Most Wanted (The Red Sky Conspiracy, Book 1) Read online

  “I got eyes on her,” Danford said as she walked past him.

  “We’re on the move,” Pete said. “We see you, Quinn.”

  There was something reassuring about Pete’s voice, even more so than Ben’s, but that could have just been the fact Ben was old enough to be her father while Pete…was certainly not.

  “Hey, baby,” a voice said at the same time a hand reached for her wrist like some monstrous tentacle snaking out of the shadows.

  She turned slightly so that the extending fingers brushed her hand but didn’t grab onto her arm. “Bathroom break,” she said, and kept going.

  “Catch you later, then,” the guy said, grinning after her. His best attempt at being handsome, she guessed.

  Not in this lifetime, she thought, but flashed him a reciprocal smile anyway before turning and kept going.

  There. The door. Ten yards away.

  Maybe I should walk slower…

  “Right behind you,” Danford said in her ear.

  “Keep your distance,” Ben said.

  “Gotcha, boss.”

  “Ringo?” Ben asked.

  “Moving into position now,” Pete answered. “It’s a good thing those bouncers didn’t do a cavity search on me, or else I’d be armed with only my good looks right about now.”

  “There you go again, being all delusional,” Miller said.

  “Shut up and move,” Ben snapped.

  “Yes, sir,” Pete said.

  Quinn smiled. She wondered how much of Pete and Miller’s brief back-and-forth was for her benefit. She was, after all, the youngest agent out here by far, and the only one who could count her field experience in weeks while they all had years under their belts.

  I shouldn’t be here. You made a mistake bringing me here, Ben.

  God, I hope I didn’t just screw up both our careers…

  Then it was there. The back office.

  There was no one standing in front of it and there wasn’t anything that even resembled a plaque on the thick heavy oak, the kind that was going to withstand at least one—maybe even two or three—strikes from a battering ram. There was a large window to its right that the occupants could use to look out at the nightclub interior. Right now the blinders were pulled tight, but there were bright lights on the other side.

  “Easy does it,” Ben said in her ear. “We’re right behind you, Quinn.”

  It’s not what’s behind me that I’m worried about, Ben, she thought as she reached for the door and knocked twice.

  It swung open almost right away, surprising her, and the same large man who had opened it earlier filled out the doorframe, bright lights silhouetting his hulking form.

  Damn, and what have they been feeding you, big boy?

  The man didn’t say anything right away, and there was just enough space between his broad frame and the open door that she was able to sneak a quick look inside at—

  Two men in the back of the office, in front of a large cherry-colored battleship of a desk. She instantly recognized the one sitting on the edge of the furniture: Gary Ross. He was a short man in his thirties, wearing a custom suit and tie that probably cost more than her year’s salary. His legs were stretched out in front of him, arms straight and hands pushing down against the desk, and he was in the middle of a conversation when his bodyguard opened the door, and Gary Ross glanced over.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Ben had said. “Just get them to open the door and make the ID. Whether it’s Porter or not, you are to get away as fast as you can after that.”

  You don’t have to tell me twice, Ben.

  The man Ross was talking to was standing in front of him, hands in his pockets, and he too turned his head in her direction. The man’s eyes narrowed and she knew, without a single shred of doubt, that he remembered her from the last time they had locked eyes earlier.

  Oh, fuck me.

  “Quinn,” Ben said in her ear. “Can you confirm? Is it John Porter?” When she didn’t answer, “Quinn, can you hear me? Is it John Porter?” And when she still didn’t answer for a second—or was that five? Ten? “Quinn!”

  “Close the fucking door!” Ross snapped.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Ben had said.

  Oh dammit, Ben, he made me. He made me.

  The bodyguard had kept one hand on the door the entire time, and he was about to obey his boss when Quinn slammed the edge of her phone into his thick, bulging neck.

  As the man stumbled back, eyes bugging against their sockets, Quinn shouted into the phone, “It’s him! It’s Porter!”

  “Are you sure?” Ben said, his voice rising almost to a shout in her ear.

  But she didn’t have time to answer and dropped the phone because she needed to reach for her purse.

  The big man had continued to stagger back into the room, abandoning the door, and that allowed Quinn to step inside even as she dipped her right hand into the purse and groped desperately for the gun—

  There!

  Ross had pushed off the desk and was staring wide-eyed at her and at his backpedaling bodyguard as if he didn’t know which one of them to focus on. He looked almost comical switching back and forth, but she wasn’t laughing and neither was the man standing in front of Ross.

  Because John-friggin-Porter was already moving, sidestepping to the right away from Ross and somehow vanishing behind the lumbering bodyguard.

  Don’t lose him! Don’t lose him!

  Quinn finished pulling the gun out of her purse even as Ben shouted in her ear, “Everyone, get in there now! Now, goddammit, now now now!”

  She lunged to the right so she could see past the bodyguard blocking her view of Porter—

  A mountain of flesh and a cheap off-the-rack suit rushed at her out of nowhere as something (Someone!) pushed the bodyguard in her direction, and it was all Quinn could do to scramble out of his path or be crushed by the incoming bulk. It was like trying to go around a stampeding bull, but she managed it anyway, and caught a glimpse of Porter just as he revealed himself again.

  She ignored the sudden gust of wind as Ross’s man rushed past her, his left arm brushing against her shoulder even as she lifted the Glock. But then Porter did something unexpected, and instead of running for the door in a bid to escape, he launched himself right at her.

  And he was fast.

  How is he so fast?

  She pulled the trigger as Porter’s hand grabbed her wrist and yanked it to one side, and before she could hit him with her free left hand, he was moving, moving, moving so goddamn fast until he had somehow gotten behind her. Then the gun disappeared out of her hand (How? How?) and she was turning, facing the door again just as—

  Danford and Pete and Miller poured inside, guns drawn, shouting simultaneously: “FBI! Everyone get down! Get down now!”

  Something very cold pressed against the back of her neck, and Quinn froze.

  “Do me a favor?” a voice whispered behind her. “Don’t move?”

  Chapter 2

  It was the dress. She blamed it on the dress. It was too short and too tight and it limited her movements. Because she had seen him coming instead of going for the door and knew his intentions even as she raised her gun hand, but hadn’t been able to get it up in time, and the shot sailed well past his head and into the office’s back wall.

  Then one second he was across the room, and the next he wasn’t.

  She didn’t understand how any of it was possible, but none of it mattered because she was only aware of the feel of her own gun pressed against the back of her neck. The contact between her skin and the Glock’s polymer material was electric and would have been overwhelming if not for the sudden presence of his body pressed up against hers, chest to back, so tightly that she was certain there wasn’t enough space for air to pass between them.

  She didn’t have to look back (not that she could have, anyway) to know he was in a slight crouch, morphing his body to use her as a shield as the three FBI agents swarmed into the room. Pete, Mi
ller, and Danford had followed her into the office, but they hadn’t arrived in time. All three had their weapons drawn and had spread out to cover as much of the room as possible. Danford was aiming his gun at the bodyguard, who was kneeling on the floor, gasping for breath. That left Ringo and Miller with eyes on her, Porter, and Ross somewhere in the back.

  “Let her go!” Pete shouted.

  “No,” Porter said.

  “What?”

  “No,” Porter said again, his warm breath beating against the back of her neck every time he spoke.

  “The fuck you mean no?” Pete said.

  Porter might have chuckled, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The music had shut off outside the office, the loud beats replaced by stampeding footsteps as people rushed out while others rushed in. She glimpsed bodies outside the door on the other side of Pete and Miller flashing across the open frame.

  Quinn had dropped her phone to get to her gun, but it was still turned on and the Bluetooth remained active. She could hear Ben’s voice now, amazingly calm: “Get in there. Contain the situation.”

  “Let her go!” Pete shouted again. His Glock was aimed at Porter just as it was when he first entered—which was to say, aimed straight at her. She wasn’t even sure if Pete could see his target and wanted to tell him to put his gun down before he accidentally discharged it, because Oh God, I don’t want to die like this. Not like this…

  But she didn’t say anything because Pete knew what he was doing. So did Danford, still covering the bodyguard, and Miller, who had skirted farther to the left until she could keep her gun on Ross. Quinn couldn’t see Ross, but she could hear his nervous shuffling.

  “What part of no didn’t you understand?” Porter said behind her.

  Pete squinted, a slight moment of uncertainty showing through, as he refocused on her. She stared back at him while remaining perfectly still, afraid that even a step in any direction would set Porter off.

  Because the man was a killer. How many bodies had he accounted for in the last five years where no one could find him? How many bombings? Kidnappings? Murders?

  Quinn didn’t dare breathe too loudly even as Porter’s warm breath continued to caress her nape, the hardness of his body pressing tighter (if that was even possible) against her back. It would have been almost (creepily) romantic if the man wasn’t a mass murderer with a (my) gun jammed into the back of her neck.

  Danford, meanwhile, had dragged the bodyguard up from the floor and pushed him toward the door. The big man staggered, looking like he might fight back, when two beefy arms grabbed him from the other side of the opening and pulled him out.

  Then they were moving too, Porter guiding her as if she were a mannequin for him to control. Pete followed them as they retreated farther into the back of the office, every backward step shoving the gun barrel harder against her flesh. Pete and Miller exchanged a look, but neither one tried to stop them.

  “Give it up,” Miller said instead. “There’s nowhere to go. You’re surrounded. There are agents inside and outside the building.”

  Porter didn’t answer her and continued backing up. She wondered where he was going because Miller was right; there wasn’t anything back there but Ross and that huge desk of his. There was no back door, and even if there were, he would only run into more FBI agents in the alley on the other side of the brick wall.

  So where exactly did he think he was going?

  She would have asked, but was too afraid. Her legs were wobbly, and it took everything she had to keep them upright. The last thing she wanted was to lose control of her own body. Worse, do something stupid like faint. Now that was something she would never live down. That is, if she lived through this.

  “You still game?” Ben had asked.

  She should have said, Hell no, Ben, sorry, but can you find someone else?

  But of course she hadn’t, because she couldn’t. Agents’ careers weren’t made by turning down assignments or letting fear swallow them up.

  Agents’ careers aren’t made by letting a terrorist take your gun and holding you hostage, either.

  Goddammit.

  “Relax,” Porter whispered behind her. “You need to relax.”

  Relax? Did the asshole with the gun just tell her to relax?

  She would have laughed if she could, but all she could manage was, “Sure, whatever you say.”

  “That’s a good girl.”

  Fuck you, she thought, gritting her teeth as he kept them moving backward until she could hear Ross’s nervous shuffling growing, then the man’s haggard breathing almost directly behind her now, too.

  “Fuck, man, what is this? What’s going on?” Ross asked. He sounded somewhere between crying and screaming. “Who the fuck are you? What’d you bring into my place?”

  “Me?” Porter said. “They’re here for you, Gary. I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time, from the looks of it.”

  Oh, you have no idea, asshole, Quinn thought.

  “Where’s Randy?” Ross said. “Where’d they take Randy?”

  “Don’t worry about Randy,” Porter said. “You should be worried about those guys.”

  Those guys was a group of men in tan-colored uniforms and assault vests flashing every now and then across the open doorway behind Pete and Miller. The members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team were carrying M4 rifles and ballistic helmets with cameras perched on top of them. Which meant that at this very moment, Ben and God knew how many other people were watching her being held at gunpoint with her own gun.

  There goes the career, right down the toilet…

  “You have ten seconds to evacuate the room, or I kill her,” Porter said.

  Pete and Miller exchanged another quick look.

  “Nine,” Porter said.

  “Wait, wait,” Pete said, coming out of his shooting stance and holding up both hands. “Don’t do anything stupid—”

  “Six,” Porter said.

  “What? What happened to eight and seven?”

  “Three…”

  “Do it,” Ben said in her ear, and Quinn could picture him grinding his teeth as he gave the order. “Get out of there now.”

  “All right, all right, you win,” Pete said to Porter, before beginning to back out through the door.

  Miller followed until there was just the members of HRT visible outside, like ghouls waiting to pounce, but unable to because of some invisible barrier they couldn’t cross.

  “Gary,” Porter said.

  “What?” Ross answered.

  “The door. Close the door.”

  “Fuck that shit.”

  “Gary,” Porter said, his voice impossibly calm, “go close the door, before I turn around and shoot you in the balls.”

  “Fuck,” Ross said, and a second later the man rushed out from behind them and almost tiptoed his way to the door.

  “Are you seeing this?” a voice said in her ear. It was one of the commandos outside, talking into his throat mic. They were all linked into the same comm system.

  “Hold your fire,” Ben said. “They’re trapped inside with nowhere to go. Let them close the door.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” the commando asked.

  “Yes.”

  Rifles tracked Ross’s movements, but no one fired as he reached for the door and slowly, cautiously closed it. Then he pressed the lock on the lever and pushed the deadbolt into place before stepping back.

  “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,” Ross said, turning to look at her. No, not at her, but Porter behind her.

  “Well done,” Porter said. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I think I shit my pants.”

  “Good thing you can afford new ones.”

  “Yeah,” Ross said, and swiped at a thick bead of sweat on his forehead. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Grab that phone and purse for me,” Porter said.

  “What?”

  “The phone and purse that she dropped. Grab them for me.”
>
  Ross sighed and bent to pick them up from the floor. “The phone’s still on.”

  “Here,” Porter said.

  Ross tossed the device and Porter held up his left hand to intercept it. There had been half a second where she thought about twisting her body to get away as the mobile was sailing through the air, but she never got the chance because the gun never left her skin.

  “You might want to get back here,” Porter said. “Don’t wanna give them an easy target.”

  “Oh,” Ross said, and scrambled back to where she stood with Porter.

  Quinn risked a quick glance down and slightly back and saw the edge of the heavy desk behind them, which meant Porter was probably sitting on the edge of it with her between him and the door and the legion of FBI agents outside. She hadn’t heard Ben’s voice in her earbud after he ordered Pete and Miller out, and it occurred to her that he might have already switched to a new channel while simultaneously keeping the one with her active.

  “Ear piece?” Porter said behind her. When she didn’t answer (because she didn’t know he was talking to her), he nudged her with the gun. “Ear piece connected to the phone?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He reached into her right ear and plucked out the flesh-colored earbud.

  “What are cops doing here?” Ross was saying to their right. He had pushed himself into a corner as far away from the door and windows (to their left) as he could manage. “And how’d SWAT get here so fast?”

  “They’re FBI,” Porter said. “Those are HRT. Right?” he added, directing the last one at her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “A woman of few words.” Porter chuckled. “My kind of girl.”

  “HR-what?” Ross said.

  “Hostage Rescue Team,” Porter said. “The FBI’s version of SWAT.”

  “Feds. Just great.” Then, slightly under his breath, “It has to be those fucking Chinese artifacts. I swear to God, I knew moving those things were going to come back to haunt me…”

  No, actually, it was the stolen art from Bulgaria, she wanted to tell him, but at the moment Ross knowing the truth wasn’t important. Ross and all his criminal activities, in fact, had been shoved onto the back burner as soon as she mentioned Porter’s name over the comm and Ben sent it up the flag to the bosses in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC.