by Tara Janzen
And then shaking her again.
C HAPTER
29
S KEETER KNEW AS MUCH about sneaking around in the dark as the next wallbanger, and man, was she sneaking tonight. The outside of the warehouse was crawling with cops. She'd slid by three before she reached the front of the building, saw all the cop cars lurking out on the street, and realized she'd been evading her rescue team, which wasn't such a bad idea from the looks of the combat-ready force assembled by the main door. When the SWAT team fired off their breaching load, she heard glass rattle in four directions. Live fire started up inside the building shortly thereafter. Cripes, was she glad she'd gotten out when she had.
What she needed to do was stay out of everyone's way, and when she looked around, she saw the perfect place to stay safe and still be able to watch the action.
DYLAN could hear all hell breaking loose inside the warehouse. The breaching load had set everybody off. From the sounds of it, the tangos had decided to go out in a ball of flame and glory. It was the frickin' OK Corral all over again.
And Skeeter was in there. He waited another second—and then he was done waiting. Staying low, he crossed the threshold, and then the receiver buzzed in his ear: “All clear.”
Hell. It was over. Fast and furious and short and sweet. He straightened up and headed for the light at the end of the rows of crates lining the walls. He could smell the gunfire, saw one dead body. It looked like one of the Brauns.
Boom! Another breaching load went off, and Dylan picked up his pace. The SWAT team had come up against a locked door somewhere, and he still hadn't found Skeeter.
At the end of the row of crates, the police were already cuffing a group of people. Dylan categorized everyone in one quick glance. There were two people he didn't know, a man and a woman who appeared to be negotiating their release before Loretta even had a chance to get in the building and book them. He heard the woman say, “Tony Royce,” but didn't have time to look into that fascinating revelation just now, because there was still no Skeeter, and no Reinhard Klein.
He pushed past two of the SWAT guys to get into the room they'd just blown open, and there was Klein, flat out on the floor. He quickly scanned the rest of the room, saw the chair with a few lengths of cut rope dangling off it, noted that Klein had been worked over, and saw a black scuff mark high up on the wall next to the window.
Son of a bitch. She'd taken down Reinhard Klein.
He stepped over to the German. He'd been tied up, hands and legs, and was half stripped of his pants—and had a small metal ring looped through his lapel.
It wasn't a fashion statement.
She'd tagged him.
She'd taken him down and then she'd tagged him with a ring of her chain mail.
God, she'd probably wanted a can of paint.
The bastard was in a lot of pain, and nobody was bothering to untie him yet, but Klein was Royce's problem.
His problem was finding Skeeter. She'd gone through the window, and considering its location, she couldn't have been hurt, or hurt very badly, to have done it. She was probably hitching home, and at this time of night in Commerce City that could probably get her killed even faster than a bunch of tangos.
Turning and walking away, he started to feel pretty good about the night. Things had gotten a little hairy for a while, but were settling down now. His team had performed beyond expectations. Not Creed. He expected Creed to come out on top every single time. But Skeeter was a bonus. And to top it all off, they'd fulfilled their mission. They'd brought in Dominika Starkova and had her safely and quietly detained in Steele Street.
By anyone's estimation, the night was a Grade A success.
He'd parked the Humvee a ways up on the street and had to skirt a few cop cars to get to it. He needed to cruise the streets and find her, but for a moment, when he got inside, he just let go, slumped over the steering wheel, and allowed himself to feel the relief washing through him. She'd kicked Klein's ass and still had enough moxie to tag him, and enough physical strength to get herself out of a window ten feet up on the wall.
He really should marry her.
“Hi.”
Shit! He jerked around, his heart in his throat, his hand going for his gun.
Shit! She'd drop-loaded two gallons of adrenaline into his system in less than half a second flat.
“Skeeter,” he said, trying so hard not to sound even half as panicked as he felt that he damn near broke a vocal chord. She was tucked into the corner of the seat, and he'd been too wired even to see her.
Then it hit him.
She really was safe—he looked her over—and she wasn't hurt, and she was here, in the car, with him, and that bastard Klein had taken his pants down in front of her.
He couldn't do this. He couldn't feel this way about her and function.
“Big night?” he asked.
She nodded, and that's when he noticed she was trembling: her shoulders, her mouth—all of her was trembling.
He couldn't do this. Really. He was Dylan Hart, the cool one, the detached one, the brains of the operation. He was not the one who got swamped by feelings he couldn't control.
“Come here,” he said, reaching for her across the front seat and pulling her into his arms. It was a helluva lot easier than he ever would have imagined, especially since she practically leaped over the console to get on his side of the car.
God, save him.
Her arms went around his neck, her face into the curve of his shoulder, her ass wiggling down behind the steering wheel so she could sit in his lap—and she was still trembling.
“Yeah. A really big night,” she whispered, then let out a long sigh, and some of the tension left her body.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” He was so cool, Cool Hand Hart.
“It was scary and gross.”
“How gross? Do I need to go back in there and castrate him?” He took a deep, easy breath to keep from giving himself away—that it wasn't a rhetorical question.
“No,” she said. “They left me my tool belt. Left it right on me. Can you believe it? I'd already cut through half my rope before he ever started to disrobe. By the time he got his fly open, I was coming around with my first right hook.”
“Good.” Low-key, that was him. He started the Humvee, turned up the heat, and let out his own big sigh, in hopes some of the tension would leave his body. “In case you were wondering, you're grounded for eternity after tonight's escapade.”
Escapade. Now there was a parent word if he'd ever heard one.
“You're not the boss of me,” she said, her mouth brushing against his skin, and suddenly his brain was flooded with sex, every cell. It washed down through his body like a river of heat.
He couldn't do this, couldn't be her parent, or her friend, or her lover. There was no way for him to be with her that was bearable.
But he could hold her for a while longer, so he could remember, later, what it felt like to have her in his arms.
“You lost your hat.” And her pony band. He'd never seen her hair down before, and it was like a curtain of silk falling across her shoulders. He picked up a swath of it and let it slide through his fingers.
“They took my sunglasses, too.” She turned a little in his arms, so she could look up at him. “They're still in the warehouse, I'm sure, but I don't want to go back and get them.”
“Neither do I,” he said, realizing his reasons were probably different from hers. “You're beautiful, Skeeter.”
He smoothed his hand up the side of her face, then lowered his mouth to her forehead and kissed her all along her scar, the whole length of it, down to where it parted her eyebrow. He took his time, but without lingering. He inhaled her, but in a way she would never know, and he gave her his heart with every kiss, because he didn't have a choice.
“And you're more trouble than you're worth,” he said. “Now get your butt on your own side of the car.”
He was done with this. Tonight had been hell. They w
ere going back to Steele Street, and he was personally taking Dominika Starkova to General Grant in Washington, D.C., and then he was going to spend the next ten years telecommuting.
“Dylan?”
“Yes?” He put the Humvee in gear and looked over at her.
“You're beautiful, too.”
Finished. Done. The end.
C HAPTER
30
A S SOON AS DYLAN had called to tell him Skeeter was okay, Creed had grabbed Cody and they'd run. He was only going to get one shot at getting her out of town, and this was it.
The library. Son of a bitch. He'd practically been sitting on a map to the warhead the whole time he'd been watching her up in Reference. Except the map wasn't shelved in the new library. She'd hidden it in the old section, in storage—which was perfect, because at this time of night, it would have taken a court order or a very theatrical, highly gadgetized B&E, breaking and entering, to get into the new library.
Getting into the old library was going to be a breeze. The lock he'd broken on the side door to get them out? He could guarantee nobody had fixed it in the last few hours. It would probably be days before they even knew they had a security breach.
They parked Angelina in the garage across the street, right next to Cody's Saturn.
All the cops were gone from Broadway and 13th, so they simply crossed the street and walked straight into the building. It amazed him a little, that she'd left the book sitting in plain sight in a public place, and that virtually anyone could have walked in and walked out with it.
Flashlight in hand, she led the way through the stacks on the main floor, and in minutes, he was holding the fate of the free world in his hands. Tajikistan Discontent. It wasn't very big.
Their plan was simple. The books in storage were often old and outdated, but sometimes people needed old, outdated information, and a number of the volumes did circulate, so a librarian was always assigned to the collection.
They left the volume of poetry on that person's desk, marked for Inter-Library Loan, with Dylan's name, address, and phone number listed on the ILL sleeve.
It was almost dawn by the time they finished, and Creed just had one more stop to make before they could leave.
* * *
THEY'RE not upstairs,” Skeeter said, striding out of the elevator into Steele Street's main office.
“Are you sure?” Dylan asked, not quite believing it. Creed couldn't have left, not and taken Dominika Starkova, or Cody Stark, or whatever the hell he wanted to call her.
He couldn't have. It was tantamount to throwing his life away.
“Dylan, I even looked under the bed, no shit, and they are gone.”
Skeeter was panicked. He could feel it rolling off of her in waves.
He was angry, and blown away.
Creed couldn't do this, not to himself, and not to the people who cared about him—and Dylan doubted very, very seriously if that included Cody Stark. She was using him, and Creed was in this bad place in his head and couldn't see it.
She must have fucked him blind.
Shit!
“Where would he go?” he asked, and by God, he expected an answer.
“He's got family in Mexico.”
“Mexico is a big place, Skeeter,” he said, tight-jawed. “Get on it.”
She slid into a chair in front of the bank of computers and had started to work, pulling up Creed's files, when the screen next to her came on, and a purple line snaked out of the lower left-hand corner across a black screen.
“Dylan, look.”
He went and stood by her side as she typed in 4167 and a map came up.
“Christ.” He put his hand on her shoulder and felt a tremor go through her.
“I guess he had to say good-bye,” she said, her voice so soft he could hardly hear her, but he didn't need to hear her; the whole story was written on the map.
“Come on.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze and wished to hell he didn't suddenly feel so goddamned awful. “We better go get him.”
SHE had a good memory. Not photographic, but good. Good enough to save him.
From where she was sitting inside Angelina, Cody let her hand slide away from the dashboard keyboard. She hadn't forgotten 4167, any more than he'd forgotten his friend.
He was still by the grave site.
J.T. Chronopolous. She'd read the headstone: Semper Fidelis. Always faithful. He'd been thirty-four years old.
God, she hadn't even known him, and she missed him. She missed him for Creed.
This was the right thing to do. She hated it, but it was the right thing to do. He'd saved her life, absolved her from her sins, and she couldn't repay him by taking away everything he loved, everything he believed in.
Before they'd left Steele Street, they had gotten the news that Reinhard and Bruno the Bull were in custody. Ernst Braun had actually been shot and killed. SDF, the team of operators he worked with out of the building on Steele Street, were amazing. They'd saved the world, and saved her.
Leavenworth was a risk, but one she was willing to take with Reinhard out of the picture. She didn't know why. Patrushev was no saint, but he also had less to prove. He'd have to go to a lot of trouble to kill her once she was in the hands of the U.S. government, utilizing time and resources that could be better spent making money, closing the next deal.
When she saw the Humvee pull to a stop up on the rise, she got out of the car and started walking back toward Creed. She wasn't going to think too much about what was happening, or about what was going to happen. She had a couple of minutes left with him, no more than that.
“Hey,” she said, sliding under his arm and going up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“Hey, yourself.” He opened his coat and wrapped her inside. “Did you get warmed up?”
“Yeah.”
The cemetery was pillowed in snow, the headstones sticking up through the mounds of white, the trees stark against a sky that was quickly turning blue.
He'd pulled his hair back in a low ponytail and hadn't shaved. She ran her fingers over his jaw, feeling the stubble, and when he grinned, she touched his lips.
“I think I'm in love with you,” she said.
His grin broadened, and he tightened his hold on her, wrapping her more securely in his coat. “Good.”
OH, cripes,” Skeeter said, looking up into the rearview mirror.
Dylan dragged his gaze away from Creed and Cody Stark where they were standing by J.T.'s grave, and glanced over his shoulder—and swore.
“They got a tracker on you, Dylan.”
“Me?” Crap. “How do you know they didn't get it on you?”
“Because nobody gets one on me.”
This was it, then. He looked back at Creed, who still didn't know the game was up. The woman did, though. He'd seen her walk away from Angelina. She was the one who had turned on the Chevelle's computer.
She'd given herself up, and he could only think of one reason for her to do that.
Hell.
He and Skeeter waited for Royce to reach the Humvee, before they got out. The two “negotiators,” the man and the woman who'd been inside the warehouse, were with him.
“I see you brought your rats,” he said. It hadn't been too hard to figure out. The CIA had positioned their own people inside the whole Blond Bimbo with the Bomb operation. They'd had their own buyers in place, and probably given them an unlimited budget to make sure they were the ones who ended up with Patrushev's nuclear warhead. Assholes. That was the frickin' problem with the frickin' CIA. They never told anybody what they were doing.
“Yeah, yeah. Meet Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel, meet Dylan Hart.” There were no handshakes. “Is that her?” Royce gestured down the hill at Creed and Cody.
“Dominika Starkova,” he confirmed as another car pulled up behind Royce's, a late model sedan, pure FBI. Yet another car pulled up behind the sedan.
Yes, it was going to be a regular party here this morning, a lynching party.
<
br /> A grim smile curved Royce's face. “It's been a long night, Hart, a damn long night.” He started down the hill.
Dylan grabbed him by the arm. “You better let me go with you, or you'll be dead before he realizes you're one of the good guys.”
Royce thought about it for all of five seconds. “Yeah,” he said. “Good idea.”
SHE was crying. Creed could taste it on her lips. One minute they'd been kissing, and the next she'd started crying.
“Cody—” He lifted his mouth from hers and started to ask her why—but then he knew. He felt it, and then he heard it, the sound of a car door in the distance, the low hum of voices.
He had another fight in him, easy, but he wasn't going to do it. Not now. God damn it. It was over.
“You chose this?” he asked, furious and frustrated and trying not to freak out. He was holding her too tight. He could feel it, but geezus, he wished she'd done anything else. “Why? I don't know if—” He stopped, took a breath, tried to get ahold of himself. How could he explain to her that he needed her? That she wasn't optional? “We could have made it. I swear. I wouldn't have ever let them catch us.”
“I know.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, and then she laughed, one short sound. “God, it was a crazy night, wasn't it?”
“Crazy.” Fuck. It had been more than crazy, and he did not want it to end, not like this. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to escape. “You've got to give me an hour, Cody, an hour to get the book out of the library. Don't tell them anything.”
She nodded.
He tightened his hands on her, thinking fast, thinking of what she needed to know. “They won't hurt you. Don't worry about that. Everything changed after the warehouse. They're not desperate now. They've pulled in a lot of the players. They've got you fair and square, and they'll stick to the rules.”
