Page 324 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

He wished he had more time to plan. He hated the uncertainty of being this rushed. He needed a distraction—Thom Lyndon’s escape. He needed a vehicle—one of the many vehicles in the fortress garage would have to do. It wasn’t impossible to snag one of the keys from the mechanic’s shop. It was under lock and key, but once the Mustangs attacked, everyone with a gun would be running to secure the fortress and repel the attack. He’d get a key; he didn’t care to which car, so long as it ran. Then he’d need to get Aliya.

That was his plan. The problem was, with the clock ticking down this fast, there was no time to spot the loose ends.

He went to the kitchen on the pretense of bringing their captive food and drink. Under any other circumstance, Fariq would have approved. Normally, he prided himself on being a proper host. The way he was right now, Reid was more inclined to think he’d be annoyed. He brought the food, anyway, and was relieved to find Thom actually working on breaking the computer code on the microchip.

Next, he needed to get word to Aliya and if nothing else, make sure she stayed put and away from the windows. That was harder done than imagined. There were men posted at the head of the stairs on that level, keeping anyone who had no business there from lingering, even him.

“He’s asked not to be disturbed,” one said before he’d even reached the top of the stairs.

Reid pointed up, where the roof of the next flight of stairs continued on. “I’m heading to my room.”

He kept going, refusing to give himself permission to so much as glance down the hallway, where two more men were stationed outside Aliya’s door. When the attack happened, the men on the stairs would get their asses to the fighting. Those on the balcony and at her door would converge around her, guns ready. He’d have to be prepared for that. Taking the stairs as if he had all the time in the world and not so much as a single concern, Reid didn’t step off on the next floor, moving away from the railing and making sure his footsteps were loud and steady, he continued up only three steps more. He trod in place—stomp stomp stomp—slow and steady as many steps more as he knew there to be from here to his floor. He lessened the force of each step to lessen the volume of each echo until finally, he stopped.

Still, he listened.

“God, I’m hungry,” one of the men one flight below muttered.

“Would you stop about your stomach for five minutes?” the other snapped. “You’re making me hungry.”

Silent as a whisper, Reid backed down the extra three steps far enough to peek around the corner into the empty hall of the floor between Aliya’s and his own. Sticking to the carpet to muffle the sound of his shoes on stone, he walked down the hall as if he had every right to be there. He didn’t even know what was on this floor. The mercs rooms were on the lower floor, where the fighting would happen if they were infiltrated by land. There wasn’t a lot of furniture here, so perhaps they were empty.

Stopping at the room directly over where he estimated Aliya’s was, he deftly picked the locked door and went inside, quickly shutting and locking it.

That the room wasn’t being used for anything was obvious. A stack of stored furniture lined one wall, covered by protectivesheets. A cloud of dust released when he cracked the heavy curtains give him enough light to work since touching the switch didn’t do anything. The floor was covered in a giant area rug, so it took a moment to move enough of the spare furniture to roll the carpet back, exposing the stone floor tiles beneath.

The clock was ticking, and he could feel it every bit as keenly as he could feel the itch of wariness growing between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t afford to take too long. If Fariq found him away from his charge, he’d need a good reason, but right now, all he could think about was getting Aliya in his sight.

Stone to stone, he crawled the floor, looking for the concealed spyhole he’d put in place when they’d acquired the property. He’d left hidden observation spots throughout the fortress to keep an eye on Fariq and Aliya. Granted, at the time, he’d wanted to know what Aliya was up to only in so far as it concerned Fariq. Now, he had another reason. Prying with his belt buckle around the edges of the stone until he found the one he needed, he ruined his longest knife lifting it, the stone giving way long before his determination did. Just like in his room, he made his way through the architecture of the floor, digging down until he reached the ceiling of the room below. Very much aware of how sound would carry, he used the tip of his knife, very slowly and carefully burrowing a small hole in the ancient plaster. If there weren’t men in the room, they might not notice the few dribbles of white dust falling onto the carpet when he finally worked his way down through the last layer and spotted light.

Belly to the floor, he got into the hole in an effort to see as far in every direction as he could. Small as the hole he’d made was, it was very limited, but he had no choice and could only hope they wouldn’t look up. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small viewing device that could be rotated around to get a good look at the room. The only men he could see were those stationed onthe open balcony. There were three, not two. One was seated on a chair inside the room where, Reid could only assume, Aliya was supposed to be the focus of his attention. She wasn’t. Right now, he was reading on his phone, and Aliya looked to be asleep on her stomach in bed. Dim as the lighting was down there, the faint lump of her stood out against the bedding, and the wave of her long, dark hair spread out across the white of her pillow. She was covered to the shoulders by only the thinnest sheet. Her hands, however, caught his attention. Stretched out as they were above her head and even the pillow, it took his eyes a moment to pierce the gloom enough to make out the ropes that bound her wrists to the headrail.

His gut seized an instant before anger flash flooded through him on a wave so violent and overwhelming, he actually caught himself, heaving back from the floor, fully intending to charge his way down to her and… what, get shot? Good as he was, seven-to-one odds were not conducive to successfully rescuing anybody.

He fucking tied her to the bed.

Fariq had fucking tied his princess to the bed.

Don’t think about it. He couldn’t afford to let rage blind him. He needed to get moving. At least he knew where she was now and knew she was okay. If he thought about it, it would keep her from doing something foolish. They were going to need to come to a meeting of the minds about her inability to keep herself safe. Of course, if she’d been able to do that, she would never have fallen prey to him. But she had, and it was now up to him to keep her safe for the rest of her life.

Wait! Where had that thought come from? Maybe his time with Fariq hadn’t corrupted his soul as much as he feared. Reid knew another layer of difficulty had been added to getting her out, but he was determined not to let it become insurmountable.

Hewouldget her out.

He checked the time, then quickly threw the room back together, leaving nothing out of place apart from footsteps in the dust to show he’d ever been here. Slipping back out of the room, he returned to check on Thom. That became his pattern for the next hour—check on how close the Mustang man was to exposing him as a spy and check something off his list of things to pilfer.

He stole a set of keys from the mechanic’s office and made sure the vehicle was ready to go.

He made an impromptu bug-out kit with as much of what they might need to escape as he could foresee, including a phone with a GPS tracker, so he could contact someone to come get them once they were free.

From the computer set up in his room, he loaded another microchip with all the pertinent most up-to-date information he could glean from Fariq’s most recent activity. Activity-wise, it wasn’t much, but content-wise, the system in the fortress uploaded to all of Fariq’s communication and banking accounts. With a few keystrokes, Reid downloaded everything he could find. He hoped NATO used it to bring down this entire underground empire and everyone connected to it.

On his way to the armory, he ran into Fariq’s body double. That unnerved him. The lookalike was never in close proximity unless Fariq was planning something he suspected might get him killed. That he hadn’t shared those plans with Reid showed the level of mistrust Fariq had of everyone around him.

Lastly, he rearmed himself, including a five-shot tranq gun with rapid action darts. Rapid action was a bit of a misnomer. He could think of no way to storm Aliya’s room without all seven adversaries becoming alert at the same time. If he took out the two at the stairs, the two at her door would know and retreat into her room for cover. If the two at the stairs bolted like he hoped they would once Avery got her ass in gear—he checked thetime again—he might be able to take out the two at the door, but then there would still be the three highly alert and armed men clustered inside. He wasn’t entirely sure they wouldn’t open fire on whoever was stupid enough to open her door next and wasn’t at all confident they’d be careful not to shoot Aliya in the process of defending her. If they were even there to defend her.

Tied to the bed. Tied to the fucking bed. He should be the only one tying her to the bed and only when he had the time to truly wallow in the exquisite sensuality that was his Aliya—and she was his.

He couldn’t think about that now. The last thing he needed was blood rushing to his cock, so it thought it was in charge.

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