Trial and Temptation (Mandrake Company) by Ruby Lionsdrake

outside, waiting with guns, he kept his hands to himself as she bent forward, gravity pressing her breasts against the blouse even more than usual. It would be so easy to reach up, slide the back of his finger along one enticing curve.
    No. He watched her hand instead, pushing back into a crouch as she fished out the latch.
    “I think that’s it,” she whispered. She must be thinking of guards too.
    Gregor grabbed the edge of the hole they had made in the door. “Ready?”
    Val backed up a few steps, nudging aside the shards of metal lying on the floor all around the door. They needed to be able to run out without worrying about slipping.
    Gregor pushed the door open, prepared for guards or an empty hallway.
    The hallway wasn’t empty. The lone guard had been leaning against the door—maybe even listening to try to figure out what they were doing—so he stumbled. He was slow to bring up his rifle. Too slow. Gregor rammed a palm strike into his nose. For the second time that day, someone’s cartilage smashed beneath his hand. This time, he was damaging a worthy enemy, an obstacle to their mission, not some foolish thug in a bar.
    He lunged out into the hall, following his blow with an elbow strike to the solar plexus. Even as he attacked, he glanced in both directions, not wanting to be caught unaware by some second guard stationed nearby. But the corridor was empty. Good. He drew back his arm, ready to throw another punch, but his target had fallen to the floor, groaning and clutching his nose.
    Val stood in the doorway, the liquid nitrogen canister hefted to her shoulder, her eyes on the guard. If he made a sudden move, he might get that hammered into his head. Gregor gave her a nod of approval, glad he had the “backup” he had hoped for in bringing her down here.
    He plucked the guard’s laser rifle from the floor. “Get up.”
    A groan answered him. The bleary-eyed man looked up, not appearing particularly fierce with tears on his cheeks, but Gregor kept the weapon trained on him anyway.
    “We locking him in a freezer?” Val didn’t sound like she would mind the turnabout.
    “Someone seems to have destroyed the lock.” When the guard didn’t hurry to stand, Gregor grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pushed him into the freezer.
    “There are other freezers.”
    “We’ll tie him up and leave him in here. I don’t want to kill anyone, despite these men’s willingness to condemn us to that fate.” He pushed the guard into the corner. “Sit.”
    The man glowered at him but did so. Gregor returned to one of the crates wrapped with straps, figuring they might prove useful after all. He was debating how to unfasten them and hold the rifle on the prisoner at the same time, but Val figured out what he was up to and waved him aside. She made short work of removing the straps from the crate, then tied up the guard, perhaps with more vigor than the task required. By the time she finished, he looked like a chicken trussed up for the oven. A chicken with his face smashed into the floor. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
    “Now what?” Val asked.
    “Now we hope we’re not too late to extricate the admiral from the generator room.” Gregor worried that, as Val had mentioned earlier, the kidnappers may have moved him. If they had identified Gregor as a part of Mandrake Company, they might worry that more mercenaries would be on the way. He and Val could start there at least. If the admiral had been moved, Gregor had memorized his list of thirty-one other possible hiding spots.
    “There were six men in that room,” Val said, “that we saw on the camera. And they have at least three other friends left out here.” She waved to the trussed guard. He had been one of the four who had come out of the lift. “Any chance there was a nearby armory on that map you were memorizing in the closet?”
    “No armory.” Gregory offered her the rifle. “But I’ll trade you. I think you may actually have