Crazy Wild (27 page)

“Ernst.” Reinhard called the Braun guy over. “Take her into the next room. No,” he said when Ernst reached for her ropes. “Keep her tied. Carry in the whole chair.”

Tied? Just what in the hell did he think he was going to do to her tied to a chair? Her imagination, which was really good, came up with a few things without any trouble, but she refused to panic.

Then Ernst came up behind her and simply lifted the whole chair by its seat and carried her through the door.

She didn't even bother trying to catch the eye of one of the MIBs and give them a pleading look. Those two were running their own game here, and saving punk rock girls was not on their agenda.

Fortunately, this punk rock girl could save herself—she hoped.

After Ernst set her down, Reinhard followed him to the door and locked it behind him. Skeeter heard him slide the dead bolt home.

Perfect.

Once this thing started, she didn't want anybody else coming in.

C
HAPTER

28

I
N STEELE STREET,
Creed was monitoring half a dozen devices on three separate computers. The Humvee was Dylan heading north into Commerce City to save Skeeter's butt. The cell phone was the location of the assholes who had taken her, and the third was an open-com setup where he was tracking everyone else who was headed up to the warehouse. He had the police radio on an open band. Royce from the CIA wasn't talking, but Creed knew by the tracker still on his car that he was definitely going in the right direction.

“You're amazing,” Cody said, standing just behind him, watching him work.

Yeah, it was pretty impressive how he'd gotten this all up and running in record time, and he thought it was cool that she'd noticed. He had the rep as SDF's jungle boy, but he had the rest of the gig down, too. He wasn't just good for swinging through the trees and booby-trapping the trails.

He'd been thinking, though, and he was thinking it was time to make a move. As soon as Skeeter was free, he and Cody needed to clear out, and get lost, and make damn sure they weren't found.

He knew the place.

He also knew a guy in Trinidad who could paint Angelina in an hour flat. She'd always wanted to look like Jeanette, and this was going to be her chance. Pure primer, baby. He was going to turn his show ride into a sleeper. Then it was straight to Mexico and the coast.

He always had two bags packed, ready to go at a moment's notice, one with clothes and stuff, and another with weapons. All he needed now was the moment, and something from her.

“We've run out of time, Cody,” he said, watching the Humvee's white-and-yellow-striped signal come to a stop on the screen. Dylan had landed, but everybody else wasn't too far behind. “This thing with Skeeter has blown us up. We're not going to be able to hide out in Steele Street after Royce gets a load of what she's been up to. He's going to know I've got you, and it's going to be warrants for everyone's arrest. He's not going to be able to put me away, but it'll be the end for you—and I'm not willing to let that happen.”

“I'm not sure you can keep it from happening.” She leaned forward, resting her hands on his shoulders and pressing a kiss to the back of his head. “Or, if you can, that you should.”

“Well, I can, and I'm damn sure I should.” He hit a couple of keystrokes. Somehow, Royce's signal kept getting stalled. He was either hitting every red light in Denver, or ending up behind every garbage truck on the late shift, because the blinking light with his name on it was hardly moving. “If after a week, or two, or three, you decide you'd rather sit in Leavenworth than stand one more day of my company, I'll bring you back.”

“Back from where?”

He looked up at her. “Paradise. You won't find it on a map, but I know how to get there. I wish I could give you a third choice, but I can't. I'd rather have you in Leavenworth than dead, and you won't last a week on your own. Not even if Dylan and the CIA get every tango in Denver tonight. Patrushev will just send more.”

HE
was right, and Cody knew it. She could run until she dropped, and there would still be somebody after her.

“There's a price, though, babe, and it's got to be paid,” he said, swiveling around in his chair, the computers momentarily forgotten. “No compromise on this, Cody. I have got to have the book. You need to be as far away from it as you can get, and the U.S. government needs to find that nuclear bomb. The world can't have that threat hanging over its head.”

He was right. Hiding the book was one thing, but it didn't make the bomb disappear. Somewhere in Tajikistan, it was waiting, and someday, map or no map, it was going to be found.

He was offering her a chance, the same way he'd offered her forgiveness for her sins. He'd lifted a weight off her shoulders, and he was willing to do it again.

“It's an awful burden, Creed.” Truly terrible.

“I know,
querida
.” He reached for her hand, then gently pulled her onto his lap and nuzzled her neck. It wasn't sexual. It was warm, and loving. It was being close, sharing the same space, and she'd never felt anything like it with anyone else, ever. “Come with me, Cody. Let's give them what they want and escape.”

A few simple words would set her free, would be the end of it, and with his breath warming her skin and his body close, touching her, she found the strength to just let go.

“I hid the book in the library.”

SKEETER
looked down at poor old Reinhard Klein with his dick hanging out of his pants, and his glass jaw broken, and his four-thousand-dollar suit looking like yesterday's news, and she would have given away half her new Humvee for one can of spray paint. She'd bagged the bastard, and now she really wanted to tag him. SB303. From the way he was moaning and groaning on the floor, she figured there was a good possibility that she'd actually broken his balls.

He had Superman to thank for that. She and Hawkins had spent enough time in Steele Street's fourth-floor gym to fill the basement with sweat—and tonight, it had all paid off.

You will
never
be hurt again, he'd told her.
Never
. And then he'd proceeded to make it so.

Poor old Reinhard. He'd never had a chance once he'd unzipped his pants. He'd thought he was going up against a girl. That's what he'd seen. What he hadn't seen was Superman's blood pumping through her veins, making her heart strong. No one could see it, but she knew it was there.

She looked around the office, but of course, there was no paint. Damn.

There had to be something she could—ah, she had it. Using her pliers, she snipped one piece of chain off her knife sheath, pried it open a little bit more, and then threaded it through his lapel button.

SB303, sucker.

From the pounding on the door, Reinhard's buddies had figured out all was not wine and roses in the love nest. It was time to get out of Dogville.

Stepping on the chair and the desk and up onto the bookcase, she climbed to the one window in the office, slid it open, shimmied her butt through it, and dropped the ten feet down on the other side. She landed soft on the balls of her feet, her knees bent, her mind clear.

DYLAN
stood behind Loretta and the guys she'd brought from her SWAT team, which had not been his choice, but they were the ones with the breaching loads, so they got to blow the door. Supplies, that's all it was, simple supplies. The guys with the most toys got to play first.

He had breaching loads at home, and a Mossberg 500 Cruiser to deliver them, the operative words being “at home,” as in “not here” outside this goddamn German warehouse, wading through snow up to his butt cheeks.

Four guys were lined up in front of him, each with their hand on the shoulder of the guy ahead of them. Everybody needed to know where everybody else was when the door went and they all peeled off into the dark building.

He was man number five, and he'd been told to stay put until he got the all clear, even though it was his employee, his
friend,
they were all there to save.

Actually, out of everybody sneaking through the dark and getting into position out here on Robinson Street, he and Loretta were probably the only ones who gave a damn about Skeeter. Everybody else wanted a piece of the action and their chance to do the deed, take down some assholes, get back at Osama, and hit one for the home team.

He didn't blame them; if it wasn't for Skeeter, he would have felt the same way.

But for him, this was about Skeeter, and his gut was in a knot of fear. He didn't want her hurt. If she was okay, then he got to strangle her himself, and that's what he wanted, what he needed. To have the luxury of shaking her until her teeth rattled and kissing her until she melted in his arms.

And then shaking her again.

C
HAPTER

29

S
KEETER KNEW AS MUCH
about sneaking around in the dark as the next wallbanger, and man, was she sneaking tonight. The outside of the warehouse was crawling with cops. She'd slid by three before she reached the front of the building, saw all the cop cars lurking out on the street, and realized she'd been evading her rescue team, which wasn't such a bad idea from the looks of the combat-ready force assembled by the main door. When the SWAT team fired off their breaching load, she heard glass rattle in four directions. Live fire started up inside the building shortly thereafter. Cripes, was she glad she'd gotten out when she had.

What she needed to do was stay out of everyone's way, and when she looked around, she saw the perfect place to stay safe and still be able to watch the action.

DYLAN
could hear all hell breaking loose inside the warehouse. The breaching load had set everybody off. From the sounds of it, the tangos had decided to go out in a ball of flame and glory. It was the frickin' OK Corral all over again.

And Skeeter was in there. He waited another second—and then he was done waiting. Staying low, he crossed the threshold, and then the receiver buzzed in his ear: “All clear.”

Hell. It was over. Fast and furious and short and sweet. He straightened up and headed for the light at the end of the rows of crates lining the walls. He could smell the gunfire, saw one dead body. It looked like one of the Brauns.

Boom!
Another breaching load went off, and Dylan picked up his pace. The SWAT team had come up against a locked door somewhere, and he still hadn't found Skeeter.

At the end of the row of crates, the police were already cuffing a group of people. Dylan categorized everyone in one quick glance. There were two people he didn't know, a man and a woman who appeared to be negotiating their release before Loretta even had a chance to get in the building and book them. He heard the woman say, “Tony Royce,” but didn't have time to look into that fascinating revelation just now, because there was still no Skeeter, and no Reinhard Klein.

He pushed past two of the SWAT guys to get into the room they'd just blown open, and there was Klein, flat out on the floor. He quickly scanned the rest of the room, saw the chair with a few lengths of cut rope dangling off it, noted that Klein had been worked over, and saw a black scuff mark high up on the wall next to the window.

Son of a bitch. She'd taken down Reinhard Klein.

He stepped over to the German. He'd been tied up, hands and legs, and was half stripped of his pants—and had a small metal ring looped through his lapel.

It wasn't a fashion statement.

She'd tagged him.

She'd taken him down and then she'd tagged him with a ring of her chain mail.

God, she'd probably wanted a can of paint.

The bastard was in a lot of pain, and nobody was bothering to untie him yet, but Klein was Royce's problem.

His problem was finding Skeeter. She'd gone through the window, and considering its location, she couldn't have been hurt, or hurt very badly, to have done it. She was probably hitching home, and at this time of night in Commerce City that could probably get her killed even faster than a bunch of tangos.

Turning and walking away, he started to feel pretty good about the night. Things had gotten a little hairy for a while, but were settling down now. His team had performed beyond expectations. Not Creed. He expected Creed to come out on top every single time. But Skeeter was a bonus. And to top it all off, they'd fulfilled their mission. They'd brought in Dominika Starkova and had her safely and quietly detained in Steele Street.

By anyone's estimation, the night was a Grade A success.

He'd parked the Humvee a ways up on the street and had to skirt a few cop cars to get to it. He needed to cruise the streets and find her, but for a moment, when he got inside, he just let go, slumped over the steering wheel, and allowed himself to feel the relief washing through him. She'd kicked Klein's ass and still had enough moxie to tag him, and enough physical strength to get herself out of a window ten feet up on the wall.

He really should marry her.

“Hi.”

Shit!
He jerked around, his heart in his throat, his hand going for his gun.

Shit!
She'd drop-loaded two gallons of adrenaline into his system in less than half a second flat.

“Skeeter,” he said, trying so hard not to sound even half as panicked as he felt that he damn near broke a vocal chord. She was tucked into the corner of the seat, and he'd been too wired even to see her.

Then it hit him.

She really was safe—he looked her over—and she wasn't hurt, and she was here, in the car, with him, and that bastard Klein had taken his pants down in front of her.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't feel this way about her and function.

“Big night?” he asked.

She nodded, and that's when he noticed she was trembling: her shoulders, her mouth—all of her was trembling.

He couldn't do this. Really. He was Dylan Hart, the cool one, the detached one, the brains of the operation. He was not the one who got swamped by feelings he couldn't control.

“Come here,” he said, reaching for her across the front seat and pulling her into his arms. It was a helluva lot easier than he ever would have imagined, especially since she practically leaped over the console to get on his side of the car.

God, save him.

Her arms went around his neck, her face into the curve of his shoulder, her ass wiggling down behind the steering wheel so she could sit in his lap—and she was still trembling.

“Yeah. A really big night,” she whispered, then let out a long sigh, and some of the tension left her body.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” He was so cool, Cool Hand Hart.

“It was scary and gross.”

“How gross? Do I need to go back in there and castrate him?” He took a deep, easy breath to keep from giving himself away—that it wasn't a rhetorical question.

“No,” she said. “They left me my tool belt. Left it right on me. Can you believe it? I'd already cut through half my rope before he ever started to
disrobe
. By the time he got his fly open, I was coming around with my first right hook.”

“Good.” Low-key, that was him. He started the Humvee, turned up the heat, and let out his own big sigh, in hopes some of the tension would leave his body. “In case you were wondering, you're grounded for eternity after tonight's escapade.”

Escapade. Now there was a parent word if he'd ever heard one.

“You're not the boss of me,” she said, her mouth brushing against his skin, and suddenly his brain was flooded with sex, every cell. It washed down through his body like a river of heat.

He couldn't do this, couldn't be her parent, or her friend, or her lover. There was no way for him to be with her that was bearable.

But he could hold her for a while longer, so he could remember, later, what it felt like to have her in his arms.

“You lost your hat.” And her pony band. He'd never seen her hair down before, and it was like a curtain of silk falling across her shoulders. He picked up a swath of it and let it slide through his fingers.

“They took my sunglasses, too.” She turned a little in his arms, so she could look up at him. “They're still in the warehouse, I'm sure, but I don't want to go back and get them.”

“Neither do I,” he said, realizing his reasons were probably different from hers. “You're beautiful, Skeeter.”

He smoothed his hand up the side of her face, then lowered his mouth to her forehead and kissed her all along her scar, the whole length of it, down to where it parted her eyebrow. He took his time, but without lingering. He inhaled her, but in a way she would never know, and he gave her his heart with every kiss, because he didn't have a choice.

“And you're more trouble than you're worth,” he said. “Now get your butt on your own side of the car.”

He was done with this. Tonight had been hell. They were going back to Steele Street, and he was personally taking Dominika Starkova to General Grant in Washington, D.C., and then he was going to spend the next ten years telecommuting.

“Dylan?”

“Yes?” He put the Humvee in gear and looked over at her.

“You're beautiful, too.”

Finished. Done. The end.