Page 150 of Storm Warning

“Yep.” Her minicomputer beeped. Outstanding. She was in. Riley typed in a flurry of commands and watched the screen fill up with the data transfer. Incredible. She’d have to tell Zane how impressed she was with his invention. This sucker was incredibly fast.

When the minicomputer beeped again, showing the completion of her commands, Riley typed in two othercommands and watched as it wiped out the hard drive of the lab computer in seconds.

After the process finished, Riley scooted to the next computer and repeated the process, marveling at the speed of the minicomputer. Zane’s toy copied the hard drive and deleted the original information in about two minutes, then uploaded the information to Fortress. Once the transfer was complete, the minicomputer deleted the hard drive copy from its memory, leaving room for another copy-transfer-and-delete operation.

She had two computers remaining when a powerful hand grabbed her arm, jerked Riley to her feet, and held her against a hard chest. The cold steel of a pistol’s barrel pressed hard against her temple.

When she gasped, Andre turned on his heel and froze.

“If you move, she dies.”

The way Riley’s captor held her, she couldn’t see his face. Who was he? She scanned the machines around her and finally found a reflective surface at the right angle.

She looked at the reflected face of her captor and swallowed hard.

Javier Garcia.

CHAPTER THIRTY

ANDRE KEPT HISaim centered on Javier Garcia. “Let her go.” One finger twitch, one tug of the trigger, and she’d be dead in an instant. He couldn’t let that happen.

Obsidian Storm’s leader laughed, amusement in his eyes. “Who has the upper hand here, Marsh? It’s certainly not you.”

From the corner of his eye, Seth signaled Teagan. She nodded. Echo’s team leader then looked at Elliot Montgomery, who gave a slight nod.

Andre should breathe easier with two world-class snipers locked onto Garcia. With Riley so close to the line of fire, he was anything but at ease. “Want to count how many of your soldiers are dead or injured? I’ll be glad to wait.”

Garcia snorted. “Your friends will all die. Is that what you want?”

Seth inched closer. “What do you want, Garcia?”

“You took something from me. It’s only fair I take something from you. I’ll take the beautiful Riley and her boyfriend. You and the rest of your people will leave our province and return to your families. You will stay away from the Chihuahua Province. We’re the power here. You’re unwelcome invaders. If you don’t give me what I want, you all will die along with Riley and Andre. Come now. That’s a more than fair bargain, isn’t it?”

Seth smiled. “No deal.”

Garcia uttered a long string of shouted curses. “You are a fool. You can’t win this fight. We outnumber you.”

“Checked your numbers lately?”

Garcia flicked a glance around the lab. When he noticed the Fortress operatives far outnumbered the soldiers left alive, the muscles of his face hardened. “The numbers in this lab don’t matter. I have the prize right here. Like in a game of chess, I have the queen and the king. If you want them to live longer, you will leave this place now.”

Movement behind Garcia caught Andre’s attention. When a man with a familiar face appeared, Andre’s breath caught. These two men had serious steel spines. They were looking down the barrels of 20 guns and acted as though they had the advantage. Didn’t matter that they still had a handful of soldiers pointing weapons at the operatives. Fortress trained its people to shoot well. They couldn’t miss so close to their targets.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Andre deliberately relaxed and sounded casual. “Riley is a handful. She’ll tell you as much.”

His woman smiled at him and winked. Oh, yeah. He loved Riley Sloan with every breath he took. They just had to survive so he could spend the rest of his life proving it to her.

“Look at our other prize, Javier,” Diego Mendoza said. His gaze locked on Andre’s. “We have a cooperative Marsh who will do whatever we say because he’ll never leave his woman behind. Isn’t that right, Marsh?”

“No one will separate me from Riley. Do you realize how much danger you’re in?”

Diego assessed the situation and shifted from one foot to the other, his confidence undimmed.

A hand signal from Seth and it was all over. Two of the best snipers in the black ops business would take Garcia and Mendoza down.

Riley moved her hand while staring straight at Andre.

He frowned. The movement was too subtle for him to make out at this angle. What was she telling him? He shook his head enough to pass the message that he didn’t know what she planned.