by Lora Leigh
“Observing impatiently, Maverick. The bastard is getting ready to run.”
“If he tries to run, stop him.” Micah lowered his wrist as his jaw tightened with the effort to hold back the rage building inside him.
“We’re going to have to go in, take him out quiet, and transport him to another location for interrogation,” Jordan stated as the team watched him with clear, determined eyes. “We have a warehouse here.” He pointed to the location on the city map he’d spread across the table. “This will give us the privacy we need for interrogation as well as confinement.” He looked up at Macey March, the technical whiz kid of the Durango team. “Head out there with Tehya and get it ready.”
Macey nodded before brushing past Micah and leaving the room. In the living room he motioned Tehya to follow before they both left the apartment.
“John, Micah, Travis, and myself will slip into the house and take Heinrick. The Durango team will cover. Nik, you’ll cover here and keep Ms. Clay stationary until Micah returns.”
Micah turned to Jordan. “Send Risa along with Nik to the secondary location until we have Heinrick there. I don’t want her here without me.”
Jordan’s blue eyes looked like ice. “We can’t risk that.” He shook his head. “Nik will stay here with her and in constant contact with us. I need you on the team, Micah; you know that.”
Micah turned and stared back at Risa, willing her to look up at him.
She was curled in the corner of the couch, her ball gown swirling around her like golden to black flames as she clutched a lap blanket around her shoulders. Her hair shielded her face, but he could see enough to know she was stark white.
Morganna sat on one side of her, while Kira had pulled a chair close to try to talk to her. She wasn’t talking to them.
“Micah!” Jordan’s voice was a slash of command despite the softness of it.
Micah turned to Nik. The Russian’s face was devoid of expression, his icy blue eyes flat and hard as he stared back at Micah and nodded slowly.
“I don’t like it,” Micah breathed out roughly. “We don’t have Orion yet.”
“Heinrick is our key to Orion,” Jordan reminded him. “This is what we’ve been working toward.” He turned back to the other men. “We’ll weapon up in the vans; we have everything we need there. Heinrick’s estate is thirty minutes from here and secluded. He has no security or staff on-site. All we have to contend with is electronic security. Are we ready to roll?”
Micah turned back to Risa. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed position. He needed to talk to her before he left. He needed to take that look of dazed terror from her eyes before it destroyed him.
“Micah, are we ready to roll?” Jordan asked behind him.
He grimaced at the demand. It wouldn’t be much longer, he promised himself. Once Heinrick was taken care of, then he would be back. He could ease her pain then. It would be a matter of hours.
He nodded slowly. “I’m ready to roll.”
As the team shifted in the kitchen, Micah moved to the living room. Morganna and Kira were rising to their feet, their expressions worried as he neared them.
“Risa?” He knelt in front of her, taking her cold hands from her lap and staring into her dry eyes.
She looked shell-shocked. How the hell was he supposed to leave her like this?
“Nik will be here with you,” he said softly.
She shook her head quickly. “Go. I’m fine. Nik is fine.”
Her voice sounded hollow, distracted. Micah felt the fine tension that filled her body and he saw the pain in her eyes.
“A few hours, that’s all,” he promised.
She nodded sharply. “A few hours. I’ll be here.”
“Micah, we have to go,” Jordan spoke from the door. “Black Jack is waiting. It’s time to clear out.”
Micah breathed in roughly before cupping her cheek and staring into her ravaged gaze. “I’ll be back soon.”
Her lips twisted in a facsimile of a smile. “I’m not a child,” she informed him, her voice cool. “I’ll be fine. Do what you have to do.”
He was going to leave anyway, Risa thought as she watched him grimace. She accepted the brief kiss he brushed across her lips and stored it in her mental stack of memories. It was a lousy good-bye kiss, though.
She watched him leave. He was dressed in black. Black pants, black long-sleeved shirt and gloves. With his black hair and black eyes he looked like a dark avenger.
Finally, the apartment cleared out. She was left with the quiet, icy-eyed Viking-like member of the team, Nik.
She lifted her gaze to his. “Will he really be back?” she wondered aloud. “Does he return or just disappear into the sunset?”
Nik’s expression never changed. “If he’s smart,” he finally said, “he won’t come back. It would be better for both of you.”
Her chest tightened at the statement. Forcing herself from the couch, she got to her feet and moved for her bedroom. Nik wasn’t the talkative type, and that was okay, because she didn’t have anything to say. She’d asked her question and he’d answered her. The fact that the answer still didn’t tell her one way or the other if Micah would be back didn’t matter.
She locked her bedroom door behind her and moved to the dresser. She pulled a pair of lounging pants from a drawer and a matching long T-shirt. Socks. Her feet were cold. It was too bad she had nothing in her room that would warm the cold, empty places within her soul.
As she removed the beautiful dress she had worn for such a short time and dressed in the warmer cotton pants and shirt, she rubbed at her arms, hoping to chase away the chill taking hold of her.
She washed the makeup off her face, smoothed lotion into her cold skin, and tried to tell herself everything was going to work out as Micah had promised.
They would take Oswald Heinrick and question him. He’d tell them who Orion was, and they would capture the killer. She would be safe then. And Micah would be gone. He would never return.
She pulled the clip from her hair after smoothing the lotion into her skin and stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
She wasn’t ugly. She wasn’t a beauty queen. She would never stop traffic with her looks, or really even most men. But she wasn’t ugly. She was a little plain. She might have flashes of prettiness if she was lucky.
Micah liked her. He was attracted to her. He got hard for her more often than just for a pity fuck.
She touched her cheek. Her skin was clear. Her eyes were a little pale, but her nose was straight. Her fingers trailed to her neck where a faint red spot marred her skin. Micah’s mark.
Her knees went weak, a sob caught in her throat, and she had to brace her hands against the sink to keep from sinking to the floor.
He’d marked her flesh and her soul. And now he would make certain that demons from her past were eradicated.
He cared for her.
He might not love her, she thought, but perhaps he cared for her. She was certain he cared for her. It had been in his eyes before he left.
Caring wasn’t love, though.
She shook her head and forced herself out of the bedroom and back into the living room.
Nik was sitting in a large easy chair, but he seemed to dwarf it. The man was seriously large. His shoulders were heavy and broad, his legs long and powerful. The hint of a beard and mustache darkened his strong jaw and emphasized the slightest bit of fullness in his lower lip.
He wasn’t a handsome man, she thought. He was unique. Savage in his looks perhaps, with the prominent cheekbones and the dark tint of his skin.
He looked dangerous, with the same hard-eyed glint that Micah often carried.
Risa moved back to the couch, curled up in the corner, and dragged the blanket back over her. She was cold, though she knew the apartment wasn’t really chilly. It was an inner cold that she wondered if she would ever be free of.
The cold that came from shock and disbelief.
How was her grandmother
dealing with this? she wondered.
Abigail had been through a lot. She had faced the truth of what her only child had become, and now she had learned that the man she had been in a relationship with for nearly a decade was a rapist and the sort who would hire a killer.
“Will the world ever be sane again?” Risa whispered.
“Was it ever?” Nik asked with cool curiosity. “Most people live in whatever dreamworld they build for themselves, Risa. The key to survival is to see the world as it is. It was never sane.”
No, it wasn’t. At least not during her lifetime.
She sighed wearily and watched the clock across the room. She watched each second tick by and held on to the thought that Micah wasn’t alone. He had a whole team as backup. He would survive.
He might not return, but he would survive.
MICAH WAS SILENT as the van pulled into place outside the brick wall that surrounded the estate on the back end. The van doors were thrown open, and like shadows he, Travis, Jordan, and Noah spilled from the vehicle. Behind the van Micah rode in, another eased to a stop and the four men of the Durango team joined them as they rushed the wall.
The six-foot perimeter stone wall was scaled in seconds as each man hoisted himself over it and dropped to a crouch before moving steadily for the three-story white brick mansion set in the middle of the five-acre property.
The house was silent. Oswald Heinrick’s sporty personal vehicle sat in the drive at an odd angle. He’d rushed home from the ball at the same time that Risa had left. He’d known she remembered him. Standing there in the lobby surrounded by all his medical buddies in their pristine suits with their noses in the air, he’d known he was finished.
“Maverick taking main entrance.” Micah spoke into the mic that curved along his jaw from the receiver at his ear as he eased up to the wide front doors.
“Black Jack back. Security disengaged,” Travis responded.
Travis was at the back door where the main security terminal was located and disabled.
Micah pulled the electronic lock pick from the belt at his side, slid the metal spike into the lock, and engaged it.
The sound of the tumblers disengaging had a smile pulling at his lips. Within seconds both locks were disengaged. He eased the door open, weapon in hand, eyes narrowed against the pitch-black recess of the entryway.
“We have no lights,” he announced quietly. “No sound.”
“Maverick, proceed with night vision,” Jordan ordered. “Let’s not spook him yet.”
Maverick adjusted the night-vision device over his eyes and scanned the entryway through the green haze that picked up each detail.
“Maverick moving in.”
“Heat Seeker moving in,” John announced through the receiver from the side entrance.
“Black Jack in,” Travis announced from the back door. “Silent as a tomb.”
“Team one, clear the way for teams two and three,” Jordan announced.
Micah moved into place, the lightweight P-90 held comfortably in his hands as he covered the main staircase.
“Main case covered,” he stated.
Two shadowed figures moved from the door and quickly up the stairs.
“Maverick scanning.” He moved from the staircase to begin a search of each room in his designated area of the house.
It was huge. There were more sitting rooms in the damned place than there was anything else. Heavy, dark wood furniture graced each room. The green aura cast over it by the night-vision device gave it an unearthly appearance as Micah felt the hairs at the back of his neck rise.
“Scanning floor.” Reno’s voice slid over the communications link as his team reached the second floor.
“Scanning three,” Clint announced as his team reached the third floor.
It was too damned quiet. The silence was heavy and filled with premonition as Micah moved through the rooms and headed for the kitchen.
“Maverick clear and moving to the kitchen,” he informed the other agents.
“Black Jack moving in to your left,” Travis informed him.
“Heat Seeker to your right,” John stated.
They met at each doorway that led into the huge dining room and came to a stop. Weapons raised, the clicks of the safeties disengaging echoed in the silence.
“Son of a bitch,” Heat Seeker breathed out roughly. “Live Wire, we have a small problem here.”
“Report,” Jordan demanded.
“Looks like Orion beat us to the bait. We have a hit, and it’s messy.”
Heinrick was spread out on his mahogany dining room table. His legs were chained to a heavy metal rod chained to a heavy hook in the ceiling above.
He was naked, his lower body lifted, his wrists chained to hooks at the floor, his head lying over the end of the table.
His throat and wrists were sliced. His eyes were opened wide, his expression one of horror as he stared back at them.
The scent of blood and death lay heavy in the room as the skylight painted a wash of moonglow over the macabre scene.
“Maverick?” Jordan snapped into the receiver. “What do you see?”
“Death,” he stated before looking around the room.
There was a painting propped on the floor; where it should have hung was an open safe that had been recessed into the wall.
Micah caught Travis’s attention and pointed to the safe.
“We have an open safe, digital code; it’s empty,” Travis reported.
“Teams two and three moving in,” Reno reported.
“Team one, secure the scene; I’m coming in,” Jordan ordered. “Pin lights only and watch where you step. Let’s not leave anything for the authorities to find when the body’s discovered.”
Micah stared at Heinrick, then back at the safe. The contact Jordan had used for intel on this assignment had said Orion’s employer had something on him, something that kept Orion from making his retirement plans. Evidently, Orion had found that information.
Was it the information that Orion was CIA? Or something more?
“Tehya, check in with Nik,” Micah ordered as Jordan moved into the room.
“Checking, Maverick,” Tehya stated.
Jordan eased in beside him and stared at the scene as Micah’s narrow beam lit the area.
“Hell,” he breathed out roughly. “Black Jack, you missed something. How did the bastard get in and out on us?”
“The same way we got in?” Travis asked. “Or he could have been waiting for him.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Reno growled. “Orion was supposed to be at the party. He can’t be in two places at once.”
“And now he’s gone,” Jordan stated.
“Live Wire, Maverick, I can’t raise Hell Raiser,” Tehya announced into the link. “I repeat, Hell Raiser is not responding.”
Micah froze. For the longest second, horror raced through him.
“Risa,” he breathed her name out in a sense of dread. “Son of a bitch, he’s gotten to Risa.”
He turned and was moving before Jordan could stop him. He heard Jordan bark a command for his return, and it was ignored. He rushed from the mansion, aware of others following him.
He couldn’t seem to run fast enough. Adrenaline poured through him, rage locked into every muscle and tendon of his body, and only one thought raced through his mind.
Risa.
RISA’S HEAD LIFTED at the firm knock on the door, her gaze turning to Nik as he moved from the chair, his weapon in his hands and ready as he moved for the door.
Risa drew the blanket from her shoulders as he motioned to her and moved to look into the peephole.
She sighed wearily at the sight of one of her clients.
“It’s just Mr. Banyon,” she told N.K. “I was expecting him. He’s dropping off his quarterly receipts.”
Banyon was quiet, professorish. A very distinguished gentleman who had always put her at ease.
Nik narrowed his eyes as he moved behind her. “Ope
n the door easy. Don’t let him in.”
She disengaged the locks and opened the door a few inches.
“Mr. Banyon, I’m not really dressed—”
An explosion of light blinded her as she felt the door jerk out of her grasp, and she was thrown backward. There was no time to cry out. She felt the carpet burn across the side of her face as she was thrown into it, and then heard a thump behind.
Nik. She shook her head. He was huge. Banyon was shorter, softer. He’d never get past Nik.
She shook her head, her eyes tightly closed, as she fought the pain searing her head and tried to drag herself from the carpet.
“Easy, Miss Clay.” Banyon’s voice was cool, menacing, as she felt hard hands lifting her and placing her back on the couch. “The pain will only last for a few more seconds. Let me secure our friend here and then you and I will visit for a while.”
A whimper fell from her lips as she shook her head and fought not to throw up.
“I was really hoping your boyfriend had stayed to protect you instead,” he said as she tried to listen for his movements. “It took me a while, but I was finally able to figure it all out. Of course, Bailey Serborne helped. When this young man captured her in the back parking lot, I knew there was a bit more going on here than met the eye.”
Bailey Serborne? Who the hell was Bailey Serborne?
“I’m still amazed at the ability of your security force. I’ve only been able to spot two of them, though there must be more. This young man and your lover.” He seemed to grunt and then a thud sounded around her as the pain in her head finally began to ease.
“There we go,” he breathed out in satisfaction as she tried to blink.
Her sight was blurry and with each attempt to clear it, a spike of pain drove through the sockets.
“There now, he’s nice and trussed,” Banyon chuckled. “He’s an interesting fellow. Unlike your lover, I was unable to place his identity, but I guess the plastic surgeon took more care with his features than he did with Mr. Abijah’s. Now there is a worthy opponent. This is twice he’s nearly had me. We’re going to make certain there isn’t a third time. Aren’t we?”
She shook her head as she was finally able to open her eyes and focus on the man who had been hired to kill her.