The creak of the walking bridge told her someone else was there. Leila straightened, realizing she’d been so caught up in her thoughts that the person was already upon her.
The sudden, fierce pounding of her heart intensified when his hand came up, the flash of silver telling her he had a gun.
Instinct—and the self-defense training her father had insisted she take before she left for college—took over. Leila’s hand darted up, swatting the gun away as he fired. The shot boomed in her ears, making them ring, as the bullet disappeared somewhere over the water.
The man who’d fired it snarled, surprise in his eyes as he stepped back slightly. Details filled in as time seemed to slow. He was taller than her. White, with brown hair and gray eyes that looked like steel. She didn’t know him.
Then his hand swung back toward her and time sped up again. Instead of turning to run—and surely getting a bullet in the back—she rushed closer, getting inside his range of fire. Twisting sideways, she gripped his gun hand with both of hers, trying to break his grip.
But he was strong. His free hand came up and fisted in her hair, yanking with enough force to send pain racing down her neck.
Her feet went out from under her, but she didn’t let go. She slammed onto the bridge, taking him down with her.
The back of her head pounded and her vision wavered, but she still had his wrist gripped in both of her hands. She twisted in opposite directions and he yelped, but didn’t drop the gun. Yanking her body away from him, she tried to rip it out of his grasp, but he twisted, too, shifting in a different direction.
Then the ground slipped away from her as they both crashed through the flimsy guardrail and dropped into the water below.
Chapter Eleven
Davis didn’t recognize the sound that tore from his throat as Leila and her attacker rolled off the bridge and into the fast-moving water below.
He’d been too far away when the guy had appeared out of nowhere and lifted his gun. He’d been trying to keep his distance, let her come to grips with what was happening in her company without his interference. He’d let her get ahead of him, paused to text Kane and Melinda for an update. He’d spent too many minutes staring impatiently at his phone, waiting for them to reply, then checked his other messages. He’d gotten distracted, and it might have just cost Leila her life.
The thought filled his throat with an angry lump, made it hard to breathe as he ran faster, then dived into the water where Leila and the man had disappeared.
Davis was a strong swimmer. He’d had to learn when he’d become a ranger. But the current was unusually fast, probably because of the storm that had rolled through earlier in the day. It spun him under, then back up again, but he got control of himself quickly.
But someone who wasn’t a good swimmer? It could disorient the person, make them swim down instead of up.
If that person was already frantic and panicked, trying to escape an attacker? It could easily be the difference between living and dying.
“Leila!” he called, scanning the water for her as he let himself be swept forward. He didn’t see her anywhere.
Taking a deep breath, he dived under, looking for any sign of movement. Silently he cursed Leila for the serious, dark clothing she always wore. Why couldn’t she have been partial to red or bright yellow? Something that would have been easier to see in the dark water?
He swam with the current, hoping to spot her, until he ran out of air and popped back to the surface. Then he yelled her name again, his heart going way too fast to be as efficient as he needed it to be right now, to let him search underwater longer.
He sucked in a deep breath, almost took in river water as choppy waves rose again. But even his battle-tested method of self-calming that had gotten him through his most dangerous ranger missions wasn’t working.
Where was she?
He couldn’t be too late. He refused to believe it.
But he still couldn’t see her. If she’d been underwater this long, it probably wasn’t of her own choosing.
Panic threatened, but he refused to accept defeat. Then, the current swept him around a bend and there she was, fifty feet ahead of him, still grappling with the guy who’d attacked her.
Davis forced himself forward in a burst of speed, trying to get to them. Fury fueled him as his gaze locked on the man still trying to harm her. The man Davis was going to strangle if he succeeded.
It felt like an hour, but he knew it was less than a minute before he reached them. But just before he could tear the guy’s hands away from Leila’s throat, her fist came up, angled skyward, and smashed into the bottom of the guy’s nose.
His head snapped back with a noise that made Davis cringe. Blood streamed from his nose, and he dropped below the surface of the water.
“Are you okay?” Davis demanded, reaching for Leila’s arms, ready to swim her to shore.
She pulled free, sucking in unnatural-sounding breaths. “Yes,” she rasped. “Get him. Don’t want—” She stopped on a fit of coughing.
Davis reached to steady her again, and she slapped at his hand.
He nodded, trusting that if she was strong enough to take down her attacker while he was choking her, she could make it to shore.
Giving her one last glance, he dived underwater. Leila’s attacker was sinking toward the bottom, but still being swept along by the current, too.
Davis adjusted his angle, picking up his speed so he could grab the guy before he ran out of air himself. He wrapped his arms underneath the guy’s armpits, then kicked upward with all his strength, shooting them back toward the surface.
Then it was instinct taking over, the familiar feel of someone needing help in his arms as he swam for shore and dragged the man out of the water. He checked for a heartbeat and heard one, faint but there. But when he checked for breath, there was nothing.
He paused for a moment, took in Leila sitting on the ground, her knees hugged up to her chest, then returned his attention to her attacker. If he’d managed to kill Leila, Davis would have been hard-pressed not to wrap his hands around the guy’s throat. But now he was no threat and he was in trouble.
Davis bent down and gave him mouth-to-mouth until the guy jerked and spit out a stream of water. Davis sat back as the guy coughed and gasped for air, not seeming to know where he was.
Finally he got control of himself and looked up. A shock ran through Davis’s body. He knew this man, recognized him from files Melinda had shown him the other day.
He was connected to BECA.
* * *
ANOTHER PARTNER WAS going to die on a mission with him. Another woman he cared about, who had made a name for herself in the Bureau through so many other dangerous cases, got partnered up with him and that was the end.
At least this time, he’d go with her.
Kane tried to snap out of the fatalistic mood, return to his cocky, nothing-scares-me Kane Bullet persona. How many times had he had a gun to his head? And he’d always walked away.
But how to explain this?
He shoved Melinda backward, hard enough to make her stumble on those ridiculous heels and fall to the ground. He held his hand toward her, palm down, telling her to stay there as his contact’s gun shifted up and down from him to Melinda and back again.
“You’re screwing this up for me, man,” he snapped at the guy, taking an aggressive step forward and praying he wasn’t about to get a bullet in the head. Or if he was, that at least Melinda would be able to leap forward fast enough to disarm the guy after he was dead.
Of course, that wouldn’t help her outrun the guy’s backup, which was probably moving in closer right now.
The guy’s gun shifted back to Kane, centered on his forehead. He brought his other hand up to brace it, holding it closer to his own body to make it less likely Kane could rush him. But his curiosity won out. “Screwing what
up, exactly?”
“I’ve been using her for months to get close to her dad, get access to a big bank he owns downtown with massive security. Now, you’ve messed it all up for me.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed as he looked Melinda over speculatively.
For a few seconds, Kane thought he’d bought it. Then, the guy let out a humorless laugh. “How stupid do you think I am? You’re a cop.”
He was blown. Kane had been undercover enough times, in enough different situations, to know he wasn’t winning back this guy’s trust. But he’d agreed to this meet too fast, not set up enough precautions. If it had just been him, he probably could have rushed the guy and taken his gun. Then, Kane would have used him as a human shield, banking that the guy’s backup wouldn’t want to shoot their boss in order to kill Kane. But that was dicey with Melinda here, still on the ground in heels there was no way she could run in, and with the guy’s backup closing in fast.
Kane could see them in his peripheral vision every few seconds, as they picked their way through the rubble.
It was time to gamble. “I wouldn’t come any closer!” he called out.
His contact glanced behind him, fast enough that Kane knew it was instinct. But not so fast Kane couldn’t have rushed him. He would have, too, if the backup wasn’t close enough to shoot Melinda while he did it.
Kane was armed, but the gun was at his ankle. Not the most easily accessible spot right now, and there was no good way to tell Melinda where it was without alerting the contact. Even if he leaped on top of her and let himself get shot, there was no way to know what sort of bullets they were using. There was too high a chance the bullets would go through him and kill her anyway.
He cursed her in his mind as he told his contact calmly, “I’m not a cop. But you were right about the fires. That was nasty business. But it wasn’t me. I just figured you’d like that story better than what I really want.” He took another step closer, saw the guy’s eyes widen with surprise and just a touch of fear.
It was exactly what he needed. Keep them guessing, make them wonder why you weren’t afraid when you should be terrified. It had worked for him before. But this was the biggest gamble he’d ever taken. This time, it was more than just his own life at stake.
“I’m ex-military. Ex-ranger, actually,” he added, using the first specialty that came to mind, the Special Operations unit Davis had worked with until he left the military. “My friends and I, we all got dishonorably discharged for a little...incident. We’ve all got rifles and pistols, things we owned before we went in, but now? After those court-martials?” He scowled, put as much anger as he could on his face, knowing it turned him from irreverent and easygoing to threatening. “Now, I can’t legally buy guns. And for our plan to get even with the military? We need more guns.”
The guy’s gaze darted to Melinda again and he shook his head. “You really think we’re going to help you now?”
Kane shrugged, tried to insert a bit of that cocky attitude back into his persona. But it felt flat this time, like he wasn’t fully occupying his cover, like he was still partly Kane Bradshaw, FBI agent terrified of losing another partner. “No. But if your backup moves any closer—or you pull that trigger—my ranger brothers are going to put neat little holes in your forehead from about five hundred feet that way.” He pointed behind him, in the direction where there was high cover.
His contact’s gaze darted that way, and he took an instinctive step backward. Then, his lips twisted up in a snarl and Kane knew his bluff hadn’t worked.
It was all over.
Knowing it was futile didn’t stop Kane from spinning around and leaping on top of Melinda as the boom of a bullet rang out. He felt the air whoosh out of her lungs as he flattened her with his body.
Still, she was squirming under him, and as she partially shoved him off her, he realized she was holding a tiny pistol. Where she’d been hiding it, he had no idea.
He yanked the gun from his ankle holster even as he shifted, getting a look at the contact, who was lying dead on the ground. He looked beyond the guy, toward his backup, and saw they had their arms up, with agents advancing on them.
Kane looked from Melinda to the contact, then he realized the guy hadn’t been shot with a small-caliber gun. He glanced back toward high cover, where he’d bluffed and said he had backup. Apparently it hadn’t been a lie.
Rolling fully off Melinda, he lifted his arm in a half salute, half wave in the direction he knew Laura Smith must have been hiding with a rifle. She looked like someone who worked in some high-powered civilian firm, with her no-nonsense attitude and her affinity for suits. But she was the perfect proof that looks could be deceiving. He’d never seen anyone without military sniper training who could shoot a rifle like that.
Then, he stared back at his partner, who’d somehow figured out not only what he was up to but also where his meet was going down. Instead of talking it over with him, she’d taken it upon herself to just show up. Not only had she completely blown their chances of getting him inside BECA, but also she’d blown the CI he’d cultivated for years. Now the FBI would have to help Dougie relocate, maybe even disappear.
The longer he stared at Melinda, the more his anger grew, until he wasn’t even sure he could speak at all. When he could finally form words, he expected it to come out in a scream, so he was surprised when his voice was barely above a whisper.
“What have you done?”
Chapter Twelve
Leila had been sitting there, shivering in the sixty-degree weather, sopping wet and staring blankly at the river that had almost swept her under, for too long.
Davis had zip-tied her attacker’s hands and feet together, so there was no way he could go anywhere fast, then called in the attack to TCD headquarters. In turn, they’d contacted local PD to take the perp in for now, because apparently Davis’s team was out helping Kane and Melinda, who’d run into trouble in a meeting with a BECA contact.
It was no coincidence. Davis felt it in his gut, but couldn’t worry about it at the moment.
He showed his credentials to the cops who were taking in Leila’s attacker, and spoke in whispered tones to them for a few minutes about holding him until someone from his team could come in and get a statement. Then, he turned his back on them, focused on Leila.
She’d already been in shock over what he’d told her about the illegal gun sales coming out of Petrov Armor. Now, she looked completely lost.
It wasn’t even remotely close to being over. He still hadn’t told her the truth about her father.
He needed to get her out of here. The river water had been cold, not enough to send her body into shock, but enough that he was getting worried about how long she’d sat there immobile.
He knelt in front of her, waiting for her to make eye contact. She didn’t for a long moment.
Then she blinked slowly, awareness returning as she shifted her gaze to him. The dazed look disappeared, replaced by wariness and fear.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised her softly. “We’re going to figure this out.”
His words didn’t ease the fear in her eyes, but the wariness shifted into anger. Not wanting to wait to find out if that anger was directed at him, he hooked his hands under her elbows and pulled her carefully to her feet.
“Let’s get you home.” She let him lead her out of the woods, then he had one of the responding officers give them a ride back to her house. He’d worry about their vehicles later.
Luckily, she had a keypad at her back door, so they could get in. She seemed to be moving on autopilot as he followed her inside, waved the cop off and locked the door behind them.
As the dead bolt slid into place with a click that echoed in her granite and tile kitchen, she turned toward him, looking perplexed. Her mouth opened, like she wanted to say something.
Before she could, he stepped forward. He grip
ped her elbows with his hands, the way he had in the woods. But this time, he wasn’t doing it to help her up. This time, he felt like he needed to hold her to keep him from falling as it hit him all over again, the fear he’d felt when he couldn’t see her in that river.
“Davis,” she croaked.
He lifted his hand from her elbow to her cheek, discovering it was ice-cold. “Are you okay?”
She let out a choked laugh. “Are you kidding me? Of course not. But maybe this will help.”
She leaned into him and he took a step back, dropping his hands to her elbows to keep her at arm’s length. “I want to,” he whispered, his voice deeper, gruffer than it should have been. “Believe me, I do. But—”
“What? The smell of river water and mud isn’t an aphrodisiac?” she joked, then immediately averted her gaze and moved out of reach.
A smile trembled on his lips. She wasn’t the too-serious, all-business CEO with him anymore. Even if he’d messed things up repeatedly, she was starting to let her guard down. Enough to let him see glimpses of who she really was. The more he saw, the more he liked her.
Still, he couldn’t believe they’d almost kissed yet again. But he couldn’t cross that line. He might know in his gut that she was innocent, but the FBI hadn’t truly eliminated her as a suspect. She was connected somehow to the person who was guilty, the person he needed to find and arrest. To do that, he had to stay impartial.
But staring at her now, her clothes sagging with water, her hair a ragged mess and her makeup smeared down her face from being in the river, he wished things were different. It actually physically hurt how much he wished that he’d met her under different circumstances, that he was free to truly pursue her. That he could really forgive her for running a business that had sent out the armor that had killed Jessica.
When she met his gaze again, he knew she could see longing there from the way her eyes dilated. Then she was back to serious, but something had changed—something important. He could see it in her eyes, could feel it in the more relaxed way she was moving. “I’m going to get in a hot shower for five minutes and then change. I don’t have anything here you’ll fit, but there’s a dryer in the mudroom we just came through. Then we can talk.”
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 11
