That left one nearby. She hoped Adam got his hands on it.
Using fists and kicks they scrambled, circling each other, bent over and snarling like wild animals. They lunged and punched. Their bodies moved over the patio to the very edge. Then Adam lost his footing where the patio met the grass, and went down.
“End this thing,” the guy holding her raged, all amusement gone from his voice.
Adam lay on his back, moving on his elbows and heels as his attacker stalked. Before the guy could land a final blow, Adam kicked out, catching him in the jaw. The man’s head snapped back and his head covering slipped.
One second she caught a glimpse of pale skin and blond hair and the next she stared at Adam’s back. He reached down and picked up the other man’s body, letting his head loll back and the blood drip off his chin. With one last punch, Adam dropped the guy. He hovered over him with his foot on the man’s neck and his fist ready for another pounding.
Just as the fight escalated into a second round, one where Adam held all the power, a shot rent the air. She ducked to escape the gunfire, but at Adam’s choked yell, she lifted her head.
His arms out and his mouth open, he fell back in free fall, right into the pool. The splash sent water flying in every direction.
“No!” She tried to run to him, but the guy holding her dug in.
Adam’s body sank, slipping under the edge of pool cover where it had separated from the side. A second later, a dark red stream bled into the water.
A cry of anguish hiccuped inside her. She would have fallen on the ground but strong arms held her steady.
The second attacker struggled to his feet. He wiped the blood on his face, turning it into a smear, before slipping the face gear back into place.
“That guy was hard to kill,” he said.
Her brain blocked his words. Every cell inside her rebelled at the thought of Adam meeting his horrific end in a pool of dirty water. If she still had any air left in her lungs she would have screamed until she lost her voice.
The man holding her put his cheek next to hers with his tongue practically touching her skin. “Your turn.”
She prayed for Adam.
Then she prayed for a quick death.
Chapter Thirteen
Adam tried to move his arms to block the steady thumping against his chest. The muscles across his shoulders ached and his body shook. He heard mumbling. Flashes of light seeped in under his eyelids. He pressed them tighter to block it all out.
Words spilled over him, syllables and sounds he could not identify. Cold pressed in on him and his body shook hard enough to tap his head against something hard and unforgiving underneath him.
Another pound against his chest and the sweet relief of air filled his lungs. He jackknifed to a sitting position as he gagged on the water filling his mouth. He choked and coughed until his insides fought enough to get out. When he started spitting up yellow bile, he fell to his side and closed his eyes.
“Come on, man.”
Zach.
Adam forced his eyes open. The figure sitting next to him blurred. He reached for his glasses but they were gone. A quick rub of his eyes and some of the fog cleared, but the headache didn’t.
“About time,” Zach said.
Adam noticed his usually unruffled friend gasped as he rubbed a shaky hand down his white face. He was also soaking wet. They both were.
The memories rushed in on Adam, bombarding him until his brain screamed in surrender. The gunmen, the pool. Maddie. He could hear her terrified screams and see her arms reaching for him as he went down.
Where the hell was she?
“Maddie?” He sat up, ignoring every creak and ache. He looked around, his gaze locking on a still man lying in the grass and the blood puddling around him.
He saw a glove, a gun. Broken patio furniture and smashed bushes.
No Maddie.
Zach shifted to his knees with his hands resting on his thighs. “We have to get up.”
“I want to see her.”
“I know, but I need to make sure you’re okay. There’s blood in that pool and I need to know where it’s coming from.”
The moments underwater came back to Adam slowly. Calling on all his training and keeping his focus on saving Maddie, he’d grabbed a last breath before the water slapped against his skin and closed over his head. He’d hit the surface and kept plunging toward the bottom. No matter how hard he kicked, he couldn’t find the surface through the pool cover.
Wrestling a knife from his front pocket, he’d sliced a long cut along his forearm and held his arm up, letting his blood stain the top of the water. If he had any chance of saving Maddie, he needed the attackers to think he was dead. The blood from the gunshot wound he didn’t bargain for did the rest.
Less than a minute later his air had run out, taking his endurance with it. His next memory was of Zach’s fist banging on his chest.
Adam lifted his arm and investigated his handiwork. The plan had been to flood the water with enough blood to hide the fact that his heart and brain worked just fine. That part worked.
“Come on.” Zach stood and reached down to pull Adam up with him. “We need to get you back to the warehouse and regroup.”
It was everything Zach didn’t say that had Adam’s pulse throbbing in his neck. He stood up and shoved a hand against his friend’s shoulder. “What the—”
Adam willed Zach to understand. “I’m not going anywhere without Maddie.”
“There’s a hole in your shirt and a cut on your cheek. I see a fresh run of blood dripping down your hand, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. Could be a cut or a bullet.” Those were more words than Zach had spoken all week.
“Tell me she’s not dead.” Adam searched his mind for a gunshot. Tried to remember if those shocking screams signaled her end.
For every minute during the past few days when he’d tried to push her away or hold her off, he begged now for forgiveness. He wanted her here. He’d apologize about not believing her. He didn’t even care about who she was before. He needed the woman she was now.
Zach inhaled, taking his breathing to a normal level as he rested his palms on Adam’s shoulders. “She’s not here.”
“What?”
“Luke is crazed and checking security footage. The cameras picked something up.”
“Cameras?”
“We’ll follow the car. Right now I’m more concerned with you being shot. The vest did most of the work, but you got more than a nick here.”
Adam had bigger issues on his mind. The worry about her being dead was replaced with an equally disturbing realization. Someone had her. “Zach?”
“We’ll trace her. Your system will save her.”
All those words and none of them were the ones Adam wanted to hear. “Just tell me.”
“They took her.”
MADDIE FELT EVERY BUMP. When the car turned, she slid across the trunk, banging against the nearest wall and burning her arms against the carpet. With her hands and feet bound, she fought back the urge to scream.
The memory of Adam’s face kept playing in her mind. She saw the shock and pain. Watched him slip away forever. That Knevin or whoever had her now thought killing her would cause the most damage was a joke. They’d destroyed her back on that patio, but not by touching her.
The reserves of strength she’d built up while living alone and learning to rely only on herself had been expelled. She was a woman without a past and now her only shot at a future lay on the bottom of a pool. She didn’t even know she wanted the chance until two gunmen stole Adam from her.
She wasn’t one to throw around emotions. She didn’t believe in love at first sight. But this week taught her about the slow burn. The desire she’d nurtured every day he’d walked into her diner had exploded into a yearning that took over her insular world.
And now he was gone.
The hollow sensation in her chest had swelled to take over her body. She wanted to curl in
a ball and refuse to move until Adam magically showed up at her side. To see his face, run her fingers along the hard planes of his shoulders… She’d give anything for those quiet moments she once took for granted.
Tears burned her eyes at the thought of never having that again. It felt as if she had a foot inside her stomach and it kept kicking until she couldn’t unclench.
Wallowing in her grief, she hadn’t noticed the car stopped. The trunk flew open before she could ready a plan. The dark night rose above her. She saw stars and a clear sky. The next minute, she saw the masked gunman who had ripped the hair out of her head.
“Get up.”
She ignored the order as her brain scrambled to figure out how to use the situation to her benefit. Too late with the answer, she saw him reach in and lift her out of the trunk as if she weighed less than his gun.
“Let me go.”
“You know the answer to that.”
Her feet hit soft ground. In a rush, she glanced around, trying to memorize her surroundings and find a landmark. The area looked familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The road cut into the mountain and the steep slope to the ravine below.
She dug in her heels and tried to shift her weight back. “No.”
She would not beg. This man would never have the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
“You’re switching cars.”
Her body went slack. “What?”
“It’s not important that you know the details.”
Her gaze hit on the headlights behind him. There were two cars, one on each side of her. Two sets of men, neither of which welcomed her as anything other than an unwanted prisoner. She could make out the shadow of a man standing behind her attacker. The harsh glow of the lights plunged his identity deeper into the darkness beyond.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“We’re making the exchange.”
The one holding her talked about her as if she were a slab of meat, something to be bartered for and sold. Not a human. The job had Knevin’s evil fingerprints all over it. Adam had assured her law enforcement was sitting on Knevin and trying to tie him to new attempts on her life, but even from prison he was making her life impossible in the process.
Shoes crunched against the road. This guy came from the new car. He had stepped out from behind the wheel and walked toward her.
She strained to see her new enemy. A facial expression, hair color—something. Concentrating on the details kept her from obsessing about Adam’s fate. Made her forget her probable one.
She waited for the negotiation and switch. They had to say something.
“Here.” Her attacker slipped his hand under her elbow and pushed her toward the darkened figure. “She’s your problem now.”
The new player didn’t say a word. Didn’t take another step. His hands remained at his sides and his face stayed hidden.
Her attacker finally let go of her. “Sometime today would be good. My partner needs stitches.”
A thrill shot through her. Adam had inflicted damage that she could only hope would be…fatal.
But the quiet now disarmed her. She had trained her mind to shut down and listen. She called on those skills now. Let the men fight and battle. All that mattered to her was getting back to that pool and finding Adam sitting by its side, breathing and alive.
The quiet one handed a thick envelope to her attacker. The move placed the new player in a bath of light for the shortest of seconds. The features weren’t familiar.
She’d half expected to see Trevor before she remembered he had men for jobs like this. He wouldn’t waste his time on someone he found as unimportant as her.
At least with Trevor she knew her enemy. This new one held out his hand. She tried to stutter her steps and keep from being passed off, but she landed in the new guy’s arms.
The old attacker tucked an envelope of cash into his chest pocket. The new one held her tight enough to break her. Neither walked away from their standoff between the car lights. Both remained rooted to the spot on the pavement.
Now that her eyes adjusted, she saw the bigger problem. They both held a gun. Whoever these two were to each other, she didn’t sense trust.
Her original attacker nodded toward the car twenty feet away. “Take her and leave.”
“Soon.”
“What’s stopping you?”
The stillness evaporated. The quiet one kept his body flush against her, not moving. Then his arm flew up and a shuddering boom sounded next to her head that rocked through her and made her knees buckle. A second shot shattered the back window of the car that had just held her prisoner.
When the quiet returned she saw a man slumped over her feet and blood sprinkled across her shirt. Looking up, she could see an arm sticking out of the now-open back of the car. Blood assaulted her wherever she turned.
The killings pushed her closer to the edge of sanity. She’d seen so much senseless killing. And all the deaths could be traced back to her.
She looked around, searching the killer’s face for an explanation or even a flicker of emotion. If he felt regret he hid it. He was all business. He kicked the gun away from the man on the ground and brought her with him while he checked the pulse on the second slumped body in the car.
By the time they finished and took the envelope back and rounded the hood of the man’s car, her survival instinct had rebooted. She separated the aspects of her life. In one compartment she placed her vision of Adam, with him alive and fine. In another she plotted a way out.
She would not die.
“Why kill them?” she asked as her new guard opened the back door and shoved her down on the seat.
He tied together the ropes of her bound hands and feet. The shackles nearly bent her double. It only took seconds for her back to cry out in a new flash of pain.
She couldn’t sit up or separate her hands from her feet. She was bound and controlled and neutralized.
Just when she switched from trying to engage the man to controlling the pain, he finally spoke. “It’s simple.”
“What is?”
“No witnesses.”
She knew that included her.
Chapter Fourteen
“We’ll get her back, man.” Caleb made the comment as he finished the last stitch on Adam’s arm.
Bloody gauze and an open medical kit, its contents spilling out, sat next to Adam. He wanted to lash out and knock it all to the floor.
He didn’t need anesthesia because he couldn’t feel anything anyway. His body, his heart, it was all numb. A minor wound on his face and an insignificant shot through the fleshy part of his upper arm didn’t warrant this level of concern. The arm pounded as it swelled, but it was a nuisance only.
He glanced at the faces lined up around the conference room table. Clearly Caleb had sounded the alarm and they all came running. Even the women showed up for this one. Luke had eased their lockdown back at his house and brought them along.
Adam appreciated the show of support, but their energy was misplaced. They should be running scenarios and looking at tape. Time was running out for Maddie…if it hadn’t expired already.
Claire rubbed her growing belly with a look of dark menace in her eyes. “It will all be okay. Don’t worry.”
Adam wasn’t in the mood for any of this. They were wasting time and sitting in the wrong state. That Caleb had brought him back to D.C., actually knocked him out with a shot despite his promise of retaliation, ticked Adam off.
If Avery were the one missing, Caleb would be racing through the woods to find her. They all would. In the past, they did. Adam wanted the same red-alert scramble for Maddie.
He was done with the nursing and babying. “Let me up.”
Luke pressed a hand against Adam’s chest, holding him down. “Not an option.”
Adam shoved the arm away and threw his legs over the side of the table. His brain followed a step behind. When a wave of nausea rolled over him, he closed his eyes to keep from falling down.
One show of weakness and he’d never get out of there and back to Rod’s house to search for clues.
“The people looking for Maddie need her dead.” The word hung there. He couldn’t say more until he wrestled his emotions back under control. “That means she has an expiration date and it could be now.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?
“Yes.” Luke pointed at Claire.
He didn’t say the words, but the reference to Claire’s previous near-death experience came through. She’d outrun the police and a crazed ex-husband. She’d survived with Luke’s help, and Luke had the limited use of one arm to prove it.
The memory took the edge off Adam’s anger, but the welling anxiety remained. “Look, I know—”
Luke cut him off. “They took her. I get that, but they didn’t kill her.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
“You should realize that them waiting means something and buys us time to figure out what.”
Holden stepped up to the table. His usual joking demeanor had been replaced with an intensity that pulsed like a living creature. “We tracked the car via satellite and surveillance cameras. Zach is at the spot now. The guys who attacked you are dead and there are signs of a scuffle.”
Adam felt a flash of unrealistic hope. “Maddie?”
“She’s not there. There are tracks for another car, so it looks like a shoot-and-grab.”
As the information dipped back into horror, Adam’s belief in bringing her out alive waned. He’d already forced out of his mind the horrible images of Maddie being hurt or worse. He held on to a thin sliver of hope but he was losing the grip.
He didn’t know how to fight an enemy he couldn’t name. This thing ran so deep, was so entrenched and dangerous. It was as if they’d gotten caught between warring groups of corruption. But he had no idea who led the armies.
Caleb repacked the medical kit. “This can’t all be Trevor.”
Locked and Loaded Page 11