by Cindy Dees
Logical. Without Aleesha having to tell him, Tom slid off the sofa to sit on the floor in front of it. Any sniper who wanted to see him now would have to climb a tree right next to the house and look down into the room. And even then it would be a tricky shot.
The cottage gradually went dark around him.
Aleesha gave quiet instructions deploying the Medusas to cover each of the doors and windows, and shadows glided past him, ghostlike, as the women moved into position.
“What can I do?” he asked in a low voice.
“Lie down and take a nap,” Aleesha replied, distracted.
“I’m serious,” he insisted. “There has to be something I can do to help.”
Her featureless face turned his way. “There is. Stay out of our way and do what we tell you to without questions.”
“Thanks, but I know the drill,” he muttered.
“Yeah, but not from the protectee’s end of things, you don’t,” Aleesha retorted. “Don’t you go all commando on me and try to be a hero, got it? You’re the important guy we’re here to keep alive. You keep your head down and don’t pull any cute stunts.”
He huffed, not at all pleased with this state of affairs. But what choice did he have? Aleesha was right. He was little better than a sack of potatoes to them. An object. Something to be kept safe from all harm. Nevermind he happened to be a living, breathing sack of potatoes.
“I’ve got movement,” Casey murmured from the front window. “I count at least three targets, arrayed at fifty-foot intervals. They’re either cops or killers working as a team.”
Great. Just what he needed. A whole team of assassins come to get him.
“My experience with the local police hasn’t been stellar,” he murmured. “My money’s on those guys out there being hostiles.”
“Duly noted,” Aleesha replied. “But let the record show we’ll be treating everyone and everything that moves out there as hostile until proven otherwise.”
“Ooh-rah,” one of the women murmured from the bedroom.
Aleesha added wryly, “No shooting until I green-light you, Monica.”
That was the tall blonde. Bloodthirsty type, was she? Who’d have guessed? Beautiful and lethal—these Medusas were something else.
And then Cho murmured from the window beside the front door, “I’ve got one guy well back in the trees, and he’s pointing a weapon at the house.”
Well, then. That answered the question of friendlies or hostiles.
“Look sharp, ladies,” Aleesha bit out. “I want the best head count you can give me.”
Cho added grimly, “Another guy just moved. He’s carrying a high-powered rifle. Telescopic sight. Doesn’t look infrared.”
That was good news, at least. It meant the sniper probably couldn’t see—and shoot—their heat images right through the cottage’s walls.
“Don’t assume everyone’s identically armed,” Aleesha warned.
He winced. Great. Maybe someone else could see through the walls and pick him off like a bug on the sidewalk. Aleesha scooted over to sit close beside him. “Nothing personal,” she murmured. “Just want to confuse the signatures if they’re peeking through the walls.”
He nodded grimly. “I sure as hell hope Paige doesn’t decide to come home right now.”
Paige glanced at her front door, then looked back at the sniper fixated on the closed portal. At least all the lights were out. If she was lucky, Tom and the Medusas had come and gone already in their hunt for her. But her gut said she hadn’t been that fortunate. The sniper was on full alert, his attention riveted on the house. He certainly was convinced someone was in there. And she was inclined to believe him.
At a snail’s pace, she crawled on her belly to her left toward the south side of the cottage. The underbrush came closest to the building on that side and offered the best close-in cover for anyone wanting to approach the place unseen.
Moving this slow was a trial to her taut nerves, but she corralled them as she’d been taught and eased through the shadows at one with the night. As her eyes continued to adjust to the darkness, she made out more details around her…and spotted another shooter. And another. And then she saw something that made her blood run cold. A fourth shooter wearing a police uniform. Her heart dropped to her feet. She’d been right. And if the Medusas called for any local help, they’d be completely unable to tell the good cops from the bad cops.
Mimi’s hit man had successfully augmented his hit squad and isolated the Medusas.
Which meant Tom and the Medusas were out of options and trapped squarely in the center of the kill zone.
Chapter 15
Paige hunkered down, staring fixedly at the cottage. Are you in there, Tom? And what about her teammates? Were they inside, too, counting their ammo and trying frantically to figure out how to escape this death trap?
If only she had her cell phone! A quick conversation with the Medusas and they’d all be on the same page, working toward the same goal. Although, supposedly, by training together so intensively, she should be able to accurately anticipate what her colleagues would do in a situation exactly like this.
No doubt about it. If she were guarding Tom, she’d have him inside that cabin. It was a defensible position, away from busy public places, and would allow her to concentrate her forces around the protectee.
Okay. So she’d work on the assumption that Tom and company were in there. What next? She’d have him planted on the floor well away from any windows. And as for her teammates?
She’d have them stationed at every window hiding from sight but keeping close watch out for any movement out here. She’d be trying to get an accurate head count of how many hostiles there were and how heavily armed they were. Then, she’d prepare a reconnaissance sortie and send out one or two of the Medusas to test the enemy perimeter and find a route to safety.
She might be able to help with some of that. She had freedom of movement out here, and as far as she could tell, she was behind the hostiles. So far, she’d spotted four. Time to finish her painfully slow circuit of the cottage and get a final head count. Maybe she could even spot a half-decent escape route out of there.
Of course, then she’d have to find a way to communicate with her teammates. But she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
Thankfully, the underbrush was thick, and even more thankfully, she’d spent the past two years crawling around lush tropical jungles on Timbalo Island, where the Medusas made their training headquarters. She settled quickly into the rhythm of it, slithering along under ferns and vines, rolling over logs, moving and pausing arhythmically so as not to sound like a living creature walking through the woods. It was almost strange how familiar and comfortable this activity was.
Paige spotted four more hostiles for a total of eight. A hit squad that size should be kid stuff for the seven full-time Medusas plus her—and Tom if it came right down to it. He might not have held a weapon in a few years, but she had faith it would come back to him fast, especially if someone was shooting at him with intent to kill.
She’d made her way around to the rock-strewn shoreline and had just determined to her satisfaction that no one was hiding in the sea-tossed boulders when the back of her neck suddenly prickled.
It was sacred Medusa mantra never to ignore a sensation like that. She sank down slowly into the sketchy cover of the rocks, her every sense on high alert. Whatever had triggered her internal alarms was still some way away, south of here.
She eased to her right to see if she could spot what—or who—was out there. The feeling was definitely getting stronger, but she was surprised at how much ground she covered without encountering any hostiles. Were her senses really that finely tuned? Vanessa had said Paige’s proximity awareness was as good as any she’d ever seen, but Paige had never believed her. Until now, that was.
About two hundred yards south of the cottage, beyond a heavy stand of jungle, Paige started hearing the distinctive crackle of radio static. What was up w
ith that?
If possible, she went into even higher stealth mode as she crept closer. The sound of quiet voices broke the night’s silence. She began to make out more details in the murmur of noise. Several male voices. Terse. Giving orders. More voices muttering in acknowledgment.
She pushed aside the broad fan of a palmetto and froze, staring. A small clearing opened up before her. A half-dozen police cars filled most of it, and milling police officers took up the rest of the space. She counted fast. Twelve cops. And as she’d feared: wearing exactly the same uniforms as the ones lurking around the cottage behind her. How were she and the Medusas supposed to have the faintest idea who was on their side and who was out to kill Tom?
The only choice was to pull Tom out of there right now…before this force closed in on him and the chaos was complete.
She turned and headed for the cottage as quickly as she could without giving herself away. It was an exercise in sheer frustration. With each careful step, her impulse was to break into a full sprint and run screaming to warn him.
She had plenty of time to reflect on the fact that the killers themselves had probably called the police to bring them out here. What better cover could the hit team have than a whole bunch of police wearing the same uniforms as them? She corrected herself. The would-be killers. No way was she letting them succeed. Not on her watch.
As she approached the cabin, she turned her thoughts to her next problem. To signal the Medusas, she’d need a spot where she’d be visible to the occupants of the cottage but sheltered from any other prying eyes. Quickly, she reviewed in her mind the layout of the surrounding terrain. Not far beyond the cottage’s front door, a pair of tall palm trees towered side by side. They wouldn’t be in the direct line of sight of any of the snipers. The trees would serve her purpose nicely.
She eased around the side of the house and made her way between the giant tree trunks into a swath of thick shadow. Her skin crawling at the unnaturalness of it, she rose by inches until she was standing up, fully exposed between the two trees, visible to the house, but blocked on each side by the looming tree trunks.
Down by her hip, she eased her fingers into a signal indicating eight hostile shooters close by. After a few seconds, she transitioned to the signal for incoming hostiles. Then she flashed the signal for twelve shooters and the direction they were coming from.
She’d just have to assume someone inside had seen it. That vaunted Medusa unity of thought would come through. It had to. If not, Tom, and potentially all of her teammates, were toast. They had to get out of the cottage, and soon.
And she knew just the thing to help make that happen.
“What the…” Casey exclaimed under her breath.
“What is it?” Tom and Aleesha responded simultaneously. He looked over at the Medusa team leader and shrugged. Great minds.
“I’ve got someone standing up and deliberately showing themselves out here!”
Tom lurched toward the window, but Aleesha put a restraining hand on his arm. He shook it off impatiently.
Then she murmured, “It could be a trap to lure you into showing yourself. You stay right here.”
He cursed under his breath. He was really getting sick of this business of not putting himself in harm’s way. He wasn’t some sissy in need of coddling. He could handle himself, dammit! But at this rate, he wasn’t ever going to get the chance to do that. He’d been relegated to the status of useless rich guy. And he was hating every last second of it.
“It’s Paige,” Cho announced from her perch by the window on the other side of the front door. “She’s signaling. She confirms eight armed hostiles in the woods.”
Tom closed his eyes tightly as his stomach dropped to the floor. Paige was out there crawling around in the woods with a bunch of assassins? Taking head counts of them, no less? She was going to get herself killed! His pulse spiked until his temples pounded with pain. His urge to lunge through the front door, grab her and throw her to the ground out of the line of fire was all but impossible to curb.
Then Cho swore. The whole team went still at that. Apparently, she wasn’t usually one for big outbursts.
Casey clarified grimly, “Paige just signaled that there are twelve more hostiles incoming from the south, estimated time of arrival, five to seven minutes.”
Jeez. No wonder Cho had sworn. Eight guys they could handle, no sweat. But twenty? Unless the twenty were armed with no more than BB guns, this was about to get ugly real damned soon.
“We’ve got to get the principal out of here,” Aleesha announced.
“The principal’s standing right here,” he snapped. “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m completely witless.”
Aleesha’s smile flashed in the shadows by the front door. “So noted.”
Casey spoke up, “Most of the shooters and that incoming force are clustered on the south side of the property. It stands to reason that we’d break north and flee that way.”
“You’ll run into a rock outcropping about a hundred yards due north of here that will be nigh unto impassable,” Tom interjected. “It’s climbable with technical equipment, but I wouldn’t want to try free-climbing it. We’d have to swim around it. With that many shooters out there, we’d be dead meat in the water without scuba gear. And I don’t see any of that lying around here.” He thought for a moment. “What about barging out the front door and heading east to the main road? We’d be running across the majority of the shooters’ fields of fire, which will drop their accuracy by a bunch, and the road’s not too far away in that direction.”
“We don’t have a car positioned up there,” Monica pointed out.
He nodded. “True. But where’s Paige’s car? She didn’t drive up to the front door, and no way did she walk here from the hotel.”
Aleesha frowned. “You said she’s got a MINI Cooper, right? It will only fit about four of us, particularly if we’re having to shoot from inside it. But we could do a jogging phalanx à la Secret Service. We can stuff you inside with a driver and someone else to lie on top of you, and the rest of us can run alongside and form a human wall.”
He frowned. “You’d be completely exposed. Somebody would get shot for sure.”
Aleesha’s retort was desert dry. “That’s what bodyguards do, bro.”
Yeah, but it didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Paige is signaling again. She says to come to her position on her command,” Casey piped up.
Ha. He’d been right. She was standing due east of the house. But then the rest of it sank in. She wanted them to join her out there? For what purpose? Tom frowned. “What is she up to?”
Aleesha frowned back. “No idea. Any guesses, anybody?”
Monica spoke up. “She knows we’re in here or she wouldn’t be showing herself like that and signaling to us. And, she knows we’re about to be trapped and outgunned. She’s telling us to get the hell out of Dodge. I’ll bet she has something in mind to help us make a break for it.”
“But what?” Tom replied tensely.
“Only one way to find out,” Monica replied. “We run out the door when she says to and see what happens.”
Tom accused, “I know her. She’s planning to do something stupid. Are you going to just let her? She’ll get herself killed!”
“She’s Medusa trained,” Aleesha replied soothingly. “She won’t do anything stupid. Risky maybe. Heroic maybe. But not stupid.”
“We Medusas don’t die easily. She’ll be okay,” Casey added.
He frowned, deeply disturbed. Big words, but he highly doubted their truth. Paige darn well would do something suicidal, particularly if she felt responsible for him being in danger. It was one of her most lovable—and exasperating—traits.
Paige didn’t stop to think about the insanity of what she was about to do. It was the only logical choice, really. Okay, so she stood a statistically high chance of being shot or killed. But that’s what being a Medusa was about. And it was going to take something spectacul
ar to turn the tide building rapidly against them.
It was anybody’s guess what the shooters had told their police comrades. Probably something along the lines of armed and dangerous criminals being holed up in a cottage and prepared to go down shooting.
Vanessa Blake said it over and over: find a way to turn your greatest weakness into your greatest strength. The Medusas’ greatest weakness right now was their inability to distinguish legitimate police from hired assassins wearing police uniforms.
But that could also work against the police themselves. If they commenced shooting at hostile targets in the woods, only to realize they were shooting at their fellow policemen, she suspected all of the police would freeze up and have no idea what to do.
She’d lay odds their radios would be jammed with men requesting instructions and clarifications, cease fire orders being frantically relayed, and if she was lucky, even more frantic reports of policemen down. And from her own experience working with a close-knit team of individuals who routinely put themselves in harm’s way, that call of men down would reflexively strike terror into the hearts of every cop out there tonight—good guy and bad guy alike.
Yep, weakness into strength. Tom and the Medusas’ best shot at escape was a major outbreak of chaos and confusion among the police.
Now. How to get them shooting at each other? She had a little bit of detonation cord in her pack, but she hadn’t been allowed to bring any high explosives into the country. Not that it mattered. She didn’t have enough time to set up a daisy chain of booby traps before the main police force would converge on the cottage. But she did have her Glock pistol and a half-dozen clips of ammo. It should be enough for her purposes.
She crept behind the first shooter, circling well wide of him in the woods. He was alert and wary, his head swiveling constantly, taking in everything around him. Drat. He wouldn’t work for what she had in mind. Maybe the next guy would be sloppier. He wasn’t.
