She moved quickly down the stairs to the first floor to do a methodical room-by-room search. It didn’t take long before she found her first body. She saw the legs sticking out on the far side of the kitchen table. “Quinn?”
Her heart plummeted to her toes as she raced forward. She took a breath of relief. Shirt. No sweats. Not Quinn. She took another breath and frowned in apprehension. This was Rowley, the blond-haired guard, murdered execution-style with a bullet in the middle of his forehead.
She found Holmes at the garage door entrance. Same bullet hole. Same kind of dead. They’d definitely missed their check-in.
But still no Quinn. There was no way out of this house, no way off the grounds with her team closing in.
Miranda checked her watch. Four minutes till midnight. Trip and Alex should be over the wall by now, coming in to back her up. She needed to brief them on what to expect. The sleeping gas had dissipated. There was a dead guard at each exit. No live bodies and one floor left to check.
She tapped her radio, then just as quickly tapped it off when she heard voices coming from the security command center downstairs. She covered her mouth and swallowed her cry of relief. Quinn.
“I knew there had to be a mole in GSS somewhere. Nikolai had the motive, but he didn’t have the means to get into my personal systems to send those messages or plant the bomb or take down the security of this house.” She tried to pinpoint the source of the sound and finally looked down. She was hearing him through the ventilation duct in the floor. Was there an alternative way to get into the command center without going straight down the stairs and possibly walking into an ambush? “You didn’t answer me. And I don’t like unanswered questions. I get why Titov wants me dead, why he wants to kill my daughter. I don’t like it, but I get it. Why are
you
doing this?”
She heard another voice, infinitely more troubling, as it answered. “Because he’s paying me an obscene amount of money. And,” David Damiani added, before Quinn could interrupt, “I wanted to prove I was better than you.”
Q
UINN HADN’T MADE IT TO THE
panic room as he’d briefly intended. But he’d provided enough of a distraction when he’d tackled David Damiani and knocked that gas mask off his face that Miranda had been able to get Fiona safely out of the house and beyond David’s reach before he even realized they were gone.
Now he had a cracked lens in his glasses, a swollen black eye and a few other bruises to remind him just how long it had been since he’d taken down a bully with his bare fists. Despite his broken nose, Damiani had hauled him straight down to the estate’s command center, as he’d hoped, and tied him to the chair farthest from the security monitors, but closest to the satellite feed station.
Quinn prayed that David was so caught up in his own ego that he’d forgotten who’d built this room in the first place, and that Miranda was as good a SWAT cop as Michael Cutler—as
he
—believed her to be.
He eyed the clock on the wall. He had a minute left to play this game. “What happens if you don’t finish the job by midnight? You’re never getting your hands on my daughter. Is Titov going to let you get away with that?”
“What makes you think I still can’t get to Fiona?” he taunted. The man’s skull was about as thick as that bulletproof vest he wore. “In a few minutes, you’ll be dead and I’ll be the last, lone survivor of a terrible home invasion that destroyed the great Quinn Gallagher. It’ll be in all the papers. People will pity me or think I’m a hero. But I’m going to walk out of here. And you’re not. I’ve planned for every contingency. Even your mouthy loose cannon of a girlfriend will be taken care of.” He edged closer with the Beretta in his hand pointed at Quinn’s head. “You think I don’t know she’s coming for you? I’m banking on it. No way can she get to you without coming down those stairs and coming through me first. And I’ll be waiting for her.”
“Are you sure the five million dollars is for you, David? Where is Nikolai, anyway? Still in the country? At the Swiss bank, counting his cash?”
“Seriously? He’s already in St. Feodor, watching this all on TV. A whole ocean away is a pretty good alibi, don’t you think?” His denasal laugh as he reached over to turn on the satellite feed was more pitiful than intimidating. “Nikolai, my friend.” The blur of Titov’s black-and-silver goatee came into focus on the screen. “I have your prize.” He pressed the muzzle of his gun against Quinn’s forehead. “Shall I do him now?”
“You must wait.” Nikolai pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to count off the seconds on his watch. “My son was killed at midnight. It will be the same for Mr. Gallagher.”
“Whatever.”
Despite the deadly risk of his current position, Quinn had to bite down on the urge to laugh. “I’m glad you were smart enough to figure out that the satellite link is on an individual feed from the rest of my systems.”
“Thirty seconds, David,” Nikolai announced. “I have been waiting a long time for this moment, Quinn. I have enjoyed watching you suffer. You took my factory, my money, my influence in Lukinburg—so my associates took my son. Know this. Once you are dead, your daughter will be easy prey.”
“You go to hell, Titov.”
“Now, Nikolai?”
“Twenty seconds.”
David began to pace, counting off the seconds with every step. “I always wanted to prove I was better than you, Quinn. I’m the security expert that
you
hired. I take care of GSS, which takes care of all those cops and soldiers and little old ladies in the neighborhood.
I
do that. And yet, people bow down to you. They call
you
the brilliant one. Well, let me tell you something, boss.” He got right in Quinn’s face. “I can outthink you when it comes to security. Maybe I should start my own security empire. I can afford to now, you know. I planned it all out. I was ahead of you every step of the way. I took your money. I took out your computer codes at GSS and here.”
“Ozzie did that—”
“—I got Ozzie to do it. I put a bomb in your building.” He waved his gun toward the floors above them. “I took out Holmes and Rowley because, well, I just want their share of the money. It’s just you and me, boss. And when the clock strikes midnight, it’ll be just me.”
“Ten seconds.” Nikolai was enjoying this more than he should.
“Congratulations, David.” Quinn wanted to keep him talking, wanted the man to confess every little part of their plan since the government monitored all foreign satellite feeds, and somewhere in the country, someone was watching this little show right now. “You came up with a plan to outsmart me, to take out every single device and protocol I’ve devised. Is that about right?”
“It’s eating you up inside, isn’t it?”
Quinn shrugged. “You forgot one thing.”
“What’s that?”
A dusty angel crawled out of the ventilation duct and dropped to the floor behind him. She put her gun to David’s skull, and Quinn smiled.
“You forgot to take out the nanny.”
Chapter Thirteen
New Year’s Day
Miranda wrapped the hotel’s fluffy white towel around her and tucked it in above her breasts. She combed out her damp hair and let it fall loosely down her back and shoulders.
“You’re a looker,” she joked with her reflection in the mirror. “If you’re a prize fighter.”
She touched the red-and-purple mark on her cheekbone and studied the stitched-up gash in her arm. She started counting all the tinier bumps and abrasions she’d earned while
celebrating
the holidays this week, but lost interest after number twenty.
Now, what exactly was it she had to offer a man again? Besides her heart?
She wasn’t sure if it was a case of opposites attracting, or two lonely souls finding each other at a time of crisis, or because he was her comic-book hero come to life, but she’d fallen for Quinn Gallagher in the short span of a week, and had fallen hard.
Work was settling into place for her, she hoped, as long as she could keep those self-doubts in the past where they belonged. Captain Cutler was writing up a proposal to the commissioner to make KCPD SWAT teams six-man units because it had required
every man and woman on the team to bring everyone safely home.
And she was beginning to think that making Holden Kincaid a surrogate big brother like the rest of the men of SWAT Team 1 might be better than treating him as her enemy. Dr. Kilpatrick was going to have a field day with all the changes going on in Miranda’s life the next time she sat down to talk with the police psychologist.
David Damiani had been arrested for multiple counts of murder, including the deaths of his accomplices, Holmes and Rowley. Elise Brown, suffering from an unfounded guilt that Miranda could relate to, had asked for a leave of absence from GSS. Apparently Nikolai Titov’s flirtations that she’d found so charming had been a ruse to keep a close eye on Quinn’s actions and reactions to each and every threat against GSS and Fiona. And now that there was an FBI and Interpol warrant for Nikolai’s arrest, maybe Miranda could take her badge off for a few days to see if she could be the woman Quinn wanted and the friend Fiona needed.
She supposed that new mission started right now.
She opened the bathroom door and walked right into the middle of Quinn’s chest. He wore a new pair of sweatpants from the hotel gift shop and nothing else but smooth skin and a dangerous smile. Singed by the contact, her cheeks hot with color, her words stuck in her throat, Miranda retreated a step.
But he followed her right through the doorway, leaning in to capture her mouth in a kiss. “Happy New Year.”
Miranda teased him as he pulled away. “You’re supposed to do that at midnight.”
He shrugged those beautiful shoulders. “I was a little preoccupied at the time.” He laced his fingers with hers and pulled her into the main room, where Fiona was stretched out with Petra in one of the room’s two queen-size beds. “What do you think?”
Her eyes were on Fiona’s sweet face. Oh, to be so young and innocent and to willingly move on from the things that could scare a body right down to her toes. “Is she asleep?”
“She’s zonked.” He tugged her another step. “I meant this bed.”
“Quinn!” she gasped as he pushed her onto the covers and followed her down. His thigh landed between hers, nudging the towel up to an indecent position. Her breast pillowed against his chest as he moved in right beside her. His hands were on her shoulders and face and in her hair. And he was kissing her. And, oh, how this man could kiss. Leisurely. Hungrily. He teased. He took. He lavished. He tenderly invited her to be an equal in every brush of his lips, every foray of his tongue, every gentle nip of his teeth. She was a clinging, grasping puddle of hot, gooey need before she could catch a breath and find her voice again.
“We can’t do this here.”
“Where do you suggest? My house is closed off as a crime scene. My office has glass walls. This hotel is the perfect place. A locked door. Privacy. Some good friends from SWAT 1 keeping watch outside so we can catch up on our…rest.”
“No, I meant…we shouldn’t…”
He discovered a sensitive bundle of nerves at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and he teased it with his lips again and again, enjoying how it made her squirm and stammer. He licked the spot and blew warm air across it, raising dozens of goose bumps and making her shiver.
“Damn it, Quinn.” She caught his face between her hands and demanded he look into her eyes and listen. “We can’t do this here with Fiona sleeping in the next bed.”
“You mean, what if you cry out and wake her?”
Miranda caught a taut male nipple between her thumb and forefinger, and grinned as the pectoral muscles bunched beneath her hand and a breath hissed through his teeth. “What if you cry out?” she challenged.
“You are… I can’t…” Was the mighty Quinn Gallagher actually at a loss for words?
But he wasn’t at a loss for action. As smoothly as they’d fallen onto the bed together, he pulled her to her feet and led her back to the bathroom.
He locked the door behind him and lifted her up onto the granite sink countertop. It was a cold shock to her bottom and thighs at first, but only for a moment. With a sweep of his hands, the towel was gone and his mouth was on her breast, teasing, tormenting. He caught the tip with his tongue and coaxed it to eager attention. His fingers kneaded her hips, her back, her bottom, until they slipped down to her thighs and went suddenly still.
He lifted his mouth from the hard rise and fall of her deep, stuttering chest and looked into her eyes. “I’m finishing what we started in the kitchen last night. Unless you tell me to stop.”
Miranda pulled off his spare pair of glasses and gently kissed the puffy bruise beneath his eye. Then she kissed another mark. And another. She kissed his chin. His pulse was beating along his jaw. She laved her tongue around his nipples until he was gripping the edge of the counter and moaning her name.
And then she found his mouth and kissed him there.
She opened her lips to him.
She squeezed a palmful of his butt and pulled herself into his heat, opening her body to him.
He sheathed himself and entered her slowly, filling her, completing her.
He reached over and turned on the shower, but made no move to get either of them wet.
“I don’t…” she gasped, clinging to his shoulders, balancing on a precipice of desire and vulnerability, of need and want. “Quinn?”
He grinned. “We’ll see which one of us cries out first.”
Then, with those blue eyes never leaving hers, he rocked against her and she gasped. She tongued the base of his throat and he spasmed. He flicked his thumb over her nipple and she moaned. She hugged him with her legs and he grabbed up handfuls of her hair as he plunged in deeper and deeper, faster and faster. Their duel found a rhythm, and a pure molten heat gathered in the tips of her breasts and weighed heavy at her core.
He kissed her, lifted her, plunged into her slick warmth, and she cried her pleasure into his mouth as she crested on wave after wave of aftershocks. And when she started to tumble over, he stiffened between her legs and groaned his release against her neck.