Fatal Heat: A Navy SEAL Novella (15 page)

The security system was fairly sophisticated but doable.

If this had been a sanctioned op with air support behind him, Max would have preferred to infiltrate by rappelling down onto the roof from a helicopter, but he didn’t have that choice here.

And anyway, Max had been following his nose and had been headed for the door. Paige had walked through that door a couple of hours ago, and so he and his teammate would, too. He had to follow the dog’s lead here.

These guards were a little less Bozo the Clown-ish. They meant business. But then so did he.

He waited, looking for an opening. One of the guards suddenly spoke into a cop-style shoulder mic, swiped a card down the side of the big door, and entered.

Good. So he wouldn’t have to blow the door down.

Ten minutes later, the guard came back, put his head next to the other guard’s head, and said something. They both laughed.

A wave of coldness swept over him. Were they laughing at the idea of holding a beautiful woman hostage? By his side, Max woofed out a very soft, brief growl.

His partner was growing impatient. Fair enough, so was he.

He was tired of being nice. He shouldered the MP-5, gritting his teeth as he tried to find stability on his bad leg. Goddamn it, wasn’t working. It wanted to buckle.

He leaned against the trunk of a big pine and took aim. It had to be a head shot because they had body armor.

Phhht!
The asshole with the card dropped as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Max shifted immediately to the second target and dropped him before he realized what had happened to his partner.

Max limped to the first target and took out the swipe card.

The dog had already bounded to the door, taking an indifferent sniff of the two dead men as he passed. He pointed his muzzle at the door, arrow straight.

Paige was in there somewhere.

There were no biometric data necessary, which was fortunate, though Max was perfectly willing to press a dead man’s thumb against a plate or hold a dead man’s retina against a scanner. They obviously felt that the water was protection enough.

Wrong.

The building wasn’t a commercial building. There was no corporate lobby or even an entrance, really. Just one big corridor that led to other corridors.

This was where Max the dog did his thing.

He leaned down to run his hand over Max’s head and said, in a low voice, “Find her, boy. Find Paige.”

The dog took off, nose to the ground, and Max followed as fast as he humanly could. Pain jarred him right up to the top of his head every time he put weight on his leg, but he ignored it. There’d be time to take care of his leg later, once he had Paige safely home.

He would never have found her without Max. The dog moved unerringly down corridors it would have taken him hours to check and clear.

It was a labyrinthine building, built for work and not for representation. It was also empty. He encountered no one as he followed Max. At each corner, he’d stop, listen, check with his small angled mirror, then lead with his rifle, but all he encountered was air and a dog turned to him, waiting for him to follow.

There was a drumming need in him now to find Paige, the sense that a clock was ticking down. He hurried as fast as he could, shutting out the grinding pain, the drumbeat of his heart loud in his head. He needed to get to her
now.
Because something was happening
now
.

Finally, Max lifted his muzzle and stopped in front of a door. It was in the middle of a long, wide corridor with very few doors, which meant the rooms were large.

He put his ear to the steel door and heard faint voices. Male voices. Then a softer voice.

Paige!

He tested the door, opening it just enough to slip the mirror in and narrowed his eyes as he watched. The dog stuck his nose into the crack and started wrig [ stt egling. He could smell his mistress and wanted to go to her.

Max put a hand down to calm the trembling dog.

Max studied the situation in the mirror for long moments, trying to remain dispassionate. Looking at the vectors, figuring the odds, checking line of sight and angles. Because that’s what he was trained to do and that’s what he did well.

He didn’t allow himself to think about what he was seeing.

Paige, bound to a chair, head hanging low. Blood trickling from a cut in her forehead. Paige, with a black eye and swollen jaw. Bruised and battered.

He put his reaction away, tamped it right down, put it in a box and locked it.

Observed.

Three men, two armed. All three with their backs to him.

The unarmed one sitting on a chair to one side of her, one leg crossed over the other, foot casually swinging. The interrogator.

The two armed fucks standing, holding their Berettas loosely by their sides. At that distance, they could never miss. She was tied up. They’d have plenty of time to kill her.

The man in the chair swung his leg idly, got up, walked over, and bent his head close to Paige’s—much as a lover would. She moved back in revulsion and he laughed. The sound carried in the big room. He said something else and she spat at him.

It was like a frozen tableau. Nobody moved; it seemed nobody breathed.

The man next to Paige wiped his face, murmured something to her, then clicked his fingers. His voice was suddenly clear and echoed in the room. “Let’s end this.”

The two armed men raised their gun hands.

Max opened the door wider and lobbed a flashbang right into the geographic center of the triangle formed by the three men and, pulling the dog away with him, flattened his back against the wall next to the door, opened his mouth, and covered his ears.

T
here was a way to deal with sociopaths, Paige was sure. Unfortunately, she had no idea what it was.

There was no reasoning with Larry—none.

In his money-crazed head, he had the perfect plan for instant riches and the only two people stopping him from raking in amazing wealth were herself and Silvia. To him, once he got rid of these two pesky women, it was going to be smooth sailing. A hole in one.

He was going to kill her. Or, rather, have her killed, as she just couldn’t see him pulling the trigger himself. It was there, in his face and in his body language.

Most of it was because he’d convinced himself that she stood in the way of a lifetime of champagne and Rolexes, but a part of it—she understood quite well—was because she had refused him. She’d wounded some deep insecurity in him and she was going to pay.

She’d told him everything she knew, bits and pieces coming out with each blow. The pain was like razor flowers blossoming at odd points of her body. Her jaw, her shoulder, a wrist she suspected was broken when he punched her so hard she fell to the floor again.

The only thing she didn’t tell him was about the thumb drive.

If she’d had the slightest hope that he’d let her live, she’d have told him. No question. She ached all over, the pain deep and vicious. Anything to make this stop.

But he wasn’t going to stop, and since she was as good as dead, she could leave this earth with the hope that even if they caught Silvia, too, Max could find the thumb drive, figure out what was going on, and go to the cops with the story.

Max wouldn’t stop until he found the truth, though in all likelihood they’d never find her body. You can drag rivers and ponds but not the ocean. They’d weight her down, slip her body over the side of that boat, and no one would ever know what had happened to her.

He’d take care of her dog, though.

Oh God. How ironic. She’d never thought to find love, not the wild, pulse-pounding kind. She’d thought maybe someone would come along at some future point. A fellow research scientist, maybe. Some nice guy who didn’t turn her off. They’d date for a year or two, then start discussing marriage.

Never, ever, would she have thought love could come [ve lig in another package. Tall and broad, a warrior. A wounded warrior who woke up every sense she had and made her feel alive down to her fingertips.

And now she was going to lose that love the instant she found it.

“
Tell me!”
Larry said, moving his face close to hers, spittle flying from his mouth. “Goddamn you, you bitch,
talk!”

He’d asked her a question and she had no idea what it was. Never mind. She didn’t even have the strength to raise her head. When she moved it, spikes hammered into her brain and she lost her vision for a second.

She gathered her senses for one last effort and spat at him.

Larry wiped his face and stood up, waving his hand at the two goons behind her. “Let’s end this.”

They were raising their rifles. Oh God. This was it.

Max
, she thought, a solitary tear falling down her battered face.
I love—

The world exploded.

A flash of blinding light so intense she continued to see it behind closed eyelids, and a noise so loud she heard it through her diaphragm like a punch.

Was she dead? Is this what death was like? So bright and so noisy?

She couldn’t think, she could hardly breathe. She opened her eyes, blinked, blinked again. All three men were on the floor, red seeping from their heads. Hands were tugging at her—a knife flashed, a big black one—and she shrank back, hoping it would be quick…

But the knife didn’t cut into her flesh—it was cutting into the hateful tape binding her. And there was, there was… there was
barking
. How could that be?

Suddenly the world righted itself. Max! And Max!

The last strand of tape was cut and she stood up, then fell into Max’s arms because her legs wouldn’t hold her. His couldnheig [s c intet either. They fell to the floor in a heap and she landed on warm, hard male.

“Oh God,” she breathed, her lungs clogged with emotion. “You came for me!”

Max looked awful. Pale and drawn and drained, but smiling as he kissed her. “
We
came for you. Did you doubt we would?”

Her dog was barking, frantically licking her face, front paws on human Max’s chest, wiggling and whining with happiness.

“No.” the word came out as an explosion of joy. “No, I knew you’d come, both of you.”

“Woof!” her Max said.

“Woof!” her other Max said.

“Damn straight,” she answered and embraced them both.

Epilogue

One year later

Outside Eugene, Oregon

“Silvia will be here in about an hour,” Paige said, flipping her cell phone closed.

Max gave a sly smile. “Cory’s really happy. He just bought himself a tie. I never thought I’d see him in a tie, but once he found out she’s coming, there was no stopping him.”

“A tie and those new titanium-blade legs. He’s going to be irresistible.” He was, too. Silvia had quietly tried to pry the guest list for their wedding anniversary party out of Paige and hadn’t stopped asking until Paige gave in and said Cory’d be there.

“Just as long as he doesn’t con me into a race,” Max said sourly.

“Because he’ll win. And you hate losing.” Man, did she know her husband. He’d acquired most of the use of his bad leg back, but no one could keep up with Cory’s blades.

“Maybe I’ll dare him and if I win he has to join us. That would be an incentive.” Max’s company, Search Inc., was very successful. He put together different teams for every search-and-rescue job but Cory was always part of it. Search was growing so quickly, Max wanted a partner and he wanted it to be Cory.

Search wasn’t the only thing that was growing, Paige reflected. She placed a hand on her belly and smiled up at her husband.

“Did you get that shipment off?” he asked. “Of… things?”

Max still didn’t have a complete grasp of what she did and rarely ventured into her propagation lab, a little unsettled by the silence and rows and rows of tiny containers.

“Yes, it’s safely gone. And I just got ten new orders.” She’d been surprised at the success of her own company, a small propagation laboratory that was growing exponentially. It felt so good to be her own boss and leave the corporate world behind.

She looked out over their home, a restored nineteenth-century homestead that she loved, her gaze taking in her lab and Max’s high-tech bunker next to it, where he and his teammates planned their “extractions.” It was soul-satisfying work. Last week they’d rescued a four-year-old boy.

The house glowed with candles and everything was ready for the guests, who would start arriving in about an hour.

“It’s all good,” Max said softly, almost to himself, then smiled down at her. He bent to kiss her, the kiss growing heated, until she pushed at his chest. He lifted his head, dark eyes glowing.