Chapter 5
Ethan
Four men, heavily armed and dismayed to see me still on my feet.
Fuck them all. I opened fire, straight to center mass. The sound echoed endlessly against the parking garage’s concrete walls and floors. Two of them staggered back but didn’t go down. A third took one in the thigh and hit the ground, cursing.
Body armor. Kat and I didn’t have that advantage.
I felt Kat duck and flinch as return fire pocked the smooth reflective metal of the back wall of the elevator. The goons scrambled for the cover of their van.
I leaned out and aimed for the driver. He fired, and a white starburst appeared in the window. Bulletproof glass. Shit. Ten shots left.
I aimed for the tires and jerked back as a bullet hit the back of the elevator, leaving another dimple. Their van surged, screeched around the corner, and shuddered to a halt behind a huge concrete column.
I punched the button on the handheld. “Mick! Where the fuck are you?”
“Trying to find you! We had to circle the whole complex and the traffic is fucking us up! Shoulda gone in with you, goddammit!”
“Just hurry,” I snarled.
A gun barrel poked around the concrete column. I aimed for the spot. Fired.
The bullet gouged a hole in the concrete, ricocheted and smashed a nearby BMW’s window.
Glass shattered, tinkling. The guy who’d taken one in the leg was dragging himself, crawling on one knee, leaving a blood smear on the long slog to the concrete column where the others lurked.
They hadn’t waited for him. They weren’t laying down any covering fire for him, either.
I edged out of the elevator, pulling Kat behind me, gesturing for her to bend double. A square of heavy concrete dividers separated the space in front of the elevators from the roadway. I pushed her down beside one, pressing her flat to the ground.
“Keep your head down,” I told her. “And don’t move from there!”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“To the guy crawling on the ground. I want to talk to him.”
“About what? They’ll fucking shoot you! Dude!”
I shook my head. “They could have done that in the elevator. They didn’t. I’m no good to them dead.”
“You? What the hell do they want with you?”
No time to explain SmokeScreen, or Shane, or the fucking hellscape my life had become since those assholes had kidnapped my younger brother.
Yeah, those pricks needed what was in my mind, so they wanted me alive. But by running out there with no body armor, I was betting my skin on it.
Still, knowing who had hired this particular pack of clowns, if it was Nicole, if it was someone else—that would be a fresh lead. And I was really fucking desperate for one of those.
A mechanical noise pulsed rhythmically behind me. I glanced back, and saw the elevator was opening, trying to close…opening, closing, again and again.
A foot protruded from the door, blocking it.
I crept out, away from the concrete barrier, bent low—
“Behind you!” Kat yelled.
I hit the ground. Kat lunged, exposing herself, and grabbed my arm, hauling me back to relative safety as bullets punched into the walls and shattered the car windows. She reached beneath the car we crouched behind, and held up a small dart.
“Tranq dart,” she said. “Someone circled around behind us. I saw his feet under the cars. Stay here, Ethan, or they’ll take you down.”
I stared at her. How the hell did she recognize a tranq dart?
She held it out to me, and I slid it into my jacket, still speechless.
An engine roared. Someone was taking the spiraling ramp down into the underground garage at reckless speed. The van was armored, with gun ports on the sides and back. Take that, you pussy motherfuckers.
Mick squealed to a halt, the van angled to provide maximum cover. The door slid wide. “Come on!” Trey leaned out, beckoning to us, brandishing an M-15.
I pulled Kat to her feet. She squawked as I heaved her up inside the van and into Trey’s grasp. “I’m grabbing that guy whose feet are sticking out of the elevator for questioning, so cover me—”
Another burst of machine gun fire punched volleys of bullets into the side of the van. I dropped to the ground while Shelby returned fire, then Trey reached down to haul me inside, too. Glass from shattered car windshields was glittering everywhere.
“We need to go,” Mick said grimly. “The cops will cordon us in when they get here, and we’ll be stuck down here with those sewer rats.”
I cast a longing glance at the elevator, its door still patiently opening and closing on the unconscious guy’s ankles. “Fuck,” I hissed under my breath.
“Yeah.” Mick’s gaze raked Kat’s disheveled figure with keen interest. “What’s with the blonde?”
“Later.” Another burst of bullets. Starburst scars suddenly marred the windshield. One, two…three bullet marks. Bam. Four.
I made my call, and barked the order. “Go!”
The van surged forward, bullets thudding into the armor plating.
Trey took his place at the other gun port, bracing himself as he peered through the sight. I sank down next to Katrin. She was on the floor, face smeared with dried blood, wide eyes darting from one man to another. She looked more frightened in here than she had outside. Or in the elevator.
“What in the hell is all this?” she demanded. “Who are these people?”
Now we were out of the garage, and careening out onto the street. “Are they coming after us?” I called up to Mick.
“Not that I can see,” Mick replied. “You want the helipad, right?”
“Oh hell, yeah.”
Mick’s sudden acceleration into a turn shoved her back against me, and I put my arm around her to steady her.
She pushed me away. There were bloody scrapes on her arms and legs.
Drops of blood stained her white shoes. Her blouse was ripped open, buttons missing.
She didn’t seem to know it was open, revealing a white demi bra that cradled amazing tits.
I glanced around. All but Mick, who was driving, swiftly looked away.
Kat inhaled sharply and started fumbling with her shirt. She held it together, crossing the sides at her waist with shaky, bloodied fingers.
“What the hell just happened?” she forced out, through chattering teeth.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“So…so those guys were after you, then? Not me?”
I puzzled over that for a second. “Huh? You? Why? What, is there a contract out on your life, or something?”
She stared at me blankly for a moment, eyes frozen wide, and then started to laugh. Tears started running down her face. She wiped them angrily away, smearing blood on her own cheek. “Oh, God,” she muttered. “This is so fucked up.”
“Agreed,” I said. “An absolute shitshow. I’m so sorry. Try to calm down.”
“Why should I? What the hell is going on? Why are those thugs after you, and what is…all this?” She gestured at the van, the men in it. “Your own personal army, complete with armored vehicles and gunports? Dude. What the fuck is your deal?”
“I’ll explain it all when we get to my—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!”
“Kat—”
“Let me out! Right here would be just fine. Right. Here.”
I took a deep breath, braced himself for who the fuck knew what. “No.”
She jerked away from me, ignoring the staring men as she tried to stay upright and not slide wildly around in the speeding van. “What do you mean, no? Am I a prisoner now?”
“No, goddamn it,” I said. “I’m assuming a lot of the guys we fought in the elevator are still alive.
They all got a good long look at you. So did the building security cameras.
They can run those feeds through facial recognition software, match your face to your driver’s license.
They’ll know who you are, and they’ll come for you. ”
“Why should they?” she yelled. “I have nothing to do with you! Nothing! I don’t know you! I just got into a freaking elevator with you!”
“Yeah, but if you were one of them, and you saw us fighting together like we did, would you believe we had never met? That you had nothing to do with me? Would you think that for one single goddamn instant, if you had half a brain?”
Kat slapped me. Hard. I was so focused on her face, I barely flinched. Fuck, I barely noticed. I just kept staring.
Her eyes were wide and bright with the awful realization of the trap she had walked into. Her mouth worked. “But—but I—”
“You can’t just get out,” I said. “Not an option. Not anymore. Sorry.”
Kat held up her hand. “You can’t kidnap me. That’s what this is, if you don’t let me out.”
Mick made another hard turn, and I slid right into her once again. I tried to brace myself with my legs, to hold myself in place and give her more space. “I don’t see it that way,” I said.
“I don’t care how you see it!” She tried to wiggle away, but there was no place to go. “You can’t do this!”
“I just did,” I said.
The guys tried, elaborately, to look at anything but me and Kat as the van descended into relative dimness of the parking garage below the building and rumbled to a stop. Shelby unfastened the reinforced steel door and slid it open.
Kat struggled to her feet, batting away my helping hand, and leaped out of the van. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll be on my way now.”
I grabbed her from behind. “Wait,” I said. “Just hold on. Let’s talk about this.”
“Let go of me, you son of a bitch!” She twisted wildly as I tightened my grip, marching her out through the echoing parking garage and toward yet another elevator.
When the elevator doors slid closed on us, she exploded. It was all I could do to hold on to her without injuring her during the long ride up. The other guys shrank back and gave us as much space as possible, while pretending not to watch.
“Need any help there?” Mick asked finally, over her grunts and shrieks.
“Nope,” I said, grimly patient. “I’ve got this.”
“You’ve got nothing, you arrogant piece of shit!” Her legs jackknifed and Trey dodged back just in time to avoid getting kicked in the face.
The elevator opened into a room on the edge of the helipad. The chopper was ready and roaring, rotor blades churning air.