by Cindy Skaggs
Barry pulled out a handgun. The fussy scientist carried a weapon? “Put the phone down.”
“You’re working with Echo,” Debi guessed.
“You mean Team Echo.”
“Are you their creator?” He really was a mad scientist.
“They’re magnificent, aren’t they?”
“You’re as crazy as they are if you believe that.” How many were left? Six? No, that was before Robert, so five left. Great. She had no skills and was bent over like an old woman. Best-case scenario was to get out the fire exit before Echo arrived. Coughing, she stumbled as she might during an attack, moving closer to Barry.
Allyson stood, the sound of her skirt swishing closer. “Debi, are you okay?”
“No.” She rasped the words like she struggled to breathe. She stumbled, brushing the desk. At the last minute, she altered trajectory and rammed her head into Barry’s midsection. They tumbled into the hall.
Her shoulder hit the wall and his gun went flying. She didn’t have to fake the pain that dropped her to the ground next to Barry.
“Well, well.” Strong hands picked her up by her hair.
“Ouch, you prick.” Hair in her eyes, she couldn’t see the attacker. She kicked out and he backhanded her into the wall. She dropped back down by Barry who had struggled to his knees. Allyson flew at the man with claws out and aimed for his eyes. She must have hit something, because he used his fist to knock her back. She landed on the opposite side of the hall, out for the count.
“Hey, leave my sister out of this. I need her to compile our results.”
“There will be no compiling.” There was no warning. One minute Barry was spouting orders and the next brain matter spattered the wall. “Once the smoke clears, it will look like you killed your ex-boyfriend.”
Debi struggled to her feet and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She stopped cold. “Wade?”
Rose slipped into the lab after ordering Fowler to get Camy the hell back to the manor. He went in hot, no time for finesse. Where the lab ended and gave way to offices, Ryder yanked him to the side. “Who trained you?” he asked in a low whisper. “You can’t come marching in like a fucking cowboy unless you want to get shot.”
“Where is she?”
“Last ping was from right here.”
“No cell service,” Craft explained. “We have to find her the old-fashioned way.”
A gunshot sounded around the corner and down the hall. Rose lurched forward, but Ryder slammed him into a cement wall. “I will tie you up again if you don’t pull your head out of your ass. You’re no good to her dead.”
Rose nodded tightly. Every muscle in his body strained to move out, to find her before it was too late, but Ryder was right. He needed to pack that shit up. “No fear.”
“Now you’re talking, brother.”
“If it isn’t my favorite bartender.” Wade gave Debi his best shit-eating cowboy grin. “You didn’t really think that I sat on that damn barstool night after night just to grab your ass?”
“No.” She thought he was a decent guy who drank too much. He’d been coming to the bar from the beginning. Erratically at first, but more often recently. Nearly every day. The implications chilled her to the bones. Wade was involved even before they started training the teams. He’d been keeping an eye on her because it was her formula. Why hadn’t they killed her like they did Barry? Debi gagged and spit the bile on the floor next to the body she couldn’t look at. “Who’s in charge?”
“Right now, I am.” He nodded to a soldier who had taken up a position behind him. “Grab the girl on the floor. Lock them in the server room.”
The other soldier dead lifted Allyson onto his shoulder.
Debi swallowed. “If you let us go now, I’ll forgive your bar tab.”
Wade dropped a hand over her shoulder and pressed into the wound. “You can come hard or come easy, but you’re going into the closet.”
Debi followed the soldier, frantically trying to find a way out, and not finding a way past Wade and the soldier she recognized from the Echo wall of shame. Another soldier dressed in black cargo pants and t-shirt approached from the opposite direction. “Team Fear is in the building.”
“How long until they find the women?”
“They have to do a room-by-room sweep. Best estimate is seven minutes.”
“Set the charges for six and then bug out.” Wade shoved Debi into the server room and slammed the door closed.
“What? No goodbye?” she muttered. She tried the door, but it was locked from the outside, which was backwards. Obviously they’d planned this ahead of time. Debi yanked the cell phone out of her pocket and checked the time. They had six minutes to get everyone clear of the building. She dialed, but there was no cell service.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Debi pulled a server from the racks nearest her and slammed it down on the doorknob with all her strength. The doorknob didn’t even bend. Okay, so she had no upper body strength, especially in her dominant arm. She wasn’t going down easy. Echo was evacuating the building, which meant there was no one to attack Stills and Camy if they made it into the building. She had to let Stills know where she was.
Banging on the door tired her arm quickly, so she switched to kicking. What she wouldn’t give for a loud pair of boots to smack against the door. That would make some serious noise. She clicked the power button on her phone, illuminating the time. Two minutes had passed. Her heart raced, but she didn’t have time to give in to the panic. She sat down on the floor and started kicking like a toddler with a temper tantrum.
The door swung in. “Ryder.” She jumped up and hugged him. “There’s a bomb in the building set to go off in three minutes.”
“Where?”
“If I knew that I might not be so freaked out.”
“Craft, grab Allyson.”
Craft stepped through and hoisted Allyson over his shoulder.
“Fire exit is closest.” She pushed through to lead the way and ran smack into Rose. “Crap.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw and then he picked her up and swung her over his shoulder like Craft had Allyson. “Wait.” She lifted her head up to find Ryder, the voice of reason, or so she hoped. “There’s a USB drive in Barry’s office. We copied files.”
“Where?”
“Next to the dead body.”
Ryder nodded. “We passed it.” He turned to go but Debi kicked out. “Wait. Don’t go alone.” The idea of him getting shot terrified her. Lauren wouldn’t survive if anything happened to her husband. “Please. Take backup.”
Craft set Allyson back on the ground and followed Ryder.
“You can put me down now,” she told Rose. “All the blood rushing to my head probably isn’t good for me.”
“Not another word.” He ground the words into dust.
Crap, he was pissed.
The woman over his shoulder stopped struggling a block or two back. Rose cinched a hand behind her knees to stabilize her position. They rendezvoused back at the cars. Fowler and Camy had already taken off. Stills met up with them carrying a rifle on his shoulder and whistling a tune.
“Team Echo did not egress out of any known exits,” Stills insisted. “There has to be another way in or out.”
A half a mile back, an explosion sent plumes of fire and smoke into the sky. Windows rattled, car alarms blared.
“Time to bail.”
Rose stopped Stills with a hand to his upper chest. “Give me your keys.”
“I’m not letting you drive my drug mobile. I stole it fair and square.”
His teeth ground together. “You took two women into battle without backup.”
“I sent you guys the information, so we had backup.”
As if that made it right. “Give me the keys or you will bleed.”
Stills pulled the keys out. “Don’t scratch it.”
Keys in hand, Rose plowed a fist into Stills’ smug face.
Stills shook it out. “I probably deserved
that.”
“You deserve more, but my hands are full right now.” Rose went around to the passenger side, opened the door, and dropped Debi to the seat. He strapped her in with a warning. “Do not try to leave this car.”
Her eyebrow lifted in a sign of rebellion, but she didn’t reply. Good, he needed time to cool down. He started the car and headed out of town, watching for a tail that never showed.
No doubt he’d been a belligerent asshole by refusing to talk to Debi the past few days, to hear her plan and make it happen, but he’d been too set on protecting her. Which wasn’t what she needed. The life they lived wasn’t a safe one, and he needed to accept that he couldn’t always protect her. If it came down to it, she needed to stay busy to ward off the fears that had ridden her all these years. He’d risked what they had because he’d tried to force her into the mold he had shoved his sisters into.
Innocents.
Soft didn’t make you weak, something his sisters had tried to tell him, but he’d never listened. It was his job to protect. It had been since he was thirteen years old and it was too late for him to change, but he could accept Debi for who she was. She was soft, she was a body full of contradictions, and she’d been alone too long to accept help easily. And he hadn’t even tried to help. He’d hindered who she was at her core. When he found out where she’d gone, he went ballistic, because all he could imagine was her dying before he had a chance to make those things right.
She was asleep by the time he found a motel that took cash. He carried her in and laid her on top of the bedspread. He wanted to wake her and get this over with; he wanted to let her sleep.
He stood at the end of the bed and watched her before pulling off his boots and lining them up by the door. When he pulled off her shoes, she woke and slid toward the headboard. Away from him.
The anger had faded, leaving him oddly calm. From the time Madigan had died, Rose had walked around defeated. Numb by what he carried in his blood. They were angry, all of them, and even without the garbage Echo tried to dose them with, they were still volatile, but at his worst, when he’d beaten that man—and Echo had deserved to die—Rose hadn’t posed a serious threat to a teammate. He’d never lifted a hand against a woman, although he’d threatened to. He smiled at the thought of giving her the spanking she deserved.
“Whatever caused that smile, get it right out of your head.”
“Right now, you don’t want to order me around. You willfully put yourself in danger. You snuck off like a thief.” And his heart had nearly split in two. He pulled off his socks and dropped them by his boots. “Since I left the Army my first priority is to protect what’s mine.”
“Is that why you left your sisters alone?”
The verbal shot was sound, but off target. He removed his flak vest and all weapons from his person. Set his Glock on the nightstand. “I have friends there to protect my sisters. Not for one minute are they unsafe. It’s not my sisters I’m worried about right now. It’s a hardheaded chemist who runs headfirst into danger.”
“I’m not yours.”
“If you think that, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“You said you were done with me.”
He reached behind and grabbed a fistful of shirt, yanking it over his head. “No, I said I was done. For the night.”
“It was more than a night.”
“I can’t talk to you when I’m angry. I can’t talk to anyone when I’m angry.”
“Why not? That’s when I find my best words.”
“Have you been paying attention? I beat a man to death. In anger. If my number one job is to protect, sometimes that means protecting those I care about from me. From the crazy man the government created.”
“You were angry, I’ll give you that, but you didn’t really hurt any of your friends, even Stills, and I know he annoys the hell out of you.”
“What if I hurt you? I won’t endanger those I love.”
Her chin jerked up. “Say that again.”
He shook his head. “Stop trying to distract me.”
“It’s not a distraction. It’s the most important thing you’ve said all night. Maybe ever.”
He unzipped his jeans and let them drop to the ground.
“Talk about distractions.” She gestured with her left hand.
“What is?”
“You’re finally wearing the blue and green paisley.” She scooted to the edge of the bed and removed her socks. Dropped them on the floor. “You haven’t been speaking to me and now you’re wearing my favorite underwear. Is that a sign of anything?”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I have some really creative ideas.”
Damn, but she pulled a smile out of him even in the middle of a rant.
“Sergeant Rose, are you afraid of me?”
“Of course not.”
She pulled off her shirt. The top of her breasts pushed from the cups of her bra creating the kind of cleavage he wanted to lose himself inside.
“You are a very dangerous woman.”
“Remember that the next time you threaten to spank me.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that wasn’t a threat.” He tucked a finger into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her close.
A low, sexy laugh bubbled from deep inside her. “You wouldn’t hurt a woman.”
“Who said anything about pain?” He unzipped her jeans and together them slid them off her body. “If it hurts, I’m doing it wrong.”
Her ample chest lifted. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Now’s not the time to challenge me.” He lifted her and shifted so she landed on her hands and knees in the center of the bed. He stood behind her and tried to stay on topic despite the tempting vision in front of him. “You were reckless, put yourself in danger by going alone instead of with the team. I about had a panic attack, and I don’t feel fear.” His voice rose with the memory, but his hand was gentle as he caressed the soft globes of her bare ass. Not in a million years would he mar one inch of her sexy flesh.
She shivered. “You locked me out. Wouldn’t talk.”
As her father had done. “I’m sorry,” he said. For failing to understand who she was until it was almost too late. “You need to be part of the solution.”
“The silence gave me too much time to think.”
He caressed down the cleft of her fine ass until his fingers found her opening. Wet already. He teased a finger along the edge. “You don’t want to think?”
“I want to feel.” Her hips pressed back into his touch, moving his fingers deeper. “You. I need to feel you.”
He wanted to memorize the look of her on her knees, open to him, begging him to grab her ass and go. Fast. He wanted to take her so hard that his body shook with restraint.
She widened her stance, opening more fully so his hand settled easily between her legs. Wet coated his fingers as she used him to get off. Her body milked his fingers. Her ass arched in the air and she started to move. Shit, the way she moved. Need, desire, emotion too deep for words propelled him to the inevitable conclusion. He needed to feel her from the inside out. He pulled his fingers free to yank his boxers off, and she moaned at the loss.
She peered over her injured shoulder at him. “River, don’t make me wait.”
“Never.” Never again would he leave her in silence and cold. With one hand, he guided his cock to her entrance and slid inside like a wet dream. The position put him so deep he could lose himself and die a happy man. He had to stop moving or come before he took another breath.
Her breath caught and her core clenched around him. She leaned forward before slamming back, and his body answered. He gripped her hips and let himself go. The movements were frantic, out of control, the kind of raw sex they’d been barreling to from the moment they’d met. He reached around to rub her clit. So wet he nearly lost it. He continued the punishing pace, his fingers working her until mindless words and sighs spilled from her mouth. Stil
l he moved, hips flying, pounding deeper, harder. He couldn’t get enough.
A cry sounded as she went slick around him, as she milked him so good, but it wasn’t enough to burn away the fear that she had run from him and into danger. So he pounded through her orgasm. She dropped onto her elbows, deepening the angle, giving him the best view of her sweet ass and the gentle glide of her back.
His balls tightened as they slapped against her bare skin.
“Yes. Yes.” She moaned, caught up, at his mercy.
He pressed closer, widening her completely. On her knees with her head down on her arms was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. The angle rubbed his cock against her G-spot and she gasped, too trapped between him and the mattress and the wide open legs to do anything but take what he gave her.
So he gave her everything. He crawled over her, around her, and took her all the way to the bed. She bore down on him as she came again with a cry of ecstasy. When the pleasure like pain stabbed his lower back, he let himself go. He lost himself and found himself in her.
In the anger and passion, he’d forgotten a condom, and he couldn’t make himself regret it. She wasn’t going to be with another man ever again. Not as long as he lived.
Much later, when the lights were off and their bodies slick, he pulled Debi into his side. “You know I don’t have a future.”
She ran a tentative hand over his chest. “You do if you fight for one.”
“I’d die for every man on the team. I planned on it.” He twisted his hand in her silky hair. “But I’ll fight for you.”
“Do me a favor? Turn on the light.”
The light pushed the darkness back a few feet, but she pressed him into it and asked him to turn around. “What’s going on?”
“There’s something I need to see.”
He turned his back to her. That was trust. She was a tricky woman. But she didn’t run or even try, but rather ran a gentle finger in a circle around his back.
“Are these runes?”
Ah, his tattoo. “It’s a Viking Compass.”