Rival Forces

by D. D. Ayres

  He felt hands cup his hand, fingers like icicles after just a few minutes of exposure. She leaned in against him, her height making it easy to bring their faces close. “With the lights out, you won’t be able to find things. I know where everything is.”

  She spoke so quietly, her words were mere puffs of warm air in his ear. But he welcomed every sweet whisper, if only because her lips kept brushing his lobe. Even so, half of him wanted to throttle her for taking the chance. The other half wanted to stuff her in his pocket and head for the trees and safety.

  He leaned in close, using a hand to embrace her by the waist as he pressed his lips to her ear. “Did you call the sheriff?”

  She nodded, rubbing her cheek along his. “He and his officers were called to a bad accident at the junction of Highways 81 and 64 up near Staunton. He says hold down the fort at least an hour.”

  Kye didn’t bother to curse. A waste of breath. They were on their own. Anything or many things could happen in an hour.

  “Don’t speak. Don’t stop. Stay close behind me. If anything happens, make for the tree line above us and hide. Stay there. No matter what happens. Until the sheriff arrives.” He pushed back from her warm body, reluctantly, and grabbed her hand. He tugged, the equivalent of come on.

  Yardley fell into step behind him. A moment later she almost jumped out of her skin when a swoosh of falling snow dumped on their heads from a cracking tree branch far above their heads. She had neglected to pull her hood up and the ice sluiced down her neck, under her neckline, and down her spine, making her gasp and shiver.

  Kye’s head swung around, tossing more melting snow from his hoodie into her face. “You okay?” At least that’s what she thought he said. Between the dark and the danger she wasn’t sure he’d even spoken aloud.

  He pulled her in close by the wrist. “Move fast.”

  All at once he was sprinting across the open space between the bunkhouse and the classroom building. She wore combat boots, the same as he did, and this was her property. She knew every rut, stone, pothole, and scrub. But snow and fear were making it all seem unfamiliar, alien, even hostile. Twice she slipped, her footing almost giving way beneath her, but Kye didn’t slow his speed, pulling her along by his momentum so that she just stumbled forward, her face colliding with his back as she scrambled to right herself.

  It was only thirty feet but it seemed like fifty yards as they ran straight out for the deeper darkness on the other side of the open ground. She could hear Kye’s sharp breathing, remembered how he was hampered by the swelling and bandages of his broken nose. But it didn’t seem to affect him. He moved strongly and confidently over strange ground until, finally, they slipped into shadow in the rear of the building. Only then did he turn to her, hands going to frame her shoulders.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. No need to tell him she’d turned her ankle a bit. It wasn’t that bad. Nothing she couldn’t walk off. “The keys.” She placed her hand against his chest so he’d know where to put them.

  He handed them over and she turned, feeling her way along the back of the building until she came to the first door. All the classrooms opened to the outside. A center corridor gave access from the inside. With K-9s needing frequent breaks, this arrangement came in handy. It also meant that one key fit many locks. She felt along the key ring in the dark, counting the number and then choosing one that felt most familiar. Like trying to read Braille, she ran her hand over the door until she found the lock, using a fingertip to locate the keyhole and then pushing the key in.

  She swallowed a little ta-da of achievement when the key turned. He had needed her. This wouldn’t have been so easy otherwise.

  They pushed into the dark of the classroom smelling faintly of dry eraser, wooden desks, two-week-old stale air, and the ever-present whiff of K-9, an earthy, not unpleasant musk she loved.

  “This way.” She was whispering, though once the door closed behind them she thought they were probably safe enough. She grabbed his wrist this time, the thickness and heat a welcome reminder of his presence, and led him through the configuration of the room. In her mind’s eye she pictured the long desks with chairs pushed in. Much easier to navigate a room with indoor obstacles used to teach K-9 techniques. Once in the corridor she turned left into the utter darkness of the interior space. She ran a hand lightly along the wall, counting doors until she was past the third classroom door. The corridor formed a T. Straight ahead was the cafeteria/social room. To the left was the supply room containing ordnance.

  She tugged Kye left, strong and solid, reassuring at her back.

  She wasn’t certain in what order she heard things. It was as if the night suddenly wrecked itself, like a car crashing.

  A shout. Shots fired. A scream.

  Kye’s voice sounded strangled. “Lily!”

  * * *

  Jackson was watching his windshield wipers make fan patterns as they swept the snow from side to side on his windshield and feeling pretty good around himself. He’d seen a few wrecks since he’d gotten on the road. But his vehicle was equipped to deal with snow and ice. Nasty night. Not a good night for man nor beast. But he was FBI. The post office had nothing on an FBI agent on the job.

  The chime of his cell phone lit up the panel on his four-wheel-drive vehicle.

  “Jackson.”

  “Glaser hasn’t called back in, sir.”

  Jackson gripped his steering wheel. Maybe the shit had hit the fan. “How far out are the people on their way down here?”

  “That’ll be difficult to ascertain. A major pileup at the intersection of Interstates 64 and 81 has all area roads backed up for miles.”

  “Find a way to scramble them. I got a bad feeling about tonight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “David!”

  Yardley turned and tried to push past Kye.

  He didn’t yield. He gripped her shoulders and pushed her back into the darkest corner against the wall, holding her there with the weight of his body.

  Her hands came up, palms braced against his chest as she pushed, her voice adamant. “Let go of me, dammit.”

  “No. Yard. Think.” Kye spoke quietly, a tone at odds with the thunder of his heart under her right palm. But he knew the best way to manage fear was to slow things down. Think and act methodically. “Where’s your gun?”

  He couldn’t see her face but he felt her stop struggling. “David has it.”

  “Okay. Good.” Kye was thinking as fast as he could. So far, no more sounds. That was neither good nor bad. Just knowledge. “Maybe David was scaring off an intruder.”

  “He’s so weak.”

  “He’s tougher than you think. He got this far, didn’t he?” Strangely, he meant those words. It didn’t make him like the man any better but he did respect him. He was beginning to understand why Yard chose him in the first place.

  He heard Yardley draw in a long breath. Felt her shudder and then release it. She was trying to get command of her nerves. “What about Lily?” She was whispering but it sounded to his ears like a shout. “Oh, Kye, do you think she was shot?”

  “No.” He struck away the image of Lily being wounded. “More likely she’s under a bed upstairs.” The gunshot alone would have been enough to frighten her into emitting those cries. She was trained to track and save, not to hunt. Without her handler to reassure her, she would be confused and worried. When anxious, a toller hid.

  “David’s protected and Lily can take care of herself. We need a plan before—” He swallowed the last of the sentence. Before he moved one step back toward the house. He didn’t want her anywhere near the fight to come, whatever shape it took.

  She stiffened. “Where’s Oleg?”

  That was a good question. One that Kye had been considering when he’d gone out the back door of the house. The self-starter Czech wolfdog might not separate friend from foe, or even care, if he was frightened or “self-deployed.” So far the K-9 had been lying low, for what purpose Kye couldn’t
begin to guess. But he was out there, in the mix, somewhere.

  “Would he track an intruder, Yard?”

  “If he’d picked up on my anxiety about him, certainly. On yours? I don’t know.”

  Kye thought about that. He and the wolfdog hadn’t exactly come to a meeting of the minds. But Kye had been sweating bullets once he saw the footprints in the snow. And Oleg had been right there beside him, staring at something even before that. Now that he thought about it, the trained K-9 had seemingly divided his attention between two points in the distance. Maybe Purdy had brought more than one snake to the hunt.

  From far away a sound broke the silence, something between a grunt and a groan.

  “Kye?” Yardley twisted against him, trying to free herself from his grip.

  “Shh.” He leaned harder against her, stilling her urge to push him away. It wasn’t exactly the best time to notice things like her chest rising and falling rapidly under the pressure of his. The last time they’d made contact like this, there were no clothes between them. Just her lush soft skin on his.

  His dick stirred. No. Not the right time at all. Next time. If there was a next time.

  He levered away from her and dropped his hands. “Go and open the ordnance room. Bring me half a dozen flash bangs. Then we’ll take the fight to them.”

  “Them?”

  He could feel her breath on his face. And for the life of him, despite the danger and thrill of the fight rising in him, all he wanted to do was kiss her.

  Reward for deeds done.

  So far, he’d earned nada.

  With that thought he shoved all personal considerations aside. People were depending on him. Besides, he’d heard her whisper Gunnar’s name in the wake of the mess that had just gone down outside.

  That snapped him back to attention. There’d been no more sounds after that first outburst. No more shouts or even barking from Lily. WTF was happening outside?

  He released Yardley. “Go.”

  Her fingers curled into his parka. “Don’t leave me behind this time.”

  “I won’t.” One of the first things he learned in police academy was how to lie convincingly. He was just sorry he had to use it on her.

  As she slipped sideways away from him, he turned toward the cafeteria area that led to the front of the building. Across the room slices of light from the security lamp cut through the glass panes of the double doors with push bars, illuminating twin wedges of wall and floor.

  He stayed in shadow as he approached those slats of light, not wanting anyone looking to see him cross the windows. He heard a door open behind him. Good, Yard would be busy trying to locate things by touch alone. That would make her slow and methodical, her senses totally concentrated on the task before her.

  He hunkered down and moved forward in a squat position to slip free the bottom door latch. Now he needed to free the top one. Above waist height, the closed doors provided only about eight inches of door frame between the glass inserts. He doubted even sideways he was a slim eight inches thick. His coat made him even bulkier.

  He slipped off his jacket and then rose up just enough to peer over the bottom edge of one narrow glass panel and froze. Behind him he heard Yard opening a cabinet. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have noticed so slight a sound. But with his every sense online and straining for information, it sounded like she was prying up floorboards with a crowbar. He needed to move, and quickly, before she realized he’d left.

  He went back to surveillance of the world beyond the door. The security lamp threw its bright-white light in an arc around the parking lot, making the snow a brilliant carpet embedded with diamonds. His vehicle and Yard’s were thrown into high relief, with stark sharp shadows angled behind them. In one of those shadows something moved.

  Kye held his breath. Something or someone was on the ground. It looked like a big sack. But he suspected it was a living being. No way to tell if it was man or dog. The noises they’d heard earlier had had consequences.

  Time to act.

  He extended an arm straight up over his head and then inched his body up the door, trying to keep himself inside the protective span of the frame. The effort to move slowly and keep his body perfectly erect had his calves burning by the time his fingers touched the bottom of the latch. He pulled down hard and twisted.

  The sound echoed through the cafeteria but he didn’t have time to worry about that. Gun in hand he pushed through the door to the outside. If he didn’t move now, Yard would try to follow him. If he wasn’t there, instinct would force her to be more careful and go back the way they’d come. By then, with any kind of luck, he could have a read on whatever the hell was going on.

  He skittered along the wall, in full sight of anyone who happened to be looking toward the classrooms. He hoped against holy hell that whoever had fired that shot was riveted on the house. Not looking for phantoms in the snow.

  He’d never moved faster in his life with the gun out in front of him, fisted in both hands as his boots churned up the ankle-deep snow. His goal was the back of the bunkhouse that lay between the classrooms and Yard’s home. If he made it that far, he could duck into the shadows again, with the relative safety of the building to shield him.

  It struck him as he made the nearby wall of the bunkhouse that he’d forgotten something. His SAR parka lay on the floor in the cafeteria. No wonder he’d moved so easily. And now he felt the wind and snow in every part of his upper body. He was wearing nothing but boots, a pair of cargoes, and a sleeveless undershirt.

  Way to go, Honolulu Boy.

  At least he’d lost the big fat white cross marking the back of his bright-red coat.

  Small mercies.

  A bigger issue was getting his breath back when he had to gulp air through his mouth. If he got a chance he might go back and break Purdy’s nose, just to even things up. It slowed him down to have to breathe this way. Any exertion made his face throb.

  He reached halfway for the tape before he changed his mind. Bleeding all over himself wasn’t a better solution. And the cold would make his sinuses burn like a sumbitch. Acknowledge then disregard. He dropped his hand.

  His instinct from years ago was kicking in. Once it had been second nature to not only run toward trouble but neutralize it. In many ways, he had adjusted to civilian life better than men like Law who carried daily the scars of war. He’d switched from MP force and protection mode to search and rescue fairly smoothly, thanks to his business partner Oliver. He preferred saving lives to threatening them. But now he needed those predator skills to survive and overcome. The hunted needed to be a hunter.

  Motivate. Devastate. Incapacitate.

  He moved toward the back of the bunkhouse. By circling to the rear, he would be protected by darkness and closer to the back of the house when he reached the other end. Perhaps from that angle he could tell who or what was down in the front yard.

  He moved as quickly as the ground allowed. In coming out this way, he’d been sinking footprints into untouched snow. But now, in keeping close to the back wall as he retraced his steps, his boots sank several times into uneven holes already made by his first passage. Some of them must have been Yard’s, too.

  Snapping sounds brought his head around several times. But there was nothing to see either behind him or up the incline behind the building where the terrain made a sudden climb as it became the foothills of the eastern range. He remembered the road on a ridge halfway up. Perhaps Purdy’s henchmen had come in that way. No way to check without revealing himself. And he needed to know what lay on the ground near Yard’s vehicle.

  By the time he came even with the back corner of the bunkhouse he was breathing heavily again. His chest hurt from the rush of icy air in and out of his lungs. All the way up to the top of his throat, his breathing felt constricted, as if his windpipe had begun to freeze. He brought his lips together, sipping in air as if from a straw.

  How much time had passed since Yard had called the sheriff? Could have been an hour or fift
een minutes. His internal clock was on high alert status, everything coming in as either speeded up or painfully slowed down. Was an hour all the time he had to burn up before help arrived? Or more likely, with snow still falling, would it be a very long wait? Best to plan for option B.

  This time as he prepared to turn the corner and look, he pulled his weapon in close to his chest, both hands on it to steady his aim.

  He did a ninety-degree pivot so that only half his body was exposed as he looked toward the parking lot and cars.

  His angle of view was better, as well as closer. It was clear from his first glance that a human body lay in the shadow of the Jeep. Cussing up a blue streak in his head, Kye made himself stay exposed as he did a perimeter check, looking for other casualties. Perpetrators. Animals. Nothing stirred. No Oleg. No other human being. Nothing.

  He pulled back and swung away, planting his back against the back wall of the bunkhouse in shadow. The icy sting of the siding felt good. It was a reminder that he was still alive. Still making plans to devastate and incapacitate whatever dickwad was out there. Because he knew, without confirmation, that whoever lay prone in the snow wasn’t Kye’s target.

  Kye made himself recount what he now knew while his hammering heart steadied itself. The man down wore a wool coat and he’d seen a trouser leg and the soles of trainers, not combat boots. Not in uniform so no officer of the law. Bad guy?

  Purdy had come dressed to deflect suspicion. He doubted his partner, or partners, would have bothered. They’d come to clean up a mess. Probably dressed to disguise themselves, including masks.

  Gunnar couldn’t have made that shot from inside the house. Or if he’d been able to open the front door and gun down an assailant, he would mostly likely have shouted for help the moment he saw the man fall. More likely, the doc was crouched in the dark, feverish and only half alert, waiting, as Kye was, to see what came next.

  He checked his perimeter again, willing himself to slow his thinking.