Release Me If You Can

by Christina C Jones

  She lifted her shoulders. “He… wants me to keep it. Really wants me to keep it.”

  “And what do you wanna do, cher?”

  Dropping her gaze, she ran her tongue over her lips, then brushed her mass of hair back from her face. When she looked up again, her eyes were glossy as she shook her head. “I’m so confused, Q. I don’t want to bring a child into all of this mess, but… I wanna keep my baby. I mean… anything could happen. What if I never get another chance?”

  Quentin stood up, then took a seat beside Naomi on the bed. “I can’t give you an answer on what you should do,” he said, pulling her into an embrace against his chest. “But… I wanna encourage you not to make your decision based on fear. If you want this… don’t let it become another thing, another happy experience that Wolfe has taken from you. Okay?”

  With a deep sigh, Naomi pulled back to look at Quentin’s face, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Good,” Quentin said, planting a quick kiss on Naomi’s forehead before he stood, grabbing his phone from where he’d left it on the desk. “I need to get down to the war room, get started on running through these files again. I guess at the briefing this afternoon, we can tell everybody about Royale.”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. “That bitch. Yeah. The sooner we get her brought in, the better. She’s always been unstable, but there’s no telling what her crazy ass might be up to now.”

  Following her to the door, Quentin opened it for her to step out first. “Yeah, I’m thinking maybe once we figure out where she is, we send Inez and Kendall. They can—.”

  Just as Quentin and Naomi exited his room, Renata appeared at the top of the stairs. She glanced back and forth between he and Naomi, and Quentin could practically see the wrong impression forming in her eyes.

  “G’Morning cher,” he said with a smile, hoping that his warm greeting would help show he wasn’t hiding anything. Naomi laughed, shook her head, then walked up to Renata and spoke something Quentin couldn’t make out into her ear.

  Renata blushed as her lips parted, but Naomi just smiled, turning to shoot a wink at Quentin before she disappeared into another part of the house.

  ten.

  “Bets on who gets hands on her first?”

  Kendall’s deep baritone, edged slightly with a musical Caribbean accent, broke through the silence in the car, pulling Inez from her thoughts.

  Two days had passed since Quentin and Naomi informed the team that their old friend Tomiko was claiming responsibility for the attacks. This was Kendall and Inez's second day of staking out the hip, semi-luxury apartment in the newly rebuilt part of the city Q and Ren had tracked Tomiko to, and Inez was sick of watching and waiting — she wanted action.

  They'd spotted their target the day before, dressed in all black and apparently in charge of the rotation of people she kept with her. That day, Tomiko looked to be handing out orders before climbing into a black SUV. Inez wanted to grab her then, but Kendall had been more cautious.

  Patience, he warned. So they waited, all day in the car, armed with enough weapons and ammo to outfit a small army until Q and Ren had successfully gotten into the security system and surveillance cameras so they wouldn’t be going in blind. They were skilled, but not crazy — neither had a death wish.

  With that resource — the camera feeds — in hand, they were able to see who had been coming and going, and determine who would be in the apartment and when. Tonight, they'd seen Tomiko come in, but hadn't seen her leave.

  It was time.

  Inez looked up, right into Kendall’s dark eyes, and had to catch her breath.

  Damn he's fine.

  “I don't make unfair bets.” She winked at him, then cast her gaze downward, pretending she needed to check the gun strapped to her calf, even though she'd already done so three times. It wasn’t that Kendall made her nervous, not at all. It was the other sensation he set off that made her avoid his eyes.

  It had been a long time since anyone had set off the insane, wild level of desire in Inez that Kendall did. In another time, or perhaps just different circumstances, she would have used that towering, powerful body of his as her own personal playground. Kendall was — to Inez — absolute male perfection. At first, second, and third glance, everything about him screamed danger. Smooth, deep mahogany skin, punctuated here and there by unexplained scars, some ugly, all sexy as hell. Piercing onyx eyes, harshly — but still handsomely — chiseled features, and an unnerving affinity for intense stares, quiet contemplation, and sudden, confident action. But… Inez knew that behind the dangerous exterior, he was a man who enjoyed and cared about his friends, and looked for fun. He knew how to flirt. And he had that damned accent. And he was... a fellow federal agent, albeit from a different agency.

  No.

  Nope.

  Not at all.

  Never again.

  The last time she'd taken it there with a colleague, she ended up wishing she'd just killed him instead. Eventually…she did.

  Probably shouldn’t count on getting away with that twice.

  Perhaps it wasn't fair to draw such a comparison between Kendall and he-who-didn't-deserve-a-name, but... that was her prerogative. She'd been misled by a handsome face, a big dick, and a badge before. Not again.

  “What do you mean, unfair? You say that as if you know you could beat me.”

  Inez looked up with a smirk. “Well...”

  “Oh,” Kendall laughed. “Cocky, are we? What, you think I can't handle you?”

  Again, Inez had to bite her lip. As much as she may have wanted to, she couldn't ignore or deny the heat his little innuendo created between her thighs. But... She knew how to create heat of her own.

  “I don't doubt that,” she said, dropping her voice to a lower, sexier timbre as she leaned over him, practically into his lap to retrieve the entry keycard to the building from the pocket where she'd seen him place it earlier. When she drew back, Inez let her hand drag over his lap, lingering for just a moment at the bulge in his pants before she sat up again. “Too bad you'll never get that chance. Let's go.”

  Before Kendall could respond, Inez opened her door and climbed out of the delivery van they were using as a cover vehicle. She took a second to take a deep lungful of the cool night air before she pulled on her mask to obscure her face.

  That's what you get for trying to play, she scolded herself silently. Now she was just more turned on. She hadn't expected his bulge to be so... bulging.

  Dios mío.

  “Ready?” Kendall asked, from right beside her, making her flinch. She was always surprised by how such a large, powerful man like him could move around so deftly, without making a sound.

  “Yeah.” She took another deep breath, then unholstered her gun, bringing it in front of her in a two handed grip as she followed Kendall to the back door of the building. Silently, they made their way into the building and up three flights of stairs, stopping on either side of the door that would lead them to where Tomiko was.

  Inez pressed her ear to the wall, listening for sounds on the other side as Kendall carefully slid a tiny, wired camera under the door. He moved it around carefully, watching the screen connected to it for any signs of movement. When he found none, he pulled the camera out and pulled it away, silently caught Inez’s attention, then nodded.

  She dropped to her knees in front of the door, swiftly picked the lock, then stood and placed a high-powered magnet on the door. Little by little, she inched it up, right, just slightly down, until she had it in the right place. Slowly, she turned the magnet, allowing herself the indulgence of a smile for just a moment when the tumblers of the deadbolt slid out of place, settling with a quiet click as the door unlocked.

  With a nod to Kendall, she stepped back, stored the lock-picking kit in one of her pockets, then waited. In her ear, she faintly heard the tapping of keys from Quentin and Renata as they did… whatever they were doing. A few seconds later, a low but firm go made Kendall reach for the doorknob, look up at Inez for confir
mation, then soundlessly open the door.

  Inez went in first, weapon pointed, sharp eyed, even in the semi-darkness, as she scanned the room for armed targets. They only needed to bring Royale in alive. Anybody else — especially if she saw a gun — was fair game. She didn’t have to look back to know that Kendall was behind her, providing cover and doing his own room clearing as they made their way through the large apartment, room by room, finding… no one.

  The apartment was unnaturally cold, a sharp contrast against the summer heat that awaited them outside. Although her sleeves were long, they were thin, and Inez shivered as they skillfully made their way through the apartment. By the time they made it to the last room — the main bedroom — an uneasy feeling had settled into Inez’s stomach. Where the hell was everybody? Another cursory glance at Kendall, and she opened the door.

  She went left, Kendall went right, moving through the room with precision. The first thing she noticed was that the bed, along with the rest of the room, was empty— so again…where the hell was everyone? They quickly checked the closets, and then with an unspoken agreement, made their way to the attached bathroom.

  As soon as the door was open, and the lights attached to the ends of their guns fell upon the tiled bathtub, the reason for the temperature in the apartment, as well as the loud, steady hum of the bathroom exhaust vent became clear. From where she was, Inez counted at least four bodies piled into the tub. She recognized the faces from the two days she and Kendall had been staked out, but… no Tomiko.

  Inez started to take another step closer to the tub, just to be sure, but Kendall snatched her back, lifting her feet off the floor.

  “Qué carajo, Ken?! What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, struggling against him.

  She may as well have been fighting a brick wall for all the good her tussling did, but Kendall drew her into his body, lowering his mouth to her ear. “Stop. You were about to trip something.”

  Reluctantly, Inez went still, then looked down at the floor to see the razor thin wire, set just about an inch off the ground, that had gone completely unnoticed by her. Kendall lowered her to the ground, then met her eyes with his. Without looking away from her, he raised his gun in the direction of the bathtub and emptied his clip with silenced shots.

  “Just in case,” he said, seamlessly loaded a new clip, then turned out of the bathroom, taking care to shine his light on the floor, checking for other tripwires as he went.

  She had no idea what would’ve happened if she’d touched that wire, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been glitter falling from the sky. Was the trap intended for them, or just whoever found the bodies? Based on the cold temperature, and bodies stored in the bathroom, obviously there was some attempt to conceal their presence, and prolong the time before someone noticed the inevitable smell of decaying human flesh… but to what end? She felt safe in assuming that Tomiko had committed the murders herself, keeping some of her team to help with whatever her plan was.

  What was the plan?

  And why hadn’t they seen her leave the apartment?

  Inez blew out a deep breath as she watched Kendall’s imposing figure travel through the bedroom. She hadn’t stepped out of the bathroom yet, but a flash of something in the corner of the room caught her eye. Easing back so that she was out of sight, she watched as the closet door crept open, then raised her weapon as the barrel of a gun came into view on the other side.

  Kendall!

  Without giving it a second thought, Inez fired once, then a second time through the closet door. The resounding thump of a body hitting the floor provided no comfort to Inez as she swiftly moved out of the bathroom. The zip of her silenced gunshots had caught Kendall’s attention as well, and he was right beside her when she came to rest against the wall where the closet was.

  “Where did he come from?” Kendall mumbled, gesturing toward the dark figure bleeding onto the hardwood floors.

  Inez shook her head. “No idea. We cleared this closet already. Nobody was in there.”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Quentin’s drawl rang in their ears, reminding them he was there. “We don’t have eyes in the apartment. If you need help, you’ve gotta let us know.”

  “Do you have the blueprints pulled up? We’re in the back bedroom, beside the closet. Tell me what’s on the other side of this wall, Q.” Kendall glanced at Inez, who nodded. They were thinking the same thing.

  There were a few moments of intense silence as they waited. Before Quentin could give them an answer, Inez felt rather than heard something heavy move against the floor of the empty closet. As if by some prior agreement, she and Kendall both switched off the lights on their guns, and held their breath as they waited for what would happen when the newcomer discovered the dead body on the floor.

  There was no gasp, or scream, even a sharp intake of breath, but Inez could sense the shift in energy. A moment later, gloved hands, holding up a gun came into view through the hinged crack of the door. Inez raised her own weapon, but froze for a moment as cold, piercing blue eyes met hers through that crack. They narrowed, and he turned to her, but before he or Inez could fire, the air behind her crackled with force. The following second, intruder #2 hit the ground.

  “Nez, Ken, the apartment on the other side of the wall you’re on is occupied by an elderly couple, and you’re separated by a foot of concrete. The apartment behind this one though… the closet wall is shared, and there’s no concrete separation.”

  Inez looked back, exchanging a glance with Kendall. The new information confirmed her suspicion. A nod of corroboration was their only discussion before Inez pulled the closet door all the way back to the wall, giving them a full view of the dead assailants. They stepped deftly over the bodies and into the closet, switching their lights on again to see in the dark.

  This time, because they were looking for it, they noticed the fine crack in the back wall of the closet. The hinges were probably on the other side, out of view. Heart racing, veins pumping with adrenaline, Inez pressed her back into the wall, then turned to Kendall.

  “Guess we’re gonna get some action after all, partner.” Her whispered words were further muffled by the mask over her face, but Kendall gave a low chuckle in response.

  He pushed a finger through one of the belt loops of her dark jeans, dragging her a little closer. “So this is what it takes to get you hot and bothered? Guns and danger?”

  Inez shrugged, willing herself not to tremble or moan at the feeling of being pressed into his broad chest. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all, Sexy. Just… something to keep in mind.”

  She couldn’t see his mouth, but she could tell he was probably smiling behind his mask as she pulled away. Inez pushed her aroused state into the shadows of her mind, allowing the job to take the forefront again as Kendall moved in front of her.

  Raising her weapon, she watched as Kendall lifted his foot, pressed it against the wall, and pushed hard to reveal the opening the assailants had used. Kendall went through first, clearing the closet, then moving into the bedroom as Inez stepped through as well.

  She was just stepping out of the closet when Kendall fired his first shot, which was followed by the distinctive thump of someone hitting the floor. They both stayed quiet, waiting to see if they would hear footsteps, or if someone else would pop out of the woodwork. When nothing happened, they finished clearing the room, then headed for the door that led to the main area of the apartment.

  They moved through the apartment silently, methodically, eliminating armed attackers as they went. When they made it to the front, they did another sweep, then checked the other apartment again as well, but there was still no sign of Tomiko.

  Nostrils flared, Inez stomped angrily back into the kitchen of the apartment, where a lone attacker sat, tied to a chair. “Where is she?” Inez asked, kneeling in front of him. The man fought violently against his restraints, but Inez didn’t flinch.

  First of all, there was no way he could brea
k through the plastic roping she’d used to tie him up — he’d cut his wrists and ankles beyond repair against her impeccable, secure knotting. Kendall had his gun aimed for a shot right between the man’s eyes, and even if he somehow made it through all of that… Inez was trained in six different international hand to hand combat styles, and armed with seven different ways to kill him in one move — not including her hands. She had nothing to worry about.

  “You can fight against that rope all you want. You’re not going anywhere, doing anything, seeing anyone until you answer my question. Where. Is. Tomiko?”

  “Kiss my ass, bitch!” the man snapped back, his eyes cold and narrowed as he stared at Inez. Behind her mask, she smiled.

  “Besar el culo, huh?” She giggled as she paced back and forth in front of him. “Besar… el… culo… that’s so rude, you know? I really can’t stand it when people are rude to me. It just makes me so… ugh!” She sucked her teeth. “Besar el culo. Do you talk to your mother like that, with that filthy mouth?”

  She went over to the sink, grabbing a bottle of dishwashing liquid.

  “Such a dirty, dirty mouth to talk to a lady. Let’s work on that before we move along, huh?”

  Standing behind him, Inez grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s hair and yanked it back. While his mouth was open in protest, she poured a long squeeze of the dishwashing liquid down his throat, then stepped back as he spit out what he could, coughing and sputtering.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked, choking.

  Standing well out of range of his spitting, Inez propped her hands on her hips. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that you still haven’t told me where Tomiko is. I really, really think you should. You see… that itching and burning in your throat and chest now, the way your lungs feel like they’re on fire from ingesting that soap… I was just playing with you. That was just me having a little fun, because you disrespected me. I haven’t even started doing my job yet, and trust me… that’s going to hurt a whole lot more.”