by Rebecca York
He poked his head out from under the table and saw shadowy outlines of people, visible only because of the moonlight coming through the windows. Then he blinked as a brighter light burst through the darkness.
It came from a high-powered flashlight.
“Put that damn light out!” the ringleader shouted.
“Take off your night-vision goggles,” a sharp voice countered. He recognized it as Ty Jones.
“I believe we’re the ones in charge here. Put out the light if you don’t want to get shot.”
After several seconds, the light snapped out.
“Nobody move,” one of their captors shouted. “Except Stack, Davis and their Secret Service agents.”
The crowd of men and women in the center of the room had been given a direct order. They stayed where they were, but an undercurrent of voices rose up in their midst. Probably most of them were expressing their relief, Shane thought.
“Quiet!” the leader of the madmen bellowed. To reinforce his words, he shot at random into the crowd.
Screams of pain and terror erupted.
Beside Shane, Ariana made a strangled sound as bullets hit the floor only inches from their hiding place.
“We’re getting out of here,” Shane whispered, knitting his fingers with hers. “Stay low.” He’d led her to one hiding place already. He hoped that in the confusion he could get her out of the room.
TY JONES’ S HEART WAS POUNDING, but he maintained an icy outward calm as three of the armed men hustled him, the president, Vice President Davis and Agent Mercer into the kitchen. Emergency lights illuminated the area, and the gunmen took off their night-vision goggles but not their gas masks. To hide their identities or because they were going to open the canisters of cyanide gas?
Ty tried to get a look at their faces, but the masks made it difficult to see their features. Well, at least he could report their hair color, height and probable weight.
One of them rudely shoved the vice president, who almost lost his footing, but Ty kept his lips pressed together. These men had already proved they were wildly unpredictable. Challenging them could be fatal.
“Stack and Davis, over there,” one of the gunmen barked.
The president and vice president moved to the side of the room, where one of the men kept his gun trained on them.
First they searched Ty and Mercer for communications equipment, then pushed them into chairs that were waiting for them.
As Ty watched helplessly, they threw cell phones, transmitters and receivers onto the floor and crushed them under their heels.
“Hands behind your backs.”
They did as they were told. One of the captors held them all at gunpoint while the other used rope and duct tape to secure Mercer to the chair.
Ty thought about making a move before they got to him, but he knew he would only be committing suicide. And maybe he’d take the president and vice president with him.
So he gritted his teeth and waited while one of the bastards secured his hands and feet to the chair. Next, they gagged both him and Mercer with the duct tape, then turned their chairs so they couldn’t see each other.
The last sight he had of President Stack and Vice President Davis was of two gunmen hustling them out the door. The other returned to the reception room.
As soon as they were gone, Ty started working on his bonds. They were tight, but as he looked around in the dim emergency lighting, he saw a metal edge on one of the kitchen drawers. Maybe he could use it to cut the rope.
Awkwardly he maneuvered his chair across the floor. Each time the chair moved an inch, it thumped on the kitchen tile and he stopped, waiting with his heart pounding to see if he’d drawn the attention of the thugs in the reception area. When nobody came through the door, he thumped again and waited. It took fifteen agonizing minutes, but finally he reached the drawer and began sawing with his wrists against the metal corner.
He worked feverishly, aware that his escape attempt could get him killed. If one of the other gunmen came back here and found Ty sawing at his bonds, he’d probably get shot in the head.
That was only one of the ugly thoughts racing through his mind.
He had been so elated when he’d gotten the assignment of guarding the vice president. He’d been on this detail less than a year, and now he had lost the man in his care. In the Secret Service, no agent’s career survived a stain like that.
But his first thought wasn’t just about his own future. It was about Grant Davis.
He and the vice president went way back. They’d both been in the Special Forces, and they’d met when they’d started training for that rescue mission in Barik. He’d admired Davis’s grace under fire back then. And he still admired the man. He was proud to say that they were friends—or as close as possible when one was a highly placed public official and the other was his bodyguard.
They had gotten to know and respect each other on that long-ago operation. They’d both gone on to other assignments and lost touch over the years, but when Davis had been elected vice president, he’d specifically asked for Ty as the agent in charge of his protection. That was quite an honor, and until this hellish night, Ty had done the job well.
Now he was feeling sick as he looked at the door behind which the president and vice president had disappeared with their kidnappers.
What the hell was the other agent doing? Ty wished he knew.
But his best alternative was to worry about himself. He had to get free, to send a message to the detail outside, telling them that the president and vice president were on their way down—with two crazed gunmen.
SHANE GRABBED ARIANA’S HAND and tugged. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Out of here.”
“They’re not going to kill me now.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t have any idea what these guys are going to do for their next big move. They can open fire on the room again, and there’s no point in your trying for martyr status.”
To his vast relief, she was still thinking rationally enough to let him lead her away from the action. Now he had to hope that the bad guys were still at the front of the room, and not at the main entrance where the guests had come in.
CHASE VICKERS SAT IN THE limo, his six-foot-one frame hunched in the driver’s seat as he sat in traffic. He banged the steering wheel in frustration. It wasn’t only the miles of cars in front of him. He’d been on edge all night, ever since the lights had gone out all over Boston. Now he felt like jumping out of his skin.
But he wasn’t an ordinary driver. He had a security clearance to escort foreign dignitaries and government officials all over the United States and abroad. Another man might have made that his main career. He used it as a way of filling his time when he wasn’t on an Eclipse assignment.
He lived for those assignments. They were the only time he really felt alive.
And he wanted to get into action now.
Unable to sit still, he absently rubbed the scar again. He’d gotten it during a mercenary mission in Afghanistan, and sometimes when he was under stress it throbbed.
It was pulsing like a son of a bitch now.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to settle down. No use acting like a mongoose in a cage. Right now the only thing he could do was sit and wait.
UPSTAIRS, SHANE STAYED on his hands and knees, moving Ariana steadily toward the west end of the room, toward the entrance where they’d first come in. The elevators were located in the foyer, but so was an exit door that led to a corridor that intersected the back stairs.
If they could slip through the doorway, they could escape. But was that the right thing to do? Their captor had said that if they tried to leave, they’d trigger the release of cyanide gas. Yet all through the nightmare captivity, Shane had been thinking about the psychology of Liam Shea, trying to figure out what mind games the bastard was playing.
If it was Liam Shea running the show. Shane had been betting that it was, and he’d
come to the conclusion that Liam Shea had thrown in the canister of gas as an effective means of crowd control.
His other reason was more complicated. Liam had set this evening up to match the long-ago raid in Barik. That night there had been darkness, hostages, machine guns and cyanide gas.
Shane was thinking that tonight it didn’t really exist.
He was willing to bet his life on his logic. But could he risk Ariana’s life?
Chapter Seven
“What’s wrong?” Ariana whispered.
Shane peered through the doorway. It was absolutely dark inside the foyer, except for the tantalizing red exit sign thirty feet away, which must have been operating on battery power. The exit spelled freedom from this nightmare. Yet it might as well have been on the other side of the earth for all the good it did him.
“They said there was cyanide gas at the exits,” he whispered.
“Not at this entrance,” she said, sounding very positive about her information.
He turned to her in the darkness. “How do you know?”
“Because just as I was arriving, the Secret Service was sweeping this area. If there had been a canister of gas, they would have found it.”
“They could have placed it later,” he argued.
“How could they? I came in with a crowd of people, and more guests were coming in the whole time. They couldn’t set up a trap like that in full view of everybody, could they?”
He thought about that logic. Her theory made sense, yet he was still reluctant to risk her life.
While he was trying to decide what to do, Ariana crawled across the threshold.
He muffled a gasp, then charged across after her, still on his hands and knees.
It was several seconds before he realized that nothing had happened. They were still breathing the building’s stale air.
Not cyanide.
And no men with gas masks were running after them shooting. A very good sign. They both crawled to the side of the entrance hall, out of sight from the main room. Ariana sat, leaning against the wall, breathing hard.
“Dieu merci,” she whispered.
“We’re not safe yet.”
He reached for her hand and helped her up, then led her along the wall, toward the exit light. And he didn’t give thanks until he grasped the cold metal of the doorknob and found that it really did turn in his hand.
He eased the door open and ushered Ariana into the corridor. Like the exit sign, it was glowing with low-level emergency lighting.
Closing the door behind them, he made a rough sound. Then, because he needed to express his thanks in a very physical way, he pulled Ariana into his arms and crushed her against his chest.
He had held her before. On the dance floor, in the crevice where they’d hidden and under the table, where they’d huddled together and he had kissed her.
That had been a sweet kiss. A kiss born of anguish. He had wanted her to know how much she had come to mean to him and so quickly. At the same time, he had been desperate to keep her away from those gunmen, and he had used the sexual pull between them to draw her in and keep her safe from harm.
But now that they had escaped from the killing field, his relief swelled over into action.
With no thought that she would reject him, he dipped his head toward her mouth, his lips sealing to hers, his mouth rapacious as he devoured her.
She could have pulled back. But she met him more than halfway, and he knew that her emotions had leaped up to meet his.
He had made love to many women. Lusty, satisfying love. But as his hands slid down Ariana’s back, molding her body to his, he felt a wave of need stronger than anything he had ever experienced in his lifetime.
The kiss was fueled by relief and greed. His and hers.
He drew her lower lip into his mouth, sucking, nibbling, overwhelmed by the small sounds of arousal that she made.
He was dressed in a tuxedo and she was wearing a stiff silk evening dress. Yet the image in his head was of the two of them naked, holding each other, rocking together on a wide bed.
She moaned into his mouth. As he drank in the sound, he stroked his fingers across her bare back, then slipped them under the top of her dress, dipping inside the fabric for more intimate contact, entranced by the warm skin of her back.
She moaned again as he cupped her bottom and lifted her up, pulling her against his erection.
His blood was on fire. He wanted her with a force that was close to madness. All thought had left his mind—except the need to merge his body with hers.
She gasped at the contact, clung to his broad shoulders as the white-hot kiss drugged his senses.
Amazingly, the world had vanished, leaving only the two of them. He rocked her in his arms, loving the friction against his supercharged body. Blindly, his fingers fumbled at the back of her gown. Finding the tab of her zipper, he felt as though he’d been given the key to a priceless treasure. He’d have her naked soon, her body under his.
But as he began to lower the zipper, Ariana stiffened in his arms.
He lifted his head, blinking in the dim light. He had forgotten where they were. Forgotten everything besides the woman in his arms.
Firmly, she pushed against his shoulder. “Shane, please. Don’t. We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t…” she repeated, her voice breaking as she said the words.
It took a moment for him to realize what she was saying, to realize why she was pushing him away.
He swallowed, struggling to bring himself under control. He’d gone a little crazy with wanting her. He understood that truth on a gut-wrenching level. Nothing like this had ever happened to him in his life. Sex was a fun activity where he and his partner gave each other pleasure. It had never been a wild ride where need took over for rational thought.
Until now.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say, hearing the thickness in his voice.
She kept her gaze steady, though he was sure she wanted to look away. “It was as much my fault as yours,” she murmured. “But…I can’t.”
“I understand that,” he answered. “And I also know that I shouldn’t have started anything.”
She answered with a tight nod, and he knew that he had to keep his hands off her. She might have been swept along by the passion of the moment, but she wasn’t a woman who could indulge in casual affairs.
The assessment brought him up short.
Casual? Not hardly.
They might have just met tonight, but what they’d been doing together hadn’t felt like a one-night stand. Which was all the more reason he had to follow a hands-off policy.
Now that his head was more or less screwed on straight, he’d better think about what he was supposed to be doing—getting her out of this tower of terror.
Once again he wished to hell he had a gun. Instead, he had to settle for the fire extinguisher on the wall. He lifted it off the metal brace, thinking that he could use it as a club. It would be good as a spray, too, if only the bad guys weren’t wearing gas masks.
The masks were only for effect, he reminded himself, since there wasn’t any cyanide gas. At least at the main entrance to the reception area.
Too bad there was no way to get the information about the gas to the people remaining in the room.
“We have to get downstairs,” he said, hearing the gritty quality of his own voice.
She looked around the hallway. “How?”
“There are stairs around the corner.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m always thorough. I studied the layout of the building before the party.”
He was glad she didn’t ask why he’d needed the information. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that it was part of his plan to steal her country’s famous sapphire. Or that he had the damn thing in the hidden pocket inside his tuxedo sleeve.
They reached the end of the hall, and he stopped, motioning for her to wait. In the dim glow of the em
ergency lighting, he looked around the corner. The hallway was clear, and the door to the stairs was only a few feet away.
Was it safe to risk a call?
He pulled out his cell phone and punched in one of the auto-dial numbers. But a computerized voice told him the circuits were busy.
“Who were you trying to call?” Ariana asked at his side.
“My brother.”
She nodded, trying to take that in. “He’s on site?”
“He’s a limo driver and he has a special clearance to drive dignitaries. I thought maybe he was outside.”
“Oh,” was all she could manage.
She hadn’t known Shane Peters had a brother. She remembered that Shane was a millionaire. And he had a brother who was a limo driver? That seemed rather strange. But why not? Everything tonight was strange.
The hostage taking. The kidnapping. The deaths.
She pulled her mind away from the deaths, from Manfred’s especially. She knew she could still join her bodyguard.
She would have liked to just shut her mind down and follow Shane Peters out of here. But she couldn’t stop the terrible images from whirling in her head.
To keep her thoughts away from death and destruction, she focused on the way she’d behaved with Shane. She had ended up in his arms. And if they’d been in a bedroom, she would have let him take off her dress. And more.
Unbelievable, considering that duty to her country had been drummed into her since she was a little girl. One thing she had always known, she had to be a virgin when she married.
So was she the only twenty-nine-year-old virgin left in the world? She repressed a hysterical laugh. Maintaining that status hadn’t been so difficult until she’d met Shane Peters. Then suddenly, all the rules that had been drummed into her flew out of her head.
Well, she’d better remember them. And she’d better remember that she and this man could never be more to each other than casual friends.
In her real life, it took her a long time to get to know anyone on more than a superficial level. She’d cut through her usual reserve pretty quickly with Shane. But the danger of the hostage situation had created an atmosphere of intimacy between them that would never have existed otherwise.