Chapter 17

Ryder forced aside the sick feeling and waited. He needed to make sure the area was clear before he moved. But son of a bitch. Harper had met Langley—he'd been with them on the rescue in Puerto Jardin—and he damn well knew she was Ryder's woman. Shit, he'd been the one who'd encouraged Ryder to ask her out to begin with, and he'd known things had become serious before he'd left the team. The bastard had hired out to kill her anyway. Motherfucker.

Anger wasn't helpful and Ryder pushed that away, too. There'd be time later, after this was finished, to be pissed off. Right now, he needed control, he needed clear-headed thinking.

It was hard. This was another betrayal, one that managed to cut deeper than he'd expected. Harper not only knew how important Langley was to him, he'd also been willing to risk Ryder's life to take out his target when he'd fired on her in San Diego. Ryder had been standing next to Langley, close enough that if a breeze had moved the bullet a small amount, it could have hit him. Harp wasn't arrogant enough to discount Mother Nature, so he simply hadn't cared if Ryder was the one to go down.

Harper had been his role model when he'd first joined the team. He'd looked up to the man, admired him, learned from him.

This made protecting her more difficult. Harper knew him, understood how his mind worked, what tactics he was likely to deploy, when he would zig instead of zag. Hell, he'd taught Ryder some of those tactics. He didn't have as much knowledge about his adversary. The man had been reticent about himself.

Had Harper always had been this callous, this uncaring?

When he realized his jaw hurt from how tightly he'd gritted his teeth, Ryder shook his head and worked to lock down his emotions. Who Harper was didn't fucking matter. There was only one person who was important right now and she was waiting for him.

It had been quiet long enough, time to move. Staying low, he crept back into the garage and the escape tunnels. He needed to forget about friendships, forget about treachery, and think about nothing except keeping Langley alive. The odds were stacked against them and getting worse by the minute.

Langley whirled when he entered, hands coming up before she identified him and relaxed. As the door to the tunnel closed, she held the phone's flashlight up to get a good look at his face. "What is it? What's wrong?"

She read him too well. "Car batteries are missing," he said, voice low.

"What else? And don't tell me nothing."

Yeah, he hadn't thought that he'd be able to get away with a partial answer. "I saw our sniper. He's someone I know."

She stared at him. Langley was in shadow since she held the light, but he didn't need to see her to recognize that the synapses in her brain were firing. He'd never met anyone who was as good as she was at taking scant facts, piecing them together, and coming up with the correct answer. She did it this time too. "Andy Harper? Your former teammate."

"Yeah," he said.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realize Bent Tree hired their operatives out as hitmen."

"Me either." It was hard to believe they'd risk those lucrative government contracts for this. Was Harper freelancing? Somehow that idea was worse than his former teammate being assigned the job. "It doesn't matter now. Let's move."

Langley moved, but as she walked, she asked quietly, "With the cars disabled, am I to assume we're headed through the tunnels and into the woods surrounding the cabin?"

Cabin? She called this place a cabin? Ryder grimaced. "You got it. I don't suppose you know how to get to the exit, do you?"

"No, when we played here, we were never allowed to go that far. You don't have that information?"

"Your father only let me review the schematics for a couple minutes. It's okay. I'll figure it out." He might make a few mistakes, but he'd get them out of here. Eventually.

He fucking hoped that the mercenaries didn't know about the secret passages because the last thing he wanted to do was go around a corner and run into one of them. The damn thing was that even if the escape system was a secret now, the longer they stayed in here, the greater the risk of discovery. Harper didn't give up and sooner or later he'd question if there were more than one set of tunnels. He'd start testing the walls, and once he got in, there'd be nowhere for them to hide.

The tunnels were a maze and they wound their way around and through the house. It had been a bitch to keep the turns they'd taken straight in his head as they'd made their way to the garage, but if he remembered correctly, once they got far enough away from the house, it should be a straight shot to the forest. If he could guide them to that point.

They reached a section where there was enough room for them to walk side-by-side and Ryder took Langley's free hand. He needed to hold her, needed to reassure himself that she was alive. Her fingers squeezed his, taking comfort and giving it as well.

Voice gentle, Langley asked, "Does knowing it's Andy help narrow down which of your teammates is assisting him?"

After a moment's consideration, he said, "I don't think so. Harper mentored everyone on the team in some way or another and everyone liked and trusted him."

There were many times that Griff stayed up late into the night talking shit with Harper. Mako had spent time hanging out with Harp and his family. Stony had considered the man to be the father he'd never had. Any of the three of them could be helping him. The million-dollar question was which one?

And could there be more than one?

Griff and Mako were best friends. Would they work together against him? In the next instant, Ryder discarded that idea. Special Forces weren't disloyal. One traitor was a surprise. Two would be almost impossible. Right?

But the last time he'd seen Harper, he'd been feeling members of the team out, trying to see who'd be interested in working for Bent Tree. A memory stabbed into Ryder's brain. Rowland wasn't going to re-up, he'd already said he was done when this enlistment was finished. Had he chosen to join Harper's band of mercenaries?

Stony had always been quiet, inscrutable, and he kept his thoughts to himself. Was he the one working with Harper?

"Ryder."

"What?"

"One member of your team is a traitor. That means the other two men are completely on their own against the squad of mercenaries because they can't trust anyone, not even each other, and they must realize that we won't trust them either."

He grunted. Yeah, he'd thought of that, and there wasn't anything he could do about it, not while he was protecting Langley. It didn't surprise him that she'd figured out Harper hadn't come here alone. "They're Special Forces. They'll take care of themselves."

"He was a Green Beret, too. He knows how they were trained."

"I'm aware of that," he said more harshly than he intended. Ryder took a deep breath and gave her hand a gentle squeeze of apology. "Sorry. I know you're worried about my friends, but there's nothing we can do."

"Yes, but if something happens to one of the guys on our side, you're going to blame yourself when this is over."

Ryder shook his head. First, Langley had tried to rescue her friend from a kidnapper and now she wanted to save his buddies—the ones not betraying them—from mercenaries. She didn't seem to understand that the mission was to protect her.

"I'll deal with it later if I have to." He had another concern. "How are your legs holding up?"

"About as well as I expected," Langley said.

"Which is probably about fifty percent worse than what you admitted to when I asked you about them earlier today."

Her shrug pretty much confirmed what he'd guessed—she'd underplayed the amount of pain she was in. And he was dragging her into the woods. Great.

As they grew closer to the house, the hall narrowed, and he was forced to let go of Langley's hand. This time he was more worried about what was in front of them than behind them, so he took his phone and led the way. When they reached the hallway that formed a T near where they'd started, Ryder paused. They could continue straight ahead or take that second spiral stairway he'd spotted earlier.

The wine cellar and the tunnel the mercenaries had used was on the lower level. The escape system had to run underground, too. At least partially.

He opted for the stairs, descending at a slower pace than he normally would have, worried that Langley would try to keep up with him if he didn't. The lower level was more of the same—dust and spider webs. At first there was only one choice of direction, but that changed quickly.

Ryder struggled to keep himself oriented as the hallways twisted, turned, and intersected with other corridors. Maze was too mild a word. Labyrinth fit better. But the passage changed from wood to stone and that added to his confidence that they were on the right track.

Until they hit a blank wall.

There was nowhere to go, and they'd need to turn around and try another passageway. "Fuck," he muttered.

"There could be a trigger to open a doorway," Langley suggested.

"There's nothing obvious, and it should be, since there's no reason to hide it on this side."

"It's worth looking before we backtrack, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Reluctantly, he released Langley and moved a few steps over to get a better look at the entirety of the stone wall. If there was a release mechanism, the only way to hide it would be with rough, textured rock.

There were several patches that looked promising, but Ryder chose to start with the least obvious choice—a spot about a foot off the ground. It would have to be somewhere everyone could reach it, like it had been in the closet. Crouching, he used his fingers and the phone's flashlight to examine the stone.

As he searched, Langley moved closer, leaning over him. He could swear he felt the heat of her body and it distracted him momentarily. Taking a deep breath, he refocused his attention on the job at hand.

It was so small, he nearly missed it.

Ryder ran his fingers over it a second time before tripping the mechanism. The doorway that appeared was small, so short he had to duck to walk through it. This hallway was clean and that made him frown. Everything had been filthy up until now. There was also a lighting system lining the walls on either side. It was turned off, but it strummed a warning against his senses. He left the secret door opened a crack, just in case.

If he was correct, turning left would take them back to the house. "Don't say a word," he ordered, voice barely a breath of sound. Reclaiming her hand, he headed to his right, moving as stealthily as possible.

After a few moments, they hit a fork in the corridor. He turned right again.

Ryder stopped short when he spotted a staircase complete with railings on either side. This one wasn't spiral, but a straight, normal set of stairs. He didn't like this. They couldn't be back at the house, but this didn't look like an exit to the woods either.

There was only one thing to do. "Wait here," he whispered against her hood where it covered her ear.

Freeing his hand, he leaned the pack against the wall next to her and crept up the stairs as silently as possible. He heard voices before he reached the door which was standing ajar. He arrived mid-sentence.

"—office is a waste of time," an unknown man complained. "It's a big house—they're hiding somewhere."

"Yeah," unknown man number two agreed, "but Harp's calling the shots, and he thinks there are more tunnels. He wants schematics."

"We haven't found jack shit."

"Then we finish the job and tell him there's nothing here."

Office. Fuck. They were in the tunnel that connected the mansion to two outbuildings—the office and the pool house. That meant they'd left the secret passage and wound up in the passageway the mercenaries had used to gain access to the house.

Not wanting to tip them off, Ryder slowly, carefully backed away from the door and went back down the stairs. Langley straightened from the wall she leaned against. "Wha—"

He moved quickly then, putting his hand over her mouth, stopping the word short. It was too late, though, he knew it. Her voice had carried upstairs.

Grabbing her hand, he started to run.