White Heat by Cherry Adair Page A

Doyle—something like that— hadn’t been out that much longer. First real assignment, security. And Emily’s best hope if she got herself into any immediate trouble. Which there was no reason for her to do.
    Still, Max felt a sense of impending danger he couldn’t shake.
    She’d be safe at the boyfriend’s until he got there, he rationalized, irritated that she’d given him the slip. And for some odd reason, annoyed as hell that she’d run from him straight to Bozzato’s arms. It wasn’t just his usually dormant ego that had taken a licking; he had a bad, a fucking really bad feeling in his gut. A feeling logic wouldn’t shake.
    He’d stick her in a local safe house with round-the-clock security until he unraveled what had happened to the old man. And/or until the lab and the interrogators could tell him what that vial had been for, and why the guy in custody had broken into her apartment.
    Emily wasn’t going to be able to take a pee without someone accompanying her to the bathroom. If not himself, then people he trusted. There’d be no negotiation. “Stay with her. ETA six minutes.”
    A second after he disconnected, the phone rang. “Aries.”
    “Vacation over, Aries,” Darius informed him. “As of now, your ass is officially T-FLAC’s again. We’ve had a third bombing. This one right there in your backyard. I want you wheels up within the hour. You’ll be in Córdoba in time for dinner. Which you won’t have time for. I’m dispatching your team, they’ll be there at 0 dark thirty.”
    “I wouldn’t exactly call Spain my backyard,” Max said dryly. “What went bang?”
    “La Mezquita. Familiar with it?”
    “Moorish palace converted into a Roman Catholic cathedral.”
    “Good enough. I’ll fax you more. EMTs have gone in and collected the bodies, as for now we have control of the scene. But the locals are champing at the bit to get in to comb the rubble. I want you there before they tamper with things they know nothing about.”
    “Got it.” Max thought for a moment. “Send Cooper.”
    “You think you’ll need a sharpshooter?”
    To watch over Emily? “Yeah.” And AJ Cooper was the best.
    “Done.”
    He’d trust Cooper to keep Emily safe while he was gone—a few days at most. The phone rang again. “What?”
    “She’s gone inside,” Ragusa hesitated.
    “And?”
    “I don’t know if this means anything. But there’s an identical yellow Maserati parked right in front of hers.”
    Max’s heart leapt. “You’d fucking better be as close to her as white on rice, Ragusa! Go. Go. Go!”
    He was three minutes away. Might as well be on the fucking moon. The driver didn’t need to be told to put her foot flat on the gas. She did that on her own.
    EMILY’S FINGERS GRIPPED THE DOOR FRAME ONCE SHE’D FINISHEDretching. Impossible to move. Impossible to breathe. There was so much blood, it looked like red paint. Blood pooling on the floor. Blood splattered on the walls. Even the ceiling had a confetti of red spray. She blinked, trying to assimilate what she was seeing.
    They’d been interrupted at a meal. Dinner. They’d been eating an early dinner. She must’ve missed the killer by mere minutes.
    Go, her brain screamed. Go. Go. Go.
    She couldn’t move.
    It was impossible to tell how many . . . Oh, God—bodies there were. Her hearing was muted as if she were underwater, but she felt the frantic beating of her heart in her ears as her brain tried to comprehend what kind of madman would do something like this.
    Bile rose in the back of her throat again, and her knees felt weak. She saw a movement out of the corner of her eye, and whipped her head around. A man was silently running across the living room, as if following the dark wet spots her footsteps had left on the Signora’s carpet. Dressed completely in black, his face covered, he was a terrifying sight. The big black gun was overkill. He shouted something she couldn’t comprehend, let alone separate the syllables into a