Danger That Is Damion (9 page)

“I came in,” Jesse said, tossing the wig onto the bed, running his hand through his dark, rumpled hair and eyeing Lev. “Now you go out.”

A few minutes later, Lev was on the move, headed toward several of Chale’s team members, while Chale, Houston, Jesse, and the dog were left in the hotel room.

A knock sounded on the door, and there was no code. Just a knock. All three men exchanged a silent look and reached for their weapons. Even the dog went eerily quiet, as if it sensed what the men knew. Trouble wasn’t waiting for sunset.

And while the Renegades enjoyed a good fight, avoidance was the plan when innocent human lives were at risk, as was the case now with every human in the building. Chale pointed to the ceiling, and Houston quickly hopped up on the dresser and moved a panel to a crawl space they’d discovered that led to the kitchen—an exit strategy, but one that required a drop from the ceiling smack into a burning stove.

“Housekeeping!” came a female voice.

“No thanks!” Chale called, not believing this was housekeeping for a minute. Jesse lifted Houston into the ceiling, and Houston offered Jesse a hand to pull him up.

“Go!” Chale whispered to Jesse, and seeing his hesitation, added, “That’s an order, soldier! I don’t need a damn babysitter, but
you
will when I’m finished with you if you don’t do as I say.” Jesse hesitated again, but reluctantly disappeared.

The door of the room burst open, but caught on a chain. “I said, no!” Chale yelled toward the door and fitted the panel back into the ceiling. He jumped to the ground, rushing to the door to slam it shut. “I don’t need service.”

That was when not one, but three bullets silently slammed through the wood and entered his midsection. Chale grunted and bent at the waist, all too aware he’d been hit by the lethal Green Hornets, a top secret, Area 51 technology, and the only bullet that could penetrate the GTECH armor. The door opened again, and a pair of steel cutters appeared.

Somehow, Chale hobbled down the hall, into the bedroom and out of sight, behind a wall dividing the room from the entryway. Flattening against it, he fell to the floor and drew his weapon. Molly whimpered and hid under the bed.

“Smart dog,” he murmured, glancing at his injuries, unable to stop the gushing from his stomach. As it was, he was so weak, his arms felt like wet noodles, and his gun, a fifty-pound barbell.

Too soon, before he was ready, a beauty of a woman, despite a bad blonde wig, sauntered around the corner, dressed in a maid’s uniform. He hadn’t even known when she’d entered the room, which told him he was in a bad way and fading.

He grimaced up at her. “What happened to knocking before you enter?”

“From the mess you’re making on the floor, I thought you needed maid service.” She straddled him, a gun in her hand, and even the conservative maid’s dress she wore and a hole in his gut did nothing to stop his gaze from following the path up her skirt. If he was going to die, he was going to die happy.

He managed to lift his gun without using both hands. “I see we like the same toys.” Spots splattered in front of his eyes. Shit. He was going to pass out.

She nudged his hip with her foot. “Don’t you dare bleed to death until I’m done with you, Renegade.”

“Hello, Chale,” came a familiar male voice.

A man stepped forward then, removing a baseball cap he wore low over his face, to allow Chale to identify him.

“Thought Adam had killed you, greedy bastard,” Chale said to Lucian, an Area-51 GTECH turned Zodius, who’d tried to overthrow Adam.

“You assumed what we wanted you to assume,” Lucian said. “What we let you believe. Your plan to evacuate the Russian has failed. He’s dead. I let your people keep the wife and kids. We have no time for babysitting.”

Anger coiled inside Chale, and he tried again to lift his gun. The woman kicked it aside.

Chale raked his gaze over her in an intentionally hungry fashion. “Sweetheart,” he drawled. “I can assure you, even bleeding to death, that I’m a better ride than this lowlife. Let me kill him, and we’ll talk.”

Lucian’s boot connected with Chale’s face in a blast that rattled his teeth. His ears rang from the jolt, and blood spilled from his mouth, but he laughed and looked at the woman.

“Jealous type, I guess,” he said, a second before the next kick sent his head jerking to the left, and everything went black.

***

Self-preservation was all that kept Sabrina from shooting Lucian herself right then. “Are you trying to kill him before he tells us what we need to know?” she demanded. “You shouldn’t even be here. Chale recognized you. Someone else might recognize you.”

Lucian slid the cap back on his head, like it was really some sort of disguise. “Chale recognized me because I gave him the chance,” Lucian said. “He won’t live long enough to tell anyone. I told you to trust me. I covered your sweet little ass just like I said I would. I killed the Russian, and I’ll kill Lara.”

Never, in this lifetime or any other, would she trust Lucian. She never should have gone to him. He was setting her up. She could feel it in every inch of her body. “For all we know, she’s already told the Renegades about Serenity.”

“She believes they killed her family,” he said. “I’m betting that hasn’t changed.”

“Excuse me if I’m not willing to gamble with my future,” she argued.

“They won’t trust her,” he said. “Whatever she says is nothing without proof, and she won’t live long enough to find any.” He bent down next to Chale, snatched the Renegade’s cell phone from his belt, and held it up. “We have everything we need to get to Lara right here.” His free hand slid around her thigh. “
Trust
me.
” His fingers brushed her crotch. “Do exactly what I tell you, and your place in Serenity will be secure.”

Said
the
wolf
to
Little
Red
Riding
Hood
, and for the first time in a very long while, she felt like the girl with the red cape—helpless and at the wolf’s mercy.

Wild
didn’t begin to describe what kissing Lara unleashed inside Damion. He had never felt anything like he felt in this moment, never felt so out of control, so out of his own body. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, there was a warning, a voice telling him this wasn’t normal.

One minute they were arguing, the next they were all over each other, touching, licking, tasting. Her naked little backside rubbing against his cock, driving him insane with need. He couldn’t get enough of her. Couldn’t make himself stop kissing her, stop touching her, couldn’t resist molding her breasts to his hands and swallowing the moan that slid from her lips to his. He was a man who didn’t lose control, but he was now. He was with this woman, this stranger. In some far part of his mind the word “voodoo” played again, warning him something wasn’t right about his reaction to this woman, that she claimed something wasn’t right about her reaction to him. He told himself to stop. Instead, they melted into one another, his tongue stroking hers. The wildness of passion exploded into an unfamiliar desperateness like nothing he had ever experienced with another woman, a need to escape into each other, a need not to speak, not to think.

Damion’s hand slid up her back, into her hair, angling her mouth to deepen the kiss, to take more. Whatever happened beyond this moment, beyond the desire, it didn’t matter right now. There was no right or wrong, no enemies or even friends. There was just feeling, needing, taking.

Reality slammed into him the instant her fingers touched the zipper to his body armor over his rib cage. Damion jerked back from her, suspicion over her motives a cold slap of reality. What the hell was he doing? Then, more importantly, what the hell was
she
doing? Accusation narrowed his stare. Had she ever been hallucinating, or was this all a ploy to take him out? Had she heated him right into a big pile of stupid?

She blinked up at him, her lips swollen from his kisses, her eyes clouded with desire that was quickly dawning with unhappy realization.
Aware.
She was now all too aware of what he was thinking, the distant confusion she’d shown minutes before, long gone. Long gone, like it had never existed. Damn it to hell, he didn’t like being made a fool and didn’t make a habit of it.

The phone on the wall by the door started to ring, a scream of sound in the midst of the silent tension that had Damion ready to roar with both irritation and relief at the timing. He needed space from this woman, but he didn’t want it. Caleb and Michael had heard Lara scream, though, and if he didn’t answer the call, they’d think something was wrong. Clearly there was, since she was naked and in his arms, and no matter how much he believed she was a victim, she didn’t hide her desire to kill all Renegades, him included.

The phone was on the second ring. “I have to get that, or we’ll have company I don’t think either of us would welcome right about now.”

She nodded tensely, her gaze, hot only moments before, now downright icy. She slid off of him, grabbing the towel on the floor.

Damion sat there a moment, both with an ache in his groin at the sight of the ivory curves, but more so, with an odd sense of loss he’d never experienced before.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, her expression clouded, confused, wounded, rather than angry at his distrust.
Wounded.
This word sang in his mind, and with it, guilt in his gut about daring to touch her when she was vulnerable.
Unless
she
wasn’t vulnerable, unless it was all an act
.

The phone stopped ringing. Damn it. Damion scrubbed his jaw and jerked into action, biting back a groan at the uncomfortable stretch of his zipper across his raging erection. He grabbed the phone attached to the wall and said, “2020,” a code that changed with every use and indicated that the facility was secure and he wasn’t under hostile takeover.

“That’s one bit of good news,” Caleb said in a heavy sigh. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the same to give you.”

Caleb didn’t take the long way to a point, unless he didn’t really want to get to it in the first place, and he was now. Damion glanced at Lara, not sure what he was willing to let her hear. She gave him a look scrubbed of any emotion and headed toward the walk-in closet, her hips swaying beneath the towel. His cock pulsed with the memory of what was—or rather was not—beneath that towel.

With a barely contained moan, Damion turned away from her and lowered his voice to speak to Caleb. “Did something go wrong with the extraction?”

“Lev is dead,” he said. “Thankfully, his family is safely in Renegade custody and headed to Sunrise City, but I’m not looking forward to telling them the news.”

“How?” Damion asked, pretty damn sure he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Lev left the room in disguise and made it to the car we had waiting. That’s when a wind-walker appeared behind Lev, shot and killed him, and shoved him into the car.”

“A woman?” Damion asked, expecting one of Lara’s people.

“A man wearing a hooded jacket with a baseball cap beneath,” Caleb said. “He was there and gone too fast to make his identity. At about the same time, a woman showed up at Lev’s room claiming to be maid service, we assume as a distraction, while the assassin did his job.”

“Sabrina?” Damion asked.

“No one but Chale saw the woman. Chale sent Houston and Jesse through a passage in the ceiling, while he stalled the maid to give Lev time to escape. He was supposed to follow, but ten minutes later, Chale hadn’t shown up, and he wasn’t answering calls. Houston and Jesse went back to the room, and Chale was gone. That’s how fast this went down. Ten minutes and Chale was nowhere to be found. His captors must have opened the sliding door and wind-walked with him out of there.” He hesitated. “You should know, Damion… Jesse and Houston found blood on the floor and bullet holes in the door.”

Damion’s gut clenched. Blood could only mean one thing. “Adam Rain still has Green Hornets.” The lethal bullets could not only penetrate their armor, but shred bone and muscle, often beyond even a GTECH’s ability to repair the damage. Chale was in deep shit.

“We knew that when we stole Adam’s stock, he’d create more,” Caleb said. “But I thought we had at least a year, after we managed to destroy his blueprints. Instead, we got a real fast six months.”

And if Chale was really shot up with Green Hornets, he had hours at most. “Chale’s alive, or they wouldn’t have bothered taking him.”

“We had Trackers on him within fifteen minutes of his disappearance, and no one picked up a trail,” Caleb said. “And since I know Chale is smart enough to let down his mental shields so we can find him, they either took him somewhere close and underground, instead of to Zodius City or—”

“He’s underground,” Damion said, refusing to hear the end of Caleb’s sentence that finished with “dead.”

Someone spoke in the background, and Caleb offered a muffled reply. “I need to go,” he said. “Concerns about Lev’s death are being relayed from the White House. But two things before I do. First off, something about this Lev situation doesn’t add up. The man was assassinated, plain and simple. There was no attempt at capture. That doesn’t fit with my brother’s behavior. If Adam knew about Lev, he’d want him for his nuclear technology.”