Leverage

by Janie Crouch

  Yeah, he might freak out, but she’d deal with that later.

  Shelby wrapped the crook of her elbow around Dylan’s head and pulled him down to her. She playfully grabbed his bottom lip with her teeth then let it go. “We can sleep later.”

  Dylan smiled, wickedness gleaming in his eyes. “Yes. Much, much later.”

  * * *

  SHELBY WAS ASLEEP. Dylan could tell by the snores coming out of her tiny body, which were both hilarious and the most endearing thing in the history of the world. She wasn’t touching Dylan at all now. Although he’d pulled her against him to hold her after their second round of absolutely fantastic sex, once she’d fallen asleep, she had immediately pulled away and rolled over to her side. Now she was curled up in a little ball.

  She was used to sleeping alone. So was Dylan. It was a fitting metaphor for both of them.

  Dylan didn’t want to think too carefully about what had just happened. Or how unbelievably great it had been. Or how all he wanted to do was get back in bed with Shelby and wrap his body around her little, balled up body. And teach them both how to sleep with someone else.

  Or maybe show her all the reasons again why they should not sleep at all.

  Dylan pulled a blanket up over Shelby before he let those thoughts gain any more traction. She needed rest.

  Dylan took a shower and, unlike Shelby, he at least had a fresh pair of clothes to put on. Shelby’s were still wet, hanging on the sink. They wouldn’t be very comfortable to put back on when Sawyer got here in a couple hours. Maybe Mrs. Morgan had or knew of a washer and dryer nearby where Dylan could at least get Shelby’s clothes dried so she wouldn’t have to ride for hours in a car in damp clothes.

  Dylan wrote a short note for Shelby in case she woke up and laid it on his pillow. He didn’t want her thinking he’d just skipped out on her.

  With Shelby’s wet clothes in hand, including, Lord have mercy, that red-and-black thong—he was going to get her to model that for him very soon—Dylan made his way out the door. He locked it behind him using the key Mrs. Morgan had given them and headed down the outdoor stairs.

  Darkness was approaching and the small town had shut down for the day. Dylan peeked into the front of the hardware store, but didn’t see either Mrs. Morgan or Angi. Perhaps they’d gone home for the day. Dylan was a little surprised neither had come to check on him and Shelby before heading out.

  As Dylan turned away from the glass, something caught his attention from inside. Just a slight movement of shadow within the already dark store. Someone was in there.

  Dylan moved away from the window and began walking away casually. Maybe it was Mrs. Morgan or Angi in there in the dark, although he doubted it was Angi because Dylan would’ve been able to see that bedazzled phone. But it just struck him as suspicious that neither of the outgoing females would not come open the front door for him.

  Dylan realized he’d been through a lot over the past twenty-four hours, and maybe was overtired and hypersensitive, but his instincts were telling him something wasn’t right here. His instincts had served him well over the years and he wasn’t going to start ignoring them now.

  Dylan continued to walk away casually, hoping whoever was in the store would think he was just some local who’d been a little nosy. But as soon as he was around the corner and out of sight, he sprinted toward the back of the building. There had to be some other door.

  Dylan found the emergency-exit door completely unlocked. He wished he had a weapon besides his pocketknife as he opened the door slowly, trying to keep it from creaking. He didn’t see or hear anything inside, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the building was empty. Dylan kept to the shadows, allowing his eyes time to completely adjust. He edged his way along the back wall waiting for any glimpse of the shadow he’d seen moving earlier.

  Nothing.

  After a couple of minutes, Dylan had convinced himself he must have been mistaken. Or if there had been someone moving around in here, that person was gone now. The emergency-exit door being open was a little suspicious, but this was a small town. People were sometimes different in a small town than a big city. More trusting.

  Dylan was turning to leave when he heard it. A sort of muffled thump from the storage room where Dylan had made his call to Sawyer earlier.

  Dylan grabbed a hammer—any weapon was better than none at all—and rushed to the storage room. He opened it, ready to pounce.

  But there on the ground were Mrs. Morgan and Angi, both bound and gagged.

  Dylan rushed to Mrs. Morgan’s side and slid the gag out of her mouth. She was bleeding from where someone had hit her in the face.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told Dylan. “He came in with a gun, demanding to know where you were. I didn’t want to tell him, but he threatened Angi. He just left.” Mrs. Morgan was sobbing.

  Dylan didn’t wait around to reassure Mrs. Morgan that she’d done the right thing. He whipped out his pocketknife and cut through the plastic zip ties the perp had used to tie her with and ran out the door.

  Mrs. Morgan could now get Angi out. But the shadow Dylan had seen a few minutes before now knew where Shelby was.

  Dylan went out the front door of the store that was closer to the outdoor staircase leading up to the studio apartment. He got to the corner and stopped, whipping his head around it to look and then back. No one was on the stairs. The man was already inside.

  Dylan took the stairs two at a time, praying he wasn’t too late.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Shelby woke up out of a sound sleep as a hand covered her mouth roughly. The room was dark and she couldn’t tell who was looming over her, but she knew whoever it was, it wasn’t someone friendly. She jerked away and began thrashing her body, not even caring that she was completely naked.

  The man’s other hand grabbed her by the hair and jerked her up to a sitting position.

  “Where are the codes?” The voice was pure menace in her ear. Now that he was close, she could see he was wearing something over his face so she couldn’t clearly identify his features. That made him even more frightening.

  Shelby shook her head since he was covering her mouth and she couldn’t talk. He yanked hard on her hair again. “Where are the codes? Are they in this room or were they destroyed in the plane?”

  The man removed his hand just the slightest bit so Shelby could speak, but kept a grip on her hair. She didn’t know what to say. Evidently he didn’t know the codes were inside Shelby’s head, not on some drive somewhere.

  “I don’t know wh—”

  The man backhanded her. Shelby could taste blood in her mouth where her teeth cut into her cheek. Her whole face felt as if it was on fire.

  “You will tell me right now or I will kill you.”

  Shelby knew he was going to kill her either way. Where was Dylan? He’d been beside her when she fell asleep. Dread flooded her. Was Dylan already dead?

  The man yanked her hair again, this time dragging her to the floor. “Where are the codes?” he snarled. He reared back and kicked her with a booted foot in her thigh and Shelby let out a scream as pain ratcheted through her.

  Shelby curled into herself as the man bent down and grabbed her hair again. “No screaming. Where are the codes?” He slammed her head against the floor. Shelby fought to hold on to consciousness.

  “In the bathroom!” she choked out. It was all Shelby could think of to say through the pain. “On a hard drive on the sink.”

  Shelby had hoped the man would go check by himself and give her a few seconds to try to get out. She knew she’d have to run outside naked, but didn’t care. Naked was better than dead.

  But instead, the man grabbed her by the hair again and began dragging her with him toward the bathroom. Shelby could hardly get her hurt leg under her, so he was mostly dragging her along the ground.
It wouldn’t take him long to figure out she’d made up the stuff about a drive being in there.

  And then he was going to kill her.

  She was trying to think of any possible way out of this when the door leading from the outside of the room crashed open. From where Shelby laid mostly sprawled on the floor, she watched as Dylan ran inside. A second later, a hammer flew from Dylan’s hand hitting Shelby’s attacker in the shoulder. He howled in pain and let go of her.

  Dylan wasted no time and leaped through the room, landing on her attacker with a flying tackle. Shelby scooted as far out of the way as she could. She knew the best way she could help Dylan was to just stay out of the way.

  It took all of two seconds to realize how skilled Dylan was at fighting. He’d obviously been trained in hand-to-hand combat. He did some sort of spinning-kick thing that knocked the intruder to the floor.

  But the intruder was also trained at fighting. He immediately jumped up and threw quick punches and kicks at Dylan’s head and torso. Some Dylan was able to block, sheltering his injured arm as much as possible, but a couple of hits he took square on the jaw.

  The blows didn’t even seem to slow Dylan down. It wasn’t long before it became obvious that Dylan would win this fight. The other man may have been bigger, but he wasn’t as quick or as smart in his moves. Dylan gave one more good punch and the intruder flew through the air and landed in an unconscious heap on the floor near the bed.

  Shelby watched it all from the corner she’d backed herself into. Everything in her entire body hurt. She couldn’t imagine what Dylan felt like after that fight. And she hoped that bastard lying on the floor would be in agony once he regained consciousness.

  Shelby heard the distinct sound of a shotgun being cocked from the doorway. It was Mrs. Morgan.

  “You two okay?” she asked, obviously ready to take down the intruder if necessary.

  Dylan quickly grabbed the sheet from the bed and handed it to Shelby. She gratefully wrapped it around herself. The teenager Angi was once again taking pictures, now of the unconscious intruder. Dylan ripped the mesh material off the man’s face. Shelby didn’t recognize him at all, Dylan didn’t seem to either.

  “Mrs. Morgan, we need some of those plastic ties that this guy used to restrain you and Angi. I need them now before he wakes.”

  “Angi, go get them,” Mrs. Morgan told her daughter.

  “But, Mom...” Angi was obviously more interested in collecting photos to post online.

  “Right this second, Angi. Or I will take that phone away until you graduate.”

  Angi muttered under her breath about having the worst life ever, but took off.

  “What exactly is going on here, Dylan?” Mrs. Morgan asked.

  “The less you know about it, the better. Just know that I’m trying to get Shelby to Washington, DC, so she can help law enforcement with something very important.”

  “And that guy wanted to stop that from happening?” She pointed at the man on the floor.

  “Yes,” Dylan explained, coming over to crouch down by Shelby. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you need a doctor?” he whispered.

  “I don’t think so.” Shelby’s voice was hoarse even to her own ears. “My leg is hurt, but I don’t think it’s broken.”

  Dylan nodded, then reached down and kissed her forehead. Angi showed back up with plastic zip ties and Dylan secured the man’s hands behind his back.

  “Mrs. Morgan, I have someone from the agency Shelby and I need to get to on his way right now to pick us up. He should be here within the hour. But can you please call your local sheriff to come arrest this guy. He’s definitely going to need to be taken in.”

  * * *

  DYLAN’S HEART BROKE every time he looked over at Shelby huddled in the corner. She was hurt, bleeding and although she had insisted she didn’t need a doctor, Dylan just wanted to get everyone out of there so he could talk to her.

  Actually, what he really wanted was to take her somewhere far away from here and all the people trying to kill her, and keep her safe.

  And naked in bed with him. He could do both at the same time.

  “Mrs. Morgan, can you please go get some ice for Shelby’s face? Also, down in the storage room, I dropped her clothes. They were wet and I wanted to see if there was anywhere I could dry them.”

  Angi, who had miraculously stopped taking pictures with her smartphone, looked over at her mother. “She’s about my size, Mom. I can find her something to wear.”

  Both women nodded and left to get the needed items.

  The man on the floor was beginning to groan, regaining consciousness. Dylan didn’t want to deal with him yet. He grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt, lifted him a few inches and then coldcocked him. The man slumped back to the ground, completely unconscious again.

  Dylan looked over at Shelby’s bruised, swollen face and had zero remorse about hitting a barely conscious man. He rushed over and sat down, putting his arms around her and scooping her, bedsheet and all, into his lap.

  “I thought he was going to kill me, Dylan. The only reason he didn’t was because he thought the codes were on a hard drive somewhere, not in my head. He wanted to know if they had been destroyed in the crash.” Shelby’s words were partially muffled against his chest.

  “If you had told him they’d been destroyed in the crash, he probably would’ve killed you immediately.”

  “I told him they were in the bathroom.”

  The image of Shelby being dragged across the floor, obviously injured, would haunt Dylan forever. If he’d been just a couple minutes later, she would’ve been in much worse shape or possibly dead. He pulled her closer to him and kissed the top of her head.

  “Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?”

  “He kicked my leg pretty hard. I thought it might be broken, but I don’t think so.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Dylan helped her stand up then crouched back down so he could see the outer part of her thigh when she lifted the sheet. An ugly purple bruise was already beginning to form. Careful not to touch the bruised area, Dylan pressed on the other side of her leg, up and down along the bone. She didn’t have any sharp pain, which probably meant no broken bone.

  “I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s probably going to hurt like hell for a while.”

  “Yeah, my head, too,” Shelby said. “Dude thought banging it into the floor a few times would be fun.”

  Dylan grimaced. She might have a concussion. He brought her over to the light near the bathroom. Her pupils weren’t dilated, so that was a good sign. But still, it was one more thing that was going to hurt her. He pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms gently around her.

  “Your body must be wondering if the Third World War has happened, with all the pounding it has taken over the past day and a half.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. But at least I’m still here.”

  And she wasn’t even falling apart. Amazing.

  Though she be but little...

  The Shakespearean quote came to Dylan’s mind again. Shelby was definitely fierce.

  The man was beginning to groan again. Good, Dylan wanted him to wake up. He wanted to ask him a couple of questions before the sheriff came to take him.

  “Stay over here,” he told Shelby, helping her sit in a chair.

  Dylan crossed to the man and grabbed him up off the ground and pushed him back against the bed. “Who do you work for?”

  The dark-haired man looked at Dylan and shook his head, his rough features giving away nothing.

  “You know the local sheriff is going to take you into custody, but it won’t be long before you’re transferred to Omega.”

  “Being in any prison would be better than what my organization would do to me because I fa
iled.”

  “If they’re so bad, tell me who you work for or who you work with. We can protect you.”

  The man smirked. “You cannot protect me. It’s all you can do to protect yourself and your woman.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “It was only a matter of listening to the transmissions of emergency services for this area. It’s all they’ve been talking about for hours.”

  Dylan was about to ask more questions—although he honestly didn’t expect to get any other information out of the guy—when Mrs. Morgan came back up, Angi and the sheriff in tow.

  “Mr. Branson, I’m Sheriff Fossen. I understand you had a tussle with this fellow, who also broke in downstairs and threatened and unlawfully restrained Mrs. Morgan and her daughter.”

  Dylan walked over to shake the sheriff’s hand. Since the sheriff already had enough to arrest the man, Dylan didn’t mention that the man had also assaulted Shelby. That would lead to having to stay around here for too long. They needed to be free to go when Sawyer arrived.

  “Well, I’m going to put some proper cuffs on him and take him in.”

  “Yeah. I think there’s going to be a lot of people who have questions for him,” Dylan told the sheriff. He was looking over at Shelby to make sure she was all right, when he saw movement from the bed out of the corner of his eye.

  Dylan immediately moved toward Shelby to protect her, but the attacker wasn’t headed her way.

  Instead, the man ran across the room in the other direction and hurled himself, headfirst, out the second-story window.

  The sheriff already had his weapon in hand and he and Dylan rushed to the window. The man lay on the ground twenty feet below, unmoving. The unnatural angle of his neck attested to his demise.

  The man had killed himself rather than be arrested and brought in for questioning. Damn it. He definitely worked for DS-13, and now they’d never know if he had been sent directly from the mole in Omega.

  Dylan crossed back over to where Shelby still sat in the chair. Mrs. Morgan was yelling at Angi not to take pictures of the dead man out the window. Sheriff Fossen was calling in what had happened on his radio and making his way out the door and down the stairs.