THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

reeks of Janecek.”
    “Don’t I know it. But we don’t have a lot of choice. So which is it? Up or down?”
    “Down.” Eli’s voice rang with certainty. “Even though we’ve got men up there, the roof would be the best spot to spring a trap. I say we take our chances on the street. Emergency Response’ll be here in minutes. Probably the press, too. Harder to ambush us in that kind of public glare.”
    Delano nodded. That would have been his call, too, but it was good to have it confirmed by his chief tactician. “I’ll round up Ainsley and keep her by my side. You marshal all hands. Except for the team on the roof, I want everyone on my Montreal payroll down on that street.”
    They hit the stairwell at the same time, Eli barking orders into his radio as he lunged upward, two steps at a time.
    In the penthouse, Eli called a “Meet you in the lobby!”, then took the second stairwell, the one that led all the way down to the ground floor.
    Delano set off for Ainsley’s suite. He nearly ran into her, quite literally, at the door to her bedroom, avoiding a collision only by catching her by the upper arms.
    Clad in a long t-shirt, her hair mussed, she wore the dazed look of someone wrenched from a deep sleep. “What is it? Are we under attack?”
    “There’s a fire on the second floor. We’ve got to get out of here until the fire department can contain it.” He pushed her back into the bedroom. Spying a bathrobe draped over a chair, he grabbed it and handed it to her. “Put this on. That’s a lot of steps down to ground level.”
    “Of course. Can’t use the elevator.” She accepted the robe and shrugged into it. “Just give me one more second.”
    “We don’t have time to fuss, Ainsley. Come on.” He tugged her by the hand but she resisted.
    “Wait! I need something for my feet.”
    He released her. To her credit, she located her runners quickly and shoved her feet into them. “Ready.”
    “Good job.”
    The reached the stairwell seconds later.
    “Stay behind me,” he ordered. “But not too far behind. I want you no more than a step or two away. Okay?”
    She sucked in a breath. “We’re under attack, aren’t we?”
    “I don’t know. But the blaze on the second floor is real. We have to get out of here. Just stay close. I’ll keep you safe.”
    At the nineteenth floor, Delano growled.
    “What?”
    “This is taking too long.”
    “I’m sorry,” she panted. “I can’t go any faster without risking a fall. I’m so dizzy from going around and around.”
    “Climb onto my back.” Already a step below her, he crouched slightly to allow her to clamber onto him.
    When she hesitated, he growled his impatience. “What, suddenly that’s too intimate? May I remind you of what transpired in my lab?”
    “Delano!”
    “On my back. Or it’s over the shoulder in a fireman’s lift. You have five seconds to make up your mind.”
    At Four-Mississippi, he turned to grab her.
    “Okay, okay! Turn around. I’ll go piggy-back.”
    He accepted her weight with a grunt, purely out of spite. In truth, she didn’t weigh enough to slow him down. “Hang on,” he cautioned, “but try not to choke me.”
    She did, in fact, nearly choke the breath out of him with her death grip around his neck. Of course, that might have had something to do with the speed with which he spiraled down the succession of flights. Even now, all these years later, he vaguely remembered how disorienting it felt to travel so fast, back before his faculties had acclimatized.
    They hit the ground floor in under a minute. Delano knelt and let Ainsley slide off his back. She reeled left, straight into the wall — a reaction that had more to do with the speed of their descent than the bit of smoke they’d encountered around the third and second floors — and he grabbed her arm. Pushing the door open with the panic bar, he pulled her out into the lobby.
    “Del.” Her fingers clutched at him and she leaned back against the mahogany paneled wall for support. “I’m so dizzy. I think I’m going to be sick.”
    “It’ll pass in a minute, if you can hang in there. Just don’t close your eyes.”
    Even as he offered the advice to Ainsley, his gaze swept the lobby. Eli was conferring with their security staff. Good. Judging by the way his orders came out in staccato puffs, he couldn’t have been too far ahead of them descending the stairs. Eli glanced up and saw them. He signaled to two officers and brought them over