Free Live By The Team (Team Fear Book 1) by Cindy Skaggs

bone.”
    “ Jesus, man, the neighbors will call the cops.”
    “ Not a problem for me. I’m just a man retrieving his wife from a couple dirtbags.”
    “ Wife?” Street Fighter dug into his pocket and pulled out the key. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t told she had a husband.”
    “ So it’s okay to abduct a single female?” Ryder wanted to end this loser. “Toss the key over here.”
    When Street Fighter complied, Ryder stepped forward to grab the key from the plush carpet. “Turn around. On your knees with your hands on your head.”
    Both men did as he ordered. Ryder knocked on the door before he unlocked it. “Baby?”
    “ Ry.” Her voice sounded strained through the metal.
    “ You alone?”
    “ Yes.”
    He unlocked the door while keeping an eye on the men. “Come on out.”
    She struggled to her feet, her hands bound behind her. Her face was banged up—from the crash or the abduction—and blood trickled from the gash on her forehead. The need to beat the crap out of someone flowed heavily through Ryder’s veins. “Baby, go into the bathroom while I finish here.” He nodded to the attached bath in the back of the room.
    “ Why?” She butted his arm. “You can’t kill them.”
    “ Sure I can.”
    Broken Nose flinched at his words.
    “ No.” Lauren glared through a swollen eye. “In war, yes, but here, we call the police.”
    Rose burst into the room. “I heard gunfire.”
    “ Just motivated the troops,” Ryder said. “Put them into the closet until we figure out what we do with them.”
    Rose frisked the men and confiscated a knife from Street Fight. Ryder kept his body between the men and Lauren as they moved past. When Street Fighter passed, Ryder stopped him with a hand to his chest. “If I see you again, I won’t ask questions. I will kill you.”
    Street Fighter lifted his hands in a sign of submission. “Hey, man, it was just a job.”
    Ryder clocked him in the left cheekbone. Street Fighter took it without flinching. He shook out his head as if to clear the pain.
    “ It’s not a job to me. You might want to remember that.”
    “ Got it.” Street Fighter strolled into the closet like he owned it. Rose locked up behind him. Ryder holstered the weapon and approached Lauren. Her smooth skin was bruised, her forehead bloody, and her lips were split. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world. He used the confiscated knife to slit the ties behind her back. She shook out her hands and moaned. The ties had cut into her wrists, leaving them chafed and red. Ryder rubbed the skin around the gouge mark to get the blood flowing. Her cold fingers trembled in his grasp.
    Rose took a defensive position in the doorway, keeping an eye on the hallway. “What’s the plan?”
    “ We call the cops.” Lauren leaned into Ryder.
    He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Not a good plan. After what went down up north, I’m not anyone’s best friend when it comes to law enforcement.”
    Lauren turned to look up at him. “They kidnapped me. They planned...”
    Ryder didn’t want to think about what they had planned or he’d go ape-shit. “We need information, and the police won’t let us participate in the interrogation. What’s going on downstairs, Rose?”
    “ Guard’s out, locked in a closet. There were four workers in the lab.”
    “ Lab?”
    Ryder nodded at Lauren’s question. “There was lab equipment in both sealed rooms. That, coupled with the guards—”
    “ And product in the garage,” Rose added. “Which makes this a meth house in the middle of suburbia.”
    “ What did you do with the lab pogues?” Ryder asked.
    “ Non-essential personnel are in the pantry along with the guard from the back deck. They didn’t put up much of a fight. The rest of the house is empty, but they’ve got a boatload of finished product stockpiled in the garage. We can’t leave that shit.”
    “ Okay.” Ryder started running contingency plans through his head. Anyone could walk in at