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“To all of it.”
She replayed that, as well, and it didn’t sound any better the fifth time around. “But what about Molly?”
He shrugged. “That’s what official channels are for.”
Cass could have pointed out all the pitfalls associated with official channels, especially since Dominic was now part of those channels. However, Matt Christensen knew what was at stake here. He knew that Dominic could hide the child so that no one could get to her—ever. He knew what could go wrong, and yet he was obviously willing to risk doing this the official way.
“Okay,” Cass mumbled. She took a deep breath and pushed her hair away from her forehead. “So, I guess this is goodbye. No hard feelings, I hope.”
With that, she started for the door.
She didn’t get far.
He snagged her by the arm. “You think you’re leaving?”
Since that sounded like a challenge, her chin came up. “I am leaving.” She tried not to sound hesitant.
But she was. Heaven help her, she was.
Special Agent Matt Christensen had been her best shot at clearing her name. Without him, she didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of doing that.
“It’d be suicide for you to try to break into Dominic’s estate alone,” he pointed out.
“I have insider help, remember?”
“Yeah, and if that were enough, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
Touché.
Yes, she had an insider, Hollis Becker, Dominic’s head groundskeeper and the man in charge of external security for the estate. Because she was paying him well, he was good at eavesdropping, keeping track of Dominic and taking the occasional picture for her. But Hollis wouldn’t be able to get her past the internal security system there. No, the best he could do was get her a fake job as a seasonal helper, give her a temporary place to stay and tidbits of information as to Dominic’s immediate whereabouts. That would give her, perhaps, an opportunity to sneak inside the basement of Dominic’s estate.
Cass tried to move out of his grip, but he held on, latching on to her other arm as well. She really hated the idea of kneeing him in the groin, but if it came down to it, she would. If she stayed, she’d end up in jail and therefore, dead.
“Once I’m inside the estate, I’ll do everything within my power to get your daughter out of there,” she explained, even though it was hard to deliver a calm explanation with her emotions doing a foot race inside her.
He blinked. “You’d actually try to get the baby out?”
“Of course.” Cass watched the surprise on his face. No, not just surprise. Shock. She frowned. “What, you think I’d leave a child there with Dominic if I had a chance to save her? You must really believe I’m a selfish bimbo.”
The hold he had on her melted away, and he groaned and dropped back a step. Cass took it as the gift that it was. She retrieved both of her weapons, and she headed for the back door.
She made it two steps.
“Wait,” he said.
Cass stopped. Held her breath. And prayed. Because even though she’d been willing to walk out that door, she knew without his help, she’d fail. Slowly she turned back around to face him.
He opened his mouth to say something. What, she didn’t know. And she didn’t get a chance to learn because the phone rang again.
Like before, he didn’t answer it. He stood there. Waiting. It didn’t take long for the answering machine to kick in.
“Matt, it’s me, Ronald,” the voice said. She recognized it as the man who’d called earlier. Except his voice was a little different now. Not sleepy. Frantic. “I hope to hell you’re there listening to this. And I hope to hell I’m wrong.”
Matt reached over and hit the speaker function on the phone. “What’s going on?” he asked the caller.
“I don’t know exactly, but five minutes ago the communications guys at the central command post intercepted a Level Red threat.”
Cass looked at Matt, silently requesting an explanation.
He didn’t provide one.
“I take it this Level Red has something to do with me?” Matt asked his friend.
“It has everything to do with you. Your name is on it. So is a fugitive—Cassandra Harrison. They believe she’s there with you.”
That caused Matt to curse.
“What’s wrong?” Cass mouthed.
Again he didn’t answer.
“My advice is to get out of there fast,” Ronald McKenzie continued. “We’ve got backup on the way, but it doesn’t look like we’ll make it in time. These guys are five to ten minutes ahead of us.”
With that ominous-sounding warning, Ronald McKenzie hung up.
Matt didn’t waste any time. He snatched his weapon from the fridge.
“What’s wrong?” Cass demanded. “What does Level Red mean?” And she held her breath because she knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Matt Christensen latched on to her arm and got her moving toward the kitchen door. “It means we leave now. Someone sent assassins to kill us.”
Chapter Four
“I hate to say I told you so…” Cass grumbled under her breath.
Yeah. Matt hated it, too, but hindsight wasn’t going to get them out of this situation.
“Help is on the way, but I doubt they’ll arrive in time. And I’d rather not get involved in a shootout,” he said more to himself than her.
“Then you’d better have a plan to avoid one.”
She added something else equally obvious in that on-the-verge-of-panicking tone, but he shut out whatever she was saying. He had to concentrate if he was going to get them out of this alive.
Matt grabbed the black leather jacket that he kept next to the back kitchen door. He shoved his cell phone, a small supply kit, her tranquilizer gun and some extra magazines of ammo into his pockets. The supply kit had money, matches and just in case, tools for picking locks. While he was at it, he crammed some ammo into Cass’s front jeans pocket, as well. Not the best idea he’d ever had.
His fingers went places they never should have gone. Cass let him know that with a huff.
Matt mumbled an apology and eased the back door open an inch, but he didn’t step outside. He paused and lifted his head a fraction. Listening.
“Won’t the assassins use the street out front?” Cass asked. She slid her smaller gun back into her holster.
“Maybe. But they might come at us from several directions.”
She sucked in her breath. Yeah. The severity of their situation had obviously sunk in.
Matt opened the door farther and did a situation assessment. He heard the vicious winter wind. But there was no indication that there were assassins about. But then, a hired gun probably wouldn’t give many indications before he aimed and pulled the trigger.
Still, they’d have to risk it.
“Let’s go,” Matt ordered her.
“Let’s go?” She didn’t move, even when he clamped on to her arm. “How could it possibly be safer out there than it would be in here?”
“Those assassins are going to riddle this house with bullets. There’s no place we can hide in here where we can’t be shot.”
Obviously not convinced, she frantically shook her head. “But—”
“They probably have explosives or some other heavy artillery they can use to turn this place and our vehicles into fireballs,” he interrupted. “We’re leaving now.”
Matt didn’t wait for an argument. He pulled her out the door and headed for the first cluster of oaks at the back of the house. It wasn’t far, less than twenty feet away. But every step felt like a mile.
By the time he hauled her behind the largest of the trees, his body was already in full adrenaline mode. His gaze whipped from one side of the woods to the other, and he braced his weapon in case he had to fire. But Matt saw no indication that anyone had trespassed—yet.
“Keep your gun ready,” he instructed. He pointed toward another cluster of trees just to the east of where they were. “Let’s go.”
Cass cooperated. Without hesitation or questions she ran, hurdling over a fallen cedar before she ducked into the next barrier of trees.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her breath heavy with every word. Like him, she kept a vigilant watch around them.
He knew the answer, but he didn’t think she’d like it. “To a bunker of sorts. We’ll wait there until it’s safe for us to leave.”
“And what will keep the gunmen from finding us there?”
“Nothing.”
Her breath got even heavier. “This doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”
And at the moment it didn’t sound like much of a plan to Matt, either. He had an old truck stashed back beyond the bunker, but it’d be a bear to get to it and then get out without drawing attention from the assassins.
Which meant he might have to kill them.
Of course, Matt had known that from the moment he’d first heard about the Level Red threat. Those men had almost certainly come to murder them, and since Matt wasn’t ready to die, he was prepared to take them out first.
Matt surveyed the area, then pointed toward a pair of cedar elms with an ankle-deep stream ribboning around them. Just like before, they raced toward cover.
It was winter all right, not that that was news to Matt, but he became brutally aware of just how cold it was when he felt the slushy, partly-frozen water seep right through the leather in his boots.
Matt heard something. The back door to his house. No doubt opened by one of the assassins. The men had probably come in through the front and already searched the place—and now they were ready to look outside. Cass’s and his tracks wouldn’t be that hard to follow.
Cass must have heard the door, as well, because she dropped to the ground, using the mound of frozen dirt and rocks as cover.
She aimed her gun in the direction of the house. “We don’t have time for this,” she whispered. “We need to get out of here so we can get that equipment and leave for Dominic’s.”
So, she did appear to have that mountain of resolve even in the face of assassins. Matt admired that. But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Because he had a really bad feeling that camaraderie and admiration were not going to be assets where Cass Harrison was concerned. The less he felt about her, good or bad, the better.
He was about to repeat to himself when a flash of movement captured his complete attention.
One of the men, dressed head to toe in black, darted behind an oak. Matt automatically took aim. So did Cass.
It was too little too late.
A bullet came right at them.
FROM THE MOMENT she’d seen those gunmen, Cass had braced herself for the possibility that she’d have to dodge gunfire. What she couldn’t have planned for was the deafening blast that sent that bullet their way. The sound ripped through her, spiking her adrenaline and sending her heartbeat racing out of control.
“Stay down,” Matt barked.
Just as another bullet slapped into the dirt mere inches from her head.
Cass flattened her body right against the frozen ground, and she tried to find out where the shots were coming from. The angle was all wrong for the bullets to have come from the gunman behind the big tree.
“He’s on the roof,” Matt informed her, as if reading her mind. He levered himself up and fired.
Cass hadn’t braced herself for that, either, and if she’d thought the shooter’s rifle was loud, it was a whisper compared to the sonic boom that came from Matt’s gun a couple of feet from her ear.
“Did you get him?” she asked, unable to spot the guy who was obviously trying to kill them.
“Not a chance. He’s out of range, and he knows it. That’s why he’s up there.”
Oh, mercy. So, they had one shooter out of range and another likely creeping his way through the woods toward them.
“Turn around,” Matt ordered her. “And watch our backs.”
Cass hadn’t thought it could get any worse until he said that. Her heart was no longer just racing, it was banging against her ribs, and she could feel her pulse pound in her ears.
Forcing herself not to panic, she rolled over so that she was on her back. The trees that’d given them so much protection to get to the bunker were now obstacles. Each one could hide a potential killer. Even worse, if she managed to spot him, Cass wasn’t even sure she’d be able to shoot. Simply put, her aim had never been tested in a real situation, only at a firing range.
She might die right here, right now. And all because Dominic wanted to make sure she couldn’t testify against him.
Those words flashed through her head and fed the adrenaline. They also fed her determination. They had to survive this. They had no other choice. Because if they died, they would never get Matt’s child away from Dominic.
Fueled with her new motivation, Cass readjusted her position and her gun so she’d be better ready to fire. And she waited.
Next to her, Matt fired two more shots.
“You said the guy on the roof is out of range,” Cass whispered.
“He is. The guy behind the oak moved.”
