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Fake Fed 1 scowled and held out his hand. I gave him the bag, which he rudely searched. He pulled out my syringes and shoved them into the nearby trashcan, ran his hand over the lining to make sure there were no hidden weapons or electronics, and started to hand my bag back to me like this might be a civilized operation after all. A surge of relief flooded through me. Then at the last second, he retracted the offer and made a close inspection of the decorative buttons covering the metal studs that attached the handles to the leather body. He pulled both of them off and ground them under his heel.
Fuck me.
One of those studs had been a tracker, but now that was gone, too. As the threats to HEAT agents had escalated over the past few months, TJ and his boss had discussed embedding trackers on our persons. I had argued vehemently against it because we’re human beings, not equipment, and because we needed our privacy and our self-respect, regardless of who employed us. At the moment, my vehemence seemed a bit short-sighted. If I got through this ordeal alive, I was sure I’d still come down on the side of personal autonomy, but at that moment, I would have submitted to a metal disc implanted in my ass if it had meant Jensen could still track me.
Fake Fed 1 handed me back my bag. We’d be taking it with us, I assumed because it was now covered in his fingerprints, which he wouldn’t want my team to find. He gripped my elbow and shoved me away from the front doors, past the front desk, and into the narrow hallway that led to the parking garage. In the chaos, no one noticed us. Except, of course, Fake Fed 2, who fell in a few feet behind us. My last hope was the uniformed cop guarding the glass doors to the parking garage. As we approached, my captor pressed his bony fingertips into my arm until it hurt and flashed something at the cop. The cop nodded at him, didn’t look at me, and let us pass.
My abductor must have some sort of badge, so the question that remained was whether it was a real one or a forgery good enough to fool the police themselves. Of the two choices, I was more worried about the first. If there had been legit agents at the hotel, TJ would have known. Which meant these guys might be double agents, moles, or just dirty feds on the Carbonados payroll. In that case, this would likely be the last trip I ever took, and it wouldn’t be to a vacation destination.
That clinched it. I wasn’t going anywhere with these assholes.
I started with the usual. “You’ll never get away with this. It would be in your best interest to let me go back to the hotel lobby.”
“Thanks for caring,” Fake Fed 1 said, then winked at me. “But we’ll be fine.”
“Let me go!” I yelled.
My voice echoed off the walls, but no one responded. There was probably no one inside the structure, so I would have to be loud enough for the sound to penetrate thick concrete. As Fake Fed 1 pushed me toward an SUV, I took a deep breath, opened my mouth wide, and let out a blood-curdling scream.
That earned me a hard, open-handed slap from Fake Fed 2. My cheek stung and my eyes watered. While I panted to catch my breath from the shock of the pain, he looked poised to do more damage. Then he furrowed his brow and turned away from me. Something had caught his attention. Maybe my ploy had worked. Maybe someone had heard my scream and was coming to help me. If so, I needed to do my part to facilitate my own escape.
“Drop it,” I heard Fake Fed 2 say to someone.
My best hope seemed to have stopped in his or her tracks. But that didn’t mean I was done. I used the distraction to land a hard blow to Fake Fed 1’s throat and a hand chop to his wrist. My captor swayed on his feet, but he didn’t go down, and he didn’t drop his gun. Fuck me. At this rate, I’d get shot.
“Fuck this,” my would-be rescuer said. He kicked the gun out of Fake Fed 2’s hand, punched him in the gut, and slammed the butt of his own pistol against the guy’s forehead, rendering him unconscious.
I’d never been happier to see a stranger with a gun.
His distraction opened up another opportunity for me to escape. This time I followed new guy’s lead and kicked, stiletto heel first, into my captor’s groin. A scrotum attack is always a risky move that can enrage an attacker as often as incapacitate him, but despite my limited fighting skills, I had enough practice and plenty of anatomy knowledge to make it work. He howled with pain and collapsed in a heap on the pavement.
“Who are you?” I yelled, hoping his pain and fear of further attack on his manhood would make him chatty. “Are you with Carbonados? Do you work for them? Are you dirty cops?”
But my disabled captor wasn’t in a talkative mood after all, and his arms still worked fine. He leveled his gun at me.
“Hey!” my rescuer yelled, drawing Fake Fed 1’s attention.
My captor jumped to his feet and stared at my rescuer, who was dressed in an expensive, well-fitted gray suit with a white button-down shirt opened just enough at the collar for me to catch a glimpse of a tattoo. An army insignia. This had to be TJ’s buddy. I nearly wooted in relief but was stopped by a sharp blow to my temple. Pain burst behind my eyes and radiated down my neck and into my spine.
I couldn’t see anything but spots, but I heard grunts and flesh-on-flesh punches and the sound of a gun clattering across the cement floor. Whose gun I couldn’t say, but I knew damn well who I was rooting for.
“Are you okay?” a man asked me.
Strong but gentle arms encircled me and helped me remain upright. From the fresh scent of light aftershave, I knew it wasn’t one of my captors. My vision cleared and I stared into a pair of beautiful, golden-brown eyes.
I nodded. “I think so.” But I was still dizzy, my head ached, and I didn’t feel as steady on my feet as I would have liked.
“Shit.” He reached out his arms. “No, you’re not.”
“You must be TJ’s friend.” I smiled, but the effort increased the pain in my temple. “Thank God you’re here. We have to go. There are probably more of them crawling around the building.” I pointed to the neutralized fake feds.
“Best idea I’ve heard all night.” TJ’s friend picked up my medical bag, which I didn’t remember dropping, then held my elbow as he steered me toward an exit door.
I thought I should warn him to proceed carefully, but TJ had told me he was covert ops, and besides, he seemed to be moving cautiously and paying attention to his surroundings. And if I didn’t need to expend energy speaking, I could use it to keep pace with him. We stepped out of the parking garage and into the alley.
My stomach lurched and my vision swam. “Wait.”
He held my arm, keeping me balanced. “You have to trust me,” he said.
