Storm Warning (Security Specialists International Book 4) (36 page)

“Next guard is rounding the house,” Paul reported in this time. “Battle at the front gate has ceased for the moment. The Feds pulled back and are waiting for you guys to give them the go-ahead to enter. They want intel on what to expect and an all-clear from your side of the mission.”

“Roger that.” DJ moved into the basement and shifted to the side so Ace could enter. “We’re in, Price.”

“Roger that,” Price responded. “I’ll be over as soon as the next guard passes.”

Ace dumped the dead guard behind the door, out of the way, and then closed the door just short of latching it.

“Moving out as soon as Price is down the steps,” Loren said. “Paul, any action at the hanger?”

“Doors are open. Lights are on. Some activity. I see two men inside.” Paul paused. “There is a helicopter. It’s a Black Hawk with an External Stores Support System. Whoo-wee. The Varneys sure upgraded from a Bell.”

DJ was ecstatic to hear about the Hawk. With the ESSS, they’d have extra weaponry to help cover their escape and assist the Feds, if needed. She moved even farther into the dimly lit basement. The little girl inside her heart wanted to run upstairs and find her mother. The soldier in her head kept her in the basement, following the mission plan. Pulling a small flashlight from her pocket, she aimed it around the dark corners of the room.

The basement contained lots and lots of boxes with military markings. She used her knife to pry open one of the boxes.
Shit.
Then another.
Double-shit.
Then she moved to some of the other ones.

Ace came to her side and examined the contents, then muttered, “Fuck.”

Yeah, that about summed the situation up.

“Paul … advise the Feds there are enough military explosives in the main house’s basement to take out a small city,” Ace said. “Looks as if Varney had plans to blow something up. A big something.”

“So conveyed,” Paul responded seconds later. “ATF appreciates the intel. They didn’t know.”

The ATF undercover agent obviously hadn’t gotten into the house, or these were recent acquisitions.

She and Ace waited with knives in their hands. Movement sounded on the exterior steps. Both stiffened. The door creaked open. Ace waved her back and began to move forward.

It was Price, and he had a man over his shoulder.

“Why the fuck didn’t you click?” Ace growled. “I could have gutted you.”

“Had my hands full.” Price delivered the line in a don’t-mess-with-me tone as he dumped the man he carried on the floor next to the other guard’s body. He turned and shut the door.

“Another guard?” DJ looked at the body. He wore no coat.

Price nodded. “This one came from inside the house. Fucker must’ve heard the window break just as the fracas at the gate began to wind down. Loren and I double-teamed him. Not sure how long we have before someone notices some guards are missing.”

“Paul, we’re heading into the house proper.” DJ looked at the men who gave her short, abrupt nods, knives in hand. “We need some more distraction from the Feds.”

Paul’s almost ghostly “Roger that” came across their headsets. Then he ordered, “Move it.”

DJ followed Price and Ace up the steps. Price led the way into the back hallway and then into the kitchen. So far, they’d seen no one. In fact, the whole place felt empty. For once, she prayed her instincts were wrong. Her mother had to be somewhere in this house.

A knife in one hand and gun in the other, Price signaled his intent to clear the rooms at the back of the house, which were mostly live-in help’s quarters and an office, if she recollected correctly.

Ace headed up the back staircase to the second level. He’d demanded that assignment since it would be the most likely place to hold a prisoner.

DJ had been okay with his choice since her gut told her otherwise. A feeling she’d chosen not to share with Ace.

Sean and his father would keep their hostage close to hand in case they needed her to save their butts. That meant the main level.

DJ ghosted through the butler’s pantry and then used the servant’s door into the formal dining room. Evidence of a recent meal was scattered over the large dining table’s surface. She edged her way around the walls and toward the main hallway that ran from the front door all the way to the back of the house with rooms branching off each side.

“No one in the back of the house, main level,” Price reported. “Need any help, Tweeter?”

“No,” Ace replied. “Second floor is clear. No guards. No anyone. Secure rear door, Price. I’m heading to main floor.”

“Roger that,” Price replied.

Desperation and, she’d admit it, fear threatened to drive DJ to her knees. Where were the Varneys and her mother?

A flash of memory from that summer when Sean had really noticed her the first time streaked across her mind’s eye. An incident she’d blocked about that pool party. Sean had cornered her … in the pool house. He’d taken her down a hidden staircase to a basement that connected to the main house by a tunnel. She’d gotten away by escaping through the main house basement.

“Basement,” she clipped out. “Tunnel to pool house.”

“Wait on us,” Ace growled. His feet pounded overhead.

DJ had already taken off, running toward the stairs to the basement. Once there, she took the steps two at a time and then went straight to the wall where the tunnel entrance was located and shoved boxes out of the way. The door blended into a faux landscape painted on the wall. She slid her knife into its scabbard and pulled her gun. She found the latch, pulled, and tore through the door.

Into the arms of Sean Varney.

“Gotcha, bitch.” Sean hit her arm, hard, numbing it and causing her to drop her gun. He then put her in a choke hold.

For several seconds or minutes or an eternity, panic gripped her. It was just as it had been all those years ago. The bigger, older Sean manhandling the younger DJ. She couldn’t catch a full breath. Her grunts of exertion mingled with wheezing and mewling cries. She fought him, but made no progress.

Ace’s growl came across her headset. “Goddammit, Dahlia Jane. Fight.” His furious and pissed-off order broke through her flashback.

Her mind back in the present, and backup on the way, she used every dirty trick she knew to loosen Sean’s hold so she could take a full breath. She also managed to slip her knife out with her left hand and started stabbing at anyplace she could reach on the fucker. The scent of her nemesis’s blood was the sweetest smell.

“Fuck!” roared Sean. With steroid-enhanced strength, he threw her against the cement wall.

She hit the surface so hard her knife flew out of her hand. Momentarily stunned, she slid down the wall, landing on her butt.

Sean kicked her in the side, hard enough to move her away from the wall. “Bitch, I’m gonna mess you up.”

Over her headset, Ace bellowed, “DJ!”

The anguish in his voice focused her. She shook off the pain and concentrated on garnering her strength to stay alive until help arrived. Without taking her eyes off Sean’s florid face, she used her peripheral vision to searched for the knife. And there it was … just out of reach.

“Like hell you will.” She pulled in a full breath, then rolled toward and snagged her knife. She used her body to hide the weapon.

Sean lumbered over to where she lay and bent over as if to pick her up.“You’ll beg me for death.”

In one smooth, but painful motion, she turned and rose to her knees. In a maneuver she’d perfected over the last few days, she swung her knife arm in a short arc and plunged the knife up and under Sean’s ribs and twisted. A gush of blood leaked from around the knife. “Don’t think so.”

The stunned look on Sean’s face as he fell forward was the most gratifying thing she’d ever seen. Then his dead weight knocked her over and trapped her beneath him before she could move.

Shit.

*

Tweeter met up with Price at the stairs to the basement. The sounds of DJ’s rasping breaths and pained grunts came over the headset. She was fighting for her life against a man who outweighed her by over a hundred pounds—and he wasn’t there. He’d never been so scared in his whole life.

At Varney’s snarled “fuck” and “bitch, I’m gonna mess you up,” Tweeter yelled, “DJ!” He practically flew down the steps and landed heavily at the bottom. He spotted the shifted boxes and the partially open door.

A heavy thud—the sound of a body hitting something hard—shot shards of ice straight into his heart. “DJ!” He ran for the opening to the tunnel.

Price snagged the back of his jacket. “Hold up, man. You won’t do her any good dead. I’ll go in low.”

His fury all-consuming, Tweeter shrugged off Price’s hands and went in high. Price cursed viciously, but followed him in, going low.

The scene would be fixed in his mind forever. Varney’s hulking body on top of DJ’s. Neither of them moved. Blood seeped from between their bodies.

“DJ!” Tweeter shoved his gun in his holster and ran to pull the bastard off her. “Please, be alive. Goddammit, Dahlia Jane. Talk to me.” With almost super-human strength, he lifted the fucker off her and tossed him aside.

“C-c-can’t…” A low moan and a wiggle of her legs. “…breathe.”

Thank God, she was alive.

“Sure you can. Take it slow, sugar.” Tweeter knelt by her side. He examined her with gentle fingers. Nothing obviously broken. The blood wasn’t hers, thank fuck. Her eyes were open and oriented; her gaze fixed on him as she still struggled to breathe. “One little breath at a time, baby.”

“Shit … ass … hole … weighed … a ton.” She panted with each word. “He’s dead … right?”

Tweeter turned and looked at the body he’d tossed like a bag of garbage. The hilt of her knife was buried so far in the fucker’s torso, he could barely see the tip of the handle. The front of Varney’s shirt was blood-soaked. “Yeah. He’s toast.”

“Good.” She took another breath. “Up … please.” She tried to sit up.

“Hold on a sec.” He stood and pulled her to a standing position and then held her against his body, facing him. Once again, he ran his hands over her precious body, rejoicing in the fact she was warm and breathing and in his arms.

When she inhaled sharply and winced, he probed more carefully. “Where does it hurt? I didn’t feel anything broken. Is some of that blood yours? Did he cut you?”

“Just bruises. No and no.” She looked around as she rubbed her throat. A frown creased her forehead. She tapped her headset. “Price? Sit rep.”

Tweeter kept his arm around DJ as they moved down the tunnel in the direction Price had headed.

“Nancy’s not here.” Price met them as they entered the pool house basement. There were three women and an older man huddled in the corner of the room, looking scared out of their minds. “The servants said Ed took Nancy and headed up into the pool house.”

“Shit,” DJ moved to the stairs. “He’ll go for the helicopter.”

“Loren … sit rep.” Tweeter said. “Ed Varney could…”

“Under control here. Fucker waltzed in here. I took him down. Nancy’s physically fine. Varney’s tied up. The chopper is all ours,” Loren said. “Watch your asses on the way here. Some of Varney’s men are trying to leave. Paul’s putting the fear of the sniper into them.”

“Paul…” Tweeter followed DJ up the steps. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight again today—maybe never again. “Tell the Feds there are four civilians under the pool house and that there’s an underground tunnel connecting the basements between it and the main house.”

“Roger that. Feds are trying to breach the gate and aren’t having much success. Seems the asshats have piled multiple vehicles and other crap up against the entrance,” Paul said. “Loren says the Hawk is armed with Hellfire missiles. Feds are asking for help in gate-busting.”

“Tell them we’ll take a run on the gate once we’re in the air,” Tweeter said.

“Roger that,” Paul said.

Once they were above the ground, Tweeter wrapped an arm around DJ’s waist and held her back until Price caught up with them. “We go together.”

She nodded. “Sorry. Want to see my momma. She has to be so scared.”

“I know. Hold on a few more minutes.” Tweeter brushed a kiss over her cheek. “You okay to run?”

DJ seemed to be favoring her one side and hip. Bruises were already forming on her throat where the bastard must’ve choked her. He really wished Sean was alive so he could kill the fucker again.

“Yes.” She looked over her shoulder at Price. “The servants know to stay hidden until the shooting is over?”

“Yeah,” Price said. “Ready to go when you are.”

Tweeter handed DJ his backup gun and palmed his. “Let’s go.”

Taking the lead, he made sure DJ was between him and Price. He heard her harsh breaths as she ran. He checked over his shoulder and saw only stoicism on her face. His warrior-woman would never complain. She could have serious injuries. As soon as they were safe, he’d strip her down and check over every blessed inch of her.

A shot whizzed by his arm. Before he could take out the man who’d popped up out of some bushes, DJ had shot the bastard in the head.

Head in the game, Walsh. Get her safe first, then worry about her injuries.

“Get down,” Price yelled as he dragged DJ with him.

Tweeter dove and rolled, taking a shot at the man Price had seen. Another one down.

Another man ran at them and then fell as a large caliber sniper round took off the top of his head.
Score one for Paul.

“You’re clear for a few seconds,” Paul said. “Go, go, go!”

Tweeter pulled DJ from Price’s hold and to her feet, then holding her hand, ran like the wind. Price, on their heels.

An AK-47 slung across his chest, Loren motioned them into the hanger. “Get in the bird, DJ. Get her ready to go.” He then reached and snagged an assault rifle from a rack by the door, tossing one to Tweeter, then another to Price. “Give me some cover so I can pull the Hawk out of the hanger.”

The tow tractor was already hooked up. Thank fuck, the hanger opening was broad enough to handle the Hawk’s rotors in their fully extended position.

“I’ll call the bogies as I see them,” Paul said. “The rats are trying to leave. Imagine that.” A pause. “Heads up. Group of four coming from your left.”