by Rebecca York
“But that could really collapse the tunnel.”
“I guess we’ll have to place it carefully. Close enough to shake the place but not close enough to do any damage down there. And I’ll bring the portable siren. We can turn it on so he’ll think it’s some kind of warning.”
Max nodded, thinking that he’d make the decision when they got to the cabin. Getting out his cell phone, he called Jack.
“We’re at the woods at the location I told you about.”
“Then I’m about five minutes away.”
“You’ll see a chained access road on the right. Don’t park near it. We’re parked across the highway. You’ll see a gravel road going uphill into the woods. The cabin’s on the other side, not far from the access road. Watch out for security guards. We’re going up, and you can follow.”
Max clicked off, and Shane took a canvas gym bag out of the trunk.
There were also assault rifles in the trunk, and Max eyed them.
“I think Troy’s only carrying a sidearm,” he said. “And an assault rifle is going to be kind of conspicuous if we’re caught here.”
Shane nodded. “Of course, so is the C4, if anyone looks in the bag.”
“We’re just here for an exercise routine,” Max quipped.
“Right.”
They made their way down the hill to the highway, then waited for traffic to pass before crossing.
Instead of taking the access road, they moved through the trees as silently as possible, heading for the cabin, circling around so that they wouldn’t approach from the road.
“He could have booby traps or sensors,” Shane whispered.
Max kept his own voice low. “He could. But that would mean he put them in place earlier.”
“He did a lot of planning for that assault on the farmhouse.”
“But he had the time for it. Let’s hope he’s improvising now.”
They came in toward the back of the cabin, and Max saw a flash of red through the trees. Stopping behind a tree, he peered out and realized he was looking at a red Beemer.
“His car,” Max said. “He drove right up here like he owned the place.”
They cautiously approached the vehicle and looked inside. The odor of chloroform wafted out from a rag lying on the floor of the backseat, and Olivia’s purse was lying beside it.
Max’s heart thumped. Masters had drugged her and driven her here. But was she alive?
Turning from the car, he and Shane crept toward the building.
A few feet away a man in a green uniform was lying on the ground.
Max hurried over and saw that it was the same guard who had stopped him and Olivia a few days earlier. Then, he’d taken them by surprise. This time, it looked like the other way around. And the encounter hadn’t gone so well for the security man.
He was dead, the back of his head blown off by a bullet that had gone through the center of his forehead.
Chapter 28
“Oh shit,” Max muttered. “Poor guy, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Another body,” a voice behind them said.
They both whirled to find Jack, breathing hard after running up the hill. “Lucky it’s not Masters who snuck up on you.”
Max made a sound of agreement. “When you called, were you telling us that Larson is dead?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“And who else?”
“Hamilton.”
“Jesus,” Max responded. “I guess he decided there was a chance we weren’t full of shit after all.”
“And going over to Larson’s place got his ass killed,” Shane added.
“Probably he thought he was on a wild-goose chase, and he wasn’t being careful,” Max said.
“Probably,” Jack agreed. “I called it in anonymously. The cops know about the bodies by now, but they won’t know I was there.”
Max looked from him to the man on the ground. “And then there’s this poor bastard. When are they going to miss him, and what’s going to happen when they do?”
“We’d better get on with it,” Shane said.
“Yeah.” Max turned toward the cabin. “The interior is empty, but it’s not very secure. I’m betting Masters is under the cabin with Olivia. There’s a tunnel with an underground room at the end. A good place to hold someone. And there’s only one way in or out.” He swallowed hard. “And going down there could get Olivia killed.”
Shane told Jack about their blasting plans.
“Risky,” he concluded.
“We can’t just stand around talking,” Max said as he moved quietly toward the back of the building. He could see the spot where he and Olivia had climbed inside. They’d put the siding back into place. Now it was pulled away again, with no attempt to disguise the fact that someone had gone inside.
Max stepped back. The others followed, and they spoke in whispers.
“I’m going in,” he said.
“What about the explosives?” Shane asked.
“They could be risky. Suppose he panics and kills her?” Max said.
Shane winced.
“They may be our last resort. But I’m going to see if I can get down there without his knowing it—and try to hear what’s going on.”
“How?” Jack asked.
He wanted to tell them to stop asking questions, but maybe they were giving him time to think.
“If I were Olivia, I’d be trying to hold his attention. Because she knows I’m coming,” he added, praying that it was true. And praying that she was alive and conscious and able to deal with Masters.
“We’re coming with you,” Jack said.
Max shook his head. “The tunnel’s too small for that. It’s a one-man operation. Stay out here.” He thought for a moment. “If I think we need the explosives, I’ll phone.”
“And if you’re disabled?”
“If you haven’t heard from me in half an hour, go ahead with the explosives. And if the cops come, you can tell them you didn’t kill the guard.”
Jack snorted. “Why should they believe us?”
“Yeah, well it could start out like that night when Masters came to the farm. But your guns haven’t been fired. And if they had, the bullet wouldn’t match.”
“But we’d have to do a lot of fast talking.”
“Which will give me time to get in there and get Olivia out,” he said, still praying he could do it.
***
A little smile flickered on Olivia’s lips as she watched Troy’s face. It was a real smile, celebrating her success. When she’d first awakened, he’d looked at her with evil intent. Then he’d bragged about his kills. Now she knew his thoughts were swinging toward the sexual. Apparently what she’d said made sense to him.
She finished unbuttoning her shirt, then moved her shoulders, shrugging the garment back. With her hands bound, she couldn’t reach around to unhook her bra, but she could tug it up so that it rode above her breasts. They weren’t large, but the band of the bra thrust them invitingly toward Troy. Her nipples were rigid, not because this was turning her on, but because it was cold in this underground room. Although the cold helped her play her part, she was sure the man watching her with such lust wouldn’t know the difference.
***
As quietly as he could, Max crawled inside the cabin. With the windows boarded up, the interior was dark, and he didn’t dare use a flashlight, lest the light show in the underground room and give him away. If he had ever needed to be steady, it was now, he thought as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
When he could see a little, he inched forward, stopping when the toe of one running shoe hit open air. The trapdoor to the tunnel was open, a big clue that Masters was down there with Olivia and had left it open for ventilation.
Max stretched out on the ground, leaning over the opening and listening. He didn’t hear voices, but he thought maybe he heard rustling from down the tunnel. Or was that what he wanted to hear?
***
She knew she was making him hot, because she could see the bulge at the front of his slacks.
Fine. Hopefully that would affect his thinking processes.
He moved suddenly, surging forward. Grabbing her ankle, he pulled her toward him, so that she ended up sprawled on her back on the mattress. He caressed her ankle, then he pulled a penknife from his pocket. Fear leaped inside her, and she thought she had made a terrible mistake—until he began to saw at the duct tape that held her ankles together. Still, she eyed the knife. She hadn’t counted on that.
He freed her legs, and she squirmed on the mattress, returning the circulation to her feet and moving provocatively as she inched a little closer to the stake that tethered her to the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable.”
“Let me help.”
He reached to open the button at the top of her slacks and then her zipper. When the top was open, he pulled the pants down her legs. She was wearing only panties now, and he hooked his fingers around the waistband, pulling them down her legs and tossing them away so that her sex was exposed to him. She wanted to scream for someone to save her. Instead she smiled at him, then stroked her tongue across her top lip.
His eyes never leaving her, he unzipped his own pants and pulled his penis out. It was red and swollen, but it wasn’t all that large, thank God, because she felt as shriveled inside as if she’d used a vinegar douche.
From his pocket he pulled a condom. Again she thanked God when she saw it was lubricated. So he’d been thinking about having sex with her all along.
After holding the condom up for her to see, he tore the wrapper, then rolled the tube onto his penis.
“Ready, honey?” he asked in a thick voice.
With no preliminaries, he came down on top of her, using his hand to shove his cock inside her. Knowing she had to endure this awful invasion for a few moments, she gritted her teeth and raised her hips meeting his thrust as she reached out her hands and pulled at the chain that tethered her to the ground.
Praying there was enough slack in it, she pulled her arms up, then brought the heavy links crashing down as hard as she could on Troy’s back.
She couldn’t tell where she’d hit him, but he screamed and leaped away from her—which gave her leverage to pull back her legs and kick him in the face.
“You bitch,” Troy shouted, and she knew he was fumbling on the ground for the knife he’d dropped.
She moved to block him, kicking out again, this time landing only a glancing blow as he dodged to the side.
“You’re dead,” he shouted.
***
Max heard a shout of pain, then of anger, and knew it was Troy. Olivia had done something to him, but Max didn’t know what it was or what was happening now.
Without waiting for a further clue, he threw himself down the access to the tunnel.
He could hear the sounds of a struggle and harsh breathing from the room at the end of the tunnel.
Unable to stand upright because of the low ceiling, he bent over, running at full tilt down the tunnel, and into the room.
Troy had a knife in his hand, and he was swinging it down toward Olivia.
With only a split second to act, Max pulled his gun and fired into the man’s back, then fired again. Troy toppled toward Olivia, and Max surged forward, knocking him to the side and kicking the weapon out of his hand.
Max reached for the man’s shoulder and turned him over. Masters lay breathing shallowly, his gaze fixed on Max. His lips moved. No words came out, but a trickle of blood escaped.
“You killed your last victim,” Max grated.
Again Troy tried to speak. Instead his breathing stopped.
Max leaned over to feel for a pulse in his neck and detected nothing.
“He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.” It was then that he saw the man’s pants were open and a condom covered his cock.
Max wanted to spit on the bastard. Instead he turned toward Olivia. She lay on the mattress, staring at him. He saw her pants were off, her blouse was unbuttoned.
When she took in the look on his face, he saw her eyes glaze with tears.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was awful, but I knew I had to distract him.”
He came down quickly beside her, closing the distance between them. “Of course you did. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“But I do. I had to make him think I wanted to make love with him.”
“You did what you had to. You were very brave to carry out a plan like that.”
“But he.…” She gestured toward her lower body. “You see what I let him do.”
Max gathered her close. Leaning back against the wall, he cradled her on his lap, stroking his hands over her back and into her lush hair. “Shush. It’s all right.” He kept repeating reassuring words, meaning them. “You did what you had to do. You knew how to distract him until I could get here. Because you knew I’d come for you.”
“Yes,” she managed to say before she began to sob.
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, stroking her and rocking her, feeling her shoulders shake and feeling his own relief like a burst of sunlight after a terrible storm. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay now. You’re safe.”
“Yes, safe.”
When she raised her hand and tried to clasp him, he realized that her wrists were still tied together.
“Christ. Sorry.”
He also had a knife in his pocket, and he pulled it out. Opening the blade, he carefully cut away the bonds. Then he leaned back against the wall again, wanting to hold her forever but knowing that they had to get out of there. She snuggled against him for a few moments, then lifted her head and gave him a critical look.
“Max. Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“We need to get you out of here,” she murmured.
He laughed. “I was about to say the same thing.”
She swung her head toward Masters. “What about him?”
“I’m not sure. Let me call Shane and Jack. They’re waiting to hear from me.” She nodded, still looking at him with concern. “Did you talk them into discharging you from the hospital?”
“That would have taken too long.”
“Then…”
“I’ll get checked out,” he said, glancing at his arm, glad to see no blood seeping through the bandage, partly because he didn’t want to leave any evidence that he’d been here.
Olivia still looked dazed.
“You’d better put on your pants before we go up.”
“Pants. Yeah, right. And my front.”
She pulled her bra down over her breasts and seated them in the cups, then reached for her panties and slacks, pulled them on and then put on her shoes.
While she was putting herself back together, Max turned to the dead man, who was lying with his pants open and a condom on his cock. Max looked around, found an old hamburger wrapper on the floor, and used it to pull off the condom. Then he wrapped it up and shoved it into his pocket before stuffing Masters’s dick back into his pants, closing the zipper, and fastening the button.
When he looked up, Olivia was watching him. She made a disgusted face, and he shrugged.
“Are we going to tell them what I let him do?” she asked.
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“I knew that if I let him fuck me, he’d be too distracted to know I was going to whack him with the chain.”
“Yeah. But nobody needs to know about it.”
“Thanks.”
He reached for her and pulled her close. “What matters is that you’re alive, and he’s dead. And he was counting on it being the other way around—when he finished with you.”
He h
ad put that in stark terms to make sure she didn’t forget how high the stakes had been. She answered with a grimace.
As Max got to his feet, the top of his head scraped the ceiling, and Olivia was in almost the same boat.
“Do you remember coming down here?” he asked.
“I was unconscious. He used chloroform or something like it in the hospital parking lot.”
“Yeah, we smelled it in his car.” Pulling out his phone, he called the surface. “We’re coming up.”
“Olivia’s okay?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. I’ll fill you in when we get there.”
“Okay,” Jack said before his voice turned strange and muffled as though he had shoved the phone into his pocket. “Trouble.”
“Huh?”
Through the muffled effect, Max heard a harsh voice saying, “I’m tired of chasing around all over Maryland. Tell me where to find Lyon, or I’ll kill you.”
Chapter 29
Max cursed under his breath, then put a finger to his lips.
Olivia nodded.
He left the phone line open, and they made their way as quietly as possible down the tunnel.
“I said, where’s Lyon?” the other man demanded.
“He’s in the hospital,” Jack answered. “You cut him, remember?”
Which told Max that Jack was talking to Damon Davidson, the bastard who had been stalking him. Just what they needed at the moment. Or any moment, come to that. Max remembered cutting Davidson as well. Apparently it hadn’t been bad enough to put him out of action.
The lowlife laughed. “I cut him, yeah. But he’s not in the hospital now. I know he discharged his ass out of there.”
“Maybe,” Jack conceded. “But what makes you think he’s here?”
“Because I hung around, and I knew where the ambulance took him, so I could watch the hospital. I saw you and your friend go in and out, and I put a tracker on both your cars. You went somewhere else first. Then you came here.”
“Clever of you,” Jack said.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you hate that I’m so smart.”
Max reached the mouth of the tunnel and motioned for Olivia to wait.
“Is he in that cabin?” Davidson demanded.
