Hell & Back (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  She stopped breathing. Someone used the correct code on the lock and opened the door. Someone not Henry.

  A bitter taste invaded her mouth, strong enough to make her want to gag, but she couldn’t make a sound. Not if she wanted to stay unmolested and alive.

  A couple of slow, careful steps came into the room, then the door shut with a soft snick.

  “You might as well come out, Miss Toth,” a man said with a heavy South African accent, his tone mocking. A voice she’d never heard before. She would have remembered the smooth, sick tone if she’d heard it. “I know you’re in here.”

  Her muscles had frozen solid the moment the door opened. She couldn’t move, even if she wanted to.

  “Would you like to know how I know you’re here?”

  She didn’t answer, her throat too constricted to allow speech.

  “The explosions we set off to get around the secure entrance knocked a lot of debris into the air. It settled on the floor. A team member reported only one set of tracks in this hallway, too small for them to belong to the gimp, leading right to this door.”

  The footsteps were getting closer, but slowly.

  Who was he, and why was he dragging this out? He chuckled, and the satisfaction in it made her stomach roll again. It was just her luck she’d end up hunted by a sicko who got off on terror.

  Her phone vibrated. Her hand shook so much it took her a moment to fish it out of her cleavage. Henry had sent her a message.

  Get ready, but stay out of sight.

  Get ready for what?

  Oh no. He wasn’t going to try to rescue her, was he?

  Someone knocked at the door.

  Holy shit.

  The footsteps coming toward her stopped then retreated.

  Henry could not be at the door, politely asking for entry from a mercenary who wanted to, without a doubt, kill them both.

  The man who’d been stalking her laughed as if presented with the one gift he’d always wanted and never gotten. “Come on in.”

  The door lock beeped again as someone punch in the code. It opened, and Henry’s slightly off-kilter footsteps sounded, then the door closed again.

  Well, look at that. Now the room had two idiots and a terrified bystander in it. Wonderful. Fantastic. If she and Henry survived this, she was going to smack him upside the head.

  “You must have quite the thing for the girl,” the unknown man said. “I really didn’t expect you to just walk in and surrender.”

  “Who says I’m surrendering?” Henry’s voice was low and rough. “I don’t need a firearm to take down a single dick-sucking dollar chaser like you.”

  A what?

  “Pretty big talk for a one-legged gimp.” The dollar chaser didn’t sound so happy anymore. “I bet I can make you and your girl squeal.” There was a slimy threat in his voice now. “But not for the same reason.”

  “Ah, you like me.” Henry’s laugh was so cold it numbed the ends of her fingers. “Don’t be shy, cupcake. Show me what you’ve got.”

  Stop goading him, stop goading him.

  “I was just going to kill you,” the dollar chaser said. “But now…now I’m going to hurt you real bad then make you watch while I hurt your girl.”

  Some people liked to brag, boast, and bully. Those people didn’t react well to mocking sarcasm, and Henry had just made all this personal for the mercenary.

  Fast footsteps preceded the meaty thwacks of fists and feet hitting flesh. Someone groaned. Something heavy landed with a crashing crunch on the floor on the other side of the workbench, then the whole bench shuddered. Ruby was pretty sure someone had been thrown up against it or on top of it, but she couldn’t tell who it was.

  A microscope fell off the bench in front of her with the same crunch.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay hidden and safe any longer. Henry was unarmed, but the mercenary had at least one gun, and a man like that wouldn’t fight fair.

  Ruby slid out from under the bench, clutching the baseball bat with both hands, and took a couple of quick steps back to avoid the fists and bodies of the two men wrestling and rolling across the uneven surface. Henry was on his back on the bottom, the mercenary attempting to choke him with his forearm while his hands tried to restrain Henry’s.

  Her appearance caught the dollar chaser’s attention, and their gazes collided—and held for one second…two—long enough for a sick smile to spread across his face.

  The nausea that had threatened to overtake her returned with a strength that had her fighting not to bend over so she could barf on the floor.

  The mercenary pressed against Henry’s throat harder. His face was an unhealthy red.

  Henry freed one fist, pulled his arm back, and punched his assailant in the face. The man’s gaze went fuzzy and his body limp. Henry shoved him off and onto the floor.

  “I told you to stay out of sight,” he said as if it was an accusation.

  She opened her mouth to explain, but the mercenary was getting back up.

  “Behind you,” she yelled.

  Henry turned as the other man launched himself forward in a full-body tackle.

  In one of the mercenary’s hands was a knife.

  Chapter Eleven

  8:52 p.m.

  Henry caught the mercenary’s wrist before the asshole could stab him with the knife he’d pulled out of his boot.

  The son of a bitch had no intention of fighting fair.

  Henry had been holding back, wanting to question the moron, but when Ruby came out in the open, the dick sucker’s expression had changed his mind.

  Lust, dark and brutal, had transformed the man’s expression to one of vicious cruelty. He wanted her, and what he planned to do to her was plain on his face. It made Henry feel dirty just to look at him.

  This man would always be a danger to Ruby, and he wouldn’t give up until he had her. Or he was dead.

  Easy choice. Dead it was.

  The man had called him a gimp, thinking it would make him easier to beat. What he didn’t know was Henry’s prosthetic wasn’t a weakness. He’d learned to use it to his advantage in a fight.

  He lifted his synthetic leg and rammed the other man’s balls with the knee joint. He hadn’t had a lot of room to build momentum, so he hadn’t hit him very hard, but it was enough of a jolt to shove the bastard off him and squeeze his wrist hard enough to make him drop the knife.

  The asshole rolled away and pulled his gun instead.

  Henry froze with his hands outstretched wide.

  The fucker grinned and winked at him.

  Rage a rolling boil in his blood, Henry braced himself for pain, but instead of the mercenary firing his weapon, a baseball bat went spinning past him, connecting with the merc’s hands.

  It knocked the weapon out of his grasp, and Henry stepped forward to punch the piece of shit square in the nose. Cartilage crunched under his fist, and blood welled up. The merc jerked, blinking, and kept backing away just fast enough that Henry hadn’t quite caught him before he recovered.

  “Fucking asshole.” The merc’s voice was a little slurred as he pulled a second knife out of a sheath hidden in his other boot.

  Henry watched the man’s hands and ignored the vitriol he continued to spout—all the ways he was going to hurt Henry and all the disgusting things he was going to do to Ruby.

  Ruby, who wasn’t in his field of vision, but had to be somewhere behind him. She’d thrown the bat, but he wasn’t sure what she was doing now. The smart thing for her to do was hide again, in case this mercenary’s friends showed up, but he didn’t think she’d do that. Maybe it was the force she’d used to throw the bat. She hadn’t held anything back. She was either pissed off or scared. Maybe both?

  The sound of gunfire shut the merc up for a moment. Henry didn’t let it distract him, since that was a s
ure way to get dead.

  The merc darted at him with the knife but pulled back before getting too close to stop the attack. He was testing Henry’s responses, looking for a weakness to exploit. The guy made several similar moves, always attacking Henry’s right side. His injured side.

  Okay, little fishy, let’s see if you take the bait.

  On the merc’s next fake attack, Henry allowed himself to stumble, or look like he was stumbling.

  The merc followed through on his attack, coming in to grab Henry’s neck with his free hand while his right stabbed the knife toward Henry’s supposed weak side.

  But Henry wasn’t stumbling, he was falling back, and the merc’s hand slid past his neck. He snapped his own right hand up, grabbed him by the wrist, and yanked hard to the right, spinning the merc into his own knife strike.

  The blade didn’t connect…to anything, but Henry was able to trip the dude and flip him ass over end.

  Ruby darted in from behind, the bat in her hands again, but the merc recovered and regained his feet. He snarled and swiped at her with the knife.

  Henry kicked the back of one of his knees, which sent the merc to the floor again with a grunt of pain. He punched the man in the temple this time, and the man flopped onto the floor, out cold.

  Ruby froze where she stood, face pale and panting. “Is he dead?” Her voice sounded too small.

  He considered the man, noted a visible pulse in his carotid. “Nope, but he would have killed both of us if he could have.”

  She swallowed hard then glanced at him very briefly. “What are we going to do with him?”

  Henry sighed. That was a good question. “This is not a problem I ever imagined we’d have in the lab.”

  The level of noise outside the lab rose as an explosion was added to the continuing gunfire. Shit, they didn’t have time for this. Killing the bastard would be so much easier than spending the time restraining, gagging, and incarcerating him somewhere in the building where he’d be out of play.

  “Henry?” Ruby’s voice wavered, and he looked at her. She shook her head. “Don’t kill him.”

  Had his thoughts been that plain on his face?

  “He’s a danger to both of us.”

  She nodded at the merc’s unconscious body. “We’ve just proved to be more dangerous than he is. Tie him up and lock him in a closet or something.”

  Henry searched him for more weapons and found two more knives, a small revolver strapped to his ankle, and a Taser in a holster on his back underneath his shirt.

  The man’s equipment was, at least, good quality, and he pocketed all of it. He used one knife to cut a couple of lengths of electrical cord off one of the destroyed microscopes and used one to tie the merc’s hands together behind his back and the other to bind his feet.

  He grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and dragged him toward the door. Ruby went ahead and opened it.

  The sound of a fully-fledged battle smacked him in the face, sending a streak of pain down the leg he hadn’t had for ten years. It nearly took him to the floor, but he staggered to one side and managed to catch himself with his good leg.

  Ruby looked both ways down the hallway. “I don’t see anyone.” By the time she looked at him, he was in control of himself. Mostly.

  The air in the hallway was moving a great deal more than in the room they were leaving. It brushed cold fingers over his skin, but he ignored it. Ignored the nausea rising in his gut, ignored the erratic gallop of his heart and the certainty he was going to make a mistake that would get Ruby and himself killed.

  Unacceptable.

  He followed her out the door and jerked his head toward the right. “There’s a small conference room down here we can stash him in.”

  “Okay.” Her hands wrapped around the baseball bat, she trotted ahead of him, scanning the hallway for threats while he dragged the merc by his shirt.

  Why was she hanging on to that bat so hard?

  They made it to the conference room without running into anyone, which wasn’t a surprise, given how much noise the battle was making. He thought he’d only seen three other bad guys, but maybe he’d missed a couple?

  The door lock was coded to thumbprints, and Henry used his to unlock the door. He dragged the merc inside, still unconscious. Maybe he’d hit him too hard? Henry couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad about that. The fucker would have killed them.

  He rolled the merc onto his side then tied his hands and legs to the large, heavy table behind his back so it would be almost impossible for him to free himself.

  “Now what?” Ruby asked, switching her weight from foot to foot.

  “Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on.” He checked the merc’s handgun. It would do until he could retrieve his own weapons. “You’re going to stay behind me and watch my back, right?”

  Surprise briefly widened her eyes, and she stopped her restless shifting. She cocked her head to one side, considering it. “Okay.”

  “You worry about what’s going on behind us. I’ll worry about what’s coming at us.”

  She bit her lip. “I still don’t have a gun.”

  “There’s no one behind us but that creep. Your job is mostly precautionary. If you see something that tells you we’re in trouble, yell out Marco.”

  She nodded.

  He waited to see if she had any more questions, but she just waited calmly for him to move.

  When was the last time anyone trusted him this much?

  An intense burst of gunfire caught both their attention.

  “Who’s fighting who?” she asked.

  “Probably DS and his team against the FAFO.” He stepped closer to her so he could look into her eyes and gauge how she was doing mentally with events past, present, and future. Was she really this calm, or was she in shock and this was the prelude to a storm?

  Ruby blinked, took a half step back, and frowned at him. “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  It took a second before she snorted. “No, I’m not okay. That…that…pervert would have killed you. I’ve been wrestling with my need to brain him with this bat and be done with him.” She paused to take in a breath. “I mean, the asshole really thought he was going to murder both of us and it gave him a boner.” She rolled her eyes. “Where do people like that come from?”

  This was the reaction he expected of Ruby. It loosened a noose that had been tightening around his neck since he’d seen that pervert enter the lab. “Bad batch, maybe?”

  “People are not the same as burned muffins,” she said. “That guy is flat-out crazy, and yet someone gave him weapons and training and let him loose on the world.”

  She had a point, but now wasn’t the time to delve into the causes of the world’s problems. “Can we table this discussion until a time when we have the luxury of conversing without the possibility of getting shot?”

  “You asked me if I was okay.”

  “Yeah, you were too quiet, too composed. I was worried.”

  Ruby threw her hands in the air. “I’m surrounded by assholes,” she said to no one in particular.

  He turned away to hide a grin and headed back the way they’d come. Toward the sound of gunfire and explosions interspersed with shouts and profanity. Ideally, he wanted to get back into the security room. The cameras would give him a 360 view of the building and who was, and wasn’t, in it.

  They hugged the walls and approached corners cautiously, but despite the noise getting progressively louder, no one came within sight. They turned another corner, which put the security room into view, but aside from some broken glass in the hallway outside the door, it looked empty. Unfortunately, every screen and computer in the place had been destroyed.

  “Shit.” The word slipped out. The destruction seemed complete, but had they figured out he had a feed panic room–style in t
he ceiling?

  “Hide over here.” He pointed at one of the destroyed computers, where there was space to crouch.

  Ruby did as she was told without argument, but she did flap her hand at him to hurry.

  He went to the ceiling tile that hid his retractable ladder, pulled it down, and climbed up into the small space reserved for his auxiliary feed. It wasn’t in any of the plans, but he’d seen the need for it, if they ever lost power or for any number of other emergencies.

  It appeared intact, so he accessed the multiple-screen function. There was a firefight going on at the spot where the bad guys had blown themselves a new door.

  That one he expected. It was the second location that surprised him—at the rear of the building—an entrance/exit that had only been in use during the construction of the building. It was now an emergency exit accessible only from the inside.

  A small, three-man team had been trying to break in, but they were now in full defensive mode since another group had arrived to drive the attackers away.

  He recognized River, one of the ex–Special Forces soldiers who now worked for the CDC. River and another guy Henry didn’t know had taken shelter behind some cement barriers and were keeping the bad guys busy with small-arms fire.

  The intruders’ days of breaking and entering were over.

  The other fight, near the front door, was a bigger concern. The bad guys were using small arms and a grenade launcher to repel a larger force. Henry identified DS, Smoke, Dozer, and a couple of guys in SWAT gear, and there might be more that he couldn’t see.

  DS and crew were using small arms, too, probably in the hopes of taking someone alive.

  If the pressure on the bad guys eased, one or more of them was going to try and get into the level-four lab and help themselves to pathogens no one should be messing with. Unless he stopped them.

  The situation hadn’t changed much—still trying to save the world from assholes who wanted everyone to die.

  “Hissss.”

  Henry glanced down the ladder. Ruby stood there looking from the doorway to up where he was.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  What? No, he’d accounted for everyone. Hadn’t he?