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If she had to, she would kick and fight and claw at anything she could sink her nails into. If the men breached her hiding place, she would fight.
Chapter 14
Logan made the trip to his apartment as fast as possible. As soon as he left Sam, he wanted to turn back around and bring her with him. But he reminded himself she had Jeff outside watching over her, and the truth was, he couldn’t let her see how he was living. He would change that, though.
He would put away the knives and guns he had strategically all over his place. If she’d seen the sheer number of them, she would know he wasn’t well, that he was still struggling. He would buy furniture, soon, instead of sleeping on the floor and eating standing up at the counter in the kitchen. He’d take down the blackout curtains on all the windows and turn his apartment into a home, instead of a cave for him to hide in.
He was three blocks from Sam’s house, heading back toward her when he got the alert on his phone that let him know someone breached Sam’s home.
What the fuck?
Seconds before, he’d been fighting the urge to blow through the red light he sat at simply because of the caution that ingrained in him during his last tour of duty. For most of the last few months of his service, he’d been overseas serving in Afghanistan. One thing US military members never did over there was to sit still in traffic. You kept moving and you stayed alive.
The urge to move had been strong, but Logan had steadied the twisting in his gut and was coping with the feelings bombarding him.
Until that alert came. Then he hit the gas and barely slowed down for turns for the remainder of the trip to Sam’s. He was instantly back in combat-ready mode. Calm, breathing evenly, ready to take on whatever came his way.
His head told him they wouldn’t have come this quickly for her, whoever the helltheywere. His brain tried to argue that Jeff was standing guard outside her place. His gut was telling him the alarm was no freaking technical glitch or accidental triggering of the alarm. He needed to get to Sam and he needed to get to her fast.
He slammed to a stop several rows down from her town house and exited his car, moving in a crouch to make his body as small as possible. He circled and crept up beside Jeff’s car, keeping one eye on the front door to Sam’s house and one eye on Jeff’s car. No sign of Jeff.
The front door stood slightly ajar and Logan stayed to the right of it, looking through the opening to the mirror hanging in Sam’s entranceway.
If the man standing guard at the bottom of the stairs was any indication, these guys had come fully loaded. The lookout held an assault rifle as though it were an extension of his arm and a Glock 23 holstered under one shoulder. A vicious looking knife strapped to one leg—and that was only what Logan could see. The man’s appearance screamed mercenary: killer-for-hire.
The man stood with his back to the door, looking up the staircase.What was the point of leaving a lookout at the door, if he kept his freaking back to it?Logan used the momentum of the door as he kicked it into the man’s body.
A blow to the temple to stun, before grasping head and neck and applying pressure beyond the bounds where a person’s mind normally says to stop.
Logan’s mind no longer sent that message. It was a move he had done in the past. Many times.
The intruder’s neck snapped and Logan lay his body down to the floor, trying to remain as quiet as possible as he continued up the stairs.
With no idea how many were in the house, he was moving blind. Not a situation he wanted to be in. On an op in the teams, they would prep intensely ahead of time, gathering as much intel as possible. He’d have backup and, at times, even eyes inside through fiber optic scopes.
Logan paused five steps from the top of the first staircase and scanned the living room and dining area. There was very little cover for him on the stairs and he could hear a struggle taking place above him, but he stayed calm. He was in his element now, and even knowing Sam was up there facing a threat alone wasn’t enough to force him to act foolishly. He needed to stay calm and move ahead with caution if he was going to save her.
And hewasgoing to save her. He focused on clearing one room at a time, even as he heard Sam scream above him.
Christ, he needed to save her from whatever hell she was in, right now. The what-ifs tried to swamp his brain, but he shoved them back.
He moved forward, his breathing steady and his mind clear, clearing the kitchen and moving up the second staircase to the third floor.
If she’d had enough time to follow his instructions, she would have headed for the crawl space in her master bathroom. It sounded like that’s where the struggle was taking place.
Logan quickly cleared the guest bedroom and hallway bathroom. No other perpetrators. He entered the master bedroom. Two men in the bathroom now stood between Logan and Sam. Beyond them, he watched Sam kick and shriek and rake her nails down one of the attacker’s faces. Her screams were no longer simply cries of fear. She was in pain. A lot of it.
One man stood laughing while the other pinned Sam to the floor, backhanding her with such force the crack of the blow seemed to echo in the room, and she went eerily still. He couldn’t tell if he’d knocked her unconscious or she simply stopped fighting back. Or worse.
Logan wasted no time. He entered the room, and double-tapped the man closest to him in the back, dead center mass, then the head.
As the first man crumpled to the floor, the other turned, raising a gun toward Logan. Logan didn’t give him a chance to use it.
He didn’t want to take a chance at firing at this guy. He was too close to Sam. Logan’s free hand shot out, grabbing the man’s gun hand and pulling the attacker into him as Logan brought his other arm up, laying a fierce blow to the man’s face with his elbow.
He followed with the butt of his gun, but the man’s own elbow shot out and struck Logan. Blood exploded from his nose as the two struggled above Sam’s limp form.
When the man forced Logan back toward the hallway, he knew he couldn’t take a chance on this guy getting back to where Sam lay defenseless. If the attacker tried to use her as a shield, Logan would be screwed.
