Captive Heart (9 page)

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 danger 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.”

“It’s these days I kinda miss doing what we used to do. Getting rid of the bodies during infil is a rookie’s job,” Edge complained. “If I were these guys and I was holding someone that could make a lot of noise, I’d stuff her in the basement, but not too far from a back exit in case I need to pull her out in a hurry.”

“Agreed.” Day nodded. “Okay, let’s have a look at that plan again.” He gestured for the cell phone Edge had produced earlier. His pals had come up trumps. Not only had they tracked Rollie within a couple of hours, but they’d also managed a pull a plan of the building where she was held.

Edge pulled it from his back pocket and handed it over. He kept his eyes on the corridor as Day checked. “Okay. Northwest corridor then, stairs to the lower levels are back there.”

He checked his magazine. “We need to double it. Sure you can handle the pace, old man?” he teased. Edge wasn’t that much older than he was.

“Hey, I’m just keeping your pace, boy. Don’t want you to trip and fall all over your own feet,” Edge retorted. “You fall on your pansy ass and crack something, you’ll start crying, and then I’ll have to shoot you just to keep you quiet.”

***

Rollie wasn’t staying idle at all. She wasn’t about to allow a scheming, greedy businessman like Blackwell have sole control over the world’s solution to the energy crisis for his own agenda.

She found the surveillance cameras they left in the room and worked on developing her escape strategy away from their prying eyes. If the bad guys decided to stick a scientist desperate to escape in a workshop filled with prime raw materials, then they really couldn’t be that smart, could they?

There was only one way to find out.

She took a wrench and began smashing the cameras one at a time. As she got herself ready, she heard a series of footsteps approaching the door. This was the moment of truth. She just hoped she got the calculations right, or this wouldn’t be good news for her, either.

There was a heavy
thump
against the door, and then it burst inward as a body barreled through it. The guard hit the floor at Rollie’s feet hard, unconscious or dead, but she had barely a second to notice as a second figure hurtled through the door.

Rollie swung up her hastily constructed compressed air slug gun and prepared to fire. The slug gun was based on a product her company developed for the police that fired rubberized slugs that would be enough to cause a lot of pain to incapacitate a target, but not kill. It was designed for riot control, a lot safer than real guns firing rubber bullets.

However, this one wouldn’t be firing rubber bullets. Not that Rollie was thinking about incapacitation. All she could use as ammo were large ball bearings, and she was just fine with that. Given the size of the barrel and pressure of the gas, the metal balls would most likely only cause serious pain and injury. She would have preferred a kill setting, but physics and a lack of materials prevented her from getting her wish.

Her finger tightened on the trigger, and half expecting her gun not to work, she was about to shoot when she saw who the second figure was. Time seemed to stop.

“Day?” she murmured, not quite believing her eyes.

He stopped, his hands spread to the sides, gun held loosely with its barrel pointed upward. “Rollie, sweetheart, it’s me. Remember me? Saved your ass in that cabin?”

She heard him, but she didn’t quite understand. She lowered her weapon but still kept staring at him, half expecting him to be just a hallucination of her lovesick, twisted mind.

“How...?”

“Oh, a brave and daring rescue of the damsel in distress, of course.” His lips quirked in that crooked half smile she found so endearing, but as she studied him further, she could see the lines of strain around his mouth and eyes. She scanned him, noting the bulk of a bandage poking from the collar of the T-shirt under the body armor.

Realization came to her slowly, tugging at the corners of her lips into a smile that grew brighter with every second. But with her joy, something else quickly followed. She swung back and socked him right in the jaw.

Day rolled with the punch, but it snapped his head back. He rubbed his jaw and frowned at her. “Er…mind telling me what that was for?”

“I thought you were dead, you jackass.”

She opened her mouth to say more, but she couldn’t quite think of anything else, so she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly, burying her face into his solid chest. She couldn’t help but cry. She held him so tight. She was afraid he wasn’t really there, and to let him go would make him disappear.

“I thought you were dead,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Hey, hey. Don’t cry, angel. I’m harder to kill than that. I promise,” he whispered, his lips against her hair as he gathered her closer into his arms. It wasn’t comfortable, thanks to the bulky body armor, but she didn’t care. Her bruised heart ached for what she thought had happened, and what might have been, even as it soared to realize she’d been wrong. Day wasn’t dead. She had another chance.

A sound outside brought Day’s head up sharply, and Rollie murmured in protest. Here in his arms, she felt safe, and it was a heady feeling.

His lips brushed her temple again. “Sorry to rush you, but we need to get you out of here.” He let her go and starting to shrug out of the vest.

“No, you keep it on,” said Rollie as she gave them both some distance and gripped her slug launcher tighter. “You’re going to be the one at the front. You need it more.”

Day gritted his teeth. “You are, without doubt, the most frustrating woman on the planet,” he told her, still stripping out of the vest and ignoring the pain in his shoulder. The pad would be soaked through soon, if it wasn’t already, but it could wait. He had to get Rollie out of here first.

“Now, put the damn thing on.” He growled as he shoved it into her arms. “Or I’ll put it on you myself.”

The gentle expression on her face quickly turned into hostility as her own anger sparked.

“You can try, buddy boy, and then you’ll wish you were really dead.” She threw it back at him. “You just got shot and you’re in front. I can’t think of anyone who’d need that thing more than you.”

Day held out the vest. Fear for her coiled in his chest, and he wasn’t the kind of man who was good at the hearts and flowers crap. “I can,” he bit out. “The bloody, argumentative, pain-in–the-ass woman I’m in love with. Now, put the vest on…please.”

For the second time in five minutes, Rollie had the same expression of shock on her face.

“What…. What did you say?”

“He said to put the fucking vest on so we can get the hell out of here,” Edge retorted from the door as he peered in. “We’re supposed to be a rescue party. That doesn’t quite work when everyone is dead because two geniuses were having a lover’s quarrel over a goddamned vest.” He spared a glance at the moaning figure on the floor. “Either put him out my misery, or let’s get a move on.”

Day moved quickly, while Rollie still reeled from his statement and the appearance of Edge, and wrapped her in the vest. He smoothed the Velcro down her sides and kissed her. “I love you,” he whispered, catching her gaze with his. “Now, let’s get you out of here.”

One of her hands firmly in his, he turned back to Edge, glowering as the other merc glanced toward their hands and opened his mouth. “Say it, and you’re a dead man. You got a way out of here or wha—” He broke off as gunfire sounded outside. If he and Edge were in here…. “What the fuck?”

“Reinforcements, but they’re feds, so they could belong to anyone.” Edge grinned and reached into a pocket, withdrawing a credit card and holding it out to Day. “I suggest you take the little lady there and get her a new name, then take her someplace hot. I’ll find you when you’re free and clear.”

Rollie seemed to have recovered from Day’s declaration of love because as fast as Day was, she managed to snatch the card from Edge before he could.

“I’ll hang on to this,” quipped Rollie. “You wouldn’t want some airhead gym-bunny being in charge with it. He’d use it to buy light beer and reduced fat chips so he can keep his figure.”

Edge grinned. “Airhead. Vann, she’s got you figured, so
don’t
screw this up. Now, you two haul ass. Catch you on the flipside,” he said and then he was gone through the door. His lean figure disappeared up the corridor as Rollie and Day emerged from the lab.

“This way. We got a truck out back.” Day started up the corridor, his whole manner alert. They weren’t out of the woods yet, and he wouldn’t be comfortable until this place was in the rearview mirror.

Rollie followed him as they ran down the corridor. “Who was that?”

“Who was who?” Day asked over his shoulder as they turned the corner.

“You know, your friend back there?” She moved faster to keep up with him. “The one whose generosity we’re going to take full advantage of in a remote tropical paradise somewhere?”

“Oh. His name is Edge. He has other, less flattering names…ooph.” Day reeled back as a door slammed open and hit his shoulder hard. The pain radiated out through his body, and he staggered back, his pistol clattering to the floor. A heavyset figure stepped through the doorway, kicking his weapon out of reach.

“Well, well, what do we have here? The knight in shining armor? Oh no, that only works well in fairytales, doesn’t it?” Morrow jeered, leveling his gun at Day’s head.

Rollie raised her slug gun and pulled the trigger.

There was a loud pop and whoosh. The steel ball bearing from her slug launcher struck the dirty agent right in his chest, throwing him back against the wall. He collapsed to the floor in a wheezing heap as he struggled to breathe. His gun clattered out of his reach.

“How does that feel,
sunshine
?” Rollie retorted as she approached and gave him a swift kick for good measure. “That was for landing a good one on me, you asshole.”

“And this is from me.” Day’s voice sounded behind her, and Rollie turned to find him, gun in hand, calmly aiming at the fallen man. “Step out of the way, Rollie, and let me finish this.”

She placed her hand over the top of the gun and gently pushed it down. “What would killing him accomplish? You’re only going to end the suffering he deserves and stain your soul in the process. You’re a good man, Dayton Vann. Don’t let this define who you are.” She smiled warmly at him. “Leave him, and let’s go.”