Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (9 page)

She got to her feet and set the stack of papers she’d made on top of her desk. She wiped the back of her hand against her eyes. He pulled her into his arms. It was the only thing he knew to do.

She leaned into him. “It’s never good when the provost calls you in.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll go.” Her arms went around him. His hold tightened on her. “Can I call you later?”

She looked up and met his eyes. Something in him snapped—into place or broke, he wasn’t sure which. “Please do.”

Greer gave her a soft smile, willing her to be strong. Briefly, the tension in her face eased, which further twisted his gut.

A sound behind him startled them. Remi pulled away. A suit stood at the door, giving him a dark look. His gaze shifted over to Remi. “Ready?”

Remi squared her shoulders and drew a breath. “I am.” She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, then shot him a look.

The suit was looking at him again. “You’re the one Dr. Chase was with when she was attacked by the bikers.”

Greer nodded. “Yeah. I was.”
 

Remi gave him a strange glance. “Dr. Zimmers, my friend Greer Dawson.” The two men nodded at each other. Greer felt the muscles at the corners of his jaw tighten. He looked at Remi, whose face was a mask of resolve. “I’ll call you later—unless you want me to wait?”

She shook her head. “We’ll talk later.”
 

He went into the hall and phoned Max. “What do you have?”

“Cameras showed a medium-height man in a black hoodie and cap come down the hallway from the elevators. He had a crowbar. He was in the professor’s office about five minutes. That’s it.”

“Did he have anything with him when he left?”

“Not that the cameras showed.”

“First her laptop, then her office. What are they looking for?”

The air-conditioning system kicked on. Geez, the university had to have it set to freezer. He blew air to see if his breath showed.

“See if you can get her to let you have a look at her data. If the WKB wants it, we do, too.”

Greer caught a flash of something from the corner of his eye. He looked down the hall in time to see a young woman’s blond head and shoulder slip between two groups of students in the hallway.
 

“Roger that. I gotta go,” Greer said, dropping the connection.
 

People were moving about the hall, checking bulletin boards, standing at office doors. He moved around them, trying to see the girl. His height was an ally, for he looked the long way down the hall and saw her just as she turned the corner.
 

He jogged after her and spun around the corner to an empty hall. It was by the bank of elevators. One of boxes was descending. He watched it land on the ground floor, then ran down the stairs. He came out onto the lobby area as the elevator was heading back upstairs.
 

He looked around the small area, down both hallways. No blond in sight. He walked outside. People were moving around. The campus wasn’t in session yet, so it wasn’t terribly crowded. The girl was nowhere to be found.

He shoved his hands into his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. Lifting his face, all he saw against the red wash of his eyelids were the dead eyes from his dream, judging him. He felt cold in the hot summer sun. He opened his eyes and stared up at the blue, blue sky.
 

He was either losing his mind or—yeah, he was losing his mind. No fucking way around it.

Chapter Eight

Remi took her plate of scrambled eggs and fruit out to the sofa in her living room. She ate a few bites before setting it down. She wasn’t hungry. Couldn’t focus. She was numb—gratefully so, too.
 

She’d worked hard to be where she was. And now she had nothing. Well, not true. She had a mortgage, a car payment, a mountain of student debt, and no income if she decided she couldn’t comply with the provost’s ultimatum.

She paced. Her townhouse wasn’t huge. Just the living room, dining room, and kitchen on the main floor. Only took a minute to make the circuit. She did it again. A third time made her a little dizzy, so she sat on the stairs and looked at her place.
 

What the hell was she going to do? Sociology professorships weren’t easy to come by. And she’d wanted this one in particular so that she could complete her study of the Friendship Community.

She leaned forward and rested her forehead on her knees. The university had been excited about her career when she interviewed two years ago. They looked forward to her research projects. They knew when they hired her that she was researching the Friends.
 

She thought back to when she started to have problems with her department. It wasn’t until earlier this summer that her department chair had begun sending a strange vibe her way. The facade he’d presented to the campus police when she was being questioned about the graffiti was his posturing at its best.
 

She braced her elbows on her knees, then propped her chin up. The Friendship Community wasn’t the first group she studied that did some pushback. Most of them did. That which lived in cults liked ignorance and darkness. Anything that shined a light on it was a threat.
 

The strange thing was that none of the pushback she’d received on this project came from the Friends themselves. All of it was from the WKB. Even before the spray-painting episode, she’d twice had club bikers flank her car on the ride home, forcing other cars off the road.

Put this project on hold until the campus police complete their investigation. Once we know your work isn’t endangering you or the students and staff here, we’ll reevaluate,
the provost had warned.

She had to comply—too much was at stake. But how would the WKB know she had parked her work? What if it had already gone too far to reverse what was happening? She lowered her face to her palms, wishing for a single thought that didn’t cause her distress.

Greer instantly came to mind, with his hard face and soft eyes. There was something in the way he looked at her, the way she felt when he held her. She realized, slowly, she was sitting where she had had the most amazing sex of her life, thanks to him. Heat washed through her, dispelling the chill that had been with her ever since discovering the mess in her office.

Was it only a coincidence that he showed up the same time the trouble from the WKB intensified? And the men he called friends…they all looked like mercenaries. Macho guys like that weren’t usually friends by choice. They were too competitive to join up with others like themselves. Usually, only one supremely alpha male existed in a group of men, because, by their very nature, they were a threat to each other.

She left the stairs and moved absently into the living room. She needed a plan. Could she continue quietly compiling her notes, and risk her future at the university? Surely, she couldn’t really be fired, could she?
 

But if she did continue working on articles based on her existing research—even without additional field work—and if the problems escalated, would she be liable? Was she willing to risk that?
 

And if she wrote the articles but didn’t submit them for review at strategic journals until things were clear, would she be derailing herself from her tenure track by not having publishable research?

She heard a motorcycle come down the parking area in front of her townhouse. And another, their engines rumbling loudly in the quiet night. One of her neighbors had a Harley. She assumed he was just getting home, bringing a friend with him.
 

Over the next few minutes, a few more bikes joined the first. She heard them now from the front and rear of her building. She got up and looked out the back window, over her tiny backyard and garage, to the alley where the bikers had stopped. Three of them, their bikes right at her fence.
 

As she watched, they kicked in her gate and toppled her lawn furniture on their way to the basement door. Her motion-detecting light turned on, illuminating their gang vests and shaved heads. Oh. God. It was the WKB. Here for her.

She grabbed her laptop case and purse as banging began on her front door. She tore up the stairs. There were two master bedrooms upstairs. In the one she used as a guest room, she’d set up a secret space in its walk-in closet behind a shelf she’d had custom made. There was just room enough for her to squeeze inside and close the panel.
 

Her security system triggered when the bikers kicked in her front door. The cops would be there soon. Five minutes. Maybe ten. She just had to stay hidden—and alive—until then.
 

She reached into her pocket to turn off the sound on her phone. She couldn’t risk responding to the security company’s confirmation phone call. The phone vibrated in her hand, making her jump. Her non-response would trigger their call to the police.
 

Men spilled through her home. She heard crashes following their progress, shouting and laughter. Her hands shook. There was no one she could call for help. No one.

Greer’s face floated through her mind, and the way he’d grinned and said, “I’m always up for kickin’ some asses.”

She called up his number, then realized she’d hit call when she’d meant to text him. She was about to hang up, but he picked up before the first ring completed.

“Dawson here.”

She held still, trying to hear if anyone was near.
 

“Hello?”

“Greer?” she whispered.

There was a pause.
“Remi. S’up?”

“Help me—”

“Where are you?”

The door to her guest bedroom banged against the wall. They slammed into the bathroom. The door banged against the closet wall where she was hunkered down.

“…Max, where the fuck is she?”

“At her house,”
another voice said, fainter than Greer’s.
“Hit the road. I’ll tell Kit.”

Seconds later, the bikers were in the guest closet. The light flipped on. She could see a thin line of it beneath the compartment’s door. She held the phone to her chest to muffle the sound of Greer’s voice. She rocked back and forth in short movements, unable to sit still.
 

Above the blood pounding in her ears, she could hear the faint sound of a siren. Someone downstairs made a loud whistle. She listened as several sets of footsteps moved out of the bedrooms and headed downstairs. Bikes started up, loud and screaming as they sped out into the night.

She didn’t move—didn’t know if they were all gone. After a few minutes, she lifted her phone to her ear, hoping he was still on the line with her. “Greer?”

“Yeah. What’s happening, doc?”

“I need help.”

“I’m on my way, but I’m about a half-hour out. The cops will be there shortly. Stay where you are until they get there.”

She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see that. “I will,” she whispered. The sirens’ whine grew louder.
 

“I’ll stay on with you as long as I can. I’m coming down from Wolf Creek Bend. I might lose the connection between here and there. If you need me, call me back. If I don’t answer, call again.”

“Okay.”

“Are they still there?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I heard their bikes leave.”

“Bikes?”

“It was the WKB again.”

“Shit.”

The sirens stopped. “I think the cops are here.”

“Where are you in the house?”

“Upstairs.”

“Stay put until the cops come to you, just in case any of the bikers stayed behind.”

“Okay.”

She heard the cops announce themselves downstairs. She couldn’t tell how many there were. At least two. They cleared the main floor, then separated, one going to the basement, the other coming upstairs. The cop announced herself as she came up the stairs.
 

Remi slipped out of her hidey-hole, leaving her laptop behind. She was getting to her feet as the cop came into the bedroom.
 

“What happened here?” the police officer asked, her hand on her weapon.

“I don’t know.” Remi folded her arms. “Some bikers just stormed the house.”

“Why your house? You friendly with them?”

“No.”

“You dealing drugs?”

“No.”

The cop looked skeptical. “Stay here while I check out the rest of the rooms up here.”

Remi nodded. The cop went through the other rooms, making a pass at any place it might be easy for a human to hide. Her partner was coming upstairs.
 

“Jack,” the cop said to her partner. “Let’s go downstairs and take her statement.”

Remi followed them and told them what she knew, tried to answer their questions. They took her statement, gave her their cards, and let her know a detective would be following up with her about the case.

“You going to be okay here, ma’am? We could give you a lift to a hotel.”

“I’ll be all right. I have a, um, friend coming over.”
 

Speak of the devil, he was walking up the path to her door. Her mind spun back through their hushed conversation while she was hiding. He moved like he owned the world, as if no enemy on earth could defeat him.

Who was he?

God, was he in partnership with the WKB? A good guy to their bad guys? Were they tag-teaming her? No. Not only did he and his friends not look like bikers, Christian Villalobo at the FBI had vouched for him, for what that was worth.
 

His eyes were intense. In a single sweep, he took in her appearance, the cops, the shambles of her living room, then returned to her as he stepped into her foyer and came right over to her. He put his arms around her, and she breathed the first full breath she’d had in hours.

“You okay?” he asked in a quiet voice as he rubbed her back.

She nodded. The cops left. Greer pushed the door after them—it was too banged up to shut properly. Greer sent a look around her place.
 

“Looks like your office.” He frowned at her. “You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on?”