them. Everyone else, stand by.” He looked over at Skeeter, who was looking at him.
“What enemy at the gate?” she asked.
“CIA,” he said.
“Lancaster,” she countered, and Dylan knew the odds were stacked way in her favor for being right. “What do you want to do?”
It was his call. Bottom line, it was always his call, and this one, like all the others, was about percentages and odds. Dylan didn’t know what the Halox might do to J.T., but he knew J.T. didn’t have a chance if Lancaster got hold of him. None. Randolph Lancaster had shown his hand, and it was death and destruction. Atlas Exports proved his treason beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But he also knew Conroy Farrel, and Farrel had been outrunning and outgunning Lancaster for six years. Odds were, he could do it again today, unless they screwed him up with the Halox and it still didn’t drop him hard enough for them to capture him—like what had happened with the ketamine.
“Creed,” he said into his mike. “Stand by. Unless J.T. poses an imminent threat to Jane or Superman, I want you to hold red. We’re going to have to bring him in the hard way.”
There was another pause.
“Copy. I tried the hard way in Paraguay and got my clock cleaned.”
Yeah, Dylan remembered, but in this game, nothing was ever easy.
CHAPTER SIX
Footsteps, one after the other, drawing nearer.
Female—the gender given away by the light snap snap snap of small, sharp heels.
Gritting his teeth, Con covered his face with his hand and leaned against the doorframe of the GTO, everything inside him resisting the disaster building in his head—the trail of pain widening and deepening and plowing a path through his skull, heading toward the soft tissue of his brain. He would not succumb to annihilation—never … never … never. Through that door lay madness.
Been there, done that, not going back.
He drew in a long breath, fighting the pain, waiting for the pills to kick in, and he listened.
She was headed straight for him.
He took another breath, and her scent hit him like a freight train, sensual, female, and feral—wild thing, the woman from the street, the long-haired brunette with the slinky curves and the catlike grace.
His head came up, and he opened his eyes a bare slit. White light streaked across his vision, but he could see her coming toward him—phone held to her ear, her attention on him, a half smile of recognition curving her mouth. She knew him, or thought she did, and for a single, perfectly clear moment, he had only one thought: that he wanted to know her, too. Whoever she was, he wanted the memory of her to come back to him.
And if that wasn’t the kind of crap that could get a guy killed, thinking about a woman when you were in the enemy camp, Con didn’t know what would.
The sound of another door opening, from above and behind the woman, had him lifting his gaze higher, away from her to a man standing at the top of the stairs leading to the offices.
“Jane!” the man called out, and with the one word, Con felt everything inside him shift. The hard, cold thing that was his heart froze solid, and he could barely breathe.
He knew that voice, the quality and the timbre of it. One word, four letters, Jane, and he was transported to a long-ago place, this place. The smell of oil and grease and tires, of gasoline and exhaust, the heat of summer nights and hot cars running fast, stolen cars with the thrill of the boost still jumping him up.
It wasn’t just a memory, a fleeting possibility. He knew he’d stolen those cars, and he’d stolen them with the man at the top of the stairs and brought them here, to this place.
The woman hesitated, still looking at him, her brow furrowing in confusion before she started to turn toward the man who’d called her name.
No, Con decided, breaking into a run and pulling a concussion grenade from the inside pocket of his dark gray jacket. Divide and conquer, confuse and overcome.
That was the mission. That’s what he’d come to Denver for—to prevail at any cost, to free Scout.
And then he was hit, a sharp, piercing pain stabbing into his arm, through his coat.
Geezus. It knocked the breath out of him, but he reacted instantly, reaching up and pulling the dart out.
Oh, shit. He glanced at the syringe barrel before tossing it away from him. Halox was