Authors: Valerie Douglas
Relieved, she followed the sound of the voices to a doorway, parted the plastic flaps that covered it…and froze in shock and horror.
Four men. Two held a third and not gently…
They hadn’t seen or heard her, they were too intent on what they were doing.
Ariel looked at the third man.
He didn’t look good, blood stained his mouth, his expression was slack, there was an abrasion on one cheek and he sagged in the arms of the other two as the third man bunched his fist to hit him again.
With obvious effort, the battered man braced himself defiantly. He lifted his head and for the briefest of moments their eyes met.
Shock shot through her.
He had the most amazing eyes. Sea-ice eyes. Eyes of a green so intense it was like the sun shining through an iceberg, as clear as glass, as bottomless as the ocean. Bottle-green eyes. Piercing, intense.
He was handsome, his features strong and even, his face a little long, with a high forehead. Thick wavy dark blond hair spilled over it. His mouth was firm, with a split in it where they had hit him. His shoulders were broad, strong.
For a moment, he stared at her, dazed, and then those startling eyes registered her presence. They widened in alarm.
The other man hit him again.
If they kept it up, if they kept hitting him, they were going to kill him.
Matt tried to gather his strength, to keep his head together but these guys weren’t giving him the time or the chance. Lifting his head was almost too much of an effort but he knew he had to do it, somehow. He had to keep thinking. Blearily, he realized he was in a world of hurt with no quick or easy way out. One way or another he had to find a way out of this mess or he was going to die here.
Just like Bill.
They’d come out of nowhere in the offices above, three big goons sitting in hiding. Matt had thought he’d been so clever, but he’d been caught completely flatfooted, cursing his own stupidity. He should have expected something like it, should have anticipated it, but what financial company hired muscle like them?
These guys were better than good, grades above the average rent a cop, clearly ex-military, and more than a little overkill for security for a financial office. One had tackled him like a linebacker but it was the taser and the blackjack that had done it for him. Both had hit nearly simultaneously. The volts and then the cosh. His muscles locked and all the breath had gone out of him, then the leaded bag had nailed him behind the ear. Everything had gone gray.
Half-carrying, half-dragging him, they’d gotten him into an elevator. They hadn’t taken any chances and they weren’t going to give him any.
Shaking his head, he’d tried to clear it as they hauled him through empty offices. Plastic was draped everywhere. He’d smelled fresh plaster and paint.
Then they’d started asking questions he wouldn’t answer. Couldn’t, if he was to live through this.
They didn’t ask nicely.
Matt knew he was in trouble and if he didn’t dredge up the strength to do something soon, he would meet the same fate Bill had – left for dead in an alley, the victim of an apparent mugging. He couldn’t allow that. Clearly, he’d underestimated them. He couldn’t save Bill but he could and would find the people responsible for his death.
Unless he found a way out of this, though, they could and would get away with it.
Struggling, drawing strength from somewhere, Matt managed to bring his head up.
To his shock, he saw a woman standing in the doorway beyond the goons.
At first his scattered brain thought she was a vision, some kind of hallucination and he wondered if he was just imagining her.
A little thing, she was pretty in an Irish fairy kind of way, her brilliant blue eyes wide, clearly startled by the situation. Hair as black as midnight curled fetchingly around her face then fell in ripples over her shoulders. Even under these circumstances, he couldn’t help but notice that she was nicely shaped but fit – there were muscles in the arms bared by her pretty, sleeveless dress.
She had to be a hallucination, an illusion caused by the bash on the head from the cosh or too many jolts from the Taser. If he had to conjure up an illusion in what might be his last moments on earth, at least it was a pretty one.
It scared him, though. Had they rattled his brains so much he was seeing things?
Matt blinked his eyes only to find she was still there.
Confusion turned to alarm.
She wasn’t an illusion, she was real. A late office worker accidentally overhearing the noise? If so, she was a witness and now they were both dead.
‘
Run
’ he thought but couldn’t say – he had no breath to do it.
If they saw her he wouldn’t be the only one in trouble and he was in deep trouble. He couldn’t help himself, much less her. One too many punches to his midsection hadn’t done him much good, either, he could feel that. The situation was different, now, though. It wasn’t just him anymore. There was this girl. Fear for her galvanized him as fear for himself hadn’t. Desperately he tried to clear his head. He gathered himself, tried to find the strength somehow to fight if they saw her and turned on her.
To his horror, she didn’t run.
Just the opposite.
She did the one thing no one could have prepared for, the unexpected.
Stunned, he watched in astonishment.
Then they hit him again.
Without thinking, Ariel bent and snatched up a piece of scrap lumber lying by the door as she ran, taking it in both hands like a bat.
She couldn’t let this happen. Three against one wasn’t fair odds. Whatever was going on here was wrong. Good guys didn’t work that way. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t going to die here alone. A sudden rush of desperate grief gave her unexpected strength and courage.
It wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t let it.
Ariel swung, aiming for the closest man’s knees. Her self-defense instructor had taught her knees were vulnerable joints. The man standing guard never saw her coming, complacent, convinced there was no one else in the building and too intent on what was happening in front of him. The other two concentrated on holding their prisoner. The fourth, her target, had his back to her.
The two-by-four connected solidly.
Wood thrummed in her hands, stung like a baseball bat on a home run. The man shrieked as he went down. Go down he did, though, grabbing his knee with a cry of pain.
One of the two holding the battered man released him and turned but Ariel was already swinging once again.
Fury raged through her. This time she could fight back. This time she could be there.
How many times had her self-defense instructor told her to plan two moves ahead?
She had.
In high school and college, she’d been on the softball team. No great shakes but she could swing a bat. Hard.
The piece of wood caught that one in the midsection and the air exploded out of his lungs. He staggered back, bent over coughing and retching.
As she turned with the piece of two-by-four in hand, Ariel saw their prisoner pivot and shift to ram the heel of his hand up under the chin of the third.
That one’s head snapped back hard. He staggered and fell.
Visibly swaying, the battered man turned, his eyes still glazed.
Ariel swung the two-by-four hard at the head of the one who’d been giving the beating, then let it go as her target threw up a hand to block it. It struck him, spinning around his arm to smack him in the head.
Wrapping her arm around the injured man, she pulled him away.
“Come on,” she said, frantically, looking up at him.
‘
Come on
?’ Matt thought. ‘
You bet
.’
As much as he hated to admit it, he needed the support. His muscles had turned to jelly from the goddamned Taser and the beating. It would be a little while before that he recovered from that.
If he, they, were going to get out of here alive, he needed all the support he could get.
For all she was such a little thing, she was a lot stronger than she looked, taking his weight on her slender shoulders with only a little effort. Oddly enough, he found himself aware of her scent, something soft and sweet, beguiling as it teased at his nose.
They ran as best as he could manage. Between the shot to the head and the hits to his face and body, he wasn’t moving too well.
“Which way?” she asked, as they came out into the hall.
He looked down at her.
Ariel hoped he knew. She didn’t. Those green eyes, though, were still a little glassy. That wasn’t promising.
For a minute he stared blankly, clearly trying to reason it out and then pointed down the hall.
Leaning on her shoulders, he managed a shambling run. They reached the elevators and he pushed the up button.
From behind them they heard a shout. Someone swore viciously. Loudly, vociferously and inventively. They heard the sound of running feet, coming their way.
Matt glanced down the hall, and then looked at the woman he leaned on.
Her eyes were wide, frightened but determined.
The elevator doors slid open.
She dragged him into the elevator. “Parking garage?”
With a push of the button, Matt sent them on their way. The doors closed a second before his assailants reached it. As the two of them rode up they could hear one of men pound on the doors in frustration.
They weren’t out of the woods yet. The goons would simply take the next elevator. They’d be pressing that button right now and be moments behind.
The elevator doors opened onto another hallway. Signs on the wall indicated office numbers.
“Which way?” the girl demanded.
He nodded his head in the direction of the garage, making it swim while he leaned on her for support.
With relief, Ariel spotted the sign for the parking garage. At last. How had she missed it?
Behind them she heard the other elevator rising.
Trouble was still on their tail.
As frightened as she was, there was something oddly exhilarating about it. To her surprise, she found herself feeling more alive than she had in years. It was as if she’d suddenly awakened.
She glanced up at her companion.
His face was very pale and those amazing eyes were dimmed with pain, there was bruising on his face and the first signs of swelling from the beating he’d taken.
There was nothing exhilarating about that. He leaned on her heavily but despite that he was still moving.
They ran.
“My car,” he mumbled, nodding his head toward it, fishing in his pocket for the keys.
One look at the glazed expression in his eyes along with the obvious fact that he could barely stand and Ariel snatched the keys from his hand.
“Get in. I’m driving,” she said, pushing him around the other side, only just registering the make and model of the car.
She grinned.
A convertible, a sports car and a good one. Standard transmission. She could drive this. In fact, she could smoke them in this, as her speeding tickets could attest.
Snatching her GPS out of her backpack, she dropped the backpack on the floor of the back seat of the convertible and slid into the driver’s seat.
“I can drive,” Matt protested.
Actually, that was questionable and he knew it. He still couldn’t focus well but he could probably drive better than this girl could.
“Like hell you can,” she said sharply as she slid into the driver’s seat and fired it up.
As much as he hated to admit it, she was right, he could barely see straight. There was no time to argue either. He had to take the chance. He got in.
The three goons came tearing around the corner, looked around frantically.
“Eat my dust,” she snapped and threw the car into gear.