Ice Cold (40 page)

Two of the tangos fell. Several fired back.

She blocked Rafael’s actions and concentrated only on closing in on
her
Bad Guys. Mind going at warp speed, as ingrained responses in her neural pathways kicked in. No time for mental discussion. On autopilot, she fired with pinpoint accuracy and kept going.

Moving the muzzle of the SIG with her eyes as she looked rapidly right and left between blasts, Honey scanned for secondary targets as she advanced quickly, firing two one-shot strings per adversary, to the chest, in rapid succession. Felt the sharp recoil, and target re-acquisitioned as she moved.

Her rapid heartbeat was due to excitement, not fear.

Two tangos, one male, one female, guns blazing, ran toward her in tandem. Honey’s first shot caught the woman in the head. She shifted the SIG laterally on the recoil, using the time between the two shots to hit the man between the eyes. Supercharged, high-octane racing adrenaline kept her moving and alert.

Rigorously trained to expect the worst, she didn’t bother hoping for the best. They were intent on killing her, and she wanted first dibs. She shot a guy, seen on a side sweep, in the throat, destroying a painting behind him that she’d commissioned of the meadow behind the house. Damn.

Ignoring a few screams from some of the hostages, Honey fired until there were no more targets.

She turned to check on her people then jerked around as Rafael yelled, “Your three!” Another tango bore down on her, weapon raised.

She pulled the trigger.
Click
. Jam. Shit.

The man got off a shot, hitting her hard in the hip. The impact spun her around, off balance. He kept coming. A woman in black joined him, and they were like the Living Dead as they ran toward her.

As she moved, Honey pulled the slide back on her pistol in the hope that it would unjam. When that didn’t do the trick, she slammed her nondominant hand up hard against the clip.
Click.
Failure to feed
. Shit.
She vaulted over the back of a nearby sofa, the leather slick with someone else’s blood. Hidden from view, she struck the spine of the mag a couple of times on the floor until the clicking stopped. Woohoo. Back in business.

Someone got off a series of rapid-fire shots, producing sparks and the
ping
of striking metal. Honey slid to the floor, inching her way across the carpet to get the tag-team from behind when a horrendous creak and crack made her look up at the wood ceiling. Rafael had shot the heavy chains holding the enormous center light fixture.

The six-foot chandelier, comprised of dozens of faux antlers set in wrought-iron fittings, dropped thirty feet from the beamed ceiling and shook the planked floor beneath her knees. Honey instinctively jerked an arm up to cover her face, despite the protective covering of mask and goggles, as the massive piece shattered on impact.

The two tangos were antlered to death.

Honey got to her feet. “Easy there, Cowboy!” She checked to make sure only the Bad Guys had been hit by the flying debris. Then glanced back at Rafael, standing legs spread, pretending to blow on the muzzle of his H&K. “That chandelier was custom-made.”

“I’ll buy you another one to go with the tree.”

They grinned at each other through masks and goggles. Crazy.

Honey turned to check on her people, who were still tied and gathered on the other side of the room. A clear swath of roughhewn floorboards between them and the utter devastation where the shootout had taken place. Splintered wood, the shattered chandelier, assorted and sundry broken glass and ceramics, divots in her polished wood floors—the picture completed by a dozen bloody corpses. It was gruesome, infuriating, and satisfying at the same time.

“Teach you to waltz into my home uninvited,” she told a guy staring sightlessly at the ceiling as she automatically kicked his weapon out of his hand as a precaution. Honey slammed a fresh clip into her weapon as she crossed to the tethered group by the fireplace. There was a round still in the chamber to allow a shot midstream should the need arise as she jettisoned the partially empty magazine.

Not giving a damn about all the things that were easily replaceable, she and Rafael started the process of liberating everyone from the plastic ties on their ankles and wrists. Pollack wasn’t with the women. She tamped down her fear and worked faster.

“Anyone hurt?” she demanded, cutting through the restraints around her housekeeper’s wrists first, because she was closest. There was a chorus of “No” and “I’m okay,” but everyone was various degrees of terrified and pissed.

There was blood in Bianca’s eye as she looked around her usually pristine home. “You keep some of those others—” She pointed through the windows, where another battle raged. “Keep them healthy long enough to help clean up their mess! How’m I gonna get all this blood off of my floors?”

Honey patted her skinny arm then assisted Kimberly Luz, their resident nurse. “How was Pollack the last time you saw him?”

“Unhurt.” Her eyes told Honey that might not be the case now. “We all thought she was you. Honestly, Honey, you could be twins, for God’s sake! Pollack and I came running when we heard you’d come home injured. He took one look at whoever she is— Unlike the rest of us,” she said bitterly, “
He
knew right away she wasn’t you. By then the place was swarming with guys with guns and shitty attitudes.” Kim was still furious. “That scary crazy bitch grabbed him, and the men rounded up everyone and tied them up. Sorry, Boss.”

“She’s fooled a lot of people. Where are the men?”

Diane Mason, accepted a pair of scissors from Judi, and went to work removing the ankle bindings from Fran. “The thugs rounded them up and took them- No idea where. We haven’t seen or heard from them since they were taken. But I’ll tell you this, they didn’t go easy!”

“No, they wouldn’t. Can you take a look at Hollie’s wrists? She’s bleeding. Then check everyone. Thanks,” she told Bianca, who’d gone to the sideboard and was dispensing sharp steak knives, so that each woman was liberated, she could help the others.

“How many more Bad Guys
inside,
do you have a vague head count?” She cut as fast as she was could. No one appeared seriously injured, just shaken and scared. She appreciated none of the women was having hysterics. She didn’t have the time or skills to deal with them if they were.

“Bunch of the bastards went outside when they heard the sirens. Told us to turn them off. I’ve never been so pleased to tell a man to go to hell,” Jennilinh Dinh, one of her ranch hands, said with relish, rubbing the raw, red indentations on her wrists and ankles. Getting to her feet, she took one of the knives and started freeing Nikki and Cheryl, pausing to say over her shoulder, “Go do your thing, Boss; we have this.”

Honey looked at the group as a whole, as she shoved her cowl down, and shoved the goggles on top of her head. Taking off her gloves, she tucked them into a hidden side pocket. “Where did she take him?” They all knew to whom she was referring.

“To your room,” Steph told her, pulling the cut ties from her wrist. “I’m so sorry, Honey, we tried—”

“I know you did. I’ll—” She suddenly realized it wasn’t a case of only herself here. Rafael was with her. Really
with
her. It was an odd, heart-melting feeling, knowing that she wasn’t alone. “
We’ll
take care of it.” And since she was painfully aware that Savage had more friends in low places and was good buddies with an internationally known bomber, she urged everyone to clear out and reconvene in the fortified horse barn.

THIRTY-THREE

 A 
few more minutes and they could’ve locked themselves inside the Safe Room. It’s only fifty feet away from where they were held,” Honey said quietly, and although she was merely a few feet away, her voice was soft enough to be picked up only by his headset.

“None of them was seriously injured.”

“True. And things better stay that way.”

The number of women in the house surprised Rafael. Two dozen females of assorted ages. The Ice Princess wasn’t the girlfriend type—not the Ice Princess he’d first met, anyway. He had more questions than answers. Because whoever those women were, she cared deeply for their well-being, taking care of them first even though the adrenaline rush was surely kicking her like a wild thing, and fear for her Pollack had to be paramount in her mind.

“This way.” She headed down a wide hallway at a dead run, trusting he’d be right on her ass. Which he was.

Her private quarters were in a separate wing of the ten-thousand-square-foot house. Why anyone would need a house of this size, when she lived alone and was out of the country half the time, was a mystery to him. Unless she’d taken in boarders?

An odd and uncharacteristic move, but he was learning there was more to Honey Winston than met the eye. Interestingly enough, not one of the hostages appeared hysterical, none even cried. Yeah, they were clearly pissed, and they might even have been afraid of being assaulted by armed tangos, but they hadn’t let that fear debilitate them. So who were these women, and why were they in Honey’s home? Rafael kept his questions for later.

The war for world security played out beyond the picture windows, seen like frames in a silent movie as he and Honey moved quickly through the house. There were fewer T-FLAC operatives than tangos, but they had skill and razor-sharp training, whereas Seymour’s people made up for skill with sheer numbers.

“Interesting being an observer, isn’t it?” Rafael pointed as two bad guys rushed a female T-FLAC operative.

“I’ve been an observer all my life.” Running, weapon in hand, Honey spared a sideways glance outside as the woman creamed the two men with her bare hands in about a minute flat.

Grim-faced, Honey paused only to activate security doors that soundlessly slid closed behind them as they moved deeper into the house. “Jesus, you have some serious shit around here.” He jogged beside her through corridors that were increasingly narrow, and less decorated. Unadorned walls now, no windows. No logs. No woodsy country décor.

“Did you honest to God think that you’d ever be under siege? The security here is better than what they have at Fort Knox.”

“Jake and I had fun with it, we have a few patent—”

The hallway dead-ended at a door. She reached out and her fingers held a fine tremor as she soundlessly turned the handle. The door cracked open. Weapons raised, they entered high low as the door swung wide.

The room was empty as they straightened from their ready positions. The high ceilinged room looked inviting and sexy as hell with a massive lode pole, four-poster covered in pristine white opposite a local stone fireplace that stretched to the beamed ceiling twenty feet overhead. He heard her breath escape in a sigh as she looked around. Gleaming wide-plank dark floors, plush rugs, soft, feminine neutrals.

They both saw the wet, muddy boot prints leading from the door, to a blank wall across the room.

“Damn it.”

“What is it?” he asked softly. Stark fear glassed over her pale eyes when she turned her head.

“The only way he would’ve opened this door is if she hurt him badly enough he didn’t have a choice.”

If nothing else, Rafael wanted to blow Savage away for what she’d done to shatter Honey’s legendary calm. “Or she threatened him with doing something to you,” he said, squeezing her hand.

Honey shook her head. “No. He and I have an agreement. Any threat to him,
ever,
for any reason, he has to concentrate on his own safety. He’s to do what’s right for him, save his own life, no matter what.”

Keeping her hand in his, Rafael cocked a brow and matched her soft tone. “Do you
really
believe he’d adhere to something like that? If he loves you a tenth as much as you love him, he’d protect you the same way you protect him.”

“Then we’ll have to have words about that,” she said grimly. Twirling a finger at the floor, she looked up at him. “I count nine-ish. You?”

“Hard to tell, but yeah, about.” The footsteps had entered but not exited. “We have a welcome committee.”

“No guns blazing, promise me? Pollack’s down there, and Savage will use him as a shield given half a chance, you know she will. Not to mention, the entire basement lab is filled with the computer array.”

“Fair enough. What’s her line of sight?”

“We’ll take the stairs. Really, really narrow. L-shaped. She’ll hear us when we’re half way down, but she won’t be able to see us until we step into the room.”

“How big?”

“Six thousand square feet. Racks ceiling to floor in rows north to south. Two eight-foot high rows of racks down the center, running the whole length down the right side. The left is where I have my console, the surveillance screens, and my active computers.”

“So most of the action will be, by process of elimination, on the left?”

Honey nodded. “She’ll be at the computers. Her men surrounding her, protecting her back.” Crossing the room, she started to drag aside a large, suede covered easy chair. As soon as he saw what she was doing, Rafe lifted the heavy chair and set it aside. “And we’re redecorating—why?”