Hard to Come By (16 page)

The team quickly convened at the door.

“On my count,” Nick said, grabbing the door handle. “Three, two, one, go.”

Nick opened the door, and Marz and Beckett cleared the opening and the hallway beyond, the team streaming in behind them. They cleared a utility room, a security room with several monitors depicting images of the business’s service counter and parking lot, and a bathroom, making sure there weren’t any enemies hidden behind them somewhere. From there, they entered a large room that appeared to be for shipment storage. The room was a maze of stacks of boxes of every shape and size. If anyone was there, they weren’t going to be easy to find.

It was too damn quiet for a business in the middle of the workday.

The team got about five feet in when shots rang out.

Adrenaline flooded through Marz’s body, honing his senses even as chaos erupted all around him. Two guns fired from across the room, and the team took cover and returned fire. Voices shouted commands, and Marz dove behind a stack of boxes, a whizzing sound letting him know he’d just gotten damn lucky.

Was one of the shooters Jeffers? Was Emilie in this holding room somewhere?

Marz peered around his boxes and made a dash toward the next set.

His movement attracted fire again, and the direction from which it came became more apparent as Marz watched where the rounds struck stacked boxes or the far wall. He had to take out that shooter and find the other one.

Marz looked to Shane and Beckett, who held positions to his right. Shane gave a series of hand signals indicating they’d flank the shooter and come up on him from both sides. Marz gave a tight nod and took off in a low, careful crouch.

Moving as quietly as he could, Marz used the boxes as cover and continued toward a long counter—the perfect hiding place for a shooter.

A muzzle came around the edge of the doorframe closest to the counter. Marz jerked back for cover just in time. Bullets tore into the boxes behind him, sending Marz all the way to the floor. Nick dove behind a trash can. Marz squeezed off a few shots and then released his spent clip and inserted a new one.

More gunfire from the doorway. Nick gave a signal that he and Easy would take out that shooter and secure the door. And then they were all in motion.

Marz, Beckett, and Shane converged on the counter. The African-American man—who Marz recognized from the photographs they’d taken at last week’s drug deal—raised up to fire, not realizing how close his enemy had gotten. Without hesitation, Beckett put a bullet between the man’s eyes.

Regret that it was all coming to this slinked through the back of Marz’s mind, but now was not the time to
contemplate their actions nor how their investigation had turned them into vigilantes. Even if these scum suckers deserved everything they got.

“Clear,” Nick said from the doorway. As he protected that position, the others swept through the remainder of the room to ensure no baddies hid somewhere behind them. In the process, they found the stairs down to the basement behind a door in the corner.

So far, Emilie was nowhere to be found. Where the hell was she?

Moving forward in the building brought them to the public storefront, where customers paid for packing materials and shipping or rented storage units. Marz peered at the face of the man Nick had taken out, but this one wasn’t familiar. The front was otherwise empty and a dead end, aside from the glass door that went out to the parking lot. Marz’s gut said that Jeffers hadn’t taken her back outside.

That left the basement. The team gathered near the door, and Nick met everyone’s gaze. “On my count,” he said, grasping the doorknob to the basement. “Three, two, one, go.”

In a crouch, Beckett peered low around the doorjamb, earning some new gunfire. He returned fire and started down. “Clear,” he called.

They rushed down, stepped over a body sprawled at the bottom, and spilled into the room below, a lounge from the tables and couches that filled the space. In one corner, there was a door to the outside, but it was heavily bolted from the inside, so no one appeared to have exited there. When they opened the interior door on the far side of the room, gunfire erupted again.

Easy grunted, drawing Marz’s gaze. Blood soaked
into the torn shirt over his upper right arm. His gun arm.
Shit
.

“How bad is it?” Marz said.

Looking down, Easy shook his head. “I’m fine. Let’s do this.”

They cleared the doorway and then faced a long hallway with doors on both sides. Marz wanted to growl in frustration. This was taking too freaking long. Last thing they wanted was to give their adversaries enough time to call in reinforcements or for a passerby to hear the exchange of gunfire and call the police.

First room was empty. Second room held a huge cache of weapons and ammunition.

“Holy shit,” Beckett said.

“A heroin empire requires a lot of firepower to protect, apparently,” Marz said, but he moved on. There was only one thing he cared about finding. Emilie.

From down the hall, shots rang out again, pinging off the walls around them. A sharp intake of breath. Marz whirled to track the noise and saw Nick bleeding from the neck.

“Flesh wound,” he said in a tight voice. “Let’s end this fucking thing.”

“Oh, shit,” Shane said as he crouched and pushed open the third door. The hallway light illuminated the barred cells that filled the long, dark rectangular space.

“Fucking hell,” Nick said.

Marz’s skin crawled. Would Jeffers have stashed Emilie here? He felt for a light switch and then reared back in case someone took a shot. All stayed quiet. A few of them crept through the room while Beckett and Easy watched the door. Cell one was empty. So was cell two.

“We got two noncoms here,” Shane said, staring into
the third cell. Marz joined him, hope flaring. But neither of the blond-haired women crouched on the floor beside a cot was Emilie. But goddamn if the gang wasn’t into kidnapping as a regular thing.

“I’ll take care of this,” Shane said. “Go find Emilie.”

As Marz retreated, he heard the women plead with Shane not to hurt them. He reassured them, his words filled with Southern charm.

Out in the hallway again, all hell broke loose.

“Incoming!” Beckett yelled.

They all rushed back into the cell room as an explosion rocked the hallway. Marz’s head glanced off the cement floor, shooting a ringing ache through his skull. Debris rained down on them and the lights flickered.

Vision blurry from the hit to the head, Marz blinked, twisted his prosthesis free from a pile of rubble, and awkwardly pushed himself off the floor.

“Everyone all right?” Shane yelled as he ran toward them.

“Yeah,” Marz said, accepting Shane’s hand.

Three pissed-off affirmatives answered as the other guys dragged themselves off the floor.

Footsteps in the hallway. Coming their way.

Beckett stalked to the doorway, glanced around the jamb, and squeezed off three quick rounds as debris floating in the air around him. “Clear,” he said.

“Stay with the women,” Nick said to Shane, and then he turned to Easy. “See if you can find the keys.” Both men nodded.

Stepping over pieces of drywall, chunks of cement, and two more bodies, Marz, Beckett, and Nick left the cell room and cleared two more rooms, then approached the last door on the hallway.

If Emilie wasn’t here, where the hell was she?

B
etween Jeffers’s constant stream of threats and jabs with the gun at her head and the soft space under her chin, the throbbing of her skull and back from where he’d hit her earlier, and the way each fired shot ratcheted up the fear and adrenaline in her body, Emilie was holding on by a very thin thread.

But Derek had come for her. Somehow he’d found her and come for her. The GPS on her cell phone, maybe? Who knew. All that mattered was that, because of Derek, she was going to have a chance to come out of this alive.

Sitting in a chair in the corner of a dingy office, Emilie kept her eyes trained on Jeffers. If she got a chance to disable him, she would take it. Her brain raced as she considered what she might do to get his gun away from him or knock him out.

Three more shots echoed from the hallway. Closer now than before.

“Come on,” Jeffers growled as he looked at his cell. The minute they’d holed up in this room, the guy had placed some calls. To whom, she didn’t know, but it was clear that he expected help to arrive. And that Jeffers considered her someone that a church would want. Whatever that meant.

How did a police officer get away with being this fundamentally bad?

The doorknob turned, just the littlest bit. Unfortunately, Jeffers must’ve seen it, too, because he yanked Emilie from the chair by the arm and held her in front of him again. What a freaking coward this guy was.

The door exploded inward in a spray of wooden shards. Emilie barely bit back a scream as a huge dark-blond-haired man appeared in the doorway.

Jeffers fired a series of shots at the opening and the man jumped back and disappeared. A moment later, the man ran across the opening of the ruined doorway, firing as he moved. Emilie braced and flinched, waiting for her body to register the searing pain of a gunshot. But it didn’t happen. Cement dust rained down from the wall above them.

And then another shot, and Jeffers hollered and jerked his gun hand. Where had that shot come from? But the answer hardly mattered because just then, Jeffers’s weapon clattered to the floor as his hold loosened across her shoulders and throat.

Reacting on pure instinct, Emilie reached behind her, grabbed the man’s crotch, and squeezed as hard as she could. He let her go altogether as he roared in outrage and pain. She scrambled to the floor for the gun, turned
on her butt, and pointed it at her captor. She squeezed the trigger.

“Don’t shoot!” came a voice from behind her.

But the bullet had already hit Jeffers in the chest, and the man went immediately pale as he grabbed his hands over his heart.

“Oh, my God,” she said as the reality of what she’d just done sank in. Her world sucked down to the hole in the front of his shirt and the small stain of red spilling from it.

Derek crouched beside her and gently laid a palm on her forearm. He spoke words she couldn’t hear as she watched Jeffers’s body buckle and fall. “Emilie? Em? It’s over,” Derek said, the words finally penetrating the buzz between her ears. Two other men—the big guy who’d kicked down the door and a dark-haired man—rushed around them to Jeffers.

Slowly, she pulled her eyes away from the cop and looked at Derek. The relief on his face reached inside her chest. “Derek?”

“Yeah,” he said with a small smile. “It’s over now. You’re safe.” His hand slid up her arm to where her fingers still gripped the gun. He gently grasped the weapon and withdrew it from her hand.

Emotion surged through her—disbelief, guilt, relief, anger, fear, and an overwhelming gratitude toward Derek. Tears gathered in her eyes and lodged a knot in her throat as Derek gently took her by the arms and helped her up.

“I’ve got you now,” he said.

Her knees felt like Jell-O. “Is he dead? I didn’t mean to kill him,” she said, staring at the growing circle of red on the dress shirt under Jeffers’s coat.

Fingers gently forced her gaze away from the blood.
“I don’t know, but it was self-defense, Emilie. You did nothing wrong here,” Derek said, his voice filled with conviction. He pulled her into his arms.

Emilie melted against him, shaking so hard her teeth clattered and her back hurt. Part of her didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know, but she still found herself turning her head toward the group of men on the floor.

The men crouching over Jeffers fired a series of questions at him, but all Emilie could clearly hear was the sound of that single gunshot—the one with which she’d killed another human being—ringing in her ears.

“It’s no use,” the big guy said as he fished through the man’s pockets, removing his wallet and cell phone.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here before we get company,” the dark-haired man said. He rose and turned toward her, and Emilie noticed he had an angry-looking cut across the side of his neck that had soaked the neckline of his T-shirt with blood.

But she didn’t have time to ask about it, because they rushed her down the hall and joined four others—two men and two women—at the midway point. The women looked nearly as shaken and bewildered as she felt. One of the men appeared to have been shot in the arm. The dark red running down his brown skin immediately resurrected the image of the bloodstain on Jeffers’s shirt. She couldn’t get away from the blood.

Every time they passed a body on the floor, Derek’s arm banded around her more tightly. Debris and destruction. Dead bodies. Bullet holes in the walls. It looked like a war zone. What in the world had she fallen into? And who—or what—was Derek really?

Upstairs, they made their way back the way she’d come in.

At a small room in the rear of the building, Derek
halted. “Wait a second.” He turned to one of the other guys. “Let me grab the security footage.” He darted into the room and Emilie gravitated just inside with him, not wanting to be separated from him. Not after he’d saved her. And not when his presence was the only thing keeping her from falling apart. “Damnit,” Derek bit out. He turned toward her, but his gaze looked over her shoulder. “The footage from today is gone. All of it.”

“Shit,” the dark-haired man said as he dragged a hand over his head. “So we missed someone.”

“Or someone came in after us. Either way, we’re on the grid now,” the big man said, stark blue eyes flashing. “Nothing we can do about that. Let’s go.”

The men hustled Emilie and the other two women out the back door. When Derek directed Emilie toward a truck, she looked up at him. “My car. My things.”

“What do you need?” he said, guiding her toward her damaged Camry. “Can’t take the car. The damage will attract the attention of the police.”

Emilie thought of Jeffers’s obvious corruption and an icy certainty tossed her belly. “We can’t call the police on this, can we?” Silent tears slipped down her cheeks. “That man . . . the one I k-killed . . . he was a detective. I saw him at the station this morning.”
Oh, God. I haven’t just killed someone. I killed a cop
.

“I know,” Derek said.

For some reason, his answer wasn’t as surprising as she felt it should be. But her mind was spinning from how crazy and surreal she found this whole situation. If she couldn’t trust the police, who could she trust? Who were the good guys? It was like her world was a snow globe and someone had just given it a strong shake. She no longer knew which way was up. “Um, m-my purse
and laptop, please,” she said. “Oh, and my cell phone is on the floor.”

Derek retrieved the items and walked her across the parking lot to a black pickup. The same one that had followed her earlier.

“We’ve got too many for the truck,” the big guy said, “so I hot-wired the Lexus. I’ll bring the women. And Easy’s gonna ride with me. We’ll follow you back.”

Words were exchanged that Emilie didn’t hear as Marz helped her up into the tall backseat. Marz climbed in beside her. Her hands shook so bad that it took her three tries to secure her seat belt. Then two men jumped into the front seat and they pealed out of the lot.

“Hey,” came Derek’s soft voice from beside her. “Are you okay?”

Emilie braced her hands against the seat as the truck took a turn too fast. “Uh, yeah. I think. I don’t even know.” She wasn’t really sure what exactly had happened yet. Or maybe it was that her brain didn’t believe it. Either way, her body trembled and her thoughts were a jumbled mess.

Derek gently cupped her jaw as his gaze ran over her face. “We’ll get you checked out when we get back to our place. Our driver’s name is Shane,” he said, nodding toward the handsome man with blond-tipped hair. “He’s a medic. And Nick’s girlfriend is a nurse.”

Emilie could hardly believe that it had just been last night that she and Derek had their wonderful date. What would she have done if Derek hadn’t come? What would’ve happened to her? She stared into his brown eyes and found comfort and affection there. A warm pressure filled her chest—something that was entirely for and about him. “Okay,” was all she could say as
she reached out and brushed some white dust from his brown hair and the shoulder of his gray shirt.

The dark-haired man, Nick, turned in his seat. “I hope you’re all right.” When Nick’s gaze went from her face to the window behind her, Emilie looked over her shoulder.

A dark Lexus followed them with the big man at the wheel.

Turning back, she looked where Nick was holding the edge of his t-shirt against the wound on his neck. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “And so was the guy in the other car. I think you all got the worst of it.” All Emilie had were some bruises from Jeffers striking at her and a lifetime’s supply of bad dreams.

“That was Easy,” Marz said. “He took a hit to the arm.”

“I’ll call Becca and let her know what’s headed her way,” Nick said, facing front again and placing a phone to his ear.

“I know there’s a lot coming at you right now, Em,” Derek said, taking her hand. “But I’ll explain everything when we get back.”

“To your place? Where’s that?” Emilie asked, giving voice to just one of the probably million questions bouncing around between her ears.

Derek’s smile was small and almost apologetic. “Not far.”

Part of Emilie wanted to lose herself against the warm strength of Derek’s chest and block everything else out. But another part—the part Jack’s infidelity had damaged inside her—yelled that Derek was keeping all kinds of things from her. She knew he was ex-army, but he’d come after her, guns blazing, with a whole
team
of guys. Who did that? What kind of person had the
ability to do that? Could he
really
be just a computer guy? Her head throbbed as she tried to come up with answers that made any damn sense. So she denied herself his comfort, even though she could almost feel his desire to take her into his arms.

That yelling voice got louder and louder inside her head until she had to know more. “How did you find me, Derek?”

He sighed and looked down at their joined hands where they rested on her denim-clad knee. Little cuts covered the back of his hand and forearm. Cuts that hadn’t been there last night. He’d gotten hurt saving her. “Did you get my message from this morning?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, staring at those cuts.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you since last night. I’m done keeping things from you, and while I think it’d make more sense if I could tell the story from the beginning, I’ll answer your questions now if you really want,” he said, his thumb stroking over the back of her hand.

Oh, God, I was right. He
is
keeping things from me
. Her stomach squeezed and nausea threatened. She hadn’t thought she could feel any worse than she did when they’d left that building, but she’d been wrong. “Tell me,” she whispered.

His eyes held none of the humor or playfulness she’d associated with him since that first time they’d met. “I put a tracking device on your car. My team and I have been looking for your brother. That’s what
led me to you.”

For a moment, the words just floated there. And then they began to sink in.

Tracking device.

Manny.

Led me to you.

The pain in her head suddenly had nothing to do with Jeffers hitting her. “So, what? Like, an investigation?”

“Yeah,” Derek said with a sympathetic gaze.

“I thought you did computer work,” she said, her mind reeling.

“I do.”

She scoffed and swallowed hard against the knot suddenly lodged in her throat. “Just not the typical nine-to-five in a cubicle kind.”

He was such a handsome man that part of her hated to see the pain and sadness on his face, but the last thing she wanted right now was to find him attractive. Not after he’d lied to her. Not after he’d used her. Not after he’d broken her trust.

It all came back to Manny once more. After everything she’d been through—because of him—she was as angry at him as she was worried about him.

God, she suddenly just felt angry at
everyone
.

“You were just using me to get to Manny,” she said, the words gritty and bitter on her tongue. She pulled her hand away from his and crossed her arms. Hurt flashed through his eyes, and Emilie looked away so she didn’t give into the still-present desire to receive his comfort, and give hers in return. She glared out the window. “That’s why I don’t know your last name, isn’t it? You didn’t really want me to know who you are.”

“God, I hate this,” Derek said. The regret in his voice drew her gaze back to him. “I hate that you got caught up in this. And I’m sorry.” He met her gaze, and she couldn’t deny the sincerity there even as her heart wanted to protect itself and harden toward it. Derek glanced downward, shoulders hunched, and seemed to gather himself, and then he looked her straight in
the eye. “It did start out that way, Emilie, but when I showed up at your work that afternoon and said I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you, that was true. That was real.” He heaved a breath. “And my last name’s DiMarzio. Derek DiMarzio. I never offered it because I feared your brother would recognize the name if you mentioned it.”

She turned her face toward the empty seat beside her, not wanting to get sucked in by his handsome face and pleading eyes. “It was all based on lies, Derek,” she said in a thin voice. “How do you expect me to believe it was real? Any of it?” Her mind resurrected the images of them laughing together, talking, kissing. She remembered the feeling of his lips on her breasts and his hand between her legs.
Oh, God
. It’d all been a show.