Hungry Like the Wolf(49)

Wow. “I’m glad no one got hurt.”

“Me too.”

She followed Gage into the small kitchen, watching as he rifled through the cabinets. He opened just about every one of them, but came up empty-handed.

“Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

“Not really. Just had an urge for something.”

“Like what?”

The teasing look he gave her made her pulse skip a beat. “Now I know what I wanted to eat.” He took her hand and pulled her against him with a low, sexy growl. “You.”

His mouth came down on hers with a possessiveness that made her knees go weak. She clutched his shoulders to keep from melting to the floor. How could she go all gooey from a simple kiss?

Because there wasn’t anything simple about it. The kiss was amazing.

“I’ve been thinking about doing that all day,” he rasped.

She smiled. “Good thing I didn’t leave then.”

He chuckled and bent his head to kiss her again, but a loud cough from the top of the stairs made them both freeze. Damn, she’d completely forgotten where they were. Apparently, so had Gage. He stepped away from her.

“Sorry to interrupt, Sergeant,” Mike said. “But we have another one.”

***

Mac sat in the operations vehicle, her eyes glued to the monitors as Gage and the entire SWAT team finished their sweep of the first floor of the fleabag motel and headed up the stairs at both ends of the building. Despite being worried to death about what came next, she was glad they were finally done with the ground floor because what she’d seen there was going to haunt her for a very long time.

From what Mac had been able to piece together, a local gang had been having some kind of initiation party on the first floor when a rival gang had shown up and started shooting. Gang Number One had returned fire and what had started out as a party had quickly turned into a bloodbath.

The cops had gotten there in time to force the gun-wielding survivors of both gangs up to the second floor of the motel, where they’d barricaded themselves in several rooms. Unfortunately, each gang had taken the people staying at the motel hostage, and were ready to kill all of them—if they hadn’t already.

When she, Gage, and the rest of the SWAT team had arrived, the uniformed officers were still trading fire with the gangs on the second floor. It had been like a warzone, with the gangs taking shots at each other as well as the cops and anyone else who came within sight of the motel.

After making her promise to stay in the operations vehicle parked four blocks away, Gage and the rest of the SWAT team immediately headed into the fray—not to take out the thugs, but to try to rescue any of the hotel guests still inside. She’d almost turned off the monitors when she’d seen all the carnage there. Any remaining thought that the SWAT team was crooked, dirty, or anything other than the biggest bunch of heroic, dedicated cops she’d ever seen in her life was gone now. Gage and his men had gone into the motel over and over, carrying out the wounded while being shot at the whole time.

Mac held her breath as Gage reached the second floor. The two gangs had knocked out windows and piled up furniture to barricade themselves behind while they used up what seemed like an unlimited supply of ammunition. She knew Gage and his team were good at their jobs, but she didn’t see how this was going to end well.

Her hands were freaking shaking, she was so scared. Gage was going in there, and she suddenly realized she didn’t want him to.

The audio system in the operations vehicle was tied into the headsets every SWAT officer wore, so why the hell couldn’t she hear anything? She darted from one monitor to the next, but the men moved so fast it was making her dizzy. She wasn’t even sure where everyone was. A minute ago, Gage had been on the stairwell, but now he looked as if he was on some kind of gravel surface. Where the hell was he, on the ground behind the building? That made no sense at all.

Several men suddenly kneeled down in front of Gage’s camera, and she had only a second to identify one of them as Cooper before they scattered again. She almost screamed in frustration.

Gage’s voice came over the speaker. “Three…two…one…go!”

There was a thunderous boom and a flash of light, then…chaos.

Mac’s heart pounded harder, almost drowning out the sound coming over the speakers. What the hell good were cameras if everything on the monitors was too fast and jarring to comprehend? There were bright flashes of light, then the pop of gunshots followed by the ear-shattering cacophony of automatic weapons being fired. Screams and shouts turned into cries of pain, but they were barely audible over the low, angry growls the SWAT team made. She’d heard the same thing when Mike and Xander had led their squads into the pitch-black office building that first day. Only this time, it was much louder.