By Honor Bound (23 page)

Annie shut up and saved her air for the effort of climbing. She’d lost count of how many stairs she’d gone up, but if this hotshot could keep going, barefoot and injured, then she could too.

They were rounding yet another landing when the door above them opened. A scrawny figure in black aimed a rifle in their direction and fired.

“Get down!” Annie yanked Mace’s arm back off the steps and dragged him towards the nearest door. Bullets zinged around their heads like pinballs, the noise exaggerated by the cement walls.

Annie hauled open the door and dragged Mace out of the stairwell. She ran blindly through the tunnel that led to the hospital and burst through the first door she came to. Looking around she realized they were in the administration wing. Where could they hide here? She tried to think of a place safe from the lunatic on the stairs.

“Come on, we can hide in one of the offices.” She pulled his arm and jiggled the handle on the first door. Locked. The next one down the line was locked too. Panic sliced through her as a drop of cold sweat slithered down her back. That guy had to be on his way down the stairs and they were out in the open.

Running down the hall, Annie’s heart pounded furiously in her chest. They were sitting ducks if they couldn’t find a place to hide soon.

Finally! An open office. A mop lay in a puddle in front of the partially open door. One of the maintenance workers must have been cleaning the office when he heard the explosion.

“What are we going to do in here? Wait for them to find us and kill us?” Mace held his side a bit, but was barely winded.

 “I don’t know, but it seemed like a better idea than charging a lunatic with a gun.” Annie gasped for air. The adrenaline running through her system made her jumpy and had all her nerves standing on end.

“Whose office is this anyway? Talk about high-class.”

Annie looked around for the first time and realized she’d busted into Colonel Michaels’ office. “The Chief of Staff, Colonel Michaels. He’s a good guy; I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“Does he carry a gun?” Mace asked, crossing to the desk and opening drawers.

“He’s a doctor. I don’t think he’s carried a gun in years.”

“He’s still a colonel. I’ll bet he has something here.” Mace continued to rifle around in the drawer.

Annie peeked out the door. “Shouldn’t they be following us? I mean it’s not like we went that far.”

“If they’re still securing the upper floors then they won’t bother with us until they have more time. Once the hospital is locked down, they’ll hunt us down like rabbits.”

“Gee, that’s comforting.”

“Aha!” Mace held up a knife that was easily six inches long. “I knew I’d find something. Come on; let’s look for a way out of here.”

He hadn’t taken two steps around the desk when the stairwell door slammed open.

“So much for your theory, now what?” Annie asked over the thunder of rifle fire.

Mace shot a glance at the window. It was sealed tight with Plexiglas. “Damn. I can’t break this with only a knife. We’re going to have to try the ventilation shafts and hope they hold our weight. If I give you a boost, do you think you could get in there and help me up?”

“Considering my life depends on it, yeah I can do it.” Annie waited for him to pry the grate off the wall and shove it into the ventilation shaft. All the while her ears strained for any sound of the terrorists coming closer. Adrenaline made her knees weak and her heart pound with every passing second.

“It’s off.” He laced his fingers together and squatted down. “Step in here and I’ll give you a boost.”

“Just like climbing into a hayloft.” Annie stepped into his cupped hands and used his shoulder for balance.

“On three.One, two, three!”

Annie practically flew up to the vent with the force of Mace’s boost. Boost? It was more like a launch. Although fit, she wasn’t tiny by any means, and he flung her up in the air like she was a toddler. Scrambling to find a purchase on the slick walls of the shaft, she felt a hand on her butt, pushing her inside.

Tucking her legs under her, Annie squirmed and wiggled around until she could poke her head and shoulders out of the shaft. “I’m ready when you are.”

Mace put the knife between his teeth and reached up for her outstretched hands. His grip was steely and confident, and she braced her feet against the sides of the shaft so he wouldn’t pull her out. Pulling with every ounce of muscle in her body, Annie fought to drag him up.

He must have found something to push himself off with, because one second she was yanking on his hands for all she was worth, and the next he was tumbling in on top of her, crushing her beneath his weight.

“I’m too big to turn around; you’re going to have to put the grille back over the vent so they won’t know what happened to us.”

Annie bit her tongue to keep from reminding him that she had the higher rank. She might be a major, but battle operations weren’t exactly her area of expertise. For the time being she’d follow his lead.

Sliding the grille cover out from under Mace’s legs, Annie wedged it back into place the best she could. Mace was sliding down her, and she could feel every inch of his muscled body against her back and legs. A sudden jolt of desire rocked her system, driving away the screaming pain in her arms from hauling that same muscled body into the shaft.

This was not the time for her libido to remind her that it was alive and kicking! She pushed away the unwanted heat and tried to ignore the moisture between her legs as she turned herself around to follow Mace.

“Do you have any idea where these things lead?” He looked over his shoulder at her.

“Not a clue. I know we’re in the west wing, and that’s about it.”

“Then we’ll follow the shaft where it leads us. With any luck at all we’ll be able to find a junction that will lead us up to the next level.”

“You really think that’s going to happen?” Granted, Annie didn’t know too much about crawling along in ventilation shafts, but she didn’t think they went up to the next floor.

“Hey, these old buildings are quirky; you never know what you might find.”

Mace used his arms and feet to push himself along the shaft. Annie was small enough so she could crawl on her hands and knees, but after scraping her back on the top of the shaft one too many times, she gave up and slid along on her belly. This was going to get old fast.

* * * * *

The stitches in his side were pulling with every inch he moved. Mace tried not to let Annie know about the pain he was in, but he was pretty sure his wound had started bleeding again. If this kept up he’d pass out from blood loss long before he could get out of the building.

There had to be some sort of junction somewhere. The vents couldn’t keep going in circles, could they? He felt like he’d been crawling around these dusty shafts for miles. Another grille was just up ahead; maybe she’d recognize the location.

“Hey, Major, we’re coming up on a ventilation grille, can you look out and see if you know where we are?”

“Sure.”

Her voice sounded a little winded, but she was still moving. Mace slid to the side, careful to keep the knife in front of him and pointing away. He already had one knife slash on him, and he sure as hell didn’t want another one.

Rolling over to make some room for Annie, Mace couldn’t help but wince at the pain in his side. Hopefully it was too dark for her to see his face, because he didn’t want her thinking about him, he wanted her alert and watching for the enemy.

She wormed her way up to him, rubbing against his torso as she tried to see out the grille. Her ass was pressed against his cock in the tight space, and he had to clench his teeth to keep from groaning at the sweet torture.

This was a life or death situation, he shouldn’t be thinking with his cock! He had to focus on the mission, staying alive and getting out, not on the sexy number rubbing up against him.

“Do you know where we are?” His voice was a little strained.

“Yup. We’re in the office next to Colonel Michaels’. We made a complete circle.”

“Shit.”

“Well, what’s Plan B?”

Plan B? He’d been operating on the seat of his pants for Plan A. He hadn’t thought any farther than getting out of the building. Annie squirmed around until she was facing him, and he sucked in his breath.

She really was gorgeous. Big blue eyes stared out at him from an angel’s face. Her long blonde hair had long since fallen out of the military bun it had been in and was hanging around her face in wisps. She was covered in dust and still looked sexy as hell. Why couldn’t she have been
his
nurse?

“So, what do we do now?” She looked at him like he held all the answers.

Before he could admit to not having a clue, the door to the office below them burst in with a shattering of glass. Two men ran in, spraying bullets across the room. Mace pulled Annie to his chest, muffling any noises she might make. Her body trembled against him, so he squeezed her closer.

“I tell you, I heard voices coming from in here.” A tall goon said to the other shorter one.

“I think the tension is finally getting to you. There’s no one in here.”

 “The two I saw in the stairwell didn’t just disappear; they have to be on this floor somewhere.”

“Well, they’re not in here. After your little commando impression, they probably hit the stairs again. Come on, this floor is secure, let’s set the charges and move on. We’ve got a lot of territory to cover before morning.”

Mace looked out over Annie’s head and watched the shorter one walk out the door. The tall one stood there, looking around, then a smile crept over his face. Pointing the gun up to the ceiling, he let loose with another round of bullets.

Wrapping his arms and legs around Annie’s body, Mace tried to protect her from any stray bullets that were flying around. He could hear the plink, plink of them bouncing through the shaft around them.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Mace watched through the grille as the shorter one pushed the gun out of the taller one’s hands.

“Are you trying to announce to everyone where we are?”

“I’m just giving them something to think about. If the two of them are crawling around up there, I might have got lucky and hit them.”

“And you might have gotten hit by a ricochet bullet too. Dumbass. You are too damn trigger-happy with that thing. Come on, you go first this time, and keep your finger off the trigger.”

With his arms still wrapped around the woman shaking in front of him, Mace counted slowly to one hundred. When he was as sure as he could be, he let go of Annie and whispered in her ear.

“I think they’re gone, but whisper; sound carries in these things.”

She nodded her understanding. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to wait them out, then seek and destroy.”

Chapter Two

“Wait them out? In this little tunnel?” Annie hoped the panic didn’t show in her voice. Sliding around in the dark tunnels was starting to get to her. The danger of the situation had kept her mind off the fact that she was in a tiny space, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d hold it together. Not only that, if she didn’t stand up soon, she’d have a permanent kink in her back.

It had to be even worse for Mace, he was so broad and tall that he didn’t have half of her wiggle room. The two of them jammed together took up most of the shaft. Her breasts were squished against his chest, and it was like being smashed against a brick wall. An incredibly good-looking, muscular, brick wall.

“We can’t stay in here until morning, it’s only a matter of time before they get bored and decide to start shooting all the ceilings. We need to find a place to hide. Not an office, maybe an alcove or janitor’s closet or something.”

Annie’s stomach clenched at the thought of being trapped in a closet, but it would be better than this tiny space. She wasn’t really claustrophobic; she just didn’t like small spaces. And if she kept telling herself that, maybe she’d actually believe it.

“I think there’s a closet at the end of the hall, on the other side of the door from the stairs,” Annie whispered.

“Okay, I’ll go first, you follow. Try to be as quiet as you can, and be careful when we pass the grille openings.”

“Yes, sir.”

Annie almost groaned as he slid his body past hers, teasing every place he touched. When his waist moved past her, she couldn’t help but notice the impressive package he had between his legs. The nearly naked, impressive package.

Her body hummed in awareness, making every atom of her being stand at attention. She was so flustered from the full-body caress, she didn’t see the pool of blood on the floor until her hand practically landed in it.

She grabbed his bare foot to stop him and slid up close enough to whisper to him. “Did you get hit? Or has your wound reopened? You’re bleeding.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s only a scratch. Let’s get to that closet first, then you can patch me back up.”

Letting him slide away from her, Annie tried to see if he was lying to her about the extent of his injuries. He was moving along better than she was, so if that was any indication, he was doing just fine.

Stray bullets clinked against the sides as they passed them. They had been damn lucky so far. Hopefully their luck would hold until they made it to the closet.

What if the closet didn’t have a way into the shaft? It wasn’t like the janitor’s closet would need to be air-conditioned. Doubts chased themselves around and around in her head until she was almost dizzy from worry. Annie bit her lip to keep from voicing any of her fears. She was combat-trained; hell, she’d done her time in the sandbox, she shouldn’t be so afraid. But she was. Working as a field nurse hadn’t prepared her for this.

It didn’t matter. She had to hold it together. As far as she knew, she and Mace were the only two people free in the whole hospital. If she fell apart Mace would have to watch over her and wouldn’t be able to go for help. It was imperative that he not know what an emotional basket case she was.

Hell, her father had survived being a POW in Vietnam; she’d damn well survive this.