Navy SEAL to Die For (14 page)

“Like me.” He bent to press his lips to hers. “Just let me say
be careful
and let it go at that.” Quentin nibbled at her earlobe and whispered, “I’m telling you I care.”

“When you put it that way...” She reached up and cupped his face in her uninjured palm and turned him to face her. “I can live with it.”

“As long as you live.”

They kissed, long, hard and deep. She opened to him and he thrust his tongue past her teeth, sliding along the length of hers in a slow, sensuous display of affection. He ran his hands down her back to cup her buttocks. When she flinched, he remembered the cut. “Sorry.”

“Me, too. I like how big and warm your hands are on me.” Becca threaded her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and deepened the kiss once more.

“Ahem. When you two are done sucking face, we might get on with this mission.” Sam leaned out of the van. “Quentin, Kat and I have three trashcans to commandeer and position before Becca makes her grand entrance.”

Quentin didn’t want to let go of Becca. “See you in a few. Once we get the fireworks in place, we’ll be listening for you in the van. Send up a verbal flare if you need help.”

“And you’ll do what?” Becca shook her head. “Don’t be a hero and try to come into the building. I can take care of myself.”

“I can’t help it.” Quentin kissed the tip of her nose. “I want to take care of you.”

“Then plan what we can do to take care of each other when I get out of the building with the disk.” She kissed him again and stepped into the van. “Let’s do this.”

Quentin’s chest tightened with his frustration. He wanted to be at Becca’s side through this operation. SEALs worked in teams for the most part. Becca needed someone on the inside who had her six. Too many things could go wrong.

And all he would be able to do was listen and maybe blow up a trashcan. Some help that would be.

Chapter Fourteen

The company car slid up against the curb and Becca got out. Her buttocks hurt every time she moved. She’d be glad when she could go back to her apartment and sleep until the pain went away. The medic said she might need stitches. Hopefully, the wound wouldn’t reopen and start to bleed again. Keeping a low profile would be even more difficult if she left a trail of blood all the way up to Oscar’s office.

Straightening, she winced. The stilettoes weren’t helping. If she had to run, she’d end up kicking them off and running barefooted. She prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

Get in. Get the disk and get out without stirring up any trouble.
She repeated this mantra all the way into the building.

Pretending she belonged, she nodded toward the guard at the front desk and headed straight for the elevator.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the guard said. “I’ll need to check you in here.”

“It’s okay. I left my reading glasses in my office. I’ll just be a minute.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” He stood and started around his desk. “It’s SOP—Standard Operation Procedure. I need to see your badge and enter it in my log.”

“Tell you what. If you’d just get my glasses for me, I’ll wait here.” In a whisper meant only for Geek’s ears, she said, “I could use a little help here.”

A loud bang sounded outside. The guard jumped back to his monitors. “What the hell?” He lifted his radio mic and said, “What the hell’s going on out there? Sounds like we’re under attack.”

While the guard manned the radio and the screens in front of him, Becca slipped past to the elevator. An alarm went off and no matter how many times she hit the button to open the doors, the elevator was shut to keep anyone from going up or down. Spinning dangerously on her heels, she spotted a stairwell and hurried for it. “I’m taking the stairs,” she said softly, hoping the mic picked up her words.

“Becca? Becca, can you hear me?” Geek said into her ear.

She didn’t respond, wanting to get through the door before the man on duty tried to stop her.

The guard looked around, but an incoming call on his radio demanded his attention.

Becca ducked into the stairwell and started the climb to the fourth floor. “Geek, I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

Taking a few steps up the staircase, she strained to hear Geek’s voice, but all she got was static. With no time to figure out the electronics, Becca hiked up her dress and ran as fast as she could in heels, twinges of pain shooting through her buttocks with each step.

Maybe she would have been better off letting Sam handle this. Her wound would bleed before she reached the floor with Oscar’s office. He’d been on the same floor with her father, their offices side by side.

The few times Becca visited, she’d always stopped to say hello to her father’s old friend, who’d greeted her warmly with a bear hug and a smile.

Her heart hurt the higher she climbed, not because she was in bad shape. Her chest tightened with memories of her father, whom she missed more than she ever imagined. When she got to the bottom of who’d sent the mercenaries to kill her father and her, she’d take the time she needed to grieve. Until then, she didn’t have time for emotion. She had a job to do.

When she reached the fourth floor landing, she pushed open the door and peered into an empty hallway. Her father’s old office was halfway down the corridor, and Oscar’s just past it. She wondered who had inherited Marcus Smith’s office and if they’d moved right in upon her father’s death.

Pushing that thought aside, she dropped the hem of her dress and strode out into the hallway as if she owned the place. The emergency lights still blinked and she prayed the security guards were more worried about the outside of the building than the inside.

With a confident stride, she closed the distance between the stairwell and the door to Oscar’s office. She ran the card through the scanner and keyed in the numbers she’d committed to memory. For a little more than a second, the lock did nothing, then a green light flashed.

Becca twisted the knob and pushed the door inward. The outer office consisted of a desk for Oscar’s secretary. Becca hurried around the desk to the next door that led into Oscar’s inner office. Once inside, she closed the door behind her and ran to his desk.

With the clock ticking in her head, she figured she didn’t have a lot of time, if any. If Geek hadn’t been able to tap into the security cameras, and Becca had been caught on camera in the stairwell, the security team could be on their way up now.

Becca eased into Oscar’s chair behind his desk, pulled out the top right drawer and ran her fingers along the underside of the desktop. At first she didn’t feel anything but the smooth texture of the wood.

She ran her hand back the other way, checking closer to the outer edges. Her fingers slid over something smooth and rounded and her pulse ratcheted up a notch. Giving it a firm push, she heard something click and a shallow drawer that had previously looked more like the rest of the trim around the edges of the desk popped out. Inside was a flat, rectangular card-like disk, no bigger than the size of a quarter.

Becca snatched the device, tucked it into her hidden pocket and pushed to her feet.

“I’m glad you found it.”

Becca yelped and staggered backward, the backs of her knees hitting against Oscar’s chair, making her sit back down, hard. Pain knifed through her as she landed on her injured bottom. She stared across the room at John Francis, the CIA’s second in command. Her father’s and Oscar’s boss.

“I thought you were at the gala,” she said, buying time while her brain processed what he’d just said.

“I had business to take care of at the office. I see you did, too.” He held out his hand. “I’ll take that disk.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His face hardened. “Come, Becca. Your father didn’t raise a fool. Hand over the disk.”

She stood and walked around Oscar’s desk. “Or what?”

“I’ll turn you over to the security team and they’ll take it from you when they frisk you.”

She shrugged. “Then they would have it and you wouldn’t.” Becca tilted her head. “Go ahead. Call the guards.”

When John reached beneath his jacket, Becca took the opportunity to charge him. Nothing stood in her way but five feet of carpet. She bent low and ran at him like a lineman going for the quarterback.

Hitting him in the belly, she knocked him backward and he hit the door. But he recovered quickly, grabbed a handful of her hair, knocked the headset out of her ear and stuck a smooth, gunmetal-gray Glock against her temple. “Don’t push me, woman. You’ve caused more than your share of trouble, sneaking into a restricted-access facility.”

“I take it you’re the one behind the murders of my father and Rand Houston, and the attempted murder of Oscar Melton.”

“Not attempted. He passed on his way to the hospital. The emergency room doctor called it. But I didn’t kill him. That Russian waiter did.”

Her heart stopped beating in her chest for a couple of seconds as emotion threatened to derail the functioning of her brain. First her father, now Oscar? When would the killing end?

“Come on, Miss Smith, hand over the disk. It contains classified data.”

“I don’t have it,” she insisted.

“You can give me the disk, or I can take it from you. Either way, I’ll have it.” He pulled tighter on her hair. “Now, which is it to be?”

“You’ll have to take it.” She slammed her stiletto heel into his instep.

He grunted and loosened his hold on her hair.

Becca lunged for the door and ran through before John could grab her again. She was banking on the assumption that the man wouldn’t shoot her in the building. It was a risk, but one she’d take to get the hell out with the disk in her pocket.

As she ran through the outer office, she shoved the secretary’s rolling chair out in front of the CIA deputy director. He stumbled and cursed, giving her just enough time to make the outer office door.

As she reached for the door, a gunshot echoed through the room, tearing a three-inch strip out of the doorframe next to her hand. “Enough!”

Becca froze. Afraid if she opened the door, she wouldn’t have time to take even one step before John put a bullet in her back.

He stepped up behind her.

Bunching her muscles, Becca prepared to defend herself. As she cocked her elbow, John pressed something against her side. “We quit playing games now.”

A blast of electricity ripped through her. Her body jerked and shook. Her legs buckled and she dropped to the floor like a ton of bricks, her head bouncing against the door.

The knock on the head, more than the shock, made her fade in and out of consciousness. Everything in her body tingled and her vocal cords refused to work. She lay as helpless as a newborn while John patted her body, searching for the disk. As much as he tried he couldn’t find the hidden pocket tucked against the waistline of her gown. The disk was so small it was barely discernible from the seams.

“Where is it?” the deputy director demanded, his face red.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Doors opened and closed along the corridor.

John pocketed the stun gun and holstered his gun. “We’re getting out of here.”

Becca wanted to tell him he wasn’t going anywhere, but her body wasn’t her own and she couldn’t move anything, including her mouth. Forming thoughts was equally difficult.

John Francis lifted her in his arms and flung open the door. “Help. This woman is injured. I need to get her to the ground floor immediately.”

Becca tried to cry out, willing her mouth to move and her voice to sound through her throat, but she couldn’t make the muscles of her throat work. John ran with her to the elevator. The guards used their badges to override the safety shutdown, and they rode down together, John making up a story about an intruder on the fourth floor.

“Don’t let him get away. You have to go back and find him. He’s dangerous.”

One of the guards who came down with them held the elevator door open. “Are you and the woman going to be okay?”

“Yes. I’ll wait outside for the ambulance. I think she’s in a state of shock.” John stepped out of the elevator carrying Becca. He glanced back. “Don’t wait with me. That maniac might hurt someone else!”

Please, don’t let him take me!
Becca shouted, but nothing came out of her mouth. A single tear slipped down her cheek.

Another guard hurried toward John. “Sir, it isn’t safe to be in the building. Someone set off explosives on the perimeter. What happened to her?”

John shook his head. “I was showing my wife where I worked, but she obviously had too much to drink at the gala. Could you have my car brought around? My keys are in my right front pocket.” He turned so the guard could fish the keys out of his pocket.

“I’ll have someone get it for you. Wait right here.”

When the guard left, John juggled her, reached for the stun gun and zapped her again.

Becca lost consciousness. When she came to, they were still standing in the lobby of the CIA building and her body still refused to cooperate. If only she could throw herself on the ground, it might slow John enough that her voice would come back and she could tell the guards John was kidnapping her.

But she couldn’t even rock her body, or open her lips. A few moments later, a guard ran in. “Sir, your vehicle is out front. Do you want me to carry her for you?”

“No, no. She’s my wife, I can handle it. Tomorrow I’m signing her up for an intervention. She’s gone too far.” He marched through the doors and out to the waiting car where a man in a guard uniform held the door.

Help me!
Becca screamed inside.
Quentin, Sam, Kat, Geek! Can’t you see?

Police cars with bright blue strobe lights pulled in at the same time as John settled her in the backseat. A bomb squad van pulled up. The scene was chaotic.

John climbed into the driver’s seat and a moment later someone tapped on his windshield.

He lowered it.

“Sir, you need to move this car away from the building. You could be in danger.”

“I was just about to do that. I’ll be out of your way in a second.”

As he raised the window, Becca lay in the backseat, able to move the tip of a toe. Sweet heaven, how was she going to get out of this mess?

* * *

A
S
SOON
AS
Quentin had his charge set, he raced back to the communications van and crowded in behind Geek, staring at images on the security cameras. On one side were the images Geek staged for the guards to see. The hallways were empty, nothing moved. On the other side were the true images. The lobby where Becca had been confronted by the guard, the stairwell she would take up to the fourth floor and the fourth floor hallway.

Kat and Sam entered the van shortly after Quentin, breathing hard from running the two blocks to the vehicle.

As soon as Becca encountered problems with the front desk guard, Quentin detonated his charge. Becca made it to the stairwell and then all the electronics went to hell.

The security camera screens turned to scrambled static.

“Becca, can you hear me?” Geek said into the microphone.

She never responded.

“What happened?” Quentin demanded.

“I don’t know. It’s as if someone is scrambling the signal.”

Quentin leaned over and tapped the side of the monitor. “Make it come back.”

“Hitting it isn’t going to help.” Geek’s fingers flew over a keyboard. “I can’t. Get. It. Back. I don’t know what’s causing the blackout.”

They couldn’t see, hear or contact Becca inside the CIA headquarters building. She would be flying blind and there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Geek switched on the police scanner.

Reports of a terrorist attack at the CIA building spread across the police network.

“Damn,” Kat said. “We’re all going to jail.”

His heart pounding, Quentin paced the length of the van—two steps—and spun. “I don’t care as long as Becca gets out alive.”

“I have her on the tracking device!” Geek shouted.