Tactical Advantage

by Julie Miller

  Glass rained down. Security lights flashed. Alarms blared.

  Nick shed his coat and pulled it over his head, protecting himself from the falling debris as he kicked open the door and climbed out.

  His first check was the front desk. Empty.

  Had the guard there been taken out, too? Had he, like Nick, sensed the danger inside the walls and left his post to check it out? Unlike the guard out front, the man he’d talked to inside was the same man he and Annie had talked to earlier. She seemed to know him. His ID had checked out.

  Nick’s phone rang right on cue. “Annie?”

  “What the hell is going on? Are you all right?”

  He dropped his jacket, shed his gloves and pulled his Glock. “Where are you?” he asked, heading for the stairwell, heading for her.

  “My lab.”

  “Kill the lights and hide somewhere. Turn your phone to silent. We’ve got intruders.

  “I think The Cleaner is here.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Intruders?

  Annie switched her phone to silent mode and watched the images on the computer screen cycle by with a new print and a new No Match message changing with every millisecond. Ticking off the time like the sense of impending danger closing in around her.

  They were so close to identifying the man who could break the Rose Red Rapist case wide open.

  She was so close to another attempt to kill her again. To stop her from finding out the truth.

  Truth? Death?

  The answer was simple.

  Annie ran to the switches by the door and turned off all the lights. The light from the computer screen blazed like a spotlight in the darkness and she zigzagged back through the stainless-steel tables to her work station. She spared a second to save the search before shutting down the system and plunging the room into darkness.

  The only illumination was a greenish glow from the security lights in the hallway, streaming through the glass wall that separated the main passage from the more sterile environs of each lab. Annie huddled beneath her workstation for endless seconds, waiting for Nick to reach her. The only sounds she heard were her own quick, tense breaths and the pounding of her pulse in her ears.

  The pulse beat took on an even rhythm, and for a second, she marveled at her ability to calm herself. But her senses kicked in and she realized she was hearing the sound of stealthy footsteps in the hall.

  “Nick,” she breathed in relief, pulling her phone from her pocket and texting his name. Is that you?

  She held her breath as the footsteps became a shadow. Then two shadows passing in front of the windows.

  Annie pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle her frightened gasp. Black stocking masks. Black clothes. Tall. Dangerous.

  She cleared the text and typed again. They’re here.

  She scanned the shadows, looking for something she could arm herself with. Rolling chairs. Big, high-tech machines. Heavy steel tables.

  The chemical cabinet caught her eye and she darted from her hiding spot, crawling across the floor, keeping an eye on the shifting shadows. She could hear muffled voices now, words like “Not here” and “Find them.” They were searching for something. Or someone.

  Her? Nick? That lone fingerprint? Something else?

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she jumped, knocking into a chair and sending it spinning. She caught the seat and stilled it instantly, dropping to the floor as far out of sight from the two in the hallway as she could get. The two figures outside paused. Had they heard that tiny noise?

  Annie froze to the spot, ignoring the incoming message, until they moved to an office across the hall. She heard the beep of a key card being recognized as it swiped through the lock. They had access to the building, she realized with a disturbing eye for details. They weren’t the explosive break-in she’d heard down below.

  She checked the incoming text from Nick, feeling at once alarmed and relieved. On my way. Trust no one but me.

  Impostors again. Fake cops. A man who was a mystery hiding in plain sight. Standing right outside the door to her lab.

  Once the intruders disappeared inside the office, Annie jammed the phone into her jeans pocket and hastened to get across the room to the cabinet before they came back out. She sorted through a couple of bottles of possibilities before pulling out a potentially volatile mix. She grabbed a beaker and an extension cord before crawling across the lab to the tent oven that faced the door. If she got trapped in here, if anyone came through that door who wasn’t Nick, she intended to make a way out for herself.

  She held her breath, squinting against the toxic fumes as she poured the concoction together into the beaker. Stretching her neck to peer over the edge of the table she hid behind, Annie made sure the intruders were still across the hall before she reached up and placed the beaker inside the oven where they often used chemicals and heat to make a print appear on evidence. She set the time and temperature she wanted but unplugged the machine. Then she pulled the cord with her as she flattened herself and crawled underneath the next table. She plugged the extension into the power source, held the end of both cords in her hands and waited.

  From her low vantage point she could see black booted feet coming out of the office across the hall. She made out a few more muffled phrases. “Split up.” “Check progress.” “Find that cop.”

  They were after Nick. Annie’s blood dropped to the temperature of the cold tiles beneath her chest and stomach. If they hurt him...if he got killed trying to save her...

  The emotions that welled up inside her were overwhelming. It felt like being caught up in that helpless wave of grief she’d gone through after her parents had died. But Annie was no teenager anymore. And she wasn’t facing this adversary alone.

  The emotions receded and clarity returned.

  “Come and get me.”

  * * *

  NICK STILLED HIS RAPID breathing after his sprint up the stairs. He eased his Glock into a comfortable grip between his hands, then released it with his left hand to push open the door to the third-floor hallway.

  But footsteps pinging on the steel mesh stairs above him had him instantly switching tactics. He ducked into the blind corner of the landing and pressed his back against the concrete wall, giving himself the advantage of seeing who approached before he gave away his position.

  Black shoes, darks pants, handgun pointed down, leading the way. Nick readied his own weapon. Tan shirt, badge on pocket.

  He blew out a silent sigh of relief as he recognized the guard from the front desk. The gun came up as soon as he saw Nick.

  “Whoa, buddy.” Nick put up one hand and lowered his Glock. “It’s me, Detective Fensom. Remember?”

  “Yeah.” The guard nodded, hurrying down the last few steps to join him. “Thank God. Have you found your girlfriend yet?”

  “CSI Hermann’s in her lab. I’m on my way to her now.” Nick glanced up the stairwell and down, worrying about the sound of their conversation carrying to someone above them or below. “They got to your buddy in the parking lot. Any idea how many of them we’re up against?”

  “Yeah, at least one more.”

  “What floor?”

  The guard’s gaze darted to the number on the door. “Third.”

  “Hell.” Too close to Annie. “Then let’s split up. There’s another set of stairs on the opposite—”

  The guard raised his weapon and shot Nick before he had a chance to do more than see it coming. The bullet hit him in the left shoulder. His gun bounced down the stairs to the next landing and Nick tumbled down along with it. Every step was a bruised muscle or cracked rib until he hit the concrete floor and slammed to a stop against the wall.

  Fire seared through his chest. His lungs ached. He rolled onto his back and let the pain clear his spinning head. He blinked the approaching man into focus and blindly reached around beside him to find his own weapon.

  Another fake guard—and he’d been in the building with them this entire ti
me. “If you hurt Annie...”

  The smiling man came down the stairs one triumphant step at a time, pulling out his phone and punching in a number as he lined his gun up with Nick’s head for the kill shot. “I got the guy,” he reported to whoever answered. “Find the woman. He says she’s in the third-floor lab. She’s all yours now.”

  Nick grunted, pain exploding down his arm as he tried to scoot some distance between him and the barrel of the gun pointed between his eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The guard pocketed the phone and squeezed the trigger.

  With a feral roar, Nick lashed out, dislocating the guy’s kneecap with his elbow. The shot ricocheted off the wall, spewing out chips of concrete that clawed through his sweater as he kicked up his legs and rolled into the stunned man. With a twist of his hips, he took the man down hard, reversing positions so that Nick was now on top. He raised his fist to strike another blow, but the other guy had hit his head on one of the steel steps and was out cold.

  Wincing in pain with every breath, Nick pulled his Glock from beneath his attacker’s legs, tucked the second gun into his belt and kicked the guard’s phone down the stairs where it shattered into pieces. Before he pulled himself back up those stairs, Nick bent over the guard’s body. Instead of checking for a pulse, he pressed a thumb to one eyelid and forced it open.

  “Green eyes.”

  The idiot out in the parking lot kiosk had blue eyes. That meant there was at least one more brown-eyed thug somewhere in the building tracking down Annie.

  He secured his Glock in his fist and headed up to the third floor.

  The bastard would have to get through Nick first.

  * * *

  “SHE’S IN HERE.”

  The shadow lurked outside her door.

  Annie had heard a gunshot in the distance. But she couldn’t think about that right now. If Nick had gotten hurt—or worse—then it was up to her now to survive and report and testify. She knew she’d make a great witness on the stand, once she dealt with these people who wanted to erase the truth she’d uncovered. A thumbprint from a crime scene. An accomplice’s identity if she could only find the match. The key to arresting Rachel Dunbar’s killer and getting him to reveal the identity of the Rose Red Rapist in exchange for a life sentence instead of a lethal injection.

  But she had to stay alive first. And one of the intruders was right here, only a few feet from where she lay beneath the steel table.

  “Take care of her. I’ll find out how we’re doing with the computer program. Almost all the data regarding the case in the lab’s system has been erased. Without those pictures, that CSI has nothing she can pin on us. And if she’s gone, then she can’t even testify to what she saw in that alley. I silenced one witness for him. We’ll silence this one, too.” The voice giving the orders was higher pitched. A woman’s voice. “He’ll be very pleased.”

  Odd. Why would a woman have any inclination whatsoever to help a man like the Rose Red Rapist? The Cleaner was a woman?

  The tall shadow passed by the windows and disappeared in the greenish light from the hallway. The opportunity to learn anything more about the ringleader of this late-night invasion had gone.

  This fight was one-on-one now. Brains versus brawn.

  Annie didn’t wait to give Muscles a chance to hurt her again. As soon as the masked figure pushed open the door, she plugged in the two cords she held, connecting the current to the tent oven and baking the chemicals inside. One. Two.

  Boom!

  The explosion happened sooner than she’d expected. Annie curled into a ball beneath the protective steel, flinching as shrapnel from the oven and beaker and nearby appliances and glass shot across the room like hundreds of tiny, deadly missiles.

  The floor shook when the man hit the floor without a moan, without a twitch.

  As soon as the glass stopped falling, Annie scrambled out of her hiding place and crawled over to the gaping hole where the door and window beside it had been. The man lay in a sea of shattered debris, blood pooling beneath him. Ignoring the shock of what she’d just done, she looked past the dead man’s plump belly and pulled off his stocking mask. She recoiled from the vaguely familiar face—blond hair, receding hairline—a match to the artist’s sketch drawing of the man who’d impersonated Sergeant Steven Gobel on New Year’s Eve.

  So where was the man who’d attacked her in the alley? The man with the raspy, unidentifiable voice. The man with brown eyes who’d probably shoved her down that elevator shaft, too.

  More desperate than ever to find Nick and help, Annie peeked into the hallway. Once she was sure it was empty, she got to her feet and ran to the elevator. She pushed the call button in a panic five times before remembering Nick’s warning to stay put. But the other man would have heard the explosion by now and would be coming back.

  Her first instinct was to run to the stairs. She put her hands on the exit door, but the sound of footsteps running up the other side had her backing away, spinning, searching for another place to hide.

  The light peeking from the office door at the end of the hallway drew her like the promise of salvation. If one man was dead and the woman had left, then logic told her the room would be empty.

  She dashed down the hallway, then stuttered to a halt as the door opened wider. Not empty. She tried to retreat. But the sleeve of a white lab coat had already appeared in the open doorway. A head of dark brown hair appeared next and someone peeked out in a glimpse as furtive and frightened as she had been when she’d emerged from hiding a few moments earlier.

  “Annie?”

  “Raj!” Her chest nearly collapsed in relief at the sight of a familiar face. “Get back in there. It’s not safe.”

  “I heard an explosion. Is that guy—” his eyes slid across the hall to the fractured windows and damaged lab and man lying in the middle of it all “—dead?”

  “Yes.” She started forward again, urging Raj back into the safety of the office. “There are intruders in the building. A woman and some men. They said something about erasing data from our computers. We need to get inside where it’s safe. Nick Fensom is here. Help is coming.”

  Instead of seeking safety, Raj took another step out of the office. His caterpillar brows had knit together. His brown eyes were crinkled with something like regret.

  Notice the details, Annie. It was what she’d been trained to do.

  Black shoes and pants beneath the white lab coat. He held a computer disk in one hand and a gun in the other.

  Raj Kapoor had brown eyes. Just like the eyes in that alley.

  He disguised the accent of his voice on a raspy whisper. “There’s no help coming, Annabelle.”

  The stairwell opened behind her. “Annie!”

  “Nick?” She whirled around to see the man she loved, his intense blue eyes and gun focused on the man behind her.

  “Get down!”

  Annie threw herself to the floor as a burst of gunfire erupted over her head. A heartbeat later, silence and the sulfuric smell of gunpowder filled the air.

  “Annie?” She pushed herself to her feet as Nick ran to her. He was bruised and bleeding and solid and strong as he wrapped one arm around her and caught her tight against his chest. “Are you all right?” He lifted her up and set her on the floor behind him, brushing the hair away from her face. “Annie, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She felt the sticky warmth of his blood beneath her hand and heard his oof of protest when she pushed away. “You’re hurt. You’ve been shot.”

  She turned on the man she’d once called a friend.

  “Raj, how could you?” But he was on the floor, bleeding out from two bullet holes in his chest. Annie knelt down beside him. “Oh, Raj.”

  “I’m sorry. She...made me. I owed so much...money.” Every word was a dying gasp.

  She felt Nick’s hand on her shoulder. “It wasn’t Kapoor. I found another fake cop in the stairwell.”

  “Raj!” His eyes were glazing ov
er, his strength was fading. “Who was that woman? Who is she?”

  He blinked her into focus one last time. “She knows...rapist. Protecting...”

  Annie clasped his hand between hers. “I know who she’s protecting. Why, Raj? Who is she?”

  “She wants...”

  “What?” Annie squeezed a little harder. “I know she killed Rachel Dunbar, Raj. What does she want?”

  His voice feathered away into that raspy, haunting tone that had once frightened her. “I’m sorry...we all had to...help.”

  Raj’s hand went slack in hers and he was gone.

  “Come on.” Nick’s hand was beneath her elbow, pulling her away. “We’re not out of the woods yet. I called for backup. I hear the sirens now. Let’s get downstairs if we can.”

  She heard them, too. Sliding her shoulder beneath Nick’s uninjured arm, she wrapped her arms around his waist and helped him walk toward the stairs.

  “What about this guy?” he asked, pointing his gun toward the man on the lab floor.

  “He’s dead. I blew him up.”

  “Way to use that science, slugger.” She felt the chuckle vibrate in his chest, then felt the flinch of pain. “Oh, damn.”

  “Nick, you need to sit down.” She leaned him against the wall and helped him slide down to the floor. She slipped out of her lab coat and dropped to her knees beside him, wadding up the coat and pressing it against the wound in his shoulder.

  He moaned and thanked her in the same breath. “So The Cleaner’s a woman. And for some sick reason, she’s destroying any evidence that could lead us to identify our unsub?”

  “In a nutshell.”

  Nick set his gun on the floor beside him and pulled his phone off his belt to punch in a number. “Maybe she wants to be the one to capture that bastard, not us. I need to fill in Spencer. Get the rest of the task force on this.”

  “Nick, enough playing detective.” She pressed a little harder against his shoulder, cringing when he sucked in his breath. “Are your ribs hurt, too?”