by Rie Warren
Actually, almost a whistle.
That high pitched sound of explosive metal, but bigger.
Deadlier.
Oh, fuck.
“Incoming!” I shouted.
Chapter Five
Is it Me, or is it a Sana’a in Here?
LOOKING BACK, I SAW the big ball of fire in the enclosed space, the head of a hot missile drilling toward us at a fast clip.
The heat welled, swelling around us with no place to escape. It crackled to my toes until they felt burned inside curled boots.
We ran hell for leather, dropping all pretenses except to get the fuck out of there alive.
An oxygen-swallowing sound echoed toward us. A whoosh like all the air expelled from a giant’s enormous chest . . . And the heat. Heat that would raze the earth. Singe flesh from bone. Tear skin from limb. Hurtling toward us.
My eyelids dried open in the flash fire rolling on our heels.
My fingers that felt like burnt cinders turning to white-hot ash.
My vision grew distorted, wavy, then red-black.
A door.
A door ahead.
How much time?
I pelted against it. There was no handle, no entry. Storm added his shoulder, and Bane pounded with his fist.
Sweat dripped down my face. My eyes felt seared closed.
I barked out, “Walker! C-4!”
“No time.” He looked grimly back. “Then there’d be nothing between us and this fucking big-ass RPG anyway.”
“There’s nothing between us now!”
The missile was followed by another, twin screams heading straight for us while we stood just outside our safety zone.
“You should’ve bypassed the system like Walker said, Justice.” Beads of sweat popped out on Storm’s brow.
“And leave the ambassador and his daughter at the mercy of terrorists?” I grunted, trying to pry open the door, but it had an interior spinlock and was probably three feet thick. “No way to know if I could get it back online.”
“Thought you were a genius.” Storm crowded beside me.
“I am a motherfucking genius. Now shut the fuck up and help me!”
My muscles bunched, and the heat rolled around us, thick and blanketing.
No way.
No fucking way was I getting gutted by a terrorist RPG.
The hot nose homed in, its red snout rounding the last corner. The screech as the second one scraped the wall shuddered down my entire body.
“OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR! IT’S X-OPS, YOU BASTARD, LAWLESS!”
“Jus.” Walker turned to me, his face red as a devil in the light of imminent impact.
“Shut your fucking mouth. Think I’m taking you back to Jade in a pine box?”
Bane and Storm bellowed loud enough to tear their throats out:
“Open this goddamn door right now if you ever wanna get out of this godforsaken hellhole!”
A squeak sounded.
The RPG was too close.
The wheel on the other side of the door rolled, but Walker placed himself in front of us and raised his arms as if he was the fucking Messiah and his body alone could block the incoming fire.
“Faster, you FUCK!” I railed against the door, everything warping in painfully slow motion.
The door creaked. The missiles blew dust off the sewer walls as it arrowed in on us.
My face strained, and I jacked Walker back by the scruff of his neck. “Got a goddamn death wish or what?”
One yard left until the RPGs makes impact with us.
It was seconds, blinding white seconds. My shoulders bulged, and I held Walker right by my side. Suicide overkill motherfucker.
The hot cones bore closer. The door edged heavily open—them pulling from the inside, us pushing from the outside with muscles straining all over our bodies.
We busted inside at the last moment. Storm and Bane collapsed in a tangle of arms and legs when we broke through, but Walker and I wheeled around and, joined by Lawless, we cranked the heavy cast iron door closed as quickly as we could.
After securing the lock, we threw Lawless and his daughter to the floor in the far corner of the room, and the four of us covered them with the armor of our bodies, hoping like hell the door would hold.
Two massive explosions ricocheted beyond the solid door. Flames licked, white-hot as the earth’s core, where cracks appeared at the edges. The collision buckled the iron inward with an almighty groan.
And outside . . . the ear-battering, endless crashing as the tunnel collapsed.
The door held.
Smoke, sooty and dark, drifted in through the fissures in the door.
With a final floor-shuddering quake, the last part of the tunnel seemed to settle.
Enveloped in ringing silence, I pulled off the huddled mass of people on the floor. Walker rose, Storm then Bane, too. I reached down with a hand, helping Ambassador Lawless to his feet. Behind him, the most protected . . . Matilda.
“Miss Lawless?” Bending forward, I gripped her by the elbows and helped her stand. “Are you okay?”
“Well”—she gave a little shake of her head and brushed down the sleeves of her shirt—“that was only the second attack today so I’d say that’s an improvement, wouldn’t you, Mister—”
She turned, confronting me with clear, soft green eyes and hair the color of ripe peaches. In fact, everything about her was ripe—my quick, discreet once-over—confirmed that impression.
My mouth instantly dried up, and my heart started quaking.
Holy shit.
Absolutely floored, I stood with my eyes riveted to her.
How the woman looked good enough to eat, damn well good enough to bed, in the middle of a crisis, I had no idea.
And what a woman she was. Not the gangly, geeky-looking teenage girl or the old maid her name implied. No freakin’ way.
“To whom do I have the pleasure of offering my thanks?”
Hell if I know.
She held out her hand with a slight smile, dipping a sweet dimple in her right cheek where tiny freckles crossed the bridge of her nose then scattered away.
I couldn’t make my tongue work. It seemed to have gotten stuck to the roof of my mouth, but at least it wasn’t hanging out and drooling all over the floor.
Walker thumped me on the back, and I coughed.
Then I belatedly wiped a grimy palm on my pants before pressing it against her still extended one. “Justice, Miss Lawless. Ma’am.”
She laughed with throaty ease—a sound that was pure sin—remarkable for one who’d almost been on the receiving end of death’s blade for over twenty-four hours.
“Ma’am?” Her nose crinkled, highlighting the soft copper freckles. “Tilly’s what I’m called.”
Tilly.
Didn’t that just roll off the tongue when I tried it out?
“Tilly. I’m Justice, this here’s Walker, Bane, and Storm.” I pointed to each man, thankful none of them stared at her the way I did, like she was an oasis of female flesh after decades of celibacy.
A lick of sweat trickled down the side of my face, and—sweet Christ—Tilly’s seafoam green eyes tracked it all the way as it dripped off my jaw and followed the straining cords of my neck.
I wiped the drop away with my thumb, and her head snapped up. At the same time we became aware of the hum of quiet conversation behind us.
Ambassador Lawless hooked her around the shoulders and drew her to his side while we finished the short introductions.
With his shirtsleeves rolled up, his bearing military, and appearing strong as an ox, Lawless stood tall as as me—a good six foot three—and despite being thirty years my senior, it showed only in his sterling silver hair that might’ve once been just a few shades more red than Tilly’s.
Tilly.
Fuck.
This time the mission might not be the most dangerous thing I encountered.
I kept my gaze trained completely off her when I grasped her father’s hand, his paw
as big as mine. “Ambassador.”
“I think we can dispense with Ambassador Lawless under these circumstances, don’t you, men? Just call me James.”
I didn’t relax my stance. Couldn’t when he looked at me with strict eyes, a darker, mossier green than Tilly’s.
We inspected the door and its near destruction, listened to the collapsed tunnel shifting on the far side of it.
“Fuck, Ambassador. Who the hell’d you piss off?” Storm hooked his finger in his gun belt.
Lawless smoothed gray hair off his brow. “The usual, it appears.”
“Well”—I leaned a shoulder against the wall—“there goes our escape route.”
Chapter Six
Head Games
JESUS CHRIST, JUSTICE, GET your head in the fucking game.
The head on top of your shoulders.
I got back on mission, charging forward. “Storm, weld that door tight. I don’t even want a damn speck of air coming through any cracks.”
He saluted me with two fingers at his forehead and a lopsided smirk. But at least he didn’t give me any lip.
Marching up to Lawless, I clapped a hand on his shoulder. The starch may have dissolved from his wrinkled dress shirt, but there was plenty of backbone left in his stature and bearing.
“Hear you know our Miss Carmichael personally. She put me in charge of this op, sir, and I won’t let her, or you, down.” And definitely not your daughter.
My gaze skittered to Tilly with unstoppable force then quickly away again.
“Blaize Carmichael, huh?” Lawless scratched a white-whiskered jaw he was probably used to having clean-shaven with military precision. “Now there’s a fine young woman with an excellent work ethic. I guess that means I have to trust you boys.”
“Boys?” Walker’s eyebrows shot up.
Lawless gestured at me. “Well, this one here doesn’t look old enough to tie his own shoelaces.”
Bane smirked. Walker guffawed until I glared him into silence. Lawless hit me with a drill sergeant’s flinty stare.
Considering we were here to save his ass, he didn’t seem inclined to go easy on us.
“And of course you four don’t officially exist. Is that right?” He skewered that stern look at me again.
“We’re officially unofficial,” I concurred, willing the tension to ease from my tight shoulders. “How about you show us the set up so we can get squared away?”
Storm fired up a mini blowtorch behind us and went at it without so much as a speck of protective gear. Wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last.
I took lead, dipping my HK VP40 pistol in front of me as we exited the hollow-sounding room.
Bane and Walker herded Tilly and Lawless from the back, and we traversed from what amounted to a reinforced bunker into a short hall that looked like it might’ve been a servant’s corridor.
“Still got power, I see?”
“Designated generator to these rooms in case of attack.”
“Someone was thinking.” I nodded in approval.
“After 2008 things got a little more orderly around here,” Lawless commented from my left shoulder.
“Orderly.” Tilly scoffed. “It’s like being shut up in a prison.”
“You live here too, miss?” I asked, keeping my eyes aimed forward instead of glancing back.
“I told you, mah name’s Tilly, not miss or Matilda.” The lilting accent came out full force when she was pissed off.
Pardon me if I liked it. Liked it a lot.
And a southern woman to boot. Damn. I never had one of those.
Her accent reminded me of the peach color of her hair—and a hell of a lot of other parts of her I had no goddamn business imagining.
Remaining silent, I rotated into the next room.
“Ah don’t live here, no.” Tilly’s hushed whisper followed me into what seemed to be a fairly decent sized galley. “I’m a professor of photography at Savannah College of Art and Design.”
Filed that intel away for future investigation. One Matilda Lawless. Definitely a Georgia peach. Appeared to be in her mid-twenties.
“I’m just visiting,” she finished.
“Seems like a foolish place to visit,” I said before I could stop myself.
I bit my lip when I heard a hiss behind me. So that was probably the wrong thing to say to the woman.
“I am not foolish.”
Swinging around, I faced Tilly on the opposite side of the room. Her cheeks stained pink and her eyes flashed with anger.
“I didn’t mean to imply you were.” My voice lowered an octave, and I looked away from her.
“Foolish, no. But you are damn stubborn, Tilly. Just like your momma was.” Lawless placed a hand on her arm.
I didn’t want to get involved in their family dynamics any more than I wanted to feel this instant dangerous attraction to Tilly. All I had to do was keep them alive, get them out of the country, and say sayonara.
“So, we’ve got the bunker, the kitchen. What else is in play, sir?” My eyes swerved and locked with Tilly’s determined ones for the space of a heartbeat before I found her father, watching with his hands pressed to his hips.
“James. I said call me James,” he chewed out between tight lips as if it pained him to welcome me to use his given name. “Through there.” He pointed. “Two bedrooms, bathroom, the gym. The rest is closed off.”
“A gym?” Walker blurted.
“Waste of square feet to include a gym in the secure set-up.” Bane scowled.
“I imagine whoever implemented it thought it might be a good way to blow off steam when cabin fever set in.” A small glimmer appeared in Lawless’s eyes. “I petitioned for an armory myself.”
Huh. Now that was a goddamn good idea. Maybe we’d get along after all.
“This area of the residence isn’t in regular use. No windows. No exit or entry points aside from the one now—”
“Screwed beyond repair?” Walker was having a problem keeping his diarrhea of the mouth in check.
“And now we’re all just snug as bugs.” Tilly chimed in with a teasing smile.
“Like cockroaches in a trap,” Bane pressed out between thin lips.
“My, aren’t you the cheerful one?” Tilly’s smug grin grew, and Bane gave her a glowering once-over.
I was surprised he didn’t just outright growl at her.
She didn’t seem to give a shit, surrounded by three big, solid, supposedly unapproachable dudes carrying all sorts of weapons.
In fact, she leaned a hip against the counter and examined us all right back.
The woman definitely had cojones.
I finally cleared my throat and looked away, motioning for Lawless to show us the rest. Everything was as he’d said—bathroom, gym, two bedrooms. No windows. No ins. No outs. Except for the one hidden, vacuum-sealed access point that led to the outer recesses of the residence the terrorists were systematically bombing to smithereens.
Even though we were ensconced behind the airtight steel cage that locked us in—and them out—sounds drifted toward us from the grounds. Echoes of victory cries, yells for Ambassador Lawless’s head, rude jeers about his daughter in guttural Arabic I understood but hoped to hell Tilly didn’t.
The five of us reconvened in the galley. We’d tuned off all lights but one in the kitchen while Walker toured the room and Bane grumbled beneath his breath, probably about the gym, the no-show armory, and the uselessness of government bureaucracies.
I hit the sink, and blessed water—relatively clean and fresh—ran from it. Scooping it with two hands, I squandered just enough to wet my face and entire head. Wiping off with a hand towel, I still stank from the tunnel run, but at least the stench didn’t burn my nostrils anymore.
Once Storm joined us with a succinct nod of his head to indicate the vault-like door was impenetrable, I motioned everyone to sit around the table.
Folding my fingers together, I rubbed an old scar. “This was supposed to be a simple i
n and out retrieval.” Running my eyes across the table, I resisted the urge to crack every single one of my knuckles. “Not gonna happen.”
Chapter Seven
Getting Down to Brass . . . Knuckles
“WE HAVE THE GENNY, water, and enough resources for a few more days,” I said.
“A few more days. What about after that?” Lawless stood, punching his hands onto the table.
“Daddy.” Tilly merely rested a hand on his arm, and the gruff old buzzard found his seat again.
“What now?” he asked more quietly.
“Now we take full stock of provisions and arms and decide how long we wait this shitstorm out before taking drastic measures.”
And I’ll just keep my eyes and hands and lips off Miss Matilda here.
“Wait it out?” Ambassador Lawless squinted at me. “What do you think we’ve been doing? If it was just me . . . I wouldn’t care.”
“Daddy. Stop. You can’t protect every single hair on my head.”
“Well, you’re just a girl. My little girl.”
Tilly snorted. “I’m a grown woman.”
Damn right she is.
“And you’re the one who took me out to the gun range and taught me how shoot a bull’s-eye.”
I’d like to see that.
The hardass swallowed his ire, and I stepped in to calm the powder keg situation. “We won’t let any harm come to Matilda—”
“Tilly.” She threw a glance at me.
“Or you, sir.”
Firming his jaw, he nodded.
With my eyes on his, I leaned forward. “So we need to know exactly what we’re up against out there. Who are they? What do they want? Why are they after you? Have they given any direct demands?”
“You can be damn sure they’re not after money. They want blood. American blood. They don’t want us on their soil. It’s as simple as that. Houthi rebels, but you probably already know that.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised.”
The man sat across from me, stoic as hell. “No demands. So far as I can tell, they want a high-ranking official as a hostage to make an example of. Maybe force our embassy to close. They probably think the US will tuck tail and run if they kill me.”
