The trek was a short one that felt like a lifetime. They crossed out of the store into the mall’s main corridor and a rush of chilled air slicked beneath her loose hair to kiss her sweat-slicked nape. A few stores ahead of them, Axel meandered across one of the wide bridges that connected the two walkways, his focus seemingly centered on his phone instead of where he was going.
From the murmured updates in her headset, she knew better. Knew that everyone else was in place ready to do their part as well. Every scrap of information registered clearly in her ear, but not a bit of it made a difference. Her brain couldn’t process it. Couldn’t do anything better than stay on damage control with her over-stimulated senses and ensure she kept pace with Gia.
The parking garage doors whooshed open and the oppressive August heat slammed against her with twice as much weight as before. This was it. No more running. No more hiding. Not from Ruslan or anyone else.
Ever.
Five cars into their row, the sound of low masculine voices drew closer, their Russian accents unmistakable but the words not quite carrying enough clarity to give her direction.
Up ahead a black SUV with blacked out windows neared their row.
“Black SUV dead ahead,” Gia whispered.
Beckett’s voice was crisp and loaded with purpose. “We have visual. Plans are a go.”
Gia wrapped her arm around Darya’s waist and gave a friendly squeeze. To anyone else, they’d look like two women drunk on overcharged credit cards with an evening of shopping afterglow to indulge in, but the sharpness in Gia’s tone as she leaned in was total focus. “Remember the plan. Grab on to me like you’re terrified. They won’t have a choice but to take us both without causing a scene.”
Darya managed a jerky nod and kept walking.
The SUV made its turn headed directly toward them.
Behind them the men grew closer, their quick footsteps ricocheting off the low ceiling and cement pillars around them.
Gia glanced back and a mask of fear that in no way matched the confident grip she kept around Darya’s waist slipped across her face just as the SUV screeched to a halt in front of them. Three men jumped from the car’s interior, leaving them sandwiched.
“Five,” Gia muttered so low Darya barely caught it even through her headpiece, but it was enough to let the team know what they were dealing with.
From there the scrambling came natural, fear and a very real need to escape pummeling Darya at all sides. With one arm she fought, slinging her bags with all she had in her and keeping her other banded tight to Gia. One man barked out a command in Russian, directing the others to take them both. The next thing she knew she was part dragged, part carried to the SUV’s hatchback and tossed alongside Gia onto the cargo area.
Gia rolled, taking Darya with her so Darya’s back was plastered against the rear seat and covered her with her body, but one of the men crawled in the cargo area, slammed the hatchback shut behind him and whipped a zip tie from his pocket.
The car doors upfront slammed shut and a voice yelled back, “Blondinka yego. Ushibla, i on budet imet’ golovu.” The blonde is his. Hurt her and he’ll have your head.
Meaning, for now, she was safe, but Gia wasn’t. Not until their own men made a move and she could engage with her gun.
Zip tie clenched between his teeth, the man with them in the back jerked Gia away and tried to roll her to her belly.
The car moved into motion, the smooth glide completely belying the struggle going on between Gia and their captor. She elbowed him in the jaw hard enough to earn a backhand across her cheek. It stunned her long enough the man flipped her to her stomach and wrenched both hands to her back.
Oh, hell no. No way was Darya letting that happen. Not when they were this close. She launched forward with everything she had, knocking the man off balance and filling the car’s interior with an infuriated roar.
Unlike his brutal attack on Gia, he merely banded his arms around Darya’s, holding her in an unforgiving grip as he tried to wrestle her to the floorboard. No easy task, considering Gia had teamed up and wrapped her arm around the guy’s throat.
“In place.” Sergei’s voice sounded in her headset, thick with his accent and loaded with grim determination. A quick glance out the back window confirmed not only the black Mercedes that had followed them to the mall behind their SUV, but an industrial air-conditioning service van pulling out of a reserved spot.
Done with playing nice, their captor released Darya and threw Gia across the cargo space so hard her head snapped against the glass. She slumped, and for a second, Darya thought he’d knocked her new friend unconscious.
Just as Darya was about to crawl across the space to protect her, the car turned hard into the narrowed stall where the self-pay gate was lowered and jerked to a stop. The sudden stop threw her and the man beside her off balance.
The driver’s window hummed as they lowered it and Darya scrambled to her knees, but her guard whipped out a knife and moved in between them. “Peremeshcheniye i ona umirayet.” Move and she dies.
Darya froze, gaze sliding to Gia’s slumped body. “Ty yey bol’no. Vse, chto ya khochu sdelat’, eto ubedit’sya, chto ona v poryadke.” You hurt her. All I want to do is make sure she’s okay.
Through the front windshield, she spied the tip of the white gate raising up. Just a few more seconds. Enough to get both the SUV and the trail car wedged in the narrow aisle and they’d have help.
The SUV inched forward just as a white Cadillac Escalade sped forward and screeched to a halt in front of them.
Beckett’s voice shot through the earpiece. “Gia go.”
One second.
One freeze-frame moment, then Gia launched for the man beside her and all hell broke loose.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Too much noise and not information. Knox fisted both hands on the desk in front of him, his forearms pressed so hard on the high-priced furniture the wood groaned in protest. He didn’t dare touch his laptop for fear he’d squeeze the ever-loving hell out of it or chuck the damned thing out the window.
Beckett, Danny, Axel and Ivan barked out feedback, but the details were too clipped to form a decent picture. It was still better than the Russian bullshit flying from the mouths of Sergei’s crew, though. Those words he didn’t stand a hope of understanding.
And not one peep from Darya. Only a few grunts and shouts from Gia beside her.
“Last one,” Beckett said, followed by a loud thump that sounded like a car door slamming. “Danny with me. Ivan get the tail car. Axel back the Caddie up.”
“On it,” Axel said.
Another thump sounded. Then another.
Engines revved and tires squealed, but Knox didn’t dare speak. The last thing any of them needed were distractions.
“You breathin’, Knox?”
Zeke cut in first. “Only one thing you’re gonna say that makes that happen.”
“Well, time to start,” Beckett fired back, more than a little satisfaction coating his voice even through his accelerated breaths. “Your girl’s clear, men are contained, and we’re on the move.”
Fuck.
He tried to relax. Tried to force his hands to uncoil and his mind to unhinge from the terrified freeze-frame it had held for the last thirty seconds. “Where’s Darya?” he finally managed, though how enough air made it up the back of his throat to ask he couldn’t figure. God knew his diaphragm was still knotted up like a pretzel.
Fumbling sounded and a second later Darya’s shaky voice sounded through the line. “I’m here.” Heavy huffs filled what would have been silence, but the smile in her words lingered. “I lost my earpiece in the shuffle, but I’m fine.” An adrenaline-coated laugh followed tight behind her claim. “We’re all fine.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Danny chimed in.
As a way of getting his head straight fast, the need for intel worked like little else could have. Before his brain could even fully process the request, his fingers were flying over the keyboard, intercepting 911 dispatches the way he used to just for shits and grins as early as high school. “Two calls. Intercepted them both. No dispatches sent. How far out are you?”
“Just pullin’ onto the service road, takin’ it slow to blend in,” Beckett said. “Axel, get on 75. We’ll take the service road to give us more time. Sergei, you with us?”
“Keycards to Ruslan’s suite and phones secured,” Sergei said. “No outgoing calls after we engaged. Only two others before we moved in, none to Ruslan.”
“So, Ruslan’s got no ETA and no alert for what happened,” Axel said.
“We hope,” Beckett confirmed. “Better not to get too cocky. Not until they’re out for the count and we’re the only ones standing.”
Knox magnified the camera feeds he’d kept pinned to the corner of his screen. “He’s still got two guards outside the front door we’ll need to deal with. You get a head count on what’s waiting inside yet?”
“Give me thirty minutes.” The low rumble in Sergei’s voice ensured whatever went down inside that van in the next half hour wouldn’t be pretty for the captured men, but Sergei was definitely looking forward to it.
“Darya, you got your phone?” Knox said.
“Um...” Movement sounded through the line along with a decent amount of rustling. “Yes, I have it.”
“Good. Anyone needs me, ping Zeke. I’m offline.” He tugged his headset free and punched her number on speed dial.
“We did it,” was her answer. Part whisper, part overwhelming thrill. “You should have seen Gia. I thought the guy trying to tie her up had knocked her out, but when Beckett said, ‘Go,’ she sprung into an action hero. I want to learn how to do that.”
“Sweetheart, after we get through the rest of this day, you can learn how to do anything you want to, so long as you don’t do any of it without me next to you. Not until I can get over the last seven hours.”
For a second, she was quiet. When she spoke again her voice was soft with need to match his own. “I miss you, too.”
Knox sighed and fisted the hair on top of his head, elbows braced on the desk in front of him. “I couldn’t see anything.” The words came from the very pit of his soul. A confession and a plea for her to understand. “It took ninety-seven seconds. Over a minute and a half when the bits and pieces I heard wouldn’t form a visual in my head, and you were in the thick of it. Without me.”
“You’re where you’re supposed to be. Doing what you’re good at.”
Funny. Ever since he could remember, he’d had a driving curiosity to poke and prod at things. To break them apart and see how they worked. The habit had driven him into computers and he’d been devoted ever since. The code and the challenge of sneaking into places he shouldn’t be had been his comfort. His way to escape and flip a mental bird to the people who’d been all too effective at keeping him out of their life. Now that he had Darya, he didn’t need the solace. Didn’t need to prove anything. “The only thing that matters anymore is taking care of you.”
Zeke smacked him on the shoulder and pointed at Knox’s headset on the desk in front of him.
Knox snatched it up, but directed his comment to Darya. “You got your earpiece on?”
“I’m putting it on now.”
“Good. Remember the plan. And no more covert shit with you in the middle and me not beside you for as long as I’m breathing.”
Her light laughter was the last thing he heard before Sergei’s voice gut through their link. “Eleven inside including Ruslan. They sent more for surveillance than we thought.”
Axel’s low voice slid through the link. “Nice. You came in five minutes under.”
“I’ll bet that also means we’ve got a van to dispose of when this is all over,” Beckett added.
Sergei’s breath was slightly elevated, but his accent was twice as thick and there was grim satisfaction in his tone when he answered. “You would be correct.”
“How much time do you need to head up?” Danny said.
“My men are gearing up now,” Sergei answered. “Take your team up the stairwell and be ready.”
“We’ll need Gia’s trigger to even out the eleven,” Beckett said. “Gia, you good with that?”
Before Gia could answer Knox cut in. “Gia covers Darya. I’m in.”
“Knox, we need you on the controls,” Axel said. “Besides, not a one of us are going in without vests. I know damned good and well you don’t have one.”
“Odds of anyone aiming at anything other than our heads are slim and a vest’s not gonna help me there. And once we activate at the entrance, there’s nothing Zeke can’t handle here. He’ll be prepped, but Darya’s not stepping a foot in that door without full cover. If we need another gunner it’s me.”
Silence crackled through the line, though there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Axel, Danny and Beckett were all scrambling for one decent reason to keep his ass in his chair.
“Glad we got that straight,” Knox said before any of them could come up with anything. “Danny, I’ll watch the feeds and meet the rest of you in the stairwell.”
To his credit, Zeke waited all of ten seconds from the time Knox muted his mic before he spoke. “You sure you want to do this? If something backfires in there, they may need you behind this keyboard more than in the line of fire.”
Under normal circumstances he’d agree, but Ruslan had bought and paid for the whole floor. No matter what went down in the next half hour, no innocent bystanders were going to be close enough to fire off any 911 calls. “I walked away from my woman seven hours ago and have sat in this chair ever since. I did it because this was the place I could do her the most good and it almost killed me. But right now, if it were Gabe walking into a room with guns firing off in all directions and we needed another trigger to even the score, where would you be?”
Zeke held his gaze and nodded. “Point taken.”
In the garage camera feed, the service van’s side door slid open and Sergei’s men piled out, all but Sergei and his two best shooters heading to join Danny, Axel and Ivan already positioned in the stairwell. Beckett, Sergei and his men surrounded Darya and Gia, acting the part of Ruslan’s guards.
Knox stood, switched his headset out for a mobile unit and checked his gun. “I’m up. All you have to do is keep a sharp eye on the guards outside the door and clue us in before they can signal any alarms inside.”
“Yeah, that and make sure no one ends up dead.” Zeke slid into Knox’s vacated chair behind the desk and cracked his knuckles. “Do me a favor. Save me some overtime and avoid the bullets, all right?”
“Says the guy who went into a break-in for his own woman without a gun and came out with a trophy wound. At least I’m armed.”
He reached the stairwell landing on Ruslan’s floor, Danny, Axel, Ivan and Sergei’s men already in place. Despite their slightly rumpled appearance and a few stray blood splotches on one of the men’s shirts, the three Russians all sported bland expressions. The sort that said they were either so damned used to this line of work it didn’t faze them anymore, or were doing their best to hide how much they hated the idea of working with a mixed crew.
With the door to Ruslan’s suite just outside the landing, no one said a word.
Beckett’s voice cut through the line. “Two floors away.”
Axel stepped back and nodded.
/> Danny took his place in front of the door.
“Zeke, we good?” Knox said low enough not to let his voice carry.
“Guards are still in place, but look bored as shit.”
“They won’t be for long,” Axel muttered.
The elevator ding sounded through the line. “Moving out,” Beckett said.
As soon as Beckett spoke, Gia and Darya kicked into action. Even without a visual, the sound of their struggle reached through the steel stairway door. He might not understand a lick of whatever it was coming out of Darya’s mouth, but the sound of it was vile. Perfect for their approach.
Sergei’s voice cut in. A command in Russian.
“I’ve got the one farthest from the stairwell,” Beckett muttered through the chaos. “Danny, you’re on the one closest. Fifteen feet.”
More Russian sounded, but this time it came through the guards on the other side of the door.
“They’re gettin’ itchy,” Zeke said. “Think you’d better move.”
Beckett’s order came right behind it. “Danny, go.”
Danny yanked open the door, snatched the startled guard outside Ruslan’s suite and yanked him into the stairwell. Five seconds. It couldn’t have been more than that, but every bit of it happened in a blur, Darya’s and Gia’s protests more than covering the guard’s struggles and ending with the two of them in lifeless heaps on the concrete landing.
Darya’s voice died off, her gaze aimed through the open stairwell door at the dead men and her face a sickly white.
Knox stepped in close.
“Guns up,” Sergei said as he pulled the keycard they’d pilfered from Ruslan’s men from his pocket.
Knox gripped Darya’s chin tight. “Look at me. Focus.”
Her eyes shot to his and she jerked a terse nod. “I’m good.” She spun and said something loud in a string of Russian that made Sergei smirk.
He punched the keycard into the slot and Gia stumbled through the opening as though someone had shoved her. She pulled Darya along with her, fully clearing the door, dropping to the floor and rolling to cover Darya.
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