“That’s me,” she said in English as she got to her feet.
Layla smiled, hoping to reassure the girl that they were the good guys; however, as she got closer, she realized Anya was anything but terrified. Instead, she was brimming with bold defiance. No doubt she’d gotten that bruise on her cheek for getting in one of her captor’s faces and telling him exactly what she thought of him. Layla decided she liked the girl before ever exchanging a word to her.
“It’s time to go,” Layla said in English. “Dylan and your other friends are waiting outside for you.”
Anya’s eyes lit up with a different kind of fire at the mention of her boyfriend’s name. “Dylan is here?”
Layla nodded. “Yes. Neither of us speak Russian as well as you do, so if you can help us get the other girls moving, we can get out of here.”
Anya looked like she had a thousand questions to ask, not the least of which was who the hell she and Jayson were and how Dylan had gotten them involved, but the Ukrainian girl focused on what they’d asked her to do. Scooping up the rifle from the man Layla had shot, she turned and urged all the other girls up. Layla led the way out of the room, taking them toward the main section of the house—and the exit.
The gunfire out front had slowed a little, but the shooting coming from the east side, where Clayne and Danica had gone, was as intense as before. There were occasional explosives going off, too. It sounded like Clayne and Danica were in trouble, but there was no way she or Jayson could go to their aid until they got all the girls out and over the wall.
They were hurrying through the living room, Layla starting to think their plan might actually work, when she picked up the scent of a lot of men coming their way—fast.
“Incoming!” she yelled, automatically slowing down and motioning behind her for Anya and the other girls to back up.
The girls slipped and slid on the marble floors but quickly moved backward into the cover provided by the arches that lined the eastern corridor.
Ten feet ahead, Jayson came to a stop in the middle of the living room and lifted his rifle just as four men came running down the central corridor from the west wing. She expected Jayson to start mowing the bad guys down the moment they came into view, but instead he hesitated.
Brian Powell’s scent hit her like a ton of bricks and her mind fought to correlate what she was smelling with what she was seeing. Powell, his head still wrapped in a bloody bandage, wasn’t a captive of the three armed militia soldiers. He was leading them.
She didn’t understand how he’d done it, but the DCO agent had somehow escaped capture and put together a small team of men to rescue the girls. Maybe he wasn’t so worthless after all.
Suddenly, the skin along the back of her neck burned as if it were on fire. Layla had never felt anything like it before, but she’d heard Ivy describe it often enough to know it was her feline intuition warning her that something was wrong.
“Watch out!” she shouted just as Powell lifted a small submachine gun and started shooting.
* * *
Jayson didn’t know why Layla was warning him, but he trusted her instincts and dived for cover behind the big-ass sectional couch that dominated the middle of the room. He hadn’t even hit the floor before bullets smashed into the sofa, sending shards of stone, chunks of wood, and cushion fluff everywhere. He gave a silent prayer of thanks that the base of the couch was so rugged. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have been dead. He’d always known Powell was a complete piece of shit, but fighting alongside Zolnerov’s men against his fellow DCO agent was sinking to a whole new level of crap.
Jayson looked over his shoulder to make sure Layla and the girls had taken cover only to find her and Anya crouching behind the arches in the corridor trying to take out Powell and the men with him. Shit, they were only going to get themselves killed.
“Take the girls and go!” he shouted at Layla. “Get them outside and over the wall.”
Layla shook her head, clearly hating the idea even as she had to jerk back when the stone edging near her face shattered into pieces from a bullet.
“Go!” he shouted again. “You two can’t hold that position and you’re just going to get yourselves and everyone else killed. I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”
Layla shouted at Anya to go, then gave him a hard look. “Don’t you dare do anything stupid!”
Getting to her feet, she spun to follow the girls, herding them down the curving hallway.
Boots echoed hard and fast on the marble floor in front of the couch. Jayson jerked into a crouch and peeked over the top. One of the militia soldiers charged straight at him. The asshole must have thought Jayson would be so focused on Layla and the girls that he wouldn’t notice anyone coming his way. But he had noticed, and he didn’t hesitate to lay his AK across the back of the sofa and fire off a quick three-round burst. The man crumpled to the floor, his momentum taking him across the marble and slamming him into the base of the couch.
Jayson had barely ducked again when the sofa around him exploded in fluff and pieces of stone. Shards of marble peppered his left shoulder, making it feel like he’d been hit with a shotgun blast.
Shit. The man charging at him had been nothing more than bait to get him to poke his head out like a frigging turtle sticking its head out of its shell. No doubt Powell had ordered the charge. Jayson wondered if the militia soldier had known Powell was casually throwing his life away.
“Hey, Jayson.” Powell’s amused voice carried across the room as soon as the shooting stopped. “Pop your head up again. I promise I’ll make it fast.”
Jayson dropped the half-empty magazine out of his AK and loaded a fresh one. Then he yanked a handful of loose rounds from his pocket, dropped them on the floor, and shoved them in the magazine he’d just extracted. He wasn’t stupid. Powell wasn’t talking to him because he missed him. He was babbling to cover up the movement of the other two soldiers who were almost certainly moving around the room right then to get a bead on Jayson. He needed to be ready when they made their move.
“Is that how it’s going to be then?” Powell asked with a chuckle that made Jayson want to kick him in the balls. “What, are you mad at me just because I tried to shoot you on that rooftop? It was nothing personal. I was just following orders. I’d expect a former soldier like yourself to understand that.”
Jayson heard careful footsteps off to his right. One of the soldiers was moving toward the fireplace, trying to outflank him.
