FEARLESS (13 page)

Chapter Fourteen

A security guard lay in a sprawl in the middle of the third-floor hallway. Connor crouched to check his pulse. He shook his head but Davis didn’t need the confirmation. A bullet hole through the forehead and blood pooled under the guard. Those clues said it all.

Davis heard Lara’s soft cry and rough intake of breath, felt her body shake as she leaned into him. Once again he’d dropped her into danger. This was one more death and a desperate reminder of just how perilous it was for her to be at the Hampton offices.

He glanced around at the team and tried to think of a way to protect her, watch over Ben and shield Connor’s back all at the same time. Dumping Ben on the sidewalk and leaving Lara in the car had been his vote. Connor had overruled him. For a man who trusted only after much hesitation, he seemed to want Ben’s help.

Davis wasn’t inclined to be that welcoming. If the special agent so much as twitched in a way Davis didn’t like, he’d put a bullet in him and deal with the questions later.

Davis signaled for the rest of them to wait as he turned the corner and glanced down the hall. Seeing it empty, he motioned for the others to follow. He led and Ben shielded Lara. Connor brought up the back end, just as they’d discussed on the drive to D.C. Davis had verbally walked them through the plans several times and hadn’t stopped until everyone could repeat them back without hesitating.

“This is bad,” Lara whispered.

Davis stopped twenty feet from the main office door. “What?”

She touched her hands against his back and whispered into his ear. “Look at the bottom. The door is actually open and unlocked. It shouldn’t be either after hours.”

The situation was getting worse with every passing second. It was bad enough Pax and Joel had almost arrived in Annapolis when the rest of them had left for D.C., meaning they literally had passed on the highway at some point. This attacker had them running in circles. One more reason to want the guy dead.

Davis needed more data. He remembered the floor plan Lara had drawn in the car and mentally walked through it. “The only thing on the left is the conference room. Parker’s office is on the right.”

“At the end of the hall.” Her killer grip on the back of Davis’s shirt didn’t unclench even though they stood next to each other now. “But there are many places in between here and there to hide. Rows of offices, the kitchen, closets—”

“I remember.” She’d picked up his repetition issue but he didn’t mind. More information always increased the odds of success.

Connor eased his surveillance behind them. Taking a break, he turned sideways and glanced at Davis. “Thoughts?’

He could see only one option, and he didn’t even like that one because it separated him from Lara. “You take Ben and Lara out of here and I check it out. I’ll signal for backup if I need it.”

“No,” Ben said, his voice not lifting above a scant whisper.

Lara tightened her grip until the edge of Davis’s shirt dug into his neck. “Absolutely not.”

Davis responded to her before Connor could jump in. “You’ve been attacked enough.”

With all that had happened and the threats that still lingered, Davis couldn’t believe he had to explain. The narrow-eyed looks he was getting suggested he did.

“Greg didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “He needs our help.”

Ben leaned in and glared at them all. “And we’re wasting time.”

The man had a point. Davis weighed the odds and couldn’t come up with a way to make them work to his favor. He didn’t trust Ben, but the man had done everything right so far. His file hinted at a bone-deep willingness to do what was necessary to finish a job. He could have turned on them, shot them or steered them into an ambush many times since he had shown up at Corcoran’s door, but his resolve had never wavered.

Still... “If it turns out I shouldn’t have trusted you—”

Ben nodded. “You’ll put a bullet in me. You’ve made that clear.”

Just in case, Davis drove the point home. “There won’t be anywhere you can hide.”

“Understood.”

Davis pushed ahead before his doubts took over. If he hesitated, common sense might kick in, and then he’d have to get Lara out of there. If he tried, he’d likely have a mutiny on his hands.

“Connor and I go left. Ben stays in reception.” Davis’s gaze shot back to Ben again. “If anyone goes for her, you sacrifice yourself to keep her alive, got it?”

Lara tugged on his shirt. “Davis, that’s enough.”

“Got it,” Ben answered at the same time, returning Davis’s stare, head-on, man-to-man.

Davis took that as the vow it sounded as if it was. With a nod, he finished the orders. “Let’s go.”

With silent steps, they moved toward the door. Before Davis could open it, Connor held up a fist. They all stopped while he dropped down on one knee and investigated the bottom of the door.

He glanced up and delivered his opinion in a near-silent voice. “No wires or explosives.”

Davis let out a long breath of relief. At least the attacker hadn’t stopped to booby-trap the door. One thing fell their way.

Lara gently pushed on the door and it opened with a swish. The noise barely registered, but in the thudding quiet, it was as loud as a blaring radio.

Waiting to see if an unwanted visitor turned the corner, Davis held up his fist. When no one appeared, he motioned for Connor to move. He sent Ben a final warning glare and winked at Lara.

They would all live through this day. They would go back to the crash pad and he’d tell her he loved her. That he had always loved and forever would. Getting to that moment was his motivation to survive the next hour. Saving her was his only mandate.

Davis and Connor slipped by the reception desk, first checking the conference room. They swept in, ducking under the table and opening the closets lining the one wall while Ben covered them from his vantage point in the reception area.

Next came the office on the right. Their gazes scanned and guns shifted to cover each hidden corner where someone could hide as they walked down the long corridor. They passed open office doors and a supply closet. Nothing in those, but the door at the end of the hall with the big plaque on it was closed and a light shone through the strip underneath.

Davis glanced at Connor and he nodded. Faster now they jogged to the end of the hall. Their feet scratched against the carpet but they didn’t stop. Davis tested the knob and found the door locked. Looked as if they were going in the hard way. Not a surprise.

As Davis angled his body for the best leverage, Connor lifted his leg and kicked the door in. It bounced off the inside wall with a crash as Davis stormed by, with his knees bent, ready to fire at anything that moved. They rotated going high and low, their guns moving the entire time.

Something crunched under his foot and Davis looked down to see papers...everywhere. The room was in shambles—drawers dumped, files ripped and documents lining every inch of the floor until the carpet underneath was almost invisible.

Connor checked the closet and private bathroom while Davis ripped back the curtains blocking out the natural light. The rings screeched along the rod as the two men stopped, shoulders touching, in front of the desk. Blood seeped out of what had to be twenty cuts on Greg Parker’s body. But it was the deep slice across his throat that had killed him.

“We’re too late,” Connor said, the vibrating anger in his voice matching the fury thrumming through Davis’s blood.

“Think the attacker found anything?”

“That is an angry death. I’m guessing Parker held out.” Connor tore his gaze away from the macabre scene. “Good man.”

“But still dead.” Davis decided he’d seen enough death. This one and Dwyer hit the hardest. They weren’t trained killers. They were men in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Davis lowered his gun and whispered an apology under his breath for being too late. His fingers shook from the force of the adrenaline pounding him.

“Let’s go get Lara,” Connor said as he turned around.

Davis grabbed his friend’s arm before he could exit. “No matter what, she doesn’t come in here. I can take papers out to her, but she stays out. It’s too much.”

“Agreed.”

They’d almost made it to the door when they heard her scream.

* * *

L
ARA
STOOD
IN
the reception area with her back wedged in the corner and the NCIS special agent plastered to the front of her. She strained to see over his shoulder, even a peek to make sure Davis was safe, but she mostly got an eyeful of black jacket and formidable shoulders.

Her thigh hit the edge of the table and the lamp bobbled. Ben’s free hand shot out to catch it before it slammed to the ground and potentially broke. After using lamps as a weapon in her past two rounds against attackers, she figured it would serve her right to have her location exposed by one.

The catch didn’t solve her problem. Her legs cramped and she shifted to get into a more comfortable position, but being penned in stopped all movement. When that didn’t work she tried a request. “Any chance you could move forward an inch?”

The only thing keeping her from running down the hall after Davis was the knowledge that she’d be in the way. If he worried about protecting he’d become an even bigger target. Bulletproof vest or no, even with all his training, he was human and she would not watch him bleed out in front of her. Just the thought of him being injured made her stomach ache from all the violent clenching.

“No.” Ben continued scanning the area in an arc that started in the general direction of the conference room and continued around reception and out through the glass doors.

He stayed still, didn’t make any noise and kept his gun at the ready. Seemed he took Davis’s threat pretty seriously.

She still wasn’t taking any chances. She had the gun in her hand and hours of practice sessions from Davis just in case. It had been almost a year since she’d shot a gun. She hoped it was like that bike thing and you never forgot. She also hoped she could hit an attacker as well as she hit a paper target. Davis had warned her about the human factor and how it changed everything.

“The moving thing was more of a statement than a question,” she said in a low whisper.

“I’d rather your boyfriend didn’t kill me.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” The response was automatic. Someone mentioned Davis and the line floated through her head.

Ben shot her a quick frown over his shoulder. “Does Davis know that?”

Fair question.
They’d been shooting mixed signals at each other ever since she had run into his arms at his house. The kiss had been a green light that suggested their breakup was more of a rest period than a true ending. But neither of them tried to push forward. Physically, yes, but not emotionally.

They had so much baggage piled between them. The baby he didn’t know about, how his work was more important than her and the letter from his long-lost mother that he hid and to this day hadn’t mentioned.

He was a man who thrived on secrets and kept his duffel packed by the door for escape. She craved stability, but right now she’d trade it all to know Davis was okay back there. Waiting for the horrible sound of gunfire to ring out or for Connor to report that Davis was in trouble was enough to buckle her knees in terror.

Because she needed all of her energy to stay focused and not let her mind wander to worst-case scenarios, she went with a response that said everything and nothing at the same time. “Our relationship is complicated.”

Those shoulders in front of her shrugged, pushing her even deeper into the wall. “What relationship isn’t?”

“No, really.”

This time Ben’s quick look suggested she was a little slow. “And I say again, no, really, they’re all complicated.”

She put her head back, rested it against the wall and fought back the urge to scream. There was just something about the way males like Ben and Davis and everyone she’d met at Corcoran downplayed important issues and lived in the moment that made her head feel as if it were being crushed until it might cave in.

But maybe that was good, because anger at their macho behavior gave her somewhere to channel all of the anxiety flipping around inside her. Between being squished from the front and suffocated from the fear clogging her throat, she needed all of this to be over. The attacker had escaped twice. He could not be so lucky a third time.

As Ben glanced to the left, Lara looked to the right. She blinked when a pair of boots dropped out of a ceiling tile. She screamed when a man slipped out, jumping to the hallway floor and straight into a shooting position. Ben’s head whipped around but the crack of the weapon beat him.

Something whistled right near her hand. As she watched, one of the glass doors in front of them shattered into a giant spiderweb pattern but didn’t break. A small hole formed but the glass didn’t crumble into a million pieces as she’d feared.

Ben shot as she felt his body buck against hers. His shooting arm dropped to his side and just hung there. When he grabbed for his arm, his hand came back smeared with blood. She tried to reach around to help him but he shifted their bodies, shoving her behind him and facing the attacker head-on.

Not
an
attacker.
The
attacker.

Her gaze locked on the man now a few feet away and aiming again. She swore she saw a sick smile form on his lips the second before he aimed again.

They were open targets. Nothing hid their position from the hall. The only thing standing between her and a bullet was Ben. If anything, he stood up straighter, making his body even more of a shield.

She refused to be a victim. She turned to look for anything to duck behind and saw Davis come flying around the corner with Connor right behind.

The attacker’s attention wavered at the streak of motion and Davis got off a shot. Ben fired, too. Through the thunder of booms the glass door broke apart, sending shards raining into the reception area.

“Lara, get down!” Davis commanded.

She was already ducking. With her hands over her face and body bent in half, she tried to avoid the glass shower. She almost fell over when Ben knocked into her. His footsteps wobbled and he started to slide.