Maya Banks - Theirs to Keep

The entire office was on fire, smoke pouring from the ceiling and windows. Flames licked from the busted windows, and Cade saw no sign of Elle.

Oh God, was she still inside?

He and Merrick hit the ground running. They threw open the door and recoiled from the blast of heat and smoke that hit them.

“Elle!” Merrick shouted. “Elle! Where the hell are you?”

They charged inside, coughing as smoke filled their lungs.

“Here!”

Cade damn near hit the floor in relief when he heard her call.

“Keep talking,” Cade hollered. “Can’t see shit in here.”

“I’m here,” she yelled back. “By my desk. I tried to crawl out, but I can’t see anything.”

Cade and Merrick dropped down, lowering themselves as close to the floor as possible as they scrambled in the direction of her desk. Merrick mowed right over her, and when he realized that he had her, he hauled her up over his shoulder and then hustled toward the door, leaving Cade to follow him.

The three burst from the building just as the fire trucks rolled into the parking lot, sirens screaming.

Merrick collapsed to his knees at the bottom of the steps still holding Elle tightly against him. He tipped over, her landing on the ground with Merrick over her. Merrick coughed and choked, his body heaving as he pressed Elle to the ground.

Cade sank down beside them and hastily pushed Merrick off of Elle. As soon as he managed to pry Elle free, he yanked her into his arms and ran his hands over her body, trying to determine if she’d been injured.

And then the paramedics surrounded them, and he was separated from Elle as he was pulled in a different direction from both Elle and Merrick.

“Damn it, I’m fine!” Cade snarled. “Let me see Elle. She was the one trapped in the building.”

“Have a seat and let me put this oxygen mask on you,” the paramedic tending Cade said in a firm voice. “If all goes well, you can get back to her soon, but for now, I need to assess your condition.”

Only wanting to facilitate the process, Cade bit his lip and let the medic slip the mask over his face. He took in several deep breaths, his throat raw from smoke inhalation. The entire time the medic poked at him and took his vitals, Cade’s gaze was directed across the way where two paramedics already had Elle on a stretcher. She was fighting tooth and nail and calling for Merrick and Cade.

He yanked the mask from his face and took off at a run. He shoved by one of the medics trying to restrain Elle and leaned over the stretcher to pull her into his arms.

“Thank God,” she whispered in his ear. “Don’t let them take me, Cade. Someone will find out about me.”

“Honey, you need to go to a hospital. This is serious. We need to make sure you’re okay.”

Fear leapt into her eyes, and she shook her head adamantly. “Take me to see Dallas.”

“Miss, you really need to be taken to the emergency room,” one of the medics advised.

Again she shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Her voice cracked and was hoarse from the smoke.

Christ. Where was Merrick?

Still holding Elle, Cade turned to look over his shoulder and rapidly scanned the area for Merrick. His gaze lighted on his friend sitting on the ground several yards away, an oxygen mask covering his face while a medic took his vitals.

Shit but this was the last thing Merrick needed when he was so close to his championship fight.

“I’ll take her in,” Cade said when he looked back at the medics. He needed to get on with it fast so Merrick could be checked out too. Dakota was going to shit a brick over this.

The medics frowned and shook their heads in disbelief.

“I need her to sign no transport papers,” one of them said.

“I’ll sign,” Elle said in a firm voice.

The other medic sighed and turned to walk to the ambulance. He pulled out a clipboard and returned, thrusting a pen at Elle. He handed over the clipboard, showed her where to sign and then waited as she scribbled her name on the line.

As soon as she was done, she tried to get down, but Cade caught her against him and lifted her from the stretcher. He carried her to the SUV that now sported a dent in the side from the collision with the dumpster.

After settling her into the front seat, he buckled her in and then touched her face to get her attention.

“I’ll be right back, okay? I need to check on Merrick and see what’s up. Then I’ll get you to Dallas.”

She nodded and laid her head back against the rest.

Cade strode in Merrick’s direction only to see Merrick push himself to his feet, strip off the oxygen mask and hand it to the medic standing next to him. He started in Cade’s direction, meeting him there halfway.

“How’s Elle?” Merrick demanded.

“I’m taking her to see Dallas now. What about you?”

“I’m good. Going with you. We’ll take care of this later.”

Cade nodded and hurried back to the SUV. There would be a shit ton of stuff to do later. Reports to file. Statements to give. Insurance to see to.

Just then, his dad roared into the parking lot and braked hard, kicking up dirt and gravel as he stopped just in front of Merrick and Cade.

Charlie jumped out, his brows drawn together in concern.

“What the hell happened?” his dad demanded.

Cade shook his head. “No time to explain now, Dad. Do you mind sticking around to take care of stuff here? We need to get Elle to see Dallas. She was trapped in the office when it went up in flames.”

“Christ,” Charlie muttered. “Go on. Take her in and see to her needs. I’ll take care of things here.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Before Cade could hurry away, his dad pulled him into a huge hug.

“Glad you and Merrick are okay, son.”

CADE CARRIED HER INTO DALLAS’S clinic, and when the receptionist saw them, she immediately stood and motioned them through the door to one of the exam rooms.

Just a moment after Cade laid her down on the table, Dallas hurried in, a frown creasing his face. Then he got a look at Merrick.

“What the hell happened?” Dallas demanded.

“Fire,” Cade said grimly.

“Bullets too,” Elle blurted.

Merrick’s face grew stormy. “What the fuck?”

Cade shook his head in confusion. “Back up. You said bullets?”

Elle nodded as Dallas put his stethoscope to her chest and asked her to breathe deeply. He was eyeing Merrick with concern even as he examined her.

“Someone fired bullets into the office. I dove under the desk, and that’s when they torched the place. I saw the bottles hit the floor and explode with flames.”

“Son of a bitch,” Merrick swore. “She could have been killed!”

“Why would someone do this?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Could be any number of people,” Cade said. “Not like we don’t have enemies.”

Elle had gone pale, and she shook visibly. “You don’t think it has anything to do with me, do you? Do you think…he…found me? Or that he knows I’m not dead?”

Dallas shot Cade and Merrick a look, quirking up his eyebrow as if to ask them if there was any credence to Elle’s fear.

Cade pushed closer to Elle’s bedside and rubbed his hand up and down her back. Merrick stifled a deep cough and went to Elle’s other side. She reached for him blindly, tangling her hand with his.

“It probably has more to do with the asshole we caught trying to steal a car from Bo’s dealership last night,” Merrick said. “He was spouting threats. Most of the time, it’s just talk, but it’s worth looking into.”

“Is he not still in jail?” Elle asked.

Cade shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t typically follow up. Could be out on bail. But even if he’s still locked up, he could have had others torch the office in retaliation. It probably has nothing to do with you one way or another, honey. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“So it was you and Merrick they were targeting then,” she said, an unhappy twist to her mouth. “They were trying to kill you.”

“We don’t know that, baby,” Merrick soothed. “It could have been a random act of violence.”

Even as he said it, they all knew how unlikely it was. Their office wasn’t in a residential section, and it wasn’t in a part of town where drive-by shootings were a common occurrence.

It was personal.

“You should both get looked at,” Dallas said to Cade and Merrick. “I need to do some blood work on Elle and put her on oxygen for a while. She needs to stay here so I can monitor her condition.”

“I’m okay,” Elle said softly. “See to them. I wasn’t in there for too long.”

Dallas put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You were exposed to the fire and smoke longer than they were. I need to make sure you don’t have any injuries that were overlooked in the excitement of the moment.”

She reluctantly nodded her agreement.

Dallas called in his nurse practitioner and sent Cade and Merrick to the next room to be checked out.

Cade was reluctant to leave Elle but knew she was in good hands with Dallas. He went into the next room and waited impatiently as the nurse practitioner did a thorough examination of both him and Merrick.

When she left the two men alone in the room, Merrick turned to Cade.

“She could have been killed. We can’t leave her alone like that again even if it’s just for a few minutes. Hell, we sent your dad to go stay with her. What if he’d been there when all this went down? We could have lost them both.”

“I know,” Cade said in a low voice. “What do you think? Retaliation? It’s not like our information isn’t all over the place at Bo’s or any other place we do security for. Our advertisement of security monitoring and the warnings are posted around the perimeter.”