Page 39 of K-9 Confidential

He dodged out of the way and threw a right hook at the attacker who’d been waiting for him. His knuckles screamed at the contact, pain vibrating up his wrist and into his arm. Granger palmed the side of the soldier’s head and slammed the bastard into the wall. The man collapsed. “Seems I’m in the right place after all.”

Another attacked from behind. He managed to block the strike coming straight at his face, then latched onto the soldier’s shoulders and threw the second attacker to the cement.

“I’ve been looking forward to this moment, Agent Morais,” a voice said. “Please give my regards to Agent Bardot.”

Ivy? Strong arms wrapped around Granger’s neck from behind and threw off his balance. He stumbled back, at the whim of a third soldier tasked with slowing him down. His shoulders hit the wall a split second before a fist rocketed into his face. Lightning struck behind his eyes as momentum threw him to one side. The taste of blood coated the inside of his mouth as another soldier joined in the fun. “The hell do you want with Ivy?”

“She and I go way back.” Recognition flared as memories of the attack in the woods surrounding Vaughn rushed to the front of his mind. The man who’d taken Charlie, the cartel lieutenant. “Didn’t she tell you? Perhaps when this is all over, I’ll pay her a visit myself. Until then, I’ve been asked to keep you here. Dead or alive—it doesn’t matter to me.”

“Good luck with that.” He kicked at the attacker to his right and jolted the son of a bitch back and gained a bit of freedom in the process.

Granger launched his elbow into the soldier’s rib cage. The bastard doubled over and gave Granger the perfect opportunity. Grabbing for the attacker’s boot, he threw everything he had into getting the man off his feet. Only the soldier fisted Granger’s clothing and brought them down together. Aches charged through his system as he tried to get his bearings. The bullet graze in his side screamed in response. Not to mention tore at the healing muscles in his shoulder. His vest kept him from taking a full breath and only added to the dizziness trying to get the best of him.

A moan filtered through the overactive race of his pulse. He threw a fist into the soldier’s face beside him, knocking a piece off the board. Granger struggled to get to his feet, unsure of his own weight. Just as the next strike forced him back down. Pain erupted from his mouth and nose in a blinding flash of heat and agony, but he wasn’t going down. Not until he found Charlie.

Granger cocked his elbow back and targeted the son of a bitch in front of him as exhaustion undermined his control. His fist streaked past the soldier he was aiming for, and Granger couldn’t help but follow. Faster than he expected, his attack shoved him into the opposite wall of the corridor.

Hunched down, the third soldier angled his shoulder into Granger’s gut and hauled him off his feet. One step. Two. Gravity released its hold on him as his opponent slammed him to the floor.

He barely had a second to make sense of his at­tacker’s next move before a knee slammed into his face. The world threatened to spin as Granger tried to regain control of his body. A boot carved into his rib cage and stole the oxygen from his lungs despite the protection of his Kevlar vest.

Granger summoned the last of his adrenaline reserves and put everything he had into getting off the floor. He dug his fingers into the wall for support. Throwing his shoulder into the nearest attacker, he lunged at the man standing between him and Charlie and pulled the soldier off his feet. The muscles in his legs burned as he hauled the added weight through a thin door on the other side of the corridor. They spilled into the room and hit the ground as one.

His mouth filled with blood. Granger spit it out as the pain in his head tried to warn him he was shutting down. Red stains spewed in every direction, creating miniature Rorschach tests on the floor.

Granger pulled a blade from his ankle holster. He arched his arm and buried the tip of the knife into the soldier’s thigh. With a twist, he inflicted as much pain as he could to take the cartel member out of commission. Only the bastard wouldn’t go down. Granger fisted both sides of the soldier’s collar and threw him into the floor face-first.

The cartel lieutenant he’d left in the hallway had come around. He shot straight for Granger’s throat and squeezed, pinning him against the floor. “Do you know how many women I’ve killed for challengingSangre por Sangre? Your FBI agent Ivy Bardot doesn’t even know about all the other bodies I buried. She only found the ones I wanted her to find. Now imagine what I’m going do to Charlie when I’m finished. How long do you think it will take you to find her? You and your team of dogs will have to search the entire state to put her back together.”

“No.” The visual was too much. Pressure built in his head with every second his brain lacked oxygen, but he hadn’t come this far to stop now. He maneuvered one hand around the soldier’s wrist, broke the suffocating contact with his throat and twisted until the bones of the man’s hand snapped.

A scream echoed off the walls as the cartel member dropped to his knees, and Granger rocketed his fist into the son of a bitch’s temple to put him down. “You’ll never touch her again with that hand.”

The final rush of adrenaline seemed to drain right out of him then, and he stumbled toward the door and back out into the corridor. His brain had a hard time making sense of direction, but there was something pulling him deeper into the building. He sucked in as much air as his lungs could hold, and still, it wasn’t enough. Peeling off his Kevlar vest, Granger discarded it on the floor to get a hold of himself. “I’m coming, Charlie. I’m coming.”

His boots kicked up chunks of cement as he used the wall to keep him upright. All he had to do was take that next step. To keep moving forward. “Just hang on.”

The corridor emptied him out into alcove lined with scaffolding. Spotlights cast too-bright light around the room. A barrel fire burned at one end with a steel poker discarded nearby, its tip still red from heat. The scream. He caught sight of severed rope hanging from one section of the scaffolding and crossed the room. Pulling it free, he rubbed the fibers between his fingers and scanned the rest of the room. Empty. His chest filled with all the longing and grief and rage he’d felt after her disappearance and honed it into a single word. “Charlie!”

The building moaned in response. Dust fell in streams. Then a single chunk of cement from above. The rock exploded upon impact and sent shards in every direction. The entire structure seemed to be suffering right along with him.

A bark cut through the tremors vibrating through the walls.

That single sound washed the failure from his veins and focused his attention to a doorway across the room. Granger discarded the section of rope, jogging for the exit. “Zeus?”

The door dumped him into an area not mapped on satellite imagery. Weapon raised, he cleared each door he passed along the corridor. The scaffolding. There was a reasonSangre por Sangrewouldn’t let this building fall apart and die where it stood. They were still building in secret. Under the radar from law enforcement and Socorro. Damn it. How long had he and his team let them restructure without notice? Wood beams braced up the ceiling, preventing the shaft from falling in on itself. The unpaved ground slopped downward, and the only place Granger could think where it led was straight to hell.

An earthquake shook the corridor and knocked Granger into the wall. Despite the cartel’s determination to keep this building on its last legs, the whole place was about to come down around them. Dirt slid beneath his shirt and into his hair, pushing him to pick up the pace.

He had to move fast.

Granger followed the shaft deeper into the earth as one of the beams fell out of place. A landslide of dirt cascaded behind him. Within seconds, the way he’d come was sealed. Another bark sounded from the darkness ahead. He couldn’t focus on a way out right now. All that mattered was getting to Charlie and Zeus. They were his team—his future—and he would do whatever it took to reach them.

He breached an anterior room off the main shaft. And froze.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you, Agent Morais.” The woman held Charlie at gunpoint. A hint of familiarity pricked at the back of his mind, and Granger found himself looking at a dead woman. “We have so much to talk about.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

---