Page 71 of The Saint

Then one of my guys gave me another dose of bad news. “We’ve got company.”

Luca had the phone pressed to his ear when he walked over to the security system that showed all the cameras on the property. A line of Hummers and SUVs pulled up from the road, all taking various positions as they faced the warehouse where we were positioned.

We were fucking surrounded.

Luca ended his call and made another. “I’m sorry, Bastien.” He abandoned Fleur and called for help. “Jeremy, we need backup. Get your ass here now.” He hung up and made another call. “I’m calling Martin. He’ll send the Foreign Legion under the circumstances?—”

Gunfire erupted, and the bullets struck the walls of the warehouse, most of them bouncing off the steel, but with enough hits, the structural integrity would collapse. I knew he could launch explosives and grenades at us, so this was purely an act of intimidation.

But I didn’t give any orders, incapacitated by Fleur’s capture. It was literally impossible for me to save her. As if my wrists were bound in handcuffs, I just stood there and listened to the bullets rain down on the base.

“Bastien, what do we do?” Someone asked me, and I couldn’t even think of his name.

Luca was still on the phone, his hand covering the other ear so he could hear.

I was stuck in this warehouse, but I’d let all these men die if I could get to Fleur.

“Bastien.” Luca shoved me in the chest. “We take ’em out, take Ivan alive, and get him to talk. That’s how we find Fleur.”

I nodded absent-mindedly. “You’re right.”

“Martin said he’ll send everything he can, but we have to survive long enough for him to get here.”

I couldn’t let myself wonder where Fleur was or what was happening to her. My mind drifted to the worst-case scenario, unspeakable shit. But I pushed the thought away, because until I was done with this, I couldn’t help Fleur.

I moved to one of the computers, punched in the code, and then the mounted guns slowly rose out of the ground outside the warehouse, automatic targeting locked on. I’d installed them years ago, and not once had I had to use them. It’d been so long, I’d nearly forgotten they were there.

“I forgot about those,” Luca said in awe.

The mounted guns fired their rounds at anything that moved.

“They’ll be distracted,” I said as I left the seat. “At least for a minute or two. Take out as many as we can.” We moved to the front, the wall still intact but the divots from the bullets visible in the steel. We slid open the panels to reveal the slots for the rifles to fire while keeping ourselves protected.

Everyone fired, shooting up the vehicles and the men using them for cover. It was a modern battlefield with hundreds of roundsfired, a graveyard of bullet casings. “Grenades!” We all pulled the pins and then tossed them hard through the holes before we slid the panels closed and ducked down behind the wall.

The explosions were so hot I could feel the warmth through the solid wall. Even with my ears covered, I felt like my eardrums were about to split. When the silence returned, the gunfire didn’t follow it.

Luca looked at the monitor. “We took out a lot of the cars, but there are still men everywhere. Gun mounts are destroyed. We’ll need to hit them a few more times.”

“But now they know it’s coming,” I said. “Continue to fire.”

18

FLEUR

They didn’t even bother to bring my bag. Left it in the back of the SUV.

My head throbbed from the punch. I suspected my eye was all black and blue, because my vision was blurred on that side. With my arms pinned behind my back, they forced me into the warehouse then shoved me onto a dirty mattress lying there on the floor. The rest of the hangar was full of Hummers and even a small six-seater plane.

I hit the moth-eaten mattress and lay there for a second, the headache pounding with every beat of my heart. Six guys surrounded me, all with guns, all there to guard me. I was scared out of my mind, and the only power I had in that moment was the reassurance that Bastien would come for me.

I just had to stay alive long enough for him to get here.

That meant I should stay quiet, give them no reason to hurt me, and wait for this to be over.

But I quickly realized I wouldn’t be afforded that luxury.

One of the guys spoke to the other in a quiet voice. “She’s pretty sexy.” He was an ugly guy with a squishy face, a guy who probably had to pay for sex because he couldn’t get it on his own.

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