Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2)

by Brennan, Allison

  If you keep debating with yourself, he’s going to find you. Just do it!

  She stumbled from her hiding place, sparing a glance down the ramp. She saw him, tall and broad, scowling. Blood covered half his face. He was fifty feet away and coming slowly, unsteady, not walking in a straight line. Did he have a gun in his hand? A knife? A hammer? She couldn’t see, he wore dark clothing, but he held something.

  She walked no faster than Cole. She turned back to the door and he laughed behind her. It sounded like he was right in her head and she turned, lashing out, but he was still down the ramp. She staggered and fell on her ass next to the door. She crawled the two feet to the bolt and slid it free.

  She pushed the door up. Pushed harder. But it barely budged. She had no strength.

  He laughed again, closer.

  She pounded on the door, the metal echoing in the vastness of the empty space.

  “Help me!” she tried to scream. Her voice was weak. She looked up. Praying? No. Where had that gotten her before? All those years praying for a home? Praying for her mother to come back? Praying for answers to all the questions that had plagued her for her entire life?

  She saw the chain above her.

  The chain would open the door.

  She pulled herself up and reached, standing as tall as she could, but she still couldn’t reach it.

  No, no, no! So close, and still she would die.

  A ladder was propped up against the wall. She climbed it, her knees aching, her bare feet slipping, but she still climbed. She reached out and grabbed the chain. Her foot slipped and she screamed as she fell from the ladder. But she held the chain tight, and her weight forced the door open several feet until her hands slipped and she fell hard on the ground.

  Ignoring the pain, she rolled under the door into bright sunlight reflecting off water. Water. Fresh air burned her lungs.

  The door didn’t close, it was stuck open three feet. She crawled away, simultaneously trying to figure out where she was, but she’d been in the dark so long all she saw was white. She couldn’t tell if Cole was following. She couldn’t hear him, the ringing in her ears getting louder and louder until she wanted to scream.

  She staggered away from the building, praying for her sight to return. She needed a person, a phone, a car—anyone to call the police. To get her out of here and take her home.

  She heard the door roll up behind her. She glanced back and saw a silhouette. Something in his hand. He was closer. Twenty feet? Less?

  Run, Maxine.

  She ran. Or, rather, loped. She fell and got back up and fell again. Her eyes were regaining their function, but everything was in shadows with splotches of light and dark as she attempted to focus. She’d been hit on the head, maybe this was a concussion.

  You’ve been hit on the head before. You know this is a concussion.

  Just get out of here. Find help. Run faster than that bastard.

  She got up one last time, walked two feet. Her next footstep came down hard on broken glass. She cried out and fell hard. She rolled over and pulled her foot up into her lap. Blood poured from a gash that cut from her big toe to her arch. A thick brown shard stuck out. She didn’t think twice, she pulled it out and got up. But she couldn’t put much weight on her foot, and her already slow speed got a whole lot slower.

  She only had one option.

  Hide.

  He was still trying to spot her, the sun blinding him temporarily like it had her. It was either morning or evening, the sun low, but she didn’t know if she faced west or east because she couldn’t make out any familiar structures.

  She crawled over to a row of rusting, overflowing Dumpsters that had been left by the side of the dock. It seemed no one had emptied them in months. They were filled with garbage, broken furniture surrounding it as if a tornado had picked up, shaken, and dumped the contents of a house right here. She crawled in the filth underneath, not caring about dirt or bugs or garbage or anything but hiding.

  Her heart raced as she wondered if she’d just signed her death warrant. He’d get his vision back, he’d see that this was the only place she could hide. She just hoped he thought she’d ran. She hoped he hadn’t seen her fall, didn’t know her foot was cut, wouldn’t realize how bad off she really was.

  She wiggled around, her face on the filthy, broken concrete as she looked under the Dumpster to see where he was coming from. He was standing thirty yards away, a speck in the distance, his hand over his eyes. He’d hit his head hard when he fell. He’d been unconscious, whether from the drugs or the fall, she didn’t know. Maybe his vision was blurred. She hoped he had a concussion, worse than hers. She hoped he felt pain, that he was hallucinating.

  Her breathing was labored and she was queasy. Cole started moving away from the docks, not coming right at her, but if she moved, he might see her.

  But she couldn’t move. She had no more energy, not even to crawl away. She couldn’t lift her arm. She collapsed into the garbage, resigned.

  The traffic she heard in the distance sounded closer. Was someone driving through? Coming to work? Going home? But Cole could have a gun. She didn’t want to be responsible for anyone dying, not while they were trying to help her. But she needed help.

  I don’t want to die. I really, really, really don’t want to die.

  The car was coming closer. She couldn’t see it. But the bastard Cole stopped. Then he turned and ran back toward the warehouse.

  This was her only chance. She needed all her strength. She willed herself to move, to crawl to the other side of the garbage heap. She did, painfully slow, the cement digging into her flesh.

  Max saw three cars pull up on a narrow, unpaved street parallel to the water. There were several cars parked on the street—they all looked abandoned or broken down. They surrounded one vehicle.

  The police.

  She grabbed the broken handle on the side of the Dumpster and forced herself to stand. Her foot ached, but really it was no worse than the pain that pumped through her body with each beat of her heart. She called out to them, but they were so far away. Farther than the warehouse and in the opposite direction. She looked around and saw a chair leg. She reached down, grabbed it, and hit the Dumpster. The vibrations made her ache worse, but she hit it again as hard as she could.

  Help. Me.

  Two men were running toward her. Odd. They looked like Marco and Nick.

  She must really be hallucinating.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  David had never seen Max so vulnerable.

  There was blood on the gown she wore—it looked like a hospital gown—and she was barefoot. Her hair was damp and matted to her head, her face bruised, her eyes far too bright blue to be normal. She was filthy from crawling through garbage. She looked feral and scared.

  But she was alive. Marco and Nick had grabbed her as she limped away from her attacker, and the ambulance was en route.

  Nick had fired at Baker, but he’d run back into the warehouse. They were waiting for SWAT before they breached the facility. But with all the underground tunnels and drainage systems, David feared they’d already lost him.

  But they’d found Max.

  Marco and Nick were both searching for bullet and knife wounds, but they found only shallow cuts. Max brushed their hands away. “It hurts,” she said.

  “What hurt? Where?” Marco asked.

  “I’m fine,” Max muttered, then laughed. Or tried to laugh. Her voice was rough and faint and her breathing was labored.

  “Are you shot?” Marco asked again. “Maxine, why are you bleeding?”

  “Cuts. Scorpions. Don’t touch me.”

  “Scorpions?” Nick said.

  “That was a long time ago,” Max said and closed her eyes.

  Nick pointed to marks on her arm. “Those are needle marks.”

  “She’s hallucinating,” Marco said.

  David’s fists clenched and unclenched. Max had been tortured. The cuts, none deep enough to kill, were designed to
elicit pain. The drugs likely made the pain unbearable. She had been stripped of personal items, dressed in a generic gown, kept without food and minimal hydration. David understood psychological warfare, and he’d been trained in criminal and military interrogations. He’d seen the results of torture. These methods were crude, amateur, but no less effective.

  “There’s two,” Max said.

  “Two what?” Marco asked her.

  “The doctor left,” she said.

  “What doctor?” Marco asked.

  Her head lolled to the side. “Which doctor?”

  David called over to where Sally stood commanding the four patrol officers who were keeping an eye on the building. “How long for the medics?”

  “ETA two minutes. SWAT is six minutes out.”

  They heard the sirens in the distance.

  “That’s fast,” Marco said.

  “I had SWAT on standby as soon as we ID’d Baker’s car,” Sally said.

  “Maxine,” Nick said, “stay with us. Focus.”

  “Water,” she said.

  “Don’t,” David said. “She can’t have anything, we don’t know what’s in her system.” He wasn’t a medic, but had plenty of on-the-job training in the army.

  “She’s obviously dehydrated,” Marco said.

  “They’ll put her on an IV.” David squatted next to Max. “Maxine, it’s David. Can you hear me?”

  “David.” She still didn’t open her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” David said. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s a first,” she whispered. There was a little smile on her face.

  David began to breathe easier. “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “Stay awake, okay?”

  Her eyes were still closed but she nodded.

  Marco said, “Max, you said there were two inside.”

  “One.”

  “Only one?”

  “No. Two.”

  She was confused, or they weren’t asking the right questions.

  “Who, Maxine? We know one is Cole Baker.”

  “Cole.” She squeezed her eyes tight. “Doctor. My head.”

  Her voice was so faint David could barely hear her. The ambulance turned on to the street. Sally ordered two officers to stand guard over the medics.

  “Get them off me!” Max’s arms flapped, as if trying to shake off bugs. “Off!”

  The paramedics ordered Marco and Nick to stand back. One checked Max’s eyes. They were unfocused and dilated. The other checked her pulse and put on a blood pressure cuff. Max screamed as the cuff contracted.

  “What’s she on?” one medic asked.

  “We don’t know,” Marco said.

  “History of drug use?”

  “No,” Marco said. “Someone drugged her. She’s been missing since Thursday night.”

  “Severe dehydration,” a medic said. “Let’s get a saline drip in her ASAP.”

  “Heart rate two-twenty over one-ten.”

  “Dear God,” Sally said. Her radio beeped and she walked away.

  “We need to know what’s in her system,” one medic said. “Ma’am, stop fighting.”

  “It hurts.”

  “What hurts? Ma’am—”

  “Everywhere. My skin. Water.”

  The two medics lifted Max onto the gurney and she began to convulse.

  “Strap her down.”

  “No!” Max screamed.

  David put his hand on one of the medics. “Don’t.”

  “It’s for her safety.”

  David pointed to her wrists and ankles, which were raw from restraints.

  Nick said, “Every time you touch her, she’s in pain.” He leaned over Max and said, “Maxine, it’s Nick. Listen to me. You can’t fight the medics. They’re going to make you better. But if you fight them, they have to tie you to the gurney.”

  She reached out and touched his hand. She had no strength to squeeze. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

  “I’m going with her,” David said. “I’m her bodyguard.”

  “I’ll follow,” Nick said. Then he looked at Marco. “Unless you need me here.”

  Marco hesitated, then shook his head. “Go. Let me know.”

  Nick nodded. “Call when you get inside. The doctors will need to know what they drugged her with.”

  “I will.”

  The paramedics hoisted Max into the ambulance and David jumped in behind them, tossing Nick his car keys.

  The driver closed the rear doors and David sat with Max as the paramedic put an IV into her arm. “Saline only, until we know what’s in her system,” he said.

  The ambulance pulled away and David prayed for the first time since he was a boy.

  * * *

  The hardest thing Marco had to do was let that detective from California go with Max to the hospital. Marco wanted to go with her, to be there for her, make sure she was taken care of, remind her that he loved her.

  The bastard had tortured her. No one had said it, but they all knew. She’d been cut, drugged, denied food, water, and more.

  The important thing was that Maxine was alive, and she would stay that way. They’d found her. She’d fought, freed herself because she was a survivor. It was why he loved her, and why she infuriated him.

  Sally O’Hara said, “We have the warehouse surrounded. The SWAT team is two minutes out. Did you recognize the guy?”

  “It’s Baker,” Marco said.

  “You know Max is the toughest woman on the planet,” Sally said.

  He knew. “Who was she talking about? A doctor.” He pictured Doctor Carter Duvall, but Duvall had been in Boston Thursday night until Friday morning. He’d been in Connecticut last night. It was possible—this warehouse was about an hour or so from Stamford. But it would be difficult. And what was his motive?

  The New York field office had verified Duvall’s alibi in Boston, but Marco called his liaison nonetheless and asked her to check the time line down to the minute, from the time he left Stamford for Boston, when he checked in, when he spoke, who saw him, when they saw him, transportation, the works.

  “Do you really think Dr. Duvall is a suspect?” Sally asked.

  “No,” Marco said. “But I can’t rule him out. And he was the shrink for both Bachman and Baker. He could have known, or suspected, that Baker had an obsession with Max. If he did, and we can prove it, that’ll make him an accessory.”

  But why was Baker obsessed with Max? The FBI was in the middle of a full background on him, and there was no doubt that Ben had the NET research team working on it as well. Maybe, when Max was coherent, she’d fill in the holes.

  “What did she mean by scorpions?” Sally asked.

  “It was a long time ago,” Marco said, noncommittal.

  She had to be hallucinating. Marco knew what she’d suffered in the Mexican jail. Things she’d never written about. Rarely talked about. He’d been there, he’d found her. He’d been so angry at the time, and relieved. Dammit, he should be with her now, not that new guy, Nick Santini. Nick didn’t know Max like Marco did. Nine years. No one could dismiss that kind of history.

  The SWAT tactical truck and two SUVs rounded the corner. At the same time, a rumbling sound came from the direction of the warehouse.

  “Take cover!” Marco yelled as the large door rolled up.

  A black Lincoln Town Car burst from the building. It was heading toward them—they had blocked the only way out of the area. Baker planned on ramming them in his attempt to escape.

  Marco and Sally drew their guns because the SWAT team hadn’t yet set up.

  “Tires!” Marco said. He wanted Baker alive. There were too many questions that needed answers.

  Between him and Sally and the two patrol cops, they hit the tires. The car veered off, out of control, and hit a row of parked cars—including the car that Baker had driven here. The Town Car flipped onto its roof, then the momentum turned it over on its blown-out tires. The airbags had de
ployed inside.

  Marco ran over, gun out, holding it on the driver’s side door. Baker was trapped and dazed, but alive.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them!” Marco shouted.

  Baker looked at him through the broken driver’s side window. He lowered his right hand.

  “I mean it, Baker! Do not move.”

  Baker raised his hand. He had a gun. Marco fired and hit him in the head. Baker slumped over, dead.

  “Well, shit,” Marco said.

  Sally was right behind him. “You had no choice.”

  Maybe not, but finding the answers to what the hell was going on was now going to be much, much harder.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Max hated lying in the hospital bed. She just wanted to go home, but the doctors said no. They were testing her blood, pumping fluids and antibiotics into her body, and her foot was heavily bandaged and in a boot because of the glass she’d stepped on when she’d escaped.

  But what she hated most of all was the three men she respected the most staring down at her as if she were some fragile little child. And a female FBI agent she’d never met before, S.S.A. Rose Pierce, who Marco introduced from the New York field office. This was Pierce’s case apparently. She was at least ten years older than Marco, and he was closing in on forty. She had a no-nonsense appearance, though Max thought her dyed hair looked just a little too blond for her sallow complexion. She should have gone with the warm browns.

  You’re being judgmental again, Maxine.

  “Ask your questions,” she said. Then go away.

  She’d been missing for nearly three days. She’d escaped Sunday morning; it was now late Sunday afternoon. She couldn’t fathom how that much time had passed. Maybe she’d sensed it, but she had been so confused so much of the time between the drugs and the dark and Duvall’s twisted mind games.

  “Ms. Revere,” Agent Pierce began, “we understand you’ve been through an ordeal, and I won’t take up much of your time. But it’s important that we know what happened. According to Mr. Kane, you were supposed to be picked up by a car service on Thursday evening to go home, but you never arrived home. Is that correct?”

  “Obviously,” Max snapped. God, her head hurt. They hadn’t given her any painkillers, which was fine—she didn’t want to be on any medication. Their reasons were medical. They hadn’t been able to identify the drugs she’d been injected with and were testing her blood at an outside lab. Their fears were of a potential adverse reaction. She didn’t want to take anything, not even aspirin. But dammit, every muscle and bone in her body hurt under an odd sensation of numbness.