“Thanks, Agent Reitano.”
He frowned down at her. “Just Ryan, okay?”
Nodding, her gaze slid to the fallen men.
Ryan squatted over the man she’d felled and patted down his pockets. Then he rolled him onto his stomach and continued the search.
“Are you looking for ID?” she asked.
Shrugging at her question, he lifted the flap of the man’s sports coat and removed the gun hidden there. “Not really. These guys aren’t going to tell us anything I don’t already know.”
He pocketed the gun, then tried the doorknob of the employee locker room she’d stood in front of during the attack. It was locked. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to make a break for it through the parking garage, so I’m going to get my gun out and load it with a fresh magazine, okay? Don’t freak.”
Avery drew herself up, giving him her best indignant glare. “Oh, please. I’m not going to go nuts at the sight of a gun. I see guns every day at the office.” Holstered, of course. But still...
He straightened his tie, smoothed a hand over his hair, then removed a big black gun from his jacket and positioned himself against the wall next to the parking garage door.
Despite her words to the contrary, Avery drew a sharp breath and her heart skipped a beat. But her reaction was purely reserved for the man holding the weapon. She followed the line of his shoulder to the bunched muscles of his biceps beneath his pricey-looking, perfectly tailored jacket, then farther, to the large, steady hand holding the gun. With that suit, the gun and his devastatingly handsome face, he looked like the most dashing and sophisticated secret agent the world had ever known.
He looked like James Bond.
A hot flush crept over her cheeks. No doubt about it, Agent Reitano—Ryan—hit every one of her buttons in just the right way.
Without seeming to notice her perusal, he said, “Stand behind me, out of sight.”
Avery complied, flattening herself against the wall, her bare arm brushing his sleeve. “You’re going to make sure the garage is free of bad guys, right?”
“Definitely.” He opened the door a crack and listened. Avery held her breath. He opened the door wider and stuck his head and gun through. Then he closed it again and lowered the gun. “The door’s at a bad angle, so I couldn’t see much, but it’s too quiet in there. No cars moving, no people’s voices. Totally silent.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve and the hotel is crawling with people,” Avery said. “The parking garage should be packed. Can’t we call someone to help us get out of here? Director Tau or Agent Mickle, maybe Agent Lucey?”
“No.”
“But—”
“Avery, you’re going to have to trust me that we’re on our own. I’m hoping the silence is a random coincidence because I’m not crazy about going back upstairs. Let me think for a sec about the exit locations in the parking garage from the hotel blueprints I went over this morning.”
That, Avery could handle. She closed her eyes, visualizing the blueprints. “Except for the employee locker room on the other side of that door—” eyes still closed, she gestured her head toward where she’d been standing moments before “—the parking garage takes up the entire underground level beneath the hotel. The only car exit ramp will be on our right, approximately fifty yards away. It exits on Fifth and J Street. There are four emergency exit stairwells in the garage. The nearest one is three rows past the first pillar on the west side. It exits to Fourth along an alley.”
She opened her eyes to find Ryan staring at her with an inscrutable expression.
“Did you memorize the blueprints?”
She shrugged noncommittally. “I didn’t try to memorize them.”
Cocking his head, he looked like he was about to speak when a door opened somewhere in the stairwell above them. Footsteps moving fast, growing louder. Before Avery knew what was happening, Ryan had pulled her into the parking garage.
The door shut behind them with a clatter that garnered the attention of four machine-gun-toting men standing near the valet parking booth. In a flash, all four guns trained on them.
Avery gasped, then clamped her mouth shut and bit her tongue. It hurt like mad, but she couldn’t get her jaw to open again to stop the pain.
Ryan’s expression was unreadable as he raised his hands.
The men with guns looked to be in their mid-thirties or early forties and were dressed in jeans, sweatshirts and ball caps. And they each had huge, nasty guns that looked capable of firing a million rounds a minute with the slightest depression of the trigger.
They sprinted in Avery and Ryan’s direction, with the burliest of them shouting in a heavy Eastern European accent, “Drop the gun! On your knees or we kill the girl.”
Avery’s arms shot in the air of their own will. She maneuvered to her knees awkwardly, her movement hindered by her dress. Ryan followed suit, placing his gun on the ground a few feet in front of him.
Behind them, the stairwell door opened again, but Avery didn’t dare look. Ryan did though. Whoever it was, he kept his arms raised and his expression stony. Guess the police or a random team of navy SEALs hadn’t charged in to save them.
One of the men nabbed Ryan’s gun and stuck it in his sweatshirt pocket; another went through Ryan’s jacket and withdrew two more guns, a cell phone and a knife. A third man circled them, calling something in another language to whoever had come through the stairway door.
Orange cones had been placed across the car entrance ramp, along with a sign that read Lot Closed. The thug at the valet booth, dressed as hotel security, was arguing with an unarmed man in a bellboy uniform.
As subtly as she could, Avery swung her eyes toward the emergency stairways. They were unmanned, but she bet they’d been rigged to stay locked. It looked like whoever these guys were—probably Vincenzo Chiara’s men, she’d hazard to guess—they wanted some privacy for whatever nefarious activities they planned to perform tonight. She’d also bet that the crew of valet parkers were either dead or had been strong-armed into taking an extended coffee break all at once, like she’d seen in a movie one time.
Ryan nudged her leg with his shoe. “The locker room,” he said under his breath. “Where in the hotel does it come out at?”
A man rushed at Ryan and speared him in the gut with the nose of his rifle. “Shut up!”
Grunting loudly, Ryan crumbled into a fetal position.
Avery held her breath lest she erupt with the scream building inside her. It was unbearable, watching him be hurt again.
“Where?” he whispered without moving.
Avery forced herself to move, though fear had once again nearly paralyzed her. She leaned over him as though to comfort him. “Behind the lobby reception desk,” she breathed. The question baffled her. How would they access it if it were locked?
“Back on your feet!” one of the men barked. “Move it!”
It was a whole new round of awkwardness, returning to her feet in the dress, though she wasn’t sure why she gave a whit about modesty anymore. She stalled on her knees, wondering how to manage it, when Ryan offered her a hand. His other hand slid against her skin at the gape in her dress where the zipper had popped off.
It was work, keeping the utter shock off her face as his hand, warm and sure, dipped below the broken zipper. His fingertips breached the top of the Spanx. Quite the terrible timing to get fresh with her, even if he clearly knew his way around a woman’s body. He helped her up gradually, and as she straightened her back, cold metal replaced the feel of his fingers. Avery nearly choked on her own spit.
The