Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc 7)

“Oh, good!” Ethan exclaimed. When everyone gave him a funny look, he said, “I think I saw him being brought here. I’d meant to rescue him anyway. There was a woman, too.”

Pete shrugged. “I didn’t see any female prisoners. Just him.”

“Let’s run for it,” Destiny said. “Once Apex figures out that the cave bear isn’t on the loose any more, they’ll swarm this place.”

“This way,” Pete said.

They followed him at a run, Merlin guiding Ransom. Alarms were going off all over the building. A guard poked his head and rifle barrel out of a room, but Destiny nailed him with a tranquilizer dart to the gun hand before he could get off his shot.

“Good one,” said Ethan.

“Next one’s yours, slowpoke,” Destiny replied.

He grinned at her. Despite the danger, she felt exhilarated rather than afraid. Danger was her home turf. It was literally her job. But facing it with Ethan at her side gave her a completely new sense of fulfillment.

Pete snatched up the unconscious guard’s tranquilizer rifle, then kept running. He stopped at an entrance with deep claw marks in it and the wall and the floor around it. The door had been ripped off its hinges. “Here.”

“What hit this place?” Merlin asked.

“I did,” said Pete shortly. “I came through as a cave bear. The doctors and nurses and guards abandoned the prisoner and ran.” He frowned. “I hope I didn’t hurt him.”

“Don’t you remember?” Destiny asked.

Pete shook his head. “Just bits and pieces.”

They went into the infirmary, Pete staying just inside the room to guard the open doorway. The infirmary had been completely trashed, with beds overturned and pill bottles rolling all over the floor.

It was empty except for the prisoner, who was sitting up in bed. He was African-American, handsome and burly, with silvering hair and a short beard covering his strong jaw. Destiny could see the edge of a bandage where his hospital shirt had been pulled low over his chest. He wore the same collar Ransom had, and was handcuffed to the bed. But despite all that, not to mention having just been trapped with a rampaging cave bear, he didn’t look frightened or helpless. Instead, he was patiently using the needle of the IV he’d apparently just pulled out of his arm to try to pick the lock of the handcuffs.

When they came in, he spoke, it was in the tone of a man used to command. “I’m Roland Walker, United States Army. Are you the rescue team?”

“Unofficially,” Ethan said. “Most of us were captured too. But yes, we’re here to get you out of here.”

“You know how to pick a lock with a needle?” Merlin asked, sounding impressed.

Roland shook his head. “I have no idea how to pick a lock with anything. But the bed’s bolted to the floor and I can’t reach anything else, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

“I can pick locks,” Merlin volunteered. “But I need a piece of wire or a paperclip or something like that.”

“Of course you can,” Pete muttered from the door.

Destiny and Ethan started opening cupboards and drawers, helping Merlin search.

“Here.” Ransom walked straight to a drawer, opened it, and held out a paperclip.

“Thanks.” Merlin took it and got to work on the handcuff lock.

As he did so, Ethan quickly introduced everyone, then asked Roland how he’d ended up in the base.

“I was in the US, driving on a country road,” Roland said. “I was on leave, but I’d gotten a call to come back to the base. In retrospect, it had to have been a setup. A tree was down across the road, but it had been cut, not fallen naturally. I realized that it was an ambush. I went into reverse and stepped on the gas, and just then I saw a car coming off a dirt road. I would’ve T-boned it and maybe killed the driver. So I swerved, went off the road, and rolled my car.

“The woman who’d been driving came out to help me. I was in bad shape. I think she saved my life. She took my hand and told me she wouldn’t leave me. Then these men came up. They had tranquilizer rifles. I knew they must’ve set the ambush, and I told her to run. But she didn’t. She stayed. The last thing I saw was her grabbing a tree branch from the ground and threatening them with it. A branch against guns!”

For the first time, his confident tone wavered. “The next thing I remember, I was here. And she was gone. Nobody would tell me what they’d done to her.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?” Ethan asked.

“Blue jeans and a white shirt,” Roland said instantly. “She was a tall, slim black woman, about my age. Did you see her?”