Tempted Into Danger

by Melissa Cutler

  “Two eighty-two.” Which meant a hundred and eighty-eight meters to go. Not a problem. She could do this.

  Movement in a window of an abandoned warehouse across the street diverted her attention. She glanced past the car in time to see the stained, beige sheet covering the window swish closed. Now she was being watched from buildings, cars and men in dark jackets lurking in alleyways. All she needed was a man with a white mask to appear or some angelic-looking kid with huge saucer eyes to say something creepy about seeing dead people and her scary movie fantasy would be complete.

  With her apartment building in view, she fished her keys from her purse. The zip drive came up with the keys and skidded across the sidewalk. Her heart thudding wildly, she scooped it up and stuffed it in her skirt pocket, then stumbled sideways as a mom with a double stroller bullied past her. She searched the street for the white sedan in time to see its rear bumper disappear into the alley around the corner.

  From here, it was a clean shot to her apartment lobby, then one flight of stairs up to her unit. She set off at a trot, her one-inch heels clicking noisily but not slowing her down. As soon as she tested the algorithm and figured out why the numbers were bugging her, she’d destroy the zip drive and no one would be the wiser about what she’d done. Then her paranoia would evaporate and her biggest problem could go back to being about her pathetic love life.

  The feeling of being watched stayed with her in the lobby and stairwell despite that the only sound was the echo of her heels on the tile. A rent increase a few months ago had induced a mass exodus of tenants, resulting in the building being only partially occupied. Of the ten units on the second floor, only Vanessa and two elderly couples at the end of the hall remained.

  A dizzying sense of vulnerability crawled up her spine as she shoved her key into the dead bolt. The vacant hallway suddenly seemed as ominous as a dark alley in one of Panama City’s slums. If someone had it in mind to attack her here, no one would witness it. No one would know she was in trouble.

  As clammy sweat erupted on her skin, she shouldered the door open, slammed it behind her and reengaged the dead bolt. Standing against the closed door, a giggle burst up from her throat as she realized how completely she’d whipped herself into a frenzy over nothing. Maybe she should lay off the horror movies because her imagination was out of control.

  Still chuckling, she texted Jordan, then tossed her key ring on the kitchen counter en route to the bathroom. A cold washcloth would work miracles on her perspiring skin and settle her still-pounding pulse. She flicked the bathroom light on and barely had time to scream before a hand closed over her open mouth.

  Chapter 2

  Diego stared down the slide of his Sig at the driver of the white sedan that had been circling Vanessa Crosby’s block for a half hour, marveling at how the seemingly simplest mission his team had ever undertaken had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.

  He shoved the muzzle of the gun into the man’s Adam’s apple and asked him in Spanish, for the tenth time, who he worked for. The driver begged for his life but wouldn’t give up any information on his boss.

  Through his earpiece, he monitored the bug Alicia had planted in Crosby’s apartment that afternoon. A rattle, then the door opened. It slammed and she released a peal of nervous laughter. She’d seemed agitated as she’d left her office, like she felt the charge in the air from his team watching her.

  He’d felt the charge, too. And not only from the shock of how much prettier she was in person than in the surveillance photos. No, he felt the buzz of trouble humming in the atmosphere. Something bad was going down tonight.

  The sedan, with its heavily armed driver, confirmed his suspicions.

  He listened to Crosby’s shoes clip-clop along the tile, past the bug in the kitchen. The sound dulled as she moved onto the carpet. Diego raised his radio to his lips, ready to pass the driver to Alicia for questioning. Before he could speak, Crosby screamed.

  Not the yelp of a chick being surprised by a spider crawling on her leg, but a piercing scream of terror. No sooner had the scream started than it cut off, like someone had shut her up against her will.

  Cursing, Diego backhanded the driver’s skull with the side of his gun, knocking him unconscious. He sprinted around the back of the apartment building.

  “Eight Ball,” he shouted into his radio, using Ryan’s call name, “did you hear that?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Diego rounded the corner. Crosby’s second-floor window came into view. Over the wire, he heard muffled movement and a thump, maybe a door closing. Hard to tell with the bug in the kitchen. “Cover her front door. I’m going in the window. Ghost Rider, Thriller, do you copy?”

  “Copy,” John and Rory said at the same time.

  No time for subtlety now that the asset was in danger, he shed the jacket concealing his utility belt and firearms as he ran. “Hold your positions. You see anyone suspicious leaving that building besides me, Eight Ball and Crosby, take them down. Phoenix, handle the man in the alley, then be ready in the follow car.”

  “Roger that,” Alicia answered.

  The wire tap had gone dead-silent. He stared up from the alley at Crosby’s windows but registered no movement inside. Whatever the identities of the hostiles, they were highly trained professionals. Diego probably had a matter of seconds to recover her before her odds of survival plummeted. “We’re going balls to the wall, guys. Our sneak-and-peek just turned into a hostage rescue.”

  He stuffed the radio onto his utility belt and swung the rifle with the mounted grappling-hook launcher around from his back. Aiming for the roof between Crosby’s living room and bedroom windows, he fired. Pressured air from the pneumatic gun cracked the silence in the alley, but the sound wasn’t sharp enough to draw attention.

  A tug and the hook caught on the lip of the roof. From there, training and brute strength took over as Diego hauled himself hand-over-hand until he was eye-level with the base of the second-floor windows. He wrapped a hand and a boot on the rope to lock himself in place, then grabbed his Sig and sidestepped against the stucco wall to look into Crosby’s living room.

  Nothing and no one inside.

  He swung right and peered through the bedroom window, which had an unobstructed view into the bathroom.

  Again, nothing.

  They weren’t in the kitchen or he’d have heard it through the bug. He shoved the Sig into his thigh holster and took his radio in hand. “Eight Ball, you at her door?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Any movement or sound? I have visual through the windows. The place is empty.”

  “Nothing here. If they left her apartment, it wasn’t through the door.”

  He looked up. They could be on the roof, but if that were the case, they’d have seen Diego’s grappling hook and he’d be dodging bullets right about now.

  The bed was made, the flowery quilt without a wrinkle on it. He replaced the radio and took up his Sig again. Where are you, Vanessa?

  The bathroom door had been moved, closed about a foot from where he’d seen it during her apartment sweep. The hand soap at the sink had fallen over and a pair of women’s heels sat on the linoleum. No blood on the floor or walls, as far as he could tell.

  Then he saw it and cursed. The closet door was ajar.

  It was time to choose—stealth or speed.

  Speed. Definitely.

  Using the barrel of the gun, he punched a hole in the window, then cleared the pane with his boot. Glass shattered to the apartment floor and rained into the alley. He swung into the room and hit the ground running.

  “Eight Ball, get in here,” he shouted into the room.

  Sig aimed and ready, he sprinted to the closet and threw the door open. Empty.

  A crash sounded, then Ryan was behind him. On a hunch, Diego
cleared the hanger rods, dumping clothes to the floor. Bingo.

  A three-foot square hole had been opened through the drywall into the closet of the adjoining apartment. The vacant room beyond it was bare. He signaled Ryan to cover him, then climbed through the opening in time to see a man lowering himself into a hole cut in the bedroom floor.

  Diego threw himself across the room. He crushed the man’s hand against the lip of the hole with his knee. Seizing a fistful of the man’s shirt, he hauled him up through the hole. Before the guy had a chance to aim the gun wildly waving in his right hand, Diego caught him with a left hook in his jugular that sent him to the floor in a heap.

  Ryan appeared behind Diego and hoisted the man away from the hole.

  Diego flattened to his stomach and looked over the edge. The only thing visible in the first-floor apartment was a stained mattress. He had a hand on the telescopic mirror he carried on his belt when the radio sounded with Rory’s voice. “A van pulled into the alley and stopped five meters west of Crosby’s apartment, next to a window. The sliding side door is opening.”

  That put the van right outside the apartment below. These guys weren’t messing around with getting their hostage out of the building. He beat a hasty path to the window past Ryan and the hostile he was smacking around in an attempt to get information out of him. A blue van idled directly below them, only a scant foot away from the outer wall of the apartment building.

  “I count three men in the van,” John said. “I have a clear shot at the driver.”

  Diego threw the window open. “Take it. Then disable the tires.”

  “Roger that.”

  He pulled the screen out of the way as the roar of shots reverberated through the alley. A bullet hole pierced the van’s front windshield. Given the steep angle of his line of sight to the van, Diego couldn’t confirm that the driver was dead, but John never missed a clear shot.

  It took the men in the van only a second to respond. On the far side of the van, one hung out the passenger window and opened fire in John’s direction on top of the building directly in front of them. The second man leaned out the open sliding side door and reached in through the apartment window, dragging a woman’s limp form into the recesses of the van.

  Vanessa.

  “Ghost Rider, Thriller, hold your fire. The asset’s in the van.”

  Once she was out of sight, the man in the van helped a second figure out the window. Diego chose the perfect moment when both men’s hands were busy, then fired at the man coming through the window, shooting to kill. With an asset’s life in the balance, he didn’t have the luxury to chance a nonfatal shot.

  The man in the van turned his gunfire on Diego.

  Diego ducked back into the room. He glanced behind him to see Ryan trussing up the hostile with zip ties around his wrists and ankles.

  “Thriller, what’s the situation?” he asked into his radio. As he spoke, the shooting from the van ceased.

  “The man who was firing at you moved to the driver’s seat and pushed the driver’s body out. Looks like they’re going to leave their fallen comrades and take the girl.”

  Like hell they were.

  Diego climbed onto the window sill. “Phoenix, I need a roadblock on the east side of the alley. Eight Ball, cover me. I’m going down.”

  Ryan appeared next to him, his rifle at the ready. “On it.”

  Diego jumped, landing on his feet on the roof of the van as it lurched forward on flat tires. As the van picked up speed, he dropped to his stomach and shimmied toward the closing sliding door, smoke grenade in hand.

  At that moment, the white sedan from earlier rolled forward to block the exit, Alicia at the wheel. The men in the van fired on it as Alicia executed a perfect rolling fall from the car and disappeared out of view around the corner.

  Diego pulled the pin from the smoke grenade with his teeth and chucked it through the open passenger window. The men inside fired on him through the roof until the grenade detonated, filling the cab with thick gray smoke, harmless except that it obscured their view.

  Boots first, he pushed through the passenger window into the lap of the man sitting there. The van plowed into the car barricade at full speed. Diego vaulted forward amid shattered glass and landed hard on the hood of the barricade car, then tumbled behind it to the ground.

  No time to recover from the impact, he leapt to his feet and ran around the crushed metal. The two remaining hostiles took off through the alley in the opposite direction, one of them with Vanessa slung over his shoulder.

  Diego gave chase.

  Pushing against the hostile’s back with her bound arms, Vanessa raised her head and they locked gazes. Man, it was hard to concentrate with her dark eyes on him. The fear and hope for rescue in her expression hit him straight in the gut. He refocused on her captor’s head, anywhere but at those eyes, as he swiftly bridged the distance separating them.

  Though his earpiece had dislodged and he had no idea where his radio ended up, he could feel the presence of his crew around him, closing in on the hostiles from all angles, a pack of wolves moving in for the kill.

  Ryan fell in step next to him and they ate up the ground between themselves and the hostiles.

  “The one with the asset is mine,” Diego said, lengthening the stride of his sprint.

  Vanessa squirmed against the hostile’s hold, pummeling his back with her joined fists hard enough that he slowed and stumbled to the right, opening a gap between himself and his cohort.

  Ryan ground to a halt, raising his gun. A boom sounded and the hostile on the left fell face-first onto the asphalt, a single bullet wound in his back.

  Weighed down with a still-struggling Vanessa, the remaining hostile darted toward the apartment building. At the wall, he whirled, dragging Vanessa around to stand in front of him. He jammed his gun against her neck. In his other hand, he held what was clearly a detonator.

  Diego froze ten meters away, with the hostile in the sights of his Sig. Ryan stood flush with him, his gun at the ready, too. He couldn’t see a bomb on Vanessa. Her work outfit was made of thin material and hugged her every curve in a way that no bomb could go unnoticed between her clothes and her skin. Could be that the bomb was on the hostile, but what would be the point of that?

  His best guess was that the explosive was either in the van or the apartment building. Not that he was about to take the chance of shooting the hostile in the chest or back and hitting a bomb should the opportunity to strike arise.

  Vanessa slouched against the hostile’s bracing arm, her wrists still bound in front of her. She fixed her eyes on Diego again, this time radiating a little less hope and a lot more fear than they had before.

  He looked past her to the hostile’s trigger finger, then his face. The hostile’s eyes mirrored hers—wide with anxious fear. He shouted in Spanish for Diego and Ryan to drop their weapons, but both men held steady.

  Patience was the name of the game now. Any second, something was going to change the balance of the situation. Either Alicia would drive up, civilians would walk by or the hostile would lose focus. All Diego needed was the slightest hairline fracture in the tension to give him the perfect opportunity to strike.

  Vanessa’s shoulders shifted, recapturing his attention. He watched her bare feet plant more firmly on the ground. The muscles of her calves and quads stiffened, like she was bracing for something. Then, so gradually that the hostile didn’t notice, she brought her hands up below her collarbone. He wished he could tell her to give it a rest and let him handle the heroics, but his only viable option was to be ready to respond to whatever plan she had cooking.

  With a shriek that nearly made Diego flinch, she shoved her elbow back, straight into the man’s gut. Ballsy move for a civilian. Stupid as hell, but impressive nonetheless.

  The hostile folded over, grunting.r />
  “Get down!” Diego shouted.

  She didn’t hesitate, but dove sideways onto the ground. Doubly impressive.

  The instant she was clear, Diego shot the hostile through the neck. He would’ve rather not, but an armed, wounded kidnapper was as lethally dangerous to Vanessa as an unwounded one. Perhaps more so.

  The man crumpled to the ground, raising the detonator above his head. Ryan fired, hitting the hostile’s hand dead-on, but not before he depressed the button.

  Diego lunged forward and threw his body over Vanessa’s, collecting her limbs beneath him as a roar sounded all around them. The shock wave smacked him hard but didn’t scramble his brains the way it sometimes did, telling him the blast wasn’t all that close. He raised his head and looked the length of the alley. Smoke and flame poured from the broken windows of Vanessa’s apartment.

  Sirens sounded in the distance. Besides the possibility of getting sidetracked by local police and fire response teams, they were way too exposed for Diego’s liking. He didn’t particularly care to find out if there were any more hostiles waiting to pounce.

  “I’m getting her out of here,” he told Ryan, who was busy with the fallen hostile.

  He stood and waited for Vanessa to follow suit, but she remained huddled in a ball.

  With no time to explain or wait for her to recover her wits, he swept her into his arms and bolted toward his getaway car around the corner from the alley. Until they turned onto the street, out of view of the alley, her gaze stayed firmly fixed over Diego’s shoulder at her burning apartment.

  He set her onto the backseat and tore the tape from her mouth. She drew a labored gasp and stared up at him, her eyes wide with confusion and terror. Even if he wasn’t in a race against the clock to get her to safety, soothing frightened broads wasn’t his gig. Pretty tough to pull off a comforting smile while covered in blood spatter and shrapnel.

  Still, irrational though it was, the urge to reassure her burned bright inside him, so he said the first thing that came to mind. “Nice jab to the gut back there.”