Into the Crossfire (35 page)

Panic would get Nicole killed. She was already in serious danger. He was

the only thing that stood between Nicole and death. If he didn't get himself under

control, she was fucked, and he would lose her.

Sam leaned forward. "How many points of entry?"

Mike looked at him intently for a second, eyes bright blue even in the low

glow of the monitor, then nodded. "Seven," he said. His finger pinpointed the

doors into the building. "Plus what could only be a big loading bay here."

Sam turned it over in his head. "They won't be using the loading bay. Those

suckers have huge doors that take forever to open even if you find the control

panel. They'll go in through one of the side doors. They're on some kind of

timeline. Whatever it is they're doing, it has to be quick."

Mike nodded. "Makes sense. And I don't think they'd go far into the

building, so we're looking at perimeter rooms."

Sam nodded. "Here. And here." He tapped two doors on the blueprint, on

either side of the front loading bay.

If the fuckers were at all rational, that's where they'd be. They had no idea

that anyone could be tracking them. Entering into the huge maze of the warehouse

made no sense.

"Jesus, I wish we had a Predator with thermal imaging," Harry sighed into

the earpiece.

Fuck yeah. An aerial image showing where warm bodies were.

"Don't have a Predator," Mike said, reaching behind him for his backpack.

"But while Sam was freaking, I was thinking." He hauled a camera-like machine

with binoculars into the front seat.

A goddamn handheld thermal imager! And Mike was right--he'd been

thinking while Sam was freaking. "I have a thermal imager," Mike said into the

mike, for Harry's benefit.

"Sam should kiss you on the mouth for that," Harry said.

"Ewww," Sam and Mike replied in unison.

Mike smiled evilly. "But I will take that kiss from Nicole once we get her

out."

"Over my dead body," Sam growled.

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"Make sure it isn't over anyone's dead body, except for the bad guys,"

Harry replied over their earpieces. "Now go get them. And afterward, Nicole has

to kiss me, too."

They were in some kind of abandoned industrial building, but Nicole had

no idea where. They could have been on the back side of the moon for all she

knew.

When the car veered into one of the empty compounds, big gate standing

open, her heart sank. The driver got out, growled don't move, pulled out a big

black gun and kept it pointed at her. He could see her perfectly, since the

headlights bounced off the steel walls of the building, lighting up the inside of the

car. Nicole could barely see the man, and followed what he was doing by sound

rather than sight.

The two big steel gates were pulled closed, a chain run through the handles

and a padlock on the chain.

She was locked in.

The man came to her side of the car, opened the door and pulled her out

roughly, pushing her ahead of him.

They walked around the right-hand corner, the man prodding her painfully

in the back with the gun. Along the side wall was a door, ajar, visible in the

backwash of the headlights around the corner. The man pushed hard with the gun.

The doorway loomed, empty and black and forbidding.

It was like walking to her doom. They'd driven for ten minutes without

seeing a light, without seeing another car or another human being. There was no

one around to call for help, no way to signal, no way to call. She and her father

were as abandoned as this building.

There was no way out, none. Even if, by some insane series of events,

Nicole managed to overcome two armed men--and there might be more--and run

away, she couldn't. Her father couldn't walk, she couldn't carry him and she'd

never leave him behind.

Another sharp jab in the back, hard enough to break skin. Nicole's heart

beat painfully hard as she eyed the open doorway, utter blackness beyond.

Something, some animal instinct told her that she and her father wouldn't escape

this building alive. The rusty abandoned warehouse would be their tomb.

"Get going, bitch." Behind her, the driver's voice was low, rough. This time

instead of stabbing her in the back with the gun, he gave her a violent push that

almost sent her to her knees.

Slowly, heart thundering, Nicole walked toward the blackness, stumbling

over the threshold, then waited. She had no idea where he wanted her to go.

A heavy hand on her shoulder. "Right," he rasped and she started walking.

There was a faint light in the distance that grew brighter as she approached

it. A door slightly ajar, light behind it. She stopped outside the door, suddenly

terrified of what might be behind it.

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"Move it." A hard push against the door and she tumbled into the room.

What she saw raised the hair on the nape of her neck.

Her father, duct taped to a chair, hands in restraints clasped on his lap, head

hung low, dried blood from the slashed cheek all over the side of his face and his

pajamas.

There was a large plastic sheet under the chair. For the blood. To ensure

that no DNA be left behind. A tense shiver of horror ran through her. These men

were thorough. They were not going to make mistakes.

On a stool next to her father was the man who'd broken into her office. A

powerful lamp on a nearby steel table provided enough light to see the hellish

scene by.

The man's head rose at their entrance and Nicole stepped back at the fierce

coldness in his eyes.

She bumped into the man behind her.

He pushed her forward. "Watch where you're going, bitch."

Nicole barely heard him. Her father--she couldn't see his chest moving. Oh

my God, was he-"Daddy?" she whispered out of a tight throat.

Nicholas Pearce's eyelids flickered, opened. His head wobbled up, brows

furrowed, eyes narrowed, unfocused.

"Daddy!" Nicole sobbed and he saw her.

In terrible pain, restraints so tight his hands were white and bloodless, duct

taped to a chair by thugs, her father tried to reassure her. He made a stab at a smile

and the deep wound in his cheek began sullenly bleeding again.

"It's okay, darling," he whispered. "I'm okay."

Pain made her heart miss a beat. She couldn't stand seeing her father hurt.

The room swam as tears flooded Nicole's eyes. She rushed forward to hold her

father, but was abruptly yanked back by a big, strong hand on her arm.

"Very touching," the man on the stool said, coolly. "Fatherly love. A

daughter's devotion. It helps me." He picked up a big gun. Nicole heard a sharp

snick! A thousand movies told her it was the safety coming off. He pointed the

gun at her father's knee. "Now. Do you have what I want?"

Shaking so hard it took her two tries to unzip her purse, Nicole reached in

and brought out the portable hard disk.

Please let this be what he wants, she thought. Otherwise he'd shoot her

father in one knee, then the other. She met the man's eyes, cold, inhuman. The

feral eyes of a creature of the night. There was no mercy there at all.

Still, she tried.

"Please," she whispered, and placed the hard disk on the ground with a

trembling hand. The man curled his free hand up in the universal gimme gesture.

Kneeling still, Nicole sent the hard disk skimming over the floor to him. He

stopped it with a booted foot and picked it up.

He put the gun back down. He could afford to. Her father was tied up in a

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way a strong man couldn't break, let alone a weak, very sick one. She was at least

ten feet from him. Even if she didn't have a gun pointed at her back, she'd never be

able to make the leap, pick up the gun and shoot. The other man's hand was a

second from the gun and he obviously knew how to use it.

She had no options here, none. She was helpless, unable to save her father,

unable to save herself.

The man reached behind him, bringing out an ultra-thin laptop. He fired it

up. It looked expensive and it was fast. With a couple of beeps, everything was

ready. Connecting the hard disk via the USB port, the man stared at the monitor.

Nicole couldn't see anything other than the silver back of the monitor and the bluegreen wash of light over the man's cold, expressionless face.

"Password," he grunted.

"Nickyblue," she said shakily. Her mother's nickname for her.

He clicked his way through something, following intently, while Nicole

trembled. Though it was cold in the warehouse, sweat coated her torso, drops

falling between her breasts. Terror made her heart pump so hard she thought it

would jump out of her chest.

Utter silence except for the genteel, expensive whir of top-of-the-line

electronics, then the man sat back with a sigh. He looked at the other man, next to

Nicole. "Got it."

"Great," the man next to her answered.

"Now." The intruder stared coldly at Nicole, picking the gun up once more,

placing it against her father's knee again. "Has this information been forwarded?

Did you send the file to anyone?"

Nicole had no idea which file he meant, but she hadn't e-mailed anyone in

the past thirty-six hours.

She shook her head and he nodded. She had no saliva in her mouth to

answer.

The man had the air of someone wrapping something up. It was coming to a

head. "Did you copy it to a flash drive?" She shook her head again. "Show me."

His voice was low, harsh, affectless.

Nicole lowered her purse to the floor and shoved it to him with her foot, as

she had with the hard disk. "In the side pocket," she said, her dry mouth making

the words hard to understand.

He extracted the flash drive, inserted it into the USB port and clicked

through it. If it was on the hard disk but not on the flash drive, it must be a file that

had arrived on the twenty-eighth or later.

He nodded and looked her straight in the eyes. She forced herself to meet

his gaze. It was like looking into a dark abyss.

"Swear that you haven't copied or forwarded the file." The man pressed his

gun hard against her father's knee. Sweat broke out on her father's face, but he said

nothing.

"I swear! Please, oh please don't hurt him!" Nicole cried. Oh God, she

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couldn't stand this. Her father was so sick, so fragile. He'd been without pain

medication for hours. He was in agony, she could tell.

Nicole watched the man's eyes, watched the utter indifference to her father's

pain.

A flood of rage swept through her. This man was like every cruel man who

had ever lived. He enjoyed holding power over others, he enjoyed inflicting pain,

simply because he could.

He looked at her for a full minute. "I believe you," he finally said, with a

nod. "Which means we won't be needing you anymore."

He nodded to his partner and lifted the gun from her father's knee to place it

against his head. In the same instant, Nicole felt the round cold circle of a gun

muzzle against the nape of her neck.

Oh God. This was it.

She and her father were going to die right here, right now, in a cold, empty,

abandoned warehouse with the stench of machine oil and rat droppings in their

nostrils, where their bodies might not be found for months. Though, come to think

of it, there was the big wide ocean right outside. Weighted down with chains, no

one would ever find their bodies.

Nicole wanted to plead, to ask for mercy, but there was no mercy at all in

those light brown eyes, as dead and opaque as marbles.

"I guess it's good-bye, Ms. Pearce." The man's hand tightened, white

showing on the knuckles.

"No!" she screamed, leaping forward, trying crazily to reach her father, as if

she could somehow place herself between the bullet and her father in the time it

took the man to pull the trigger.

She was hauled back brutally by the hair by the other man. He knocked her

to her knees and placed his gun against the back of her head again. Crazily, Nicole

braced, as if that would help her deflect a bullet.

She looked over at her father through the tears swimming in her eyes. If she

could at least have departed this life looking into his eyes, so they could go

together...but his head lay heavily against his chest, unconscious. He'd slip from

unconsciousness into death...

Two shots rang in the room and she cried out. In shock, and then, after a

second, surprise. It took her seconds to get her bearings. She was...she was still

alive! As was her father, slumped and pale and broken, but alive.

A pink mist had bloomed around the intruder's head. He had an expression

of utter and total astonishment. He sat on the stool for a long moment, a round

pink hole in the center of his forehead. Then, suddenly, as if the weight of the gun

against her father's head were too great to bear, the pistol slipped from his hand,

falling to the floor with a clatter. Then he bent forward slowly, finally tumbling to

the floor.

Nicole turned around, heart racing. The man who'd been holding a gun to

her head had suddenly disappeared. Just like that, in a second. Shock had her

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staring at where he'd been, stupidly checking the room. Finally, she looked down