Too stupid to realize who they were up against, neither one took the out he’d offered. He took another step to the left, aware of Georgia mirroring his movements on his right, his gaze pinned to the left edge of the table. If the bastards decided to shoot their way out, he would have only a split second to react.
A flicker of movement came from the left edge. He froze, automatically adjusting his aim. The instant the black pistol appeared he stepped left and fired at the man crouched there.
A cry echoed along with the gunshot. The enemy’s pistol clattered to the concrete floor, followed by shuffling and a string of low, guttural curses.
The idiot’s friend suddenly popped up from behind the table, pistol raised, a livid expression on his face. “You motherfu—”
His face contorted and he stumbled back as Miguel and Georgia both hit him center mass almost simultaneously. He blinked at them in shock, his arms falling. His weapon hit the floor, both his hands going to his chest as he fell to his knees.
Miguel surged forward and kicked the table aside with a noisy clatter. All three men were down now, clutching their chests, their wide eyes full of terror as he stalked toward them while Georgia stood guard.
“Where are the women?” he growled out while Georgia quickly bent to tranq them with Eden’s sedative, then took their weapons and frisked them. She came up with phones and blades, tucking them away in the pockets of her black tactical pants.
“Where?” he snapped when they just kept staring at him, their eyes going hazy from the drug. There was at least one more tango to contend with somewhere to the left down the hallway. But there could be more.
“In the back,” one of them gasped out. “Oh, Jesus, you shot us. You fuckin’ shot us,” he moaned, trying and failing to move away.
“How many more of you are there?” he demanded, unmoved by their suffering. They deserved to suffer. They deserved to die for what they’d done, and were lucky his team couldn’t afford to rack up a high body count on this mission. Otherwise these assholes would all be facing their maker right now.
One guy let out a sob and started wheezing. “You…broke my ribs,” he gasped out.
“How many?” Miguel snapped, his voice cutting through the room like the crack of a whip.
“T-two,” the first one wheezed, collapsing onto the floor.
Georgia had already secured their hands behind them and straightened. “Heath?” she said, glancing toward the other end of the warehouse where they’d entered.
“Clear back here,” the former PJ answered, dragging the second of Briar’s kills inside and pushing the warped door shut to mostly cover the opening. “We need to hurry.” He jogged toward them, taking in the captured men with a single look. None of them posed a threat anymore.
Miguel turned to his wife. She was calm and composed as she visually swept the room, her blue eyes cool. Seeing her in operator mode again was unbelievably hot. And incredible as it still seemed to him, she was all his. “Let’s go,” she said.
He took point as they moved down the hallway. It was dark except for the light filtering down it from the main room they’d just left.
Their boots were all but silent on the concrete floor as they moved, scanning for any hint of a threat ahead. Two doors stood at the end of the hallway, one on either side.
He used hand signals to indicate that he would enter the one on the left. Pausing briefly with his back to the wall beside it while Georgia stood back to assist, he drew a breath and reached for the knob. Surprisingly, it turned.
Throwing it open, he whirled and swept the room from the doorway, his eyes adjusting slowly to the faint amount of light coming through the edges of the blind on the window. The room was empty except for a massive wooden desk in the far corner.
His gut tingled, telling him there was someone hidden behind it.
He crept toward it, weapon aimed. When he got halfway across the room, he caught the faint sound of movement from behind the desk. He dove to the right, rolling as shots exploded in the silence. Bullets slammed into the wall behind him, raining down a shower of drywall.
Rolling to one knee, he aimed to the right side of the desk and fired when a shadow moved there. A faint grunt sounded, then a shuffling noise. He rose to a crouch and eased forward, finger on the trigger.
The shadow moved again. He stopped, waiting.
His prey sprang from cover and tried to dart past him in a desperate attempt to escape out the door.
Miguel fired, hitting him in the back before he’d cleared the desk. The man cried out and dropped to his knees, cursing as he put a hand to his back.
Quickly disarming him, Miguel drugged and bound the asshole, then rejoined Georgia, now standing guard in the doorway. “Any movement in there?” he murmured, nodding at the closed door across the hall.
“I heard a woman crying inside.”
If the bastards in the other room had been telling the truth, there was only one more man left. But criminals rarely told the truth, and could never be trusted.
This door was locked. He loaded a fresh magazine of rubber-tipped ammo before approaching the final door, and glanced at Georgia. At her nod, he reared back and drove the sole of his boot into the lock.
Once. Twice. Three times, until it finally broke and the door groaned open.
Shots exploded through it immediately, ripping across the hall and slamming into the wall behind them. Georgia dropped to one knee and returned fire.
Everything went eerily silent.
Was the shooter down? Or just fucking with them?
He surged inside with Georgia right behind him.
In the dimness he made out the two women bound and gagged in the far corner, and a man lying crumpled on the floor, holding his belly. He looked up and raised a pistol.
Georgia fired, hitting him in the chest. He flopped back and went still. Miguel stalked forward to drug and sedate him, holstering his weapon.
He barely caught the flash of movement in his peripheral vision before someone burst out from behind the opened door. He was half-turned toward the threat when an arm suddenly locked around his throat.
Instinct took over.
Grabbing the arm, he reached his other hand down to draw the blade strapped to his waist and pivoted, slicing across the man’s inner thigh. A howl of agony rent the air and the arm barred across his throat let go.
Teeth bared, Miguel whirled and slashed again, laying open the man’s chest. Not deep enough to kill, but enough to hurt like a bitch and make him bleed like a stuck pig. They were keeping this one alive for interrogation.
The man yelped and tried to stumble back, but there was nowhere to go except straight into the wall. Miguel drove his elbow into the side of the bastard’s face and swept his leg out to buckle the guy’s knees.
The man went down hard, bleeding and cursing. Miguel seized him, pinning him facedown on the nubby carpet as he secured the asshole’s hands behind him without sedation, then tied a blindfold across his eyes.
When he looked up from his crouch, Georgia had already freed the women’s hands and feet and was removing the second one’s gag. “Are either of you hurt?” she asked in a low, calm voice.
“M-my leg,” one of them gasped out in a strong Manchester accent. “I c-can’t walk.”
“It’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here.” Georgia looked up at him.
“Take them to Heath,” he told her, sheathing his blade as he stood, towering over the whimpering lump at his feet. “I’ll handle this one.”