by Dianna Love
“When dawn comes, he’ll be at our mercy.”
“Couldn’t he just call for another helicopter to lift him to safety?”
“He could, but he’s got to know we’re equipped with anti-aircraft guns we could turn on any incoming helo. He would not have dared land here without hostages.”
“Hey guys,” Eli interrupted, “Security cams indicate the pilot is doing a visual sweep of the rooftop, looking for booby traps. He gave our helo a careful look, but didn’t raise an alarm.”
“No less than what we expected,” said Delano. “Give them a few more minutes for Janecek to scan—”
“Time’s up.” Janecek’s voice came through the speakerphone. “Decide now. You have precisely four minutes to get up to the roof, or one of these pretty gals becomes dinner.”
Delano hit the mute button to connect with Janecek again. “We’re on our way.”
“Excellent.” Janecek severed the connection, leaving a dial tone resonating through the room.
Delano turned the phone off. “Okay, raise our jack-in-the-box. We’re going up.”
Chapter 22
DELANO SILENTLY cursed the perspiration that slicked his skin beneath the armored vest Eli insisted he wear under his shirt. Was this the normal human state, or was the reversal in progress wreaking extra havoc on his body? It had been so long, he couldn’t remember. Probably a little bit of both.
Eli stood with his hand on the door’s panic bar, impatient to be off, but they had two minutes yet, and Delano had things to say to Ainsley. “Go on up,” he said. “I need a minute.”
Eli frowned. “Make it a literal minute.”
The door had barely closed behind him when Ainsley spoke. “I should be going up there with you.”
“No, my love. You know we can’t run the risk of both of us falling into his hands. He wouldn’t spare the hostages.”
“I’m scared, Delano.”
“I know, love.” He put a hand to her face and felt a tremor go through her. “But it’s our best chance.”
She nodded, biting her lip to still its trembling.
I love you, he said silently. If something should happen to go wrong up here, I just wanted to make absolutely certain you to know that.
Her brow furrowed. “Delano?”
Oh, Lord, she couldn’t hear him. The reversal was progressing quickly. “Sorry, I just wanted to do this before I go.” He fit his hand behind her head and drew her to him for a short, sweet kiss. Just as quickly, he released her and stepped back. “I’m afraid our minute is up.”
“I know. Go.”
He’d reached the door when her voice stopped him.
“Delano!”
He turned to find her heart in her eyes.
“Be careful.”
Heart thudding painfully against his ribs, he gave her his best reassuring smile. “I will. Now remember, don’t go out there, no matter what happens. Okay?”
She nodded, her eyes solemn, and he turned away before his throat could grow any tighter. Knowing he’d used more than a minute, he leapt up the stairs. On the first landing, Eli and the members of B-Team stood waiting.
Eli clapped him on the back. “You ready for this, boss?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be. Are we good to go?”
“Our man has a bead on the helicopter door as we speak.”
“Time to rock and roll then.”
Delano ran lightly up the last flight of stairs alone. When he reached the door, he took a deep, steadying breath. Exhaling, he raised his hands up over his head, pushed the panic bar with his hip and carefully stepped out on the roof.
The pilot stood midway between the idling helicopter and the door, holding a lethal-looking rifle. A rifle that was trained unerringly on Delano’s chest as evidenced by a red laser dot. Feeling alarmingly weak in the legs — damn the timing of this mutation reversal — Delano strode toward the flak-jacketed pilot.
Then all hell broke loose.
Gunfire erupted, but from the wrong helicopter! Janecek must have detected their sniper. Dammit, dammit, dammit! Before Delano’s horrified eyes, a hundred bullet holes bloomed on the body of the helo, and shattered glass erupted onto the helipad. For a few white-hot seconds, he considered trying to rescue the sniper, but logic told him neither of them would survive it.
Bastards!
His blood boiling with fury, Delano streaked toward the pilot, who’d let the nose of his rifle dip when the helo-to-helo gunfire broke out. And oh, thank you Jesus, he must have had some vampiric power left, because his speed was there. The startled pilot’s curse was cut off as Delano struck his windpipe with the side of his right hand. The other man dropped his rifle and clutched his throat. Delano grabbed him. Using the pilot as a shield, he raced back to the door in a blur of speed. Yanking the door open, he hurled himself and his burden down the first flight of stairs, and not a second too soon. A hail of bullets struck the door, entering the vestibule and ricocheting dangerously. Dragging the dead weight of the now unconscious pilot, he plunged down the next flight, nearly plowing into Eli, who was on his way up.
“Get down! Ricochets!”
Eli crouched but didn’t retreat. Rather, he slid a shoulder under the pilot’s free arm to help Delano evacuate him. When they reached the next landing, the shooting, thank God, had stopped. Two soldiers reached for the pilot. Ribs screaming from the impact with the concrete floor, Delano was only too happy to pass off the burden.
“Get him inside. He needs attention.”
Eli turned worried eyes on Delano. “What about you? Are you hit?”
“No.” But dammit, he almost wished he was. How was he going to explain this goatfuck to Ainsley? Janecek would be livid, and the hostages… Dammit. He cleared his throat. “Did you get a sit rep?”
“Yeah. And Ainsley will have heard it, too. I left her a radio.”
I’m sorry, Ainsley. “Have you got a medical kit at the ready down there?”
“Always.”
“Then let’s get a move on. I think I might have hit our prisoner a little harder than was strictly necessary.”
When they reached the penthouse, they found the unconscious pilot stretched out on the carpet, with Ainsley kneeling at his side.
Her eyes flew to Delano’s. “Bartlett? Did he … I mean, is he…?”
Delano shook his head grimly. “That was a hell of a barrage. Even if he survived it, there’s no way to get to him.”
“And Lucy and Devon?”
His throat ached. “I don’t know.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
I’m so sorry, Ainsley.
He knelt opposite her, forcing his attention to the patient. “Did he take any bullets?”
She cleared her throat. “Not that I could see. I gather from the radio report that you struck him?”
“Neck area.” Delano palpated the patient’s throat, and swore at the crackling sensation beneath his bare fingers. Damn. The man was a goner without a tracheostomy. He sat back on his heels. “Subcutaneous emphysema.”
Eli joined them, medical kit in hand. “Good thing I’ve got a trach kit in here. You want to do the honors, or shall I?”
“You’d better do it.” He moved back to make room for Eli. “You don’t want to know what equipment I employed the last time I did an emergency tracheostomy. But I’ll assist.” He moved around to the pilot’s right, intending to relieve Ainsley, but she waved him off.
“I’ve got it covered.”
Delano blinked. Tears still shone in her eyes, but her demeanor was completely composed. Her trauma room training, he realized. It was probably all that was holding her together. Deciding the best way to help her was to keep her busy, he backed off.
Ainsley, her hands already gloved, dug a Betadine swabstick out of the kit and swabbed the patient’s throat below the Adam’s apple. Eli tugged on surgical gloves and quickly laid out his supplies on a sterile pad. Feeling redundant, Delano watched as Eli and Ainsley worked quickly and calmly to
expose two cartilage rings, incise them and install the tracheostomy tube.
A moment later, Eli leaned back on his heels. “Airway restored.” Peeling off the surgical gloves, he nodded to the two men who’d carried the pilot downstairs. “He’ll be coming around any minute now. Put him in my room and shackle him to the bed. Search him. Oh, and take his clothes and give him this to wear.” He tossed one of the men a hospital-issue Johnny shirt. “That oughta keep him humble.”
“He won’t be able to talk,” Delano added. “Tell him the tracheostomy is reversible, and that we’ll be in to discuss it when our situation is resolved.”
As the men moved in to pick up the patient, Eli turned to Delano. “You sure you’re all right, boss? You hit the deck pretty hard.”
“I’m fine.” He waved off Eli’s question, even though the dive onto the concrete had almost certainly cracked a rib or two, not to mention the scrapes and bruises. “I wish I could say the same for our sniper. I thought about trying to get him out of there, but they riddled the Comanche in a matter of seconds.”
Eli cleared his throat and blinked, but his voice when he spoke was perfectly controlled. “You did the right thing, Del. Even if Bartlett wasn’t killed outright, the both of you would have been cut to ribbons if you’d tried to get him out. And by grabbing up the pilot, you drew their fire. Not to mention that we bagged ourselves a pilot.”
Delano knew he could not have done anything differently, but Eli’s approval helped. He touched his ribcage surreptitiously. Yep, cracked ribs. “Thanks. Except we needed to bag two pilots to turn the tables. Janecek is going to be pissed as hell.”
As soon as the words were out, he wished he could call them back. Mrs. Michaels and her daughter were still at the mercy of Janecek. Ainsley didn’t need any reminders how angry their captor was going to be.
Except when he looked around, he realized she was no longer within earshot. She’d stepped clear when the men moved in to transfer the patient to Eli’s bedroom, he remembered, but he hadn’t seen her since. Where had she gone? His pulse jerked. Not the roof! Surely not the roof.
He whipped his head around, searching for her.
Oh, thank God! She sat at the dining room table, in front of the cursed speakerphone. A phone that was destined to ring any moment now.
His heart contracted at the picture she made. Now that the pilot’s medical emergency had passed, she held herself stiffly on the chair, her face tight, limbs trembling with tension held in check.
“Excuse me,” he murmured to Eli, then went to stand behind Ainsley. If she felt his hovering presence, she gave no indication. Rather, her focus was fixed intently on the phone as though she could make it ring with the sheer force of her will.
Oh, Ainsley. He wanted to place his hands on her shoulders, to pull her head back against the warmth of his chest. He wanted his touch to infuse her with courage and strength, and he wanted to draw the same from her to boost his own beleaguered faith that they were going to come out of this all right. But he dared not touch her. She looked as though she might shatter into a thousand pieces at the first contact.
He seated himself beside her and sent her a calming, centering vibe. She glanced up at him, but her face disclosed no evidence that she’d caught his thoughts. Lord, he was losing his powers, piece by piece, inch by inch. Any more of this and their blood-bond might—
Heart pounding, he casually pushed his sleeve back to examine the mark on the inside of his elbow. His stomach dropped. The triangle of dots was still there, but just barely, a faint trace of what it used to be.
Before he could reflect on that, the phone rang.
Ainsley’s gaze sprang up to meet his, naked fear visible in those violet depths. He squeezed her hand, then pushed the button to answer the phone. “Bowen.”
Eli slid into a seat across the table.
“I’m very disappointed in you, Delano.”
Janecek’s words were delivered calmly enough, but Delano heard the volcanic rage beneath the surface. He could also hear sobbing in the background. Acid erupted in his stomach, a veritable volcano of hot pain, and he grimaced.
“You used to have more respect for human life,” Janecek said.
“I assure you, my respect for human life is as strong as ever.” He tensed his abdominals against the next wave of pain. “If that were not so, we wouldn’t be here in this position, would we, Radak?”
Janecek snorted. “I’ve got a dead sniper out here who might argue about that. The way I see it, if you gave a flying fuck about his life, you wouldn’t have planted him in the middle of this. Did you seriously think I’d overlook him? Christ, he couldn’t have announced his presence any louder, the way he was salivating as he waited for our chopper door to swing open.”
“So naturally you had to kill him.”
“Like he wasn’t planning to kill us!”
Delano rubbed his forehead, which had begun to pound. “For your information, he was after your co-pilot, not you. And he would not have shot to kill. I reserve that for unrepentant predators. Your man just happened to be in the employ of an unrepentant predator.”
“Is that what you’ve done with my pilot? Disabled him?”
“Indeed we have. Quite effectively.”
Ainsley surged to her feet. “Shut up! Both of you!” Hands propped on the table on either side of the speakerphone, she continued: “Why are they crying? Dammit, what have you done to them?”
“Ah, yes, they are making a bit of a racket, aren’t they?” Janecek’s voice was easy, relaxed, charming. “Can’t say I blame them, though. I just explained how long it’s been since you had a child underfoot, Delano, and how I thought I’d remedy that right here and now.”
Acid surged in his stomach again, as the import of Janecek’s words sank in. “Don’t do it!” He leapt to his feet, gripping the table’s edge so hard that his nail beds screamed. “I’m begging you, Radak. If you have a shred of humanity left, you won’t do this.”
“Fuck you, Delano. This is what you get for screwing with me.”
Screams erupted over the speaker, drawing an echoing cry from Ainsley.
That bastard. Evil, black, soul-dead spawn of Satan!
Another piercing shriek, this time unmistakably the child’s. Delano shoved his chair back, intent on stopping the obscenity Janecek planned to perpetrate.
“No!” Ainsley clutched at him.
Eli had the good sense to hit the mute button just then.
“Let go!” He pried her hand off his wrist. “Goddammit, Ainsley, he plans to turn that child. I can’t let him do it. I can’t. You just don’t know—”
“No, you don’t know.” She clung to his arm fiercer than ever. “Devon is my daughter, Delano. Mine. You know what that means.”
Ainsley felt like her face was on fire. Her lips, her cheeks, her ears — everything burned. And in the background, the screaming…
Delano stared at her, his impossibly dark eyes gone blank. “What did you say?”
“Devon is my daughter.” She held his gaze, willing him to grasp the truth. “If your research is correct, if what you’ve told me is the truth, then Janecek can’t possibly turn her. But if he does this, maybe she can turn him.” Her eyes begged him to understand. “It’s our only chance.”
He reeled backward. “Devon is your daughter? Not Lucy’s?”
“Yes.”
Devon shrieked again, a high-pitched, terror-stricken animal sound. Lucy screamed.
Ainsley clapped her hands over her ears. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!
“Yes, she’s my daughter, but I gave her away. It was just like you said about the other Merzetti women. I was driven to get pregnant, despite my normally good judgment, and then I felt equally driven to have the baby and give it away. Except Lucy wanted her. Lucy was a product of the foster system, like me, and she campaigned to claim my baby as her own from my first missed period. And God help me, I let her.”
“Sweet Christ on the cross.”
Delano sat down again, heavily, obviously conceding the truth of her argument. An argument that would force him to stand by impotently while a child was hideously traumatized.
The screaming had stopped, replaced by Lucy’s sobbing. Ainsley shuddered, feeling her friend’s grief. She clasped her hands around her midriff, rocking back and forth in an effort to contain her own agony.
Then the sound of the idling copter surged, then faded, followed by another soul-ripping wail from Lucy.
“There you go, Delano. Come and get her. Maybe you’ll have better luck with a daughter.”
Delano leapt up, but Eli restrained him with a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll extract her. If you go out there, he’s apt to shoot you.”
“No he won’t.” Delano’s mouth was a grim slash. “He’ll want me to suffer longer than that. He’ll want me to think about the role I played in creating yet another abomination.”
“Then he won’t interfere with my evacuating her.”
“Thank you for the offer, but—”
“He’s right, Del.” Ainsley closed her hand around his wrist for the second time in as many minutes. “If you go out there now, his anger is likely to get the better of him. Or he might just decide that time is of the essence, and he can’t afford to make you suffer as long as he’d like. After all, the night is wearing on. He won’t want to be caught here come sunup. And he knows once you’re out of the way, I’ll trade myself to try to save Lucy.”
“You’re outvoted.” Eli tugged on his flak jacket and headed for the roof.
Delano snatched a radio from the table and depressed the button. “This is Dr. Bowen. Grayson is headed to the roof to retrieve the child. Can you give me a sit rep from the cameras? I want a play-by-play when he hits the roof.”
“Roger that, Dr. Bowen. Stand by.”
Ainsley reached for his free hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back hard enough to hurt her hand, but she refused to flinch.
Devon will be okay. You’ll see. Ainsley mustered all the calm assurance she could and directed it toward Delano, wanting to return the favor he’d done for her so many times in the past. When he didn’t respond, she squeezed his hand again. Really, Del. She’ll be okay, and so will Eli.
