by Julie Miller
Fiona needed her.
“Save her.”
She wasn’t failing the people who needed her again.
Reaching up, Miranda grabbed the edge of the bookshelf. She pulled herself up high enough to grab the window ledge. She got her feet beneath her and pushed with her legs to stand. But the window was so heavy.
In a burst of strength that came from determination alone, Miranda pulled herself up higher, climbing the shelves with her hands, one by one, reaching up to the top of the shelf and feeling around until her fingers closed over the grip of her Glock. Tick. Tock, the cruel voice inside her head warned. Time was running out.
Air. They needed air. They were passing out. Maybe dying.
Her hands, trained by the best, trained to be the best, knew what to do even when her eyes refused to focus. Miranda unhooked the holster and dropped it. Her palms folded around the grip, her finger slid against the trigger. She raised the heavy gun and fired three shots at the window, shattering the glass.
Cold night air rushed into the room, clearing her head as she breathed it in. She tucked her gun into the back of her jeans and found the strength to slide over to the other window and open it. The curtains fanned out into the room, telling her the sweet, fresh air from outside was filling the room.
She heard another pop. Her ear jerked to the sound. From somewhere inside the house. With her head clearing, she identified the three pops immediately.
Gunshots.
They were in trouble. Big trouble.
And she’d just announced to whoever was in the house that he wasn’t the only one here armed with a weapon.
“Quinn? Quinn!” Growing stronger with every breath, she stumbled back into the room and knelt down beside his still form. She rolled him onto his back and spread her hand over his chest. “Thank God.”
There was still a strong heartbeat.
“Quinn?” She tapped his cheeks, tried to rouse him. “Quinn, wake up. We have to get out of here. Someone’s in the house.”
She rose to her feet and pulled on his arm. But all she managed to do was turn him sideways. He was too big for her to drag outside. And away from the windows, she was falling under the influence of the knockout gas again.
“I’ll come back for you.” She stooped down and pressed a kiss to his mouth. “It’s my job, right? I’m going to take Fiona outside. I need you to breathe in the fresh air and wake up while I’m gone, okay?”
He moaned something unintelligible.
She leaned in closer. “What’s that?”
“Go. Save her.”
“I will. I promise I will.”
She could hear footsteps all the way down in the basement level. How had Titov or one of his men gotten into the house? There were guards, gates, cops, codes.
“Come on, sweetie.” Miranda wrapped Fiona up in the afghan from the rocking chair and carried her sleeping body to the open window. She kicked out the screen onto the second-story porch.
The footsteps were in the hallway now. Anyone who could move that quickly had to be immune to the gas. A standard-issue gas mask would suffice.
“Quinn!” She turned and whispered desperately. “He’s coming.”
He was on his hands and knees now. “Go.”
“He has a gun.”
He pushed himself to his feet and leaned against the bedpost. “Systems must be…offline.” He lurched to the next bedpost. “No lights. No alarms.”
That was right. The house was deathly quiet. There was no movement outside. She’d fired three shots straight out the front window. This place should have been locking down like Fort Knox. Guards from the front gate should have been storming the house. But it seemed every technical gadget Quinn had put into place was dead.
And then she understood what he intended to do. “No. You come with me. When we get outside we can call for backup.”
The footstep hit the first stair.
“Come with me,” she begged, panic clearing her head now. “We can run to the gate. Climb over it somehow. Forget your security system.”
“I can fix it.”
She stepped back into the room. “Then I’m staying with you.”
He pushed her right back to the window. He bent his head to kiss Fiona. “You save my daughter. That’s why you’re here.” His blue eyes were clear as he captured her face in his hands and kissed her hard on the mouth. “I’m sorry our timing was off. I didn’t know I was ready for another relationship until I met you.”
Footsteps. “Quinn.”
He freed her ponytail from where it was wedged between Fiona and her chest, and smoothed it down her back. “I owe you a proper New Year’s kiss,” he promised. “But first I’m going to take this bastard down.”
He lifted her out onto the porch and disappeared inside Fiona’s closet just as a shadowy figure filled the doorway.
MIRANDA RAN THROUGH THE snow, shutting down her emotions, allowing herself no opportunity to think about Quinn trying to be a superhero when he just needed to be Fiona’s daddy.
She was across the bridge before Fiona stirred in her arms. “Wandy?”
“Thank God.” She kissed her soft forehead. “Randy loves you, sweetie. Be still. Be quiet.”
Where were the lights of the front gate?
“I’m cold.”
If she thought about it too much, Miranda was, too. But she had to get Fiona to safety. Nothing else mattered.
Except getting back into that house to help Quinn.
She saw a large, dark shadow moving behind the bars of the gate and she instinctively zigzagged off the driveway and plunged into the snow again, making it tough for a potential enemy to get a straight shot at her.
“KCPD!”
The shadow called out at the same time Miranda shouted, “Identify yourself!”
There was a huff of relief and then the beam of a flashlight hit her in the face. “Murdock?” The light instantly lowered. “It’s Holden Kincaid and Trip Jones.”
She saw the second figure, an even bigger shadow in the darkness, working with a flashlight over by the thick brick wall. “I can’t get anything to work,” Trip groused. “What the hell is going on? We heard gunshots.”
Looping Fiona’s arms around her neck, Miranda jumped to her feet again and met the two SWAT cops at the gate. “How many?”
“Three.”
She shook her head. “That was me.” The house must be soundproofed. “I had to bust out a window. There’s some kind of sleeping gas inside.”
“The gate’s locked up tight.” Holden wrapped a black-gloved hand around one of the unyielding bars of the gate. “We can’t get in unless we scale the wall or cut through these with a torch. The sarge is coming with the van and some rope.”
“Do either of you guys have a spare radio and a gear bag?” There was no way either of the big men could squeeze through the bars, but she had a little three-year-old who could. “Here. Take her.”
“Wandy?” she whined.
“You’re fine, sweetie. I need you to be a big girl for me.” She handed Fiona through to Holden on the other side. “Got her?” Funny, trusting this most precious gift to the man she’d feared was back at KCPD to replace her. Maybe he still was. But tonight, that didn’t matter. Tonight, they needed to work together as a team. “I have to go back in and help your daddy.”
“Hold up. You don’t go anywhere without a sit-rep,” Trip chided. He thrust a radio and earbud through the gate. “Alex and the captain are on their way. Captain said all of Damiani’s guards missed their check-in. They went to find them.”
Intel. Routine. Communication. Training. They were all part of being on SWAT. It was the only way to get the job done quickly and safely, and Miranda intended to do both. She gave a quick situation report while she clipped on her radio and tested it. “Somebody’s hacked into the security system here. Everything’s offline. Quinn’s trying to fix it.”
“Here you go.” Trip unzipped a gear bag and started passing equipment through th
e gate. Flak vest. Flashlight. Gloves. Watch cap. Spare clips. Second weapon. Gas mask.
Miranda suited up. “There’s someone in the house. He’s armed. I heard three shots besides my own. I’m going back in.”
“Wait for backup,” Trip insisted. “We’ll get the gate open.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Murdock,” Kincaid warned.
She swung back around and pointed a finger at him. “If anything happens to that little girl, I will come back and kick your ass.”
And then she was running, retracing her steps through the snow and across the bridge.
“Can she do that?” She heard Kincaid’s voice in her ear.
“Oh, yeah.” There wasn’t a doubt in the world in Trip’s tone.
Now she just had to believe it, too.
MIRANDA CLIMBED BACK UP the railings and decorative posts to reach the second-story porch. Moving as silently as the breeze itself, she sidled up beside the broken window and held her breath, listening for any signs of movement inside. Nothing. Then she stooped down and lightly sniffed the air around the window. She couldn’t detect the sleeping gas.
She tapped her radio and whispered, “I’m going in.”
“Roger that.” Captain Cutler’s deep voice startled her. Then reassured her just as quickly. “You’d better be coming out, too. Delgado’s here with the climbing gear now. Jones and Taylor will be there to back you up in two minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” She inhaled a deep breath. Two minutes was an eternity when an officer was storming a building in search of a hostage. This was all on her. Saving the man she’d fallen in love with was all on her now. She couldn’t fail. “Going to radio silence. Now.”
She turned off the radio and climbed inside.
Fiona’s bedroom was empty. Miranda checked the closet and the panic room located inside. That must have been where Quinn had been headed. The door stood open, as if he’d tried to take refuge there. But a quick check showed it to be empty, too.
Miranda fought off the fear that tried to take hold. She needed to think clearly right now, for her own survival as well as his. An empty room meant there was every chance Quinn was still alive, that the man who’d been at the door when she’d escaped with Fiona hadn’t killed him. Maybe he hadn’t even intended to kill him. Maybe that man had been one of David Damiani’s security guards, or Damiani himself, who’d managed to get a gas mask on so that he could find the occupants of the house and get them safely to breathable air.
Yes, think like that. Be positive. Damiani’s men were here and—she shined the flashlight on her watch—her own team would be here to back her up in a minute and a half, give or take.
Moving to the door, she checked the hallway for any signs of movement. Clear, she sounded off inside her head. She made quick work of the upstairs rooms. All clear. Wherever the shadow had taken Quinn, wherever he had gone, it wasn’t up here.
She moved quickly down the stairs to the first floor to do a methodical room-by-room search. It didn’t take long before she found her first body. She saw the legs sticking out on the far side of the kitchen table. “Quinn?”
Her heart plummeted to her toes as she raced forward. She took a breath of relief. Shirt. No sweats. Not Quinn. She took another breath and frowned in apprehension. This was Rowley, the blond-haired guard, murdered execution-style with a bullet in the middle of his forehead.
She found Holmes at the garage door entrance. Same bullet hole. Same kind of dead. They’d definitely missed their check-in.
But still no Quinn. There was no way out of this house, no way off the grounds with her team closing in.
Miranda checked her watch. Four minutes till midnight. Trip and Alex should be over the wall by now, coming in to back her up. She needed to brief them on what to expect. The sleeping gas had dissipated. There was a dead guard at each exit. No live bodies and one floor left to check.
She tapped her radio, then just as quickly tapped it off when she heard voices coming from the security command center downstairs. She covered her mouth and swallowed her cry of relief. Quinn.
“I knew there had to be a mole in GSS somewhere. Nikolai had the motive, but he didn’t have the means to get into my personal systems to send those messages or plant the bomb or take down the security of this house.” She tried to pinpoint the source of the sound and finally looked down. She was hearing him through the ventilation duct in the floor. Was there an alternative way to get into the command center without going straight down the stairs and possibly walking into an ambush? “You didn’t answer me. And I don’t like unanswered questions. I get why Titov wants me dead, why he wants to kill my daughter. I don’t like it, but I get it. Why are you doing this?”
She heard another voice, infinitely more troubling, as it answered. “Because he’s paying me an obscene amount of money. And,” David Damiani added, before Quinn could interrupt, “I wanted to prove I was better than you.”
QUINN HADN’T MADE IT TO THE panic room as he’d briefly intended. But he’d provided enough of a distraction when he’d tackled David Damiani and knocked that gas mask off his face that Miranda had been able to get Fiona safely out of the house and beyond David’s reach before he even realized they were gone.
Now he had a cracked lens in his glasses, a swollen black eye and a few other bruises to remind him just how long it had been since he’d taken down a bully with his bare fists. Despite his broken nose, Damiani had hauled him straight down to the estate’s command center, as he’d hoped, and tied him to the chair farthest from the security monitors, but closest to the satellite feed station.
Quinn prayed that David was so caught up in his own ego that he’d forgotten who’d built this room in the first place, and that Miranda was as good a SWAT cop as Michael Cutler—as he—believed her to be.
He eyed the clock on the wall. He had a minute left to play this game. “What happens if you don’t finish the job by midnight? You’re never getting your hands on my daughter. Is Titov going to let you get away with that?”
“What makes you think I still can’t get to Fiona?” he taunted. The man’s skull was about as thick as that bulletproof vest he wore. “In a few minutes, you’ll be dead and I’ll be the last, lone survivor of a terrible home invasion that destroyed the great Quinn Gallagher. It’ll be in all the papers. People will pity me or think I’m a hero. But I’m going to walk out of here. And you’re not. I’ve planned for every contingency. Even your mouthy loose cannon of a girlfriend will be taken care of.” He edged closer with the Beretta in his hand pointed at Quinn’s head. “You think I don’t know she’s coming for you? I’m banking on it. No way can she get to you without coming down those stairs and coming through me first. And I’ll be waiting for her.”
“Are you sure the five million dollars is for you, David? Where is Nikolai, anyway? Still in the country? At the Swiss bank, counting his cash?”
“Seriously? He’s already in St. Feodor, watching this all on TV. A whole ocean away is a pretty good alibi, don’t you think?” His denasal laugh as he reached over to turn on the satellite feed was more pitiful than intimidating. “Nikolai, my friend.” The blur of Titov’s black-and-silver goatee came into focus on the screen. “I have your prize.” He pressed the muzzle of his gun against Quinn’s forehead. “Shall I do him now?”
“You must wait.” Nikolai pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to count off the seconds on his watch. “My son was killed at midnight. It will be the same for Mr. Gallagher.”
“Whatever.”
Despite the deadly risk of his current position, Quinn had to bite down on the urge to laugh. “I’m glad you were smart enough to figure out that the satellite link is on an individual feed from the rest of my systems.”
“Thirty seconds, David,” Nikolai announced. “I have been waiting a long time for this moment, Quinn. I have enjoyed watching you suffer. You took my factory, my money, my influence in Lukinburg—so my associates took my son. Know this. Once you are dead, your
daughter will be easy prey.”
“You go to hell, Titov.”
“Now, Nikolai?”
“Twenty seconds.”
David began to pace, counting off the seconds with every step. “I always wanted to prove I was better than you, Quinn. I’m the security expert that you hired. I take care of GSS, which takes care of all those cops and soldiers and little old ladies in the neighborhood. I do that. And yet, people bow down to you. They call you the brilliant one. Well, let me tell you something, boss.” He got right in Quinn’s face. “I can outthink you when it comes to security. Maybe I should start my own security empire. I can afford to now, you know. I planned it all out. I was ahead of you every step of the way. I took your money. I took out your computer codes at GSS and here.”
“Ozzie did that—”
“—I got Ozzie to do it. I put a bomb in your building.” He waved his gun toward the floors above them. “I took out Holmes and Rowley because, well, I just want their share of the money. It’s just you and me, boss. And when the clock strikes midnight, it’ll be just me.”
“Ten seconds.” Nikolai was enjoying this more than he should.
“Congratulations, David.” Quinn wanted to keep him talking, wanted the man to confess every little part of their plan since the government monitored all foreign satellite feeds, and somewhere in the country, someone was watching this little show right now. “You came up with a plan to outsmart me, to take out every single device and protocol I’ve devised. Is that about right?”
“It’s eating you up inside, isn’t it?”
Quinn shrugged. “You forgot one thing.”
“What’s that?”
A dusty angel crawled out of the ventilation duct and dropped to the floor behind him. She put her gun to David’s skull, and Quinn smiled.
“You forgot to take out the nanny.”
Chapter Thirteen
New Year’s Day
Miranda wrapped the hotel’s fluffy white towel around her and tucked it in above her breasts. She combed out her damp hair and let it fall loosely down her back and shoulders.
