Bear My Heir(21)
She screamed as Dice tackled the next guy, who was fumbling to grab his sidearm from the folds of his jacket. In the background, gunfire and screaming seemed to erupt like a volcano, spewing panic around them.
"Get down!" Dice yelled at Meredith, who was pale in the face and shaking, but she did as she was told.
Dice grabbed the guard's wrist just in time for him to get a hold of his gun, and at the very last fraction of a second, Dice managed to yank his wrist back and snap it clean in half, making the gunshot whine past Meredith with only a couple of inches to spare. The animal snarl that emitted from Dice's lips was sign enough that the man had really fucking fucked up with that move.
"That was a real fucking dumb decision," he rasped, bending the man's broken arm back so he was staring down the barrel of his own gun.
The wolf's pure blue eyes managed to flash gold for only a moment before his face was reduced to a mess of blood and cartilage. Dice yanked the gun out of his hand, pulled his security pass from his belt, and took hold of Meredith's hand, pulling her up and into a run immediately. He glanced over his shoulder to see Ryker and Rio taking out three of the guards with the assault rifles who had been closest to their position, before running after him.
Price was nowhere in sight.
Shit.
"Where's Price?" Dice demanded, throwing caution to the wind as far as their identities were concerned.
There wasn't going to be a lot of doubt about their Firm background after this mess, after all.
"Lost him in the confusion," Thor said impassively, his last word marked with a gentle popping sound in the background, which turned into the deafening noise of tempered glass breaking and shattering and then countless voices screaming.
Thor had shot a guard in the eye who was aiming at Dice's head, finally getting to use his rifle.
"You fuckers need to get out of there, fast," Prowler commented, stress evident in his voice.
"Where's Price!?" Dice asked again, pushing through the same doors with Meredith as the ones she'd just entered from.
"I don't see him, he's dropped his camera," Prowler replied.
"We don't have time for this," Rio growled, pushing past Dice as the lion twins caught up.
Both of them had managed to secure an assault rifle from the men they'd mangled. It was only the commotion of the party, the countless rich and famous trying to trample all over one another in an attempt to get out of the path of destruction that gave them a chance to run at all. The party was packed so densely that the guards had a hard time making their way to the squad's position and even if they could see them, they could hardly try and shoot at them because of the threat of killing one of their wealthy patrons instead.
"See, we should have done this in the first place," Ryker laughed, taking up the rear.
He spun around for a moment, in time to dissuade one of three guards who were on their tail to drop behind a large concrete pillar, lest he wanted to get his kneecaps blown off.
"Dice," Meredith called, struggling to keep up with his long steps as they ran up the stairs to the next floor. "There were guards there as well," she gasped.
"There are guards everywhere, baby," Dice replied morosely, intimately aware of just that fact.
But Meredith's hand was in his and that made it all okay. At least he'd tried.
And succeeded, he reminded himself.
Losing wasn't an option.
"What are our options?" Dice called, speaking both into the headset as well as to the two men around him.
"Blow out a window and jump to our deaths, unless one of you is a secret dragon shifter who can fly us to safety," Rio remarked, slamming open a glass door in their path.
The next door was clearly locked and before Dice could key it to open with the pass he'd stolen off the dead guard, they were met by gunfire.
"Shit," Ryker hissed as a blast went by his side, blowing a hole in his suit jacket.
Dice pulled Meredith aside and made her crouch behind a pillar, standing in front of her so she couldn't be attacked from the other side.
"You okay, man?" Rio called.
"Right as fucking rain," Ryker growled, spinning out of cover and landing a shot through the hole that used to be a glass wall separating the Shifter Squad Nine men from the two guards.
"That's the room Rowen was in," Meredith said, peeking out for a moment before Dice pushed her back.
"He's not there anymore," he answered.
"Dice, we need to find him. He- … I think he has our baby. They're going to kill him," Meredith said, her voice seeming to both shake and at the same time be filled with more certainty than Dice had ever heard.
His world seemed to still for a moment and despite the fact that they were surrounded by werewolf commandos, they only had a few guns between them and they were stuck on basically the top floor of the Etihad Tower with no means of escape, things seemed to go from bad to worse. Great.
"Thor, do you have a visual on Rowen?" Dice asked, the response coming in immediately.
"Two rooms ahead of you. He's trying to get on an elevator but there seems to be issues with the pass. I think-"
"Don't think, know," Prowler's voice came over the line, practically laughing. "I shut down the lifts. He doesn't have anywhere to run, unless he's taking the million steps of stairs down."
"Good job," Dice said. Turning his attention to Meredith, he crouched down for a moment, knowing that every second was crucial. "Baby, stay with them. If anything happens, you stay with Rio and Ryker, you got it?"
She nodded in response, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
"You have nothing to be sorry about," he said resolutely, kissing her briefly but savagely before jumping up and running forward.
It must have been the fact that he seemed to so obviously crave for his death that the guards didn't shoot him, but before either of the men holed up in the room ahead could do a thing, Dice had blown through the hole and landed right between them. He ducked and rolled, popping up on one knee and shooting one of the guards in the neck. Using the confusion, the other could get a clear shot and only moving at the last second saved Dice from certain death.
He took the bullet in the shoulder and spun around, roaring as he retaliated by putting a bullet right through the man's forehead. Before the guy could even keel back and fall over, Dice was up again, running toward the lifts.
Footsteps sounded behind him and for a wild moment, he was sure that it was reinforcements for the werewolves and that he was about to get run over. A million thoughts piled through his mind, most of them trying to analyze the situation and find a way out, but none of them seemed to be particularly promising. Even if he caught Rowen and they all got on the elevator then the odds of them actually ever making it out of there alive were as close to zero as they could get.
One problem at a time.
Sixteen
Dice
Rowen was slamming his hand flat against the lift in evident frustration, cursing at it.
"Come on, you fucking piece of shit," he snarled, perfectly encapsulating Dice's own emotions about the day so far.
"I don't think you're going anywhere," Dice said with deathly calm, coming up behind Rowen.
The tall man spun around, his back against the lift and surprise evident in his eyes. The party obviously wasn't going the way he planned.
"Where are your little friends?" Dice asked, glancing around as Rio and Ryker piled in after him, Meredith kept between them.
"You," Rowen hissed, his hateful gaze flicking gold as it landed on Meredith. "I should have just killed you half an hour ago."
"Probably," Dice confirmed. "But then I don't think I could have kept myself from ripping you apart limb for limb where you stood."
The words were said completely nonchalantly, as if the thought was no more grueling than a walk in the park.
"They're not here, they left," Rowen hissed. "I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, but there's no way you're getting out of this building alive. My men will shoot every last one of you like the dogs you are."