Holding Fire

by April Hunt

  “I know he’s not going to let me walk away, because I have something even more fucking precious to him than that old broad.” Winters jabbed his rifle into the center of her back, where she no doubt had a bruise forming from his incessant poking. “I got you. And please, keep dragging your feet through the snow. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the incoming storm won’t wipe out our tracks and your lover boy will get to us that much faster.”

  Shit. That was exactly what she’d been doing.

  Elle needed to fire up her synapses and do something that didn’t involve Trey—and probably the rest of the team—walking into a trap. Because it wasn’t a matter of if he’d find her, but when.

  For once, Elle was thankful Winters was behind her, because it gave her the opportunity to think—and assess. They reached the next steep incline, slick with newly fallen snow, and climbed. It was a little dicey and more than a little physically draining, but where there was an up, there had to be a down…

  Elle waited until they reached the crest of the hill and did a quick scan of the bottom—no large boulders and no menacing trees with trunks thicker than her wrist. Considering she had no idea where they were headed or if they were almost there, she needed to act fast.

  Elle faked a stumble. She whipped her arm out to knock Winters’ rifle to the side, and then she let gravity roll her down the mountain. Rocks dug into her back and branches tugged at her hair. She tucked her arms against her body and protected her head from the worst of it. From somewhere above, Winters cursed.

  At the bottom, something slammed against her forehead, bringing her to an abrupt stop. Stars swirled across her vision for a moment.

  “Damn it,” Elle cursed.

  “Don’t you fucking move a muscle!” Winters started skidding his way down.

  Elle scrambled to a standing position and took off as fast as her numb feet would go. She ran—and when each breath felt like a newly frozen brick in her chest, she ran a little harder. It felt like a lifetime had passed when she realized Winters was no longer behind her.

  Elle paused and listened for a solid three minutes, hearing nothing except the heavy pants of her own breathing. Avoiding tracks was impossible, but she took her time, careful to keep as much to the rocky areas as possible, until she found a thick patch of drooping evergreens. She tucked herself against the base of the center-most tree—and waited.

  Elle battled against droopy eyelids. Her fuzzy brain knew that sleep right now was not her friend…but it was a fight she’d lost, she realized some time later as she startled awake.

  At the soft crunch of snow, Elle froze. The footfall was too heavy to be a rabbit, not quite big enough for a bear—which, she hoped, were all sleeping peacefully in their dens.

  That left only one other possibility.

  Sitting straighter, Elle squinted through the foliage and saw Dean Winters closing the distance between them like he had all the time in the world.

  “I know you’re here, Miss Monroe,” Winters’s voice echoed through the trees. “There’s really no point in prolonging the inevitable. Come with me now and we’ll get you warm…save all those little piggies from falling off. You have to be getting awfully worried about frostbite by now.”

  Elle stayed still, her eyes locked on him through the shrubbery.

  “I’m going to take a wild guess,” he added, “and say that you’ve stopped shivering. You’re a smart woman, Elle. You know it’s not going to be long before your body starts shutting down, letting the hypothermia take over. And there’s one hell of a storm about to blow in. You and I both know your chances of surviving out here are about a million from a miracle.”

  Crunch. Step. Crunch. Winters moved closer to her position, almost like he really did know where she was hiding. To move or stay? Elle questioned in her head. If he got too close, there’d be no way she could make a break for it. If she moved, where the hell would she go?

  Winters turned in her direction. From less than six feet away, he pointed his rifle—at her.

  “I’ve found you,” he announced in a singsong voice, and cocked his gun. “I’d rather do this whole bait thing with you breathing—it gives me a bit more leverage with Hanson. But I’m not averse to maiming a little bit. If you want to keep all your original beautiful parts, sweetheart, I’d suggest you come out right the fuck now.”

  Elle didn’t have a choice. Her legs had long since stopped obeying commands. She’d be barely able to stumble, let alone run.

  “You’re trying my patience, Miss Monroe,” Winters warned.

  Elle spewed an entire roster of obscenities as she crawled from her hidey-hole. “I can’t wait for Trey to find you. You’re so going to get what you deserve.”

  “When he finds us, so is he.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Trey and the team followed Elle’s GPS signal to the eastern part of the mountain, where the wildlife far surpassed any two-legged population. No one lived nearby for miles, as the area was not easy to get to on foot, much less on four wheels. It was why the Army Reserves had chosen this area for their field drills.

  Trey kept his night vision binoculars focused on the single-level building where Cummings, or whatever the fuck he called himself now, decided to use the dilapidated barracks for his showdown.

  Rafe knelt down at his side. “You realize this is a trap, right? There’s no way he wouldn’t have gotten rid of Elle’s cell unless he was planning on using it to lure us here. He’s playing fucking games.”

  “Then I’ll play.” And Trey was going to win, making sure the bastard got locked up in Leavenworth for the rest of his miserable life.

  Yeah, not only was he going to play Cummings’s fucked-up game, but he’d ring his bell and then make the bastard choke on it for putting Elle’s life in danger. Her son-of-a-bitch father had put her on Black Dunes’ radar, but she was in that goddamned barrack because of him.

  As if he’d gotten a read on his rising anger, Rafe’s hand landed on his shoulder in a firm squeeze.

  “Head on straight, man,” Rafe encouraged in a low murmur. “Trust me. I know what you’re feeling right now, but you’re not going to do her any good by going in there stupid.”

  Trey swallowed the nervous fury clogging his throat and tried to do just that, but this was a hell of a lot more than the most important operation of his life…this was his fucking heart. “I can’t lose her when I just found her, man.”

  “You’re not going to lose her. Stone?” Rafe questioned their team leader through the comm-link.

  “We’re in left flanking position now,” Stone stated.

  “On right flank now, too,” Logan announced. “Vince?”

  “Almost finished with the final touches on our distraction and then I’m joining Callahan. T–minus ten minutes to fireworks… ” Vince started the countdown until Trey could finally do something.

  “Charlie,” Trey added. “How close are we on getting eyes inside that fucking matchstick building?”

  “I’ll have it in five…” Charlie’s voice came online. “Four. Three. Two. Ah…gotcha, you bloody bastard.”

  A weaponized Charlie was a dangerous Charlie. But put a computer in the woman’s hands and she was fucking lethal. Stationed at the base of the previous decline, she directed a heat-scanning drone over their heads like a toy airplane on ’roids.

  “Looks like we’re the only ones he invited to the party,” Charlie verified. “There are two heat signatures inside the building, and we’re the only ones outside of it. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “That he doesn’t have the place rigged like a fucking funhouse,” Rafe finished her thought.

  “He doesn’t.” Trey knew he was right. “His whole point in taking Elle is to see me suffer, right? He can’t enjoy the show if he ends it before I even step through the door.”

  Even though it made sense, it didn’t mean they weren’t going to watch their asses. Like they’d done a million times before in the field, the team divvied up and approached the
large shack from all sides. Rafe and Trey stayed low, reaching their position toward the rear—right beneath what looked to be a bathroom window.

  “Found a way in on our side,” Trey murmured.

  “Us, too,” Logan announced. “Vince and I got a window here that looks like it leads to a storage room.”

  “Tread lightly. Whoever gets in position first gets a snake cam turned on that main room. Charlie, you let us know if anything changes in Cummings’s position.”

  “Got it,” Charlie agreed.

  Bursting through doors and breaking in windows was one sure way to give Cummings a heads-up. They needed to be quiet. Trey and Rafe worked in silence to remove the windowpane from their side of the barrack. It was ridiculously easy, the wood frame practically disintegrating in their hands as they lowered it to the ground

  “After you, my lady,” Rafe quipped. He linked his fingers and gave Trey a boot up, and once they cleared the window, Trey turned and hoisted Rafe’s two-hundred-pound ass up the side of the building. The move was quick and efficient, and didn’t cause a damn bit of noise.

  “T–minus five.” Vince updated everyone on the countdown.

  Trey carefully tested each floorboard before applying the full brunt of his weight. Ten fucking feet felt like ten fucking yards, but he reached the door and slid to his stomach.

  “I’m getting eyes now,” Trey murmured.

  Rafe was already passing him the snake cam. He shimmied it through the gap beneath the door. Snowlike fuzz filled the handheld screen while he worked it into position—and then voila. The damn thing flickered to life.

  Four walls and an empty room large enough to have slept at least twenty soldiers didn’t come as any shock. What did was the small cot shoved into a corner and a small living area halfheartedly constructed off to the side. Evidently the bastard had been hiding under their noses for some time.

  Trey swung the camera to the left.

  A burst of white fury nearly made the damn thing shatter in his hands.

  Tied to a chair in the center of the room, Elle looked half unconscious, her chin dipping down to her chest. The vid-screen didn’t need to be in color for him to identify the blotch of darkness above her right temple.

  Blood.

  The fucking bastard had drawn blood.

  “Easy,” Rafe warned.

  “Fuck easy. I’m going to kill him.” Trey was going to reach up and pull Cummings’s dick out through his ass for having laid so much as a finger on Elle.

  “We got an extra set of eyes pointing west,” Logan interrupted. “Good thing we have a distraction, because one step out of either of our rooms puts us right into the bastard’s line of sight.”

  Vince muttered, “T–minus three, kids.”

  Trey shifted closer to the door.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Rafe grunted softly.

  “Keep an eye on Cummings,” Trey said, passing the cam over. “I need to see her with my own fucking eyes, not through this damn screen.”

  Rafe cursed but remained focused on the video feed while Trey pushed the door open just wide enough to notice that the snake-cam hadn’t caught the worst of Elle’s injuries.

  Along with the bloody knot on her head, her face was covered in cuts and scratches. Blood soaked through her jeans, damn near looking like fucking handprints. And her bottom lip was busted open. She looked like she’d survived nine rounds with a heavyweight boxer.

  Not only was Trey going to rip off Cummings’s balls and shove them up his ass, but he’d shove them so high they’d get caught on his fucking tonsils.

  * * *

  Someone must’ve hammered an ice pick into Elle’s forehead. And her chest. And her back. There wasn’t a single part of her body that didn’t hurt. She fought against the heavy weight of her eyelids and when she finally won the battle, the room spun. She grabbed for the nearest stable surface and found she didn’t have to go far—because rope tied her to it.

  Sitting in the middle of an empty room, her wrists and ankles bound to the chair beneath her, Elle focused on taking a deep breath and gagged on the urine-scented air.

  “You’re finally up.” Winters lounged back in a nearby chair, looking like a man without a care in the world.

  “This is the best you could do as far as accommodations?” Elle croaked, her throat dry.

  “Best I could do in this Bumblefucklandia. You’re lucky to be here after that little stunt you pulled. Actually, I’m a bit surprised you woke up at all. That’s a nasty bump on your head.”

  Elle didn’t need to shine a penlight in her eyes to know she had a concussion, a real one this time because it took her a few moments to remember what he was talking about. “You almost sound like you care.”

  “Not in the least. You’re just a more effective commodity if you actually have a life to threaten. If you’re dead by the time Hanson gets here, he’s got nothing to lose.”

  Elle’s head pounded as she tried to follow along. “I thought my father hired you to make it look like I was being threatened. So what does this all have to do with Trey?”

  Winters’ chair clunked to the ground. He stood, stretching his lanky body. “Everything. Little did I know when I took your father’s measly little job that it would practically hand-deliver the man who destroyed my fucking life. I’m not the kind of man to let an opportunity pass me by. I took advantage of it—which is why I took you. Nothing fucks with a man’s head more than threatening the woman he loves.”

  “Then I suggest you go find her,” Elle said harshly, “because she’s sure as hell not here.”

  The words sliced Elle apart from the inside. The truth was, she didn’t know how Trey felt. Given how their last conversation had ended, she couldn’t imagine it was a fraction more than toleration.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Miss Monroe,” Winters jested. “There isn’t a doubt in my mind that he’s going to come for you, and when he does, I’ll be waiting.”

  “To do what, exactly?”

  “To fuck over his life like he fucked over mine.” Winters only spared her an occasional glance as he started pacing. “He couldn’t mind his own goddamned business—couldn’t just avert his eyes and play fucking dumb. No. He had to suck the asses of the higher-ups and invade my desert, ruining everything I’d had in place for fucking months. Suddenly, no one wanted to chance having an American Delta team on their fucking asses—not even for military-grade weapons.”

  “So he put a kink in your arms-trafficking plans—how horrible of him,” Elle said sarcastically.

  “He blew them the fuck up—with me inside!”

  Winters grabbed a mug off the table and hurled it. Elle flinched, but the glass rocketed by her ear, missing by inches, and shattered against the wall. The quick move saved her another blow to the head, but sent a bolt of pain through her midsection.

  Winters no longer paid attention to her as he ranted and raved. Elle breathed through the throb in her head and caught movement from the corner of her eye. She squinted, trying to focus on the wisp of a snake slithering beneath one of the back doors.

  No, not a snake.

  A camera—one of the compact kinds she’d seen used in the movies.

  The black, coiled length twisted toward her like some little Cyclops, and then the door opened—just barely. Elle blinked. And then she blinked again. Either her concussion came with hallucinations or Trey’s green eyes stared at her from across the room.

  He pressed a finger to his lips and then he vanished back behind the door.

  “Can I get a drink?” she asked suddenly. She’d rather not be tied and completely helpless when all hell broke loose.

  Winters came to an abrupt stop, looking at her as if he’d forgotten she was there. “What?”

  “A drink. Please.” Elle cleared her throat, emphasizing a wince, and prepared herself for a no.

  “No fucking games,” Winters warned.

  “No games. Like there’s anywhere for me to go, or like
I’d get very far if I even tried.”

  Winters cut her ties and handed her a bottle of water…and then not only did hell break loose, it shattered. Multiple doors crashed open, and Alpha descended into the room in a mad rush of barked orders and chaos.

  Winters hauled her off her chair. He used her as a shield, beveling his gun against her sore torso.

  “Let her go, Cummings,” Trey demanded, aiming his assault rifle at Winters.

  “So you made the connection, huh?” Winters laughed bitterly. “Took you fucking long enough. And here I thought you were semi-intelligent, Hanson, but you keep proving me wrong. Not only did it take you so fucking long to figure out, but you left your woman all alone and defenseless and shit.”

  “In case you didn’t notice the six guns aimed at your fucking head, she’s not alone. You wanted me here, and I’m here.” Trey slowly skirted the perimeter of the room, never once taking his eyes off Winters. “Let Elle go, and then I’ll send everyone away. It’ll be you and me.”

  “Trey, no,” Elle murmured.

  “You may be stupid, but I’m not.” Winters shook his head frantically. “The second I let your little girlfriend go, it’ll be all over.”

  “This is going to come to an end sooner or later. Wouldn’t you rather do it in a way that doesn’t have your carcass peppered with bullets?”

  “You already fucked my life, so what the hell do I care? As long as I take you with me, I’m good.”

  Behind her, Winters’s weight shifted. His grip on her shoulder released enough for her to register the swing of his aim—toward Trey.

  “Watch out!” Elle leapt forward in the hopes of knocking Trey out of the way.

  A loud bang reverberated through the rickety cabin. The floor shook and the walls creaked. Elle slammed into Trey’s rock-hard chest. His arms wrapped around her, and his body cushioned their fall to the floor.

  A hefty mixture of concern and anger pulled his mouth into a tight line. “Goddamn it, Elle! What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Please tell me you’re okay.” Her hands shook as she skated her palms across his chest looking for holes…and stopped when her fingers brushed a warm wetness. “Oh, God. You’re shot.”