Live By The Team (Team Fear Book 1) (9 page)

“
You let a girl break your nose?”

“
Fuck you.” He spit blood.

“
Where is she?”

“
I’ll get her,” Broken Nose offered.

Ryder stepped forward and kneecapped him. “You don’t go near her. Ever.”

He turned his attention to the guy who was so far uninjured. “One chance to answer my question. Where. Is. She?”

Street Fighter grinned, showing yellowed teeth between cracked lips. “Closet.”

A steel door had replaced the closet door. A padlock had been added to keep her stuck inside. “Key?”

Street Fighter motioned him closer. “Come get it.”

Ryder aimed the Glock and fired. The bullet lodged in the wall behind Street Fighter’s head. “Next one hits skin and bone.”

“
Jesus, man, the neighbors will call the cops.”

“
Not a problem for me. I’m just a man retrieving his wife from a couple dirtbags.”

“
Wife?” Street Fighter dug into his pocket and pulled out the key. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t told she had a husband.”

“
So it’s okay to abduct a single female?” Ryder wanted to end this loser. “Toss the key over here.”

When Street Fighter complied, Ryder stepped forward to grab the key from the plush carpet. “Turn around. On your knees with your hands on your head.”

Both men did as he ordered. Ryder knocked on the door before he unlocked it. “Baby?”

“
Ry.” Her voice sounded strained through the metal.

“
You alone?”

“
Yes.”

He unlocked the door while keeping an eye on the men. “Come on out.”

She struggled to her feet, her hands bound behind her. Her face was banged up—from the crash or the abduction—and blood trickled from the gash on her forehead. The need to beat the crap out of someone flowed heavily through Ryder’s veins. “Baby, go into the bathroom while I finish here.” He nodded to the attached bath in the back of the room.

“
Why?” She butted his arm. “You can’t kill them.”

“
Sure I can.”

Broken Nose flinched at his words.

“
No.” Lauren glared through a swollen eye. “In war, yes, but here, we call the police.”

Rose burst into the room. “I heard gunfire.”

“
Just motivated the troops,” Ryder said. “Put them into the closet until we figure out what we do with them.”

Rose frisked the men and confiscated a knife from Street Fight. Ryder kept his body between the men and Lauren as they moved past. When Street Fighter passed, Ryder stopped him with a hand to his chest. “If I see you again, I won’t ask questions. I will kill you.”

Street Fighter lifted his hands in a sign of submission. “Hey, man, it was just a job.”

Ryder clocked him in the left cheekbone. Street Fighter took it without flinching. He shook out his head as if to clear the pain.

“
It’s not a job to me. You might want to remember that.”

“
Got it.” Street Fighter strolled into the closet like he owned it. Rose locked up behind him. Ryder holstered the weapon and approached Lauren. Her smooth skin was bruised, her forehead bloody, and her lips were split. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world. He used the confiscated knife to slit the ties behind her back. She shook out her hands and moaned. The ties had cut into her wrists, leaving them chafed and red. Ryder rubbed the skin around the gouge mark to get the blood flowing. Her cold fingers trembled in his grasp.

Rose took a defensive position in the doorway, keeping an eye on the hallway. “What’s the plan?”

“
We call the cops.” Lauren leaned into Ryder.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Not a good plan. After what went down up north, I’m not anyone’s best friend when it comes to law enforcement.”

Lauren turned to look up at him. “They kidnapped me. They planned...”

Ryder didn’t want to think about what they had planned or he’d go ape-shit. “We need information, and the police won’t let us participate in the interrogation. What’s going on downstairs, Rose?”

“
Guard’s out, locked in a closet. There were four workers in the lab.”

“
Lab?”

Ryder nodded at Lauren’s question. “There was lab equipment in both sealed rooms. That, coupled with the guards—”

“
And product in the garage,” Rose added. “Which makes this a meth house in the middle of suburbia.”

“
What did you do with the lab pogues?” Ryder asked.

“
Non-essential personnel are in the pantry along with the guard from the back deck. They didn’t put up much of a fight. The rest of the house is empty, but they’ve got a boatload of finished product stockpiled in the garage. We can’t leave that shit.”

“
Okay.” Ryder started running contingency plans through his head. Anyone could walk in at any time, which meant he didn’t have time to move Lauren to a secure location while he got answers. “They targeted Lauren. Specifically. I didn’t see them at the bar, but they had definitely staked out her habits. They knew she’d be on that stretch of highway. How long have you been staying with Debi?”

“
Two weeks, but my schedule at the bar changes all the time, depending on how busy they are.”

“
But you work every Sunday?”

She shivered. “Yes.”

Ryder caught Rose’s gaze. “They knew where she’d be. They disabled the truck.”

“
What?” Panic laced her voice. “They’re the reason I crashed?”

“
Baby, your brakes and your clutch went at the same time. Hard to call that a coincidence, especially when followed by the abduction. They’re related.”

Her fingernails dug into his arm. “Why?”

“
That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“
You two go on. I got this,” Rose said across the room. “I’ll question these two, find out what we need to know, then—” He glanced at Lauren. “I’ll eliminate the product and the threat.”

“
Is that a euphemism for murder?” Lauren pushed away from Ryder. “You can’t take the law into your own hands.”

“
Watch me.” Ryder shook with the need for retribution.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ryder assured her they weren’t killing anyone. Right before he stashed Lauren in an empty bedroom and locked the door, making her as much a prisoner as she’d been in the closet of the master bedroom. She paced and muttered to herself. Being tucked away “for her own good” felt a lot like sitting at the kid’s table.

When Lauren left the room, the menace oozing off her warrior husband was off the charts. If Wade getting handsy had angered Ryder, it was nothing compared to the rage against the men who dared to take her. Ryder kept the rage contained in her presence, but he would let it loose on the two they planned to “interrogate.” No doubt he’d get answers.

A chill washed her body in goose bumps. How did one go about interrogating a suspect? If she couldn’t think about it, she probably shouldn’t witness it. Still, she’d rather they gave her the option to stay or go. It wasn’t like she’d jump in to defend the men who’d kidnapped her, but she worried about Ryder. When they were dating, he’d go on missions for a week or two at a time. Each one altered him; had stolen pieces of his soul. The final deployment he refused to discuss at all. She feared this kind of operation would trigger the same response.

She sat onto the lower bunk and huddled into the corner, seeking comfort in the childlike space, but the memory of Ryder’s stone cold face kept her on edge. No mercy. His look promised no mercy for the men in his custody, but there was a cost to cold, calculated torture. He’d wall himself off, and she couldn’t go through the separation again.

She plucked a string from the navy comforter. Despite being married for eighteen months, they’d actually spent only a few months living together, thanks to the deployment and his sudden departure six months ago. Did she know him as well as she thought, or was she fooling herself?

Ryder pushed through the door. “Time to go.”

“
What happened?”

“
We got the information,” he said without inflection. “Rose set a charge to go off in five minutes.”

Lauren hopped from the bed. “You can’t blow up a house in the middle of a suburb. We can make an anonymous call. Let the police handle it.”

“
They’re not handling it or these guys wouldn’t be so organized. We’re in a position to eliminate the product and the equipment.”

A shiver shook her body. “Did you kill the people?”

“
I told you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t.” His face was hard and unreadable. He motioned her forward with two fingers. “It will look like an accident in the meth lab.”

“
This is U.S. soil. You don’t have the right—”

“
They threatened you, so I have every right, but we can argue later. Now, we move.”

“
I can walk and argue.” Lauren stepped into the hall and down the stairs. “I’m talented that way.”

Ryder chuckled softly. “Can’t argue with you there.”

Now he wanted to be agreeable. They exited out the front and met Rose on the lawn. All the cars had cleared out, leaving the cement drive empty.

Rose tossed her an oversized handbag. “This yours?”

“
Yes. Thank you.”

Rose nodded. He was a big man, much like Ryder, with light hair, suspicious eyes, and way of looking straight into your soul. Lauren hugged the purse to her chest. She’d known a few of Ryder’s fellow soldiers, but not well. None of them talked much. At least not when she was around. They certainly weren’t as carefree as the young soldiers at the bar earlier. She’d never seen Rose dance with anyone or even chat up a girl at the bar. He went with his buddies, but he was the most solitary man she’d ever met, which was saying something considering Ryder was a lone wolf of epic proportions.

Rose clapped his hands together. “Saddle up.”

At the bike, he gently set a helmet on her battered head and wrapped his leather jacket around her shoulders. She stuffed her arms into the sleeves and breathed in his scent. The coat was warm from his body. Wearing it shouldn’t make her heart fluttered like a debutante at her first ball, but it did.

They pulled away as the sun brought light and reason to the most hellish night of her existence. Lauren wrapped her hands tighter around Ryder’s middle and relaxed into his back. Her head pounded and every muscle ached, but she’d survived, a doubtful outcome an hour ago. When the explosion sounded behind them, She jumped and her breath hitched. Ryder kept the motorcycle steady as if nothing unusual had happened. Maybe explosions were normal for him. Maybe he simply didn’t care. Lauren shivered. She pressed closer to him and zoned out.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a motel parking lot. Rose’s truck was parked at the end of the line. Ryder pulled next to it and turned off the bike. Lauren dismounted and stumbled two steps back. It had been awhile since she’d ridden and her legs were rubbery. She wanted more than anything to sleep for a week, but she still had classes to teach.

Rose tossed Ryder a key. “Debrief in an hour.”

Lauren shook her head. “Ryder, I have to teach this morning.”

“
Call in sick.”

“
No.” The aches turned to anger. “This is my life. I can’t call in sick. Aside from Dr. Crawford, I have students depending on me. I’m going if I have to call a cab to get there.”

Rose stepped away from the pair. “I’ll be next door.” He disappeared behind a faded blue door.

“
Coward,” Ryder muttered. He led the way to the next room and unlocked the door. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“
Then don’t get in my way.” Lauren stepped into the plain room. A bed and a desk with a bathroom in the back. She’d kill for a shower. “I left the scene of a crime, let you blow it up for heaven’s sake. That goes against my sense of right and wrong.”

“
It was the right thing to do.” Ryder helped her out of his jacket.

Lauren shivered at the loss of his leather jacket, and it wasn’t simply the heat. She turned around. Ryder’s bereft expression matched the feelings winding through her gut. Deep down, she loved him, but love wasn’t enough. They’d had more love than sense and he’d still walked away. She refused to get attached this time. “I’m going to take a shower.” She glanced at the bedside clock. She still had to get a fresh change of clothes before heading to campus. “I’m leaving in half an hour.”

She scurried into the bathroom before he could react. That probably made her a coward, but she could live with cowardice. The reflection in the mirror reminded her of a horror movie. The top of her hair was flat while the rest was windblown into knots. The scrape on her forehead was starting to scab and bruises marked her cheek and chin. God, she looked like she’d gone two rounds with a bouncer.