Selling Out (29 page)

Which was confirmed when we heard the squawk of a handheld
radio nearby, and I almost squeaked in response. Luke pushed me back into a
corner, then Major covered us both, like shields made of flesh and bone. The
other two men were entering at a different entry point on the perimeter.

The guys slowly came closer, and I could see the red light
of a cigarette. I watched the light bob in his hand, bouncing with his step.

We were not actually hidden from sight, tucked against a
cutout of the building. If it were broad daylight out, we would be completely
visible. But our dark clothes melded with the shadows, and so we would be
missed. Probably. Except I was the only one who could see the guys and the red
pinprick of light.

Luke held his body against mine, his arms holding me in, his
breath light against my ear. Major was holding him in, facing me, with his
breath brushing faintly against my other ear from over Luke’s shoulder, so it
looked like we were getting that threesome after all.

The two guards were maybe five feet away from us. If the
guys noticed us, if they shot at us, Major and Luke could be dead before either
of them realized they were exposed. Would they even hear anything? A slight
scuff in the gravel as one of them raised his gun to aim. A high-pitched whine
as the bullet zoomed near. Or maybe they’d just go down. One minute giving
full-body hugs, the next—lights out.

I had known we were risking our lives here. That was what
euphemisms like
fighting chance
and
get your hands dirty
really meant, after
all—kill or be killed. So aside from the abject terror, I was feeling very
suave and sexy about the whole thing. I had actually been shot before. Had Luke
or Major been shot before? I didn’t know. Which meant I might have been the badass
of the group, even if I didn’t get to have an earpiece. I did, however, have my
gun in a holster at my side. That had been Major’s last stand. I could come, he
agreed, but I had to be armed.

I liked him better after that.

I watched the guys come closer, drawing crazy red circles in
the dark, like some sort of screen saver reenactment. My heart pounded; my
throat was dry. My breathing sounded like a racehorse, and I thought they must
have heard it. They must have seen the whites of my eyes, because Lord knew I
was staring, frozen, unable to blink or look away. The two men in front of me
were crouched over me, shielding my body with theirs, but I felt protective of
them.

“Shhh.” A breath of a sound. Luke’s hands ran down my arms,
softly, lightly.

I didn’t need his comfort. I needed him to stay alive. I
should tell him to stop, but I was petrified, about to break down bawling, so I
just stood there and shivered as Luke pressed a kiss to my temple.

“Almost,” he said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.
Just the sound, like a hiss but soothing. Almost what? Almost over, I guessed,
but it wasn’t. This was only the beginning. We weren’t even inside yet.

“Hey,” the smoker said, waving his cig. “When the fuck do we
have to get back?”

“A few minutes.”

“I’m so tired of that shit. At least out here, I can
breathe.”

More waving of the red light. I was like a cat with a laser
pointer, watching with bated breath.

The other guy coughed pointedly. “Maybe you can, but I can’t
breathe for shit with all this smoke in the air. Jesus Christ, put that thing
out.”

“Fuck you. Maybe if you had a drag, you’d stop being so
uptight.”

“Excuse me if I don’t want to get my ass chewed out today.”

“Yeah, yeah, or maybe you’re looking to get a piece of ass.
The amount of fucking time you spend with that girl. You probably spend half
your paycheck.”

“Do I complain about where you stick your dick?”

One red circle, another. “I’m just saying this for your own
good.”

“Yeah, well, for your own good, put that fucking light out.
If someone sees us, we’ll get docked for being unsafe. And you’ll be paying me
back for it.”

A snort. “So you can spend it on, what’s her name, Candace?”

The red light lifted. The guy took a long drag, then blew
out just as slow, taking a final hit.

He flicked the cigarette. It flew in a long red arc. It only
took a second for my fevered, oxygen-deprived brain to figure out where it
would land. On us. Almost anyway, but it was enough—I tensed. Luke felt it, and
through him, Major did too. They turned, ready to strike, to defend us against
an attack that wasn’t coming. And in doing so, their defense would expose us.
With one hand, I grabbed Major’s wrist, the one pressing against the wall by my
head.
Trust me
. With the barest
breath, I said, “Wait,” and I knew Luke heard me because his body stilled.

The little red cigarette landed at our feet, creating a
small glare on Luke’s shoe. Luckily, the men were already heading the other
direction. When their footsteps had faded and fifty-two beats had passed, Major
blew out a breath. “Jesus,” he muttered. “That was too fucking close. Next time
we run into someone, we don’t sit around like ducks. We disarm them.”

“We’re too wired,” Luke countermanded. “We almost blew our
positions because of a fucking cigarette.”

“I would have got them.”

For the first time, I approved of the arrogance in Major’s
voice. I needed some of that surety.

“We stick to the plan,” Luke said, and that appeared to be
that.

The word
airport
was really overselling the Barracks. It was actually a set of five hangars,
each with a small circuit of offices in the back. The hangars were organized
into a pentagon, facing a circular pavement that led out to a singular runway.

The design of the place was simplistic, which would work in
our favor. The downside was that we didn’t know which hangar Henri would be in.
If we went busting into the wrong ones, we would set off alarms, and Henri
would have time to bolt. So it was important that we find the right hangar
before going in.

Which is why they’d brought gadgets. Specifically,
heat-sensing goggles.

The building next to us was completely empty. One down, four
to go.

We crept around the side, where Major checked out the next
one. “Four below, two upstairs doing the horizontal tango.”

“Having fun there?” Luke asked.

“Nothing like infrared voyeurism to make my night brighter.”

“Let’s go in,” Luke said.

“We don’t know he’s in there.”

“Six people total? Those are good odds. And we’re here.
Let’s go.”

“Five,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Five that could be Henri. Those are the odds. I’m assuming
Major saw an old-fashioned boy-girl party upstairs, which means one of them is
female.”

“Shit, that could be him,” Major said. “Having a good time
while his hired helpers do all the work.”

“How was he taking her?” I asked.

“What?”

“The position,” I muttered impatiently. “What position was
she in?”

“Uh…missionary.”

“Not Henri,” I said decisively. Neither man questioned my
conclusion.

“He could still be on the first floor,” Luke said.

“Here. Let me see.” I reached for the goggles. “Come on.”

With clear reluctance, Major handed them over. I peered
inside. It took me a couple of minutes to line up my eyesight correctly and
then to make sense of the blue-red blobs on the screen. I checked the two
upstairs first. Yup, still going at it. And nope, no way would Henri resort to
something as intimate or leveling as missionary. Besides, he was an ass man.

I lowered the goggles to the second floor. First I only saw
a single mass, like some sort of a shapeless amoeba. Then one separated and
shrank a little—sitting down, I guessed. Another moved away—and sat. I pictured
guys gathered around a break-room table, talking shit and grabbing a beer.

Henri wasn’t here. Even if their specific activities were
slightly different, no man was singled out from the crowd, held away as Henri
preferred to be. This was the disorganized chaos of jacks and marbles. Henri
ruled the space around him with the rigidity of a chessboard.

“Not here,” I said.

“How do you know?” Major asked impatiently.

I really didn’t want to have to explain the
marbles-and-chessboard thing to him. He’d just give me that frowny look and
tell me I was stupid again.

“He just isn’t.”

Major looked ready to argue, but Luke cut him off with a
glance. “Next.”

Two down, three to go.

The middle hangar was the trickiest, because people were
milling around. My heart began to race. Most likely this was it, if only
because of the activity outside. I counted four men carrying machine guns.
There didn’t seem to be any urgency to their movements—which meant our entry
wasn’t detected—but energy crackled in the air. As if they were waiting.

This time Luke and I hung back while Major checked out the
building with the goggles. “Too many to get an accurate count,” he said when he
got back. “But I’m estimating twenty total.”

Twenty of them, three of us. And I probably shouldn’t even
have counted myself, compared to these guys. Two and a half. Could the
situation get any worse?

“There’s another problem,” Luke said. “Rico isn’t responding.”

“Shit,” Major said.

“Yeah, shit. You heard him when he got inside the fence,
right? Then nothing. We’ve made it past two buildings now, and he hasn’t
reported in about a single one.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“We follow the plan,” Luke said grimly. “We’ve found the
right hangar. Now we go in.”

“Redundancy.” I felt light-headed.

“Keep breathing,” he told me. Then to Major, “You stay with
her. I’ll go in.”

“That wasn’t the plan.”

“Well, in the plan we had two teams, one to keep watch outside,
one to go in. Since there’s only two of us, that means one person per team.”

“Bullshit,” Major said. “She can wait outside by herself. If
anyone comes close, shoot them in the fucking face. We’ll hear the shot and
come get you.”

“No,” I said. “I want to confront Henri. You said I would be
able to.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Major said, his voice oddly gentle,
as if I might break.

Maybe I was shaking a little. “That’s why I’m here. I know
I’m slowing you guys down, but it will all be for nothing if I don’t at least
try. If he dies before he calls off the hit on me and Ella, we’re screwed. You
know that.”

Luke looked away, the moonlight drawing long shadows over
his eyes. “Okay. We all go in.”

We waited until the side of the building was clear and then crept
to the back. The night air felt suddenly as thick as fog, as rich as butter.
The light beaming down on us from the stars seemed blinding, even though I
couldn’t quite make out anything.

I felt invincible.

“That’s the adrenaline talking,” Luke muttered, and I
realized I had spoken aloud. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

Right, adrenaline. Except it already was in my head, in my
body, rushing through my veins like a sweet hit of coke. I had done drugs a few
times. There were men who wanted to get high and wanted the girl to ride it
with them. The crash at the end had never been enough to make me want to repeat
the experience without a paycheck to help me bounce back.

This racy, jittery feeling was just like shooting up. I
wondered if adrenaline had a crash at the end too. But who cared when it felt
this good? It felt surreal, and that kept me safe.

We crept through the quiet hallways. Where was everyone?

Major motioned with his hand. Up the stairs.

We started to climb when Luke paused. He put a hand to his
ear. “Shit,” he muttered.

“I love it when you say that during sex.”

Major gave me a strange look.

“Not you,” I assured him.

He rolled his eyes. “You
are
flying high.”

“Almost,” I whispered.

Luke pressed a hand to his ear, listening. “They need
backup,” he whispered. “Major, you go.”

Major firmed his lips, as if he wanted to protest. But he
didn’t have a choice. With a salute and a faint look of regret in his eyes, he
was gone.

“Come on.” Luke waved me to follow him.

We crept down the hallway, hearing men and women moan and
groan and cry out in questionable pleasure.

He looked back at me.

I shook my head. Henri didn’t moan. He shouted. And anyway,
I didn’t really expect to find him in these upper rooms. He rarely took his
prostitutes to bed. This wasn’t a party to him, unlike Major had thought. This
was business. This whole setup was too dirty, too common for him. Despite that,
I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling, as if he would be here, exactly where he
would never be. It didn’t make sense, but I wanted the feeling to go away. I
wanted to see Rico and Major and Jeff again.

“Downstairs,” I mouthed.

Luke nodded his agreement, and we slid along the wall the
way we’d come.

From the stairwell came the raucous sound of male laughter
and female giggling. I looked back and saw nothing but rows of doors. Trapped.
Their footsteps climbed the staircase, banging along the sides, as they tumbled
about in wild sexual abandon. At least he did. Her laughs were obviously fake,
way too high-pitched and evenly spaced. They reached the top landing. I held my
breath. Then it was pushed out of me in a whoosh as Luke slammed me inside the
closest room.

He was on me, pulling off my clothes. My hand was caught, but
it didn’t matter—he yanked it free, the whole shirt whipping over my head along
with my bra, tumbling my hair from its ponytail. I gasped into his mouth,
trying to catch up, but I couldn’t. He was moving too fast, climbing onto the
bed, dragging my body beneath his as if I were prey and he a tiger gone in for
the kill. His mouth glued itself to mine, taking away any sound as he settled
between my legs, the hard ridge of his erection a blatant message that his lips
hadn’t had time to speak. He rocked against me, and it hurt. I wasn’t ready,
wasn’t aroused, but already my body prepared itself to receive him, well
practiced in this, growing wet and swollen, supple flesh to be speared
repeatedly. His hands were all over me, my waist, my arms, my sides—but not my
breasts.