CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lennox was a Navy SEAL. He was used to operations frequently going sideways. It was that whole thing about plans never surviving contact with the enemy. But right then, as Talia started shooting nonstop, he realized this moment was like nothing he’d ever experienced.
Desperate to help her but knowing he couldn’t turn his back on Keller, Lennox went into a forward roll, coming up shooting. For a big man, Keller moved incredibly fast, firing as he threw himself backward behind the truck.
Lennox kept shooting, raking the MP5 across the vehicle and sending a hail of 9mm rounds slamming into the cab and then the partially opened computer crate loaded on the back. Even over the sound of the gunfire and shattering equipment, he heard Keller curse as the computer he was here to recover was torn apart.
Lennox started to slip under the bottom of the truck, angling for a shot at Keller’s legs. He needed to end this quickly and get back to Talia. But then he heard the sounds of thudding boots, immediately followed by a high-pitch squeak and more rapid footsteps.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
Backing out from under the truck, he ran toward the front. The moment he rounded the vehicle, he saw Talia kneeling on the deck, Anna lying on her back several feet away. Anna was bleeding heavily from at least three gunshot wounds that Lennox could see.
At the flash of movement from the corner of his eye, Lennox looked that way in time to see Keller running into one of the passageways between two stacks of cargo containers, Maria slung over his shoulder.
Torn, Lennox started to follow but instead, ran over to Talia, pausing on the way to kick the weapon away from Anna’s outstretched hand. He had no idea if the woman was still alive, but he wasn’t going to take the risk of her reviving enough to shoot someone.
“Are you okay?” Lennox asked Talia, searching her for injuries.
While she was obviously shaken, her face pale and her eyes glassy, he couldn’t see any obvious wounds.
“I…I…shot her,” Talia murmured, her eyes never leaving Anna’s body where it lay on the deck a few feet away. “Did I…is she…dead?”
Before Lennox could answer, Talia’s eyes went wide and she looked around, frantically searching.
“Where’s Maria?” she half shouted, face filling with panic. “She was right here. Anna dropped her. She was right here and then… Keller grabbed her.” She tried to push herself to her feet only to collapse to the deck again. “Keller took Maria! I have to go get her!”
“I’ll go get her,” Lennox said firmly, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You stay here out of sight and wait for Colt and the other guys to show up.”
Assuming the other guys are still alive , a small voice whispered in the back of his mind.
Talia looked like she hated everything about that suggestion, but her legs were too weak to do anything about it.
“Hurry,” she finally said, sinking back to the deck. “Maria looked so scared when Anna had that gun pointed at her head.”
Lennox nodded and took off running. He was at least a full minute behind Keller and Maria, and he had no clue which way they’d gone. Hoping for the best, he went in the direction Keller had taken. Within moments he found himself in a familiar passageway outside the cargo hold.
He headed aft at a dead run, assuming Keller would have gone toward the midship gangway. It would be a long trip through the interior of the cargo vessel—especially with Maria slung over his shoulder—but once he made it that far, getting off the ship would be easy. Lennox ran by a set of stairs when he heard automatic weapon fire coming from somewhere up ahead.
That had to be Keller. Colt and the other guys must have intercepted him.
But before Lennox could take a step, he heard a high-pitched scream from somewhere overhead. He stopped, turned, and listened, hearing another cry. This one was softer, but it was definitely a little girl.
Keller had taken Maria upstairs to the uppermost deck.
Charging up the stairs two at a time, Lennox didn’t have time to worry that Keller might be waiting in ambush on one of the various levels on the way to the top deck. He simply ran as fast as he could.
By the time he got to the top deck, he heard the familiar thunk-thunk-thunk sound of an approaching helicopter. Suddenly, Keller’s escape to the top of the ship made a lot more sense. The man had a backup plan all along—or rather, Anna did.
Cursing, Lennox looked around the cluttered deck, praying he’d find Maria.
Instead, all he saw were dozens of cargo containers. They made it difficult to see much of anything but given that the helicopter was heading for the back of the ship, Lennox took the hint and headed that way at a sprint.
The helicopter was still about fifty meters away from the fantail of the ship when Lennox finally caught sight of Keller and Maria. The man was standing on the elevated helipad deck, close to the low railing along the port side of the ship. He had his back to Lennox and Maria was flailing her arms and legs around like crazy as she attempted to get free. Keller was struggling to keep one arm around her while motioning the helicopter in with the other.
Lennox moved forward, bringing his MP5 up to his shoulder and sighting in on Keller’s back, avoiding a shot line that would hit Maria if the bullet went all the way through the man.
He was seconds away from squeezing the trigger when one of the people in the open sliding door of the approaching helicopter caught sight of him and motioned frantically for Keller to look behind him.
Keller spun, continuing to back toward the copter as he held Maria in front of him, using her to shield his chest and most of his face even as he pointed his gun at her. If that wasn’t bad enough, the helicopter turned sideways, slipping closer as the man who’d warned Keller raised an assault rifle and aimed it at Lennox.
Knowing he had a split-second before the man shot him, Lennox took a step to the left, using Keller to shield him from the shooter in the helicopter for a few extra seconds. He’d go for Keller’s knees and hope the pain would keep him from shooting Maria.
But before Lennox could pull the trigger, Maria lifted one small foot high in the air and sent it slamming down into Keller’s crotch. As aiming went, that was pretty near perfect.
Keller let out a shout of pain, loosening his grip on Maria. She fought to free herself all the way even as Keller grabbed one of her tiny arms in an attempt to keep her in place.
With the helicopter sliding right to get a clear shot at him, Lennox had no more time. Shifting his aim higher, he took a step forward and pulled the trigger, paused a fraction of a second and then fired again. He grunted in satisfaction when he saw Keller go down only to curse when he realized the man was tumbling backward toward the low railing around the helipad deck—one hand still latched onto Maria’s arm.
Lennox was ten feet from the landing pad when the guy in the helicopter started firing at him on full automatic, sending him diving across the deck as sparks flew up all around him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Keller trying—and failing—to keep himself from going over the protective railing. Maria was screaming like a banshee, trying to kick and fight her way free, but that only sent him over the edge that much faster.
“Dammit!” Lennox muttered.
He shoved himself up from the deck and emptied the rest of the MP5 magazine at the helicopter. At this range, every round hit the chopper, and while he might not have hit the people flying the thing, he definitely made them want to be somewhere else.
The helicopter aborted its attempted landing on the platform, peeling off wildly and diving away from the ship. Not waiting to see if they came around for another pass, Lennox jumped up, threw his empty weapon aside, and charged for the edge of the landing pad and the place Keller and Maria had gone over seconds earlier.
When he reached the side of the ship, Lennox expected the worst—namely two foamy circles of ripples in the water well over a hundred feet below where Keller and Maria had smashed into the bay.
What he saw instead was Maria lying on the emergency safety netting that had been strung up along the side of the helipad deck, while Keller was hanging off the side of the net, his feet dangling over the water far below. One of Keller’s hands was twisted in a section of the netting, but the other was latched onto Maria’s arm, like he was threatening to take her with him if he went.
Maria was holding onto the ropes for dear life as Keller fought to climb his way back onto the netting. He was bleeding heavily from the two wounds in his upper chest but was still doing everything he could to get back on board.
Lennox leaped over the rail, getting an arm around Maria’s waist just as she was about to slide over the side. Unfortunately, Keller still had a grip on her arm.
“Pull me back up,” Keller shouted over Maria’s screams of terror. “Or I’ll take the kid down with me.”
Lennox lunged forward to get a grip on Keller’s wrist, trying to relieve some of the pressure being exerted on Maria’s arm even as he tore at the man’s clenching fingers one by one in an attempt to get her free. But all that did was make Keller yank at Maria’s arm harder, dragging her closer and closer to the edge. She shrieked again, her eyes wide with fear.
Lennox was contemplating whether throwing himself at Keller would get him to release Maria when a shout from behind made him twist around to see what the hell was coming next. He was ready for anything, except the sight of Talia leaping over the helipad railing toward him. She ended up landing on him with a thud and would have likely kept rolling if he hadn’t grabbed her with his free hand.
He expected Talia to immediately grab onto Maria to try and pull her to safety. Instead, she pointed the handgun Anna had been carrying in Keller’s general direction and started pulling the trigger as fast as she could. He had no idea if Talia hit what she was aiming at, but Keller let go of Maria and the netting with a shout, a look of pure hatred etched across his features.
Lennox watched the man fall all the way to the water below. The splash when Keller hit was loud as hell and when he disappeared from sight, it was obvious he wasn’t coming back up. Whether it was the impact with the water or the two bullets in his chest, Keller was dead.
Talia panted breathlessly from where she lay beside Lennox on the helipad’s safety netting, one arm around Maria. Whereas a few seconds ago she was a frightened little girl, now Maria was relaxed and smiling. He supposed kids were as resilient as they say.
“You rescued us, Talia!” Maria exclaimed. “You’re awesome!”
“She’s right,” Lennox agreed. “You are.”
Talia let out a sound that was half laugh, half cute little snort. “Thanks. But I think you did most of the rescuing.”
“That means he’s awesome too!” Maria agreed. “Don’t you think so, Talia?”
Lips curving into a tired smile, Talia looked at Lennox. “I do think so, yes. But can we go home now?”
Lennox rolled over a little on the netting so he could look at Talia. “Home as in your cottage or my apartment?”
Her lips curved. “It doesn’t matter. Wherever you are is where I want to be. Though I do have that very cool coffee maker at mine.”
He couldn’t help chuckling a little even as he forced himself to temper his expectations in case he was reading more into Talia’s words than he should. “But just so I’m clear about this. Are you saying you want to be wherever I am tonight or beyond that?”
“Beyond that,” Talia said, her expression earnest. “I know there’s still a pin in the conversation we need to have about what it will mean for the two of us to be together but after everything that’s happened over the past twenty-four hours, I realized that I always want you coming back to me. And I want you to know that there’ll always be someone waiting for you to come back to.”
Lennox leaned in to give Talia a kiss—a very chaste one since Maria was right there.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I have for a while now. I realize this seems fast, but I know what I know. It just took me a while to say the words.”
“You’re not going to hear me complaining,” she said with a laugh and another quick kiss. “I seem to be as slow as you when it comes to admitting my feelings but yes, I love you too. It took me a little while to fall, but when I started to tumble, I fell fast.”
“Yay!” Maria shouted gleefully. “Does this mean the wedding and honeymoon to Legoland are back on?”
Lennox gave Talia a questioning look.
“It’s complicated,” she said with a smile. “It’s best in the long run if you just go along with all of Maria’s plans.”
Seeing the value in that suggestion, Lennox gave the little girl a smile. “It might not happen as soon as you want, but yeah, I think everything is on as planned.”
Maria probably would have jumped up and down cheering if she wasn’t lying on a patchwork of ropes and straps a hundred feet above the ocean. So instead, she giggled and punched the air with both fists.
Chuckling, Lennox motioned toward the water with his head. “Maybe it’s time to get off this ship before one of us falls overboard.”