King spun around and pleaded, “Don’t shoot. You might hit her.”
Jay didn’t have a clean shot and lowered his weapon and walked down the stairs to join him. “If they tip off Iceman, we could lose him or walk right into a trap.”
“We need to go after them. We have to get her back.”
Jay reached for his phone to call in backup and get the local cops to intercept the truck.
Out of nowhere, a wall of heat and a blast of pain picked him up off his feet and tossed him several yards and dumped him in a heap on the pavement and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty
Jay came awake in increments. First the ringing in his ears. Then the pain throbbing in his head in time to his heart. And the overwhelming need to see Alina, hold her, tell her . . . everything . . . before it was too late.
His head felt like it might split clean open. If he didn’t survive this, who would take care of Alina and make sure whoever tried to kill her paid for it?
It took his mind a minute to answer that question with her brothers, but it should be him.
He needed to keep her safe. He needed to protect her.
He needed her here with him right now.
If she were here, he’d be okay.
He could barely move but managed to pull his phone from his pocket. It didn’t surprise him her name came up first in his Favorites list. They’d kept in touch a lot these last few days. After they got together at the wedding he’d wanted to call her all the time. He should have.
Jay: I wish you were here
Jay: Explosion head hurts
Jay: need to see you
Jay: hope I see you again
Jay: should have told you I love you
Jay: I never said that
Jay: I should have said it
Jay: maybe it’s too late or I have time
Jay: stay put I want you safe have to prote
His brain overloaded and switched off.
He came awake again to the sound of sirens, wiped his hand over his stinging forehead, and pulled his bloody fingers away from the wound. The sirens grew louder as the ringing in his ears subsided so all he heard was the high-pitched fire trucks and police vehicles and the throbbing of his heart like a bass drum echoing in his head.
The reason for the pain, spinning stars overhead, and blood running down his raging head hit him. A bomb. He rolled his head to the side and spotted King sprawled on his stomach ten feet away and fought the wave of nausea that soured his gut and sent searing acid up his throat before he swallowed it back.
It took him two tries to push himself up to sitting. His phone fell off his chest and landed on the ground between his legs. He didn’t remember taking it out.
The all-encompassing pain in his body narrowed to his splitting head, left shoulder, and right calf. He reached over his chest and swept his fingers toward his back along the edge of his bulletproof vest, feeling a sharp pain when his fingertips hit wood. He pinched the piece between his index and middle finger and pulled hard to get the inch-thick piece out of his back. Blood soaked his shirt. He couldn’t see it, but he bet his vest took a few more hits when the building exploded into a mass of fire and shards of wood and glass.
Jay pulled another, thicker, piece of wood out of the back of his calf. More blood ran down his leg. Other nicks, scratches, and gouges peppered his legs and arms. He felt like a pincushion. He should probably look at them to see if any needed immediate attention, like his shoulder and leg, but he needed to check on King.
“You alive, King?”
King rolled over and sat up with his legs out in front of him and held his head in his hands. “Fuck.”
That about summed it up.
Emergency vehicles poured into the lot as his phone rang. He checked caller ID. Alina. God, he wanted to hear her voice.
Firemen, cops, and paramedics poured out of the vehicles and went to work attacking the fire and securing the scene.
Jay hated to do it, but he ignored the call that mattered more to him than anything else; he needed to get his head together and make sure King was okay. He needed to contact the other agents still tracking the truck. And worst of all, he needed to contact his superiors and let them know they’d just lost a man. Agent Alvarado and Tandy had been inside that building when it exploded. No way they survived the blast. The building had practically been leveled.
A police officer squatted in front of them. “You guys okay?”
Jay took the wad of gauze a paramedic handed him and pressed it to the oozing wound on his forehead and tried to wipe some of the blood from his face. “We’re rattled but good. We had an agent inside, second floor, and a woman in custody.” Jay stared up at what little remained of the building and shook his head, his sour gut tightening with dread and remorse that he couldn’t save them.
The paramedic stuffed a gauze pad under his shirt over his shoulder and pressed hard on the wound. Jay bit back a groan as pain exploded through his shoulder and back.
His phone dinged with a string of text messages. He pulled them up and stared at the messages he didn’t remember sending to Alina.
Oh shit! What had he done? Did he really say . . . yep, he did. He waited for the denial, the need to take it back, his mind to figure out a way to play it off as nothing. But it was something.
Alina: Answer the phone!!!
Alina: What happened?
Alina: Are you okay?
Alina: ANSWER ME!!!!!!
That was a lot of exclamation point yelling.
The paramedic ripped open his pant leg, pressed another pad over his seeping wound and rolled some gauze around his leg and tied it tight to stop the bleeding soaking his black cargos.
He tried to focus and rattled off Agent Alvarado’s and Tandy’s information to the police officer. King sat quietly beside him, letting the other paramedic tend to his own wounds, enduring the flashing light in his eyes and checking out of the back of his head, all without much participation from King.
The paramedic touched King’s shoulder to be sure he had his attention. “Looks like you’ve got a concussion.”
“No shit.”
“Ambulance just arrived. We’ll transport you to the hospital and get you checked out for any other internal injuries. A doctor will stitch your arm and clean these other cuts and scrapes.”
Jay needed the same attention, but he was in charge. He was responsible for King, Agent Alvarado, Tandy, and all the other members of his team still doing their jobs.
“They’ll do a scan to see how bad the concussion is. You’ll probably stay a couple days,” the paramedic rambled on.
King shook his head, planted his bloody, road rash-scraped hands on the ground, and pushed himself up. His legs wobbled under him until he stood tall and balance returned. Mostly. He swayed.
The paramedic held him steady by the arm. “You need to stay seated until they get you loaded on a gurney and take you to the hospital. It’ll only be a minute.”
King shook off the fireman paramedic and waved off the ambulance guys. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You’ve got a head injury,” Jay reminded him before the paramedic could point out the same thing.
“She’s in danger. I need to get to her.” King didn’t need to say who or why. The desperation in his voice felt as deep as Jay’s need to see Alina. He hated to keep her waiting after the string of random but telling texts he’d sent her. He hated putting her through hell. He didn’t want to think that this might be the very thing that ended it all.
“We’ve got an APB out on Otis Potter and his truck,” the officer interjected. “We’ll find him.”
The desperate look on King’s face said it all. He needed to find Cara and make sure her uncle didn’t do something stupid. Jay stared at the blaze the fire department fought to extinguish that had taken Agent Alvarado and Tandy. Well, something stupider.
The man wasn’t right in the head.
Jay stood, not so steady on his feet.
“Thanks for the help, guys. We’ll leave the scene to you,” he said to the officer, and handed over his business card. He didn’t have the strength or heart to even try to stop King from going after Cara. “Keep me posted. I want to know when you recover Agent Alvarado’s and Tandy’s bodies. The DEA will notify the agent’s family. I’ll have another agent here soon to oversee everything.”
The officer took the card and nodded.
“Come on, King, let’s get moving.”
They walked across the street to the gas station and the back corner where King had stashed his truck.
They both slowly climbed into the cab. King dug the keys out of his pocket, making the scrapes on his hand bleed even more.
Jay checked his dinging, cracked phone, swiped the screen, and read the incoming text messages. “Iceman’s men picked up the loaded trailer. We’re following.”
King started the truck, but didn’t pull out of the lot. He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and rubbed his eyes, then stared out the windshield at the destruction across the street.
“Why the fuck did he blow the place? He has to know how much she loves it. Where the hell is he taking her? She won’t be on board for any plan that involves killing her best friend, even if Tandy betrayed her.”
Jay sent off a string of texts to his team, telling them to stick close and not lose that truck. It was the only lead they had to find Iceman and hopefully Cara. “My best guess, based on the fact he destroyed that ranch she and Castillo planned to live on, is he’s getting rid of everyone he thinks hurt her. It’s not the first place he’s blown up. Several rival cartel bombings have been attributed to Iceman’s crew.”
“Fuck. Iceman and her uncle are working together.”
“After he did this tonight, looks that way.”
King pulled out onto the main road and headed in the same direction Cara and her uncle took. “Do we have eyes on Iceman?”
“Haven’t in weeks. Not since your talk with him at Cara’s place.”
King smacked his bloody hand on the steering wheel. “Fuck. He knows who I am.”
Jay turned to King. “How do you know?”
“Why else would he keep out of sight for so long?”
“How would he find that out?”
King raked his scraped fingers through his hair and winced when he hit the goose-egg-shaped lump on the back of his head. “I told him.”
“You what?” Jay couldn’t believe King spoke that freely to their target.
“I told him I knew Manny Castillo was dead. He must have guessed a guy with one conviction and barely any ties to the drug world probably didn’t know that information offhand.”
Jay got it. “You knew a little too much.”
“I think so. He may not know I’m DEA, but he probably guessed I’m a cop.”
Jay’s brain still processed everything slower than normal. Plus, part of his mind was still on Alina as he stared down at the new text from her.
Alina: Please tell me you’re okay. I need you to be okay.
Jay: I’m okay
Jay: I swear
“Does Cara’s uncle know?”
Jay: I’ll call you when I can
King swore under his breath. “He found out tonight when Cara caught me here with DEA emblazoned across my chest.”
“How did she recognize you behind the mask?”
King didn’t take his eyes from the road, but something came over him that had him looking inside and to whatever he and Cara shared.
Jay didn’t want to know, but he suspected King and Cara had grown much closer than was wise when King had a job to do and was using Cara to do it. The desperation and resignation in King’s eyes said he understood that whatever they had was on the line. Cara knew he’d lied to her.
Jay’s phone went off again. Not Alina, but the team updating him again. “The truck ended up at an auto body shop. It’s a thirty-thousand-square-foot building.” Jay let his head fall back as he thought about the daunting task ahead of them.
“Gonna be hard to surround something so big with only five guys on the team that followed the truck.”
“They’ve called in backup already.”
The last thing Jay wanted was a shootout with Iceman’s crew. He’d lost one man tonight. He’d nearly been killed along with King. He didn’t want to lose anyone else.
“Surrounding buildings?”
Jay read the incoming information on his phone. “Mostly empty or small businesses closed for the night. Nothing with a line of sight into the second-story windows.”
“Iceman chose wisely. Snipers can’t take a shot at him if he gets caught in there.”
“If he goes out the back, there’s a huge junkyard to help him evade and escape through.”
“Any sign of Cara and her uncle?”
Jay typed out his replies. “I just sent a text telling the team to be on the lookout for them.”
Jay loaded up directions to the auto shop on his map app and set his phone on the dashboard for King to follow.
King pushed the truck as fast as he could take it down one street, around a corner that sent Jay leaning into the door, and down into an industrial district.
“Slow down. It’s dark and the way you’re squinting tells me your vision isn’t all that clear yet.”
“I’m fine.”
Jay’s phone dinged with another text message. “Backup just arrived at the auto shop.”
“Good. They can take down whoever is inside and recover the drugs.”
Jay read the next three messages. “Not good. Cara and her uncle drove inside the building. Several minutes later, eight armed men fled out the back.”
King pushed the pedal to the floor and took the next turn with the tires squealing. “Contact the team. Tell them I want a rifle ready. He’s not walking out of there alive if he hurts Cara.”
The texts and bad news just kept coming. “It gets worse. The team surrounded the building, but are sticking back.”
“Why?”
“The guys they caught running out the back said Iceman told them to run because the place is rigged to blow.”
“He’s going to take them all out.” Dread filled King’s voice. If he could make the truck go light speed, he would to get to Cara.
King’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “I’m getting in there.”
Jay understood King’s need to protect Cara. He felt the same way about protecting Alina from whoever tried to kill her. Well, shit. Didn’t that just say so much? If he recognized how King felt about Cara, why didn’t he acknowledge it for what it was inside himself?
Still, he needed to reel King in and make him think straight. “King, it’s suicide. He’s out of his mind. He’s going to blow the place sky-high.”
“Not with her inside of it. I will get him to let her go. Deep down, he doesn’t really want to hurt her. He wants to protect her. Right now, he thinks the only way he can is to kill her.”
Jay had dealt with people out of their minds, their thinking clouded by drugs or convoluted by extreme circumstances and trauma. “Do you hear yourself? That’s crazy talk. That’s exactly what he is.” And talking him out of his beliefs might be futile at this point. Not when he’d gone this far to get Cara and Iceman alone. “He’ll blow the place the second he sees you.”
Jay stared at the sheer number of vehicles clogging up the street outside Anderson Automotive.
“Then we need to distract him so he doesn’t know I’m coming.” King pulled the truck in next to the DEA’s armored vehicle. A tactical team stood beside it going over plans to infiltrate the building or figure out a way to get a sniper into a position with line of sight to take out Cara’s uncle and Iceman if necessary.
He knew the men, had worked with them on several occasions, and trusted them to give him an assessment of the situation. Once up to speed, Jay could help form a tactical plan that didn’t involve sending King to his death.
King jumped out of the truck the sec
ond he killed the engine. Unsteady on his feet, he slapped his hand on the hood, catching himself before his knees buckled. He may not be a hundred percent, but right now his focus was on getting to Cara and making sure she made it out of that building alive.
Jay climbed out of the truck at a much slower pace. His vision blurred, then refocused. Every step sent a blast of pain through his injured calf. He tried to keep his arm still and the searing pain in his shoulder at bay.
“King. You look like shit,” Cruz, the team leader, said the minute they joined the group.
“I feel like it. What’s the plan?”
“With the potential for another bomb like the one you just survived, we can’t get close to the building. We’re about to make contact via phone, but from what I’ve been told, this guy isn’t in the talking mood.”
Jay considered all the angles and the lives of the men around him. Any plan they came up with had to take into account that Cara’s uncle wanted King dead and had already tried to kill him once. As much as King wanted in that building to save Cara, Jay didn’t want to give the guy another shot at him, but controlling King in his state of mind might not be so easy.
He believed in King’s abilities. And though driven by his personal needs, King would do the right thing.
“Bomb squad and a hostage negotiator just arrived.” Jay gave King a once-over, finding him still unsteady on his feet, his eyes clouded with pain, though his determination hadn’t waned. “Let them handle this.” Jay had to try to keep King thinking straight, but he didn’t delude himself into believing King would follow his orders. Not in this case. Not with Cara inside that building with a death sentence hanging over her head if they didn’t handle this the right way.
King nodded his agreement, even though he probably had no intention of sitting back and doing nothing. In King’s place, Jay would do the same thing.
Controlled chaos reigned around them.
Jay let King simmer and focused on the discussion between Cruz, the bomb squad leader, and the negotiator. They batted around one idea after the other, but in the end, the negotiator didn’t deliver encouraging news.
Tempted by Love Page 17