ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (14 page)

At the Compound

David stood at the back of the room, watching Ash chose the weapons we were going to take with us. He was nervous, thinking of all the things that could go wrong…he was the one who’d designed the security program, the one who had to look forward and figure out what could go wrong so it could be prevented from happening. But there were so many variables this time that there was no way to plan for all of them.

“Vests,” David said.

“Obviously.”

“Extra ammo.”

“I know.”

“Grenades?”

“Yeah.” Ash glanced at David. “I’ve planned an operation like this before, David.”

“I haven’t.”

Ash put down the machine gun he’d been studying and came to David, putting his hands on each of his shoulders, reminding David of the way their father used to do that when he thought either David or Ash was upset.

“We have no other choice. If we don’t take these people out—”

“What about the cops? What about jail? This isn’t Afghanistan. We aren’t Green Berets.”

“No. But Jack knows what we’re up to.”

“Doesn’t mean he can protect us if things go wrong. And what if someone gets hurt? Joss has a new baby. Donovan just reunited with the love of his life. And Ricki…she thinks she might be pregnant.”

Ash nodded, a knowing look in his eye. “It’ll be okay.”

David moved around Ash and walked over to a shelf that held all kinds of different types of ammo. Bullets that were smaller than little Aidan’s hand to shells that were longer than my own hand. He picked one of the latter up, studied the long, pointy end, remembering how they’d taught them to load a gun with these things when he was at Quantico. He had the training. He grew up in Texas; he knew his way around a gun even before he arrived in Virginia. He had the highest marks of his class on the firing range. If not for his computer skills, he might have been a field agent, might still be a field agent. He knew the dangers of what they were doing.

“How much do you trust Mina?”

He could almost feel the tension ripple through Ash.

“She didn’t think you would trust her.”

“What did you do?”

David felt the coldness in Ash’s voice. He turned, studied his brother’s features, wondering how badly it would hurt when his brother punched him. He’d felt his brother’s blows before, but that was back when they were kids, back before Ash was trained by the Army to hit fast and to hit hard.

This was going to hurt.

“We had to know where they were. She couldn’t tell me because they always made her ride in the back of the vehicle, the windows all darkened. She knows they’re near water, but…”

“What did you do?”

“We had to know where their compound was.”

Ash stared at me, slowly shaking his head. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“We had to know where to go. We had to know we were going to the right place.”

Ash slammed his hand on a low shelf, making all the guns and the equipment on it rattle.

“You didn’t do this! You didn’t send her in there without any way to protect herself!”

“It was her idea.”

Ash grabbed David by the throat and shoved him back against the wall, his eyes narrowed with anger. His face was inches from David’s, his grip on his throat hard enough to choke the life from him if he’d wanted to.

“Tell me what you did.”

His voice was a low growl, anger carefully controlled. He balled his fist and lifted it high enough that David could see it. He was wondering if maybe today wouldn’t have been a good day for him to have still been in his wheelchair. But, again, he understood his brother’s anger. But he also knew that this had to end. Today.

“Ash!”

Donovan rushed into the room and grabbed Ash’s arms, pulling him off of David.

“What the hell?”

“He sent her in there. He did something….”

Donovan shot David a look.

“He’s right.”

David dug his cell phone out of his back pocket and pulled up a screen that he held out for them to see. It was a green dot in the center of what looked like a simple architecture drawing.

“The building we thought was Bazarov’s headquarters is just a decoy. Mina told me that they rarely ever have more than one or two guys at that place and rarely guys who know anything about the main objective of the cartel. It’s a trick to fool their enemies. That’s how they’ve managed to stay around for so long.”

“So where is there real headquarters?”

“This place. It’s out on the Pacific Coast Highway, not far from here. It’s a house, a sort of clubhouse where most of the lieutenants and their families live. Mina described it to me down to the tinniest detail. The bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen and the living room, the torture chamber they built themselves in the basement. She told me everything, even down to the color of the fucking walls.”

“Then why?” Ash growled.

“Because she couldn’t tell me where it was with any certainty. And there’re no cameras there, nothing to hack. We can’t go in completely blind.”

“We’re not blind.” Donovan gestured at David’s phone. “You have that.”

“I have this because Mina’s there. And, as long as she remains there, the bug I put on her bra strap will broadcast details we couldn’t get any other way.”

Ash grabbed the phone out of David’s hand. “You put her in there for this? There aren’t enough details.”

“There’s enough. I can tell you they’re in a downstairs room and there are four souls in the room, including Mina. And there are five more in the next room, three upstairs. One of those is a child.”

“You can tell all that?”

“I can.”

Ash stared at the phone. Then he slowly asked, “Can you tell what they’re doing to her? Can you see if they’re beating her? If they’re torturing her?”

“Ash…”

“Do you know what that bastard did to her?” he asked, staring at David now. “You sent her back into the arms of a man who left indescribable scars on her body. You…” He shook his head, unable to speak any more.

“She wanted to do it. She begged me to let her help.”

“That doesn’t mean you should have let her.”

“If you hadn’t said some of the things you said—”

Ash rushed across the room again, shoving his brother back. “What do you know about it?”

“I know you’re in love with her. And I know you think she betrayed you. But she was just scared.”

“You don’t know shit!”

David studied his brother’s face, aware of the torture he was putting himself through at that moment. He’d watched Ash for years, watched as he pined over a woman he thought he loved. But David knew. David could see the kind of woman Alexi was long before Ash ever did. The one time he met her, he could see the selfishness and the self-absorption; he could see that their relationship was doomed before it ever started. But he told himself that it was none of his business. If Ash wanted a shallow, self-obsessed wife, then that was his choice. But now? Things had changed. He was a different man and so was Ash. And Ash deserved better.

He deserved a woman who would sacrifice herself for him.

“I nearly lost everything that matters to me because I couldn’t see what was right in front of me. I couldn’t see past my own guilt, my own stupidity. I’m not going to let you make the same mistake.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“She loves you. If you can’t see that now…”

Ash shoved him hard, again making the shelf rattle. Then he turned and stormed out of the room.

“Did she really volunteer to do this?”

David nodded. “She did.”

“She’s brave,” Donovan said, clearly impressed. He walked to a shelf to David’s left and picked up a long, narrow weapon. “We’d better go get her out of there.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Ash

I went upstairs, ignoring the looks of the people gathered there. I knew they were scared. I knew they were looking to me for guidance. But I was scared, too. I wasn’t sure I could pull this one off, not the way they wanted me to.

I went to my bedroom, but the only thing I could think about as I paced there was the last time I spoke to Mina. I could almost feel her body under mine when I pinned her to the bed, saying the cruelest things to her out of a misguided sense of betrayal. I should have known better. I knew her. I knew she couldn’t do the things I’d accused her of and still look me in the eye with all the honesty and the love I saw there. I knew she hadn’t done it. Yet…

What kind of a damn fool was I?

And how could David send her to Dimitri, knowing what he was capable of? Had he not seen those pictures? Had he not heard how brutal the attack on Rose was? Did he not appreciate how many times those crazy fools had shot Emily?

They were going to kill her, and his own brother sent her to them.

I heard the baby cry out in the next room. I crossed to him, hesitating before I picked him up. What if his mother never came back? What would happen to this innocent little life? What would we do without her?

“I’m sorry, little man,” I said, as I gently picked him up. “I never meant for things to be like this.”

The baby made a soft mewling sound as he looked up at me. His eyes were so much like Mina’s that it was almost like looking into her eyes. I thought about the moment of his birth, the first moment I looked into his face. He was so tiny and red and strong, flailing his little arms around before he was even completely in the world. I was so impressed by the whole process, by this perfect human being in my arms.

I delivered him. I wasn’t his father, but I guided him into the world. I owed him so much more than this.

I wanted to kill David for what he’d done. But for Mina to agree to what they’d done, to going back there, she must have truly believed it was the only way. She never would have left Ford otherwise.

“I’ll bring her back,” I told the baby. “And then we’ll be a family, if she’ll have me.”

“Hey, I found a bottle,” Kate said from the doorway. “Mina must have had an idea they would be necessary at some point.”

She was holding the small bottle filled with clear, white milk. I took it from her and watched as Ford eagerly accepted the foreign nipple. He stared at me as though to say this wasn’t right, but he was hungry enough that it must not have mattered that much. I moved back to the bed and settled against the headboard, as I watched her do a dozen times, usually in the middle of the night.

I was going to make this right. If it was the last thing I did.

This little boy needed his mother.

“We leave in an hour,” I told them when I went back downstairs.

Mina

They had me tied to another chair, but this one was smaller. Metallic. My wrist was swollen and there was a gash on my forehead that was weeping into my eyes. Andre was across the room, working at a tall, metal table. I knew what he was doing. I’d been in this room before, but as an observer. Today I was to be the victim.

“Where’s Dimitri?”

Andre ignored me as I’d known he would. There was no talking in the torture room unless you wanted to confess to whatever they were torturing you for. And then you were dead.

I’d seen that happen, too.

I tugged at the restraints on my wrists. Pain shot up one arm, the restraint so tight that I was never going to be able to slip out of it on my own. The other, however, was loose. If I tugged just the right way…

“Is it dark outside yet?”

Again, Andre refused to answer. But that question got me a strange look.

“They’re coming, you know.”

He shook his head. “Dimitri doesn’t believe you. Not even our own boys know where this house is.”

“I do. And you can bet I told them about it.”

“Dimitri was always careful when he brought you here. You don’t know where this house is, either.”

“You’d be surprised what I know.”

Andre tilted his head, studying me as if he wasn’t sure whether he could trust what was coming out of my mouth. He’d be better off if he did, but I knew he wouldn’t. They never did.

“They’re coming. And they’re going to take you out like nothing. Like you never even existed.”

“Why would they do that, Mina? Don’t you realize what the consequences would be if a bunch of guys just marched into this house and shot it up? They’d go to jail. Ash Grayson and his people aren’t the kind who operate outside the law.”

“You’d be surprised what a man will do when he’s been pushed beyond his limits.” I tugged at the loose restraint, carefully trying to pull my hand free without alerting him to what I was doing. It wasn’t easy. “You shouldn’t have gone after Rose.”

“Who’s Rose?”

“The lady in the house. The one you and your thugs dragged out of bed and beat.”

“Oh.” He smiled. “She was fun. Thought she could fight the three of us off. I love it when they think they can do that.”

“She’s still alive, you know.”

“Yeah. Dimitri wasn’t too happy about that.”

“And the cop.”

“That wasn’t our fault. Poor Paul took a bullet on that one. He’s upstairs, bleeding out in the kitchen.”

“He won’t be the only one in an hour or two. You’ll all have bullet wounds to deal with.”

Andre shook his head again, turning around to take a pair of plyers from the table. “You have to stop telling tales and get down to the truth, Mina. Dimitri wants to know how you got out of the compound without them knowing you were leaving.”

“What makes you think they didn’t know?”

He sat on a rolling stool and came to sit in front of me. “You were waiting for us at the back of the property. How did you get over the fence?”

“The electrified fence?” I studied his face. “The one you guys tried to climb over and couldn’t?”

“The same.”

I smiled. I’d wondered when they were going to make the connection.

“They let me out, Andre. It’s the only way to defeat that fence.”

“There’s got to be a way—”

“David Grayson designed that fence himself. It’s made of a special sort of metal that makes it impossible for idiots like you to defeat it. Why do you think they retreated there when you hit Rose?”

He tilted his head. “Why would they let you out? Why would you willingly come back here? You had to have known what Dimitri would do when you arrived.”

“I did. You guys are as predictable as the flu.”

“You knew Dimitri would ask these questions.”

“I did.”

“You knew he would hurt you.”

I shrugged. “It’s worth it.”

He studied my face for a long second. “We searched you. You didn’t have a phone. You didn’t even have a wallet. Nothing but that knife.”

My eyebrows rose. Andre’s eyes widened.

He ran for the door, the sound of his footsteps pounding on the stairs the only thing I could hear for a long moment.

I tugged at the restraint as hard as I could, pain slicing through me once again. I was bleeding now, but the blood was helping. It was like a lubricant, helping smooth the way. I closed my eyes, pictured my little boy, and pulled as hard as I could.

I was free.

I reached into my shirt and tugged at the tiny electronic bug David had put there.

It was almost time.