“You can’t do it,” he said, his expression certain. “I know you can’t. Because I got to you. I made you feel, didn’t I, sweetheart?”
He’d lied to her. Used her. Drugged her. “I can. I will.” Her finger tightened on the trigger.
“It’s not loaded,” he said.
Rachel paused. Her gaze darted down to the gun.
And in that instant, he bent down and yanked a second weapon from his ankle holster.
“No!” Rachel’s shout seemed to echo in that huge room.
He fired at her.
She shot back at him.
Rachel fell, hitting the floor. She held on to her gun. She hurt. Hurt.
“Such a fighter...” His whisper drifted to her. “All the way to the end.”
Rachel tried to bring her gun up.
Then she heard his footsteps, running away.
“Adam?”
He didn’t answer.
She didn’t let go of the weapon. Rachel tried to pull herself up. The bullet had sunk into her left shoulder. Blood dripped down her arm.
There was no sign of Adam. No, there was no sign of Jack.
She stood on her feet, body trembling, wondering if she would be able to chase after him.
But then Rachel heard the pounding thud of footsteps. A lot of footsteps. And that thundering sound was coming toward her.
She turned, aiming her weapon even as the door on the right flew open. Men swarmed inside, men wearing all black and armed with guns of their own.
“Rachel Mancini?” One of the men barked.
Her gaze flew up to his face. He had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. And the lines of his face looked so hard. So dangerous. Deadly.
“Wh-who are you?” She didn’t lower her weapon. So what if a dozen guns were trained on her right then? The weapon was the only thing she had.
“She’s hurt.” These terse words came from another man. An older man who stormed into the room with an unmistakable air of command surrounding him. “Get a medic in here now.” He pushed through the guns. Headed toward her and acted as if she didn’t have a weapon locked on him. “Ms. Mancini, I’m here to help you.” His gaze slid around the room. “But first you have to tell me...where is he? Where’s Adam Wright?”
Rachel felt a tear leak down her cheek. She never cried. Never.
But her entire world had just changed. I changed. “I shot him,” she heard herself whisper. “But he ran away.”
The commander, a man with gleaming eyes, gave a hard nod. He turned back, speaking to the others as he said, “Get a search out now. I want every inch of this building checked.”
The team broke up, rushed out.
Except for the commander—and for the man who’d first pointed his weapon at her. The man who’d known her name. His voice had been hard, rumbling, devoid of any accent.
That man came toward her now.
Rachel tensed.
“Easy.” His voice was softer than it had been before. “I’ve got medical training. I can help you.” He holstered his weapon and advanced on her.
Her world was falling apart. Rachel wasn’t sure that anyone could help her then. She gave a short, negative shake of her head.
Her knees buckled then, and Rachel knew she’d hit the floor soon.
But he caught her. The man with the dark eyes. His hands were strong, callused at the fingertips, but he held her gently.
“Who are you?” Rachel asked him again. The world was spinning and that man—the stranger with the dark eyes—was the only thing that seemed solid in that instant.
“Dylan,” he told her, his voice a bare rasp of sound.
Over his shoulder, she saw the commander frown at him.
“I’m going to take care of you,” Dylan promised her. “We’re the good guys. We’re going to keep you safe.” A pause. “I’m going to keep you safe.”
But Rachel didn’t believe him. Adam had just taught her the danger of trusting a man. “He’s going to come back.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “And he’s going to kill me.”
Dylan’s face hardened. “I won’t let that happen.”
She still had the gun. Rachel gave him her weapon, but Dylan immediately passed it to the commander. Then she was in Dylan’s arms. He carried her out of that room. Carried her out of what was, indeed, an old, abandoned factory.
When the ambulance arrived, Dylan was still there, right at her side.
But no one had found Adam. He’d escaped. Vanished into the night.
I’ll come back for you.
Chill bumps rose on Rachel’s arms. She knew that, sooner or later, she would be seeing Adam again.
Three years later...
As a rule, the EOD didn’t usually handle routine murder investigations.
The EOD—the Elite Operations Division—was an off-the-books covert unit that Uncle Sam liked to pretend didn’t exactly exist. The men and women in the EOD were all ex-military. They were lethal, well-trained agents who specialized in hostage rescue and unconventional warfare.
A murder in D.C. shouldn’t necessarily catch their attention.
But this was no ordinary murder. And it was far from a routine case.
Dylan Foxx slipped past the cops who waited in the hallway of the high-rise hotel, a hotel that was situated just a few blocks away from Pennsylvania Avenue. They were on the top floor of the hotel, and the cops had all gathered around suite 706. Dylan’s boss, Bruce Mercer, had made sure he’d get access to this room. Bruce Mercer controlled most of D.C. from behind the scenes. A puppet master, always pulling the strings.
Dylan entered the room and surveyed the area. The murder victim lay sprawled near the bed. His blood had pooled and darkened the lush carpet.
One shot to the heart.
Dylan recognized the victim. Hank J. Patterson. Patterson had been a military judge, one of the most respected on the bench.
Patterson spent over fifteen years as an active soldier, but the man hadn’t been able to fight back
