Chapter Nine.

Kieralyn pulled her car under a giant tree in the parking lot across from Jazz on the Rocks and cracked the windows in hopes that the breeze would diminish the cloying heat inside of the car. It only stirred up the outdoorsy scent of Ian beside her.

The morning sun pounded the parking lot concrete, glinted off the mirrors and windows of the other cars parked around. The club's back door opened. "A man's coming out. He's heading to a cargo van."

"That's Sanders."

"How can-"

He tapped his ear and then his chest before smiling.

She rolled her eyes. Sanders opened the driver's side door and popped the hood. "What are your limitations?"

"Obviously, I can isolate and identify sounds better when it's quiet."

"Yet, you were able to pick me out of the crowded street on a Friday night." Sanders climbed in behind the steering wheel and started the van. Kieralyn straightened in her seat and reached for her phone. "You knew the secret of the couple at the bar, and you identified Isaacs as the owner of the club despite everything that was going on."

"Kieralyn." He c.o.c.ked his head and smiled. "If I didn't know better I'd almost think you were beginning to get used to me. Maybe you even like me a little."

Sanders turned off the van, got out and headed back inside. She relaxed back into the seat and put her phone on the dash.

"I'd hope you aren't a betting man, but I think we both know you are." d.a.m.n if he hadn't grown on her, though, with his quick wit and sense of humor. Predictability clung to him. Everything around him was structured. The way his furniture sat, the color-coded order his shoes and clothes were lined up in his closets, and that he faced his toothbrush north in his home and apartment at work were just a few examples. As regimented as he, and his life, seemed to be, she never knew what he would say or do next.

"It depends on the odds and the stakes."

Like that. He indulged in spontaneity more easily than she did without losing his grasp of the possible consequences. She couldn't get her balance, so why bother trying? Focusing on work was more her speed.

"Speaking of odds-" She pulled her gun from her bag and sat it on her thigh. "I'm going to go improve the ones for the women inside that club."

Ian grabbed her wrist. "What are you doing?"

"Sanders just checked the van to make sure it was ready to go." She took the ear piece out of the black box sitting between them. "I'm going to go disable it."

"How?"

"Like you, I'm more than a pretty face."

He grinned as he ran a finger along the scars on his face.

"Ian?"

He shook his head and dropped his hand. "How?"

Wherever his mind had gone it had pleased him, but she couldn't think about that now. "Distributor cap, spark plug wires. They're equally effective."

"So when they're ready to move the women-"

"They can't."

"This isn't right. You should wait." He looked into her eyes as if he could actually see her. She narrowed her eyes and studied him. Intensity and concern shone in his gaze.

She took out the second earpiece and placed it in his ear. "Don't worry. You'll be able to hear everything from the two men and me. Besides, I'm just running across the street."

"You need backup. You need to call your team before you move."

"Fine." She picked up her cell and called Breck. After giving him the thirty-second overview of where they were and what was going on, she hung up. "Happy?"

"You didn't tell him what you're planning because you knew he would tell you to wait."

"The women in that building are counting on me. I'm doing this." Arrogant jacka.s.s. "Besides, Breck will have the team here in less than ten minutes. They're just a few blocks away at the gym."

"It only takes one minute for you to be hurt." He sat the mini PC on the seat. "Let me go in. I can distract them until your team shows up."

He was trying to take this from her. "Can you defend yourself against a bullet?"

"No more than you."

"Can you disable the van?"

He grinned. "Never saw the point in knowing how to fix a car. Let alone disable one."

"Well, I can." She grabbed her gun, opened her door and darted across the street before he could argue anymore. "Keep your ears peeled."

"You're a foolish woman, Kieralyn."

She shrugged off his grumbled chastis.e.m.e.nt in her ear.

"Be careful."

Shrugging off the impression that his voice deepened with intensity and fear for her safety wasn't easy.

Keeping an eye on the door that Sanders had gone into, she tucked the gun in the back of her jeans and hustled toward the van.

"There's a car approaching."

"I'll be done in a jiff." Quickly and quietly, she opened the door and popped the hood. Grateful for the first time that one of her foster dads had forced her to help him in his garage all the time, she jiggled a spark plug wire loose.

"s.h.i.t," Ian said into her earpiece. "Someone's coming."

"Almost done." Smiling with satisfaction, she reached up to lower the hood. "Who?"

"Not sure. Hurry up," Ian urged. Anxiety shook his voice.

A hand brushed the small of her back. An instant later, her gun had been taken and the barrel was pressed against her temple. "Time's up."

s.h.i.t. Another ten seconds and she'd have been headed back to the car. To Ian. She swallowed and held her hands out beside her head.

"s.h.i.t. Kieralyn it's-"

"Turn around." The man stepped back.

"El Dogo." She choked down the irritation that she'd been caught. The anger that she'd depended too heavily on Ian's help that she'd been oblivious enough to her surroundings to have her weapon taken. She lifted her right heel, placing her weight on the ball of her foot. Using her left foot to control the move, she spun around and grabbed for the man's arm.

He stepped out of range quickly and c.o.c.ked her gun. "You complicate matters, Agent Beckett. Don't make it worse by getting shot with your own weapon."

s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her stomach shook violently.

Ian's eyes, older and harder, glared down at her. Evil. Sweat broke out at the base of her spine. She struggled to keep her hands from visibly trembling. "You must be the infamous El Dogo."

She'd been discovered and he knew who she was. Did he know about Ian? Or that backup was on the way?

"Agent Beckett, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time." He tilted his head as he regarded her, like Ian did when he listened. "You should have stayed away."

"You know who I am."

"Your reporter friend has a big mouth." He grabbed her arm and jerked her away from the van. "I know more than you can imagine."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Out of the way." He shoved her toward a metal door. "Now shut the h.e.l.l up."

She would've tripped if she'd been wearing her heels. She had to figure out how much he knew, what his plans were, and where the women were being taken. Ian wouldn't be able to follow them.

She doubted El Dogo would knowingly take an FBI agent to the other women. She had to break free and get the evidence her team needed. Then again, given the circ.u.mstances and Ian's awareness of the situation, they could enter the building without a warrant.

El Dogo opened the door and shoved her inside. He muttered a curse.

Pain exploded across the back of her head. Everything went black.

Naked fear gripped Ian's spine. He'd been distracted by his worry for her and had almost missed the sound of someone approaching her. When he finally picked up on it, the second heartbeat, the pounding reverberation of a snare drum, jerked him back to the last time he'd seen, rather heard, his father.

Ian had stepped into his parents' living room to wait for his mom. His father was in the kitchen on the phone. "They're not giving up the information. It's going to take more drastic measures."

Nothing good ever came from his father employing "more drastic measures". He tended to resort to his Army Ranger days and entertain solutions that included someone's death.

"That's not going to work this time."

Ian could focus and listen to whoever was on the other end of the line, probably Eli aka Enigma. It was too much of an invasion of his father's privacy, and he'd accepted long ago that he and his family were safer not knowing the details of his father's a.s.signments.

"Listen, I have to go. Lily's going to be back soon." His father's heart pounded anxiously. "If anything happens, keep an eye on everyone. It could hit Lily the hardest."

Ian never found out what his father had been planning, but soon after that call he'd vanished. Eli had stuck close to the family until he knew Ian's mother would hold it together. Anytime she'd voiced concerns about Mick's possible death, he'd simply told her to have faith.

Ian snapped back to the present. His father's heart had pounded then as it had when he'd approached Kieralyn. Now, he couldn't hear either of them.

"Kieralyn?" Answer me, d.a.m.n you. Say something. Anything. "Where's he taking you?"

A nails-sc.r.a.ping-on-chalkboard chill, intensified a thousand times, raced through him. Crashing waves in the ocean drowned out all sounds, erasing the possibility of pinpointing anything that could help Kieralyn.

His father was involved. He'd known that. He hadn't expected his father to take Kieralyn. But did it mean that he'd gone fully to the other side, or had he somehow been trying to protect her?

A car pulled to a stop, but he couldn't judge where. What was going on with his senses? His hearing?

"Kieralyn, talk to me." d.a.m.n it. He shouldn't have gotten distracted with memories. For that matter, he should have focused more closely on the surroundings than he had on Kieralyn. "Where are you? What's going on?"

"That's what we'd like to know," a man said from outside the car.

Ian jumped and instantly determined that four men stood outside the car on the driver's side. Kieralyn wasn't responding, he figured he was about to face down her team, but couldn't know for certain. And his dad was inside the club. He needed to get his s.h.i.t together.

Shaking his head clear, he exited the car and turned toward the men. "Who are you?"

"Where's Kieralyn?"

She'd said her team wouldn't be long. Still, he'd learned a lot from his dad and Eli. Caution was one of them. The men standing around could be more of the group trafficking women, though he doubted it. El Dogo or Isaacs could've found her earpiece and destroyed it. "I'm going to need an answer first."

"I'm Breck." The man's cotton shirt shifted as if he pointed at someone. His heart made a sort of whooshing sound. Reliable and steady like the waves lapping at the sh.o.r.e. "This is Aidan, Liam and Tyler. We're her team."

"Where is she?" one of them asked. His heart beat faster than the others, with a pulsing energy.

"You're going to have to help me out with which of you is which." Ian tapped his right eye. "I'm blind."

"You're...no one..." Breck's teeth ground together. "She neglected to mention that."

Another of the men cursed.

"How were you supposed to be any help to her?" The questioner's heart clipped along almost erratically.

"I'm not exactly helpless or useless."

"Chill, Tyler." Breck seemed to be the leader. "It's not like we can control Kieralyn."

As if anyone could. Well, except in bed. Ian jerked his mind back to the moment. Besides, he didn't want to think about another man in bed with her.

He pointed across the street to the club, taking Kieralyn's omission to his lack of sight as a sign that she didn't see his sight as important. "She went to disable their van. She had her weapon and a comm device on, but I'm not picking anything up now."

"I'm Liam." A slight Scottish burr thickened his gravelly voice. He spoke the way his heartbeat sounded, as if he worked to leash the energy. "You should have made her wait for us."

"Ha." Ian started to laugh at them, to blast them with the truth that Kieralyn was a capable agent who'd tracked down the leads that had brought them all to this club where she and a group of kidnapped women were being held inside. Then he realized why Kieralyn thought her team didn't respect her.

None of them had bashed her, badmouthed her abilities or degraded her. They hadn't behaved as if they thought she'd screw up. They worried about her-like he did for his sister. Their need to protect her rivaled her need to be independent. To her, they were antagonistic or chauvinistic. To them, they were looking out for her.

"She took every precaution. We have ears on two of the men inside, the two who attacked us at my place last night. We know their movements. She was armed and the comm device she wore allowed us to communicate."

"You were attacked?" Aidan, the one with the fastest heart rate who stood the farthest to the right, bellowed. "Why the h.e.l.l didn't we know this? Was she hurt? What's with her not telling us this s.h.i.t?"

"Last night. Late. She knocked one of the two out cold. As for not telling you..." Yep, definitely the big brother routine. How could she not see it? Was it really his place to give them a clue? "Well, she has the impression that you guys don't value her as a member of the team. That she needs to prove herself at every turn."