Silver Fire (Guardians) (12 page)

He was going to have to draw the guy out. Taking a peek through the entrance, the burn of a bullet singed his temple. Without hesitation, Derek dropped to the floor on his side and squeezed off a shot, hitting his assailant in the abdomen. As the man hollered for help, Derek quickly scrambled to his feet and shot the man in the head.

Another gunman skidded in front of him before scuttling back behind a corner. Derek heard the shuffling of footsteps from the entrance.

“Big of you to join me,” Derek told Jack blandly without turning around.

“As if I’m letting you have all the fun,” his friend replied mockingly.

They grabbed the weapons from the fallen gunmen, shouldered the assault rifles and cautiously headed down the hallway. The entrance to Silver Fire Research split into two passages and converged at the end with the length of the lab between them. From the crackle of gunfire, the attackers seemed to be congregated by the left corridor.

Shouting in a foreign language punctuated the exchange of firepower, then there was a lull, before Connelly yelled at someone to stand back. Then another barrage of shooting and another lull. Someone had shouted Connelly’s name. Connelly was down. But when Derek heard Stephen screaming, “Sophie, baby no!” He had heard enough. Derek’s chest constricted to actual physical pain as he tore around the right corner, Jack at his heels. Before he could reach the edge of the lab, a huge explosion rocked the hallway fronting the lab. A cloud of dust billowed past him.

“Sophie!” Derek roared, running down the length of the lab and almost losing his mind when he saw her lying face down on the floor. “Angel, no, no, no.” As much as Derek wanted to flip her over quickly, he did it carefully, making sure to keep her neck stable. His throat caught when he saw blood streaming down from a head wound.

“Holy shit!” Jack swore behind him. “Derek, we need to move her into the lab.”

Derek barely heard his friend but looked briefly at the tangle of limbs, body parts and debris before them. There was also some medley of voices. Not all the assailants had died in the explosion.

Not sure of the extent of her injuries, Derek carefully pulled Sophie the short distance into the lab.

Once inside, Stephen belly-crawled toward them. His face was pale and dazed.

“What the hell happened?” Derek asked brusquely.

“IED,” Sophie croaked beneath him. Her eyes were still closed, but it was a relief to hear her voice.
 

Resisting the urge to crush her to him, Derek whispered, “Angel.” He shifted her hair away from her face.

“My ears hurt, damn. My head hurts,” Sophie muttered. Her eyes were hooded as she tried to sit up.

“Sophie, stay down,” Derek ordered as he gently but firmly pressed on her shoulders. He glanced up and saw Jack attending to the wounded Braden Connelly and briefly noted the irony of the situation. “Where’s Agent Guerrero?”

Stephen shook his head. Derek clenched his jaw.
 

“Stay with her,” Derek told Stephen as he approached Jack, who was presently wrapping a a piece of torn shirt around Connelly’s leg wound.

“We lost Thalia,” Derek informed him grimly as he positioned himself by the doorway and leaned past the frame to assess their situation. He saw an assailant’s muzzle flash and quickly ducked back into the room.

“Damn it!” He dragged his phone out and realized he had several missed calls from Maia. He punched her number; she answered on the first ring.

“Are you and Jack all right?” Maia asked tersely.

“Yes, where are you guys?”

“SWAT is in position, we’re still seven minutes out.”

“We made it to the lab. The attackers sustained heavy casualties, but there are a few stragglers. Tell the SWAT to go slow on the approach.”

“Is everyone all right?”

“We lost Agent Guerrero.”

Silence.

“We’ll be there soon,” Maia said and hung up.

***

It was over in minutes. When the SWAT team moved in, the three remaining gunmen surrendered their weapons. Fifteen had stormed the compound, the explosion had taken out five, Jack and Derek took out one each, and Guerrero or Connelly shot down the rest.

Braden Connelly was getting loaded up on a gurney when Maia arrived with several Guardians. Connelly saw her and immediately called her attention.

“Maia.”

“Braden.” Maia took his hand in hers while with the other, brushed his sandy blonde hair from his face. “You’ll be OK.”

“Sorry about Thalia,” Connelly whispered.
 

“Don’t even think it’s your fault,” Maia said roughly. “Look, you need to get to the hospital. We’ll talk later.”

When Maia tried to pull away, Braden grasped her hand tighter. “Promise?”

Derek couldn’t believe Connelly would pull the wounded-puppy card after what Jack had done to save his life. What a douchebag.

“Ow.” Sophie’s yelp brought Derek’s attention back to the blonde beside him. An EMT was cleaning her head wound and other minor lacerations she had sustained in the explosion.

“Be careful, will you?” Derek snapped.
 

“Derek!” Sophie rebuked.

The technician smiled apologetically. “I’ve patched you up a bit, but you will be needing stitches. Fortunately it’s on your hairline so it won’t be visible. I’ll also suggest a CAT scan just to rule out any complications from the concussion you’ve sustained. You did lose consciousness, you said?”

“She did,” Derek answered abruptly.

“Do you want to ride in our ambulance?”

“I’ll take her,” Derek said.

“I am capable of answering and making decisions for myself,” Sophie retorted, glaring at Derek. To the EMT, she said, “I’ll come with you. Give me a minute.”

Sensing an oncoming quarrel, the EMT walked away.

Derek regarded Sophie with amusement. He was so relieved she was alright and did not care that his bossiness was irritating the hell out of her.

“You need to dial it down.”

“What, Angel?”

“Your high-handedness.”

“Someone needs to take care of you.”

“Take care? I can take care of myself,” Sophie snapped. “Did what I had to do to stop the assassins, didn’t I?”

“That you did,” Derek said, controlling his lips from twitching.
God, she was brave, gorgeous and —

“Oh, by the way,” Sophie reached into her pocket and took out a spherical device that had blinking numbers on them.

Reckless
.
What the fuck?

Derek forced himself to ask calmly, “What is that, Sophie?”

She walked away from him, saying over her shoulder, “I need to disarm it.”

“Jesus Christ!” Derek stalked over to her. “Give that to me!”

The room suddenly got tense as all eyes swung to Sophie and Derek.

“Oh, calm down!” Sophie chided. “It’s plastics, it’s not doing anything until it’s triggered.” She flicked a switch on the device and the blinking numbers disappeared. “See? The frequency—Hey!”

Derek snatched the device from her, ignoring the mutinous glare she threw at him, and bellowed, “Manning!”
 

A tall, muscled Guardian that resembled Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson came forward. “Take care of this.”

“That device is proprietary to Silver Fire, you can’t have it!” Sophie cried.

“It’s evidence,” Derek fired back. He had felt his heart stop when Sophie pulled out the sphere.
Damn her,
he wanted to strangle her. He gripped her arm and led her to the EMT.

“Which hospital?”
 

The EMT told him.

Turning back to Sophie, he said, “I’ll be following you there shortly. Try not to slip away. You are coming home with me tonight.”

With that statement he turned away and walked over to where Jack and Maia were having a heated discussion of their own.

“I need to go to the hospital, do you need me for any debrief?” Derek asked Maia.

Maia sighed. “You can come by tomorrow. Are you guys heading back to MDI?”

“I’m going wherever you are, sweetheart,” Jack told his wife.

“Let’s not start,
 
Jack,” Maia snapped. “I’ve got things to do. I’ve lost an agent and I’ve got one in the hospital. I’m thankful to you for saving his life. But can you possibly back off a little?”

Maybe he should have just rode in the ambulance with Sophie, Derek thought. Maia speared him with narrowed clear blue-eyes.
 

“Don’t think for a moment I’m forgetting how reckless you both were,” Maia continued, fuming. “You went up against assault rifles with damned pistols, and you guys were outnumbered. What if Sophie hadn’t built an IED? Where would that leave you?”

“Shoe on the other foot, babe?” Jack sneered.

Fuck McCord
, Derek’s eyes widened. His friend just didn’t know when to shut up. Maia glared at her husband before cocking her head, lifting both hands in a gesture of annoyed resignation. “Immature asshole,” she muttered as she backed up a couple steps before turning around and walking out the door.

“Where are you going?” Jack called out furiously.

“Anywhere you’re not!”

“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Derek stated dryly. “You need to learn when to shut up.”

“Oh, and you’re the expert on women now?”

“No. But I’m not the one whom his wife can’t stand.”

Jack fell silent as they walked out the lab, his expression brooding. The hallways were teeming with forensic investigators trying to piece together the events—or body parts.

Derek’s phone buzzed. Maia.

“Hey sweetie.”

“I just got a call from Tim,” Maia said. “We have a lead on the perpetrators of this truck bomb.”

“That’s great, uh, and you are telling me this because?”

“So you can tell my husband not to wait for me tonight.”

Shit.

Derek sighed as he ended the call.

“What?” Jack asked impatiently.

“I hate getting caught in between,” Derek said in resignation. By this time they were out of the building and walking to their vehicle.

“They’ve got a lead on the attackers,” Derek said as he leveled his gaze on his friend. “Maia said not to wait up for her.” A scowl was settling on Jack’s face. “Guess I’m driving.”

***

Sophie shifted restlessly in bed. She had fallen into deep sleep after they returned from the hospital, but now she was wide awake, drenched and disturbingly aroused. She had been dreaming of Adam again. But it was one of those dreams that had her waking up conflicted. These dreams that never seemed to go away or fade with time; they were like flashcards of all the sexual interludes between her and Adam. Every time she thought he would fade into memory, these dreams recurred, almost as if her subconscious was refusing to let him go.

In her dream, she was in a bed, her hands were tied on either side and she was naked. It had been just a few days since her abduction, and she was resisting his sexual advances—screaming at him as well as kicking him. It surprised her that he had not bound her feet too. He did beat her with a switch each time she resisted, and it would leave angry welt marks all over her body. Sometimes they would bleed. When the pain became too hard to bear, Sophie would stop fighting and that was when Adam would start kissing her, tracing the redness with his tongue until he reached the mound between her thighs. She was too distraught to fight him, he kept her legs open and gave her unimaginable pleasure. She hated him for that.

But on the second week, after days of giving her mindless orgasms, he crawled back up her body and finally pushed inside her, taking her virginity. It was pain and ecstasy combined. Soon, she began looking forward to their coupling and by the third week, she had become addicted to these interludes: sex with him—both the pleasure and the pain. And somewhere along the way, she had fallen in love with him until he became her world.
 

The dream tonight took a bizarre turn. The scene shifted to Adam slamming inside her from behind. She was bent over a table, gripping the edge for purchase and then when he bent over her, he whispered, “Come for me, Angel.”

It was Derek’s voice.

***

Derek got out of a cold shower and put on his boxer shorts. It was rush hour when they finally left the hospital; Sophie hadn’t wanted any dinner and went straight to bed. Thankfully, her concussion was mild and the cut on her head was shallow enough, so the doctor could use dissolvable stitches. A couple of Tylenol for the headache and she was good to go.
 

He walked out of his bedroom, drying his hair and checking if there was any light streaming from under the door of the guest bedroom. None.

Derek sighed. Guess, he’d be watching sports tonight again. He went back to his room to pull on a t-shirt. It was 8:00 p.m. and he had nothing to do. A blonde siren was in his condo but not sharing his bed. He really should leave her alone for a couple of days because she was probably still processing the shock of seeing Agent Guerrero getting shot in front of her and having more than a dozen assassins trying to kill her. He flipped through the channels, getting antsier by the minute. Should he go talk to her, comfort her or something? Shit. He never had intimate conversations with women he fucked, or in this case, wanted to fuck.

Beth had called him earlier to check on her friend, and the reason she had not charged over was because Derek told her firmly that Sophie was sleeping.

His phone buzzed. He sighed when he saw it was Maia. Was he going to be a relay again?

“What?”

“Jeez, someone’s a bear.”
 

“You would be too, if you’re caught between two bull-headed people.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No, you’re not,” Derek retorted and heard Maia laugh.

“Listen, Derek. I thought Sophie would like to know that we have the mastermind of the fire and the attack on Silver Fire Research in custody.”

“Raid went well?”

“Yes,” Maia replied. “Anyway, Viktor is doing the interrogation. The man’s name is Tebogo Ademola. He is a high-ranking lieutenant of the Abu-Haxa Brotherhood. Tim was able to trace a hack this morning on Divergent Research Zone’s computers to someone called Jax Roscoe. Agents busted him, and he admitted to stealing the building blueprints of the research center and selling it to a Paki Dimka—a US Citizen sympathetic to the Brotherhood. He lives just outside New Park in the Cloverleaf district.”