Janet nodded. Slipping into the door, she tried not to worry about the sounds of a scuffle, Marcie’s sudden cry of indignant pain as she was likely shoved back or hit, the way Dana had been.

She moved toward the main floor of the warehouse, trying to deaden every facial muscle she had so she wouldn’t react to seeing Max. It was a good decision.

Chains were dangling from the ceiling above him, as if they’d hung him there for a while. She could imagine it, his feet a few inches off the floor. She knew how the shoulders could scream in that position, how long before the danger of dislocation loomed. Right now, though, they had him stripped to his shorts and bound in a chair. Blood was running down his upper body, caused by multiple cuts from some kind of blade. There was also bruising, where he’d likely been punched. Given that they were supposed to save the worst of it for Dino, she shuddered to think what Dino had in mind for Max.

The four guarding Max must be the ones who’d taken him at the first warehouse. The stiff way a couple of them moved, the cuts and bruises on their faces, suggested he hadn’t gone down easy. She felt a visceral satisfaction at it, though nothing could override the cold clutch in her heart at seeing Max bound that way. She knew he had to be alive, but it was still nigh unbearable, seeing him motionless, his head hanging down, indicating he was unconscious.

At her appearance, the men went on full alert, one of them even drawing his gun. She channeled every ounce of will she had into looking unconcerned about the bleeding man in the center of the room. “Leo told me to look for Manny. I’m a present for Dino from the 9th Streeters, but I really need a bathroom. He said I could wait in an office somewhere?”

“We gotta search you first,” one of them said, giving her a leering appraisal.

“Of course,” she said, with the bored indifference expected. “Just be careful handling the merchandise, sugar. I’m sure Dino would like his present intact.”

At the first word she spoke, she noted a tightening of Max’s shoulders, a slight twitch of his head. He was awake then. There was a relief to that, and an opportunity. They’d concocted a couple plans, including one involving his participation. It was on her to determine if he was in a condition to do that. That question was answered easily enough.

When he slowly lifted his head, she was confronted with a steel-gray gaze that said exactly what he thought of her being here. It reminded her of a Hulk movie, only in this case mild-mannered Dr. Banner had embraced his anger with both hands, welcoming the beast.

Hold fast, Max. I’m here because we have a plan.

She forced herself to stay relaxed as Manny nodded to one of the other men. When he approached her for the search, she gave him a scornful look, raised her arms like a ballerina and did a slow pivot on the balls of her feet before he reached her. The move would give Dale a panoramic view of the surroundings, show him where everyone was. She gathered up her hair, twisting the mass of it on her neck so it wasn’t impeding the search.

The man was as zealous as she expected, his hands wandering with great familiarity over her breasts, under her skirt, squeezing her ass and rubbing against her pussy, but he was also thorough in his search for weapons. She gave him a teasing look and bumped him with her ass when he got too pushy with his fingers. “You go any further with those, sugar, you have to pay for it.”

He gave her a feral grin, but then nodded to Manny. “She’s clean.”

“In so many ways. Bathroom?”

The next moment, her cheekbone exploded with pain. Manny had closed the three steps between them and knocked her down with the back of his hand. Even as the agony rocketed through her, she knew it had been designed to set her down on her ass, not to do any harm. She’d been beaten by Jorge enough to know the difference between an object lesson and uncontrolled rage.

“Don’t be acting like you’re more than a whore around us, just because you’re some fancy piece sent by the 9th Streeters. Shit, they owe us. When Dino’s done, we’ll all take a piece of you, and they can consider it a tip on their back rent.”

She got to her feet, tossing her hair back. She didn’t dare a look at Max, but when she fell, she thought she’d heard the chair scrape, as if he’d lunged against the bonds. Fortunately, no one else had noticed that.

“Sugar, if you’re the kind of boy who’s into the pain, I can bend you over my knee and have you begging for Mama to give you more.”

The other men snorted with laughter. Even Manny’s expression eased. As she suspected, it had been a simple dominance gesture, nothing personal to it. “Bathroom’s up that way.” He pointed to the mezzanine behind Max.

All the better. She sauntered that way, but then she deviated on her track, bending down a couple feet away from Max to tsk him in a mocking voice. “You’re having a bad, bad day, sugar, aren’t you? Working for Jorge, I could have told you that Dino’s the wrong badass to cross.”

“Hey, don’t be…you knew Jorge?” Manny’s gaze sharpened on her.

“Of course.” She straightened. “I used to be one of his. I told Leo that. When they cut him up, I came back here. But I wouldn’t mind living South of the Border again. One of the reasons this job tonight interested me.” She let her gaze pass over all of them. “And why I’m interested in seeing what I can do for Dino to make him appreciate me.”

Before they could stop her, she slid on to Max’s knee, and ran the tip of her tongue over the blood at his temple. He was still playing unconscious, though he let out a grunt, his head trying to roll away from her as if he was disoriented. She caught his jaw to hold him fast. As she wet her lips with her tongue, she ran a provocative hand under her hair, letting it spill forward onto her breast, taunting him. “Hmm… You taste good, sugar.”

She caressed his shoulder, let that hand drop to dig her nails into his bare back, hard enough he flinched, since she found a place they’d already marked. She tightened her grip on his face, turning it so their eyes met. His were in half-slits. “Dino’s going to kill you nice and slow for whatever nasty thing you did to him,” she chided him. “Shouldn’t have done that, you know. Shame. You’re a pretty boy. Some mama’s going to miss you terrible.”

Standing up, she ruffled his hair like a schoolboy’s. She licked away the blood on her fingers like cake icing. “You said the bathroom’s upstairs?” she asked Manny, her expression bored again.

He shook his head. “Yeah. You’re a bit of a twisted bitch, ain’t you?”

Janet smiled. She wouldn’t have been surprised if there was frost coating her lips. She was made of ice, ice through her veins, even numbing the pain in her cheek. “You have no idea.”

She made her way up the mezzanine stairs with lots of hip action sure to draw attention. She heard the men chuckle among themselves, make comments about Dino either being a lucky bastard or one deserving their pity. In her peripheral vision, she could tell Max had lifted his head again. She couldn’t look at him. She’d worn the honeysuckle gloss he liked so much, a light layer over her lipstick. He would have smelled it, and she’d left it on his skin, marking him. Hers. He was hers.

When she reached the top of the mezzanine she turned. “Manny, do you mind—”

He looked up at her, and that was when the shot took him straight through the head, accompanied by the plink of broken glass from the window above her left shoulder.

Janet felt time slow down. A stunned expression crossed two of the men’s faces in that elongated moment, but the third man never had time to register it. Another shot dropped him. Then things sped up, like a fiery star streaking across the heavens.

Max surged out of the chair, the zip ties on his wrists cut by the short knife she’d given him when she’d trailed her hand down his back, delivering the blade beneath her hair to his waiting hands. He used the blink of time when shock gripped his enemies to cut his ankles free and launch himself. Since the two men were standing next to one another, he hit them like a bowling ball hitting pins. They both went down, but one made a faster recovery. It didn’t matter. From where Janet stood, he never had a chance. Max killed him with an eerily efficient blow to his temple. She knew he’d killed him, because when he shoved him away, the man’s body fell and rolled face up below the mezzanine. Life died out of his eyes as he stared up at her frozen visage.

The other man bolted, headed for the door. When he got there, it hit him in the face, because Dale bounced the heavy metal off his forehead, dropping him like a stone. Max stopped in mid-pursuit, his expression settling when his former master chief gave him a nod. “All clear. Aaron and Billy took out the guy watching the back entrance.”

Janet watched Max brace himself with hands on his thighs, drawing a breath, then he straightened, nodded back. Dale pushed open the door for Neil and Lawrence, who were dragging in an unconscious Leo and his companion, as well as a third man. The man watching the back, she assumed. Marcie and Dana were helping. When Billy and the invisible Aaron didn’t come in, she assumed they were continuing to stand watch. Dale confirmed it, touching his earpiece and acknowledging they were in a concealed position outside.

She jumped at the short, crisp puncture sound of three shots, muffled by a silencer, and Lawrence emerged from behind a stack of crates. It was where they’d dragged the three unconscious men. Janet wondered if he’d have done it right there in the open, if “civilians” hadn’t been present.

She was feeling intangible, as if her mind was floating above all this. Max was free. She should be running to him. Yet something in her was silent, unresponsive. She stood at the rail, held on to it, stared down at the scene as if she was watching a play.

Dale raised a brow, sweeping a glance over Max’s mostly naked body. “You’re underdressed. There are women present.”

“And one of us can’t take advantage of the view, damn it all,” Dana said. Though she spoke with her usual sense of humor, her tone was strained. She had her arm around Marcie, and Janet saw Marcie was limping, as if she’d turned her ankle.