X-Ops Exposed Read online

  Mac glanced at Dixon and the other men. They were all staring at the monitors. Figuring this was her chance to pick up some intel, she slid her hand into her back pocket for her camera.

  “Please put your camera away, Ms. Stone,” Dixon said.

  Mac froze. Damn. Everyone turned to look at her—well, everyone except Dixon. He was still glued to the monitors.

  She pushed the camera back into her pocket. How the hell had he known what she was doing?

  Dixon reached out and thumbed a switch on a box near the monitors. “We just got audio from the room where they’re holding the hostages.”

  The sound of quiet sobs and pitiful moans—punctuated with a whole lot of shouting for the hostages to “Shut the eff up!”—filled the operations vehicle.

  When the hostages were only silent, black-and-white video images, it had been possible for Mac to distance herself from the fact that the people lying on the floor—most of whom were women—were real, live human beings with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, boyfriends and husbands, maybe even kids. And that they were scared to death. But now it was impossible to remain detached.

  Mac edged closer, holding her breath without even meaning to. One of the gunmen weaved in and out of the hostages, kicking them in an attempt to get them to move…somewhere. Most of the women just curled up in the fetal position and cried harder, which only seemed to infuriate the guy kicking them even more.

  Cursing, he grabbed one of the women by the hair and dragged her out of the camera’s view. The woman’s terrified screams echoed through the speakers, chilling Mac to the core. She’d seen a lot of violence in her line of work, but that didn’t mean she was used to it.

  She covered her mouth with her hands to keep from shouting at Dixon to tell his damn SWAT team to do something to help. She was a journalist. She was supposed to stay neutral in every situation and just observe. But it was damn hard when she knew that thug in there was moments away from killing that poor woman—or worse.

  “Shit, this is bad,” the hostage negotiator said. “Those animals are on the edge and ready to go over. If your team is going in there, they’d better be quick.”

  Dixon didn’t answer but just spoke softly into the mic he was wearing. A moment later, he turned to the man from the power company. “Are your people ready?”

  Hard Hat looked nervous, but he nodded. “When you say the word.”

  Dixon turned his attention to the uniformed officer. “I know you were hoping we wouldn’t have to do this, but I need to get my people in there.”

  The man didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Do whatever you have to do. Just be careful. There’re a lot of hostages in there.”

  Mac wasn’t sure in a case like this who got to make the call as to when SWAT went in. But regardless, Dixon had smoothly put the lieutenant in the decision loop, making sure he didn’t step on any toes he didn’t have to. She’d used that trick herself a few times in the past to keep herself on people’s good side, even when she could have trampled all over them. He was pretty smart for a big, muscle-bound trigger puller.

  Dixon threw a glance at Hard Hat. “On my mark. In three…two…one. Now.”

  At the SWAT commander’s signal, Hard Hat said a single word into his radio. All at once, every screen on the wall went black. For a moment, Mac thought the SWAT vehicle had lost power. Then she heard screaming over the speakers and realized they’d cut the power to the building.

  Half a second later, gunfire erupted.

  Mac couldn’t see a damn thing on the monitors except the occasional bright orange flashes that reflected off the walls.

  But while she couldn’t see much, she could hear plenty. Women screaming, men cussing, the thud of heavy stuff hitting the floor. And interspersed between all of it, the growls of what sounded like a pissed-off SWAT team. Man, these guys really got fired up when they went in. It sounded as if they were ready to tear the place apart. Maybe that was what Marvin had meant when he said they were on something.

  Right now, she couldn’t care less about her story. She only prayed the hostages made it out of this in one piece, although she couldn’t imagine how that would be possible. Not with all that gunfire.

  But as fast as the shooting had started, it stopped.

  Mac stared at the pitch-black screen, straining her eyes for something—anything—that would tell her if the hostages were still alive.

  Gage pressed his index finger to the small bud in his right ear as if listening, then he turned to Hard Hat. “Flip on the power.”

  The monitors trained on the interior of the building lit up, but not the ones connected to the SWAT officers’ helmet cams.

  Mac sagged with relief. The women were huddled together in the center of the room, clearly traumatized but alive. Three men were on the floor nearby. They were still moving, but it didn’t look like they’d be going anywhere. One member of the SWAT team was covering the downed bank robbers, while two others moved among the women checking for injuries. Mac didn’t see the fourth member of the SWAT team. He must be dealing with the other thugs out of the camera’s view.

  “Copy that,” Gage said into his mic, then glanced at the lieutenant. “Scene secure. Five suspects down, four WIA, one KIA. No hostages seriously wounded, but a few got trampled in the panic.”

  Four bad guys wounded, one dead.

  The lieutenant looked as relieved as Mac felt. “I’ll get in there with some uniforms and EMTs, start getting everyone out.”

  He brushed past her at a run, slamming the door of the operations vehicle behind him. A few moments later, Hard Hat and the hostage negotiator left as well, leaving her alone with the SWAT team leader.

  Curious despite herself, Mac moved closer to the man so she could see the monitors better—or at least that was the excuse she was going with.

  She watched in silence as police officers and EMTs rushed into the room to take custody of the bank robbers and give first aid to the hostages. Dixon’s team fell back, disappearing out of the camera’s view.

  Only then did Dixon take off his headset and turn to face her. “So, Ms. Stone. Did you get what you were looking for?”

  This was the first time Mac had seen Gage Dixon this close up. Saying he was gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover it. With his dark hair, chiseled jaw, and sensuous mouth, he was downright devastating. She was especially captivated by his eyes. They were the color of dark honey. Or maybe fine whiskey. Either way, it was too easy to get lost in their depths.

  She gave herself a mental shake and forced herself to look away, if just to catch her breath. “What are you talking about?”

  He smiled at her in a way that made her wonder if he knew how off balance he had her. That bothered her—she was used to being the one who put other people off balance.

  “It’s obvious you’ve been snooping around for a story,” he said.

  “When your man grabbed me, you mean?” She shrugged. “That was a complete accident. I got turned around and ended up back there.”

  He chuckled. “Right. Just like it’s a complete accident that your unmarked news van has been parked outside my SWAT compound for the last two days?”

  She tried not to let her surprise show, but failed miserably. Mouth twitching, he turned and switched off the monitors.

  How the hell had Dixon made her so easily? She and Zak weren’t that sloppy, were they? Dixon turned off the monitors, then picked up a cloth and wiped down the whiteboard.

  “Okay, you caught me,” she said. “But I only resorted to that because the department turned down my request for an interview and a ride-along.”

  He stopped wiping and turned to her, his brow raised in a way that did interesting things to her tummy. Damn, the man had quite the smolder. “Most reporters would be able to infer from that answer that they should go after a different story.”

  Mac
knew it was crazy, but if she didn’t know better, she’d think Dixon was teasing her—if not outright flirting. Well, she could play that game, too. But while she wasn’t above using her feminine wiles to get a story, she needed to make sure she was right about him first.

  She moved a little closer. If he backed up, she’d assume she read him wrong and would retreat accordingly. If he didn’t, she might be able to work him a little bit.

  Dixon did neither. Instead, he took a step toward her so that they were standing even closer together. She hadn’t realized how big the SWAT officer was until that moment. He towered over her by almost a foot, and his shoulders were nearly twice as wide as she was. She decided she suddenly liked really big men.

  Damn, it was going to be hard remembering this guy was the target of her next in-depth investigative article.

  “I’ve never been very good at picking up subtle hints.” She gave him her best award-winning smile—the one she used on her editor when she wanted a really juicy story—and moved a fraction of an inch closer. He smelled nice. “I was simply waiting outside the compound so I could talk to you and straighten out the obvious misunderstanding the department had.”

  “Of course.” He returned her smile with one of the sexiest grins she’d ever seen. “Because it must have been a mistake. After all, what cop wouldn’t want to talk to the ever-insightful Ms. Mackenzie Stone, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  Mac gave him a real smile this time. It was hard not to. He was one of those rare men who could be charming with a few carefully chosen words. And he seemed attracted to her—at least she was pretty sure he was.

  She was just trying to figure out how to use that attraction to weasel an invite for an in-depth interview with the hunky SWAT commander when the door to the operations vehicle opened and two of his men climbed in. They hesitated for a moment when they saw her, as if surprised to find their superior alone with a woman in the back of the operations vehicle. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if they could know she was a journalist looking for a story.

  One of the men was Senior Corporal Michael Taylor—the man who’d saved her life before. The other wasn’t one of the three she’d ID’d earlier, but she recognized him from the files anyway—Senior Corporal Xander Riggs. He must have been the one who’d slipped into the building before she and Zak got there.

  Dixon took a step back, putting some space between them as Taylor closed the door behind him and Riggs.

  “This is Mackenzie Stone from the Dallas Daily Star. Ms. Stone, meet Mike Taylor and Xander Riggs, two of my senior team members.”

  Being surrounded by three guys so big and muscular in a confined space like the operations vehicle should have made her feel claustrophobic, but that definitely wasn’t how Mac felt right then. She had to make a serious effort to keep her mind in gear as she shook their hands.

  She had a hundred questions about the operation she’d just witnessed, but there was one thing she needed to get straight first. “Sergeant Dixon said that one of the bank robbers was KIA. That means he was killed in action, right?”

  Riggs glanced at his boss, his dark eyes questioning. Dixon nodded, signaling it was okay to talk to her. “Yes, one of the suspects was shot and killed by a member of the team. He left us no choice. When the power went out, he grabbed a hostage. We ordered him to drop his weapon, but he pointed it at the woman’s head and was about to pull the trigger. A disabling shot wasn’t an option because he was behind the woman.”

  Mac noticed Riggs didn’t say which member of the team had shot the suspect, but based on the level of detail he provided and the way the muscle in his jaw flexed, she guessed it was him.

  “That must have been a pretty tough shot, considering how crazy it was in there,” she said. “And in the pitch black, too.”

  Xander’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. She thought he would have taken it as a compliment, but instead he looked uncomfortable. Why did men find it necessary to downplay every heroic thing they did?

  “We have excellent night vision goggles,” Taylor said. “They help.”

  “Of course.” She smiled at him. “By the way, thanks for helping me out back in that alley. It’s possible I might have been in a bit of trouble.”

  Taylor’s mouth curved. When he smiled, he seemed a lot less intimidating. “Something tells me you find yourself in trouble like that frequently.”

  Mac shrugged. “Every now and then,” she said before turning back to Riggs. “I didn’t see you enter the building with the rest of the team. Did you go in before I got here?”

  Riggs threw Dixon a sharp look. Instead of giving the corporal the okay, he answered her question this time.

  “We dropped Corporal Riggs off a few blocks out from the scene. He hoofed it in over the rooftops while we were getting into position outside. He went in and set up the remote cameras and microphones while everyone inside was focused on us and the other police officers.”

  Riggs and Taylor stared at their commander, clearly shocked by how open he’d been about their tactics to a member of the media. Mac was stunned, too. She’d been fishing when she’d asked the question. She hadn’t expected them to actually answer her.

  Dixon chuckled. “You don’t have to look so alarmed. It’s not like I shared state secrets. Besides, Ms. Stone will be coming by the compound later today to take a look around and see how we operate.”

  Mac did a double take. “Seriously?”

  His amber eyes met hers. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? An in-depth look at a day in the life of a SWAT officer?”

  She was more interested in finding out if they were hiding something, but she didn’t tell him that.

  “I figured if I didn’t make the offer, you’d only hang around outside the compound for months until I agreed to let you in. Or until you tried to sneak into the middle of the next hostage situation,” he said. “This way we can do our job without worrying about you popping up out of nowhere, and you get to do yours without risking your life.” She opened her mouth to thank him, but he held up a finger. “There’s one condition, though.”

  “Name it.”

  “You agree not to detail any of our tactical procedures or techniques like the one I just told you about. You print those and you’ll get my team killed.” He lifted a brow. “Do we have an agreement?”

  Mac nodded eagerly. “Yes.”

  She’d agree to whatever he wanted if it got her in the compound—even if it meant going back on her word later. Although, after today, she wasn’t sure there was a story. She seriously doubted these guys were doing drugs, regardless of what Marvin said. But that didn’t matter. No way was she passing up an opportunity like this.

  “I’ll see you at the compound this afternoon then,” Dixon said as he opened the door for her. “Say three o’clock?”

  She smiled up at him. “I’ll be there.”

  Mac had to resist the urge to do a little happy dance as she hurried back to the news van. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow she’d gotten herself an engraved invitation to get up close and personal with the country’s most elite tactical unit—the Dallas PD SWAT.

  Chapter 2

  Zak was flipping through digital pictures on his laptop when she climbed in the news van. He took a lot of shots of the on-scene lieutenant and the uniformed cops running into the building, then coming out with the hostages and the handcuffed bank robbers. He even had some pictures of the SWAT team coming out. But he wouldn’t send those in. Her boss considered it bad policy to print pictures of cops if it tied them to specific crime scenes. He thought it might lead to retribution against them. Mac wasn’t sure if she always agreed with that, but she abided by it.

  He glanced at her, his eyes full of amusement behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “I thought I was going to have to bail you out of jail.”

  She made a face at him
. “Very funny. I’ll have you know I got an invitation to visit the SWAT compound this afternoon.”

  His eyes went wide. “Seriously? You think that invite includes me?”

  She considered that. Dixon hadn’t specifically said to come alone, but she didn’t want to press her luck by bringing her photographer. Especially since the SWAT commander wasn’t crazy about cameras. “Probably not right away. Let me work my magic on Dixon first.”

  Zak looked bummed at that, but nodded as he went back to surfing through his photos. “So, did you enjoy being carried to the operations vehicle like a sack of potatoes?”

  Mac’s face heated at the memory. Damn, she should have known Zak wouldn’t have missed that. She gave him her best I’m-offended-by-that-comment look. “I was not carried like a sack of potatoes. Officer Danner simply escorted me to the operations vehicle to meet with the commander of the SWAT team.”

  Zak snorted and spun his laptop around so she could see the screen. There was a picture of Officer Danner running across the street with her in his arms, his hand over her mouth. Her color deepened. He kind of was carrying her like a sack of potatoes. God, that looked bad.

  “Maybe you could keep that one off the shared drive?” she asked Zak.

  He laughed. “Sure thing. But it’s definitely going on the Best of Mac Stone disk.”

  Mac stuck her tongue out at him. Zak loved reminding her he had visual evidence of all of her most embarrassing moments—and that she shouldn’t forget it.

  He was still flipping through photos when something caught her attention. “Stop. Go back a couple pics.”

  Zak didn’t ask why, but just scrolled back a half dozen pictures.

  “Stop,” she said. “Go slow from there.”

  He clicked one picture at a time, giving her a chance to look at each of them before moving to the next. She studied each SWAT officer’s photo as it filled the screen. Zak had captured them coming out of the brick building. They had their ski masks pulled up, and under their helmets, each man’s handsome face was covered with a light sheen of glistening sweat.