Chapter Twenty-Three
HELL brEAKS LOOSE
There was no Whip.
Axel shoved through another set of double doors, his heartbeat pounding loud enough to drown out the gala behind him. Kitchen. Hallway. Empty.
Nothing.
Just static he was having trouble hearing past.
“Bain.” Boone’s voice crackled through his earpiece. “Outside. Now.”
Axel kept moving.
“Bain. That’s an order.”
“No.”
“Son of a bitch!”
He ripped the earpiece from his ear and threw it down the hallway.
There would be consequences.
He might even get suspended or fired.
Fuck all that.
Once he found Whip, they could sort all that out.
Together.
Screaming erupted from the ballroom. Through the doors he’d just kicked open, a crowd came running.
From fuck knows what.
SWAT.
There was your criminals.
Holy fuck. What had they stumbled into?
“Police! Stop where you are.” The orders came fast and hard.
Axel didn’t stop. Kicking in another door, he found himself in a foyer.
People pushed past him, running to the far end and downward.
He moved with them.
Someone killed the lights.
Fuck.
Complete darkness hit. He gripped the railing. The noise was deafening, bodies jostled past him.
“Get a fucking grip, Bain,” he muttered.
His panic ran deep, and if he didn’t get a handle on it, then he was going to do something stupid.
And stupid wouldn’t find Whip.
The people shoved from behind. They weren’t going to move him faster than he wanted to move. He slowly took the stairs to the bottom and into a hallway filled with people trying to find a way out.
“This way!” a man shouted, throwing open a door. A light beyond flared and most of the crowd followed.
Axel went the other way.
Back into the darkness.
A few of the others still hugged the shadows. Beyond the light in the other room.
Perhaps Charleston was one of them.
Axel settled against the wall and took in the figures moving, now silently except for the occasional scrape of a shoe.
The cut of shoulders, the tip of a head. He’d know the minute the fucker appeared.
Boone had this place locked down.
There was no way they were getting out with Whip.
No fucking way.
And there he was.
Charleston. Muttering orders like he still had a chance.
Too many people stood between him and the man and Axel advanced.
He hauled one guy away. Ducked when another swung at him and kept going.
In a panic, Charleston stepped back and entered a room with three other men before the door snapped shut.
Axel hit it at a full run.
But it held.
A gun nudged at the back of his head.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Nobody.” But he was somebody. He was the man who was going to kill this guy’s boss.
“Well, Mr. Nobody, have fun in hell.”
Axel dropped and spun. The gun fired. The bullet plunged into the door.
Axel already had his Glock in his hand.
The bullet entered the man’s chest.
Another shot rang out, a bullet went into the door behind him.
Shit!
Snick. Snick.
Stunned, he watched two men fall to their knees, and a figure appear behind them.
Not waiting to be next, he rolled and slid into the darkness.
Planting his back to the wall, he cradled the Glock to his chest and kept his eyes glued back the way he’d come.
He saw the second the other figure entered the same hallway.
Who the hell—
“Bain.”
He knew that fucking voice. It took him a moment to place it. That and the outline of the man’s tall, lean frame.
“Fierce.”
His next thought was, what the fuck was the Secretary of Defense’s cousin doing here?
To donate perhaps?
Nah. This man wasn’t a politician. Oh, he’d served in the military, but he’d gone another way.
A darker way.
As far as he knew, Fierce was part of an elite group of assassins that handled issues caught up in red tape.
“What are you doing here?”
“Same as you.”
“So, he sent you after Charleston?” Axel frowned.
“Mmm.”
“They took Whip.”
“So I gathered.” Fierce jerked his head to one of the many hallways and moved.
Axel followed. “You know I have to bring him in.”
“He won’t see the inside of a jail.”
“I’m going to arrest him.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Then let’s move.”
Every second they talked felt like another second Whip was alone.
Axel stalked ahead through the dark.
“Take the next left,” Fierce said from behind him.
One thing still didn’t sit right.
“You think killing him will solve the issue we have here? Think about it, man. He’s the head of a sex trafficking ring. How many hubs does he have?” Axel growled.
Fierce stayed silent and kept walking.
“Think about the kids.”
Fierce stopped.
Axel glanced back.
“I am.” The man said through his teeth.
He got it. Fierce was not only doing this for the SecDef; he was doing it for Freedom.
Not freedom itself, but his closest friend.
“How’s Freedom?”
“He’s safe now, thank God.”
“So, this is for all the Freedoms out there still struggling,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
“At least get the locations from him.”
Fierce’s smile glinted in the dark, and he moved past him.
“I’ll keep him alive that long. Now come on, there’s a holding room on the bottom level. I bet that’s where they took Whip.”
After that, he stayed silent.
A few moments later, Fierce stopped so abruptly Axel nearly ran into him.
“Problem.”
Six men stepped from intersecting hallways ahead, spreading out without a word. None of them wore tuxedos now. Jackets had been discarded. Pistols and knives glinted beneath the emergency lights.
Charleston’s last line of defense.
“You take left,” Fierce said quietly.
“Was planning on it.”
The closest man charged.
Axel met him head-on, driving a shoulder into his chest hard enough to throw him backward into another thug. His Glock barked once. The hallway exploded.
Fierce moved beside him like smoke.
One second, a knife flashed. The next, it clattered across the concrete while its owner folded silently to the floor.
No wasted movement.
No hesitation.
Just bodies dropping.
“Move!” Axel shouted.
They pushed forward another few feet before two more men poured through a security door farther down the corridor and opened fire.
“They’re buying him time,” Axel growled, ducking and returning fire.
“I know.”
Every delay twisted the knot in his gut tighter.
Axel dropped another man and looked toward the stairwell leading to the lower level.
So damn close.
The hallway filled again.
He spun and lifted his Glock.
Come on, fuckers.
Let’s dance.