Operation: Midnight Tango

She heard fear in his voice. Felt that same fear galloping through her own system. Adrenaline fed her muscles and within a few steps she was running full-out.

“Where to?” Zack shouted.

“My car. In the lot.”

“We’re sitting ducks in the lot.”

The pop of gunshots sounded behind them. Floodlights as bright as the sun flashed on. The outdoor sirens began to wail. Emily looked over her shoulder and saw a dozen men silhouetted against the prison walls.

“They’re shooting at us!” she said.

“I don’t know why that would come as a surprise.”

Something that felt like a red-hot baseball bat traveling at the speed of sound slammed into her upper arm. She yelped at the sudden burst of pain. The impact knocked her off balance. Her legs tangled. Zack’s hand was torn from hers as she went down hard on her stomach.

“Emily!”

She lifted her head, saw him rushing toward her, his face taut with horror. She had snow in her eyes. In her mouth. In her hair. Down the front of her shirt. For some reason, her arm was burning like the dickens.

“Are you hit?” He went to his knees beside her, reached for her, pulled her toward him. “Are you hurt?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think—”

“Damn it!”

She looked over to see his fingers probing the tear in her coat. Now how had that happened? Weren’t the SORT team marksmen supposed to be shooting at Zack? Since when had she become a target? “Oh, my God.”

“You’ve been shot.” He glanced over his shoulder, cursed. Four men in full SORT team assault gear were two hundred yards away and closing fast. “Can you run?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

Pulling her to her feet, he looked around. “We need a vehicle.”

“The utility garage.” She pointed with her good arm. “Over there.”

“Let’s move.” Taking hold of her uninjured arm, he tugged her into a run toward the corrugated-steel utility garage.

One of the four overhead doors stood partly open. Emily and Zack ducked under the door and burst into the building. Country music billowed from a radio atop a toolbox. Two ATVs were parked near the first bay. A small yellow bulldozer hulked in the corner. Two four-wheel-drive trucks with the Lockdown, Inc. logo on the doors sat at bays two and three.

A scrawny young man wearing insulated coveralls looked up from the engine he was working on. His face blanched at the sight of Zack. “You’re the escapee,” he said.

“I’m your worst nightmare if you don’t find us a vehicle pronto,” Zack said.

The young man looked as if he were about to swallow his tongue. “Take whatever you want.” He pointed. “If it were me, I’d go for the snowmobile. Weatherman says we’re going to get dumped on.”

Wondering what else could go wrong, Zack darted to the snowmobile, shot a hard look at the kid. “Where are the keys?”

The young man raised a trembling hand and pointed. “O-on the bulletin board,” he squeaked.

Emily crossed to the bulletin board, snatched the keys off a hook and tossed them at Zack. He caught them with one hand, then said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll run out that door and forget you ever saw us.”

The wrench the kid was holding clattered to the floor. Backing away, he spun and sprinted through the door without looking back.

Emily watched him disappear into the falling snow. She could hear voices and shouting coming through the open door. No doubt the prison SORT team and tower guards were assessing the situation. It was only a matter of minutes before they stormed the place.

Somewhere in the distance an engine fired. She watched Zack pull a small bundle from the satchel and set it on the floor beneath one of the trucks.

“Give me that gas can,” he ordered.

Emily spotted the red can next to the workbench, picked it up and handed it to Zack. “What are you doing?”

“Just taking out a little insurance.” He placed the can next to the bundle, then dashed to the snowmobile, picked up two helmets and slid onto the seat. “Come here.”

She met him at the snowmobile. Her arm was burning and throbbing. Light-headed, she wondered if the wound was more than just a graze.

“You okay?” Eyeing her intently, he lifted one of the helmets and slid it gently onto her head.

“Oh, I’m just peachy. In the last half hour I’ve been taken hostage, shot at, lied to by people I thought were the good guys. No, I’m not okay! I want to know what the hell is going on.”

His eyes met hers as he fastened the strap beneath her chin. “Look, I didn’t mean to involve you. But I can’t leave you here. And there’s no time for me to explain right now, okay?”

It wasn’t okay, but she didn’t think it would help the situation if she started demanding answers now. She looked down at the hole that had been torn in her coat. Her stomach clenched when she saw the blood seeping through the sleeve.

As if reading her thoughts, Zack reached out and touched her arm. “As soon as we get out of here, I’ll find a place to stop and take care of your arm. I’m an EMT. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

It was ridiculous, but looking into his eyes, she believed him. “I can’t believe they shot me.” Of all the things that had happened, that was the one that bothered her the most. She’d been a member of the Lockdown, Inc. corrections team for three years. Her teammates were her friends. Her family. Surely the prison marksman had been aiming for Zack.

Hadn’t he?

His eyes darkened as he slid his own helmet over his head and fastened the strap. “I’m going to drive this thing like a bat out of hell. Put your arms around my waist and don’t let go. You got that?”

The motor purred like a big, wild cat as she slid onto the seat behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

An instant later the snowmobile’s steel shoes dug into the concrete. Sparks flew as the machine shot out the open door like a cannonball.

Once outside, Zack looked behind him toward the utility garage, holding what looked like a tiny television channel-changer in his hand. He depressed a button, then dropped the device into his coat pocket. “Hang on!”

The snowmobile took off like a racehorse out of the gate. Emily tightened her arms around Zack’s waist. She heard gunshots and shouting over the roar of wind coming through her helmet. Zack veered sharply, barely missing a light pole. They were heading toward a line of trees that would take them to the foothills of Idaho’s Bitterroot Mountain range when the garage exploded.

Even from a hundred yards away Emily felt the hot breath of the explosion. She glanced over her shoulder to see a ball of flames billow like a giant orange mushroom into the early-morning sky.

“I take it that wasn’t a concussion grenade,” she shouted to be heard over the whine of the engine, the roar of wind around her helmet.

“No,” he shouted over his shoulder. “But it might buy us some time if we’re lucky.”

“If we’re lucky?”

“Yeah.” He muttered a curse. “We’re about to run out of gas.”

“HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?” Marcus Underwood furiously paced the briefing room.

Standing a few feet away, Lieutenant Riley Cooper looked everywhere but into his superior’s livid eyes. “We didn’t anticipate an inmate getting inside help,” he said.

“Didn’t anticipate? It is your job to anticipate!”

The other man swallowed hard. “I understand.”

“I want them caught or dead—and I want it done yesterday!”

“Y-yes, sir.”

The seven men who comprised the prison SORT team shifted uncomfortably in their chairs while their team leader was grilled to a crisp.

“The woman, too?” one of the men asked after a moment.

“She is an accomplice and is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. For God’s sake, she smuggled a firearm into the prison for him.” Underwood’s gaze scanned the faces of the team he’d gathered to hunt down and kill Zack Devlin and Emily Monroe. “All of you saw the security-camera video. She and Devlin have evidently been planning his escape for quite some time. He is armed with explosives, antipersonnel devices and at least one semiautomatic weapon. I don’t need to remind any of you what this man is capable of.”

Nobody had anything to say about that. Underwood had made certain each man on this handpicked team had seen the file he’d built on the infamous Irish terrorist, Zack Devlin. As far as they knew, Devlin had spent the last ten years murdering indiscriminately. Men. Women. Children.

“This is a race against time, gentlemen,” Underwood said. “It is your responsibility to stop this murderer and his accomplice before they kill again. It is your responsibility to bring them back to me dead or alive. Am I clear?”

Silence shrilled for the span of a full minute.

“This briefing is over,” Underwood snapped.

The team members rose quickly, gathered their weapons and gear and filed out the door.

Dr. Lionel was in the process of gathering his notes when Underwood approached him. “Were you able to locate and remove the GPS device before he got away?” Underwood asked.

“It had been implanted just under the skin.” The doctor pulled a sealed plastic bag from the file and held it up. “I extracted it just a few minutes before he overpowered me.”

Underwood took the bag and studied the tiny device. “Looks to be state of the art.”

“It is. But without it, whatever agency he’s working for won’t be able to locate him.”

The lieutenant approached the two men. “Devlin doesn’t stand a chance in a storm like this with seven of my best men tracking him.”

“You had better be right.” Underwood looked at Dr. Lionel. “I do not want our progress on RZ-902 interrupted.”

The doctor nodded. “We’re moving on to the next phase as planned.”

“Excellent. You know how I feel about delays.” Dropping the GPS device on the floor, Marcus Underwood crushed it with his shoe. “I hate waiting almost as much as I hate loose ends.”

Chapter Four

Zack pushed the snowmobile to a dangerous speed, zipping between trees and treacherous outcroppings of rock. The machine beneath him screeched like a mechanical banshee. Wind and snow battered his body and face shield. Even over the roar of wind he could hear the rotors of the helicopter overhead. He could see the spotlight sweeping down like a white tornado. If they were spotted, it would be over. Not only for him but for the woman he’d dragged into this.

Cursing beneath his breath, he punched off the single headlight. Behind him Emily tensed. “You can’t drive this thing without headlights!”

There was no other choice. The headlights made them sitting ducks. Blanketed in darkness, it took all his concentration to steer around the trees and jutting rock. He silently prayed he wouldn’t run them into some immovable object. At this speed, an accident would be fatal.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said.

He remembered from the map he’d studied of the area surrounding the prison that the main road leading to the small, rural town of Salmon was straight ahead. He was familiar enough with law-enforcement tactics to recognize they were setting up a perimeter. That there would be roadblocks. The map had shown a less-traveled dirt road that would take them west into the Bitterroot Mountains. The terrain would be rough, but with a chopper hovering just a few hundred yards away, Zack didn’t have a choice but to take it.

The road forked. Without slowing down or hesitating, Zack veered left. Trees and rock formations blew past as he pushed the snowmobile at a reckless speed down the narrow road. He was putting them in a perilous position, but getting shot at seemed even more dangerous, so he leaned forward and put the pedal to the metal.

There were no towns to the west. Just the vast wilderness of the Salmon National Forest. If they were lucky, they might be able to find a ranch and get to a phone. But even if they did, Zack wasn’t sure whom to call. Clearly someone at the agency had sold him out. He didn’t have a clue who or why. But he was going to find out. And then he was going to take great pleasure in breaking every bone in their body.

Of course, before he could do that he had to stay alive. That meant losing the chopper.

He ducked instinctively when the powerful spotlight swept over them. He twisted the throttle, trying to squeeze more power from the snowmobile, but the engine was running at its peak. Damn it!

The spotlight swept over them again, only this time it held.

“They’ve spotted us!” Emily cried.

“Not for long,” Zack fired back. “Hold tight.”

He swerved right and for an instant they were hidden beneath the canopy of pines that grew along the road. But the spotlight latched onto them again when they burst from the cover of the trees.

Snow being kicked up from the chopper’s rotors blinded him, but Zack held the handlebars steady and managed to keep the snowmobile on the road using the treetops as his point of reference. The chopper was flying low and bearing down on them, getting closer and closer….

Suddenly a bullet blew a hole through the Plexiglas windshield. Fear notched up into cold, hard terror at the realization there was at least one sharpshooter on board the chopper. And that he and Emily were in his crosshairs. He didn’t know if there were enough trees up ahead to provide ample cover. If he didn’t do something quickly, they would be shot….

Then the windshield exploded. Plexiglas blew back, pelting his face shield and chest. Through the driving wind and snow Zack spotted an opening in the trees off to his right. “Hang on!” he shouted and drove off the road.

The snowmobile bumped over some fallen logs and snow-covered rocks the size of basketballs. He felt Emily tighten her grip. Even through the pandemonium of the out-of-control ride and the knowledge that certain death was only a tiny miscalculation away, Zack vowed to keep her safe. She might be employed by Lockdown, Inc., but he didn’t think she was involved with the RZ-902. She sure as hell hadn’t asked for this.

A rock the size of a Volkswagen came at them seemingly out of nowhere. Zack turned hard to the left. The snowmobile tilted at a precarious angle, but he leaned into the turn and managed to keep it upright. He glanced behind him, looking for the chopper, and saw with some surprise that it was nowhere in sight.

“Do you see the chopper?” he shouted.

“I think it went straight when we went into the trees,” Emily answered.

That wouldn’t last long. Chances were, the Lockdown people were equipped with night-vision equipment. They probably had infrared technology, as well, which worked much the same way only using body heat instead of light. In the snow, he and Emily would stand out like neon beacons.

Zack glanced down at the gas gauge, which had been on E since leaving the prison maintenance building. The best he could hope for would be that they had enough to get them out of the immediate area.

The trees had opened up and Zack drove the snowmobile like a madman. Even though the headlights were off, he could see that they’d entered what looked like an old ski slope. The terrain was sloped severely, but it was clear of trees for the most part. He took the snowmobile up the mountain at an angle.

The snow was coming down in earnest now. If the bad weather continued, there was a good possibility the chopper would be grounded. If they could reach a house or flag down a passing motorist, they might just get out of this alive.

The hope evaporated like a snowflake in the sun when the snowmobile jerked violently. Too late Zack saw the looming cliff. He applied the brake and yanked the handlebars hard to the right. Snow spewed high into the air as the big machine pivoted. To his left he saw the black vastness of space, but they were still on solid ground. For a moment he thought they were going to make it. Then the snow crumbled beneath them.

“Jump!” he shouted to Emily.

The warning came too late. The snowmobile plummeted downward. The engine whined as the machine went into a free fall.

Emily screamed. The terror in her voice pierced him like a dagger. He wanted to turn to her, tell her he hadn’t meant for this to happen. He hadn’t meant for her to get hurt….

Then the snowmobile tumbled into a nosedive, and Zack couldn’t do anything but pray.

EMILY WASN’T SURE how or when she’d lost her grip on Devlin; she’d been holding on tightly just a moment before. Now she was flying through the air, barreling toward an inevitable impact that would surely kill them both. Damn convict. If she’d had a gun, she would have pulled it out and shot him.

She slammed into the ground hard and lost her breath. She heard a crash nearby, then the world went silent and still. For several seconds she lay there, trying to get oxygen into her lungs. When she opened her eyes, she saw heavy snow swirling down. The tops of the pines were swaying. She could hear the wind whistling through the branches.

She’d fallen into deep snow, which had cushioned her fall. Shifting slightly, she took a quick physical inventory and ascertained she was relatively injury-free. Groaning, she rolled onto her side, sat up and looked around.

She was sitting on a steeply sloped incline in two feet of snow next to a broken sapling pine and a big chunk of the snowmobile’s fairing that had been ripped off in the fall. Twenty feet away the snowmobile lay on its side, the engine sizzling and smoking like an overcooked steak.

Slowly Emily got to her feet. Her arms and legs shook as she brushed the snow from her clothes. She glanced up and saw they’d gone off the cliff and down about twenty feet. A long way to fall. She was fortunate to have survived unscathed and wondered if Devlin had been so lucky.

“Devlin?” she called out.

She stood motionless and listened for a response, but none came. Even though Devlin was an escaped convict who had taken her hostage and nearly gotten her killed, the thought of being out here in the middle of nowhere all alone was unnerving. Especially since she was becoming more and more certain there was something sinister and deadly going on at Lockdown, Inc.

She was going to have to climb down to where the snowmobile lay to check on Devlin. Emily started toward the ledge. “Devlin, you had better be alive,” she muttered beneath her breath as she plowed through deep snow. “Because I’m going to wring your neck with my bare—”

The sound of a breaking twig cut her words short. Gasping, Emily spun—and found herself staring into Zack Devlin’s eyes. For the first time since he’d taken her hostage, he looked shaken. His face was pale against his dark hair. Blood was trickling down from a cut at his temple. How badly had he been injured?

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

The question took her aback. She didn’t expect him to be worried about her well-being one way or another. “Considering you just tried to kill me by driving off a cliff, I’d say I’m doing better than expected. What the hell were you trying to pull?”

“Maybe you’d rather take a bullet in the back.”

She didn’t have a comeback for that. Whomever had been in that chopper had been shooting at them. And they hadn’t seemed too concerned about which of them they hit. A deeply disturbing fact.

“If it hadn’t been for me, your pals back at the prison would have turned you into Swiss cheese,” he said.

“They were shooting at you,” she said. “In case you’re wondering, that’s standard operating procedure when an inmate takes an officer hostage and escapes.”

He glanced away from her and looked up at the sky as if gauging the storm. He had a strong profile with a straight nose and chiseled mouth. Emily wasn’t sure why, but the sight of his lips made her think of the kiss in the prison locker room. Remembering it right now was ridiculously inappropriate considering the situation. But neither of those things changed what the kiss had done to her….

Tearing her gaze away from him, Emily brushed the last of the snow from her coat and slacks and looked around. Under different circumstances she might have enjoyed the beauty of the night. The heavy snowfall was lovely against the backdrop of the mountain forest and night sky. But standing out in the middle of nowhere with an escaped convict who’d nearly gotten her killed removed any discernible pleasure.

“We lucked out,” he said. “The chopper must have been grounded because of the storm.”

“Oh, yes, I’m feeling luckier by the second,” she said dryly. “If we’re really lucky, we’ll be buried alive with snow by morning.”

The look he gave her caused the hairs on her arms to prickle. A different kind of uneasiness rose inside her. Emily wasn’t familiar with his background or what he’d done. It had to be brutal, savage, for him to end up in the Bitterroot Super Max. She didn’t want to think about what he was capable of. Or what he might do to her…

Refusing to let the thought spook her, she stuck out her chin and gave him a hard look. “So what do you propose we do now, Einstein?”

“First and foremost, we stay alive.”

That might be very difficult under the circumstances. Emily refused to go there.

He sighed, motioned toward the tear in the sleeve of her coat. “At some point I’ll need to take a look at that bullet wound.”

Between dodging bullets and crashing the snowmobile, she’d pushed the pain in her arm to the back of her mind. But now that he’d mentioned it, she could feel the stinging and burning of the bullet wound, the wet stickiness of the blood.

“Why don’t you just make a run for it while you can?” she said.

Her heart sped up when he stepped close to her. “Because I didn’t risk my life breaking out of that hellhole to run.”

“You don’t need me,” she said. “Just go and leave me here.”

“If they find you here or anywhere else, you’re as good as dead.”

“They wouldn’t—”

“They would,” he said sharply. “Do you think that bullet wound in your arm was an accident?”

“I think the SORT team marksman was trying to stop you. I got in the way.”

“In case you’ve forgotten what happened in the locker room, let me refresh your memory. Three men. One of them had a syringe with your name on it. He was going to shoot you up with some kind of truth serum, for God’s sake. Then who knows what was next on the agenda.”

Emily wanted to deny it but couldn’t. She’d seen the syringe. She’d seen the looks on the men’s faces. And she’d known what they’d been about to do. But why?

“They think I helped you escape,” she said dully.

“They think you know something you shouldn’t.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like why inmates at the Bitterroot Super Max have been dying under mysterious circumstances for the last six months.”

Something was going on at the prison. In the last six months, she’d personally known of at least two inmates dying unexpectedly. That was why she’d been asking questions. That was why she’d been in the infirmary that morning to begin with.

But to believe the people she’d worked with for the last three years were capable of murder was unthinkable. How did Devlin know about it? There appeared to be a lot more to Zack Devlin than met the eye.

“How do you know inmates have been dying?” she asked.

“I know because for the last four months I’ve watched men systematically disappear. Healthy men who are sent to the infirmary. Most come back to their cells deathly ill. Some of them don’t come back at all.”

Was Devlin just a smooth-talking liar whose very freedom hinged on manipulating her into helping him?

But in her heart Emily knew something was going on at the prison. She just didn’t know what.

Things aren’t always what they appear….

“What’s happening to them?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

He turned his gaze to hers. She saw a weariness that hadn’t been there before and wondered about its source. “Horrors you can only imagine in your worst nightmares,” he said.

Emily stared at him, aware that she was frightened. And that the fear didn’t have anything to do with the man standing so close she could see the stubble on his cheek. Deep inside she knew that despite whatever this man might have done, he was not lying about Lockdown, Inc.