Forged in Ash (39 page)

“You’re not trained in insertions or close-quarter battles. You’ll be in the way.” Not to mention a big fucking distraction. Mac grimaced.

“Bull,” Amy interrupted calmly. “I’ve had plenty of crime-scene experience, a hell of a lot more than you or your team has.”

“And if the cleaning crew shows up while we’re inside?”

She shrugged and turned to study the blackened building. “I’m pretty handy with a gun.”

Why did the damn woman have to be so stubborn? Mac took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We need a lookout.”

“If you needed a lookout you would have brought one. I’m going in, and we’re wasting time. Your team’s moving in without you.”

Without waiting for his response, she dropped into a crouch and headed toward the building, her gun extended in a two-handed grip.

Mac swore viciously, and fell in behind her.

She reached the lab’s gaping front door—the entire door must have been blown off during the explosion—and waited beside it. He glanced over at her and swung through into the darkness beyond. He could feel her body heat behind him, and his skin prickled.

They moved slowly down a hall with offices and conference rooms to their right and left. Most of the doors to the rooms were missing, but every once in a while they’d come across one hanging loosely from a hinge.

After checking another charred office, Mac made a note to come back after they’d swept the place and have a look at those blackened metal file cabinets. Maybe something had survived the blast.

The smell of smoke was overwhelming. But there was another smell beneath the smoke that was all too familiar; it was the thick, pervasive scent of charred flesh, in this case, human flesh.

He glanced toward Amy. Had she picked up on the scent? Did she know what it represented?

She backed out from a room to their right and turned, catching his eye. With a small jerk of her head she slowly moved back down the hall. The last two doors on the right and the left led into conference rooms. Mac took the one to the right and Amy took the one on the left; they rejoined in the hall moments later.

An intact metal door guarded the end of the hall. He didn’t bother tugging on the blackened handle, because the walls along either side of it had disappeared. The frame still stood, and the door as well, but there was nothing on either side. He stepped through the space to the right and she stepped through the space to the left.

A much larger room spread out in front of them. Full of gutted computers and office furniture and mangled desk chairs, it had obviously been some kind of computer station. She carefully moved down the wide, mostly empty aisle between the charred cubicles, pulled a screw driver and pair of pliers from her tool belt, and started pulling hard drives.

While Amy grabbed the hard drives, Mac eased into the next room.

This room was full of mangled pieces of metal, glass, and plastic. The roof was also off, so the moon bathed it in a spidery web of silver light. A huge metal contraption towered before him. How in the hell it was still standing was a mystery to him.

He was about ready to turn away, when movement caught his eye. He froze, his gaze darting back to where the movement had originated. Another slight shimmy of movement. It was coming from the floor.

He frowned, easing closer. Legs took shape, from the thighs down. The torso was underneath the mangled behemoth of a machine.

The legs were too damn slender to belong to either Rawls or Zane. Hell, they were too damn slender to belong to a man.

He studied where the torso disappeared beneath the machine. Was she stuck under there? She was using her heels to push herself deeper into the belly of the machine, Mac realized slowly. Why?

This gal was obviously up to something. It would be to their benefit to wait until she’d completed her task and find out what she was up to.

Turned out they had to wait for a while. They were still waiting when Zane and then Rawls silently appeared beside him.

He was just about ready to call it quits and yank the woman out by her feet, when she made a soft hum of triumph. Her oddly silent shimmy changed direction. She went from pushing with her heels to pulling with them.

He listened for a moment to her grunts of effort and hisses of pain. She was making progress. But by God, it was slower than a fucking snail and they didn’t have all freaking day.

Scowling, he reached down to grab her ankles and yank her free. Rawls grabbed his elbow and yanked him back before he could make contact.

He stumbled, the sound loud as a bell in the silent room. The legs on the ground froze, and then jackknifed up, the heels digging frantically into the ground as the body they were attached to wiggled urgently.

Mac shrugged; at least the noise had lit a fire under her ass.

The torso grew longer; a hand emerged and caught the edge of the metal contraption. A second hand joined the first. A pair of breasts appeared, clearly visible in a skintight T-shirt. Slender shoulders. He frowned. The shirt was ripped in places from the tight fit, and blood clearly dampened the shirt. Whatever the hell she was
doing under there was important enough to continue regardless of the pain.

A slender throat emerged. How the hell was she going to get her head out? Hell, how had she gotten it inside to begin with?

That mystery was answered when she started pushing up with her hands, instead of pulling herself forward. The machine lifted a fraction of an inch. There was no way she was going to be able to lift the damn thing enough to scoot out from beneath.

Mac gestured at Zane and stepped up to the left side of the machine. Rawls squatted by the woman’s feet, as he and Zane leaned a shoulder against the machine and pushed up.

The woman froze as the machine started moving, a startled squeak breaking from her. And then Rawls had hold of her legs and tugged her out. The squeak escalated to a choked scream. Rawls had her flat on the ground beneath his legs with a hand clamped over her mouth before Mac and Zane had lowered the machine back to the ground.

And then all hell broke loose.

The woman grabbed a heavy chunk of pipe and swung it at Rawls’s head. He ducked, but the metal connected with the side of his head. A dull thud and he slumped. She thrust him aside and rolled, sliding out from beneath him. Mac and Zane dove in unison for her, which ended up saving their lives.

The room suddenly exploded in gunfire.

Jillian was halfway through the front door, her gaze dazzled by the shimmering sunlight bouncing between the cabin and the swath of emerald trees in the distance, when a deep voice broke over her from behind.

“Ah,
nebii’o’oo,
you are awake.”

She took another step, tantalized by the wood smoke scent of freedom.

“You wish to walk,
bexookeesoo
? Soon. The fresh air will do you good.” His voice was right behind her—yet she hadn’t heard footsteps.

With a last yearning look toward the trees and the safety they represented, she turned to her kidnapper. Or one of them. The new one.

The huge, dark-haired one with the braid who’d caught her after she’d fled the car. He was so tall she had to tilt her head to look up at him.

She wasn’t quite sure what to make of this one. He hadn’t been identified on the television as one of the men who’d killed her brother. In fact, he and Marcus Simcosky, one of the men she knew had been involved in the murder of her brother, seemed to detest each other.

They had the bruises and split lips to prove it.

Yet this Wolf, as Kait had called him, had come after her when she’d fled during their fight. He’d forced her back to the car.

Wary, she watched him step closer, unnerved and baffled by him.

He’d established himself as her guard, yet he’d proved to be an incredibly gentle one so far. After swinging her over his shoulder on the football field, he’d stroked her back and crooned assurances in her ear the entire way back to the car.

“You are safe,
nebii’o’oo.
No one will harm you. You are safe now.”

And he’d made good on his promise, planting himself in front of the car door and refusing to let those murderers take her.

Was he some kind of a setup to gain her trust? Someone those bastards had called in to get her to loosen her guard so she’d answer their questions? While he didn’t seem to be connected to the SEALs, he was obviously connected to Kaity somehow, and she was Marcus Simcosky’s girlfriend.

“Come,” he said, stepping to the side. “Breakfast is waiting. You must eat, and then we will walk to the lake.”

She wouldn’t be able to outrun him, so after a long hesitation, she finally slipped past him, retracing her steps toward the bedroom he’d given her the night before. Their arrival at the cabin was a blur. She’d awoken briefly as he’d carried her into the cabin, but had fallen asleep again before he’d put her to bed. There was a vague impression of darkness and moonlight streaming through an open window haloing a big, blocky body in the armchair beside her bed.

Other images had flickered through her dreams: a warm, sheltering embrace cradling her as she cried, a hard shoulder that smelled like wood smoke and pine beneath her cheek, a smooth, velvet baritone crooning unfamiliar words.

He touched her elbow in front of the bedroom and opened the door, silently escorting her inside. A plate sat on the bedside table. Piled high with bacon and eggs and hash browns, there was enough food for both of them.

Did he expect her to eat with him inside her bedroom, from her bed? Her feet dug in and she stopped in her tracks.

Turning, he stared down at her and lifted a heavy eyebrow. “You need to eat,
bixoo3etiit.
Eat to build strength. Your choice, kitchen or here?”

He was right. She did need to eat. She needed to regain her strength so she could escape this house and this man.

But eating in the kitchen…with the blond chick and Marcus Simcosky, one of the cold-faced, cold-voiced monsters who’d been responsible for Russ’s murder. Suddenly the bedroom sounded like a haven.

“I’ll eat here.” She held his gaze, forcing herself not to look way. “Alone.”

Approval lightened the pitch black of his eyes. “Every bite,
nebii’o’oo
. I will be back.”

It was the same word from her dreams. Unfamiliar. But strangely beautiful.

Off balance, she retreated into the bedroom, waited for him to leave, and firmly closed the door. She picked up the plate and turned to sit on the armchair next to the bed. Only then did she realize the cushion had the imprint of a butt—a very large butt, for a large man.

Slowly, she turned to stare at the door.

The images from her dream danced through her mind. The shadowy profile of a man sitting next to the bed. Protective, sheltering arms. Sobbing into a hard shoulder. She sniffed the air and could swear she smelled smoke and pine.

She turned to study the pillows on the bed she’d slept in the night before. They’d been wet when she’d awoken.

Was it possible? Had he spent the night next to her bed and cradled her when she wept?

If so, why? To make sure she didn’t try to escape? Why not just lock the door and nail down the windows? It would have kept her prisoner without eating into his sleep.

Shelving the questions, she sat down and dug into the food. As her belly filled, exhaustion tugged at her. Halfway through she was so tired, she could hardly keep her eyes open. She fought her way through several more bites before giving up.

Setting the plate down, she got up and stumbled over to the bed.

As she drifted off into sleep, a vague alarm stirred. This exhaustion wasn’t normal. She’d just woken up after sleeping for hours. Had he drugged her food?

Distantly, she felt someone removing her shoes and lifting her,
then setting her down again. A cover was pulled up to her neck. She rolled, cradling her head with her clasped hands, the alarm fading.

As she fell into sleep, the scent of wood smoke and pine embraced her.

“You are safe here,
wo’ouusoo
. Sleep.”

Kait was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, picturing what she wanted to do with her abandoned sketch, when a soft knock sounded against her door. She ignored it. The man on the other side of the door wasn’t Wolf. She was certain of it. Her heart didn’t jump into warp drive for Wolf. Her blood didn’t start humming. Her body didn’t start melting.