Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games #2)(85)

And Shaggy withdrawing his gun from the holster at his waist.

“If you move, I’ll put a bullet in your brain,” he says quietly. “Nothing personal.”

“I don’t know, that seems pretty personal to me.”

He doesn’t answer or make any other sound. I feel him listening, feel his attention intently focused into the darkness that surrounds us, and on the door.

The electrically operated door, which, with the power out, is more like the lid of a crypt. We’re not getting out of here unless someone lets us out.

Shaggy says, “Just stay put. The backup generators will come on in a second.”

That’s what they all say.

After a while when nothing happens, I start to count. It keeps my mind occupied, keeps me from thinking how Shaggy might actually be able to see in the dark with those cat eyes of his and decide to pull the trigger even if I don’t move. Keeps me from thinking about Connor, and what he’s thinking right now.

Keeps me from focusing on how much I wish he were here with me.

Finally, when I’m nearing six hundred, I hear a noise.

Bang.

It’s far away, the sound muffled by the thick walls, the reinforced steel door. It comes again several seconds later, louder and closer than before.

Bang.

“Did you—”

“I heard it,” says Shaggy grimly.

“Gunfire?”

“Or explosives. Charges of some kind. Hard to tell.”

Another thirty seconds and then—

BANG!

The floor vibrates. My gasp is audible.

Speaking low and rapidly, Shaggy says, “Tip the table over. It’s steel, heavy, you’ll have to put all your weight behind it to get it over. If you can, drag it left a few feet so it’s parallel to the door. Then get down behind it and don’t get back up until I tell you to.”

I move without thinking. I’m on my feet, the chair kicked out from beneath me, my hands curled around the cold edge of the table, lifting with all my might. When my biceps fail to do the job, I crouch low, set my shoulder under the edge, and shove using the strength of my thighs.

The table topples over with a crash.

I drag it blindly by one leg to the left as instructed, guessing how far I need to pull it to put it parallel to the door. The sound of metal grinding against cement doesn’t mask the next earsplitting bang, which produces a tremor in the floor that I feel to the marrow of my bones. I quickly kneel behind the table, listening to Shaggy mutter a curse.

“Drop your weapon,” I urge, stress making my voice hoarse.

His laugh is hard and short. “There’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. Whoever’s coming through that door is getting a belly full of lead.”

“If you resist, it will only piss him off! Just lay down your weapon and get behind this f*cking table—”

BOOM!

Following that deafening blast of sound, several things happen at once.

The door flies open with a scream of rendered metal. A concussion of air, hot and gassy, blasts through the room with such force, it blows the table back, taking me with it. I hit the far wall. The breath leaves my lungs in a sharp gust. There’s a crunching sensation in my right shoulder, followed by searing pain. A flash of light, brief but intense, illuminates the room just long enough for me to see Shaggy blown clear off his feet, flung backward until he collides brutally with the wall. His head hits it with a sickening crack.

He slides limply to the floor, where he lies unmoving.

Everything takes on the surreal quality of a dream.

Sound is muffled as if I’m underwater. A murky red light permeates the smoky air. The light moves in odd, zigzag lines, cutting this way and that. I roll to my side, cradling my arm, which hangs at an unnatural angle, and try to regain my balance. I get my legs beneath me and shakily rise.

Crowded in the doorway are imposing figures dressed all in black combat gear. Boots, pants, jackets, gloves. Black helmets cover their faces, reflecting a faint green light from within.

Night vision, I think, at the same time I realize what the strange red light is.

The figures in black each carry a rifle with a tactical infrared light mounted on the bore. Five little red dots land in the center of my chest and wriggle there angrily like a nest of wasps.

Sounding very far away, an emotionless masculine voice says, “Target acquired.”

The men in black swarm into the room to take me.





Thirty-One





Connor




I’m pacing. Back and forth across the entryway of Miranda’s office, my boots wearing a track in her expensive Turkish rug.

Across the large room in front of a wall of glistening windows, Miranda sits behind her imposing oak desk. Regal. Silent. Watchful. Hands pressed flat against the polished wood.

Her hands are still. Her body is still. She gives no indication of stress.

That’s how I know she’s guilty. No normal person faced with a roomful of armed men—and one with the attitude of a bear woken early from his winter hibernation—should be that calm.

The quadruplets are behind me, flanking the door as they did in the room where I woke up, standing in the same tense, gun-gripping readiness that seems to be their default.

Downs stands to one side of Miranda’s desk, hands in his overcoat pockets, staring out the windows. In contrast to her watchful silence, he’s whistling a jaunty tune, rocking back on his heels, enjoying the view.