Marked (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (20 page)

On the third kick the door splintered around the door handle and it flew open to reveal two Asian men wearing hotel uniforms. The first one stopped in the doorway, a chilling smile forming when his gaze lit on Rachel cowering in the tub.

“You gonna shoot me with that?” he taunted in Mandarin, his laugh skating down her spine with icy fingers.

She flung out her arm and shot the smug bastard right in the face with the hairspray. He howled and wiped his eyes. Rachel shot to her feet, prepared to jump out of the tub and make a run for it, but the second man was there, blocking the doorway. She froze, heart hammering against her ribs.

The first man stopped scrubbing at his face and shot a bone-chilling glare at her. She was too terrified to scream, hoped that the shots had alerted someone on the floor to what was unfolding here.

He raised his pistol like he was going to hit her with it but the other guy grabbed him by the arm to stop him. A battle of wills ensued for a few seconds and she noticed the second man was bleeding from a wound in his left shoulder. Celida had shot him.

Good.

The first man jerked out of his hold, his red, runny eyes shooting sparks at Rachel. He lunged forward and knocked the can out of her hand with an angry swipe. The sound of the metal clattering on the tile floor was loud in the terrible silence.

Without a word he seized her by the upper arm and dragged her from the tub, easily overpowering her resistance.

“Let me go!” she shouted, yanking and twisting with all her might. All it got her was a burning sensation as her skin twisted in his steely grip. “Let me go!” she screamed again, this time in Mandarin.

The man jerked her so hard her head snapped back and she landed on the floor on her knees before him. Before she could move he wrenched her arm behind her and seized a handful of her hair, still holding his weapon, and glared down at her with an oily smile that told her exactly what he’d like to do to her in this position. Rachel glared up at him in defiance, terrified but determined to fight him to the last.

The second one reached past him to grab her by the upper arm and haul her to her feet. Without pause he started dragging her toward the hotel room door and she caught her first sight of Celida, lying face down on the floor. Dark puddles of blood were pooling around her and Rachel couldn’t see where she’d been shot but Celida was moaning and moving slightly.

The man holding her aimed his weapon at the agent and Rachel reacted without thinking. She shot a hand up and grabbed his wrist with an outraged, “No!”

He met her eyes for a second, but relented when the sound of voices came from the other end of the hall. Cursing, he yanked her up against him, his grip bruising as he jammed the muzzle of his pistol under her chin. The cold metal bit into her skin and she started shaking.

“You come with us without any trouble or I shoot you,” he threatened, and Rachel knew he would do it without a second thought. He shook her once, hard enough to make her teeth clack together, then shoved the weapon against her lower back. “One shot to the kidney and you’ll bleed out while you beg me to kill you just to make the pain stop.”

It scared her to death, but why go to these lengths to kidnap her if they wanted to kill her here and now? They could easily have shot her in the tub already. He had to be bluffing. And better to die here and now by a gunshot or be wounded as she ran, rather than let them take her and do God only knew what later.

She opened her mouth to scream, had just gotten the first blast of sound out of her restricted throat when one of them wrestled something wide and sticky across her mouth. Duct tape.

She bucked against the iron hold restraining her and threw her head back, hoping to ram the one holding her in the face, but the back of her skull bounced off his chest. She kept screaming and struggling but her cries for help were muffled, maybe too quiet for anyone to overhear. Which was what they’d no doubt intended.

Her stomach clenched, the fear threatening to close her throat off as she desperately dragged air through her nose. She kept fighting, doing her damnedest to gouge and claw and kick as she was dragged into the hallway.

Someone had to have heard those shots and her screams. Hotel security had to be on the way up, and the police would have been alerted. She just had to hold out until backup arrived.

The second man closed her room’s door—maybe to block anyone from noticing Celida initially—and followed a few steps behind. A door behind them opened but whoever it was quickly snapped it shut again when the second man swung around and raised his weapon at them. Her legs felt like rubber and she didn’t even remember moving; the guy holding her practically carried her down the hallway and into the stairwell, her struggles barely even slowing him down.

The whole time her mind was spinning, scrambling to come up with a way out of this. But they were too strong. Despite her every effort she was dragged along like a piece of driftwood caught in the surf.

At the bottom floor they exited out at street level into the bright sunlight. She squinted at the sudden glare. A dark car came around the corner and sped toward them. Its tires screeched as it came to a quick stop. The back door flew open and the man holding her shoved her headlong into the backseat.

She caught herself on her forearms, scrambled into a sitting position just as the other door flew open and one of her captors slid in. The second slid in on her other side and slammed the door shut, trapping her between them.

The car’s tires let out a high-pitched squeal as the driver took off. She pushed her hair out of her face and angrily shoved against the men caging her as one of them tore the tape away from her mouth. It felt like her skin came away with it. “What the hell do you want with me?” she demanded, her voice hoarse, shaky.

“You’re going to be our diversion, Rachel.”

Her blood turned to ice at the sound of that familiar voice.

She watched in horror as the man in the front passenger seat turned to look back at her.

Xang.

Her skin prickled and the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stood up. “Where’s my brother, you bastard?” she snarled.

“You’ll see soon enough. He’s dying to reunite with you.” He smiled and held up a phone, showing her a picture of Brandon.

Her brother was bound to a chair, chin resting on his chest in a defeated posture that broke her heart, his mangled hand covered by a blood-soaked bandage. The image had been taken from an angle to the side and slightly from above. It took her a second to realize it wasn’t a picture, but a video. She had no way of knowing if it was a live feed or not.

“Too bad it won’t be a happy reunion,” Xang finished with a smirk.

Turning to face front again, he tucked the phone back into his coat pocket while the car sped toward whatever fate he had planned for her and her brother.

Armed with a tray full of pastries and specialty coffees—including a dolce cinnamon latte for Morales, because it was her favorite—Tuck approached the front entrance of the hotel and frowned at all the cop cars and emergency vehicles parked out front. When he’d texted Jake earlier to tell him he was on his way here, his friend had texted back asking Tuck to grab something for the girls to eat. But the sight that greeted him in the lobby had his internal alarm blaring.

Around a dozen cops were stopping people from getting on the elevators and questioning people coming out of the stairwells, so he knew something big must be going on and he was ninety-nine percent sure it must have something to do with Rachel. Then he noticed a group of men talking beside the elevators and his body stiffened when he saw Agent Travers there.

Shit, what the hell had happened? Tuck headed straight for him. The other men speaking to Travers fell silent as he neared.

“What’s going on?” Tuck asked.

Travers clenched his jaw and shook his head once. “Two men stormed Rachel’s room less than half an hour ago. They took her and shot Morales—”

“
What
?” When the man just stared at him in response, Tuck wanted to grab him and shake him. “Where is she?”

“We don’t know, but the surveillance cameras show them taking Rachel—”

“Morales,” he growled, his gut clenching at the thought of her being shot.

“She’s still upstairs in Rachel’s room. They’re getting ready to transport her.”

Tuck shoved the coffees and pastries at a guy standing to his left, didn’t even wait to see if he caught them before racing for the staircase. The metal door clanged shut behind him as he raced up to the sixth floor, dodging people trailing down the stairs to the lobby. More cops were positioned by the door on the sixth floor but they let him through when he showed his badge.

He jogged the rest of the way down the hall, his heart stuttering when he saw the bullet holes in the door. Big ones, likely from .45 caliber slugs. They could kill from hydrostatic shock even without hitting anything vital.
Fuck.

The first responders let him in after he showed his badge and he stopped dead when he saw Celida laid out on a stretcher, bloody bandages on her arm, face and head.

He strode right up to the side of the gurney, his gaze sweeping over the damage. Head and facial wounds bled a lot, so though she looked pretty bad, none of the wounds appeared to be life threatening. Her eyes were closed, a huge swollen knot forming above her right temple. Whatever they’d hit her with, that blow alone could have killed her.

God, sweetheart…

“Celida.” He reached down to take her unbandaged left hand, wrapped his fingers around hers. Her pallor and stillness worried him. She was always so bold and full of sass, seeing her this way scared the shit out of him. Even though he knew the risks that came with her job he’d just never imagined her not being here, never allowed himself to think that something might happen to her. Had he lost her now, after being such a Boy Scout all this time by keeping things strictly professional between them?

“She’s concussed,” one of the EMTs told him as he finished hooking up an IV. “She’s still pretty out of it.”

Jesus, was there a skull fracture or something? He leaned over her, put a hand on the uninjured left side of her face. “Celida. Hey.”

Her lashes fluttered and her eyes opened slightly. She blinked up at him, seemed to have trouble focusing but thankfully her pupils responded evenly. “They took her,” she rasped out. “Didn’t…stop them.”

“Travers is already on it.” He eyed the lump on the side of her head, the bloody bandage on her right cheek. “Damn, they marked you up pretty good, huh, sunshine?”

She blinked at him, whether because the endearment had just slipped out or she was having trouble concentrating, he wasn’t sure. “Is it…bad?”

Likely they hadn’t let her see her face yet, but the lack of a smart-ass remark told him just how worried and vulnerable she felt. She wasn’t squeamish, but this was her blood they were talking about and he was glad she couldn’t see it.

His muscles knotted with the need to scoop her up and hold her, tell her everything would be okay. But he didn’t out of fear of hurting her more—because he knew damn well she’d never tell him if he did—and because he wasn’t going to let his feelings flap out in the breeze for her and everyone else to see when he wasn’t sure if she would push him away. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if she was on the same page as him in terms of wanting a change in the status of their…relationship.

“Not that bad,” he lied, though he’d certainly seen worse. “You’re gonna have quite the shiner for a while though. How’s your arm feel?”

“Not broken. Just sore. Flesh wound, I think. My wrist is worse.” She sounded groggy as hell.

He gritted his teeth at the thought of those bastards shooting her through the door. He wished he’d been here. Maybe he could have made the difference in turning the tide of the attack, or preventing it entirely. Maybe Celida wouldn’t have been wounded, Rachel would be safe and the suspects would both be dead.

Because, man, what he wouldn’t give for five minutes alone in a room with those fuckers right now. He’d tear them apart, solely for what they’d done to Celida. Jake could have a turn on Rachel’s behalf after that. Wherever she was, Tuck hoped she was okay.

Tamping down the primal rage burning through him, he kept his voice calm as he spoke. “You just rest and get better, okay? The team will handle this.”

She started to nod, then winced as though the motion was agonizing. “Tell Rachel…I’m sorry.” Her voice shook and a sharp pain lanced through him at seeing her so fragile and broken.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he argued. Hell, she’d taken at least two bullet grazes and by the looks of the way her eyes were already swollen half shut, nearly suffered a skull fracture trying to ward off the attackers. Celida was well trained and a deadly shot—he’d worked with her on the range personally many times to hone her skills—so if she’d been caught off guard and unable to take her attackers down, it could’ve happened to any of them.

He squeezed her hand once more, feeling helpless. During his years in SF and later in Delta it had always been hard to see a teammate wounded, but with her it was a thousand times worse. “Just rest and heal up. I’ll be in touch but call me if you need anything. Okay?” he stressed, needing her to see that she could count on him. That he
wanted
her to.

The woman was notoriously independent and hated when anyone suggested she couldn’t handle something on her own. He admired that to a point, but as a man he wanted the woman he was involved with to let him take care of her to at least some extent. Say, after getting shot and suffering a concussion, for example. Celida wouldn’t see it that way, of course, which was one of the reasons he’d been wary of getting involved in a relationship with her. That pig-headed part of her personality drove him fucking nuts.

“Yeah.” She closed her eyes as though the effort of speaking to him had completely drained her.

Reluctantly Tuck released her hand and stepped out of the way as the EMTs transported the stretcher out of the room. The forensics team would be in here shortly. And shit, he didn’t know how the hell he was going to break this to Jake, assuming he could even reach his commanding officer to relay the message. But damn, he’d seen how Jake was with Rachel. In his shoes, Tuck would want to know immediately, and he’d rather hear it from a friend than from Travers or someone else.