Page 9 of Jonas (Silver Team #4)

CHAPTER SEVEN

The elevator door slid open on the lobby level. Coop and Kira exited. Derrika was next out but came up short when I tagged her hand and brought her to my side while at the same time dipping my mouth to her ear.

“Boyfriend,” I whispered.

Her head tipped back to catch my gaze. Her hand in mine pulsed and she plastered a smile on her lips that, to the untrained eye, I suspected looked just as she’d intended—genuine. Big, bright, and beaming. The way a woman would smile at her man who’d just whispered something sweet.

I didn’t understand the fullness of it, but something had tweaked Derrika.

Proving she was better at her job than I’d originally thought—and I’d gotten the sense she was pretty damn good—she’d deftly signaled she had not swept her apartment for bugs, and further conversation needed to cease.

I’d also seen her mentally running through what we’d already discussed and how out there we’d be if there were listening devices.

Kira picked up the vibe and ran with it, getting us out of the apartment with a plausible excuse.

Now we were motoring through the lobby, the woman behind the desk eying us like she wasn’t pleased trash was walking through her foyer.

As soon as we crossed the street I asked, “How long has that woman worked at the desk?”

“Brenda?” Derrika asked.

“Yeah.”

“Three months. I ran her, she’s clean. Doesn’t make her not what she is, a stuck-up kiss-ass, but she’s harmless.”

I didn’t know about harmless. Stuck-up bitches had claws. But as long as she wasn’t a threat that was good enough for me.

“Did you run her prints?” Coop asked from in front of us.

“It’s like you think this is amateur hour,” Derrika muttered then raised her voice to answer Coop. “Of course I ran her prints.”

“There a reason you ran her prints?” Coop pushed.

I didn’t understand Cooper’s question, especially as a follow up to “did you run her prints.” Apparently neither did Derrika and she made that known first by squeezing my hand and then verbally, “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“Do you run everyone’s prints as a matter of course? Or was there a specific reason you ran hers?”

Derrika’s steps slowed, and I felt her string tight.

“Is there a reason you’re questioning how I do my job?”

“Yup,” Coop readily answered. “First, I need to know if I can trust you. Not with my life but with my wife’s.

Second, I’m interested in why you felt the need to run her prints.

If you were being cautious as a matter of course because that’s how you always do things, or if it was specifically something about that woman that made you go the extra mile. ”

Unlike the rest of my team, Cooper Cain wasn’t former military, he was former law enforcement who’d ended his career as SWAT. Not that Coop or Kira were technically on Silver team —they were Blue Team. But with a well-designed terror plot in the hands of the Chinese, it was all hands on deck.

“You’d be crazy to trust anyone with your life and double extra stupid to trust anyone with your wife’s.

” My head shot to the side and I stared down at Derrika as she continued, “But I’m always cautious, always thorough, and always go the extra mile.

” She paused, glanced up at me with a look I couldn’t read.

Her eyes flicked to the side and everything changed.

“Move!” she shouted, and yanked my hand with such force I had no choice but to move with her or court my shoulder being dislocated.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cooper turn, his face a mask of fury before he lifted his wife clean off her feet and darted between two parked cars.

That was all the notice I had before I heard the first crack of a gun.

The sound was mixed with glass from a nearby car window shattering.

My thigh grazed the bumper of an SUV as Derrika darted between the parked vehicles with our hands still tightly clasped.

As soon as we cleared the cars, with a mighty jerk of my hand, she ducked low.

I didn’t miss the hopefulness in her voice when she asked, “Are you strapped?”

Wordlessly, I reached around and pulled my HK from my holster clipped into the inside of my jeans.

“Escalade’s a block up,” I heard Coop yell over the traffic.

“Get Kira and go,” I yelled back. “You, too, I’ll cover?—”

“No way am I leaving you.”

I didn’t have a chance to respond before a burst of bullets slammed into the car we were ducking behind. And that did it—all-out pandemonium broke out from the pedestrians.

One gunshot had people looking around, curiously wondering if they’d heard what they thought they’d heard. A hail of gunfire made them run screaming for cover.

I didn’t want to use innocent bystanders as cover, but I had no choice. Using the chaos to move before we were hit, I grabbed Derrika’s hand and took off across the street, dodging moving vehicles in the process.

Derrika easily kept up. When my feet hit the sidewalk on the other side, I started to go right. She had other ideas and pulled left.

“Around the corner is a parking garage.”

I let her hand go, allowing her to lead.

Around the corner we went. Down half a block, I saw the parking sign at the same time I heard the screeching of tires.

The next few seconds happened in a blur—a literal blur.

I felt a sharp pain hit my back. Immediately, my legs felt like lead weights, my arms the same.

I tightened my grip on my HK but even that felt like an enormous task.

Darkness danced in the corners of my vision until Derrika’s running form tunneled.

Fuck .

“Keep…going.” The words felt like they’d taken a million years to get out and worse they sounded slurred.

I vaguely saw Derrika look back. I distantly heard her shout, “Down.”

I didn’t get down.

I dropped and everything went black.

It could’ve been the cold, rough concrete under my cheek, the throbbing in my shoulders, or the weight of a body pressing on my back that had me coming back into consciousness.

No wait, it was the screaming—the very feminine, very irate, very loud screeching next to my ear since Derrika was lying on top of me.

“Don’t you dare,” she shrieked.

“Move!” a man demanded.

“Fuck you, asshole, you’ll have to get through me first.”

Was she…protecting me?

My hands were tied behind my back with zip ties.

It was an amateur move. If Derrika would roll off of me, I could pop the plastic digging into my skin in two-point-five seconds.

I wiggled my fingers, grazed the waistband of her jeans, and as I suspected she was indeed using her body as a shield.

Derrika’s body went from loose to stiff in the blink of an eye—not that my eyes were open to blink.

I hadn’t so much as cracked them open as I waited to get my bearings.

“Miss Hart.” A second voice entered the fray, this one calmer, more refined. “If you would please come sit back down so we can finish?—”

“Finish?” Derrika interrupted. “We haven’t begun, asshole. And we won’t unless you untie me so I can see to my friend.”

Jesus .

The woman was trying to protect me.

“You know that’s not going to happen,” the man returned.

“Well then it sucks for you because I’m not talking until I know my friend is safe.”

I didn’t need time for her words to sink in.

They burrowed into my skin like the tip of an arrow, leaving pain in their wake.

No one other than my teammates had ever had my back.

And right then Derrika had it—literally.

She was lying over me, how she got there and the circumstances that put her there, were a mystery.

But I could guess. I was nothing more than a helpless unconscious body and she didn’t like that much.

“Miss Hart?—”

“Go fuck yourself with that Miss Hart crap. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know as soon as I know my friend is safe. Untie me so I can check on him, then I’ll leave with you and sing like a canary.”

Was she insane?

Not the sing like a canary part, I didn’t believe that for a second. But this crazy woman would offer herself in exchange for my safety, which made me hark back to what Nebraska had warned us about.

My fingers curled into the waistband of her jeans, silently making my feelings known on her attempt. This unfortunately didn’t deter her or her mouth for long.

“I could teach you some manners,” the first man rejoined.

“You could try,” she snapped. “But you’d fail.”

Good Christ. She was going to get herself killed before I could assess what we were working with.

At least two men, cool room, concrete floor.

Other than that, I was flying blind. I had no idea how long I’d been out.

But I did know that Cooper and Kira would’ve alerted the team.

It was only a matter of time before backup arrived.

Now to keep Miss Mouthy quiet long enough for me to get a better understanding of what we were working with.

I groaned loud enough for anyone in the room to hear. Derrika’s response was immediate and comical—or it would’ve been if the knee between my legs that she jammed into my thigh to get me to shut up wasn’t dangerously close to a part of my anatomy I was particularly fond of.

I grunted. Her knee dug in harder.

“Good, the big guy’s waking up,” guy number one sneered. “Now how about your first lesson.” With that came a boot to my kidney. “Get the fuck up and mind your mouth.”

My eyes shot open, my gaze landed on nothing but a white wall.

A cool glow to the room told me the room was windowless.

The pain-filled grunt from the steel-toed boot to my side sounded more like a growl.

I could think of Derrika as mouthy but hearing some motherfucker who had snatched us for reasons I could not only guess but was certain had to do with Delcon since he was calling her Miss Hart made me want to shove my fist down his throat until he choked on it.

Derrika, however, was undeterred.

“You think to kick him again, not only will I die before I tell you what you want to know, I’ll claw your eyes out when I’m free.”

Jesus.

Vicious.

And I’d be lying if it wasn’t a total turn-on how fearless this woman was. But not at my expense.

“Roll off.” My murmured command was ignored.

“Not until the boss?—”

Before she could finish, her body weight disappeared and her mouth ran away.

“Put me down, asshole.”

Her words were mixed with grunts—both hers and whomever picked her up.

I quickly rolled to my hip, then to my feet, and came face to face with a dark-haired man, his Chinese ancestry clear, but he had no accent.

Either he was extremely talented at hiding it or he hadn’t been raised in the place of his lineage.

His suit was expensive, as were his shoes, and the gold watch that peeked out from under the cuff of his jacket.

That was as far as I got before the room shook and the lights went out.

The cavalry had arrived and the timing couldn’t’ve been more fucked.

I couldn’t see where Derrika was though I could still hear her struggling.

With that, I lifted my arms as high as I could with them zipped together, bent forward, and slammed my wrists down on my lower back as hard as I could while jerking my wrists outward.

The plastic ties popped open. My first instinct was to get to Derrika.

That instinct was proven unnecessary when a man’s howl of pain was followed up with what sounded like a body hitting the concrete.

“He’s down,” Derrika called out.

I switched targets and moved in the direction of shuffling loafers.

I didn’t have to know the man in the expensive suit to know he was the type of man who would recoil to the corner when shit hit the fan.

He was the type of man who employed others to get their hands dirty.

He was the boss, untouchable because he surrounded himself with morally bankrupt assholes who had no compunction when it came to harming innocent women.

In other words, Boss Man was a total pussy who was fixing to learn an important life lesson. That lesson started and ended with my fist to his throat. I was close enough to smell the man’s cologne when a door banged open.

“Cover,” Cooper’s voice rang out.

I didn’t drop and cover like Cooper had instructed.

Instead, in the pitch black I turned in search of Derrika.

She had no clue what was coming. Not that covering her face would do much against the effects of the tear gas Coop was going to employ, but if she could get down, curl into a ball, and cover her face with her shirt, it would help… a little.

However, I didn’t know where she was, and unlike Coop and the team I didn’t have on NVGs, which would make finding her difficult.

Seeing as I didn’t want to call out and alert the two men in the room what was about to ensue, I was stuck fumbling through the darkness.

As it would happen, I didn’t need to find Derrika, she found me.

With a tentative brush over my arm, which was obviously all she needed to ascertain I wasn’t the douche in the suit, she all but tackled me.

I twisted Derrika, bringing her back to my front, dropped my mouth to her ear, and didn’t hesitate issuing demands.

“Cover your face with your shirt, drop into a ball, and close your eyes.”

She didn’t miss the urgency nor could she miss the hiss of the CS canister filling the room with toxic gas. As soon as Derrika was on her knees I curled around her the best I could and shoved my face into the side of her neck. I closed my eyes, trusting my team to have my back.

It took a second for the room to fill with noxious vapor. Derrika’s body bucked under mine. I held on tighter listening to the sounds of grunts, coughing, and ultimately gagging and groans of pain.

“Clear,” Coop called out. “On the move.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I unfolded, taking Derrika with me, turning her again so I could position her where I needed. She said not a word when I scooped her up into my arms.

“Keep your eyes closed,” I told her. I felt her nod against my chest. “Ready.”

Coop’s hand wrapped around my upper arm, then with my eyes watering, nose burning, lungs feeling like they were on fire, I carried Derrika out.