Free The Protector of Ambra (Mercenaries of Fortune, #5) by Lyn Brittan Page B

said, rising with Noah’s keys and a cell phone in hand. He tossed both over. “Hold these. I’m going to drag our friend into the next room.”
    “No, but why did you do this?”
    Pierce paused with his forearms latched between Noah’s armpits. “You did this. The IRS? C’mon. No one was going to believe that. And the guy had a gun. See,” he said, nodding at the object on the floor.
    “Well, I froze. I guess.”
    Still dragging and walking backwards into another room, Pierce shook his head. “No...no, no. You did the opposite of freezing. You ran, jumped in the fire with a can of kerosene on your back. Then you pulled me along with you. IRS. Geez. One, he saw right through it. Two, I’m not trusting a guy who won’t let me walk behind him.”
    She kept her mouth shut at the obvious irony that Noah had rightly felt the same way. “Just because he had a gun didn’t mean he was going to use it on us.”
    “You’re referring to the guy who’s been stealing from you?”
    “Says the guy who stole from a monastery.”
    Pierce ignobly dropped his bundle and shut the double French doors to the side room. “That’s different. I’m one of the good guys,” he said, tapping himself on the chest and walking past her. “We need to get out of the open. Any clue where his office is?”
    “No, but the whole bottom layer is refrigerated. I could go down there while you root around up here.”
    “You’re insane if you think we’re splitting up.” His fingers crunched around her wrist as he pulled her along.
    The building was a strange mixture of house and barn. The massive interior space had few options for them to go. There was the room where Noah was, and closed doors on the opposite side and finally a set of stairs leading above and below. Pierce’s gun was firmly in hand. It looked as natural there as a scalpel. “I need to find his office.”
    “I need to see what’s downstairs.”
    “No you don’t,” he said, holding onto her like a parent dragging his kid through an amusement park. He peered a room. Looking over his shoulder, she didn’t see anything other than a widescreen TV and a desk. Pierce finally let her go, but put her right to work while he stayed by the door with his gun in hand. “Check for a laptop or tablet.”
    A shiver of excitement skipped down her back. She should be horrified that her life had come to this, and she mostly was. But on the same day that she’d made love to a beautiful man and been shot at, now she was secret agenting herself through a strange house.
    She allowed herself to savor it as she opened drawers with her fingertips, feeling for levers and hidden latches as she’d seen in spy movies. Each time she almost felt bad about it, she reminded herself that Noah was taking her mother’s retirement money.
    “Find anything?”
    When she shook her head, they moved back into the main room. Pierce’s gun was slightly overhead as he looked up the stairwell. “His office must be upstairs.”
    “Or down. Next to the product. That’s what I’d do.”
    “No shit,” he said, deadpan as ever. “Fine. You win. Again. Follow me.”
    The air down here should be rich with the aroma of chocolate. The farm’s small operation was simple and genius in its nature. After harvesting and drying the beans, they would be brought to a building on-site for packaging and then to the bottom floor of this building for mixing, conching and tempering before arriving at her shop. According to Noah, the bottom layer stretched out underground for a quarter mile, eventually rising to a building with a docking area for trucks.
    Machines whirred down here. Somewhere. But it was too hot and too quiet. Without people and fresh chocolate, the space was nothing but a massive gray coffin with unused conveyor belts and bare trolleys.
    Rows of refrigerated rooms lined the tunneled walkway. She dragged her hands along the warm doors. Every few steps, she’d pop to her tiptoes. Each one just as empty as