Live By The Team (Team Fear Book 1)

by Skaggs, Cindy

  The answering laugh was movie-villain evil. Someone shoved her into a room so normal it screamed suburban housewife, but something heinous had happened here, leaving a psychic residue that threatened to swallow all the light. Some latent survival instinct had Lauren dragging her feet the more they pressed her into the room. Getting cut open seemed preferable to whatever they had planned in this room. She screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors. The man on her right slapped her across the cheek with enough force to send her sprawling into the wall. The back of her head smacked, aggravating the existing wound, but Lauren wasn’t done fighting. The hands tied behind her back weren’t her only weapons. She lowered her head and rammed the man who had hit her.

  With a grunt from the impact, the man went flying back, but Lauren didn’t have her hands to balance, so she went sprawling on the floor next to him. Pain ripped her shoulders. The man next to her on the silky beige carpet sucked air like she’d knocked the wind out of him.

  Satisfaction was short lived. He turned his dark eyes to her and rolled to subdue her under him. Lauren braced her legs to buck him off, but it didn’t work. He leaned down to sneer in her face. “Smythe didn’t pay me enough to keep your ass safe, bitch.”

  Gathering every ounce of energy, Lauren crunched forward and smacked her forehead into his nose. Agony lanced through her head and the world twisted around her like the accident. The man rolled, blood oozing from his nose.

  Ha, bet Smythe hadn’t warned him about the broken nose. Before Lauren could celebrate, the other man yanked her by the hair to drag her to her feet. Spikes of pain added to the existing aches until her vision blurred. Using her hair as a sling, he spun her through a narrow doorway. She hit the wall and screamed as agony preceded her slide to the floor.

  The door locked, leaving her in silence and dark. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Tears clogged her throat, but she swallowed the sobs. The pricks wouldn’t have the satisfaction of hearing her fear and desperation.

  Tears leaked down her face silently. Lauren twisted her cheek to the silky rug to wipe them away. Someone had chosen this carpet to soothe tired feet after a long day of work, but it wasn’t soothing to her abraded cheek. None of this made any sense. Despite the aura of evil pervading the space, once upon a time, someone had decorated the house with love and attention. This was not the house for the men who had bodily hauled her from Ryder’s side. This wasn’t even a house that belonged to a slick salesman like Smythe.

  She curled into a ball and waited for the pain to ease, to catch her breath, to figure out how she ended up in a house in the burbs locked in a closet with her hands tied behind her back.

  Ryder parked his bike at the end of the block and approached on foot. The sports car that had taken Lauren was still parked in the front drive along with a pickup and a few older cars. Dawn threatened on the eastern horizon, but for now, the night blanketed him. Sticking to the shadows, he prowled the perimeter. There were no streetlights on the block, no alarms or landscape lights. Blackout curtains covered the windows, and something wicked infused the air.

  The gap between the houses was significant enough to avoid detection from the neighbors. He hopped the fence and eased around to the back. A man sat on a deck by the door smoking a cigarette and playing on a cell phone. Both ensured the target had screwed his night vision.

  Ryder approached swiftly and silently. The man looked up when Ryder made it within three feet. He dropped his cigarette, but Ryder decked him before he had a chance to defend. The sideswipe snapped the man’s face to the side. He was knocked out before he hit the deck.

  With the guard incapacitated, Ryder moved to the back door and listened. All quiet. He slipped through the door. The gourmet kitchen was overflowing with fast food wrappers and garbage. The lights were on but no one was home. He moved through to a hallway before he heard voices. A guard sat on a stool near the front door. He was talking on the phone. There was no sign of Lauren, and the only way into the rest of the house was through a guard the size of wrestler. He had a thick neck and bulbous nose, and a handgun strapped to his chest.

  Ryder eased back into the kitchen to evaluate. Without knowing how many men were in the rest of the house, he’d rather not take on the guard. He’d retrieved his gun from the accident scene, but one gun wasn’t enough to take out a full house. He grabbed his cell to text Rose.

  ETA?

  At your bike. Tell me you didn’t go in alone.

  Ryder ignored the last statement. Rear guard is incapacitated. Second guard inside front door. One handgun visible. Number of unfriendlies unknown. Need distraction up front.

  I’m the distraction?

  Just knock on the door, asshole.

  Rose sent him a middle finger emoji. A minute later, a knock pounded on the front door loud enough to wake a stoner. Ryder shook his head. Rose didn’t have a subtle bone in his body.

  He eased back into the hall where the guard had pulled out his weapon and now peered through a stingy crack. A mumbled conversation ensued while Ryder stepped closer. Two doorways leading off the entry were closed off with thick plastic sheeting, the kind used by construction workers at renovation sites. No way to tell how many were in those rooms. He’d need Rose on the inside.

  Ryder slid past the opening and rammed the barrel of his gun into the guard’s back. “One’s in the chamber. What you do in the next two seconds decides whether you live.”

  The man twisted, but not fast enough. From the outside, Rose slammed the door inward, smacking the guard in his face. They had him face down on the tile before he could shout a warning. Rose subdued him while Ryder stepped on his gun hand. He leaned down so they wouldn’t be overheard. “Where’s the girl?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Ryder shifted his weight to the heel of his boot. Heard a finger crack and break.

  “Fucker,” the man grunted.

  Ryder squatted down and yanked the man’s hair back to look in his bruised eyes. “This is going to be the longest hour of your life.” He glanced up at Rose. “Take him out back where they won’t hear his screams.”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?”

  “No.” Ryder grinned. “It’s to get my buddy on board. He wasn’t sure a douche like you was enough of a challenge. He likes inflicting pain.”

  Rose flipped him off behind the guy’s back.

  A woman’s scream rent the air, coming from upstairs. Lauren.

  “I got this.” Rose smacked the guard’s face into the tile. “Go get her.”

  A steady heartbeat pumped in Ryder’s veins as he jogged up the stairs. He pulled the Glock as he approached the first closed door. Before he made it, someone opened a door down the hall. Shit. Nothing like flying blind. Ryder tackled the first guy through the door, hitting the wall with the crunch of bones. A second guy punched him in the kidney from behind.

  Flying backwards and blind, Ryder dove straight back, taking the second guy with him to the ground. He flipped and pointed the gun to the guy’s chest.

  The man who’d knifed him on the dark highway stilled. “I left you bleeding out.”

  Incompetent bastard. “Not even close.” The knife had cut open Ryder’s jacket and left a gash through his midsection. Nothing fatal. “Paper cut, asshole. If you hurt her, you’re a dead man.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “Get up.” Using the gun, he motioned the men up and back into the room.

  The bedroom was pristine. Well-decorated by someone with money. The cozy bed with pretty linens twisted something in Ryder’s gut. What did they have planned for Lauren? The anger he struggled to contain came alive. He glared at the two men. The taller one had sparred with Ryder on the road. He was lean and fast, clean cut in the regular light. Despite the gun, the man held himself loose, legs apart, waiting for an opportunity. Street fighter, and he liked it. The second had a bloody nose. Quite possibly broken.

  “You let a girl break your nose?”

  “Fuck y
ou.” He spit blood.

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ll get her,” Broken Nose offered.

  Ryder stepped forward and kneecapped him. “You don’t go near her. Ever.”

  He turned his attention to the guy who was so far uninjured. “One chance to answer my question. Where. Is. She?”

  Street Fighter grinned, showing yellowed teeth between cracked lips. “Closet.”

  A steel door had replaced the closet door. A padlock had been added to keep her stuck inside. “Key?”

  Street Fighter motioned him closer. “Come get it.”

  Ryder aimed the Glock and fired. The bullet lodged in the wall behind Street Fighter’s head. “Next one hits skin and bone.”

  “Jesus, man, the neighbors will call the cops.”

  “Not a problem for me. I’m just a man retrieving his wife from a couple dirtbags.”

  “Wife?” Street Fighter dug into his pocket and pulled out the key. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t told she had a husband.”

  “So it’s okay to abduct a single female?” Ryder wanted to end this loser. “Toss the key over here.”

  When Street Fighter complied, Ryder stepped forward to grab the key from the plush carpet. “Turn around. On your knees with your hands on your head.”

  Both men did as he ordered. Ryder knocked on the door before he unlocked it. “Baby?”

  “Ry.” Her voice sounded strained through the metal.

  “You alone?”

  “Yes.”

  He unlocked the door while keeping an eye on the men. “Come on out.”

  She struggled to her feet, her hands bound behind her. Her face was banged up—from the crash or the abduction—and blood trickled from the gash on her forehead. The need to beat the crap out of someone flowed heavily through Ryder’s veins. “Baby, go into the bathroom while I finish here.” He nodded to the attached bath in the back of the room.

  “Why?” She butted his arm. “You can’t kill them.”

  “Sure I can.”

  Broken Nose flinched at his words.

  “No.” Lauren glared through a swollen eye. “In war, yes, but here, we call the police.”

  Rose burst into the room. “I heard gunfire.”

  “Just motivated the troops,” Ryder said. “Put them into the closet until we figure out what we do with them.”

  Rose frisked the men and confiscated a knife from Street Fight. Ryder kept his body between the men and Lauren as they moved past. When Street Fighter passed, Ryder stopped him with a hand to his chest. “If I see you again, I won’t ask questions. I will kill you.”

  Street Fighter lifted his hands in a sign of submission. “Hey, man, it was just a job.”

  Ryder clocked him in the left cheekbone. Street Fighter took it without flinching. He shook out his head as if to clear the pain.

  “It’s not a job to me. You might want to remember that.”

  “Got it.” Street Fighter strolled into the closet like he owned it. Rose locked up behind him. Ryder holstered the weapon and approached Lauren. Her smooth skin was bruised, her forehead bloody, and her lips were split. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world. He used the confiscated knife to slit the ties behind her back. She shook out her hands and moaned. The ties had cut into her wrists, leaving them chafed and red. Ryder rubbed the skin around the gouge mark to get the blood flowing. Her cold fingers trembled in his grasp.

  Rose took a defensive position in the doorway, keeping an eye on the hallway. “What’s the plan?”

  “We call the cops.” Lauren leaned into Ryder.

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Not a good plan. After what went down up north, I’m not anyone’s best friend when it comes to law enforcement.”

  Lauren turned to look up at him. “They kidnapped me. They planned...”

  Ryder didn’t want to think about what they had planned or he’d go ape-shit. “We need information, and the police won’t let us participate in the interrogation. What’s going on downstairs, Rose?”

  “Guard’s out, locked in a closet. There were four workers in the lab.”

  “Lab?”

  Ryder nodded at Lauren’s question. “There was lab equipment in both sealed rooms. That, coupled with the guards—”

  “And product in the garage,” Rose added. “Which makes this a meth house in the middle of suburbia.”

  “What did you do with the lab pogues?” Ryder asked.

  “Non-essential personnel are in the pantry along with the guard from the back deck. They didn’t put up much of a fight. The rest of the house is empty, but they’ve got a boatload of finished product stockpiled in the garage. We can’t leave that shit.”

  “Okay.” Ryder started running contingency plans through his head. Anyone could walk in at any time, which meant he didn’t have time to move Lauren to a secure location while he got answers. “They targeted Lauren. Specifically. I didn’t see them at the bar, but they had definitely staked out her habits. They knew she’d be on that stretch of highway. How long have you been staying with Debi?”

  “Two weeks, but my schedule at the bar changes all the time, depending on how busy they are.”

  “But you work every Sunday?”

  She shivered. “Yes.”

  Ryder caught Rose’s gaze. “They knew where she’d be. They disabled the truck.”

  “What?” Panic laced her voice. “They’re the reason I crashed?”

  “Baby, your brakes and your clutch went at the same time. Hard to call that a coincidence, especially when followed by the abduction. They’re related.”

  Her fingernails dug into his arm. “Why?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “You two go on. I got this,” Rose said across the room. “I’ll question these two, find out what we need to know, then—” He glanced at Lauren. “I’ll eliminate the product and the threat.”

  “Is that a euphemism for murder?” Lauren pushed away from Ryder. “You can’t take the law into your own hands.”

  “Watch me.” Ryder shook with the need for retribution.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ryder assured her they weren’t killing anyone. Right before he stashed Lauren in an empty bedroom and locked the door, making her as much a prisoner as she’d been in the closet of the master bedroom. She paced and muttered to herself. Being tucked away “for her own good” felt a lot like sitting at the kid’s table.

  When Lauren left the room, the menace oozing off her warrior husband was off the charts. If Wade getting handsy had angered Ryder, it was nothing compared to the rage against the men who dared to take her. Ryder kept the rage contained in her presence, but he would let it loose on the two they planned to “interrogate.” No doubt he’d get answers.

  A chill washed her body in goose bumps. How did one go about interrogating a suspect? If she couldn’t think about it, she probably shouldn’t witness it. Still, she’d rather they gave her the option to stay or go. It wasn’t like she’d jump in to defend the men who’d kidnapped her, but she worried about Ryder. When they were dating, he’d go on missions for a week or two at a time. Each one altered him; had stolen pieces of his soul. The final deployment he refused to discuss at all. She feared this kind of operation would trigger the same response.

  She sat onto the lower bunk and huddled into the corner, seeking comfort in the childlike space, but the memory of Ryder’s stone cold face kept her on edge. No mercy. His look promised no mercy for the men in his custody, but there was a cost to cold, calculated torture. He’d wall himself off, and she couldn’t go through the separation again.

  She plucked a string from the navy comforter. Despite being married for eighteen months, they’d actually spent only a few months living together, thanks to the deployment and his sudden departure six months ago. Did she know him as well as she thought, or was she fooling herself?

  Ryder pushed through the door. “Time to go.”

  “What happened?”

  �
�We got the information,” he said without inflection. “Rose set a charge to go off in five minutes.”

  Lauren hopped from the bed. “You can’t blow up a house in the middle of a suburb. We can make an anonymous call. Let the police handle it.”

  “They’re not handling it or these guys wouldn’t be so organized. We’re in a position to eliminate the product and the equipment.”

  A shiver shook her body. “Did you kill the people?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t.” His face was hard and unreadable. He motioned her forward with two fingers. “It will look like an accident in the meth lab.”

  “This is U.S. soil. You don’t have the right—”

  “They threatened you, so I have every right, but we can argue later. Now, we move.”

  “I can walk and argue.” Lauren stepped into the hall and down the stairs. “I’m talented that way.”

  Ryder chuckled softly. “Can’t argue with you there.”

  Now he wanted to be agreeable. They exited out the front and met Rose on the lawn. All the cars had cleared out, leaving the cement drive empty.

  Rose tossed her an oversized handbag. “This yours?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Rose nodded. He was a big man, much like Ryder, with light hair, suspicious eyes, and way of looking straight into your soul. Lauren hugged the purse to her chest. She’d known a few of Ryder’s fellow soldiers, but not well. None of them talked much. At least not when she was around. They certainly weren’t as carefree as the young soldiers at the bar earlier. She’d never seen Rose dance with anyone or even chat up a girl at the bar. He went with his buddies, but he was the most solitary man she’d ever met, which was saying something considering Ryder was a lone wolf of epic proportions.

  Rose clapped his hands together. “Saddle up.”

  At the bike, he gently set a helmet on her battered head and wrapped his leather jacket around her shoulders. She stuffed her arms into the sleeves and breathed in his scent. The coat was warm from his body. Wearing it shouldn’t make her heart fluttered like a debutante at her first ball, but it did.