Her dark eyes bugged, but she nodded. He released her, and she scrambled to pick up the first ringing phone. She spoke in French again but he knew by her tone she was obeying him. Even as her hands shook, her voice was steady, her tone upbeat and reassuring. Keeping one eye on her, he stepped over to the window to check outside. The rest of his team had arrived, and they appeared to be rounding up some more hostages. He’d have to find out who fired those shots and put their whole operation at risk—
The fire alarm screamed. The hostages wailed. Kennion glanced around like he’d been struck by a sudden-onset case of dementia and the whole situation confused him.
Holy fuck. Could anything else go wrong? The receptionist must have triggered it somehow. Briggs swung toward the desk, but caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned back toward the center of the room in time to glimpse a big blond guy in a New Orleans Saints T-shirt scoop Tiffany up from where she still lay on the floor.
Dr. Claire Oliver’s bodyguard.
Briggs lifted his weapon and fired. It was a wild shot, but he was pretty sure it had made contact. The bodyguard didn’t even flinch and kept right on running like he hadn’t just taken a bullet and wasn’t carrying 150 pounds of nearly-dead weight. Tough bastard.
Head pounding from the shriek of the alarm, Briggs took a step to go after him, but the hostages surged forward like they were going to make a run for it and Kennion was doing jack shit to stop them. He swung around, aimed his rifle at the ceiling, and let a stream of bullets drill into one of the wood beams arcing overhead. Splinters rained down, and the hostages fell back, subdued again.
He pointed at the receptionist. “Shut that fucking alarm off!”
Chapter Sixteen
Trinity Sands Resort
Main Building
4th Floor
At first, Connor thought the rat-ta-tat-tat sound was from the TV. Last thing he remembered before drifting to sleep was Jeremiah Wolfe browsing the channels, looking for something to watch. He had apparently decided on an action movie because the sound of gunfire was loud enough to rattle his bed.
But then Connor opened his eyes. The room was dark. No blue glow from the TV, but still the muffled rattle of an automatic weapon. Disoriented, still not sure he was fully awake, he stared up at the ceiling above his bed.
Who was shooting? Was anyone? Or was he imagining it? Maybe it was leftover from his dreams. Though he couldn’t exactly remember what he’d been dreaming about, it was totally possible after the week he’d had that he’d been dreaming of a war zone.
Rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-ta-tat.
The fire alarm wailed, its shriek piercing the dark.
Wolfe bolted upright, knocking his pillows to the floor between their beds as he did. “What the…? Is that the fire alarm? Shit!” He rolled out of bed, heavy limbs flailing. The guy was all solid muscle, almost the exact opposite of Connor, but he seemed to have the same problem coordinating his body. Instead of the ungainly giraffe Connor was always compared to, he was more like a bumbling bear cub.
Wolfe grabbed his pants and boots from the floor. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” Connor scrambled to his feet. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes and only needed his boots. He was on his way to the door a step behind Wolfe.
“We need to find your dad,” Wolfe said and pulled the door open.
Holy shit.
Dad!
Wolfe was right. They had to find him.
Emergency lights strobed in the hallway. The other recruits spilled from their rooms in various states of undress, but Connor ignored them and beelined for his dad’s room. He pounded on the door.
No response. Where was he?
Wolfe’s large hand closed around his shoulder. “We have to get outside.”
“Not without Dad!” His voice cracked, sounding more child than adult, but he didn’t care. He tried pounding again, but Wolfe pulled him around.
“Hey. He’s not here.”
“He has to be!” Panic rose up, fast and hard, nearly choking him. His hands started to shake and he balled them at his sides.
Wolfe tightened his grip on his shoulders. “Man, listen. I’ve been training under your dad for a couple months. He’s smart. He’s tough. If he’s not here, he’s probably already outside directing people to safety and tending to wounds. You’ll see. He’ll be taking care of people. It’s what he does, and he’s damn good at it.”
But why wouldn’t he come get me first? The question stuck in Connor’s throat and brought a coating of bitterness to his tongue. Stupid. He knew why. His dad had a savior complex when it came to strangers, but kept friends and family at arm’s length. And double that arm’s length for his son. He’d never wanted the responsibility of fatherhood. Why would he start caring about his son now when there were other people to be saved?
Fine. Whatever. It wasn’t like he was pining for his father’s love anyway. He’d save his own skin, just like he always had.
The fire alarm stopped just as suddenly as it had started. Everyone froze and looked at each other.
This couldn’t be good.
Connor turned away from the door and shouldered through the crowd, making his way toward the stairs. Fire alarm or no, he was getting out.
Just as he reached for the push-bar, the door flung open and Jean-Luc staggered from the stairwell, followed by several other people who looked like they’d been through a war zone. They carried a bleeding woman in a sheet. Jean-Luc’s shirt was covered with blood, but whether it was his or someone else’s was anyone’s guess. The moment the final person cleared the doorway, he threw his body weight against the metal door. “Find something to block this with!”
“What about the fire?” someone asked. “We can’t stay here!”
Connor didn’t hesitate. He’d already figured out there was no fire. He glanced around, spotted a table and chair set-up by the elevator banks down the hall and started toward it. “Wolfe!”
Wolfe must have had the same idea, because the guy was already one step ahead of him.
“Yeah. Good thinking,” Jean-Luc called after them. “We need to block all the exits and jam the elevator. We’re going to hold this floor until help arrives.”
“But what’s happening?” Schumacher asked and was ignored. He looked sleepy and pissed off and not the least bit frightened. The bastard.
Connor wished he could say the same about himself, but his heart was trying to surge up out of his throat. Still he kept moving. He and Wolfe flipped up the long side table that sat against the wall across from the elevator bank and broke off the legs with several well-placed kicks. Jean-Luc grabbed one of the legs, while another recruit—Samira Blackwood—jammed the stairway door at the other end of the hall with another leg. Two other recruits dragged one of the heavy chairs over to jam against Jean-Luc’s door, while Wolfe muscled the other chair over to help fortify Sami’s door.
While they all worked, Connor considered the problem of the elevators. The easiest way to jam them was to call them and push the emergency stop button when they arrived. He didn’t know how smart that would be, though. Someone, somewhere in the hotel had automatic weapons, and judging by all the blood on Jean-Luc, they weren’t afraid to use them.
So no calling them. But, like everything else, elevators were computerized nowadays. And Sami Blackwood had been working with Harvard to learn how to hack.
Connor grabbed Sami’s arm as she passed. “Can you hack the elevators?”
She looked at the doors and a line of concentration formed between her sculpted brows. “Yeah, but I’d need Harvard’s computer. Mine won’t cut it.”
“What floor is he on?”
Sami pointed down. “Third.”
Connor considered the doors again, but shook off the idea taking one down a floor. Harvard might have gotten out of the building. Or he could be dead. But they still had to stop the elevators somehow, and Connor could think of only one way to do it. He jabbed the call bu
tton and held his breath as he waited for the ding announcing the car’s arrival. The doors slid open…
Empty.
He released his breath, darted inside, and hit the emergency stop button. Then he reached to hit the button again to call the second car.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, kid!” Jean-Luc plowed through the crowd and tried to swat his hand away from the down button, but was too late. “Merde! Your pa’s gonna kill me.”
“We have to stop the elevators or else blocking the doors won’t do much good,” Connor explained, trying to sound reasonable despite the terror riding him hard.
Jean-Luc positioned himself between Connor and the still-closed elevator doors. In his hand was a wicked looking blade already dripping with blood. “And they say I’m reckless.”
“I had to.”
“Not saying otherwise, but—” The second set of doors slid open and Jean-Luc readied the knife, but sheathed it when he saw the car was also empty. He exhaled hard, walked inside, and pushed the emergency stop. “Good call,” he conceded finally as he dug around in the pocket of his bloodstained shorts. “But no more risks like that. I need to keep you breathing.”
He found his phone and cursed in a long string of Cajun French at the spider web of cracks across the blank screen. It wouldn’t power on. “Anyone have a working phone?” he called to the group.
“I do,” Sami said and disappeared inside the room she’d had to herself. She returned a few seconds later with her phone and slapped it into Jean-Luc’s waiting hand. “I should’ve saved everyone’s numbers before we left the training facility. I didn’t think—”
“No worries, cher.” He tapped the side of his head with one hand while he dialed with the other. “Photographic memory.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“What can I say? It’s a gift and a curse.” He raised the phone and waited through the rings. “Jess, call me back at this number when you get this message. I have your boy. He’s safe. All of the recruits are also present and counted for, plus a handful of civilians, one critically injured. We’ve barricaded on the fourth floor. Christ, Jess, where are you? Could really use some ideas on how to get us out of this clusterfuck right about now.”
Chapter Seventeen
Holy fucking chaos.
The bad guys’ reinforcements arrived in force and started shooting into the crowd. People panicked and stampeded.
Lanie helped Marcus and Danny guide some of the terrified guests as far as the playground, where Seth and Ian still waited. She’d just passed off a woman with a dislocated arm to Seth, when a lone shot from the hotel had her whipping around. A long, lean figure tumbled from the third floor. She knew that body, had been admiring it quite thoroughly only an hour ago.
Jesse.
No!
The scream lodged in her throat and she had to swallow hard to find a semblance of her voice. “Get the wounded back to my cabana,” she told Seth. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The bad guys had come in hard and fast and had managed to round up some of the guests who had scattered when the shooting started. Bad for those guests, but lucky for her since keeping them from fleeing now occupied the Tangos’ full attention. At least, she hoped it did. Or else what she was about to do might end up getting her killed.
She darted across an open expanse of lush green lawn, taking the direct route to where she’d seen Jesse fall, rather than trying to find cover around the edges. She made it across without anybody shooting at her, which was encouraging. A peek over her shoulder showed the bad guys were indeed otherwise occupied, corralling their hostages into the lobby.
“Jesse?” She didn’t dare call out above a whisper. There could be more Tangos she hadn’t seen yet. “Oh, Jesse, please answer me. Where are you?”
He should have fallen somewhere in this area, but she saw no indication he had. No broken body, no blood on the paved path under her feet. She looked up at the third floor, calculated. If he’d managed to throw himself out, rather than just fall…
She spun and stared at the palms lining the path.
…then he’d have landed in the trees.
“Jesse?” She ducked under one of the low-hanging fronds, and there he was, lying in a pile of fronds he must have dragged down with him. He bled from a gash over his eyebrow, but otherwise looked intact. He was conscious, and pushed himself up to his hands and knees when she knelt down beside him.
“You okay, cowboy?” The question came out light and airy, like she didn’t doubt for one second that he was fine, and she was proud of herself for that. Because, holy shit, she was jumping with panic inside. All she wanted to do was wrap her arms around him and press her ear to his chest so she knew for sure his heart still beat.
Blood poured into his left eye from the wound on his head, and he tried to blink it away. Didn’t work, so he raised a badly scraped hand to swipe the blood from his face. “Think so,” he mumbled. Then winced. “Right ankle’s fucked. Might be broken.”
She tried to push him back when he made to stand. “Wait, no. Let me see.”
He shook his head. “No time. Gotta get you to safety.”
Despite everything, she snorted a laugh. “Get me to safety? I’m not the one who just fell three stories.”
He looked at her with the one eye not blinded by blood. “They shot at Gabe. I don’t know if they hit him, but I can’t deal with that and the thought of both you and Connor in danger. I just…can’t. It might break me.”
He cared about her that much? A fist tightened around her throat. “Okay.” Now her voice was choked. So much for keeping her poker face firmly in place. She cleared her throat and slid an arm around his waist. “Okay. We’ll go back to the cabana, regroup, and come up with a plan to save everyone. Including Connor and Gabe. Deal?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed and his throat made a dry clicking sound. Even with her help, he struggled to his feet. “Anyone else hurt?”
He was more injured than he wanted her to know, but that was typical Jesse. Always caring for everyone else before himself. “Nothing you can’t fix. C’mon, let’s move. I’ve got you.”
Chapter Eighteen
2:13 a.m.
Trinity Sands Resort
Cabana 47
Lanie was right, the wounded civilians mostly had superficial injuries. No bullet wounds. All cuts, sprains, and one woman with a dislocated arm. Jesse couldn’t leave her like that, but popping her arm back into place did him in. He could no longer ignore his own pain and limped outside. He needed air or he was going to pass out. Unfortunately, the earlier breeze had died away and the air was oppressively muggy.
Jesse sank down on the cabana’s narrow porch and leaned back against its stucco wall. About twenty feet away, Lanie and the guys stood together and seemed to be making plans. He knew he should get up and find out their next move, but he didn’t have the energy for it at the moment.
Lanie spotted him and broke away from the group. She walked over and knelt beside him. “How you doing, cowboy?”
Nothing was broken—his ankle had only suffered a bad sprain—but he still felt like a horse had trampled him. No, not just one horse. The whole fucking Kentucky Derby. “I’m okay.”
“Uh-huh.” Doubt hung heavy in her tone. She nodded toward the boots he still hadn’t taken off. He was afraid he’d not be able to get them back on if he did. “Bet your ankle is swollen up like a balloon. Have you taken anything for the pain yet?”
“No.” He ground his teeth. Part of him hated that she knew him well enough to see through his bullshit. Another part of him, the foolish heart that always led him into trouble, fell a little bit more in love with her for her concern.
She shook her head and stood. “I’ll get you something.”
She came back a few minutes later with aspirin, a bottle of the hotel’s water, and his cell phone. She shook out some pills and handed them over, then the water. She only gave him his phone after he’d finished the tiny bottle.
The screen showed a missed call and voicemail from a number he didn’t recognize. He accessed his voicemail and sagged with relief as he listened. It was good to hear Jean-Luc’s voice. At least the Cajun wasn’t dead somewhere in the hotel. And Connor was safe, thank Christ.
He called back, and Jean-Luc picked up immediately. “Please tell me you have a plan, mon ami.”
“We’re workin’ on it.”
“Work faster,” Jean-Luc said. “I’m not looking to relive the Alamo here with a handful of civilians and a bunch of half-trained kids.”
“It’s not goin’ to be the Alamo.” At least, he hoped not. “According to Marcus and Danny, the hostage takers seemed to be lookin’ for somethin’. Once they realize it’s not here—”
“Not something. Someone. They want Claire.”
Claire. He’d forgotten about her. He hadn’t seen her inside among the wounded, and a quick scan proved she wasn’t out here, either. He covered the receiver and asked Lanie, “Where’s Claire?”
Lanie shrugged. “The cabana was empty when Marcus and Danny got here with the wounded.”
Well, shit. “Claire’s gone,” he told Jean-Luc. “She took off when Lanie and I were at the hotel.”
“Ça c’est bon. I told her to get away.” There was some shuffling, and a door opened. Jean-Luc grunted softly like he was in pain. “But they’re also looking for her business partner, Tiffany. Don’t know a last name. We have her. She’s our critically wounded civilian. Looks like she was shot. I’m not sure what to do for her, mon ami.”
More wounded. Jesse glanced behind him at the injured people he hadn’t yet treated. There were so many that they spilled out of the cabana and onto the beach. Lanie had moved off to offer them bottles of water. She must have felt his gaze because she straightened away from a woman with a hastily bandaged head and glanced toward him, concern pulling her brows together. His instinct screamed to go to her, wrap her up in his arms, and tell her everyone would be all right. That he’d be all right. It was a ridiculous urge. Knowing her, she’d probably sock him in the gut and tell him to get back to work.
Code of Honor (HORNET) Page 11