Page 86 of Wicked Ambition

The footsteps reached the room next to where he and Ski stood. That team wasn’t being lured away from their job by the shooting. Oz exchanged a few hand signals with Ski. They’d only have one chance to take out Petrova’s men when they entered.

The door to the room was slowly pushed all the way open.

If the dude turned his direction to clear the room, he belonged to Oz. If he turned the other way, he was Ski’s problem. It was the second man that caused issues. Whoever dealt with the first one needed to wait as long as possible so the trailer was at least partially inside.

He turned Oz’s way.

Oz waited. He knew the instant he was spotted and moved before the man could react. Knocking the pistol out of his hand, Oz took him down. Knee in the middle of his back, he used flex cuffs to secure his wrists and ankles. Standing, he returned to his position.

They had a problem now.

Dude two hadn’t been deep enough into the room when Oz was forced to take action. The enemy was in the hallway; he was armed, and he knew Oz was inside.

He also had six other men with him.

How much help was Rusty going to be? How long could the kid handle a team that large on his own? They might be flunkies, but they were still experienced and ruthless.

More gunfire underlined Oz’s concern.

The standoff with the hallway dude wouldn’t last indefinitely. While not yet shooting through walls, how long until he strategically fired at Oz and Ski’s likely locations?

Not long.

The first shot put a hole in the wall next to where Ski stood. Because of their positions, neither of them had an angle to return fire.

Another shot, this one even closer to Ski.

A slow screeching sound from outside caught Oz’s attention. What the fuck was that?

The crash reverberated through the house. It sounded as if someone had leveled a wrecking ball at the structure.

It didn’t deter the man in the hall. He took another shot through the wall.

“Drop the weapon. Put your hands up,” Rusty said in English. The man must have ignored him because the order came again in Spanish. A moment later, “It’s clear Wiz, Ski.”

Oz went around the corner and covered the man with his pistol. “I have him. Put the flex cuffs on him.”

When Rusty took care of it and the Spetsnaz dude was on the floor, Oz asked, “What was that crash?”

“A car came into the house.”

“What?”

“A car exploded through the front of the house,” Rusty repeated. “It allowed me to get those other men subdued and come up to help you.”

“I’ll get the sister,” Ski said from inside the room. He entered the corridor with Iona Desmond in a firefighter’s carry. “We need to get out of here. The car crash is going to have the neighborhood outside gawking.”

“Copy that,” Rusty said. Then, grinning, he turned back to Oz. “Your Pollita really sent that car flying. It was an awesome diversion.”

Oz scowled. “You and I are going to have a discussion about what orders mean.”

Walking past Rusty, he went to check on his woman.

Chapter 34

Ayla let Oz pace.

They were in a new safe house. This one was much bigger than the previous one and BD had put her and Io in what he referred to as the dedicated Paladin League suite. It wasn’t as luxurious as it sounded. The door between the rooms was warped, the paint flaking, and the suite part was tiny with two dilapidated sofas, a sorry-looking loveseat, and a banged-up coffee table. Oz kept running into something he needed to maneuver around, and it left him cursing.

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