He got his gun ready, in case he had to shoot their way out of there, but the sound made him realize they had bigger things to worry about than the shooter.
The ceiling groaned, threatening to give way.
“Run!” Bree shouted.
She fought to get up, just as Kade fought to get the debris off him. They finally made it to their feet and raced out of the room. What was left of it, anyway. It was the same for the hall. Walls had collapsed, and there was junk and rubble everywhere.
Bree hurdled over some of the mess and continued down the hall. Cursing, Kade caught up with her, and shoved her behind him. Of course, that might not be any safer, what with the ceiling about to come down, but there were other rooms ahead. An exit, too. And he didn’t want that shooter jumping out from the shadows.
After all, Kade still had the backups.
Maybe the guy thought the blast would destroy them, along with Bree and him. Especially Bree, since the bozo clearly thought she was the biggest threat. Still, this could be all part of some warped plan to get them out and into the open so he could gun them down.
Behind them, another chunk of the ceiling fell. It slammed into the tile floor and sent a new spray of debris their way. They kept on running until they reached the back exit. Kade hit the handle to open it.
Hell.
It was locked.
He cursed, grabbed Bree again and ducked into the room to their left. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought this would lead them to the quarters where the infertile couples stayed. As Bree and he had done. There were more exits back in that area. Maybe, just maybe, not all of them would be locked.
His phone buzzed, and since Bree was still holding it, she pressed the button to put the call on speaker.
“Are you okay?” the person asked.
Not the shooter. It was Nate.
“Barely,” Kade answered. “Did you see anyone leave the building?”
“No.”
Kade cursed again and kept watch around them. “Bree and I are trying to make our way to an east side exit.”
“Good. My men and I are converging on the building now.”
Kade wanted to ask about the baby, how she was doing after being dropped off at the hospital, but it would have to wait. Right now, he had to get Bree out of there. Bree closed the phone and they started running as fast as they could.
Her breath was gusting. His, too. They meandered their way through the maze of rooms and furniture until they came to another hall. There were more windows in this part of the building. Good thing because it allowed him to see.
There was a door ahead.
“Stay behind me,” Kade reminded her once again.
He lifted his gun and made a beeline to the door.
They were still a good ten feet away when the second blast ripped through the hall.
Chapter Seventeen
Bree didn’t have time to get down. The blast came right at them, and she felt herself flying backward. Everything seemed in slow motion but fast, too.
Her back collided with the wall.
Kade hit the concrete block wall beside her, and despite the bone-jarring impact, he managed to hang on to his gun. He also yanked her to her feet. Kade didn’t have to warn her that they had to get out of there.
She knew.
Because there had already been two explosions, and that meant there could be another.
So far Kade and she had either gotten lucky or this was all some kind of elaborate trap.
“This way,” Kade said, and he led her away from the part of the hall where the door had once been. It was now just a heap of rubble—a mix of concrete, wood and metal—and it was dangerous to try to get through it.
They hurried in the other direction, back through the rooms where Kade and she had stayed nearly a year ago when they were undercover.
Each step spiked her heartbeat and tightened the knot in her stomach. Because each step could lead them straight into another explosion. For that matter, the entire place could be rigged to go up.
Kade and she made their way into another hall, one with windows. And it was the thin white moonlight stabbing its way through the glass that allowed Bree to see the movement just ahead of them.
Kade pulled her into the room.
Just as a shot zinged through the air.
There was another jolt to her body when Kade and she landed on the floor. Another shot, too. But it slammed into the doorjamb and thankfully not them.
Despite the hard fall, Kade got her out of the doorway, and they scrambled to the far side of the room.
She glanced around. More windows, all with security bars, and there were two doors, feeding off in both directions. The doors were closed, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t be waiting on the other side.
Since she no longer had a gun, Bree grabbed the first thing she could reach—a metal wire wastebasket. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but if she got close enough, she could use it to bash someone.
Another shot.
This one also took a chunk out of the doorjamb.
As unnerving at those shots were, it did give Bree some good news. Well, temporary good news, anyway. There likely wasn’t about to be another explosion in this area. Not with their assailant so close.
Close enough to gun them down.
“You’re like cats with nine lives!” the person shouted, still using the voice scrambler. “You should have been dead by now.”
Yes, Bree was painfully aware of that. And so was her body. She was aching and stinging from all the cuts, nicks and bruises. Beside her, Kade was no doubt feeling the same.
“Why don’t you come in here and try to finish the job?” Kade shouted back.
Bree prayed the guy would take Kade up on the offer. Because Kade was still armed. But she didn’t hear any movement in the hall or outside the building.
Were Nate and the other officers there, waiting to respond?
She hoped so because Bree didn’t want this monster to escape. If that happened, the danger would start all over again. The threats to Kade and her would hang over their heads. The heads of their babies, too.
That couldn’t happen.
This had to end now, tonight.
“Are you too scared to face us?” Bree yelled. Yeah, it might be a stupid move to goad their assailant, but it could work.
Maybe.
“Not scared. And I’m not stupid, either. This can only end one way—with your deaths.”
“Or yours!” Bree fired back.
Kade nodded, motioned for her to keep it up, and while he kept low, he began to inch toward the hall door.
“You know, I think I do remember some things Tim Kirk said,” Bree continued, keeping her voice loud to cover Kade’s movement. “He wasn’t very good at keeping secrets, was he?”
Silence.
Kade stopped. Waited.
“All right,” their assailant finally said. “If Kirk told secrets, then who am I?” The person didn’t wait for her to answer. “You don’t know. You can only guess. And guessing won’t help you or Agent Ryland.”
Kade moved closer to the door but crouched down so that he was practically on the floor.
“What if it’s not a guess?” Bree lied. “What if I’ve already left a sworn statement with the district attorney? Think about it—I wouldn’t have risked coming here if I didn’t have an ace in the hole.”
She nearly choked on those words, the same ones that Kirk had used to describe her child. Maybe their attacker would recognize them and panic. Mercy, did she want panic. Maybe then the person would make a mistake, and Kade could get off that shot.
“Well?” Bree called out when she didn’t get an answer. “Should I call the district attorney and tell him to release my statement?”
She waited, her heart in her throat.
Kade waited, too, his attention fastened on the hall and doorway.
Bree was so focused on what she could say to draw out this monster that she barely heard the sound. Not from the hall or the doorway.
But from behind her.
She turned and saw the shadowy figure in the now-open doorway on the right side of the room.
Oh, God.
The person lifted his arm, ready to fire. Not at her. But at Kade.
Bree didn’t think. She dropped the trash can and dived at the person who was about to shoot Kade.
* * *
K
ADE WHIRLED AROUND
just in time to see Bree launch herself at the gunman. And there was no mistaking that this was a gunman because Kade spotted the guy’s weapon.
He also saw that weapon ram into Bree when she collided with their attacker. But it wasn’t just the collision and the gun that latched onto his attention.
Kade’s heart went to his knees when the sound of the bullet tore through the room.
“Bree!” Kade heard himself yell.
She had to be all right. If this SOB had shot her…but he couldn’t go there. Couldn’t bear to think of what might be. He just ran toward her.
And then he had to come to a quick stop.
Their attacker hooked an arm around Bree’s throat and snapped her toward him. In the same motion, the person jammed a gun against Bree’s head.
Now that Kade’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he had no trouble seeing the stark fear on her face. Her eyes were wide, and her chest was pumping for air.
“Run!” she told Kade.
But the person ground the barrel of the gun into her temple. “If you run, she dies right now,” her captor warned. “Drop your gun and give me the backups.”
Kade tried to give Bree a steadying look, and then his gaze went behind her to the figure wearing the dark clothes and black ski mask. Kade also didn’t miss the object in the gunman’s left hand. But he or she didn’t hold on to it for long.
It clattered to the floor.
The voice scrambler, Kade realized.
Their attacker had dropped it, no doubt so that both hands could be used to contain Bree. And it was working. Bree couldn’t move without the risk of being either choked or shot.
“I said drop your gun and give me the backups,” the man repeated.
And it was a man all right. Kade knew that now that the scrambler was no longer being used. It was a man whose voice Kade recognized.
Anthony.
So, they had the identity of the person who’d made their lives a living hell and had endangered not just them but their newborn daughters.
The anger slammed through Kade, but he tried to tamp it down because he had to figure out a way to get that gun away from Bree’s head. He wasn’t sure Anthony was capable of cold-blooded, close-contact murder, but considering everything else he’d likely done, it was a risk that Kade couldn’t take.
“Why are you doing this, Anthony?” Bree asked, but she kept her attention fastened on Kade. Her left eyebrow was slightly cocked as if asking what she should do.
Kade didn’t have an answer to that yet.
“You know why I’m doing this,” Anthony assured her.
Kade heard it, but the words hardly registered. That’s because he got a better look at the grip Anthony had on the gun. Oh, mercy. Anthony’s hand was shaking. Not good. He was probably scared spitless despite the cocky demeanor he’d had earlier, and Kade knew from experience that scared people usually made bad decisions in situations like these.
“Put down the gun.” Kade tried to keep calm. Normally, it would be a piece of cake. All those years of training and experience had taught him to disguise the fear he felt crawling through him. But this wasn’t normal. Bree was on the other end of that gun.
“You don’t want murder added to the list of charges,” Kade pressed.
“No.” And that’s all Anthony said for several moments. “But I’ll be charged with murder and other things if the cops see the surveillance backups.”
Hell. So, that’s what was on them.
Murder.
Kade figured it was bad if Anthony was willing to go through all of this to get the backups, but he’d hoped for some lesser charges. Murder meant Anthony had no way out.
This was not going to end well.
“I didn’t know my father and Coop had set up the extra cameras,” Anthony said, his voice shaking. “And I did some things.”
Bree pulled in a hard breath, and Kade knew she’d come to the same conclusion as he had. Anthony couldn’t let them out of there alive, not with those backups that could get him the death penalty.
He was a desperate man.
But Kade was even more desperate.
“I didn’t know about the backups at first,” Anthony went on. “I thought you and Bree were the only two people who could send me to jail.”
“So you kidnapped me,” Bree provided. She glanced around as if looking for a way to escape. Kade hoped she wouldn’t try until he had a better shot. At the moment, he had no shot at all.
“The kidnapping worked.” Anthony paused again. “Until Jamie decided to do something stupid like leaving the baby at the hospital and letting you escape.” He said the woman’s name like venom. “Jamie’s dead now. I don’t have to worry about her or her stupidity anymore.”
Hell. That was not what Kade wanted to hear. Yet another confession to murder to go along with the ones on the surveillance backups.
“The cops are outside,” Kade reminded him just in case Anthony had forgotten that he wasn’t just going to shoot and stroll out of here.
“Yes, and so is the gunman I hired.”
There was an edge in Anthony’s voice. Not the edge of someone who was a hundred percent confident in this plan. So Kade decided to see if he could push a button or two.
“You mean the incompetent gunman who was supposed to kill Jamie in the park?” Kade asked.
Anthony stammered out a few syllables before he managed some full-blown profanity. Clearly the gunman was a button, and Kade had indeed managed to push it. Now he could only hope that it didn’t put Bree in more danger. Kade needed Anthony distracted, not just fuming mad.
Anthony ripped off his ski mask. “Yes! That’s the idiot. But he won’t fail me this time. He knows it’ll cost him his life if he doesn’t succeed.”
Kade made an
I-doubt-that
sound in his throat.
Another button push. Every muscle in Anthony’s face tightened. “Give me the backups,” he demanded. “And put down that gun. If I have to tell you again, you’re a dead man.”
Despite the
dead man
warning, Kade didn’t move until he saw Antony’s hand tense. He was going to pull the trigger if Kade didn’t do something fast.