Protect Me (24 page)

She
sank her weight down into a crouch momentarily and then hissed out a breath and
straightened up.

“What’s
going on?” Rick whispered. His face was pale, but his dark eyes were steady.

Hope
stared at Boran’s retreating back and watched him disappear around the corner
in the distance. She hadn’t seen anything, and yet something had sent Boran
haring off down the hall. Already things were starting to spiral out of
control, and they’d only just stepped inside the door.

Time to
move.

“I
don’t know, but we need to get going,” she said in an undertone, moving in
close and pushing Rick forward. He went willingly with a hint of a smile in
spite of the seriousness of the situation.

Together
they hurried down the left branch of the hallway. Giving in to her instincts,
Hope pulled out her gun, but kept her finger off the trigger. It would keep her
from making any mistakes in the case of a surprise - Hope never wanted to be
the person to pull the trigger too soon. But the solid weight of the gun in her
hand was comforting, and it looked intimidating. Sometimes that was enough.
Sometimes.

Rick
was doing his best, but he didn’t know how to move quietly. It was lucky that
they were going for speed rather than silence. Even his sneakers were clapping
echoes off the close walls in the narrow, dark hallway. Emergency lights made
it possible for them to see where they were going, but not much further.

“Maybe
this is the rabid paranoia talking, but do you get the feeling we’re being
funneled?” Rick inquired.

Hope
gave a strangled laugh. Yeah, she did, but there wasn’t a thing they could do
about it. Not now. The only way out was through.

“Keep
moving,” she directed. Rick flashed a look at her and even in the darkness she
caught the arch of his eyebrow and the tug of a wry smile at the corner of his
mouth. He knew. He was too smart not to know, damn him.

In the
half-second between when Hope’s boot hit the ground silently and Rick’s foot
fell toward the floor to complete a step, she heard something.

She
threw out a hand into Rick’s chest and the two of them stopped, not breathing.
Dead silence, and then…

“Yes,”
Hope hissed. Through the wall, she heard the sound of a muffled shout. It could
have been anyone, but there was a distinctly feminine lilt to the noise, and
Hope knew enough of Gouws to know that he wouldn’t hire any women on his teams.
It had to be Iseul.

She
grabbed the keychain flashlight strapped to her belt and didn’t bother to
remove it, just snapped the light on for a moment. The thin beam illuminated
about twenty feet of dirty linoleum in front of them. And at the end, a door.

Hope
clicked the flashlight off again and let it hang.

“Ready?”
she said, the vibration of her voice more a suggestion of sound than an actual
spoken word.

She
watched Rick draw in a long breath and simultaneously slide his hands over his
gear in a final check. He looked around at her; nodded. Hope shoved down a wave
of affection for this brave, incredible man and gently bumped her shoulder into
his. It was the sign of an ally more than that of a lover, but right now, that
was all she could afford to be.

Rick
understood. His white smile broke the darkness and he darted out a hand to rest
at her hip for just a moment.

“Behind
me,” Hope mouthed, and moved out in front quietly. She walked up to the edge of
the door and paused next to the slit. Here, her shadow wouldn’t give her away,
and she could hear more easily.

From
the next room, she heard a familiar voice give a shocked gasp. Hope’s heart
lurched. She couldn’t help but picture lovely, kind Iseul trussed up and
terrified, at the mercy of some heartless predator.

There
was an audible intake of breath from the other room and Hope’s hand started
drifting toward the doorknob.

Then,
through the door, she heard Iseul speak.

“Do you
have any idea how many degrees I have?” a spitting-mad Iseul demanded.

A weary
voice replied in heavily accented English, “I do now, for you have told me at
least six times.”

“Well,
I have a lot. Far too many for this nonsense! If you do not release me - ”

The
goon interrupted, “You will do what? Throw your degrees at my head? They might
suffocate me under their weight madam but you will notice your hands are tied
behind your back. Now stop talking or I will gag you!”

“I am a
lawyer,” Iseul shot back with icy disdain. “When I get out of here - and I will
- I will drag you in front of the courts so fast it will make even your thick
head spin.”

“Heads
cannot spin.”

“It’s a
colloquialism, you oaf!”

There
was a dull thud that sounded awfully like someone dropping their face into
their palms. “How can you expect me to know these things? I am not American, I
do not know your stupid phrases. I hate this country. This is the worst task we
have ever had to complete. Once we get this drug I will leave and never return.
I will poison each of the Botswana myself if it means I never come back to this
place where women like you are taught to speak like this.”

“Ever
heard of extradition? Look the word up in the dictionary, buddy, because you’re
going to be intimately acquainted with it very soon. And if you think I’m going
to let you harm one hair on Rick Stone’s head, you’re sadly mistaken.”

The
henchman gave an ugly snort. “You cannot protect your lover. You are weak and
your hands are tied. Literally. Ha! Do you see? Your hands, they are cuffed.
Ha!”

There
was a brief pause, and then Iseul said grimly, “I will charge you with brutal
use of force on the English language. That was sue-worthy. And for the
hundredth time, I’m not Rick’s girlfriend anymore, are all of you selectively
deaf as well as stupid?”

A
distinct growl sounded from the other side, and Hope figured it was time to get
to work before the goon got any bright ideas about educating Iseul further.

She
looked over her shoulder at Rick to find him staring anxiously at her.

“Ready?”
she breathed.

He
nodded without a moment of hesitation. At that moment, no matter how
inexperienced he was, there was nobody Hope would’ve rather had at her back.

She
opened the door.

No
matter how experienced you are, when a true adrenaline rush hits, you freeze
for a second. It’s biology. What separates the pros from the amateurs is how
long it takes you to unfreeze.

Within
a half a second Hope had swept her eyes over a survey of the room and was
moving forward.

Iseul
was dressed in probably not the most flattering pair of flannel pajamas, her
hair tied back in a messy ponytail, and her face set as stubborn as any
respectable mule. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back and she was sitting
on one of those uncomfortable metal folding chairs, glaring up at a goon at
least as wide as he was tall. Hope was momentarily impressed that Iseul had the
nerve to stand up to him. He probably had a room temperature IQ, but
hundred-year-old oak trees would be envious of the width of his neck.

The guy
saw them and his small eyes widened marginally in surprise. He was kitted out
in your standard semi-professional goon outfit of black army pants and a tight
black shirt with a black jacket on top just to add a little color (and pockets).

He
jerked his elbow back and reached into his jacket for his gun, but Hope was
faster - not fast enough to stop him grabbing hold of it, but fast enough to
grab his arm and force it up toward the ceiling.

“Rick!
The shears!” she bellowed into the goon’s face. He might have looked confused,
or that might have just been his normal expression.

To her
great relief, over her shoulder she heard footsteps start into action. She’d
known that Rick would freeze; in fact, she’d counted on it to keep him in comparative
safety by the door during those first few uncertain seconds. But she’d also
counted on the fact that he’d wake up and start moving when she needed him to.
If somebody else had been watching them, they’d probably have assumed that Hope
was negating all the benefits of her showing up by bringing Rick along - that
she’d have to try to protect both Rick and Iseul and herself, and end up saving
none of them.

But
Hope had a little more faith than that, these days.

“Come
on, my ankles too,” she heard Iseul hiss impatiently behind her, and then the
goon’s other fist came swinging in at her face, and she had to stop listening.

When
the goon started laying into her, Hope immediately had a serious problem,
because if he managed to hit her it was going to
hurt
. And if the guy
managed to hit her in the head, she was probably out, and then they were all
screwed.

Fortunately,
his bulk slowed him just enough that Hope was able to get in under his guard.
She swung herself out of the way of the punch and shoved him off-balance with
her shoulder, making him stumble after his punch.

Unfortunately,
he actually was trained; rather than tumbling forward he sank down and took his
weight into his knees. It held him steady and he recovered in time to sling a
quick, almost random, punch right into Hope’s side.

She had
about a quarter of a second to decide whether or not to get out of the way. But
Hope knew she couldn’t. If she let go of this goon’s grip on the gun then it
would instantly become a firefight, and in close quarters like these, it could
just as easily be deadly by accident as on purpose.

The
goon’s fist slammed into her side and she let out an involuntary mix between a
grunt and a forced exhalation of air. It felt like the hit tossed her like a
rag-doll, but though her lower body jerked around, she kept hold of her grip on
the gun. Behind her, somebody shouted her name.

Pain
radiated out from her side. Hope knew it was moderated by the adrenaline. If
she pushed past the initial adrenaline rush and had to keep fighting, this was
going to be nasty.

Time to
stop messing around.

The
goon’s thick lips drew up in a grin as he drew back his fist for another punch.
He let out a grunt of exertion; Hope could see the glint of victory in his eye.

Hope
hung all her weight off the goon’s wrist and he instinctively refused to let
his arm fall. The movement distracted him and momentarily occupied his energy;
he shifted his feet to brace himself. In one moment Hope snapped her leg out in
a kick and pulled at the gun hard with both hands.

The
kick landed right at the bottom of his kneecap. She would’ve winced in sympathy
if she wasn’t busy trying not to get killed by him. He howled and she used the
moment to seize the gun away from him.

Instinctively
Hope backed away a few paces, breathing hard. She immediately regretted it when
the goon showed no signs of backing down. His wide face set in the meanest
snarl she’d ever seen and though he limped a bit, he still looked formidable as
he closed in on her.

The
best defense was a good offense, but Hope wavered as the goon growled low in
his throat and came forward. She really didn’t want to shoot him; she would if
she had to, but she’d go another round if it was at all possible to prevent it.
A fight could be explained away. Gunshots generally couldn’t be (not in the US,
anyway); fatal ones even less so.

She
didn’t bother to point the gun at him. After years in this business you
developed the skill of picking up on the little cues that most people were too
used to fights to notice. Hope knew that the goon wouldn’t back down if she
threatened to shoot him. She could see it in the way he bore down on her with
his shoulders hunched inward like he wanted to trap her, the inexorable rolling
motion of his gate, the way that adrenaline had narrowed his pupils into
pinpricks.

It felt
like whole minutes passing by as the goon barreled toward her, though it wasn’t
more than a second. There was no safe action to take. She couldn’t do anything
but watch the goon close in on her, and trust that she’d be able to do
something, anything to stop him when he reached her…

“HEY!”
someone shouted, and at almost the same instant, the shears were flung into the
side of the goon’s head.

Without
waiting to see who had done it or why, Hope exploded into action. She leapt
forward, grabbed the falling pair of shears, and slammed them into the side of
the goon’s head again. A thin line of blood trickled down the side of his face.
He grabbed for her, but slowly, woozily, and she dodged out of the way easily.
Hope had time to square up and land a solid punch right to the sweet spot on
his jaw.

The
goon dropped like a stone.

She
kicked him over before his limbs had even fully come to a rest and held out an
impatient hand. “I need the rope, now,” she demanded. The goon’s wrists were
too thick for her to zip-tie him.

Only a
second passed before a couple lengths of rope dropped into her hands. She
quickly but carefully looped the rope around the goon’s wrists and tied a
constrictor knot. Simple and secure, and if he tried to struggle he’d just make
it tighter. Someone else would need to cut him out of it for him to ever get
free.