Page 56 of I Dream of Danger
Afterward, he couldn’t remember closing the distance between the hovercar and the lobby of the motel. He jumped out of the hovercar and then a second later he was wrenching open the door of the lobby, barely casting a glance at the body of the night clerk whose legs he could see sticking out from behind the counter.
He didn’t need to know where Elle was. All he had to do was follow the last of the men, who was at the end of a corridor, turning right. Everything in Nick screamed to run full tilt into them and mow them down, but though there was no contest between him and four other men—no matter how good, no matter how well-trained—he had no idea where Elle was. Once he was in combat mode, his senses narrowed; he couldn’t take the fuckers down and at the same time ensure that Elle wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.
Nick sprinted silently to the corner and caught the last guy around the neck in a chokehold, yanking him back into the main corridor. The stunner made a light buzzing sound so he pulled his Glock 32 with the silencer, rated at two decibels, less noise than an exhale. He nudged the ballistic mask up with the muzzle, shot the man right between the eyes and eased him quickly down to the dirty carpet.
One down.
He peeked around the corner and saw three men congregated at a door. They’d found Elle’s room. Elle was behind that door. They wanted to hurt her, maybe kill her, and that wasn’t going to happen. Not even if there were a hundred of the fuckers.
The man with the windbreaker, clearly the leader, had grabbed a keycard and waved it in front of a monitor set in the wall to the side of the door. In a second, the door to Elle’s room would swing open. The card didn’t take immediately, and windbreaker guy waved it again. Nick could hear the faint click of the lock disengaging and watched as the guy at the door brought his stunner up.
They were covered in LocTite, head to toe. Nick’s stunner couldn’t stun through the suit designed to dissipate beams and his Glock, powerful as it was, would break a bone or two but wouldn’t penetrate. Nick wanted these fuckers dead.
It would have to be done the old-fashioned way. By hand.
Nick was good at combat strategy. In an instant, the whole thing was planned to the second, he didn’t have to think at all. It was like a geometric equation, moves calculated and precise.
He ran full tilt into the corridor, a swarming mass of muscle and deadly intent. Planting his right hand on the wall next to the last guy, he pivoted, lifting his body, putting his entire weight behind the kick to the head. The man fell like a bull in the slaughterhouse, but Nick was already at Fuckhead number two, dropping to the ground, scissoring his legs between the man’s legs, throwing his entire weight into his elbow which he drove straight into the middle of the man’s face. Bone crunched and blood sprayed. The leader had turned around, aiming his stunner at the ground but Nick wasn’t there any more, Nick was aiming a kick at the solar plexus, something the LocTite couldn’t protect against.
The man fell, temporarily paralyzed, without breath, and that was fine, because it allowed Nick to finish all three of them off properly with three hard head twists. He lifted each head slightly to make sure that the spinal column had been severed from the brainstem because he wanted these fuckers to stay dead.
The instant he finished off the third, he ran into the room and his head nearly exploded with panic when he saw it was empty.
She wasn’t there! Elle wasn’t there!
Where the hell could she be?
The dead guys thought she was here, so he’d assumed…
Had she escaped? There was one window that gave out into a courtyard, but it had been painted over a billion times, and if it had once been designed to be opened, that day had long since passed.
He pulled with all his strength then desisted. If he couldn’t open it, Elle couldn’t either.
Oh God oh God. If she’d escaped, how could he find her, how could he protect her if he didn’t know where she was?
Think!
Not on the bed, not out the window, maybe the closet? Nick yanked open the plywood door and stared inside at the tiny space full of empty misshapen wire hangers.
Not there…
And that was when he saw her. Lying face up on the floor, one arm outstretched, pale as ice. Unmoving, unbreathing.
His heart stopped. Simply stopped for a long, horrible second.
He was too late.
Somehow they’d killed her.
He hadn’t been able to save her.
All his life, all he’d ever wanted was to keep Elle safe. And now he’d found her after all these years and she was dead.
He took a shaky step forward, then sank to his knees. To be near her and because his legs simply wouldn’t hold him up. He felt hollowed out, totally, completely empty. Incapable of thought or action. Merely a bag of skin holding in guts and bones.
He wanted to gather her in his arms but his body wouldn’t obey him. He gave the order but nothing happened. His entire body was lax, as if it had simply given up. As if it had died but hadn’t told him yet.
But he wanted to be closer to Elle so he did the only thing he could think of—he toppled forward onto her, hoping that his limbs would recover and that he could gather her in his arms and weep over her.
