In His Keeping (Slow Burn #2)

Dane had insisted Eliza remain behind and she was not chill with that at all. Her eyes had narrowed to glaring slits and Beau had heard more than a few curses tear past her lips. But when Dane had put it in the light of there needing to be at least two people on point to protect not only the Rochesters, but the helicopter as well, because if the helo was disabled, they were fucked in the middle of the desert, Eliza had grudgingly capitulated.

Still, Beau could feel the heat of her glare as he, Zack, Dane, Cap and Isaac rapidly made tracks back to the inner sanctum of the compound.

Zack walked ahead at Beau’s side, pulling up Ari’s position, as well as pinpointing the other heat signatures in the building. Beau’s eyes widened when he saw the screen flash and display the results.

“What the fuck?” Beau asked incredulously.

Dane caught up on Zack’s other side to peer at the device and then whistled.

“I’d say you’ve got one pissed-off hellcat,” Zack said.

Where before there were at least four dozen heat signals inside the building, there were now only a little over a dozen. As he’d noted before, heat meant life, and well, unless the device had malfunctioned, Ari had gone on a rampage and taken down three-fourths of the men responsible for holding her and her parents prisoner.

“Ari is here,” Zack said, pointing to a blinking light at the end of a long corridor. “As you can see there are three heat sources there. But none between the cell where she and her parents were held and the room she currently occupies. Which means she mowed down anyone in her way.”

“And none there,” Dane murmured, gesturing toward one of the hallways that was bare of any heat source.

“The rest are here.” Zack pointed to a concentrated area where ten dots overlapped one another on the screen. “If we get lucky, we can slip down that first hallway that is across the compound from where Ari is, take out whoever the two blips are in the room with her then take her, and get the hell out before the others decide to come looking for us.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Beau muttered.

Beau would normally be more proactive in planning missions down to the minutest detail. But he had no objectivity for this one and he knew it. He also knew he couldn’t trust himself to make sound, unemotional decisions. Not when it came to Ari.

So he’d allowed Zack free rein, which probably didn’t sit well with Dane, but if it bothered the other man he didn’t show it. All he displayed was his usual determination to see a mission through successfully. Beau appreciated that particular trait, now more than ever. Because this mission was deeply personal and if it went to hell, Beau would go right to hell with it.

As they approached the wall of the prison cells, the pitched roof in the middle of the facility simply collapsed and flames roared upward, licking toward the sky. Smoke billowed in black clouds and the fire began to race across the rest of the roof.

Ash, cinder and burning debris blew hard over them, pelting down like a hailstorm.

“Your girl is wreaking some serious havoc,” Zack said, awe in his voice. “I think I might be in love.”

Beau merely stared, more worried than ever, as they closed the remaining distance, picking up speed until they were at full sprint.

They ducked inside the gaping hole in the wall and streamed one by one into the hallway. Dane and Capshaw took the others’ sixes by turning so they walked backward, guns up, scanning the hallway behind.

When they got to the doorway that opened into a large circular room with a glassed-in dome, they paused only long enough to ensure Ari’s position hadn’t changed and that they weren’t in for any unexpected surprises.

The mostly vacant area of the complex they were standing in was likely at one time either a nurses’ station or a reception area with each of the corridors branching off housing different wings of the so-called hospital. Obviously the more serious threats to society were housed in the filthy, vermin-infested barred cells, and Beau was sickened that anyone would be treated with so little humanity. Even if the criminals were the worst sort of human beings.

Here they were reduced to the furthest thing from humanity one could get. Most animal shelters and, hell, modern prisons, for that matter, offered better accommodations.

But then the bastards who’d put their hands on Ari, who’d stuffed her parents into a tiny cell with deplorable conditions, deserved far worse, so Beau would reserve his judgment in the future before offering blanket sympathy to anyone.

“We got a problem,” Zack said grimly. He turned halfway so he stared at the hallway to the far lower right. “Got movement in the northern wing. Headed this way.”

Dane tensed, immediately shifted so his hands held a weapon in each. Then he nodded at Cap and Isaac.

To Beau and Zack he said, “Go and retrieve Ari. We’ll provide cover here and make sure they don’t get past us. Let us know when you’re coming in, though, so neither of you gets your balls shot off.”

“Thanks,” Zack said dryly. “I’d rather not part ways with my dick.”