by Mina Carter
The sound of a hammer clicking above her stopped her cold. She looked up and saw a murderous Morrow holding a snub-nosed revolver trained at her head; a backup weapon she hadn’t counted on. He took a moment to press his thumb against his nose to straighten it with a muffled crack. “You’ll regret doing that. I’ll make sure you do.”
He swung, and the next thing Rollie felt was incredible pain along her jaw as she landed on her ass. Morrow grabbed her by the hair and yanked her toward the van.
“Kill the merc and move out.”
Rollie watched the scene unfold as though it were a DVD on slow replay. Day fired back, yelling something at her. At least, she assumed he was yelling. His mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of gunfire and the roaring of her heart in her ears.
Morrow yanked on her hair again, bringing tears of pain to her eyes. She kept her gaze riveted on Day as he fought to get to her. He returned fire from behind the Charger, lethal shots that had Morrow cursing foully beside her.
Then it happened. Day leaned out of cover for just a second too long, and a bullet found its mark. His big body jerked as he was hit, vivid scarlet splashing across his shirt and spreading.
“Day!”
The scream of anguish came from the depths of her soul. Apparently, Morrow had had enough of her noise and swung yet again. This time her pain was quickly overwhelmed with blackness and then…nothing.
Chapter Eight
He hurt. Day lay in the dusty pavement where the fake FBI agents had left him, one kick to his prone body convincing them he was dead or dying, and listened as the engines faded into the distance. He’d get up in a moment, he told himself. He just needed a second to get his breath back, and then he’d deal with his arm.
Consciousness faded in and out. Each time he became aware, pain greeted him…and something else. Something important he needed to do. He opened his eyes and stared up at the sun, which beat down on his weary body, wincing as it blinded him. Groaning, he tried to roll to his side to get away, but agony sliced through him and blackness claimed him again.
“Dayton Vann, you idle son of a bitch, wake up.”
Day flinched at the slap on the side of his face. A shadow of a figure stood over him, blotting out the sun. Something pushed him over to his back.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, boy,” said a gruff voice. “Ain’t in the mood to get annoyed.” Everything swam back as he recognized the voice. Hayden Edge. Who else would treat a gunshot victim like a sack of potatoes?
“I just got shot, man,” he croaked. “Cut me a little slack.”
“Stop moving, goddammit, and let me look.” Edge reached over and checked the injury. “You can stop whining now, you pansy. It’s just a flesh wound.” He produced a field kit and a roll of bandages.
Day blinked as he looked up, trying to clear the dust from his eyes. “A flesh wound?” he asked in disbelief. “I was hit at least three...arrrgh.” He broke off as Edge decided that it was an appropriate moment to dig into one of his wounds after a bullet. “Fucking hell, Edge, give a guy some warning, would you?” he asked when he got his breath back.
“Yeah, yeah.” Edge checked the bullet. “Full metal jacket. You’re lucky these aren’t hollow point.” The flow of blood from the most serious of the three hits stopped as Edge finished his basic treatment. “Not gonna qualify me for a fancy M.D., but it’ll hold till we get you to the safe house and get the rest of them bullets out of you.” Edge shifted the cheroot on his mouth to the other side before reaching down to help Day up. “Okay, up you go, boy.”
Day grunted as Edge hauled him to his feet, where he swayed as his body adjusted to the change in position. His head swam. Blackness threatened to claim him again.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Edge shoved a solid shoulder into Day’s uninjured side and held him upright as Day struggled to stay conscious. “You stay awake and tell me about this little problem and why people been trying to kill you. Not that they need a reason. People been trying to kill you for years. Me included.”
Day grabbed hold of the other man’s shoulder and hung on. He needed to stay on his feet. If he hit the deck again like this, he wasn’t going anywhere, and Rollie needed him.
“One word. Gavilan.”
“Fuck.”
Day managed a short bark of a laugh, then winced as pain lanced through his injured shoulder and the ribcage on that side. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Edge eased back a little, obviously assessing whether Day was okay standing on his own. It was an assessment Day was fairly interested in the result of, too. Finally, Edge nodded and stepped back, apparently convinced Day wasn’t going to face-plant in the dirt yet. Day didn’t put too much faith in his unsteady legs and half-walked, half-staggered the few steps to lean against the hood of the battered Charger.
Edge followed him, leaning one hip against the hood as he offered him a smoke. Day shook his head, sliding his companion a sidelong look. Rollie might have thought Day was dangerous, but Hayden Edge was a cut above, and then some. He was a tall man, with a lean, wiry build from years in the field, both in service and after it, running his own outfit. Whiskers covered his upper lip and chin, too short to be called a beard and too thick to be called stubble. Striking ice-blue eyes watched Day with interest.
“Done eyeing me up, or you want me to pirouette as well?” he asked in amusement. “Now, you were about to tell me about this clusterfuck you got yourself into. Because we’re way past a SNAFU with this one and edging toward pooch-screw territory. So, out with it.”
Day snorted. “Eloquent as ever, I see.” Amusement filled him, but not enough to make him laugh. He didn’t think that was a good idea, thanks to his current condition. Why Edge talked the way he did, Day had never figured out. Unlike Day, Edge could and had pulled the full-on James Bond routine in the past. His English accent was cut-glass if he chose to exert himself, yet he spoke like the ex-commando he was.
“Spit it out, boy. Told you I ain’t in the mood to get annoyed.”
“All right. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I took a job—”
“You took the Gavilan job. What are you, fucking nuts?” Edge looked at him as though he’d grown another head.
Day sighed. In hindsight, it had been a bad move. But the deal had looked good, too good to be true if he looked back on it, and it was. “Yeah, it was a good deal. One last job, and I can buy my cabin and retire.”
“Yeah, and I dream of having a mansion filled with bikini-clad supermodels with soccer ball implants and the sex drive of rabbits in heat. But too bad, dreams don’t really come true. Not the good ones, anyway.” The sarcasm dripped from Edge’s tone.
“What did I tell you about jobs that were too easy to be true? You really thought a simple snatch and grab would be worth that much? Heck, a rookie fresh out of the farm could have done that job cheaper, and then he would have gotten his stupid head blown off.” Edge’s tone was a toss-up between amused, incredulous, and plain old frustrated as he looked at Day as though contemplating boxing his ears for being such an idiot. “So what do you plan on doin’? With two dings and a bleeder, you ain’t gonna be prancing about anywhere.”
“You don’t like false tits. Said that often enough.” Day couldn’t help it. The response was automatic as he recovered from Edge’s verbal assault.
Edge moved, and Day responded on instinct, rolling his good shoulder and bringing his arm up to cover his head as the older man clipped him around the ear like the rookie he had been when they’d first met.
“Okay, okay. I need some help. I got to get her out of there. They aren’t going to let her walk. Not after something like this.” His voice held an edge of pleading, which surprised him.
Day recognized the look Edge gave him, and it was the same one he gave the rookies when he was sizing them up. Edge only had two categories for rookies: good enough, and civilians. And right now, the ex-commando was trying to see where Day fell.
“Shit,
boy. Don’t tell me you’re in love with the doc. ‘Cause I got a fresh one right here if you say yes.” He pulled his hand back for emphasis.
Day’s lip curled, ready for a contemptuous of course not, but then he paused. Did he love Rollie? His face obviously mirrored his indecision, because Edge snorted. Day looked up, schooling his expression. “Then go for it, because the answer’s yes.” Quite how it had happened, he didn’t know. Somewhere between their desperate flight from the cabin and her hesitant seduction routine in the shower, he’d fallen head over heels for her.
“I said it years ago, and I’ll say it again. Vann, you’re a moron.” Edge shook his head, then was silent for a moment as he contemplated. “I don’t want to risk following them right now. We could, but they’ve got heavier firepower, and there’s more of them.”
The older man dug the keys out of his pocket and headed for a beat-up, red truck. “We can track them down and come up with a plan. I’ll call up some of my National Security pals and try to see if they can task a satellite to look for your girlfriend and her new pals.”
Day frowned. “Okay, genius, how you going to accomplish that? Because last time I checked, satellite tracking still needed a phone or a device. And believe me, she’s got nothing on her.” His voice was smug. He had checked her. Several times. All over.
Edge smacked him at the back of the head. “Get your mind out of the bedroom. We don’t need a tracker or a phone on your girlfriend, we just need to track the bad guys. We can pick up chatter from this area from cellphones from the cell towers. They gotta make a call sometime to their boss, right? Once they figure out which cellphones belong to the bad guys, my pals can lock on to them and give us a good picture of where they’re going. When they’re locked, it won’t matter if its pitch dark or if they turn off the phones. The satellite will track them wherever they go.”
Day nodded, casting a look back at the Charger. Noting worth saving there, even if it hadn’t been stolen in the first place. Something Rollie hadn’t been happy about anyway. “Whatever it takes. I just gotta find her.”
***
The first thing Rollie realized when she finally came to was that her neck ached like a son of a bitch. Even worse than the bump she’d gotten from being whacked by that douche of a fake FBI agent. Or maybe he was real but on someone else’s payroll. She really didn’t care.
Her captors put her in a dark, dank room that seemed to be the basement of somewhere. If they had thrown in a few rats and some chains bolted to the walls, she could have sworn she was the heroine cheesy suspense flick. The only glory points to those disasters were the hero’s muscles and skill in killing underpaid and semi-skilled henchmen, and the leading lady’s ability to look vulnerable and wickedly hot in ridiculously skimpy attire. Rollie had always hated women like that.
But she would have given anything for this to be a B movie. Even if she had to endure looking like a hysterical porn star just to make the hero look good, it would have meant Day would still be alive.
She sat up from her slouch, and her abused muscles complained. She tried to rub her aching neck, but discovered she was cuffed to the chair.
She closed her eyes for a moment to will away the spinning room but instead found herself reliving the few seconds in slow motion when the bullets had struck Day’s body and he fell to the ground in an unmoving heap.
She snapped her eyes open and struggled to breathe. She wanted to stop the flow of tears, but she couldn’t. Then she didn’t bother. There wasn’t any point.
“Oh, Day,” she whispered as grief threatened to overwhelm her. She loved him, and he was dead. All her life, she’d been looking for someone to love, waiting for this feeling of belonging and happiness. As soon as she’d found it, it was taken from her.
She stared up at the ceiling. Her sobs were silent, only her ragged breaths indicating her heartbreak as tears spilled over from her unseeing eyes.
And then slowly, as the tears fell and dried up, anger began to take their place. She had been born in the ugliest recesses of so-called civilized society, and she had fought for everything she ever had. She never knew her parents, and the only family she knew had been murdered. And then there was Day.
She quickly stifled her thoughts when she heard several footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. She swiped her tears away as the rusty lock twisted open. The door swung open and slammed against the wall.
“Right, bitch. Time to get to work.” Dark figures converged on her, and she was un-cuffed and hauled from the chair. She had sat twisted in the chair for so long that her legs had gone numb. She stumbled as they shoved her from the room, only the hard grip on her arm keeping her upright as she was bundled up the stairs and into the brightly lit corridor beyond. She winced, her eyes frantically trying to adjust after the darkness of the basement.
“Christ, you ain’t much to look at like this, are you?” One of the pseudo-agents sneered. “Gotta hope that you’ve got more than air in that head, otherwise Mr. Blackwell ain’t got no use for you. And if you ain’t useful…”
Rollie glared up at the man who shot Day. “Well, with that broken nose, you’re not really prince charming yourself,” she croaked. “And that slowly emerging bald spot won’t make your day any better, either.”
“Bitch,” he snarled, raising a hand, but then seemed to think better of it and shoved her along the corridor ahead of him. He opened a door. She saw the familiar confines of a lab beyond, and he viciously pushed her through it. “Plans are on the table. Get working. Oh, and take your time, sweetheart, because the longer you take, the longer I get you afterwards.”
Pushed through the door with more force than courtesy, Rollie caught herself on the edge of one of the worktables with a muttered curse.
“There’s more where that came from. Now get on with it.” The fake FBI agent gestured at one corner of the lab. The workbench there contained tools and equipment she recognized. The rest of the lab was identical to pretty much every other lab she’d worked in, bar the armed guy standing outside the door and the welded metal plate on the windows.
“What, no tea and flowers? I’m insulted,” quipped Rollie as she glowered at him. “You can tell your boss that I’m not making squat. And if he thinks sending someone to kidnap me and threaten me with torture and death is going to make me shiver, then he doesn’t know me that well. On the other hand, I’d just love to be alone in a room with you right now. With me carving you a new smile on your scrawny throat while you choke on your last gasp of bloody air.”
The agent lifted a hand, his expression gleeful. “Oh, I don’t think so, sweetheart. I think you’re going to do exactly what the boss wants you to. If you don’t, you know that brand spanking new lab and all your nice little employees? The ones with families and loved ones depending on them?”
Despite herself, she nodded. She had a bad feeling about this. The agent moved closer until she could smell the stink of his sweat under the sickly sweet cologne. He curled his fingers into a ball under her nose and suddenly splayed them open.
“Boom.”
“You sonofabitch.” She leveled a look of pure hatred at him. Blackwell and this sleazebag were willing to commit mass murder just to get what they wanted. She realized that if they were this determined, she could pretty much expect herself to be dead when all of this is over.
Or worse. Baldy’s plaything.
It was up to her now. Everything had always been. Just like before.
“Tell your boss I’ll build the reactor. But if anyone else gets hurt, I will destroy him.”
He smirked. “Yeah, right. What you gonna do? Bat your eyelashes? Pull the other one, darling, it’s got bells on. Jingle Bells.” He laughed and slammed the door shut behind him.
Rollie waited for him to leave before approaching the tools and materials on the table. She smiled slightly as she surveyed everything.
“Oh, it’ll definitely be an early Christmas for me, buddy boy.” she picked up a red container with dang
er labels all over it and went to work, whistling a jaunty Christmas tune.
***
In the desert heat outside the secure building Rollie was being held in, Day and Edge carefully stayed out of sight of any of the bored-looking guards.
Day hit the last corner, crouching down with his shoulder against the brickwork as he peered around the corner. Never do the expected. Never look around a corner at head height, or you were apt to get it shot off.
“This is too easy, Edge. You sure you got the right place?”
“Yep, and don’t ask me how I found out about this. You’re gonna owe me more than one on this one, Vann. And don’t believe what you see. If it looks easy, then it can only be a trap.”
Day snorted, checking the safeties on his own weaponry again. “By the time you’re finished, I may as well have made a deal with the devil. What’s this going to cost me?” he asked, checking around the corner again, his eyes narrowing as he checked targets. “Two x-rays. One half left, eleven o’clock. One quarter right at two. Which one do you want?”
“I’ll take the right.” Edge thumbed off his pistol’s safety. “Then you move to cover down the way, and I’ll cover your six. And do I look like I know everything? I’ll collect when I need it. Right now, let’s take care of this and bail your princess out.” Edge got ready to roll out. Since they were coming in from the right, Day had to go first.
“You’re a con artist,” Day muttered, using another quick glance around the corner to set his aim. “By the time you call this in, the deal will have changed, and I’ll owe you an arm and a leg. On three. One…two…three.”
The two men exploded into action. Their movements were precise and economical, lethal and fast as they stormed the building. The two guards went down in seconds, the pfft-pfft of silenced shots the only sound before the dull thump of bodies hitting the dirt.
Day approached the door, checked the knob and quietly opened it just far enough to peek to check for hostiles. No sense in announcing their presence just yet. The corridor beyond was empty. “We need to find her.” He jerked a thumb toward the dead guards. “When Pinky and Perky out there get found, the shit’ll hit the fan.”
