer knew how. He was seriously damaged.
He mentally shook it off. Didn’t matter. If he got her out of here alive that would be good enough.
He wasn’t a hero.
Not the way she was.
He inhaled the fruity smell of her hair. She was something. He smiled in spite of himself. Maybe Lucky Malone hadn’t ever been very lucky but she more than made up for it in determination and bravery.
Maybe they were more alike than he first thought.
Chapter Seventeen
3:48 a.m.
Lucas had questioned Maggie James until she’d broken down in tears. He’d known he was getting soft when guilt had driven him not only to comfort her but to apologize. She was an innocent in this catastrophe.
He’d pushed her too far. For nothing. Keaton had left her place around 2:00 a.m. How he’d gotten away without Jim or Lucas catching him was another indication that Lucas was not at the top of his game these days. Retirement had made him soft and slow. Jim had been distracted with updates from Simon and Ian.
He and Jim had driven back to the brownstone that served as the Equalizers headquarters and gone inside. Keaton hadn’t bothered to have the locks changed. Jim still carried a key. Technically it was still breaking and entering but they didn’t care.
“He’s cautious,” Jim commented when a second search of Keaton’s office turned up nothing in the way of personal information.
“And smart,” Lucas admitted though it galled him to say so. “Whatever he’s up to, he’s gone to great lengths to cover his tracks.”
Uncertainty haunted Lucas once more. What if he were wasting time? Victoria and Lucky were out there. There still had been no ransom demand or contact whatsoever from the bastard responsible for their disappearance. So far the Colby Agency had found nothing. Nothing.
Not once in thirty tears with the military and then the CIA had Lucas ever hit a brick wall like this.
“I know what you’re thinking, Lucas.”
He turned to his stepson. Jim had leaned against Keaton’s desk. “We have nothing,” he said, his voice tight with an unfamiliar emotion. Fear.
Lucas shook his head. “We have to be missing something.” When a perp plans and then executes a move,” Jim went on, his own voice weighted with worry, “typically there’s a demand or contact of some sort. At the very least there’s chatter out there. But this guy—” he glanced around the office that had once been his “—if it is this guy, has kept his plans to himself. No bragging. No coordinating the strategy. Nothing. It’s impossible to track down clues when none are left behind.”
As correct as Jim’s assessment might be, it didn’t change the fact that they had nothing. More than eighteen hours missing and they had not one lead.
Lucas was about to say as much when his cell vibrated. Adrenaline shot through his veins. His gaze met Jim’s expectant one as he answered.
“Byrd Institute,” Ian Michaels, a second in command at the Colby Agency, announced. “We tracked down the ambulance driver who was called to transport a patient to the institute from the clinic where Victoria disappeared.”
Lucas passed this info on to Jim. Then to Ian he said, “The driver wasn’t aware the clinic was closed for renovations?”
“He was not. He assumed the call was legit.”
The pause that followed trapped like a rock in Lucas’s craw. “Did he identify the patient as Victoria?”
“Yes.”
“Jim and I are on our way. I’ll download the route on my phone.” Lucas wasn’t wasting another second. There were many questions to which he wanted answers but those would have to wait.
“Simon and I are already en route.” He provided the address and quickest route from Lucas’s location.
Lucas motioned to Jim. “We’re right behind you.”
“There’s one other thing.”
Lucas stopped cold at the grave sound of Ian’s voice.
“Miss Malone was not with Victoria.”
Dear God. That could mean only one thing.
Like the agency’s driver and the others at that gruesome scene, Lucky was dead.
&nbs
p; THE TRUCK STOPPED ABRUPTLY.
Victoria winced. Despite the cramped quarters she’d bumped her head. She wished she could move. Her entire body ached.
The driver’s door slammed shut. Tension trembled through her as the truck shifted. The driver was climbing into the bed of the truck. She assumed it was the driver. Would it be Lucas or Jim? Anticipation lit in her belly. Thank God they had found her. And Lucky. Victoria smiled. She had gone above and beyond the call of duty. Thank God she hadn’t been hurt. Wait. Victoria fought to clear her groggy mind. The drug they’d given her wasn’t wearing off nearly quickly enough.
Lucky had gone back in. They could waste no time returning to that awful place to save her. And her friend Garrett. Who was this Garrett? How had Lucky come upon his help?
The door to the hidden compartment opened. Victoria blinked rapidly in an attempt to force her eyes to adjust and make out what she saw. A dim glow backlit the man leaning over her. Recognition nagged at her. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t see him that well.
“Victoria, we have to move quickly.” He reached out his hand to assist her.
“Who are you?”
“Once you’re out of danger, I’ll explain all you need to know.”
Part of her wanted to hesitate. Who was this man? But she was no fool. She accepted his hand and allowed him to help her out of the constricted hiding place.
They were in a room…no, a garage. Small, nothing like the massive one Lucky had led her to. “Where are we?”
He kept her balanced as she stepped down to the concrete floor. She quickly checked her hospital gown to ensure it was fully closed.
“This way.”
He guided her outside, then closed the garage door. The garage was connected to a small yellow ranch-style house. Another vehicle, a dark SUV, sat to the side of the gravel drive. When he hit the remote, the SUV’s interior lights flashed as the doors unlocked. He opened the passenger-side door and assisted her into the seat.
As Victoria fastened her seat belt, she watched him climb behind the wheel and start the engine. She studied what she could see of his face until the interior light faded to darkness.
“Keaton.” That was where she’d seen him. With Maggie James at the restaurant that night.