Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (34 page)

“Don’t, Lark. Not now.” Ah, shit—“I’m losing my powers, aren’t I?” he said hoarsely. “Jesus.” He pounded the towel dispenser again. It fell off the wall with a clatter.

She raised a multi-pierced eyebrow at his display of frustration. “Your temper, maybe. But you are
not
losing your powers, Middle Edge, that I can tell you for sure. I’d suggest that you clue in on why they don’t work on
Heather.
Before it’s too late.”

Too late? The words hit like a punch.

Bathed in an icy sweat of foreboding, Caleb rubbed a fist across the familiar ache in his chest. She wasn’t dead. He’d know it.
Where are you, Heather? Where in God’s name are you?

“Tell Gabriel he can give me the CliffsNotes on that meeting. Later. Right now all I give a damn about is Heather and Bean.”

Thanks to Lark, Caleb and Rook had a location.

While the talented empath could give the men a sketchy description on the interior of the building, she couldn’t pinpoint where in the fifty-thousand-square-foot medical center Heather was being held.

It was after hours, and the parking lot behind the two-story building held only a dozen or so vehicles.

The second he materialized inside, Caleb smelled the familiar stench of death.

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“Report?” he asked softly into his lip mic. Rook had teleported to the other side of the building, and the Big Plan was for the two men to check each room until they met in the middle. Or until they found Heather. His mind raced along with his pulse.

Picturing his wife, his
wife,
damn it, he sent out a desperate, but useless, thought.
Where are you?
He’d give anything to be telepathic right now. A simple mind-meld, and she’d be safe, with him.

He ignored the weakness that caused his muscles to feel like Jell-O. It would pass, but in the meantime, it was a stark reminder that there could be no magic for him until the end of this rescue attempt. Not
attempt,
damn it.
Rescue.

He couldn’t afford to expend energy rendering himself invisible. He had used up his store of power backspacing, followed immediately by this short teleportation. He was damn well out of juice. And frankly, he thought, feeling feral as he ran down a corridor, weapon drawn, he didn’t give a shit if anyone saw him or not.

His stores were so depleted that unless it related directly to Heather, this takedown was going to have to be done without utilizing any of his wizardly skills. He had to replenish what he’d lost so that he could teleport Heather and himself out of here when it counted. And the only way to do that was wait.

“Woman dead in her car. Side parking lot,” Rook said in his ear, sounding grim. “Throat slit. Oh, shit.

There’s a kid strapped in a car seat in back—Man, I fucking
hate
when kids get—Holy crap. It’s
sleeping
! I’m porting the baby to Lark.”

Bean. Jesus. Bean.Caleb’s heart clenched. He’d never had this much to lose. When he’d gone into that bombed building in Beirut a couple of years ago to rescue some diplomat’s daughter from a tango kidnapping, he hadn’t given the girl more than a second’s thought. She was nothing more than a job.

This was no different, he reminded himself. He
had
to put his emotions, along with the personal connection, aside. Had to, in order to function on all cylinders.

He glanced down the long, doorless corridor as he ran toward the front of the building. Weapon raised, he recognized the incessant ping as that of an elevator door opening and closing. He sped up, his long
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legs making short work of the hallway.

Caleb paused to take a quick glance around the corner. A chilling calm settled over him as he came across more of the tangos’ handiwork. He spoke softly into the mic. “Couple of bodies by the elevator near the pharmacy.”

Three mutilated bodies sprawled on the floor, half in and half out of the open elevator. The door dinged and opened. Then it tried to close but was obstructed by the bodies, and dinged open again.

Caleb did a lightning-fast visual, trying to maintain his professional detachment. “Three women.

Jesus—”

“How bad?”

Professional detachment was impossible, because with this kind of evidence he knew with a sick certainty who, God help her, was holding Heather hostage.

“Fazuk Al-Adel bad,” Caleb told Rook hoarsely, stepping over the tangle of arms and legs and other severed, indistinguishable parts. Avoiding the seeping pool of coagulated blood darkening the carpet, he kept going, his sole focus: Finding Heather.
Please God, don’t let me be too late.

“Al-Adel?” Rook said in his ear. “Oh, shit. This century’s Dr. Mengele.”

Tightening his grip on the gun, Caleb recalled that Al-Adel derived perverse pleasure out of performing his atrocities. He remembered some of the photos T-FLAC had posted and winced. The sick bastard had clearly indulged his sick proclivities for some time with the center’s staff and patients.

“He had time to entertain himself with these kills.” There were more ahead. The inside of the building was as cold as an f-ing meat locker. Air conditioning turned up high. A notorious Al-Adel idiosyncrasy.

“While he waited for Heather?”

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Caleb’s mouth went dry. His thought exactly. “Christ. Smells like a slaughterhouse.”

At any other time he’d have at least paused to ascertain whether any of Al-Adel’s victims were still alive. Today the thought barely crossed his mind as, on a razor’s edge of urgency, he ran down the corridor.

They already knew from Lark that each floor of the two-story building consisted of two parallel corridors. Caleb had come through the back door. This corridor was clearly used for wheeling patients outside in wheelchairs or gurneys. He could see the lobby ahead. Off that was yet another hallway, this one leading to a row of exam rooms and various doctor’s offices, according to Lark. Who was rarely wrong.

“Shimmer upstairs to the recovery room,” Caleb instructed Rook. “I’ll stay down here.”

In real time Al-Adel had had close to two hours alone with Heather, doing—his throat constricted.

Couldn’t go there. Not now.
Focus.

Caleb raced through the luxurious reception area, where phones rang unanswered, a couple of computer screens swirled with screen savers, and a fax machine spewed out papers onto the bodies of the two young women gutted and left on the floor behind their desks.

Two more women had been killed and left in the middle of the reception area, where a shattered fish tank spewed water, vegetation, and dead fish. Bullet holes riddled the floor and ceiling. The path of gore led from the front doors, through the waiting room, and down the corridor with all the exam rooms.

“Three nurses dead up here,” Rook reported. “More than one bad guy did this shit. What a bunch of sick sonuvabitches, you should see—Sorry,” he said quickly.

Listening to Rook lose his normal rigid control at what he was seeing up there, Caleb slammed open an exam room door. Empty. He prayed a quick fervent prayer that his powers would return to full strength quickly.
Instantly
would be even better. He opened every door as he raced down the corridor.

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Jesus. Where the fuck are you, sweetheart?

He paused only long enough to glance inside each exam room, then ran to the next, and the next. Pretty much every room had the tango’s brutal touch, as evidenced by dark crimson pools or blood-splattered walls. Gruesome reminders of the futile efforts of his victims attempting to escape. His stomach lurched.

Not because of the gore before him, but simply knowing that his—that Heather might very well be counted among the victims of the sadistic Fazuk Al-Adel.

Cold sweat broke out on his brow and he ran faster.

Heather? Tell me where the fuck you are. I swear to God, when this is all over I’ll let you do whatever you want to do. I’ll never see you again. I won’t—

He didn’t know what the hell she was going to want him to do.

Go jump off a bridge, most likely—especially after that confrontation in their honeymoon suite just this morning.

He couldn’t even swallow past the rock in his throat. Whatever it was she wanted, he’d give it to her on a platter.

Just be alive. That’s all I’m asking you. Please be alive.

Caleb couldn’t imagine his world without Heather in it.

A woman moaned when he opened one of the doors. Barely conscious, and in bad shape, but alive.

Caleb hesitated. Jesus. He hated this. His first inclination was to teleport the woman immediately. Lark was at their private medical facility in Switzerland, waiting. But he couldn’t, he just
couldn’t
teleport this woman and then find that he couldn’t do the same for Heather when he needed the juice. “Room 121B.

For teleportation.”

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“Now?”

“Now—”

Rook materialized to teleport the woman. He didn’t have to accompany her, but he did have to have line of sight. “Go,” he told Caleb as the woman disappeared, leaving the outline of her upper body on the sheets she’d been lying on.

Caleb went.

Caleb felt the guilt weigh on his shoulders, and despite the frigid air, a film of sweat bathed his entire body as he methodically searched behind every door.

Chaos, brutality, murder. More of the man’s vile trademarks. No more living victims. He gulped and spoke into the mic. “I’m holding you to that promise, Tony.”

The promise that no matter what happened to
him,
Rook would get Heather out. No matter what.

“Shit, you’re a lazy dog. Get your lady out of here yourself. The sooner, the better, man.”

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Caleb intended getting her out of here himself. But he always had a contingency plan or three. So long as he thought of Heather as his responsibility, he could make it another step. Because if he thought of her the way Al-Adel had left these other victims, he’d be a worthless excuse for a wizard.

An arrowed sign pointed to the Chief of Staff’s office, and the surgery center at the end of the corridor.

Fifty-fifty. They were the last two places downstairs that he hadn’t checked yet.

Caleb’s blood froze because he knew which area Al-Adel would choose.

The surgery center. Where there was a plethora of lethally sharp instruments. Al-Adel had a history of doing his reprehensible deeds in an operating theater—there was something about the sterile environment and the harsh, revealing lights that turned the sick son of a bitch on.

Caleb had never moved so fast without magic. He was highly motivated, and so damned scared he wasn’t rational anymore. He practically flew the five hundred feet to the double doors at the end of what seemed like a million miles of charcoal carpet. The doors opened with a crash as he blasted inside. They swung out into the hallway, then closed again behind him with a soft swish.

A group of men was circled around an operating table in the center of the room. They turned as one at the noise of his entry. Even as he fired the first shot, Caleb subliminally took in a woman’s pale naked legs, visible between the bodies of the men. She was spread-eagled on the table.

Every bit of moisture in his body turned to dust, and his heart stopped beating in his chest.

Was she…

“Not Heather.”
Thank you, God.

It helped that the guy at the end of the table, the one about to position himself, had his pants around his knees, and his dick waving in the breeze. The second guy was clearly surprised to be wearing a hole in the middle of his uni-brow.

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“Need help?” Rook asked hopefully in his ear.

“Nah. Two down, only five to go. Dumb asses have their weapons tossed on a cart thirty feet away.”

Didn’t mean that they weren’t armed anyway. Caleb hoped they weren’t. While he would have enjoyed a close encounter of the violent kind, he damn well didn’t have the time. He popped off Number Three before Number Two hit the floor. And by the time Four, Five, Six, and Seven came at him at once, he had his knife in his other hand just to speed things up.

He hated to rush his work, especially since he itched to take these guys on and build up a real sweat.

But somewhere in this building, Heather needed him. He had to go.

Not only weren’t they armed, but they sure as shit were predictable, Caleb thought, almost disappointed. They poured all their energy into rushing up at him. Way too fucking enthusiastic.

He shifted to the right, knowing someone was behind him.

He snapped back his elbow with hand support. The man shifted just before the blow landed, rendering Caleb’s defense ineffectual. The guy grabbed him, binding his arms at his sides. Not for long, but long enough for Caleb’s gun to fly out of his numb fingers.