Olivia beat against his back with her small hands. “Daddy, we have to go back! Ana needs our help! Go back!”
“We can’t go back, Liv.” His eyes burned at her pleas. His daughter wasn’t the only one who’d gotten attached to the federal agent assigned to recover his son, but he’d keep his promise. The SUV came into view, and Benning left the protection of the trees. The back window had been shattered, glass crunching under his boots as he rounded the driver’s side of the vehicle. He wrenched open the back door and buckled Olivia inside, then climbed behind the wheel. “Ana’s going to be okay. She’s a federal agent, remember? She’s trained for this.”
Whether he’d meant the words for his daughter or for himself, he didn’t know.
A final gunshot echoed off the mountains, and he slowed his reach for the glove compartment. Ana. His heart threatened to beat straight out of his chest as the seconds ticked by. Maybe a full minute. No other shots registered. Did that mean—
Movement shifted in the rearview mirror.
“Get down!” He spun in his seat a split second before a bullet cracked the front windshield. Olivia’s scream spurred Benning into action. He reached for the keys in the glove box, hit the remote start, and shoved the vehicle into Drive. Snow kicked up behind them, blocking his view of the shooter as they fishtailed onto the main road. Leaving the cabin, the deadline and Ana behind.
* * *
FLAKES FELL IN even sheets as Agent Evan Duran followed the fast-vanishing trail of footprints around the back of the property. The TCD safe house had been compromised by a single shooter determined to get his hands on the skull Benning Reeves had recovered from a Britland Construction property. Only now the evidence was missing. Along with Ramirez.
“What the hell happened here?” JC Cantrell straightened from a crouch beneath the shattered window on the north side of the house.
“I have no idea.” Snow had been falling for the past few hours—long before he and Cantrell had tracked Ramirez’s SUV and recovered Benning Reeves and his daughter on the shoulder of the 441—but failed to hide the stark pool of blood stained into the white backdrop. Mierda. Whether it’d come from the attacker or Ramirez, he didn’t know, but whoever they were, they didn’t have much time after losing that much blood. Whatever’d occurred here, Benning and Olivia Reeves were obviously lucky to be alive, even if that man had walked away with a fresh bullet in his shoulder. “I count three sets of adult footprints, one child. All of them coming from the back of the house.”
“Let’s move.” JC withdrew his service weapon and raised it shoulder level. “If that blood belongs to Ramirez, we might already be too late.”
In the year Agent Ramirez had joined Tactical Crime Division, there wasn’t a lot she’d revealed to the team about her past. She’d transferred from missing persons, but other than that, she liked to keep to herself, which he respected. Every agent on their team had secrets. The TCD worked together, trusted each other with their lives when it counted, but that didn’t mean they had to give up their entire personal histories. He imagined Ana Sofia Ramirez had one hell of a story to tell. Evan had noted the way she isolated herself from the rest of the team, insisted on them calling her by her last name, how she took on every case with a detachment he usually only saw in veteran agents who’d seen too much over the years. There was a reason behind it, a familiarity.
She’d lost someone close to her—violently—and in that regard, he and Ramirez were probably more alike than she realized. If it hadn’t been for Annalise, he never would’ve seen past all that anger, that pain that came with losing the person he cared about to circumstances he couldn’t control. Even worse, the guilt that if he’d only been strong enough, fast enough, he could’ve stopped it from happening in the first place. No matter how old he’d been at the time when his sister was taken.
Ramirez carried that same guilt now and had been investing it into saving as many lives as she could as though she was searching for some kind of redemption. He didn’t know for whom, didn’t have to, but it wasn’t any way to live. The Tactical Crime Division had been created for rapid response, but even then, it was impossible to save everyone. As long as Ramirez refused to accept that, she’d destroy everything and everyone she cared about in the process. Then again, she had to have survived whatever had happened here to get that chance. Evan tapped JC on the shoulder twice. “On your six.”
Unholstering his own weapon, he pressed his shoulders against the exterior of the cabin and put one foot in front of the other until they reached the corner. He waited until JC cleared them to move and followed close on his partner’s heels. His heart pounded loud behind his ears as they neared the large pile of wood straight ahead. Countless bullet casings peppered the snow, more blood. Someone had taken cover behind the wall of wood, and another... He traced the path of footsteps near the tree line. And caught sight of a body twenty feet ahead. “JC.”
“I see it.” They moved as one, ready for anything in case whoever’d ambushed the safe house hadn’t gotten far. Wouldn’t be the first time a killer had stuck around to soak up the aftermath of what they’d done. Weapons raised, both agents searched the area for signs of movement as they closed the distance between them and the unidentified victim. The remains burned to a crisp in the fireplace on Benning Reeves’s property, the charm linking back to one of Ramirez’s old cases, now this. The bodies were piling up, too fast to keep up with.
JC crouched beside the body, rolling the victim onto their side. Long, dark hair spilled away from a familiar face, and dread fisted a tight knot in Evan’s stomach. Blood drenched the front of her body from what looked like two bullet wounds—one in her side and one above her right breast—and a wound that’d obviously been a rushed patch job in the field in her left thigh. How she’d survived long enough to ensure Benning Reeves and his daughter had escaped, he didn’t know, but they sure as hell owed her their lives. “Ramirez. Hijo de—”
“She’s alive. I’ve got a pulse, but barely.” Pulling his bare hand from her neck, JC holstered his weapon, then ripped her coat down the middle. “We can’t move her like this, and it’ll take two hours before EMTs can get here by road.”
In a single breath Evan had his phone in his hand and pressed to his ear. The line connected directly to Director Jill Pembrook’s private cell almost instantly. A gust of frigid air worked under Evan’s jacket as JC stared up at him, his partner’s expression blank, helpless. They didn’t have a lot of time. Not if they were going to save Ramirez’s life. The line connected. “I need a chopper to the Sevierville safe house now.” He studied the lack of color in Ramirez’s face, then let his attention drift lower to her injuries. “We’ve got an agent down.”
Chapter Nine
Numb.
She couldn’t feel her fingers, toes, or anything in between, but the soft beeping from nearby said she wasn’t dead. If she was, heaven sucked. Ana struggled to open her eyes. Dim fluorescent lighting, scratchy sheets, uncomfortable bed with a remote next to her hand. Hospital. But the weight pressing into her left side didn’t fall in line with previous experiences she’d had in places like this. Raising her head, she stiffened as her chin collided with a head of soft, beautiful auburn hair.
“She didn’t want you to have to wake up alone.” That voice. His voice. The IV in her hand ensured she couldn’t physically feel the pain her body was in, but she still felt the tug of her insides when he spoke. Bright blue eyes steadied on her, and everything that’d happened since he’d inserted himself back into her life vanished. Leaving only him, leaving Olivia.
“You weren’t...supposed to come back for me.” Her mouth tasted dry, bitter. How long had she been here? Hours? Days?
“That credit goes to your team. Agents Cantrell and Duran tracked the SUV’s location after I called them from a burner phone you’d left in the glove compartment.” He rested his elbow on his knees, one hand intertwined with hers. Shadows d
arkened under his eyes, his voice choked by something she couldn’t put her finger on. “I wasn’t going to leave you there to die, Ana. Not after everything you’ve done for us.”
Was that why he was here? Because she’d done her job and he thought he owed her some semblance of repayment? Pain worked through her chest as she tried to sit higher in the bed, but the morphine dripping from the clear bag above her head should’ve taken care of that. No. This pain was something she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for a long time. She’d spent so long trying to control her feelings, trying not to let people get close. While she and Benning had reunited after all these years in grief, held together by blood and fear, facing down the man who could’ve taken it all away had brought one life-altering realization into focus: moving on to the next case would hurt far more than ever before. In a matter of days, he and the precious soul tucked into Ana’s side had carved their way into her heart without her realizing it until it was too late. Leaving would take everything she had left.
“How is she?” Ana set her mouth at the crown of Olivia’s head and inhaled the scent of shampoo. Memories flashed like lightning across her mind. She’d provided cover for Benning and Olivia as they’d raced through the trees toward the SUV. Only...she’d taken another bullet before they’d reached the vehicle. She’d tried to stay on her feet, tried to give them a chance, but she’d lost too much blood and her body hadn’t been able to take any more. She’d collapsed. The man in the mask had stood over her, weapon aimed directly at her head, but then...she’d blacked out.
“She’s fine. Thanks to you. We made it to the SUV and were able to get out of there before he could get to us.” Benning rubbed circles into the pressure point between her index finger and thumb, and an immediate sense of calm flooded through her. “You saved our lives, Ana, and I’ll never be able to repay you for that, but don’t ever do that again. We almost lost you.”
Air caught in her throat. The way he’d said those last four words almost made her believe his concern was more than professional courtesy, and her insides warmed. Did that mean... No. He might’ve been right about the fact her guilt had colored her relationships with the people around her, but she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that any feelings built from their stress-induced situation were real. Or would last. She couldn’t give in to that hope. Not when she still had so much work to do. Smoothing Olivia’s hair out of her face, she rested her cheek on top of the girl’s head. “I gave you my word. I’m not going anywhere. Not until I find your son.”
The blue of his eyes deepened in color. Sliding his hand from around hers, he leaned back in his chair and ran his uninjured hand through his hair. “They lost the shooter’s trail about a quarter mile into the woods. He must’ve had an ATV or a snowmobile waiting. He’d planned everything before he’d even walked into that cabin. And without him, I don’t know if I’ll ever see my son again.” He picked up the phone she’d taken from the shooter, the one loaded with video of Owen. Alone, in the dark. The hospital staff must’ve recovered it with her personal effects when she’d been brought in, but seeing Benning with it pooled dread at the base of her skull. “Except with this.”
“How many times have you watched that?” she asked.
“I lost count after they brought you out of surgery.” He smoothed the pad of his thumb across the screen, and, even though she couldn’t see the video clearly, she had the feeling he was imagining smoothing his son’s face. “Your team is still processing my house, and they won’t let me go inside, so this is all I have of him right now. A video.”
“Benning, you have every reason to hate me right now for turning down that bastard’s offer, but I promise you, he was never going to give up Owen’s location. He would’ve baited you until you were no longer useful, then killed you both, and I couldn’t let that happen.” She wanted to reach out for him, take the phone from him, protect him from the pain so obviously pushing him to his breaking point. And protect herself from feeling that same pain.
“I don’t hate you.” His words barely registered over the beeping of the monitors at her side. “I tried. Those first few weeks after I’d found out you’d requested to be transferred back to Washington, I was angry. At first, I didn’t understand what I could’ve said or if I’d done something wrong.” His gaze narrowed on her, head cocked to the side. “But no matter how many times I tried to move on, even after I married Lilly, had the twins, lost her, you were still in the back of my mind. I hated myself more for not being strong enough to realize you weren’t coming back than I ever hated you. Now you’re the only one standing between my family and the man who wants us dead.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say but understood those two words couldn’t possibly make up for the months—years—of raw pain Benning had endured. She rolled her lips between her teeth and bit down, but the morphine made it hard for her to know how much pressure was too much, and after a few seconds, she tasted salt in her mouth. A small price to pay for what she’d left behind. “It sounds grim, but the shooter still has the leverage to use your son in order to recover the skull. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we still have a chance to bring Owen home.”
“No, we don’t.” His humorless laugh tugged at something deep inside. He sat fully back in his chair, shadows deepening the exhaustion etched into his expression. He studied the phone in his hand one more time before setting it facedown on the end table beside her bed. “I don’t know where the damn thing is.”
“What do you mean?” She tried to sit up in the bed, but Olivia’s weight pinned her to the mattress, and her strength wasn’t what it used to be before taking two bullets and having her leg punctured by a window. “You told me—”
“That I hid it inside that fireplace where your team found Jo’s body, and I did,” he said. “But they didn’t recover it, the killer doesn’t have it and I’m not the one who moved it.”
The scorched remains belonged to Benning’s nanny? Her heart sank as she studied the bandage taped over her broken trigger finger. So much blood, so many innocent lives just...gone. It was her job to protect the innocent and find the guilty, but she couldn’t even stomach looking at the damage to the rest of her body. Not without reminding herself of who’d she’d almost lost in the span of a few hours. How much more she would’ve lost if it hadn’t been for him. Raising her gaze to his, she tried to clear her head of him, of his daughter pressed against her side, of all the distractions that could get in the way in finding the scared little boy in that video. But over the course of this investigation, Benning Reeves had made it very hard for her to stay numb.
Owen and Olivia’s abductor had returned to the scene to clean up his mess, but he hadn’t found what he’d killed an innocent woman over. If Ana had been able to physically feel anything in that moment, she would’ve had a headache pounding behind her ears. This didn’t make sense. Someone else had gotten to the evidence before they could, but that still left the question of how Owen’s kidnapping connected to the Samantha Perry case. It wasn’t a coincidence that the charm had showed up at the scene of a body dump, and it wasn’t a coincidence the shooter had blamed her for that girl’s death. There had to be something linking the two investigations. Something she wasn’t seeing. “Who else knew about the skull?”
“Nobody.” Benning shook his head, that dark, shoulder-length hair stark against his white long-sleeved shirt. He’d showered, changed, but the shadows under his eyes said he hadn’t rested during the time she’d been recovering. He’d stayed. Maybe at his daughter’s insistence, but still, it meant a lot. More than it probably should have. There weren’t a whole lot of people in her life that would’ve done the same.
“I need to brief my team.” The dim lighting was suddenly too bright then, her body aching more with each passing second. The key piece of evidence in this case was missing, Owen Reeves was still out there and the shooter had nearly killed them all in the process. Ana sat up, ri
pping the IV from her hand, and Benning shot to his feet.
“What are you doing?” He peeled Olivia from her side.
Infierno, her body hurt, but Ana couldn’t just sit here. The SOB shouldn’t have been able to find them. Not unless he’d hacked into her vehicle’s GPS system, which meant her entire team was officially at risk. “The shooter knew where to find us. I want to know how.”
* * *
SOMETIMES THE AIR stilled before the onset of a hurricane.
Ana hadn’t said a word since her discharge from the hospital, but he had no doubt in his mind that her silence wasn’t a sign of weakness or pain. She’d survived two bullet wounds and a nick to her femoral artery from being shoved out a second-story window. If anything, the intensity in which she studied what had been left of his house, the way she curled her uninjured hand into a fist, could be seen as the calm before the storm. Because he wasn’t sure there was anything that could bring her down.
Olivia barreled past both of them on her way toward the hallway leading to the back bedrooms. “Ana, come see my room!”
The woman at his side let a laugh escape past her lips, and Benning held on to that sound for as long as he could, committed it to memory. He didn’t think he’d hear it again after what’d gone down at the safe house, but it was good to know it was still there. Buried, but there. “Thank you. For letting me stay here. I know it’s not ideal, having to come back here after everything that’s happened, but I’ll make sure you get reimbursed for any damage the crime scene techs or my team might’ve caused.”
Midnight Abduction Page 11