She looked past him at the screen. It had a cell phone number on it, but he quickly crashed her hopes by saying, “The number’s not useful in itself; it’s a throwaway. But I have the cell’s last GPS location. It’s been switched off, but you were right. It was at a marina, right here.” He brought up a map, and pointed. “It’s not exactly the yacht club. The place is a favorite for drug smugglers. If we go, we go in armed and ready.”
“If we go?”
“Mercer—”
“Pat, Mercer didn’t set this up. If he had, he’d have at least had her give the location to feed to me, wouldn’t he?” Even as she said it, it had a hollow ring and she knew it. She wanted to believe that Annie had gotten free of him, that she could be saved. Could be fixed.
And at the same time, she knew that was bullshit, but she couldn’t let it go.
Pat, however, was going to make her do it. “Knowing we could grab the number off your records and get the GPS coordinates? No. He gives you more credit than you give him, Bryn.” He leaned forward, capturing and holding her gaze in his intense stare. “I will not let you throw yourself away on this. We’ll play the game, but we’ll play it safely. You don’t go charging in, are we understood? Say yes and mean it, or I zip-tie you and leave you here while Joe and I go on our own.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You think not?”
She couldn’t actually swear that he wouldn’t. McCallister could be coolly ruthless when he needed to be, and he might think that he did need to be right now, with her. “I could probably get those zip-ties off. I mean, skin and bones do grow back on me.”
A smile shadowed his lips but didn’t show itself plainly. “Probably,” he said. “But it’d slow you down.”
“So does a bag over the head.”
The smile, never really present, disappeared completely. Pat’s grip on her hands tightened, then deliberately loosened. “I will never, never do that to you,” he said. “You believe me?”
She did believe him, and always had—from the moment she’d first seen him on her second birth, she’d somehow believed in his essential goodness. And on impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him—caught him by surprise, for once, and for a second his lips were soft, yielding under hers before pressing forward, parting, meeting hers with equal amounts of need and longing. His tongue stroked gently over her mouth, and there was a buried wildness in her that broke free when she allowed it entrance. His body was tense against hers, and his hands traveled slowly down her sides, curved inward, cupped her hips, and pulled her tighter against him. She had no idea what drew him to her with such constant and consistent force, but it was always there, that buried attraction that required only a moment’s slip of control to surface. It was wildly sexy, but more than the pure attraction of him, there was a kind of beautiful strength to Patrick that she couldn’t begin to define.
Why he wanted her was such a mystery to her, but there was no question in her mind, no question at all, how much she wanted him. She wanted to blot out the world with the red race of pulses and bodies, the damp solace of kisses and sweat and hot, mind-wiping sex. She needed to feel alive, with Pat, now.
But she couldn’t. Because of Annie.
So she sucked in a deep, angry breath and backed away.
McCallister reached for her, but when he saw the look on her face, he let his hands fall back to his knees. He pulled in a deep breath, dropped his head against the cushion of the chair, eyes narrowing. “I still mean it about the zip-ties.” He almost succeeded in making it sound as if nothing had happened between them. Almost. But there was color in his face, and his lips were damp, and she couldn’t stop zeroing in on them.
On the shining focus in his eyes.
“I know,” she said. “And I want to…continue this. But if she’s out there, if Annie’s out there and loose, we need to find her before Mercer can. Please.”
It had been unfair of her to do that to him, but he only nodded and said, “Then we go in five minutes.”
He meant five minutes to tell Liam where they were going, put on body armor (Bryn didn’t need it to survive, but she did admit that not being shot was still preferable), and arm up with what Patrick kept on the premises—almost as complete a selection as Joe Fideli had in his workroom. Patrick and Joe had been friends a long time, and there was no doubt that part of what had built that foundation was how similar their backgrounds were—if they’d served together, they’d never spoken of it, but Bryn wouldn’t have been surprised.
Joe almost certainly provided Patrick’s armory.
It was five minutes on the dot when she met him downstairs. He was holding a shotgun and sliding a handgun into the holster he wore.
“Are you sure that’s enough?” she asked, as she checked her own sidearm. He handed her extra clips for her belt pouch, and after ensuring the magazine was ready and there was a bullet in the chamber, she safetied the weapon and put it away. “Remember who we’re dealing with.”
“I’m well aware,” Pat said. “But your sister’s in the middle of it, and as much as he probably deserves it, we can’t take the risk of killing Mercer. So pick your shots. Joe’s our backup. He’ll have the heavier stuff.”
She hadn’t seen him call Joe, but it didn’t surprise her that he’d managed to fit the call in while her back was turned. As she watched, Pat readied a small bag with more extra clips, shotgun shells, and three sealed preloaded syringes. “You said that Annie didn’t sound so great. She’ll need boosters, if so.”
“Manny’s formula?”
“No,” he said. “Pharmadene standard’s all we can spare. We don’t have enough of Manny’s to use for anyone but you.”
He strapped on his own bulletproof vest with smooth, competent, almost instinctive motions, and Bryn was suddenly struck by the fact that he was the at-risk one in this equation. She could take a bullet. So could Annie. So could Fast Freddy, Mercer’s slimy little thug, equally Revived.
But not Patrick McCallister. He was still alive, and vulnerable. “Pat, you don’t have to do this with me. I can go alone and just check it out. I promise, I won’t do anything stupid.”
He glanced up at her and smiled—a real smile, one that lit up his eyes, crinkled the skin next to his mouth, and made her shiver somewhere deep. “I’m not that fragile,” he said. “Trust me. And I need the practice.”
She sincerely doubted that last part. Pat looked about as comfortable with weapons as anyone she’d ever seen; his movements with them were precise, careful, and had the grace of incredible familiarity. He’d never told her exactly what his military experience had been, but it must have been far, far more intense than her own. And the fact that he’d survived it without too many visible scars told her that he was either seriously good at it or lucky, or both.
It was a very good combination, if so, because right now, she could use some serious luck.
And so could Annie.
Pat was right about the area of the marina.…It was murky, industrial, poorly lit, and in a part of town where the police traveled in numbers if they came at all. As she braked the dark sedan in a spot as far from the wan security lights as possible, another vehicle coasted to a stop beside her—a big pickup truck, in the same basic, lightless black. She knew it by sight: Joe Fideli’s vehicle. It wasn’t a surprise when he stepped out, dressed for battle in dark gray urban camo, with a black watch cap over his shaved head. As Pat had promised, Joe held the heavy arms: an FN P90, or a look-alike. The military had classified it as a PDW, a personal defense weapon, but it was capable of some fearsome offense and was probably highly illegal to carry around in the wild.