Into the Crossfire (31 page)

had to let her sleep. She'd been hungry, so he'd fix her a hot meal. And hope it

wouldn't poison her.

He was halfway to the kitchen when his cell phone buzzed from his jacket

pocket.

"Yeah?"

What the hell did he have in his kitchen cabinets? Anything warm he could

cook for her? What would you feed a traumatized woman? Soup. That was it.

Soup was what they fed the sick. Only how the hell did you make soup?

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"Sam, it's Harry."

"Uh-huh."

So maybe soup was out. Presumably it took ingredients and time and some

skill. Would a grilled-cheese sandwich do?

"Sam, we've got a Fed in the office."

"A Fed?" Soup and sandwiches fled from his mind. There could only be

one reason a Fed would be in his office. "They got a read off the vidcam."

"Roger that. And the news isn't good."

"It never is. Shoot." Holding his cell between his ear and shoulder, Sam

shrugged his shirt back on, his shoulder holster and jacket. The jeans were still wet

but what the hell. Things were moving fast and so would he.

"The guy's ex-Special Forces. Ranger, for ten years. Dishonorable

discharge five years ago, accused of stealing and selling base weapons, fell off the

grid. But the Feds have linked him to one murder for hire and have been on the

lookout ever since. He was red flagged, that's why the FBI got here so fast."

This was bad news. Special Forces soldiers had an extra gear. About a

million dollars of training went into each soldier and they were worth it. To a man,

they were smart, relentless and capable of devastating violence delivered with

surgical precision. An SF soldier gone bad was tragic news. An SF soldier gone

bad and after Nicole was terrifying.

"Coming in," Sam said and flipped his cell closed. He went to his gun

locker and chose a Glock 19, slotted in a full magazine and picked up another two

magazines he put in his jacket pocket. He slid the Glock into the shoulder holster.

There was more firepower in the office, but it just felt good to be loaded for bear

right now.

He took the time to stare for a full minute at Nicole, stretched out on his

bed, in a deep sleep. What would waking her up achieve? Nothing. There was

nothing she could do right now and learning that a highly trained bad guy was

after her would only make her more anxious. The best thing she could do for

herself right now was to rest. Her father was safe and by God, if there was one

place in all of San Diego where Sam trusted the security, it was his house.

It had top-of-the-line features, triple backups and a small separate generator

to keep the alarm system going even if the electricity was cut. He would swear in

court that he and Harry and Mike were the only ones who could get in.

He scribbled a note--Honey, I had to go into the office, call me on my cell

when you wake up. Be back as soon as I can--and left it on the dresser.

Sam was in a rush to get back to the office, but still he stood for a moment

on the threshold of his bedroom, just looking at her, naked, stretched out on his

bed. He could see every single detail of her slender, curvy body. Could see the

delicate collarbones, the sharp points of her hip bones, the long lines of her legs.

A stunningly beautiful woman. A head turner. The kind of woman who'd

have made a fortune modeling.

But more than just a beautiful woman. She was smart and strong and kind

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and funny and fiercely loyal in a way he appreciated down to his bones. A woman

in a million, and she was his.

He was going to keep her safe.

The fuckhead after her might have been a Ranger, but Sam was a SEAL,

which trumped that to hell and gone. As long as he was alive, no one would ever

hurt her.

And he was a hard man to kill.

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The man who came, Wilson, was fast and good. He'd given his bank

account number, and by the time he drove up in a non-descript-looking off-white

Transit van with the logo of an electrical-supplies shop on the sides, Outlaw had

had the money transferred. Outlaw believed in paying well. You got what you paid

for. And anyway, it was the client who was paying. He'd just add that amount to

the bill.

It was the wonderful thing about working for the money men. They could

fucking well afford anything. All they wanted was for their problem to go away

and they were willing to throw money at it to insure that it did.

Outlaw did his briefing inside the van as Wilson drove them to the

warehouse. The old man was trussed up in the back. Getting him out of the house

had been a snap, he'd weighed as much as a girl and he'd been sedated. The nurse's

body was in the back, too, and would be weighted with heavy chains, abdomen

slashed open. It was improbable given the weight of chains attached to her, but the

gases that formed in the stomach could possibly carry her to the top. Slashing her

open took care of that. Outlaw never took chances.

"We'll get the geezer set up and then get his daughter here. I'll have her

meet up with you. As soon as I get what I need from her, we'll just drop them over

the side of the wharf. Where is it exactly that we're going?"

"South side of town," Wilson said. "The docks around Fleetridge. This

warehouse was impounded because the owners were using it as a drug

clearinghouse and now it's slated for demolition. Next month, in fact. There won't

be anyone there. There won't be anyone in a three-mile radius this time of night."

"Perfect," Outlaw said. His instinct had proven correct. Nothing beat local

knowledge. And Wilson was proving real efficient. Outlaw liked men who did

what they were told without unnecessary talk.

He'd made it a habit to hook up with former soldiers and so far it had

worked out fine. He'd refined his search parameters even further, sticking to men

who'd tried out for Special Forces and hadn't made the grade. They were perfect.

Depending on where in the long, grueling process they dropped out, they'd had the

best training on the planet without that fuck-you, my-way-or-the-highway attitude

all Special Forces soldiers developed. To a man, SF soldiers only followed orders

when they made sense to them, which made them useless to Outlaw.

Outlaw didn't need for his men to understand, just to obey.

There was also the fact that a man who had been an SF soldier had his pick

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of civilian security jobs, low-hanging fruit for all of them. There didn't need to be

anything else on the resume. If you'd been a SEAL, a Ranger, Force Recon, that's

all anyone needed to know.

There were plenty of guys who'd nearly made it, but when they mustered

out of the military, no one would give them the time of day. If they were lucky

they became rent-a-cops, low-level security, cheap bodyguards for minor punks.

Not a one who didn't need money.

They'd trained and trained hard, and yet, since they couldn't make that final

cut, their lives were over. But they were manna from heaven for Outlaw, who

didn't need that razor edge the elite soldiers had. All he needed was good, solid

muscle with some brains behind it.

Outlaw had mostly uncomplicated jobs to do for clients who had to remain

anonymous. The SF dropouts were efficient, took orders and were glad for the

work, since they were shut out of the top-tier security work Special Forces soldiers

gave each other once they were out of the military.

They wouldn't give the dropouts the time of day. Outlaw had once seen a

former SEAL cross the street to avoid a man who'd rung the bell four days into

Hell Week.

He treated his men with respect, paid them above market rate, and got

excellent service.

He'd learned well from the money men.

She was swimming in the Pacific, way out beyond her comfort zone. The

strong tide was slowly carrying her out to sea, however hard she fought against it.

It was getting dark, the last slice of the sun drowned in the vast ocean's

blackness and there were no lights on shore. A wind started up, blowing from

land, creating wavelets rippling out that would reach all the way to China. Never a

strong swimmer, she was tiring fast, swimming as hard as she could to shore, yet

never coming closer.

The wind intensified, grew cold, sapping her strength. A wave crashed over

her head unexpectedly and she drank water, icy salt water. She surfaced sputtering

and frightened and shivering.

She drew in a deep breath and set out once more for shore. For what she

hoped was shore, a big black mass rising out of the dark sea, cold and unforgiving.

She tried to speed up her strokes, but it took all her strength merely to resist the

increasingly strong tide.

Another wave crashed over her head, driving her under, and she crested the

surface just as her breath gave out, gasping and treading water, looking around her

in a panic.

It was all black, all dark now. Which way was shore, and safety? It was

impossible to tell. She struck out again, hoping it was the right direction, her

strokes uneven. She fought down the waves of panic, the deadliest enemy at sea,

as she fought the strength of the waves that wanted to carry her out, away, toward

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the vastness of the open sea.

Exhausted, she gulped in air, only to find it was salt water instead. Her

limbs were flailing now, she was so cold it was hard to coordinate her movements.

She treaded water, turning in a full circle, fighting panic.

Darkness, everywhere. No lights, no sounds from shore to orient her. No

ships on the horizon, nothing.

Staying still like this, she rode the waves as they grew taller, trying to time

it so she wouldn't dissipate her strength. Rising, rising, a faint ripple of light as the

wave crested in foam, then the drop to the trough, over and over again. Up,

cresting, plunging down...another wave crested fast over her. She hadn't expected

it, she had no air in her lungs.

Oh God! It was pitch-black beneath the waves! The swirling water had

tumbled her into a somersault and now she didn't know which was was up and

which was down. She tilted her head back, but there was nothing to see, not even

reflected starlight on the surface.

She started kicking, arrowing as fast as she could...up? Please God, let her

be kicking upward. In a last spurt of strength, she scissored her legs harder and

faster, lungs burning, aching to pull in the breath that would fill her lungs with salt

water. She had a second left, maybe two...

She was going to die here, all alone, in the cold, dark ocean, everything so

silent except for her beating heart. It thumped against her rib cage, hard, as she

kept her hands outstretched, hoping to break the surface, but all her hands

encountered was cold water.

She was dying, panic ringing in her mind like a bell, ringing, ringing...

Nicole sat up in bed with a gasp, sweating and shivering, completely

disoriented in the dark. With a shaking hand, she groped until she found a lamp

and turned it on, blinking blankly at the room.

The ringing continued, on and on. Her cell phone!

Nicole dove for her purse, lying on the floor, scrambling for the phone.

Maybe it was Sam. He wasn't here. The house had an unmistakeable empty

feeling. And, she now saw, there was a note on the dresser from him.

She glanced down at the little window. Not Sam, her father. Was something

wrong? Had he taken a turn for the worse?

"Dad?" she said breathlessly. "Are you okay?"

"Not your father, bitch." A low, deep, man's voice. Slightly raspy, somehow

familiar...

"Who is--" And suddenly she knew. That low, raspy voice had spoken

vicious things in her ear only hours ago. The intruder.

"Look at your screen."

Nicole turned the phone so she could see the screen and gasped. It showed

her father, pale as ice, tied to a chair. He was trembling badly. Not fear, those were

muscle spasms unchecked by the medication he'd clearly not had a chance to take.

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While Nicole watched in horror, a large man's hand off-screen took a knife and

traced a long line down her father's face, from temple to chin.

At first she thought he'd brought the wrong edge of the blade to her father's

face, as an admonishment. Look what we could do to him if we wanted to.

But then a small red line appeared, growing larger and larger, gaping open,

blood starting to drip off her father's jaw onto his pale gray pyjamas. Looking

more closely, Nicole could see that the knife had cut deep into the flesh, possibly

to the bone.

"Stop it!" she screamed into the cell phone. "Don't you dare hurt my

father!"

The hand reappeared, this time holding a gun. A big black gun that looked

enormous next to her father's frail figure. Deadly black metal against her father's

pale, wrinkled skin. The gun angled downward until the muzzle pressed into her

father's knee. It was driven so hard into her father's flesh she could see the material

of the pajama pants ruching around the muzzle.

Then the screen went dark.

"Oh, we'll do more than just hurt him," the deep, vicious voice came back

on. "You saw that gun."