He nodded, his lips pursed in an expression she recognized. He didn’t like it, but he knew he wasn’t talking her out of this.
Then he was gone. Leila stayed in her office, trying to text Davis. She stared at the screen for another thirty seconds, hoping a response would pop up. When it didn’t, she took off at a run.
The remote testing facility wasn’t that far from the office by car, but while the area around their main building had continued to be built up year after year, the spot where they’d put this facility had stayed mostly deserted. The perfect place to murder someone.
The unbidden thought made Leila shiver and she punched on the gas, taking the back roads way too fast. As she pulled into the lot, her heart seemed to slam down toward her stomach.
Two cars were there—her uncle’s and Davis’s.
There had to be some innocent explanation. Maybe her uncle had offered to give Davis a tour of the place. She’d never mentioned it to him, so Davis had probably jumped at the chance. It hadn’t even occurred to her, since they hadn’t used it in almost a year. Frustration nipped at her because it was the perfect location to put together inferior armor.
Uncle Joel would never kill Davis. He’d never kill her father.
No matter how many times she repeated those things to herself, the fear remained.
Climbing out of her car, Leila glanced around. The place really was in the middle of nowhere, with woods on one side and a huge, overgrown field on the other. The fence around the lot was still intact, but the guard gate had been up when she’d arrived, some kind of malfunction. She had no idea how long it had been that way. It had been months since she’d made a personal check of this place.
Locking her car, Leila took her phone out of her purse as she ran for the door. With shaking hands, she pulled up the internet, looking for the number of the local FBI. But when she dialed, she got a recording with a list of options and hung up, not willing to wait.
Whatever her uncle was planning to do to Davis, whatever he might have done to her father, he’d never hurt her. If there was one thing she believed without question, it was that. As long as she could get there in time, she could stop him from hurting Davis.
She slid her access card into the reader and yanked open the door, stepping inside.
The lights were on, but the front area with its handful of desks and storage cabinets was empty. Beyond the entry was the testing area. Leila couldn’t hear a thing, but if her uncle and Davis were back there, she wouldn’t. Since they’d been used for shooting, they were all soundproofed.
Leila used her security card again to enter the shooting area, and her heart gave a painful thump. The testing space at the very back had a green light glowing over the door that meant it was in use.
With every step toward the active lane, Leila’s breath became faster, more uneven. When she pulled open the heavy steel door, in front of her was the thing she’d feared most.
Davis was kneeling in the middle of the shooting lane, blood on his head and swaying. Her uncle stood at the front of the lane, a Petrov pistol centered on Davis like a target.
* * *
BECA HAD KNOWN they were coming.
One minute, the SUV was driving down the narrow lane toward the mansion where one of the wealthiest BECA members lived, toward a meeting supposedly in progress. Each member of the TCD team had been clutching their submachine guns, gazes steady, jaws tight. Kane’s gaze had been on Melinda, cool and slightly angry, as she’d stared back at him.
Then, the world around him exploded in light and sound and the SUV tipped sideways, slamming to the ground on the side away from him.
Kane’s head bounced off JC’s. The agent had gotten stuck in the middle of their row. Pain filled his head and something dripped in his eye, and then the team around him was scrambling, most of them responding on instinct and training. Across from him, Melinda looked dazed, one hand to her head, blinking rapidly. JC, with his military background, was the first to move, despite the conk to the head.
“Move, move, move,” JC ordered. “We’re target practice here.”
BECA must have had some kind of camera or alert system at the beginning of the long, winding entry to the mansion. They were the kind of group that was always armed, always prepared for a fight. They’d had the place booby-trapped. And Kane knew the BECA members would get here fast, to finish them off. He could already hear them coming, the growl of a large engine speeding toward them, then the screech of brakes.
He scrambled to both brace himself against the seat in front of him and the door and release his seat belt. It took longer than he would have liked. Then there was a face at the window, one that managed to be both snarling and smiling as he lifted his gun.
Forgetting the seat belt, Kane went for his pistol instead. He’d always been a quick draw, but as he saw his face reflected back at him superimposed on the guy intent on killing him, he wasn’t sure he was fast enough. Even as he fired three shots and the window exploded, showering glass all over him and the teammates below him, Kane didn’t know if he’d hit his mark until the guy dropped out of sight.
He waited for the pain of a bullet to his own body to register, but he only felt the needle-sting of what seemed like hundreds of tiny shards of glass. Not the searing intensity of a bullet. Then more shots boomed, way too many, and Kane cringed, knowing the SUV wasn’t armored. A scream from inside the car emphasized the thought, and Kane’s stomach clenched even as his mind cleared.
This was it. There was no good way out of this vehicle.
He’d always known he would die on the job. He’d accepted that years ago, in some ways longed for it, because it was no less than he deserved.
But he didn’t want to go like this. Not surrounded by more teammates.
His gaze shifted to Melinda, still tethered to her seat, an easy target if someone else managed to clamber up to the side windows—now directly above them. He moved his gaze past her, to the front windshield, now on ground level. Past the two teammates in front, who were either hit or out cold, to the man bending down there, a furious intensity on his face as he lifted his weapon.
Kane shifted, aiming and firing at the same time as JC. Apparently Laura in the driver’s seat wasn’t as unconscious as she’d seemed, because her gun hand rose at the same time. The guy dropped in a shower of bullets. The front windshield shattered, too, and as shots started coming through the floorboards—now facing toward the zealots—JC yelled, “Ballistic shields!”
Then, someone was handing him a shield and Kane propped it between him and the bottom—now side—of the car, protecting him and the agents below him. Across from him, Melinda was being handed a shield, too. But she urged Evan Duran, in the seat next to her, to trade places.
Awkwardly he swapped with her. Melinda almost fell, but managed to slip between the agents, down to the other side of the SUV, pressed to the ground. But the vehicle wasn’t entirely flat, Kane realized. The SUV had landed on something—maybe a boulder—putting the vehicle at a weird tilt. The front of the vehicle was actually slanted downward, too. And as Melinda shoved at the passenger door, it opened a crack.
“Time for BECA to get a surprise,” Melinda muttered.
Kane grabbed for her, realizing what she was going to do. Melinda was tiny—five foot four and no more than 115 pounds. She could fit through that crack. But no one else would be able to follow.
Kane’s fingers closed around Melinda’s shirt, gripped hard. But his angle was awkward, and the SUV was crowded, especially as Laura yanked the other agent who’d been sitting up front—Ana Sofia—into the back. More shields were pressed around them and JC lifted his arm over Kane’s, firing through the space in the middle. A BECA member screamed outside the front of the vehicle.
Then, it was too late. The fabric slipped out of his grasp and Melinda was gone.
Out of the SUV, alone, facing an unknown
number of armed BECA members.
Chapter Twenty
This was a very bad idea.
Melinda had been a regular special agent once, working a Civil Rights squad. With her background in psychology, her supervisor had figured she was a perfect fit for the myriad of human trafficking cases that came their way. That work had been dangerous at times, but it had been the people she’d run into—both victims and perpetrators—who’d made her go into profiling.
She’d been there so long, she’d started to forget what it was like in the field. Profiling sometimes sent her into the thick of a case, but often it left her buried in paperwork. Too many of her days had been spent fixated on the tiny details of a case file that gave her a behavioral analysis and helped her track down the criminal.
When she’d come to TCD, she’d needed a refresher in fieldwork. Right now, as the only agent not hunkered down in the SUV, it didn’t feel like even close to enough.
She had no backup out here. Not unless one of the other agents could get clear long enough to rush through the shot-to-pieces windshield. And that was a death wish only one agent was likely to try.
Thinking of Kane made Melinda move faster. She sucked in her breath and turned her head sideways, shoving herself the rest of the way through the SUV’s open door. The helmet barely cleared, but she felt Kane’s fingers peel away. Her shirt tore, but she kept going, worming her way toward the rear of the vehicle and praying the whole thing didn’t crash down on top of her.
Her submachine gun wouldn’t have been an easy fit through the door, so she’d left it in the SUV. Right now, she longed for the comforting feel of the big gun. Sucking in dirt and dust, Melinda angled her pistol awkwardly, praying no one saw her before she was ready. Body armor and a helmet wouldn’t be enough if they saw her while she was still trying to squeeze out of here.
When she’d realized the SUV wasn’t flat on the ground, that the back door would open just enough, she’d known what she had to do. Yes, the agents inside had covered themselves well with strong ballistic shields. But eventually, the BECA members would either get lucky or simply force their way inside. With no option of retreat, her teammates would be in serious trouble. Especially if the BECA members had other weapons, like grenades—which wouldn’t surprise her.
The thought put a heavy weight on her chest, like the SUV really had sunk down on her. She was the agent least prepared for this. But failure meant they would probably all die here today.
She’d get one chance. One chance to take out as many of them as possible, provide a distraction that would give her team time to rush through the front windshield. If she did this right, together, they could eliminate the threat.
Boots came into view and Melinda froze, afraid to even breathe. Then, another pair joined them, and another.
She was trapped. No way to slip out from underneath the vehicle, dart behind the cover of trees like she’d planned. If she fired from here, they’d know exactly where she was, be able to hit her while she had limited visibility and few ways out.
“Climb up,” one of them whispered. “You two hit them from the side, and we’ll hit them from the back. Tell Don to stand near the front and pick off anyone who tries to escape that way.”
Melinda’s gut clenched, her breathing came faster, and her vision and hearing narrowed. Tunnel vision. Knowing it was happening—that her fear was overriding her senses—didn’t make it easier to fix.
BECA had a good plan. The agents inside were still firing periodically, but only out the front windshield. A distraction, hoping to give her a chance. Not knowing what she’d planned to do, since she hadn’t told them, since she hadn’t fully known when she’d slipped out that door.
She was a pretty good shot. But there were at least four BECA members near the side and back of the vehicle, at least one up front. Even if she could hit the four closest to her, she had an angle only on their feet and calves. Enough to bring them to the ground, sure, but to take them out of the fight entirely? Unlikely.
All that mattered was taking them down long enough for the other agents to get out the front, not getting shot herself before she could yell a warning about Don’s position.
If she was going to die today, she prayed she’d be able to do it giving the rest of her team a fighting chance.
Not daring to move her hand up to touch the ring dangling under her T-shirt, she focused on the feel of it. The simple gold band she’d picked out for her late husband. It always gave her strength. Thinking of it made her breathing even out, her senses sharpen.
Just as one of the BECA members started to clamber up the side of the SUV to get a shot through the window, Melinda lined up her first shot. Then, she said one more prayer, fired two shots in rapid succession. Someone—maybe two someones—dropped to the ground, screaming in pain, but moving around. Probably aiming their own weapons, a new target in sight now that they were lying in the dirt.
Melinda didn’t waste time. She screamed a warning to her team as she pivoted toward the side of the SUV, toward the guy dropping off the vehicle, making it bounce up and down, too close to her. Then more shots joined her own and Melinda kept firing, wondering if the adrenaline was preventing her from feeling the bullets that had to be hitting her by now.
The two guys on the side of the SUV both dropped, and Melinda hit them again, not waiting to see if they were dead before she swiveled once more toward the two she’d hit first. The two who had to be recovered enough to shoot her fatally by now.
But as she turned, a new pair of boots slammed down to the ground and someone else fired, taking out those BECA members. One of them had his gun up, pointed directly at her head, and Melinda squeezed her eyes shut, expecting it to fire anyway. But instead of a bullet, she felt a hand on her leg.
She jerked, opened her eyes. And there was Kane, kneeling down, pulling her out from under the SUV.
“Nice job,” Evan told her as he ran around from the front of the vehicle, Laura close at his heels. Both of them still swept the area with their weapons even though the shots had ceased.
Kane yanked her to her feet, took the pistol from hands she realized were shaking and holstered it for her. “You did good,” he said, his voice deeper than usual.
Then he was pulling her against his chest, and she could have sworn his hand stroked the back of her hair before he let her go, started talking logistics.
Ana Sofia was hurt. Not shot, but knocked cold when the SUV crashed. Evan had taken a bullet to the arm, Just a nick, he’d said. Laura had a nasty bruise on her forehead and blood on the side of her face. But they were all alive, their suspects all dead. Not even remotely the plan, but better than the alternative.
Melinda sank to the ground, her heart rate—so calm in those important moments—now off and running again. She closed her eyes, tried to will away the nausea, as she let her teammates handle the logistics. Dead suspects still needed guns moved away from them, hands cuffed. It was procedure. Calls had to be made, to deal with the bodies, to report back to Pembrook.
Through her haze, Melinda felt Laura’s hand on her arm, her calm, understanding words. “It happens to all of us. Just breathe through it. You’ll be okay.”
Then, from farther away, JC’s voice, obviously on a phone call. “What do you mean we don’t know where Davis is?”
She tried to focus, to contribute in some meaningful way. She was FBI, for crying out loud. She could handle this.
But the buzzing in her ears just got louder, the uneven cadence of her breathing got worse. Then, somehow, it was Pembrook forcing her head up, staring back at her. Her voice that finally snapped Melinda out of it.
“It’s over, Melinda. We’re getting help from the Knoxville field office to manage the scene. We’ll need statements, but right now, we need your profiling brain. We need to figure out where Davis might have gone.”
Melinda frowned, took a deep breath. “
Last I heard, he’d left the Petrov Armor office. He’d gone home.”
“We’re going to send an agent there now. Davis’s phone is off, so we can’t track it, but Hendrick is doing his magic back at the office. In the meantime, maybe Davis went back to Petrov Armor headquarters or—”
“He said he was finished there.” The brief text she’d gotten earlier from Davis said he strongly suspected Eric Ross, flat out announced his undercover time was over. She’d texted back, asking for more detail, but hadn’t gotten a response. “Did you ask Kane?”
“Kane said he had nothing more to offer on this,” Pembrook replied, and something about the way she was scowling made Melinda glance around.
JC was still on scene and Rowan was here now, too, looking a little queasy. But the rest of the agents had cleared out. Probably some of them had gone to get medically checked out, some had gone to the office to either fill out statements about tonight or help with the search for Davis. And yet...
“Where’s Kane?”
Pembrook shook her head, her face scrunching up apologetically. “He’s gone.”
Dread made her press a hand against her chest. “Gone?”
“Back undercover.”
“What?”
“It came up days ago, new movement on a major drug smuggling operation where Kane had a deep cover a few months back. We’d pulled him, but his cover was intact. It’s not great timing, but—”
“He’s really gone? Just like that?” After everything that had happened tonight? After all their hard work to bring down the members of BECA? And not even a goodbye?
Pembrook stood, dusted off the knees of her pants. “You’re the profiler, Melinda. You should understand.” As she turned away, she added, “Get moving. I need you.”
Grimacing at the stiffness in her arms and legs and back, Melinda stood. Her mind whirled as she followed her boss.
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 18