by Mina Carter
Shit. That’s what he’d been worried about. Drew schooled his initial reaction, and instead of freezing, he shrugged one shoulder.
“I would say that’s a bad idea. I’m not the cuddly type, am I?” He snorted, flicking a glance at the screens on the desk. They showed the different entrance and exit points for the building. “The soldier and the billionairess doesn’t exactly work does it? This isn’t the movies.”
Tom placed his palms flat on the desk, leaning in to stare him down. “I don’t care how it ‘works.’ She’s not the kind of person you hurt because you got your rocks off and are ready to move on. We go way back, man, and I owe you my life, but I won’t let you break her heart. She’s too special.”
Drew blinked. Something in Tom’s voice prickled at him. “You’re in love with her.”
“Don’t be stupid. She’s like a sister to me. Would you want someone to break your sister’s heart?”
“I’d break the bastard’s legs if he did.” He and his brother had actually threatened to do that to one of their sister’s boyfriends once. Before they’d both gone into the services.
Tom nodded. “So you understand where I’m coming from? Amy needs someone who’s going to be there for her, who’s going to make her his priority. Not someone who will put her off to the side for a job.”
Drew’s lip quirked. “Or I get my legs broken?”
“Glad we understand each other.”
Drew nodded, his attention on the screens as the silence stretched out between them. Amanda was due to finish her meeting soon, but from the chatter of the team on her car, there was no sight of her. He flicked a glance at the time. Odd.
“So, if I was considering getting out of the game… Settling down, perhaps with a curvy CEO... Would you still break my legs?”
A smile broke over Tom’s face. “Never thought I’d see the day. I don’t think Amy would let me live it down if you stayed here with broken legs. Maybe bust up that ugly mug of yours some more.”
Drew slid him a sideways smile. “You and whose army, mate?”
Tom opened his mouth to retort, but Drew held up his hand as the bud in his ear exploded with sound. Men shouting. What sounded like gunshots.
“Shit,” he exclaimed, out of his seat and heading for the door in a heartbeat. “Saddle up, someone just hit the Carillon building.”
***
“You bugged Amanda?” Tom blinked in surprise, sliding Drew a sideways glance as he gunned the car through the busy city streets.
“Yeah, several times.” Drew frowned as he checked his phone; the GPS was active, and the blip onscreen should be where they were holding Amy. Panic rolled in the back of his mind, but he kept it locked down, nice and tight. Mission first, emotions later. “Looks like they got most of the bugs. There’s only one still active. Pull up here. We need to approach on foot.”
Tom slowed down, pulling the vehicle to a stop behind what looked like an abandoned warehouse. “Just one. Where the hell did you put that?”
“You really want to know?” Drew slid him a sideways look before shoving the door open and climbing out. “I bugged everything. Figured if they took her they’d ditch most of her belongings.”
“Yeah, the police picked up her briefcase and purse a couple of streets away from the Carillon building.” Tom paused, looking at him directly over the roof of the car as Drew hauled the back door open to grab his kitbag. “Please tell me you didn’t bug her underwear?”
“That’s for me to know and you to never find out.” Drew concentrated on the bag, ripping it open to access the contents. He pulled free a tactical vest and slid it on. Lightweight but hardy, it wouldn’t hamper his movements but would give him the extra storage he needed.
He reached for an assault rifle and slung it across his body before adding a pistol in a holster and another one in the back of his waistband. Not the safest, but he didn’t intend to slow down to reload. He was going in balls out, death-or-glory style. Taking no prisoners.
“Tom. Load up,” he ordered. “I’m gonna need some cover, but make sure you stay out of the line of fire. Got it?”
Tom looked pale but nodded, his lips compressed into a thin line as he selected weaponry from the back of the car. Drew had loaded everything he had, just in case, so there was more than enough to choose from. Drew glanced up from checking his primary weapon and assessed the guy’s condition as Tom joined him at the front of the car. Tom had obviously kept himself in shape since they’d served together, but it wasn’t the hardened muscle of a professional soldier anymore. He’d have to go light on the guy.
“Let’s go. First right, it’s the building at the end of the row. We’ll duck around the back, case the place out. Then we hit it before they can move her. As soon as I’m in, guide the rest of the team in, then hit the front of the building. Okay?”
He set off at a quick jog, trusting Tom to keep up. For a moment he was back in action, the dust of the desert beneath his feet and the familiar feeling of adrenaline flooding his veins. But this wasn’t just any mission; this was the mission. Suddenly his throat threatened to close over, his heart lurching painfully in his chest. This was Amy they’d taken, the short, curvy, sassy, pain-in-the-ass woman he hadn’t wanted to help but who had somehow wormed her way under his skin anyway.
The woman he was in love with…
Shit. He almost paused at the realization but then kept running. Achieve the objective, worry about the other shit later. That was the way it worked. The way he worked.
“I should be asking if you’re okay. I kinda feel bad for the men who took her. They don’t know what’s coming. I’ve seen you in action when you’re angry. Not pretty. Not at all.”
They stopped at the corner, Drew hunkering down to check the road was all clear before they moved. The warehouse Amy was being kept in was at the end of the row. Nothing stirred. Not so much as a guard on the doors or movement in any of the windows. No one on the roof.
Good. They weren’t expecting anything. Probably hadn’t expected Amy to be tagged.
“I don’t get mad.” His voice was level, calm for even him. Scarily calm. “I’m fine. Seriously, don’t worry about me. Worry about the assholes who took her. Or order body bags. It’s all the same to me.”
Ducking back, he motioned at Tom to cross the road, and they used a series of dumpsters as cover to get to the other side. Using quickfire hand signals, he directed Tom to the top of a nearby building to give him the best angle for cover fire and carried on alone.
His breath roared in his ears, and he deliberately took a couple of deep breaths, holding them to calm himself. He didn’t need to. His level of calm was so absolute that it even scared him, but he had rituals. Everyone in his line of work did...whether that was wearing pink boxers or reciting the nine times tables before a firefight. He could remember the nine times tables, but fuck wearing pink boxers. Blue was more his color.
He reached the back of the building without incident and paused in the shadows. There was no one on the back. No guards. No bullets thudding into the walls and floor around him. He frowned, edging forward to the single door in front of him, weapon at the ready. Where the hell was the resistance? Given Amy’s status, someone should have been shooting at him by now.
A glance upward assured him that Tom was in position, so Drew reached out and dropped the handle on the door. He went through it hard and fast, his mind and body totally in professional mode. Inside, his eyes adjusted rapidly, the muzzle of his rifle slicing through the air as he checked for opposition. Nothing doing...no movement, no muzzle flashes of people firing back at him. He was alone.
Good. His face hardened into a nasty little grin as he set off into the depths of the warehouse. The element of surprise was still his, and he intended to use it.
***
Shit. She was screwed. In a bad, not-at-all good, way.
Amanda sat on a chair in the middle of a room. Alone. Well, sat was perhaps the wrong description. When the goons had hauled he
r in here, kicking and screaming, they’d tied her to the chair, hands behind her and ankles lashed to the legs. Dicks.
“Assholes!” she screamed, yanking on her hands again. All that did was make her wrists sore and put her in danger of toppling the chair over, so she stopped. Sitting in a cold warehouse strapped to a chair was a shitty situation to start with. Lying on the hard concrete strapped to the same chair would be an even worse one, so she quit while she was ahead.
Trying to remember everything Drew had taught her, she looked around. Perhaps there was something she could use to escape and make him proud of her. At the thought of her sexy, handsome-as-hell bodyguard, her heart stuttered in her chest. What if she didn’t get out of this? Never got to tell him…? Her thought stalled. Never got to tell him what? She frowned, forced to face her feelings.
Drew had stormed into her very well organized life and turned it upside down. His sinful smiles and dark brooding glances turned her knees to jelly. Her heart flipped, imagining his body shifting when he taught her self-defense moves. It wasn’t all physical either, even as sexy as he was. His bossy and domineering ways had somehow sunk into areas of her heart she didn’t even know existed.
He wasn’t a typical nice guy. He was rough and tough, and she wanted to kiss him and yell at him every other second they were together. Fear careened through her veins. Oh, no. She was in love. In love with a man who probably saw her as no more than a paycheck. A man who had a life as a mercenary for hire wherever the next job took him. Her day went from bad to sucking lemons. Assuming she got through this alive, she’d just have to deal with it when it he left. Somehow she’d get through it. Unless she could convince Tom to hire Andrew forever. There was an idea.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the rackety door slamming open. She opened her mouth but quickly shut it when she saw who stood there.
“Mercedes?” she gasped. Dear god! She was there to rescue her. But how did she find her? Acid burned at the pit of her stomach as she stared at her cousin’s not-surprised features. She swallowed back the pain from her disappointment. The only way Mercedes could know she was there was if...she was in on all of it. The last person she would have thought to have her abducted was her only female cousin. They used to play together as kids. Go to dances and charity events as adults. What the hell was going on?
“Hi, Amy.” Mercedes smiled. She made a show of not touching the walls, so her pretty white suit wouldn’t get dirty. The burly men who had kidnapped Amy entered the room after her. “I see you made it in one piece, prima.”
“What in the hell is going on here?” Amy tugged on the ropes holding her wrists hostage. “You are the last person I would have thought to do this,” she spat. “We’re friends!”
“So?” Mercedes asked with her way-too-arched, penciled brows rising even further. “I can be your friend and still help daddy get you out of the way.”
“My uncle is doing this?” Amy asked, hoping that Mercedes hadn’t really set this up to kill her.
“No. Daddy mentioned wanting your ass out of the way.” She scrunched her nose. “He dislikes how competitive you are. I want your money. We both win.”
Fucking awesome. Her family was insane. Tom had been right all along. She was nothing but a stumbling block on their road to her company and bank account. How could she mean so little to them?
“You can’t seriously be thinking of killing me,” she argued. “Me! I’m family.” There was no stopping the disbelief and anger in her voice. Or the way she curled her hands into fists in the too-tight confines of her seat.
Mercedes nodded and folded her arms over her chest. “You’re right. We are family.” She shrugged. “I didn’t decide this easily. It was difficult to come to the conclusion that you had to be taken out.”
“Oh, let me guess, you wrote down the pros and cons on a sheet of paper?” she muttered.
Mercedes smiled. “You know me so well. I have to see what the advantages and disadvantages of doing something are in writing.” She pouted and let her shoulders drop. “I hate to tell you, but there were more pros than cons to killing you.”
A fiery red haze covered Amy’s vision. She’d kill her. Her normally smart cousin was letting her selfishness drive her to commit the ultimate crime. All over money?
“I swear to god, I’m going to slap you into next week the moment I get loose,” she hissed, tugging on her ropes. “You have no idea the kind of trouble this is going to bring you and your father.”
Mercedes rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth. “Doesn’t matter. Dad has a plan. He thinks I’m a genius for getting you at your weakest moment. That hot security guy you have following you wasn’t with you at the Carrillon building. Now we can finally be rid of you.”
Amy growled between her teeth. “You stupid, stupid woman. I can’t believe we’re related.”
The smile dropped off Mercedes face, and she pursed her lips. “We are related, but thankfully, that’s something I can fix. Stay for awhile.” She grinned. “I’ll have someone come and see you. Don’t look so angry, Amy. For the right price, anyone can be bought.” Mercedes strolled to the room’s entrance, stopped, and turned to give Amy an evil glare. “Once you’re out of the picture, I might hire that sexy piece of man candy to be my own security. He looks like he plays rough.”
“You bitch!”
“You only just figured it out?” Mercedes laughed. “God, you’re so dense. No matter, it won’t be a problem for long. Now, I’ll just leave you here with Raoul and Steve. Let you three get to…know each other.”
The two men behind her bitch cousin stepped forward, and Amanda shivered at the looks on their faces. This was not going to end well. There would be no bargaining with these two. Especially not the one whose nose she’d broken.
Before they took two steps, though, all hell broke loose. The door to the left exploded inward, and a figure in black burst through. Gunfire exploded into the air. Bullets were flying, and before she could scream, both of her cousin’s bully boys were dead on the floor, holes in the middle of their foreheads. Her gaze was riveted by the nearest one for a moment, sick fascination filling her as she watched a drop of blood slide down to the floor.
“You like it rough, darling?” Drew’s voice was cruel, harder than she’d ever heard it, and she whipped her head around, straining to see. Her knight in black tacticals stood in the middle of the room, a pistol in his hand aimed straight at Mercedes. “Believe me, you won’t like the kind of rough I like to play.”
“Y-you...what? How did you?” Mercedes spluttered, flicking a horrified glance at the two dead men.
“It’s a little thing called a trigger. You pull it and boom,” Drew informed her, taking a few steps forward. He came fully into view, not taking his eyes off Mercedes, and Amy could see he was dressed fully for war. Weapons bristled from him, and he looked meaner than any action hero she’d ever seen. And hotter. Crap, what was wrong with her that she found him enticing in the middle of all this?
“I mean…,” her cousin replied coldly, pulling herself together even as they watched. Her hand started to move to the large purse over her arm. “How did you find us?”
“Tracker. In Amy’s bra,” Drew said shortly, his eyes on her hand. “Don’t do it, darling. I’ve got you right in the crosshairs, and I never miss,”
Mercedes laughed. “Oh, come on. You won’t kill me. You’re English. You might play the bad guy in the movies, but everyone knows you’re all too nice to get your hands dirty.”
“How did I not notice how stupid you are, Mercedes?” Amy shook her head at her idiot cousin. “He’s a lot more than just a pretty face.”
Amy grinned at Drew. “Isn’t that right, hot stuff?”
“Not even a pretty face if you ask my old CO.” A ghost of a smile flickered across his lips, but he didn’t take his eyes from Mercedes. The consummate professional. The smile dropped as Mercedes fingers reached the edge of her purse. “This is your last warning. Drop the purse, or I’ll put enoug
h lead in you to drop a rhino.”
Fear threaded through Amy. Despite it all, she couldn’t watch her cousin do something stupid and get herself killed. Not if she could do something about it. “Mercedes, don’t. He was a soldier. He really can shoot. He really will kill you.”
Mercedes eyes were wild, and she drove her hand into the purse anyway. She pulled a gun out, a snub-nosed revolver clasped in her grip. It had barely cleared the leather when gunfire rang out. Mercedes screamed, jerking backward, the gun hitting the floor as red blossomed over her arm. Drew crossed the gap in seconds, spinning and dropping Mercedes in one smooth and brutal movement.
“You shot me. You fucking shot me!” she wailed.
His knee in her back, he wrenched her arms behind her and secured her wrists with a zip tie he pulled from a pocket. Leaning down, he snarled in her ear. “The only reason you’re still alive is because I didn’t want to shoot you in front of your cousin. But I can still haul you out to the alley in the back and finish the job. And for the record, I’m fucking British.”
Had she blinked, Amy would have missed the action. Drew was lightning fast and even sexier angry. Wow. She eyed her cousin with renewed hatred. “Don’t kill her before I get to slap her upside the head a few times for thinking she’d get away with this. Only an idiot would think murdering a family member wouldn’t be found out.”
Drew hauled Mercedes to her feet as the door behind them burst open and men with guns poured through, Tom hard on their heels. Drew shoved Mercedes at him. “Deal with her before I regret not ventilating her skull. And it’s the uncle. Best get the cops on it.”
Tom nodded, catching the stumbling girl before she fell. “He shot me! I need a hospital,” she complained shrilly. “I’m bleeding!”
“You’re not dead.” Tom was unrepentant. “Be thankful. That man could have dropped you and not batted an eyelid. Now, though, we get you into court, and believe me, darling, where you’re headed you’ll wish he had.”