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He was as startlingly handsome as before, but something was different. There was no flashlight beam to light his features from below, so there was no way to mistake what she saw. There was more going on behind those sparkling blue eyes than she’d assumed. His expression was more than hard. It was predatory.
“Abigail, please.” He released her wrist and placed his hands on her shoulders. “We’ve got to get away from this apartment.”
“No, you go ahead. I’ll—”
“I can’t risk your safety by leaving you here.” He looked toward the stairwell. “There could be more men on their way.”
“How do you know that?” She inhaled sharply, realizing what he’d just said. “And how do you know my name?”
Flynn met her gaze squarely. His eyes probed hers for a few tense seconds. “All right. I’ve got no choice. Keep running the security check, and we’ll sort it out later.”
He was still looking directly at her, but she had the feeling he was talking to someone else.
“Are you going to come with me, Miss Locke?” he asked.
Her mind was reeling. There was simply too much to take in, to figure out, to try to make sense of. She shook her head.
“I should have known you wouldn’t do this the easy way,” he muttered. In a move too swift to follow, he leaned forward, wrapped one arm around the back of her knees and straightened up, flinging her over his shoulder.
She tried to scream, but the force of his shoulder hitting her stomach had knocked her breathless. Her head bounced against his back as he jogged to the elevator. She hit him with the purse she was somehow still clutching, but the blows had no effect—beneath his loose shirt, he was built like a brick wall. She clawed at the backpack he carried over his other shoulder in an attempt to lift herself up. “Put me down!” She gasped. “What do you think—”
“I’ll explain everything later, Abigail,” Flynn said, carrying her into the elevator. “We’re using the central car, Gonzales. I’ll need a control override so it won’t stop on the way down.”
“What? Who’s Gonzales?”
The doors slid shut, and the car started downward. It plummeted past the other floors without showing any signs of slowing. Just as Flynn had said, it didn’t stop.
Abbie wriggled, trying to kick free from his grasp.
Flynn tightened his grip on her legs. “Please, don’t do that, Abigail. You’re only making this more difficult. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her fingers latched on to the backpack’s buckle. She braced her arm against its side and lifted her head just as the buckle snapped. The pack had been crammed so full the top flap sprang open the moment the pressure from the buckle was released.
Abbie went still. She’d wondered briefly about what was in this pack, but she hadn’t bothered to look. She’d known children liked to carry an incredible amount of paraphernalia with them, so she hadn’t found the weight that unusual. Nor had she been surprised that the owner hadn’t claimed it—her classroom was full of items that had been left behind.
But judging by what she could see poking out of the top of the green canvas, she was certain this pack didn’t belong to one of her students.
Money. The pack wasn’t full of Pokеmon cards, it was stuffed with money. Thick, bundled wads of it. So much that she could actually smell it.
It couldn’t be real. No, this must be some kind of joke, and the wad of bills next to her nose had to be from a board game with very, very realistic props….
Game? Joke? Those looters who had broken into her apartment had been dead serious. As was the blood on their faces and the vicious way Flynn had fought them.
The looters? Had they been after this money? How had they known she had it, when she hadn’t known she had it? And why had Flynn grabbed this pack…unless he, too, had known what it contained?
Something clicked in her brain. This is what he’d been after all along. He was no electrician. He’d lied. He’d used that story to get into her apartment.
And she’d believed every word. She’d looked at that charming smile and those oh-so-sweet dimples and she’d been so sure she’d had his number, but she hadn’t, had she? She’d thought she’d learned her lesson about believing handsome men, but she’d been played for a fool. Again.
Dammit, she should have followed her instincts and slammed that door while she’d had the chance.
What was she mixed up in?
The elevator bypassed the ground floor. It didn’t stop until it reached the first level of the basement parking garage.
Where was Flynn taking her?
And why in God’s name was she letting him?
He shifted his grip, sliding her down the front of his body until she was standing on her feet. The instant the doors opened, he fastened one arm around her waist, drew her against his side and started forward.
Abbie didn’t wait for answers to any of her questions. She didn’t pause for regrets or self-recriminations. She reached for the screwdriver on Flynn’s tool belt, yanked it out of its slot and drove it as hard as she could into Flynn’s arm.
He muttered a sharp oath and loosened his grip for a vital second.
Abbie dropped the screwdriver, twisted out of his grasp and ran.
“Miss Locke, stop!”
At the shout from behind her, Abbie moved faster. She darted toward the nearest row of cars, the sound of her footsteps echoing through the cavernous garage. Her parking spot was on the next level down. Should she try to make it to her car, or head for the exit ramp? She glanced over her shoulder.
Flynn was following her. He was pressing his hand against his forearm, and she could see blood on his fingers. Her stomach churned. How badly had she hurt him?
“Abigail!”
She veered to the right, choosing to try to reach the exit instead of her car. The sooner she got outside where she could get help, the better her chances of escaping this…this…whatever she was mixed up in.
“Block the exits,” he said. “She’s heading for the ramp.”
His voice was low and hard. Who was he talking to? Was he crazy? She looped the strap of her purse around her neck and broke into a sprint, her arms pumping as she gulped in air. Her foot hit a patch of oil as she followed the ramp around a pillar. She slid sideways and crashed into the wall.
“Abigail, please stop!” he called. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
We? We? She slapped her hands against the cement wall and pushed off. She didn’t see the van that was coming down the ramp until it was directly in front of her.
Tires screeched as the vehicle skidded to a halt. A trim blond woman in a yellow cardigan set stared through the windshield at her, then opened the driver’s door and hopped out. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I didn’t hit you, did I?”
Abbie heard footsteps pound up the ramp behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Flynn was steadily closing the distance between them. His jaw was clenched. The sleeve over his forearm glistened dark red. She whipped her gaze back to the woman from the van and made a split-second decision. “Please. You’ve got to help me,” she said, racing around the hood to the passenger door. “That man’s crazy. I need to get out of here and call the police.”
The woman didn’t hesitate. Abbie had barely pulled the door closed behind her when the woman slid behind the wheel, flipped the power locks on the doors and threw the van into reverse.
Abbie braced her hands on the dashboard, trying to catch her breath. She saw that Flynn had stopped running. His lips moved, as if he were talking to himself again.
“No problem, Sergeant,” the woman said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Flynn smiled and lifted his bloody hand to his forehead in a crisp salute.
Abbie whipped her gaze back to her rescuer.
The blond woman palmed the wheel as she changed gears, expertly sending the minivan into a skidding half circle so that it was pointing up the ramp instead of down. She gave Abbie a tight smile. “Relax, Miss Locke. If you had the good sense to run away from Flynn O’Toole, then you won’t have any trouble understanding what I’m about to tell you.”
Chapter 4
The warehouse looked as if it had been empty for years. The weeds that poked through the cracks in the asphalt loading area were waist high in places. Rust stained the overhead doors and trailed down the brick wall beside the corroded rain gutters. High in the wall beneath the eaves, the rising moon glinted from a row of windows. The darkness behind the broken panes stood out like missing teeth.
Flynn eased back on the throttle and let his bike coast toward the middle door. “It’s O’Toole,” he said quietly.
The door lifted on well-oiled rollers. Staff Sergeant Lang was on guard duty. He averted his rifle and motioned Flynn to drive inside.
The bike’s headlight revealed several parked vehicles beside a canvas tarp that formed a wall directly in front of him. Flynn took off his helmet and waited until the warehouse door rolled shut, then swung his leg off the bike and headed toward the tarp.
In fact, the tarp was one side of a large canvas military tent that the team had erected inside the warehouse as part of their security precautions. The ruse was low-tech, fast to implement and surprisingly effective when it came to ensuring the outside of the building continued to appear dark and deserted.
The operational detachments from Delta Force were accustomed to working on their own—after some spectacular failures decades ago when the force was first formed, they had learned the hard way not to trust outside intelligence. They’d also learned the more fingers there were in the pie, the more likely that matters would spiral out of their control. The best way to keep a secret was not to tell anyone, so besides the president and the brass at the Pentagon, no one knew that Eagle Squadron was here.
Flynn lifted aside a flap, stepped over a bundle of electrical cables that snaked along the cement floor and strode into a blaze of light and activity. The tent was organized into two areas: one for equipment, the other for personnel. To his left he saw two soldiers cleaning their guns while Rafe Marek sorted out the ordnance they’d assembled. On Flynn’s right, the team’s communications center had been set up on a table crammed with radio, telephone and computer equipment. Scale maps of the area and photos of known members of the LLA had been taped to the poles that supported the roof. Some folding chairs, a trestle table, a small refrigerator and a microwave oven marked the mess hall and beyond that were two rows of cots that would serve as their barracks for the duration of the mission.
They’d brought only the bare necessities to Washington when they’d loaded the transport plane at Fort Bragg—vehicles, equipment and shelter. This self-contained temporary base of operations could be packed up and stacked in the back of a truck as quickly as it had been assembled. The living conditions were cramped and far from comfortable, but the plumbing in the warehouse bathrooms worked, and Gonzales had coaxed hot water out of the showers. Compared to other places where Eagle Squadron had set up shop, this tent was downright luxurious.
As far as Flynn knew, the mission was still a go. According to the latest news, the damage done by the mix-up at the ransom drop and the scuffle at Abigail’s apartment appeared to have been successfully contained. To everyone’s relief, the team had moved swiftly enough so that no word had leaked to the media or to the local authorities. How much damage had been done to the Ladavians’ negotiations with the LLA was another matter.
Flynn turned right and headed toward the stocky, bald man who was seated in front of the radio. “Is there any word from the Ladavian Embassy yet, Chief?”
Chief Warrant Officer Esposito shook his head as he glanced up at Flynn. His forehead creased like a pit bull’s. “The LLA hasn’t been in contact since they put the boy on the line.”
“How’s Vilyas?”
“Not doing well. He had to be sedated.”
“That’s rough. He didn’t look in good shape when I saw him at the ransom drop.”
Esposito bared his teeth, exposing a flash of gold. “I can’t blame him. If anyone snatched one of my boys, I’d have to be tied down to keep from going after the bastards myself.”
“Do you think the Vilyas kid is still alive?”
“At this point, the odds are in his favor. The ransom money isn’t all the LLA are after. They want to terrorize Vilyas and the Ladavian government, and as long as their hostage is alive, they can keep turning the screws.”
“Yeah, it’s a win-win situation for them. If they get the money, they finance more terrorism. And if they execute their hostage, they demoralize the royal family and gain worldwide publicity.”
“Hanging would be too easy for bastards like that.” Esposito gestured toward the pack that Flynn carried on his back. “Is that the money?”
Flynn slipped the straps of the pack off his shoulders and held it out to Esposito. “Yeah. It’s all there. What do you want me to do with it?”
“The box I used for my equipment is under the table. You could put the money in there to keep it out of the way until we’re ready for the next round.”
Flynn peered under the table and spotted a battered steel trunk. He bent down to slide it toward him, stuffed the pack inside and closed the lid. By the time he had straightened up, Esposito had already turned back to the radio as if he were totally disinterested in the twenty million dollars in cash that rested inches away from his feet.
Neither man considered the situation to be strange. People in their line of work were motivated by loyalty, honor and duty—if they’d been interested in money, they would have been accountants.
“Hey, O’Toole. Let me take a look at that arm.”
Flynn glanced at the lanky man who was walking toward him. Sergeant Jack Norton had the easy gait and whipcord leanness of a marathon runner. His specialty was field medicine, but no one made the mistake of believing that made him soft. Norton could pop dislocated joints back into place or fish through a guy’s guts for shrapnel in the morning, then proceed to take advantage of their grogginess to rob them blind at poker in the afternoon.
“Forget it, Norton,” Flynn said, moving toward the mess area. He grabbed a can of soda from one of the cases on the floor, opened the top and took a long swig. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” Jack said as he followed him. His soft Louisiana drawl echoed in his loose-limbed strides. “Humor me, anyway. It’s the major’s orders.”
Flynn looked around. “Where is the major, anyway?”
Jack tipped his head toward the far corner where some extra canvas tarps had been strung to partition off a small room. “Back there, doing his best to keep any more, ah, surprises from hitting the fan. He told me to send you in when I’m done.”
“Fine,” Flynn muttered. He pulled one of the chairs close to the trestle table, sat down and extended his arm. “Knock yourself out.”
Jack sat across from him and opened up the red tackle box where he kept his medical supplies. He let out a low whistle as he peeled back the blood-encrusted sleeve of Flynn’s shirt.
Flynn gritted his teeth. Not from the pain—he was trained to ignore far worse than this—but from embarrassment. He was a Delta Force commando. He was an expert marksman. He could use his feet and his hands as lethal weapons. He’d disabled three LLA terrorists less than an hour ago without breaking a sweat.
But he hadn’t been able to stop a five-foot, four-inch schoolteacher from stabbing him with a screwdriver.
Why? Sure, the grip he’d used to restrain her hadn’t been all that solid because he hadn’t wanted to give her bruises, but he should have been able to catch her before she’d bolted into the parking garage. The truth was, she’d distracted him with all that wriggling in the elevator.
What normal man wouldn’t have been distracted? Flynn asked himself. His hand had been clamped over the backs of her thighs, his face had been level with the curve of her buttocks and her unbound breasts had been jiggling against his shoulder blades. He’d been engulfed by the warm scent of fresh-washed female. Even with the voices of his team giving curt reports through his earpiece, he’d been aware of every panting breath she’d drawn.
Yet the lapse in his concentration could have been more than embarrassing. It could have been dangerous. If Sarah hadn’t shown up with her van when she had, the outcome might have been entirely different. The mission could have been compromised because, instead of focusing on his job, Flynn had been thinking about how good Abigail Locke had felt against his body.
He scowled. Hell, she wasn’t even his type.
“Hold on there, son. I’ll be done in a minute.”
Flynn returned his attention to Jack. “Did Captain Fox get in yet?”
“Uh-huh. She and your little friend are in with the major.”
Flynn’s gaze strayed to the partition that defined the major’s “office.” He should be wondering how the security background check had panned out, or how Abigail was handling the situation. Yet instead he wondered whether her blouse had dried.
“This looks ugly,” Jack added, his voice suspiciously sympathetic as he cleaned the dried blood from the area around the wound. He swabbed on a generous amount of disinfectant. “I have to give the schoolteacher credit. She got some good penetration after she pierced your sleeve.”
“It wasn’t that deep. The bleeding stopped after a few minutes.”
“I can’t tell the caliber or the make of the screwdriver she used.” Jack took a pair of tweezers and picked out some shirt fibers that clung to the sides of the hole. “Was it a Robertson?”
“It was a Phillips,” Flynn said.
“Ah, yes. Now that you mention it, I can see the four points of the star.” He gave the wound a final cleaning, laid a piece of gauze over the top and taped it in place. “Next time, make sure your tool belt isn’t loaded.”
Flynn folded the bloodstained sleeve above his elbow and flexed his arm, watching the white bandage ride up on a ridge of muscle. He wasn’t going to respond to Jack’s ragging. If the men knew how much this bothered him, they’d never let him hear the end of it. “I’ll ask Rafe to install safeties on all the screwdrivers, okay?”
Jack packed up his supplies. “Good idea.”
