Hungry Like the Wolf (2 page)

“Yeah, yeah,” Zak groused, thumbing a button on his camera and taking rapid-fire shots of the primary focus of her investigation.

It was possible the SWAT commander wasn’t even aware someone on the team was using drugs to improve his performance, but instinct told her if there was something going on, Sergeant Gage Dixon knew about it. Which was why Mac had put his name at the top of her list.

Three other men followed the SWAT commander out of the vehicle, but it was almost impossible to do anything but ignore them—Dixon was that mesmerizing.

Dixon was the type of man who made it hard to notice anyone around him, even the other members of the SWAT team, who looked as if they should each have their own month in the Hot Cops of the Dallas Police Department calendar right along with him. It wasn’t simply that Dixon was tall, muscular, and sinfully gorgeous. It wasn’t even that he was a charismatic leader. It was that he had a presence, which made every head turn his way—male and female.

Sergeant Gage Dixon, fifteen years on the force, the last ten with SWAT. Previous military experience as a U.S. Army Ranger, two years in the narcotics division, and commendations out the wazoo. She didn’t have to refer to her personnel record to remember those facts. She’d learned everything about him she could, including the fact that he’d replaced every single member on the tactical team with his own handpicked people after taking charge when he was promoted to sergeant eight years ago.

That by itself gave her reason to think something was fishy. Organizational trends being what they were, it was highly unusual there’d be a one-hundred-percent turnover in such a peach assignment in such a short period of time—unless someone pushed to make that happen. And that someone was Gage Dixon.

She finally forced her attention to the other men who’d come out of the operations vehicle behind Dixon, trying to figure out who they were. The one wearing a uniform was obviously a cop—a lieutenant she guessed—probably the on-scene commander who’d called in the SWAT team. The shorter guy next to him was also easy to ID. The white shirt, hard hat, big radio on his belt, and a familiar logo above the pocket on his shirt indicated he worked for the local power company. The last guy had her stumped, though. He had unkempt hair and wore a cheap herringbone sports coat, but he didn’t have a sidearm or radio that she could see. Whoever he was, he got along well with Dixon. They shook hands, then did one of those weird shoulder-squeeze things men did when they were giving an enthusiastic hug.

Zak was snapping photos of the man-fest, so Mac asked him, “Any idea who that man is in the sports coat? I don’t recognize him.”

“Not surprising. He doesn’t get a lot of press. He’s one of the department’s new civilian crisis negotiators.”

“But SWAT has its own negotiators.”

Three of them, to be precise—Diego Martinez, Trevor McCall, and Zane Kendrick.

Zak shrugged. “Maybe the department brought him in to soften up SWAT’s image.”

And he was on good terms with the commander of the unit? What was next—dogs and cats sleeping together?

Dixon finished up his conversation with the lieutenant and two civilians, who disappeared back into the operations vehicle. The SWAT commander then turned and said something to Taylor, who nodded. Damn, she wished she could hear what they were saying. A few moments later, Taylor and the other two SWAT officers headed for the brick building, reaching under their helmets to pull knit caps down to cover their faces as they went. Before they got there, the three men split up, each disappearing around a different part of the building.

“You’d think they would go in with more people than that,” she said.

“Maybe some of them entered the building before we got here,” Zak suggested. “You know, like an advance recon team.”

Mac blinked. Where the hell had that come from? “An advance recon team?”

He stopped taking pictures to give her a superior look. “Hey, I play video games. I know the lingo.”

She shook her head. Men.

Mac turned back to see what Dixon was up to and saw him looking over at their undercover van. Crap. She started to duck down in the seat but caught herself. What the heck was she worrying about? The windows were too tinted for him to see anything at this distance.

His gaze lingered on them for a moment longer before he said something to the two patrol officers nearby, then climbed into the operations vehicle.

Mac grabbed the door handle.

“Where are you going?” Zak asked in a voice that said he knew exactly where she was going, and that he also knew he couldn’t stop her. He’d given up trying a long time ago.

“I’m going to look around, see if there’s anything interesting happening. Maybe get a few pictures.”

Zak frowned but held his tongue. Another thing he’d learned over time. “I’ll go with you.”

She reached into her bag for the digital camera she carried on little sneak-and-peek missions like this. It was small, simple to operate, and took higher-quality pictures than her cell phone. She tucked it in her back pocket.

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She slipped out the door and closed it before Zak could insist. And he would, on principle. But she didn’t like him getting involved in this kind of stuff. She was willing to be stupid with her own neck, but she sure wasn’t going to let him risk his. Zak was good at a lot of things, but he sucked at the sneaky, Danger Mouse stuff. Fortunately, he knew it and never tried to force her to take him along.

“Be careful,” he called out.

She nodded and hurried down the block, away from the scene. As soon as she reached the end of the block, she started jogging. Cop cars zipped past her, lights flashing and sirens wailing, but nobody paid attention to a woman who seemed to be doing the sane thing—running in the opposite direction of trouble.

The moment she was out of sight, she turned down an alley and worked her way back toward the rear of the building where all the crap was going down. If she could sneak inside and find a place to hide, she’d be able to observe the SWAT team in action and see how messy things really got.

And she had no doubt things were going to get messy. Why? Because she was here now, and things always seemed to get messy when she showed up. Zak said it was because she had a nose for finding trouble. Maybe he was right. That used to scare her parents to death when she was a kid—it probably still did—but it proved to be an invaluable talent for a journalist.

She looked left, then right, then darted across the street. She couldn’t believe the SWAT team didn’t have anyone covering the back door of the building, but there wasn’t a cop in sight. Maybe they weren’t the hotshots everyone made them out to be.

She was just about to grab the handle when the door burst open.

Mac barely had time to gasp before a man with a baseball cap on backward and a chest full of tattoos lifted a big rifle and aimed it at her. Her heart stopped. Instinct told her to run—or at least scream for help—but before she could do either, a SWAT officer in tactical gear dropped from above and knocked the thug to the ground with some kind of martial arts chop to the back of his tattooed neck.

She stared at the man lying unconscious on the ground, then at the cop before looking up to see a rappelling rope swaying back and forth against the side of the three-story building. How the heck had he dropped down fast enough to do that?

Mac opened her mouth to identify herself, but the SWAT officer closed the space between them in the blink of an eye and slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. She automatically reached up to grab his hand, but then froze as she locked eyes with his. He was wearing his ski mask, so all she could see were those eyes and a small amount of smooth brown skin around them. It had to be Mike Taylor or Jayden Brooks, the only two African American members of the team. Since she hadn’t seen Brooks go in, it had to be Taylor. But for the life of her, she didn’t remember his eyes being a shocking shade of gold in his personnel file photo.

Movement caught her attention and Mac darted a quick look to her right to see two uniformed officers appear out of nowhere. When had her SWAT savior called them?

“Get them out of here,” the golden-eyed man said softly. “And keep her quiet.”

And just like that, one of the uniformed cops wrapped his arm around her waist from behind and picked her up, putting his hand over her mouth when Taylor pulled his away. She watched helplessly as the other cop grabbed the unconscious gunman and heaved him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then ran toward the front of the building. When she looked back, the SWAT officer was nowhere to be seen. Where the heck had he gone? If all the guys in the tactical unit were this fast and powerful, she could imagine why Marvin thought they were on something. Nobody should be able to move that fast.

Her captor followed his partner, running down the alley with her like she was an unruly kid in a movie theater. She was so shocked she didn’t even struggle, and by the time she thought about it, they were at the SWAT operations vehicle. The minute he planted her firmly on her feet and took his hand away from her mouth, she whirled around to chew him out for manhandling her and was amazed to discover he was the same uniformed cop Dixon had spoken to earlier. Had the SWAT commander seen the news van and told the cop to keep an eye on her? But that was impossible. No one had eyesight that good.

The officer reached around her and opened the door of the operations vehicle, then motioned her in.

She’d about had enough with the caveman crap for today. “I’m not going in there.”

“In here, or in the backseat of a cruiser until this is done,” a deep voice said from inside. “Your call, Ms. Stone, but make it quickly.”

The cop raised an eyebrow, gesturing with one hand toward the open door and the other across the street where his cruiser was parked. Well, she’d wanted to get an inside look at how the SWAT team operated.

Mac ignored the hand the cop put out to help her and tried not to stamp her foot as she stepped into the vehicle.

“Please close the door, Officer Danner,” said that same deep voice.

The door slammed shut, making her jump.

Mac pushed her sunglasses up on her head and surveyed the inside of the huge vehicle. The three men she’d seen earlier were eyeing her curiously. Gage Dixon, on the other hand, wasn’t paying attention to her at all. He stood with his back to her, his focus locked on the computer monitors attached to the far wall of the vehicle. All six screens were on, but the images on four of them were moving and changing so fast it made her dizzy to look at them. It took her a moment to realize she was seeing live feeds from cameras mounted on his men’s helmets. Funny, she hadn’t seen one mounted on Taylor’s.

Who the hell was she kidding? She hadn’t noticed much of anything besides his big muscles and seriously mesmerizing eyes. He might have been naked for all she knew. Nah, she would have noticed that. She never missed a naked man.

But the four moving cameras meant Zak had been right—there were more than three SWAT officers in there. There were four. Not that four seemed like enough to her, either. She’d want like fifty or so to do the job.

The other two screens were stable, showing the inside of the building from two different angles. Mac took a step closer to get a better look and saw people lying facedown on the floor. At first she thought they were dead, but then she picked up movement.

She surveyed the inside of the operations vehicle and was disappointed to see it was nothing more than an RV without all the good stuff that came with it. That wasn’t to say it was empty. There were racks for equipment, racks for weapons, and racks for radios, computers, and cameras. There were even two whiteboards and a corkboard. A rather detailed drawing of the exterior of the building had been drawn on the whiteboard. Double red lines marked what looked like entry points.

Mac glanced at Dixon and the other men. They were all staring at the monitors. Figuring this was her chance to pick up some intel, she slid her hand into her back pocket for her camera.

“Please put your camera away, Ms. Stone,” Dixon said.

Mac froze. Damn. Everyone turned to look at her—well, everyone except Dixon. He was still glued to the monitors.

She pushed the camera back into her pocket. How the hell had he known what she was doing?

Dixon reached out and thumbed a switch on a box near the monitors. “We just got audio from the room where they’re holding the hostages.”

The sound of quiet sobs and pitiful moans—punctuated with a whole lot of shouting for the hostages to “Shut the eff up!”—filled the operations vehicle.

When the hostages were only silent, black-and-white video images, it had been possible for Mac to distance herself from the fact that the people lying on the floor—most of whom were women—were real, live human beings with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, boyfriends and husbands, maybe even kids. And that they were scared to death. But now it was impossible to remain detached.

Mac edged closer, holding her breath without even meaning to. One of the gunmen weaved in and out of the hostages, kicking them in an attempt to get them to move…somewhere. Most of the women just curled up in the fetal position and cried harder, which only seemed to infuriate the guy kicking them even more.

Cursing, he grabbed one of the women by the hair and dragged her out of the camera’s view. The woman’s terrified screams echoed through the speakers, chilling Mac to the core. She’d seen a lot of violence in her line of work, but that didn’t mean she was used to it.

She covered her mouth with her hands to keep from shouting at Dixon to tell his damn SWAT team to do something to help. She was a journalist. She was supposed to stay neutral in every situation and just observe. But it was damn hard when she knew that thug in there was moments away from killing that poor woman—or worse.

“Shit, this is bad,” the hostage negotiator said. “Those animals are on the edge and ready to go over. If your team is going in there, they’d better be quick.”

Dixon didn’t answer but just spoke softly into the mic he was wearing. A moment later, he turned to the man from the power company. “Are your people ready?”