Dangerously Hot (A Hostile Operations Team Novel)(#4) (31 page)

She had no idea where they’d taken the king, but she suspected they’d spirited him out of the city as well. Was he here in this compound too? Perhaps that’s why Al Ahmad had come here.
 

If so, maybe a rescue force was on the way. Maybe there was still a chance.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to search the room again. She might be going down, but not without a fight. And not without doing some damage on the way. It’s funny what you were willing to do when you had nothing left to lose.
 

She thought about using the night table as a weapon, but it was bolted to the floor. She stopped tugging on it and yanked open the drawers. They were empty.

Lucky tore the bedding off the mattress and upended it. The mattress sat on wooden slats, and she tested each one. They were solid. She nearly gave up, but she was determined to tug on them all to see if one came free… and one did.

Or, it didn’t come free, but it wriggled when she tugged. Upon closer inspection, she spotted a hairline crack running along the top half of the slat.

She stood on the slat and bounced—and it came free with a loud crack. Triumph surged in her veins as she worked the broken slat back and forth until she had two jagged pieces. The wood was solid and the edges were sharp. They’d do some damage if she managed to stab somebody with them. She quickly remade the bed and tucked both the broken pieces beneath the pillows where she could reach them easily.

And then she sat on the edge of the bed near the headboard and waited for someone to come for her.

The room was quiet, but she could occasionally hear voices filtering into her prison. At one point there were booted feet on the concrete over her head, and she guessed she was on the top floor.

She reached under the pillow and put her hand around the slat for comfort. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She was not going to take whatever happened without fighting back.

She thought about Kev and about how he’d admitted that he loved her tonight. Was it just a few hours ago now they’d been held captive in another room and she’d thought their lives were over? She scrubbed an angry hand over her face. It came away wet.

They’d had so little time together. And it had been fraught with so much tension and unresolved feelings. Even if they’d made it out of Qu’rim alive, they would’ve had a lot to work through if they wanted to be together. And maybe it wouldn’t have worked out, just like with her and Marco. Maybe the past was simply too much to overcome.

Lucky tightened her fingers on the slat. She would never know, would she? Kev had been shot in Baq and she was once more locked up and awaiting a madman.

Her head snapped up as she heard someone coming down the hallway toward her room. And then the door swung inward and her heart pounded with fear and adrenaline. It was now or never.

She jerked the slat from under the pillow and lunged.
 

The man coming through the door didn’t know what hit him as she jammed the broken slat into his throat. A look of utter surprise crossed his face and she couldn’t help but mutter an apology. Taking a life wasn’t an easy thing to do, even when it was your only choice.

But it wasn’t Al Ahmad she’d stabbed through the throat. It was the same man who’d shoved her up the stairs and into this room earlier. He clutched the slat, making gurgling noises as he stumbled into the room. She jammed the wood harder, and then she grabbed the other broken end from under the pillow when he toppled forward.
 

Lucky groped around his still-twitching body, searching for a weapon. There wasn’t one. If he had a gun, it was in the front. She thought about rolling him over, but what if he wasn’t dead? What if he grabbed her?

She didn’t look back as she jumped over his body and ran out the door. She remembered the way they’d brought her in because they hadn’t thought they needed to blindfold her this time. She slipped down the stairs, her brain whirling. If she could find another weapon, find a phone, something. Maybe she could get out of this alive. Maybe she could go home and see her mom and stepdad and the triplets again. She missed them, even if she felt like an alien in their presence.

They were the only home she had left. Despair threatened to choke her as she thought about a life without Kev in it. She pushed those thoughts away and tried to listen past the pounding of blood in her ears. The compound was strangely silent…

And then it wasn’t. There was an explosion somewhere and gunfire, and Lucky’s heart rocketed into overdrive. Maybe the king’s forces had come for him, or maybe HOT had come for her.

She didn’t care which, but for the first time all evening, she could taste freedom again.

She crept down the hall a bit slower now, listening hard for movement. The truth was she didn’t know who was out there or which way they were coming from, and she needed to be smart and careful. She stopped at a door and listened. There was no movement inside, so she turned the knob carefully and stepped inside.

It was an office and there was a phone on the desk. She ran over and snatched it off the cradle.

But there was no dial tone. She set it down with a sob and clutched the broken slat against her chest.

“Going somewhere, Lucky Reid?”

She spun to find Al Ahmad standing in another entryway, a gun pointed at her. He’d removed his keffiyeh, and she was struck by the beauty of his face once more. He was a classically handsome man, dark and chiseled. But he was also evil, and it was his evil that made her stomach churn.

“You aren’t going to win this time.” The gunfire continued somewhere in the distance. “They’re coming for you.”

He strolled into the room, lowering the gun to his side as he did so. She calculated whether or not she could rush him and jab the jagged slat into his throat before he could shoot her.

The odds were not in her favor, so she stood and held her weapon close, waiting.

His dark glittering eyes traveled down her form, fixing on the slat. Then he met her eyes again. “I could shoot you right now,” he said softly. “In a place that won’t kill you right away. That
weapon
will do nothing to save you.”

The wood bit into her fingers as she squeezed. “Maybe not, but I’m not letting it go. Shoot me if you want, but if there’s any strength left in my body when you approach me, I
will
stab you.”

Because there was no doubt he would approach her. Killing her quickly or easily was not his style. Torturing her was. It was what he wanted, what he needed.

And they both knew it.

“You have grown tougher since the last time we met.” He grinned and lifted the gun. “This only makes it more fun, you realize.”

“Go ahead,” she shot back. “But what will you use for leverage once they break in here? I’m your bargaining chip.”

“What makes you think they will succeed? This compound is well defended.” He snorted. “You and your pitiful military. Never able to see the bigger picture. A country like yours should rule the world, and yet you do not. You are weak, unable to do what needs to be done.”

“And that’s a good thing for you, isn’t it? Because if we believed in indiscriminate killing, we would have eradicated the Freedom Force a long time ago—along with a lot of innocent people who would have been nothing more than collateral damage. But we aren’t like you. We don’t believe in killing innocent people to achieve our goals.”

She felt the shot before she heard it. A sharp stinging pain radiated down her arm, up into her shoulder and collarbone. Her fingers opened of their own accord and the slat fell to the floor. Instinctively, she clutched her arm with her other hand and tried not to pass out from the pain.

Al Ahmad was still grinning like the madman he was. “A flesh wound, nothing more. But oh so painful, I’m afraid.”

He closed the distance between them and punched her in the gut before she could react. And then he slapped her across the face. Her ears rang, and the metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth. Lucky tried to stay upright, but she fell to her knees, her head aching and her arm throbbing. Tears sprang to her eyes and made everything blurry. She let them fall because blinking them back only made it worse.

She groped on the floor for the slat, but he sent it flying with a kick. And then he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back, baring her throat. She felt the bite of his knife in her skin before she saw the glint of the blade.

“Just a little more pressure and your throat will open like a dam,” he whispered in her ear. “What then, Lucky Reid? No one can save you when it happens. Your precious Americans will go home and forget you.”

Lucky swallowed and the blade cut into her a little bit more. Fear swirled in her belly until she wanted to vomit. But there was something else too.
 

Anger. Pure, blazing anger.
 

She was not going to die without inflicting some kind of pain on him.

He was kneeling beside her now, his mouth at her ear, his knife wedged against her throat, biting into her. She flexed the fingers of her wounded arm. It hurt like a bitch, but they still worked. If she was fast enough, she could grab his balls and squeeze them tight.

He would cut her throat, of course, and that would be the end of that.

But it would be worth it, by God. And she would die much sooner than he planned.

He dragged the knife down a bit, slicing a vertical line in her skin, alongside her artery.

“Ah, but that would be too easy for you,” he whispered. “Much too easy…”

He laughed and Lucky drew herself up tight, preparing to strike. A second later, as if in answer to her prayers, the lights went out. Al Ahmad stiffened, his knife slipping away from her skin for the barest of moments.
 

It was just the opportunity she needed.

***

His side hurt like a sonofabitch, but Kev pushed past the pain and kept going. They’d HALOed in and then started humping for the compound. The place was defended, but those defenses weren’t much against a team like his. The tangos were no match, though of course there was always the danger one of them would get a lucky shot.

Hawk took out the rooftop defenders, then Knight Rider and Brandy set a charge and they all burst into the compound. They were met with gunfire, but they fought their way inward, taking out as many men as they could along the way. Iceman and Flash found the generator and the lights blinked out, leaving the team in the dark.

Just the way they liked it.

They systematically worked their way from room to room, shooting whoever got in the way and searching for signs of Lucky. Kev focused on the mission, but that didn’t stop his heart from thumping extra hard, his side from aching, or pain from radiating throughout his body.

He gritted his teeth and kept on going. He wasn’t stopping until he found her.
 

God, please let her still be alive
.
 

Because he knew it was perfectly possible Al Ahmad had already killed her. He could have thrown her from the helicopter just for the fun of it, or he might have killed her and left her body behind in Baq. There was no telling, but this had been their best option for finding her.

“Anything?” Iceman’s voice on the headset.

“Nothing.” That was Knight Rider.

“Keep going, ladies.” Matt ranged along beside Kev while the other guys swept the compound in pairs, searching every corner and closet. “We aren’t leaving here without Lucky.”

Kev swallowed against the lump in his throat. The guys knew as well as he did that she could already be dead, but none of them acted like it. And they wouldn’t until they knew it for a fact. He was more grateful for that than he could say.

They turned and started down a hallway, helmet lights sweeping the area for signs of life. They hadn’t run into a tango in minutes now and Kev was beginning to get worried. What if they weren’t here? What if it was all a ruse?

Yeah, the helicopter was on the pad—disabled now that they’d arrived—but that didn’t mean Al Ahmad had even been onboard when it left Baq.

A scream shattered the night, stopping them in their tracks. Kev’s blood ran cold as he bolted forward. A woman’s voice screamed Arabic words that pelted the air with their vehemence. Kev identified the room the sound came from and surged toward the door. Matt was on his six as the two of them burst through, assault rifles notched into their shoulders and ready to fire.

Two bodies tangled on the ground, writhing and twisting in a heap of fabric. Long tawny hair glinted in the light from his helmet. A knife flashed upward and then disappeared and Kev’s heart leapt into his throat.

He wanted to shoot, but it was impossible to separate the two people twisting together on the floor.
 

“Jesus,” Matt said. “I can’t get a target.”

Kev lurched forward just as the two bodies on the floor separated. Lucky sat up then and did something that made the man beneath her scream like a little girl.

“Goddamn,” Matt breathed. And then he gave an order to the rest of the team while Kev went over and shoved the barrel of his rifle in Al Ahmad’s open mouth.
 

Lucky blinked then, as if she’d just realized she was no longer alone with a terrorist shitbag.