Page 82 of Dead Drift

No response, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Lauren until she was unarmed and subdued.

Heavy footfalls rushed toward them.

“Stay back!” Luke hollered as he wrestled with Lauren, both fighting for control of her gun.

Declan entered, gun drawn, followed closely by Kate.

Lauren kneed Luke below the belt and rolled over, firing an instant after Declan leapt behind a metal column.

The bullet pierced the aluminum, and Luke feared his friend had been shot through the slender column, but he took the small tactile advantage he had with Lauren on her stomach, momentarily faced away from him, and flung himself on her back, gun drawn, muzzle flush with the back of her head.

“Drop your weapon,” he ordered.

“Never!” Her fingers slid for the trigger, and a nanosecond into her squeeze, he did what he had to do and pulled his trigger.

Tanner, running in, gasped.

Luke moved off Lauren’s limp body, moving the gun now loose in her hand.

Concern flared through him. Malcolm.

He spun around to find him laid out on the floor, a bullet wound to his chest.

“He’s not breathing,” Tanner said, rushing forward and commencing CPR.

Luke called in the crisis code, and while Tanner worked from the right, he knelt by Malcolm’s left side, willing him to breathe.

The whoosh of a helicopter’s blades whirred overhead, growing louder as it came closer.

A specialized team moved in and, within a matter of minutes, Malcolm was onboard the helicopter en route to shock trauma.

Both FBI and CIA agents flooded the building in streams.

One of the medics checked Lauren’s vitals, but Luke had called it. The check was in vain. Lauren Graham was dead.

Griffin woke to a thunderclap of headache. He lifted his aching head but discovered his hands were cuffed behind his back, his legs duct-taped around the wooden rail-back chair he was restrained in.

He blinked, the space dim except for shafts of light flooding through the second-story window.

Panic ricocheted through him. Finley.

He scanned the space and attempted to shout her name, but duct tape covered his mouth too.

“Look who’s finally coming to.” Joel Hood moved in front of him and revealed Finley secured in a similar fashion to a chair thirty feet away at his ten.

Tears streamed down her face, and a thin bloody streak ran the length of the left side of her neck.

Griffin yanked against his restraints, trying to break free, but Joel only laughed.

“Don’t worry. I waited to start the real fun until you were awake to watch.”

He strode to a table with a black leather roll case laid out, displaying the knives, razors, and other tools of destruction it held. He fingered the instruments, his demented mind apparently carefully considering which to use.

“Outside your hotel room in Houston . . . that was me. The rose was placed by a man I utilize occasionally when I want to send a message, but I digress. When I stood watching you that night, contemplating what to do, I considered killing you quickly and then having my way with your wife. But I think it’s far more profound and painful this way, don’t you think?” He slid a serrated blade from the leather case.

Griffin would get out of this. He had to. He just needed to come up with a plan.

Joel stalked toward Finley, and horror riddled through Griffin’s veins.