Forged in Fire Read online

  The two pairs of military-grade binoculars they’d found amid the guns had been the last piece of good fortune they’d been blessed with before things had taken a detour into fucked-up.

  Apparently, the good citizens of Enumclaw didn’t believe in numbering their mailboxes, driveways, or even their goddamn houses. Nor had the worthless piece of shit the FBI called a GPS system been able to direct them to the address on that slip of paper. The system had guided them toward a driveway that didn’t exist. They’d wasted twenty minutes looking for a mailbox with a street number, and then counted their way up from there.

  “This has to be the place.” Cosky aimed the binoculars toward the left edge of the house, and the two cameras mounted to the trim just below the gutters.

  “No shit.”

  The cameras and windows were a dead giveaway. Zane took the binoculars back and peered at the sheets of plywood stretched across the glass. No way in hell were they gaining access through there. Not without a crowbar and some serious muscle. He turned the binoculars toward the upper-left quadrant of the house. One of the cameras was aimed out, surveying the endless stretch of emerald lawn, while the other was angled in, toward the windows, front door and the two-car garage.

  He scanned the yard again. At least two acres of flat lawn. No trees. No shrubs. No rock. No dips or swells. Which equaled no cover. Yeah, they were well and truly screwed.

  Out of the blue, Zane found himself wondering where Beth lived. Did she live in a rural setting, or the heart—

  Christ, he needed to get his mind back on the mission. Scanning the entry way again, he forced Beth out of his mind.

  No steps. No shrubs. No decorative trees.

  Son of a bitch.

  “At least we don’t have to worry about neighbors. The last thing we need is some poor bastard out mowing his lawn taking a stray slug.” Cosky didn’t lift his gaze from their target.

  “Or calling the police.” Zane lowered the binoculars, foreboding prickling.

  The house was a good three quarters of a mile from the main road, and surrounded by a thick stand of maple, pine, and fir. They couldn’t ask for better cover, at least back here, but once they left the shield of the trees, they’d be completely vulnerable. The residence’s position gave a tactical advantage to its inhabitants. With those cameras on the roof line, and the lack of cover—the kidnappers would know the second someone launched an attack.

  No doubt the house’s defendable position was one of the reasons this place had been chosen. But he could think of another reason.

  Nobody would hear any screaming.

  His phone started vibrating against his thigh. He fished it out of his pocket and pressed it against his ear, sealing it tight, so no sound escaped.

  “Yeah.” The word was more breath than sound.

  “We got eyes all the way around. No cover,” Mac said his voice hushed.

  Zane wasn’t surprised. “Copy.”

  “Cameras ring the place.” He snapped the cell phone closed by making a fist and shoved it in his pocket. “Cover’s no better out back.”

  Cosky swore beneath his breath and plucked the binoculars from Zane’s lax hand. He trained the lens on the front door. “Reinforced steel.”

  Zane scowled at the front entrance. The door was hardly a surprise. Boarding up the windows had been a clever tactic. They’d limited access to the interior of the house. They’d hardly blow that advantage by using wood doors—three good blasts from a shot gun and you’d have a manhole. Those same blasts against reinforced steel just left a couple of impressive dents.

  “We’ll have to take out the frame,” Zane said, his voice grimmer by the second.

  Even reinforced steel had its weakness; the doors were hinged to a wood frame. The frame could be chipped away. Once the wood was destroyed, access was assured.

  But it would take time, and a hell of a lot of bullets.

  Zane shook his head in disgust. They could scratch any possibility of a blitz attack. With cameras recording every move they made, the kidnappers would be waiting for them long before the door fell in. Rocking back on his heels, he scrubbed both hands down his face, then got his toes beneath him and slowly rose to his feet.

  “This has to be the right place,” he said, the lack of numbers still bothering him.

  “Probably,” Cosky agreed and then his voice turned dry. “Or, whoever’s inside could be batshit crazy and cooking meth in the garage.”

  “Hell.” But Cosky was right. He could think of dozen illegal activities requiring these kinds of security measures.

  “We’re fucked,” Mac said tightly, as he fell in behind them.

  “That’s the consensus,” Zane agreed, his voice just as tense.

  “We might as well just walk up to the door and knock.” Mac raised the second pair of binoculars and scanned the area in front, then shook his head. “Same distance front or back. Rawls and I will take the back. You two take the front.”

  “We’ll have to shoot out the frames. Kick the doors in,” Zane said.

  Mac swore beneath his breath and glared across the lawn. “We could blast our way through the garage door.”

  Zane and Cosky shook their head in unison. “If they’ve stashed the hostages in there, we’ll end up killing the people we came to release. Besides, we can’t be certain this is the right place.”

  All four men turned to glare across the grass.

  “Is it too fucking much to ask that people number their damn mailboxes?” Mac braced his fists on his hips. “How in the hell did the kid get the address, anyway?”

  Zane had been wondering the same thing. “We need to get them to open the door,” he said after a moment of silence. “Lure them out.”

  With a disgusted snort, Mac dropped his hands. “Yeah? How the hell we gonna do that? Tell them we’re selling Girl Scout cookies?”

  “Everyone shut the fuck up,” Cosky suddenly snapped.

  Zane turned to find him standing with his head cocked, listening. A moment later the rest of them heard it. The low prowling growl of an engine. The crackle of tires rolling over gravel, the ping of rocks chipping away at an undercarriage.

  A car was headed up the driveway.

  Zane shot a quick glance at the house. If they were actually parking their vehicles inside the garage, that car could be their only chance of accessing the target without fatalities. In unison, they turned and sprinted deeper into the woods, rifles thumping against shoulders, moving as silently as possible while maintaining speed. The driveway cut through the forest in a lazy arch. There were two bends—the first less than a klick from the main road, the second just before the narrow lane broke into the open and cut a swath through the lawn.

  They didn’t have a shot in hell of reaching that car before the first bend, so they had to intercept it before the second one.

  This time Mother Nature and the property owner’s stinginess smiled on them. The driveway was a rutted, washed-out mess, impossible to navigate with any kind of speed.

  They reached the straight section between bends before the vehicle finished navigating the first turn. Cosky and Rawls darted across the rutted strip of gravel and melted into a pocket of shrubs. Zane and Mac took cover in the dense underbrush opposite, shed their rifles and crouched.

  If their luck held, the car doors would be unlocked. They could hardly shoot out the tires; the report would alert everyone within a five klick radius. Nor could they afford to render the car unusable. Stepping in front would just invite a hit and run. Their best bet was to yank open those doors and jerk the bastards out.

  As the car turned the first bend, the odds shifted in their favor. Peering through a slit in the surrounding vegetation, Zane got a good look at the approaching vehicle. It was white, an older model Chrysler Sedan, and the driver’s window was down. A muscled forearm rested on top of the door. They could yank the asshole out the window if need be.

  There were two people in the vehicle. The passenger was smaller, slighter, with
dirty blond hair. The driver was a big bastard; heavy through the shoulders, his dark hair spiky and short. A ripple of movement caught Zane’s attention as the car passed beneath a break in the canopy, and a beam of light shimmered across the exposed bicep. Crimson and black ink undulated beneath the sun’s rays. Some kind of tattoo.

  A low, menacing growl rose from his right. From Mac.

  Zane froze, his heart slamming into triple digits. It was a sound unlike anything he’d heard before. Menacing. Inhuman. Like a rabid bear, or a Rottweiler on steroids. The hair lifted along his forearms and down the back of his neck.

  The car rolled closer, bumping across the ruts and the ink flashed again.

  That low, guttural growl broke the stillness once more.

  Jesus Christ!

  What the hell had gotten into Mac? But he couldn’t afford to check and see. The vehicle was so close; the shiver of branches on a windless day could give them away. Hell, that fucking growling could give them away. If the bastard hit the accelerator, they’d never get him out of the car.

  The Chrysler rolled closer.

  Ten feet.

  Five feet.

  Three.

  Zane gathered himself, every muscle tensing, but before he took that first step, Mac leaped forward, flying through the thicket like a cannonball.

  His attack was brutal and eerily silent.

  * * *

  As the Chrysler bumped its way down that narrow, pitted lane, an image exploded in Mac’s mind. A slender, pale neck. Feminine. The muscles bulging as she fought to lock the screams inside. Finger-shaped bruises mottled the white skin, like some obscene choke chain.

  He tried to shake the vision aside, to focus on the job, but with every flash of that fucking tattoo, the image bloomed in his mind. And it was flashing a lot, as the car hit patch after patch of sun. Just as it had flashed in that bedroom with every brutal thrust of his hips between her bloody, semen-streaked thighs.

  Violence wasn’t new to him. Brutality and black ops shared the same leech-infested swamps and burning stretches of sand, but there was something about the viciousness that had taken place in that bedroom… something about her white neck and furious courage, her stubborn refusal to give them the satisfaction of her screams.

  The car rolled closer, the tattoo shimmered and—

  Flash.

  “Scream, bitch. Scream. Tell me how much you like it and maybe I’ll let those two brats live after we’re through with you.”

  Mac shook the memory aside. Burying it within his subconscious where it coiled, waiting to strike—an oily, black serpent belching rage and repugnance.

  He could sense Zane tensing beside him as the car rolled closer, but at the three-foot marker, Mac’s muscles took on a life of their own and he found himself flying through the air without the memory of taking the first step. He hit the driver’s door like a rocket, yanked it open, grabbed the driver by the back of head and slammed him face-first into the dashboard to the right of the steering wheel.

  The car slowed, and rolled to a stop.

  “You hit that car horn and we’re fucked,” Zane said from behind him. “Drag him out.”

  Hell. He hadn’t even thought about the horn. It was a miracle the driver hadn’t hit it when he’d connected with the dashboard. He needed to get his head back in the game.

  Grabbing a handful of muscle shirt, Mac yanked the bastard out of the car. Zane leaned in to shove the gear into park and set the emergency brake. Cosky, he saw with a quick glance across the seats, had already dragged the passenger clear.

  As the driver’s shoulders hit the gravel, he shook off the dashboard-induced lethargy and lunged for the .357 SIG tucked into the waistband of Mac’s jeans. With furious satisfaction, Mac slammed his fist into the asshole’s face.

  “Scream, you bitch. Tell me how much you like it and maybe I’ll let those two brats live after we’re through with you.” He waited long enough for recognition to stir in the bronze eyes below before lifting his arm again.

  Zane caught his cocked fist in an iron grip. “Jesus, Mac. What the fuck? Stand down. We need him functional.”

  For one long moment Mac strained against Zane’s grip, the serpent coiled inside him vibrating with the need to strike. Of the three who’d raped and brutalized, this bastard had been the worst. He’d savored the agony he’d inflicted.

  “He was on the video,” Mac said. “With Chastain’s wife.”

  When Zane let go, he eased back on his knees and yanked the SIG loose from his waistband, aiming it at the driver’s head.

  Zane stared down at their captive. “You said their backs were to the camera. How can you tell?”

  “The tat.” Mac forced calmness into his voice.

  Cosky crouched, taking a closer look at the tattoo. Mac didn’t bother checking it out. He already knew what he’d find—a harvest moon pierced by a dagger, tears of blood dripping from where the knife ripped into the moon’s flesh.

  Swearing, Cosky rose to his feet. “There’s letters inside the tears. It’s some kind of fucking trophy.”

  Did the harvest moon symbolize women? Each tear representing a rape? Chastain’s wife’s name was Amy. Was the bastard planning on adding an ‘A’ to his trail of tears? A ‘G’ for Beth’s friend Ginny? Mac finger tightened on the SIG’s trigger. He forced it to relax. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zane head to the open driver’s door.

  “At least we know we’re at the right place.” Zane braced a palm against the hood and leaned inside. “There’s a garage door opener clipped to the visor. We can use it to gain entry.”

  The driver stared hard at the unwavering hold Mac had on the weapon, then rolled onto his left shoulder and spit out a loogie thick with blood.

  “You’ve got the wrong guy.” He turned his head and shot off another wad of bloody spittle.

  “That’s not what your tat says,” Mac growled. “Or what the DNA will say.”

  “We can get into the garage with this.” Zane jerked his chin at the Mac’s captive. “Tattoo here can drive. Rawls, you’re the same size and coloring as your new friend.” He nodded toward the kidnapper Rawls held at gunpoint. “You should be able to pass as him long enough to get us inside the garage.” He leaned into the car and popped the trunk. Gravel crunched underfoot as he walked to the rear of the car. “There’s enough room back here for me and Cosky. Mac can stretch out across the back seat.”

  “Works for me.” Mac gestured at the driver with the gun. “Get up. You’ve been drafted.”

  Tattoo studied Mac’s face, and his swollen lips twisted. “I don’t see any warrants.”

  Mac shot him a nasty grin. “Sue me.”

  “We should assume they have protocols in place,” Cosky’s icy gaze locked on Tattoo’s face. “Some kind of code to alert their crew to trouble.”

  “No doubt.” Mac thumbed off the SIG’s safety, his smile showing plenty of teeth. “But our new friend’s going to provide every code necessary to get us into that garage. Aren’t you, motherfucker?”

  The kidnapper offered another smirk. “You bet. What are friends for?”

  “You think I’m blowing smoke up your ass?” Lunging forward, Mac jammed the .357 against Tattoo’s left knee. “Maybe you need some convincing.”

  The driver’s smirk shifted to a sneer. He glanced down at the gun pressed against his leg and rolled his eyes. “You think I’m a fucking idiot? The FBI’s nothing more than glorified Boy Scouts. Get serious. What the fuck are you going to do if I say no? Kill me? I don’t think so.”

  As Mac stared at the asshole across from him, he knew with absolute certainty that they couldn’t trust the bastard. First chance he got, the motherfucker would bungle the code, and lead them into an ambush.

  They needed a different driver.

  Rawls’ captive had a different temperament. Controllable. Rather than superiority, there was wariness in his watery blue eyes. He’d make an excellent chauffeur. After some conditioning.

  As the d
river shifted his weight from one shoulder to the other, his tattoo flickered. Mac’s gaze darted toward it, then back to his captive’s swollen but smug face.

  “You keep looking at the tat. You like? I bet you got off on that video, didn’t you. I bet you liked what we did to that bitch. How we made her scream.”

  That damn image mushroomed in Mac’s mind. A slender, arched neck. The muscles corded. Eyes locked on the ceiling. Endurance and courage.

  “But she never screamed, did she? Not once,” Mac said, the darkness inside him stirring again. “You couldn’t take that from her.”

  Tattoo’s bronze gaze went flat. Utterly cold. “She would have. By the time I was finished with her she’d have screamed herself hoarse.”

  The bastard had been on his way back for another round. The serpent coiled tighter and tighter around Mac’s chest, squeezing the breath from him. Without conscious thought, the SIG migrated north.

  “Give it up,” Tattoo sneered, glancing down as the gun moved. “You can’t do a fucking thing. You sure as hell aren’t gonna kill me.”

  Flash.

  The driving punishment of male hips hammering between spread, bloody thighs. Crimson tears weeping down a harvest moon.

  All those tears. Over a dozen of them. Each tear an initial. A name.

  “You’re right,” Mac agreed with eerie calm. “I’m not going to kill you.”

  He smiled and watched sudden wariness flare in the eyes across from him.

  In a smooth, unhesitating move, he jammed the .357 against the driver’s crotch. As panic flooded the guy’s face, and the tattooed arm lunged forward, making a sudden grab for the gun, Mac plunged forward, slapping his palm over the guy’s mouth. The force of his grip slammed the driver’s head down to the gravel. The guy’s legs scissored. Both hands clamped onto the gun in a desperate attempt to force it away. Mac climbed onto the bastard’s knees, pinning him to the ground.

  As he settled onto the kidnapper’s legs, the tattoo bulged along with the guy’s bicep, and with each flash of ink, the rage burned hotter, darker.

  “I’m not FBI. Nor was I a Boy Scout.” He angled the SIG’s barrel for maximum damage, and held it in place by sheer force of will as straining, panicked hands tried to force the weapon aside. “And no, I’m not going to kill you. I want you to remember this every fucking minute you have left.”