Her sudden stop threw him against the seatbelt as the car screeched past into an access road.
A vehicle was parked there…
Niki slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel hard. The car slid around.
A white panel van.
Empty. All the doors were thrown open in evidence of that. Not in haste, but not to waste unnecessary time and to make sure they would know Ty was gone, transferred to another waiting vehicle.
Niki’s throat locked.
She closed her eyes and slammed her hands on the steering wheel.
“If they wanted him dead,” Buck said quietly, “they’d have done it already.”
Her breath catching, Niki laid her head on the steering wheel.
“Ty’s the only one who knows where Byron is,” she said. “Even I don’t. We knew I was a target, so he didn’t tell me, just in case.”
“Shit,” Buck said. They hadn’t gotten around to telling him that part.
As terrified as Niki was for Ty, she forced herself to put her fear aside, to consider what she had to do to keep Ty alive.
“Call Mark Foster,” she said, “he’s with the Hoods. Tell them to move them now.”
Buck looked at her grimly. “Torrance will know we’ve moved them.”
“Maybe,” Niki said, “and maybe not. Victor was always a top down administrator. He never told anyone, not even Evan, everything he was doing or had planned. As good a psychologist as he is, he has blind spots. He sees us as subordinates, not leaders. Ty was the leader. Victor doesn’t know us. He’s always underestimated me. I’m his pet trained assassin, and he doesn’t know you at all. He’s going to think we won’t move without authorization. Authorization we don’t have and can’t get without either Ty or Byron. And in that, he’s right, unless Elizabeth Bonham gives it to us. Which is unlikely. She’ll pull Mark in or one of the others. We’ll lose precious time.”
She felt sick. “Time Ty doesn’t have. Victor wants to know where Byron is.”
Buck looked at her, his eyes reflecting the horror she felt. “And he’s an expert in coercive techniques.”
Swallowing hard, her stomach churning, Niki risked a quick glance at Buck.
Nothing else needed to be said.
“We’ll get that authorization,” Buck said, dialing. “Once Byron learns what’s happened.”
“Have him use Mark’s phone or a local one, not one of ours. Victor still has connections. He’ll have our phones monitored if he can.”
Buck nodded, speaking quickly into the headset of his phone.
“We’re a go,” he said.
Niki was thinking a mile a minute, going over everything in her head, everything she knew about Victor Torrance.
“It’s a trap for me, too, and I know that. Victor meant for me to see them take him,” she said. “He wanted me to. Why?”
Suddenly she went cold and still, the little car picking up speed even as she reached for her own headset, securing it in her ear.
“Because he wants me to panic,” she said, in answer to her own question. “If he didn’t know about my relationship with Ty before, he sure as hell knows about it now. He knows how important he is to me. He also knows we’ll pull out all the stops to get him back.”
Watching over her shoulder, she gauged her distance, slewing out onto the main road and merging onto highway traffic.
Buck swallowed, seeing how close she’d come to the oncoming vehicles.
As many defensive driving courses as he had taken, it was still hair-raising to sit and watch as Niki shot the car down the entrance ramp and out into traffic, looking back over her shoulder to judge distances, slipping them neatly into the flow of traffic, her feet and hands moving automatically.
“HQ,” Niki said. Voice activation dialed.
“NIO.” Delia’s voice.
“Delia, thank God. It’s Niki. Listen, don’t talk. Scramble this communication. Now.”
They had anti-surveillance equipment throughout the building. In light of recent events it had been tested regularly. Niki hoped and prayed that Tony hadn’t tampered with it, and it was good enough to defeat whatever surveillance Victor had. She had to trust Jerry on that. Victor knew she was coming, but she didn’t want Victor to know exactly how much she knew or guessed.
“Done,” Delia said.
“Good. They’ve taken Ty.”
Delia’s shock almost seemed to reverberate through the headset.
“What do you mean they’ve taken Ty?”
“Torrance had him kidnapped out of the hospital parking lot.”
“Oh My God,” Delia whispered.
“As soon as we’re done talking, put me through on conference to both Mitch and Brad. Instant message them to let them know now. Start evacuating the building immediately. Send an IM, follow it up with verbal. Get everyone out ASAP. They have to be gone before we get there. ETA less than forty minutes. Go, transfer me to Mitch. No questions. Just do it.”
“Transferring,” Delia said and the phone clicked.
Bless her, but then that was who Delia was, it was what she did so well.
“Niki?” Mitch said, his voice tense.
“Mitch, Brad, they took Ty out of the hospital parking lot fifteen minutes ago. He’s still alive, and they’ll keep him that way only as long as he’s useful.” She didn’t want to think about what would be happening to him in the meantime. “Until or unless they get the answers they want. Brad? Get your gear on. Search the building. There are explosives hidden there somewhere. Remember Tony…? He wasn’t there just to watch. You don’t waste someone like him, with his skills, on surveillance. He was there to take us down if we got too close. We got too close. ETA forty minutes, maybe less. That’s all the time you have, Brad. Go now. Don’t wait.”
“Going,” Brad said, and she heard him disconnect.
“Fuck,” Mitch said. “What the hell, Niki?”
“It’s Victor’s style,” Niki said, “a trap within a trap. He took Ty, gambling that I’d panic, that we’d all go into emergency mode, go back to HQ and start searching. He wants us all in that building when it blows. He’ll probably set it up to look like a terrorist attack. No one knows what we do there.”
“Against a U.S. Department, reigniting everyone’s fears, putting the country back into lock down mode, and effectively removing everyone who might testify against him at the same time, serving multiple purposes,” Buck said grimly.
“Yes, that’s Victor. Get everyone out, Mitch, everyone,” Niki said, “until Brad finds that bomb.”
“Got it, Niki,” Mitch said.
The connection was broken.
She manipulated the pedals of the car, shifting, ducking and dodging through traffic.
“Niki,” Buck said cautiously.
“Knowing what I know about him, Victor is going to expect me to panic, to be so frightened for Ty that I’ll do everything I can to get to him,” she said, with a quick glance at him. “And he wants me to come.”
And it was there, that fear, Buck could see it in her green eyes, but she controlled it as she did the car, working it, fighting it, letting it drive her. It was very real, but she held it at bay with sheer will, letting it heighten her reactions, while keeping an iron control on it. Buck couldn’t help but admire it.
“That’s the timeline he’s working on. He wants to keep me moving, keep me off balance. He’ll keep Ty alive as long as he knows I’m coming, as bait,” she said, her eyes going back to the road, “knowing that I’ll demand to hear him… He wants me at Headquarters. If he can take me there, then he has all the time in the world to get the information about Byron’s whereabouts from Ty, but if I don’t get there or I don’t answer the call… Then we’ll lose our only shot at finding him.”
Alive, anyway. If they ever found him. He wouldn’t be the first person Victor had made disappear, Niki knew.
Just the thought nearly destroyed her. The urge to cry nearly blinded her as tears burned in her eyes. Throat locking, her con
trol nearly gave way, but she locked it down. Tight.
That wouldn’t help Ty. He didn’t need Callie or Niki now, he needed Nike. Nike was what she would give him…
And if they hurt him Nike would become vengeance. She would hunt Victor Torrance down. and she would kill him.
Buck took one look at her face and watched as all expression drained out of it and her green eyes turned as hard and cold as emeralds.
Waking up to find himself handcuffed to a chair was Ty’s personal and private nightmare, reminding him far too much of Qatar. His head throbbed where they’d hit him, and his neck was stiff from being too long in an uncomfortable position, but neither was intolerable. It was instinct to fight the handcuffs, but a waste of time and energy, so he resisted the urge.
He was, though, still alive, and while he was grateful for it, he knew there was a reason for that. There was no other reason to take him otherwise. No other reason he was still alive.
Niki and Byron. His gut went hollow. Victor drawing him out of cover, out of the safe house…
Carefully, Ty opened his eyes, keeping his head down, absorbing impressions quickly. He wasn’t alone. Two guards were in the room with him, one at the door, murmuring into a radio.
They would know he was conscious, awake, and aware very shortly.
He was in the office of a warehouse somewhere. The carpeting on the floor was industrial. It had a feeling of abandonment, though, despite its relative newness. Not unusual these days in this economy. There was a typical steel office desk and all the accoutrements of any office. Except that he was handcuffed to the chair.
Lifting his head slowly, he fought to focus.
The room, apparently a manager’s office, offered a view through room-length windows of the broad expanse of concrete warehouse floor below. The floor was painted dark gray in the center, with light gray on the edges to indicate safe walking areas. and it was immaculately clean. The walls were painted light gray also, the space illuminated thinly from above by metal-framed windows and skylights. A spider web of metal framing bearing interior lights, ductwork and fans supported the ceiling.
“Good,” a man said as he walked into the room. “You’re awake and just in time. I was hoping.”
Looking at him, even having seen his picture and read Victor Torrance’s bio and stats, Ty was less than impressed.
Torrance vaguely resembled a demented monk, his dark hair balding in the back like a tonsure, with just a scrap of hair above his forehead. He stood a little less than average height. Behind the glasses, though, the eyes were clear, sharp, and intelligent. He was a chubby, balding, and not particularly prepossessing man with a round face and glasses.
His opinion was not shared by Victor Torrance. There was an air of arrogance in the way the man carried himself, a sense of self-importance. He was the master manipulator.
Torrance wasn’t alone; he had a number of men with him, all military types.
He had a cell-phone in his hand. He thumbed the switch for speakerphone and then speed-dial.
It was apparent Torrance also liked drama. He was making a production of this.
“NIO,” a voice said.
Delia. Ty recognized her voice instantly and took a breath.
Smiling, Torrance held up a small device that Ty recognized instantly. A transmitter. A detonator. Tony. Ty made the connection instantly. He went cold as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He closed his eyes.
Niki… Buck…
Step by step, Nike put first Niki and then Callie aside, stripping away and closing off those parts of herself that wouldn’t help. Fear for Ty nibbled in the back of her mind, but she used it to ramp up her adrenaline, to hone her edge until everything around her seemed razor-sharp. Reaching into the glove compartment, she pulled out the shooters glasses Ty had made her put aside. Putting them on was like putting on Nike again.
Somehow Buck wasn’t surprised to see the parking lot was full, fuller than Buck had ever seen it. It was crowded, although everyone was a good distance from the building, they were there. No one had left and, unless Buck was mistaken, some people had arrived. It was gratifying to see. Something about Ty inspired that kind of loyalty. As he knew.
Nike looked over the parking lot as she brought the car to a stop in front of the building. She glanced at Buck.
He smiled at her grimly. “It looks like we’ve got back up.”
She took a breath, a thin answering smile flickered. “We’ll need it. How are you holding up?”
“I’ll make it,” he said, evenly.
Looking at him, Nike nodded. It was his decision.
Mitch was headed their way as they got out of the car, falling into step beside them.
Taking one look into her cool green eyes behind the sunglasses, Mitch’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t comment, he just said, “Brad. He just found it, he’s working on it.”
Fastening the headset in place, all Niki said into the microphone was, “Brad, the clock starts now.”
Down in the bowels of the building, concentrating on the bomb, Brad nodded, although no one could see him. “Acknowledged. There’s a ton of C4 down here, Niki. All those times Tony used to come in early to set up the equipment…”
There wasn’t anything else that needed to be said.
“There isn’t much time to plan, Niki,” Mitch said.
Without pausing, Nike strode toward the headquarters building.
“So we’ll plan on the run,” she said.
Neither Mitch or Buck so much as flinched as they walked through the doors beside her.
“Brad?” she asked. “There’s no more time…”
In the bowels of the building, on his back, the light from the lamp attached to his helmet the only illumination, Brad sorted through the wires, looking for booby traps, distractions, discounting them in his search for the right one.
“Stop talking to me.”
Nike almost laughed.
There were two people Nike hadn’t seen outside in the parking lot, Delia and Jerry.
Delia stepped out of communications even as they walked in. She pointed at one of the conference room phones. As much as Nike wanted her safely out of the building, she was glad she was there.
“Miss Tallent just walked into the building, sir,” Delia said into her headset.
From above a voice said quietly, “Tracing.”
Jerry.
“Get everything you can find on Victor Torrance as well.”
“Already done.” The tall tech looked down over the railing at her, then disappeared back to his equipment.
Moved, grateful, Nike nodded.
“He’ll just be blocking it,” Buck said as Delia disappeared back into communications.
Shaking her head Nike said, “No, he’ll make it a little hard so it will look as if he doesn’t want to be found, but he wants us to find him. Everything else is just too unsure. If the bomb doesn’t work he’ll want us to come after him. It’s a game. He’ll want to be sure we find him so he can eliminate all the loose ends.”
“That you find him,” Mitch said. “So he can eliminate both you and Ty.”
With a tight grin, Nike said, “Don’t take yourself out of that game, Mitch. You, Buck, and Brad are loose ends as well.”
She hit speaker on the phone.
“Tallent… If I don’t hear Ty Connor’s voice in the next five seconds there’s no need for this conversation, Victor. Ty, you need to talk to me if you’re there.”
The sound of her voice… In the crispness of it, Ty heard Nike and his heart clenched.
He hesitated. A dozen thoughts went through his head, wanting to protect her, to keep her safe, to keep her away, but he knew her too well. She would come, regardless. Because she loved him. As he would have done, for her. And would search to the ends of the earth until he did. As she would.
“I’m here, Niki,” Ty said.
For a moment, all the breath went out of her. Nike’s knees nearly buckled. Relief washed thro
ugh her just at the sound of his distinctive deep voice on the other end of the phone.
She closed her eyes, steadied herself on the chair. Her eyes burned.
It had all been guesses, hope, until she heard him.
For a moment, just a moment, the mask dropped, and she wavered.
“You know I love you, Ty,” she said, even as she heard Brad’s voice in her ear.
“I love you, too, Callie,” Ty said, his stomach tightening, watching as Torrance raised the detonator, pressed the trigger, “See you when you get here."
The pause seemed to last forever, Ty’s heart seemed to stop for a moment, and then…
“I’m coming,” Nike said.
Fury washed over Torrance’s face as he threw the detonator violently at the wall, and then ripped the phone from the desk and flung it, too, against the windows.
“We go to plan B,” Victor Torrance snapped, turning. “Mr. Connor, you have information I want.”
He looked to his subordinates. “Get it.”
They moved toward Ty.
Victor Torrance turned toward the shadows outside of the room.
“It seems we’ll need you after all, Mr. Garcia.”
A familiar figure stepped into the room from the hallway, glanced briefly at Ty.
Daniel Garcia smiled wolfishly in answer to Torrance’s summons.
Ty went still and cold, his heart sinking.
Chapter Forty
Even as she headed for the locker room, Nike stripped off the sundress she wore, down to her underwear, stepping up to her locker to pull out her leathers. Buck and Mitch were doing the same, getting into gear. No one so much as blinked at her as Brad came to join them. It was hardly the first time they’d seen her half naked like that, although it had been a while.
Andy’s absence was a sharp twist of her heart.
Nike pulled on the shoes she used for Parkour and free-running, and then turned toward the armory, thinking fast, formulating a plan. There were so many variables. She loaded up on everything she thought she might need and could conceivably carry. Her holsters went on, her weapons were seated. She opened the rarely used Velcro on her pants pockets, added more clips, a pair of flash-bang grenades, smoke bombs and a small beacon.
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