Forged in Ash (41 page)

He was silent for a moment, a deep frown knitting his forehead. Eventually he looked down at his hands again. “But why?”

She smiled back, trying to mask her satisfaction. He was going to get that healing, whether he wanted it or not. “I have no idea, but it will be easy enough to test. Put your hands out.” As soon as he extended his hands, she laid her palms over them. “Anything?”

“You’re certainly lighting a fire, but it’s not to my hands,” he said with a slight quirk to his lips and a glitter to his eyes.

Flushing, Kait pulled her hands away.

He quirked an eyebrow. “I wasn’t complaining.”

Kait blushed again. She wasn’t normally the flushy-blushy type. But this new behavior was such a departure from his earlier hands-off icy demeanor, she wasn’t quite certain how to react. What if she said the wrong thing and he reverted back to Mr. Iceman?

Maybe it was best to ignore his flirting, until she figured out whether he was serious. With that in mind, she cleared her throat and held out her hands, palms down. “Now cover the back of my hands with your palms.”

The instant his flesh touched down over hers, the heat hit. The fire pulsed higher and higher. Her hands started burning.

“Shit,” he said, pure disbelief in his voice.

He was looking down at their hands, which were getting redder by the moment. After another second, he pulled his hands away. He splayed them out in front of him and just stared.

“See?” Kait asked quietly.

“This is what happened in the parking lot.” It was half question, half statement.

“I think so. I think you boosted the energy I was channeling. I think this was why I was able to heal your knee so quickly. And why the blisters disappeared.” She paused, held his gaze. “I want to try this on your eye.”

Mac hit the ground on his belly to the
rat-tat-tat
of gunfire and rolled to his right, crawling beneath a scorched steel desk, which wasn’t much of a shield considering the firepower those bastards had. AK-47s could pierce pretty much anything.

He glanced to the right and left, then had one breath-stealing moment of worry for Amy before he forced her from his mind. Zane was to his right behind some kind of steel mini fridge, the damn thing barely shielded him, and Rawls—Mac chanced a quick glance to his left and found his corpsman behind another fried desk, their mystery woman smashed against the wall behind him.

Mac snorted in disgust. The damn idiot had put his body between her and the shooters. Forget the fact she still had hold of that length of pipe she’d nailed him with and looked like she could use it again at any moment.

The gunfire ceased. Mac popped his head up to locate their targets, which started the rat-tat-tatting back up again. Christ, they were well and truly pinned down, like fish in a fucking barrel.

He glanced over at Zane, but his LC was as pinned down as he and Rawls were. From the heavy artillery lighting up the room, those bastards had both the men and the guns. A sense of déjà vu hit him. It looked like Amy had been right. The bastards pinning them down had the same overkill approach as the ones they’d confronted in that farmhouse all those months ago. He hoped to God they fared better this time.

Rawls was effectively stuck. There was a wall to his right and behind him, and absolutely nothing but empty space to his left. He had no place to go if he tried to make a play. Zane was in pretty much the same position. There were only a few feet between him and that monstrosity that their mystery girl had been trapped beneath though. He had no idea what was behind it. But it was time to find out.

He caught Zane’s eye and jerked his head toward the towering machine. Zane nodded and leaned around his desk to fire. Mac bolted for the machine, skidded around it, and slowly made his way around the back. The area tightened the deeper he went into the room, but at least there was a solid wall behind him. Although solid wasn’t the best description—riddled with holes worked better. Those holes made him nervous.

If someone was back there, he was fucked and dead.

Apparently their attackers hadn’t inserted throughout the building yet, because the back recesses remained empty and silent. By the time he reached the north corner, the wall had thinned to studs and charred wire. Which didn’t leave him any cover.

Talk about a bad idea.

Gun extended, he slipped through the wall and eased forward and to his right, which should lead him back to the room they had originally entered from. Should…which didn’t actually mean it would. Christ, he could be headed away from the battle, not toward it.

His shirt clung to his sweaty back as he picked his way as quickly as was safe around debris, trying to keep his approach as quiet as possible.

Off-and-on gunfire hammered the building—his men’s Glocks, as well as those damn AK-47s.

Were any of those shots Amy’s? Had she caught sight of them first, or they her? If they’d shot her before opening up on them, he would have heard it. The damn place was an echo chamber.

Christ, he hoped that meant she was holed up somewhere safe and sound. And this was exactly why women shouldn’t be in the military. Men spent too many fucking brain cells worrying about them.

To his right, gunfire started up again. He increased his pace, looking for cover in case his targets noticed him coming. Nothing.

Damn it to hell.

If they saw him coming before he saw them, he was as good as dead.

Chapter Eighteen

A
DOOR FRAME
arched just ahead to Mac’s left. Where the door should have been was nothing but a gaping black hole.

Another volley of shots fired.

“Fuck,” he whispered beneath his breath.

His men were pinned down. If there wasn’t any cover for him to set up shop, maybe he could at least take out a couple of those bastards and give his guys a fighting chance.

If he took a couple of rounds…well, hell, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about getting goat fucked by the DOJ and NCIS. With that in mind, he ducked low and swung through the gaping hole. As luck would have it, three feet into the room was a huge metal cabinet. He slipped behind it.

Through his night vision device, he caught a glimpse of several men kneeling in front of the wall, framing the room they’d found the woman in. Movement across the room caught his eye. He tracked the movement and found Amy sliding through the open door in a half crouch, gun drawn.

Son of a bitch, unlike him, she had no cover. He needed to move now, to draw their eyes and fire, otherwise she was dead.

Stepping out from behind his cover, he took out one and then two of the targets. She took out two others. The fifth spun toward him on his knees, but Mac’s round caught him in the head. He pitched forward across his dead buddies.

“Clear,” Mac said as he eased forward, listening to the way his voice echoed in the aftermath of the firefight.

As he closed the distance to the mess of bodies against the steel wall, he grimaced. Christ, they needed to get the hell out of this place. If someone had reported the shots and the locals were in route, yeah, they’d be well and truly fucked this time.

Zane swung over the wall as Mac approached, and went to work rolling the bodies over and stripping off their masks and night vision devices. Someone had sure outfitted these guys to the max.

Amy started going through pockets.

“Rawls, you got the camera in your pack?” Mac asked.

Rawls nodded, thrust the girl they’d pulled from beneath the machine toward Mac, and shrugged out of his rucksack.

The girl went limp in Mac’s one-arm clasp, and then twisted hard, trying to wrench free. Without missing a beat, he lifted her off her feet and simply held her there. After a moment, her struggles lessened.

“Behave,” Mac told her coldly.

Rawls handed the flash camera to Mac and took possession of their unexpected guest again. This time the woman didn’t bother trying to wrench free. Instead her gaze skittered between Rawls, Zane, Amy, and himself with guarded watchfulness.

She was biding her time.

Fine, as long as she kept quiet about it. So far she hadn’t made any sounds other than that surprised squeak when they’d grabbed her feet and jerked her from beneath the machine.

“Son of a bitch,” Zane suddenly said grimly. “Take a look at this.”

Mac walked around the bodies toward the one Zane was crouched in front of. Even in the milky light of the night vision device, he recognized Pachico’s face.

“Son of a bitch,” he echoed Zane tightly. “He’s dead?”

There went that avenue to answers.

“Not yet,” Zane said slowly, rising to his feet. “Your round creased his hair. He’s out, but stable.”

Mac smiled. “Grab him. Let’s get the fuck out.”

“You know him?” Amy asked, taking a step forward and staring down at the bald man sprawled out on the bloody floor beneath them.

“Yeah,” Mac said with a hard grin. “We ran into him in Coronado. He was impersonating a detective with the Coronado PD. We were trying to catch him yesterday when you called.”

“Your stakeout.” Amy crouched down, staring much more intently.

“Let’s move, people,” Mac snapped.

While Zane lifted Pachico’s limp body in a fireman’s hold, Mac took hold of the woman’s arm, and they headed back out of the building.

“Rawls,” Mac said as they moved down the hall. “Get the car. We’ll meet up in front of the gate.”

His LT was the fastest of them. He’d have the car back by the time they got the girl and Pachico through the fence.

Although they were still left with one big problem. Where were they going to hole up with their new hostage?

As Mac tried to shove the woman through the hole in the fence, she started struggling. “I’m not going with you.”

“Look at that, you can talk,” Mac said, “and yeah, you’re coming with us.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her back toward the fence.

“No. I’m. Not.” She wrenched herself back. Only this time Mac was expecting the movement. “Unlike you, I wasn’t doing anything illegal. So it doesn’t matter if the cops catch me on the premises.”

“It’s not the cops you need to be worried about, Dr. Ansell,” Amy broke in to say. She nodded at the woman’s sharp look at her. “Dr. Faith Ansell. I recognize you from your DV photo. Glad to see you didn’t perish in the fire like reported.”

“You worked in the lab?” Mac asked.

Hell, maybe their luck was finally changing. They had Pachico and one of the scientists those bastards had been after. Two pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place.

“Who the hell are you people?” Faith asked, her suspicious gaze shifting between Mac and Amy.

“Believe it or not,” Amy said, “we’re the good guys. And the bad guys, the ones with AK-47s, buddies to the three men who just tried to shoot you, could be arriving any moment. You need to climb through that fence and come with us. We’ll explain once we’re on the road.”

“You guys need to move,” Zane said, a note of urgency touching his flat tone. “We’re losing our window.”

“Obviously you know the explosion wasn’t an accident,” Amy told the scientist when it became apparent she wasn’t going to respond to Zane’s urging. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have lain low and played dead. Obviously you know someone is after you, otherwise you wouldn’t have broken into the lab in the middle of the night to look for whatever it is you were looking for.”

“I didn’t break into the lab,” Faith said sourly. “I’m a partial owner of the property. And why the hell should I trust you? You did
break in. You have night vision devices and guns. You killed those poor men.” Her voice faltered.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Mac pushed her against the fence. This time she didn’t try to wiggle away, instead she bent down and slipped through the narrow hole. Amy followed her, her rounded ass swaying in the air.

“You need some help getting Pachico through?” Zane asked.

Mac dragged his hypnotized gaze away from Amy’s ass and bent down to their bound and gagged prize. Pachico’s eyes were still closed, which didn’t mean much of anything since the bastard could be playing possum. But his breathing was slow and calm and there was no tension in his limbs. Maybe he was still out of it after all.

Mac grunted as he dragged the guy to the fence and shoved him partially though. Zane grabbed his shoulder and pulled him the rest of the way. As Mac dropped to the dirt and shimmied through himself, Rawls swung in with the van. Everyone piled in.

They stripped off the night vision devices and rucksacks as Rawls took off.