Crazy Love

by Tara Janzen

  Women, he’d discovered at a young age, were no physical match for a man. It was ridiculous, really, how easy they were to break. Not ones like Skeeter Bang, which he knew was one reason he disliked her so intensely, but the smaller ones, like Gillian Pentycote, were pretty much at a man’s mercy—not that there would be much mercy here tonight.

  A smile slid across his face.

  Not much mercy at all.

  He loosened his tie and checked his watch. He guessed it would take about two minutes for Dr. Souk to find out what Ms. Pentycote had been doing in Hart and Bang’s hotel room, and after that the real fun would begin.

  RED Dog.

  The name raced through Gillian’s brain for about the millionth time—Red Dog.

  It sounded cool, sounded strong, like the name of a steady person who could handle herself.

  Red Dog.

  She wondered if that’s why Skeeter Bang had given it to her, so she’d have something to hold on to if things got tough.

  Because things were tough for her right now, terribly tough. She was strapped into a dental chair in a white-tiled room that was so bright it hurt her eyes, and her heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and she could hardly breathe, and she had more than enough imagination to see where this was going.

  There was a drain in the floor.

  She’d seen it on the way in, when they’d dragged her into the horrifying white room, and her skin had gone instantly cold.

  She was still so cold, terrified, trembling all over, and she couldn’t stop, and no one seemed to care or even notice. Certainly not the guards standing around the room, or the iron-faced man in the cheap suit and loose tie who had been staring at her with unrepentant disgust since her arrival, and certainly not the pathetically thin, sallow-faced Asian man in the white lab coat who was picking and choosing his way through dozens of stainless steel instruments and laying them out on a white cloth on a steel table with wheels.

  And the syringes. She didn’t want to think about the syringes. They were lined up, too, some filled with a clear liquid, others with red, and a few with blue. She didn’t know why, but the thought of being injected with the colored liquids terrified her more than the thought of being injected with the clear liquid. Somehow, they looked like they would hurt very, very badly going in, especially the red one.

  Or maybe the blue looked worse.

  It was hard to tell with so much sweat running into her eyes, running down her face, making her damp in some places and downright wet in others. The white room was ice-cold, and she was sweating, and freezing, and shaking, and wanting so badly to just open her mouth and scream.

  But she couldn’t open her mouth, and she couldn’t scream, and she was trying not to think about either of those things, because it just made her want to do them even more.

  The leather gag was so tight between her teeth, pulling at the sides of her mouth. The metal clamps were so tight around her wrists and ankles, cutting into her skin. The light was so bright, hurting her eyes.

  Red Dog.

  The man in the white lab coat turned then and began pushing the steel table over to the dental chair, the wheels squeaking, the instruments rattling.

  The iron-faced man had called him Dr. Souk.

  Doctor. He didn’t look like a doctor. He looked like a nightmare, a maniac, his glasses thick and dirty, his black hair the same, his lab coat stained. He pulled the table to a stop at the side of the chair and gave her an unreadable look. Unreadable except in its utter disregard for her as a human being. She was an organism to him, a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood lab experiment with enough sentience to fear and respond. His eyes were black, and cold, and intensely calculating, absorbed with the small pinch of her skin he’d taken between his fingers.

  Red Dog had made love with an angel.

  She watched him choose a syringe, the blue one. She watched him set the tip of the needle to that small pinch of her skin.

  That’s what she would think about—oh, God, help her, oh, God—Red Dog and the angel boy.

  She felt the first prick.

  …and the angel.

  She felt the first sting of the liquid.

  …angel…angel…angel…

  And then she felt the pain.

  CHAPTER

  25

  SKEETER WAS not going to buy a Honda Civic.

  Ever.

  But Red Dog’s had done the trick.

  Travis had picked them up at the Gas & Grub, and she’d driven the baby POS to the very limits of its engineered capabilities to get them here.

  They were parked on a hill overlooking Negara’s ten acres of prime U.S. real estate, gearing up out of the trunk with all the goodies she’d stuffed in her rucksack. It was a free country, and Skeeter would fight to keep it that way, but it ticked her off that the likes of Hamzah Negara owned a piece of Virginia. Indonesian warlords in Prince William County—what the hell was next, she wondered.

  Unfortunately, she knew the answer—Indonesian warlords with Gillian Pentycote in their clutches.

  She took a breath, reminded herself to stay calm, to stay focused, to not give in to the wave of panic trying to wash over her.

  “I don’t like the looks of that,” Dylan said, pointing to an outcropping of trees two hundred meters to the north of the mansion. “Something’s up.”

  A glow was emanating from the center of the outcropping, as if it were lit from within, or as if there were a building hidden in the middle of it.

  Skeeter didn’t like it, either. She hated it, but unlike Dylan, she figured she knew exactly what was up. Her “spidey sense” was humming in every direction with what was up. She glanced at Travis, and worked faster, choosing one of the HK UMP45s over the sniper rifle, and keeping her thoughts to herself. This was going to be close-in work all the way.

  Travis had a bra strap hanging out of his pants pocket, and she’d noticed an empty condom wrapper on the console. Yes, sirree, it had been a busy, busy night all around, and if there was one thing she knew, it was that Travis James did not want to know that his very recent lover was putting out a one hundred percent pure vibe of sheer terror. Skeeter could feel it. She could smell it, fear, sharp and acrid and female, and so help her God, somebody was going to pay.

  Goddammit.

  She was sweating, like Red Dog had to be. She could almost hear the woman’s brain going snap, crackle, pop.

  What in the holy hell was going on in that building in the trees—and was it the same thing that had gone on with Dylan?

  “This feels bad,” Travis said, zipping into one of the tactical vests she’d had Red Dog load at the hotel.

  “It is.” She finished zipping her own tac vest.

  “Let’s move out.” Dylan, typically, was carrying one thing, a .45, but at least this time he’d taken all the extra magazines.

  WELL, so far, the night was a bit of a disappointment, Royce silently conceded. Gillian Pentycote had passed out. Just like that. Without a whimper.

  Well, not much of a whimper. Not enough to do him any good.

  Negara had come in, taken one look at the slip of a woman, and left again, pure disgust on his face.

  Royce didn’t blame the man. Ms. Pentycote wasn’t Skeeter Bang. She wasn’t enough bait to draw in the big fish, and she wasn’t nearly the challenge Dylan Hart had been. Hart had fought. He’d not only fought the guards, he’d fought Souk, he’d fought the drugs, and Royce had to admit, he’d done a damn fine job of all of it.

  Of course, in the end, he’d given everything up. Well, almost everything. The damned White Rook was still a mystery.

  And the woman in the chair was a disappointment. The whole night was a disappointment. He’d played his Godwin trump card, and Hart had still eluded him. Skeeter Bang had eluded him. Two Indonesian pirates had died at Whitfield’s, which should give the authorities something to chew on for the next few years, and he doubted if Negara would hear from the men he’d sent to Denver ever again.

  Those boys
were gone. Royce felt it in his bones.

  Gillian Pentycote wasn’t going to last much longer, either. Dr. Souk was trying to revive her, but she’d gone completely limp. No challenge, no torture, no pain, no watching her squirm and scream. Souk had all but killed her with his first volley. It wasn’t like the bastard to be so damn careless.

  Wait a minute.

  Her fingers had moved.

  Royce pushed himself off the counter and walked closer to the chair. Maybe this was going to get interesting after all. Souk had taken the gag off, so if the woman did come up with something to say, or another whimper or two, at least they’d all be able to hear it.

  Staring down at her, he waited, not particularly patiently, for something else to happen. When it did, he grinned.

  She clenched her hand into a fist. Tiny blue veins stood out all along the tender inside of her arm. Then she made a strangled sound.

  That was good, he thought. Whatever was in the blue syringes hadn’t outright killed her. She was coming around.

  A spasm hit her next, making her jerk from one side of the chair to the other, her legs going stiff, her head going back, and his grin broadened. Dr. Souk hadn’t lost his touch.

  The doctor walked back over to his supply cabinet and pulled out a few more items. When nothing else happened with the woman for the next couple of minutes, Royce decided to help things along a bit.

  Raising his arm, he backhanded her across the face, a blow that snapped her head to one side, but garnered him no other reaction—dammit.

  Then her eyes popped open.

  For all of five long seconds, she held him with her wild gaze, and then she opened her mouth and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  AGAINST Dylan’s direct order, Skeeter was already flat out on the run when she heard Gillian scream.

  Goddamn, she thought. Oh, goddamn.

  Travis was pacing her, and they both increased their speed, breaking every hostage-rescue rule in the book. Speed and violence of action were supposed to happen after the team was in place, after the operators had infiltrated, gathered what information they could about their enemies, and readied themselves for the takedown.

  Skeeter was starting the party early.

  She dropped to one knee behind a tree at the edge of the clearing around the two-story building and swung up her subgun. Floodlights illuminated the grounds, giving her all the advantage she needed. She dropped the guard on the south side of the building with a suppressed burst as Travis took out the man standing in front of a set of double doors.

  No other movement was visible, and the two of them moved out. With so much light on the outside of the building, they didn’t waste any time getting inside. They slid in the door, and Skeeter took out the man inside with a quick single suppressed shot. A number of doors lined the main hall, but with Gillian still screaming and other people yelling, there was no mistaking which room they were in.

  The screams were awful, unbearable.

  Skeeter felt Travis pull a flash-bang off the back of her tac vest, and she let him move forward. She would follow him into the room, covering the left side as he cleared to the right.

  Dylan, she knew, would remain outside in the shadows, hidden in the tree line, his pistol trained on the doors. Anyone who tried to get in the building would never make it past his Glock. Anyone who tried to get out, besides her, Travis, and Gillian, would have to cross through the same deadly line of fire—and they wouldn’t make it, either.

  Speed was of the absolute essence. If reinforcements arrived from the mansion, the rescue mission could easily turn into a standoff, with all the odds on Negara’s side.

  Travis threw open the door to the room and tossed the concussion grenade inside—and all hell broke loose with a blinding flash and an earsplitting bang. They cleared the room in seconds, acquiring targets almost instantaneously, one after another, until the tally was filled—four guards dead, a man in a white lab coat dead, Gillian still screaming, and standing over her, a man Skeeter had instantly identified and not shot. In the split second of his reprieve, he’d dropped behind a dental chair bolted to the floor, and Skeeter had signaled to Travis to hold his fire.

  But all the while, her brain was working at light speed and coming up with answers that made too much sense not to be acted upon.

  Dylan’s capture in Jakarta had been an inside job. The Godwin job had been a setup. Indonesian pirates at Steele Street was nothing short of bizarre—and all of it could have been arranged by the CIA, or by someone who had recently left the CIA, someone like Tony Royce, who had plenty of motivation for destroying SDF.

  Travis had moved toward Gillian even as Skeeter made her own move toward the chair, taking small steps, making sure her feet never crossed, moving fast, her gun up, ready. God, the room reeked of negative psychic energy, of horror and death. But her concentration was all on Royce, until the hair rose on the back of her neck.

  She swung around, her finger pulling up slack on the subgun’s trigger and squeezing off a round. The Jai Traon coming through the door went down, and she was hit by someone from behind.

  Twisting, she dragged her combat knife out of its sheath on her vest and slashed upward, making contact. The sling on her subgun tightened around her left arm, leaving her to fight one-handed, until she made her second slash, and her attacker screamed—Tony Royce, blood gushing from a head wound, his hands over one side of his face, covering his right eye as he backed away.

  Travis had one job during the fight—get Gillian and get out.

  Another pirate came through the door, and Skeeter pulled her sidearm and shot him dead. Shouts from outside told her their time was up.

  Scrambling to her feet, she ran from the room, covering Travis’s retreat. He was carrying Red Dog and running sure and steady for the trees. Dylan fell in with them as they passed his position, while behind them, more and more men from the mansion were racing toward the building.

  CHAPTER

  26

  TONY ROYCE, Dylan thought, stepping aside as another CIA agent crossed by him to get to the other side of the hall. The small building on Negara’s estate was crawling with agents and operatives from half a dozen agencies housed on both sides of the Potomac. Most of them were in the hallway, looking through the windows, while a couple of specialists were inside the white room, collecting evidence. There was even an older guy from the State Department, the last person Dylan would have expected to see.

  He watched the white-haired man write something down on a piece of paper and hand it to his aide. Then the State guy looked up and caught his gaze.

  Dylan understood.

  The mansion and grounds had been abandoned by the time the authorities had arrived. The warlord had moved quickly. The sun was barely breaking the horizon. With General Grant out of the country, it had taken Dylan longer than he was happy with to make contact with the kinds of people who could expedite and execute a full-scale takeover of an exclusive estate deeded to a foreign corporation with strong ties to a previous administration. Especially since it had taken a ridiculous amount of time to make it clear that the abduction and subsequent torture of one small woman on the estate grounds had anything to do with national security.

  But even the lowest of the official low understood the importance of apprehending anyone involved with the fiasco at Senator Arthur Whitfield’s reception for the British ambassador. Of course, the only crime against the state committed at Whitfield’s had been committed by Dylan, a fact he was keeping to himself.

  It was a complex situation, the irony of which was not lost on him.

  In an even more bizarre twist, the rumor running through this crowd of alphabet-soup agents was that Vice President Hallaway’s fingerprints had been found at Whitfield’s, on the biometric lock to the senator’s safe.

  Skeeter had obviously been a busy girl and was finding all sorts of uses for her newfound “fingerprint” collection. Grant should have known better than to give her something she could really get herse
lf in trouble with. On the other hand, given what Dylan knew about the names on the Godwin file, which included Hallaway’s, he figured the whole damn, crazy night had come full circle. Except for all the bad guys getting away. Negara had flown the coop, and Tony Royce was not dead on the floor.

  Skeeter had failed to deliver a killing strike, and she wasn’t happy about it. He’d been with her and Travis at the hospital while the doctors had been working on Gillian Pentycote, and they’d gone over every detail of the attack, analyzing her moves, deciding what she could have done differently, how she could have killed Royce in the split seconds allotted for the job.

  Tony Royce. A lot of things made sense now that hadn’t before, including, possibly, what had happened to J. T. Chronopolous in Colombia. J. T. and Creed had been taking up the slack on a CIA operation when they’d been ambushed, and Dylan had often wondered how much of that disaster could be laid at the Agency’s door.

  He was guessing plenty.

  Tony Royce was going down, if Dylan had to track him to the ends of the earth, and Negara was going down with him—all Dylan needed were the orders, and there were ways to get those.

  He wasn’t a rogue, and he wasn’t a vigilante, and none of what he did was personal. Every dead bastard SDF had left in Colombia had been authorized and covered by the mission’s Rules of Engagement. Tonight had been the same. He’d been tasked with stealing seventeen million dollars for the U.S. government and given plenty of latitude to accomplish the goal—and he had.