Over the Top

by Cindy Dees

  Silence met that question.

  Eventually Spencer said, “If the Oshiro gang is doing business with the Tanaka Clan—maybe distributing drugs for them in America—the two gangs could have a beef. Or, if the Oshiros are looking to expand into Asia, they could have run afoul of the Tanakas.”

  Gunner commented, “If these Oshiros have decided to tangle with the Tanakas, we know one thing about them. They’ve got cast iron cojones.”

  “Why do you say that?” Chas asked.

  Drago answered the question. “Clan Tanaka is one of the biggest, oldest, and most powerful Yakuza clans in Japan. Tangle with them and you will pay a steep price. These modern Yakuza outfits aren’t like old-school Yakuza families. Nowadays they’re more like Western-style mafias, motivated by profit and power. They’re well trained, well armed, and violent.”

  “How violent?” Chas asked warily.

  “As violent as any South American drug cartel.”

  “Holy cow,” Chas mumbled.

  Gunner added quickly, “Before you freak out, Chas, Japan is a significantly more lawful part of the world than certain Central and South American countries. Gang violence is tightly controlled in Japan, and because Japanese officials are generally not corrupt, the gangs don’t have control of the government.”

  “Still,” Chas retorted. “Poppy is related to these Tanaka mafia dudes?”

  Drago shrugged. “Spencer’s trying to find out if this Kenji guy is one of those Tanakas.”

  Chas glanced over at Poppy, who was sitting on a blanket playing with a set of stacking blocks. “Assuming she is one of those Tanakas, how did she end up in Misty Falls?”

  Spencer fielded that one. “Let’s assume the Oshiros have some problem with the Tanakas. What better way to hit them where it hurts? Kidnap Grandpa Tanaka’s cute little granddaughter. The Oshiros snatch Poppy in Japan. If they’re smuggling drugs, they obviously have shipping conduits from Asia to the United States. They smuggle her over here, hand her off to Leo Ledbetter to hide. He knows squat about caring for a baby, so he takes the kid home to his mom. And voilà, Poppy is in Misty Falls.”

  “Then who shot up the town and tried to grab Poppy?” Chas asked logically.

  Chas looked around at all the other men, and finally Drago muttered, “I’ve got nothing.”

  Spencer added, “We’re obviously missing a piece of the puzzle.”

  Gunner said grimly, “I don’t care who all is coming after our girl. Nobody gets near her until we hand her off to her parents—Tanaka or not.”

  Drago fiddled with his laptop for a bit and then announced, “I’m guessing our guy Kenji is one of those Tanakas. He’s in construction, they’re in construction. He’s rich, they’re rich. His great-great-grandfather has the same name as a founder of the Tanaka Yakuza family.”

  Spencer asked, “Are the guys pursuing you Tanaka guys who want Kenji’s kid back, or are they from some rival clan?”

  Gunner frowned. “If it’s Kenji’s guys, it seems to me they’d be coming in a whole less hot than these guys are. When they entered the hotel the first night we were on the run, they were wearing full tactical gear and carrying Uzis and AK-47s. Would you send in armed guys with itchy trigger fingers after your kid?”

  Chas answered promptly, “No way. I wouldn’t want weapons anywhere near my kid. I wouldn’t want to chance an accident.”

  “Or a stray bullet or a ricochet,” Spencer added.

  “So Daddy’s enemies are chasing Poppy?” Chas asked.

  The little girl looked up at him, and her face started to crinkle pre-tears. Did she sense his distress? Chas scooped her up off the floor into his lap and bounced her on his knee. “It’s okay, squirt. Nothing’s wrong.” She started pulling at the buttons on his shirt, and he pretended to bite at her fingers until she was giggling happily.

  “What else can you tell us about Kenji Tanaka?” Gunner asked.

  Spencer typed some more, read some more, then typed some more again. “He’s not married. Never has been.”

  “Who’s her mother?” Gunner blurted, glancing at Poppy.

  “Looks like he might have adopted her, or maybe he used a surrogate. The Japanese press is being cagey about how Kenji came into possession of a baby he seems to be treating as his own.”

  “They probably don’t know,” Drago responded. “They’d have printed it if they did.”

  “So DNA testing might not tell us if he’s her papa,” Chas added.

  “Not if she’s adopted,” Spencer agreed.

  “What are we supposed to do with her, then?” Gunner asked. “I’m not keen on handing her over to the first Yakuza types to catch up with us.”

  “I’m not keen on handing her over to anyone until I’m convinced she’s going back to her actual family and she’s going to be safe,” Chas said vehemently.

  Spencer glanced over at Drago. “Your instinct in the embassy was a good one.”

  “How’s that?” Gunner asked.

  Spencer explained, “Drago didn’t tell the Japanese embassy staffer that we might know where Poppy was and that she might be the missing Tanaka baby. He… prevaricated… a bit.”

  Gunner nodded. “So he bought us some time. But to do what? Draw in the guys who’ve been following us and ask them which gang they work for?”

  Drago snorted. “That would not go well.”

  Gunner snorted right back. “Not for them. I doubt they’ve ever run up against SEALs. I’m confident we can take them in a straight-up fight.”

  Catching the other men’s speculative looks at Poppy, Chas stated firmly, “We’re not using her as bait. No way.”

  Spencer shrugged. “We could use the idea of her as bait, though.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Chas asked sharply.

  “We can stash Poppy somewhere safe. Out of the way. But if you and Gunner go on the run with a Poppy-sized mannequin in a car seat, your pursuers would be none the wiser. We could lay a trap for them.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Chas blurted in alarm.

  The other men shrugged, supremely unconcerned.

  “Hello. Civilian here. I’m a kindergarten teacher, for God’s sake. I’m no commando.” When nobody responded, he added a little desperately, “Just running away from those guys was more than I could handle. Knowing I’m bait in a trap—” He made a slashing motion with his hand. “Not a chance.”

  “It could work,” Gunner said eagerly.

  “No. It could not,” Chas objected.

  “Aww, c’mon, Chas. Have I let anything bad happen to you or Poppy? It would be a ton easier to stay ahead of these guys without Poppy to worry about. We could lead them right into a sweet ambush.”

  “Or end up ambushed ourselves!”

  “Give it a chance. Let us come up with a plan and run it past you. Just think about it.”

  “Why can’t you be the bait if you’re so eager to die?”

  “I won’t die—”

  “You forget, I was in Misty Falls the night they shot it up. I’ve seen these gangsters at work. They’re vicious and efficient. I want nothing to do with them.” Then, his voice sounding more desperate than he’d ever heard it, he added, “And I don’t want you anywhere near them either.”

  “Aww,” Spencer and Drago said in unison, as if he was nothing short of adorable. Gunner grinned, looking a little embarrassed.

  “What?” Chas demanded, indignant.

  “That’s sweet of you to be so concerned for me, Chas,” Gunner murmured.

  “Fuck off, Gunner.”

  That sent Gunner’s eyebrows shooting skyward as he commented blandly, “Watch your language in front of the baby, Chasten.”

  Chas glared at Gunner, stood up with Poppy in his arms, and marched outside to show her around the front yard. It was a warm afternoon, one of the last of the fall, and she would enjoy being outside after so much time cooped up in cars. As for him, he was going to attempt to climb down off his homicidal ledge and chill the heck out.

&nbs
p; The other three men spent all afternoon with their heads together. They relocated to a big, scarred dining room table that must have come with the house and spread out a giant map of the United States. They seemed to think it was a good idea to draw their pursuers far away from the nation’s capital before confronting them. As long as Poppy stayed in this area, Chas reluctantly agreed to lead the bad guys away from her, which was the least violent plan the group came up with. Apparently the idea was for him and Gunner to go on a road trip through rural places. Somewhere a bunch of Asian mafiosos would stand out and be hindered from operating freely.

  After supper, a man named Charles Favian arrived and joined the discussion. He came armed with a ton of information about the various Yakuza clans and American gangs. His best guess was that the Oshiros were behind Poppy’s abduction.

  Apparently the Oshiros controlled drug smuggling through several major shipping ports in America, and appeared to be trying to branch out into Asia. If that was the case, it could explain clashes between the Oshiro and Tanaka clans over the past year or two. The CIA analyst believed the Oshiros were attempting to challenge old Yakuza control of various Asian ports.

  When Chas challenged Favian over why the Oshiros would shoot up Misty Falls if they already had possession of Poppy, he had no answers.

  Chas didn’t like any of this. They were all missing something big, and that big thing was the main source of danger to Poppy. They might know more about who she was, but they were still missing the key to understanding who was chasing her—and them.

  Favian also swabbed the inside of Poppy’s cheek and put the sample in a test tube that he sealed up and stuck in his pocket.

  Chas liked him. The man wore hopelessly unfashionable corduroy pants, and his shirt looked like it had never seen the hot side of an iron. But his gray eyes were clear and shockingly intelligent.

  The hour got late, and Spencer asked Chas, “What kind of sleeping arrangements do we need to make for the baby? I confess to not knowing a thing about little kids.”

  “She can sleep anywhere. It’s containing her when she wakes up that’s the problem. If you’re not awake before she is, there’s no telling what she could get into. She’s at that age where she’ll open cabinets or drawers, climb all over, and put anything she finds into her mouth.”

  Spencer eyed her as if she was a bomb about to go off.

  “If there’s a big-box store open nearby, I can run out and grab a portable playpen,” Chas offered. “She could sleep safely in that.”

  Gunner objected quickly, “I’d rather have you not leave me, Chas. You and I both will be recognized by the hostiles.”

  “I thought we lost them in Pennsylvania,” Chas blurted.

  “Gangs will have their own full-time hackers. And where there are security cameras or closed-circuit TVs, there are searchable records of human faces,” Drago explained. “Hackers are way ahead of most governments in messing with facial recognition, and we could be spotted walking into a store anywhere in America.”

  Chas shuddered. “We really don’t have privacy anymore, do we?”

  The other men shrugged. “Nature of the beast,” Gunner murmured.

  “I can go buy a playpen,” Charles volunteered. “Nobody chasing the child knows about me.”

  After some discussion, they all agreed that he would be the best choice to go out in public and buy baby gear, though he looked less than excited about the prospect.

  It took nearly an hour, and several texted pictures from Favian, to get the right product selected and purchased, but by nine o’clock or so, he’d returned to the farmhouse armed with a playpen and a high chair.

  Poppy was in full meltdown by the time he returned, and the big bad commandos wrestled through getting the playpen unpacked and set up while Chas gave her a bath, which she screamed through. Chas laid her down in the playpen, and she crashed immediately. Thank God.

  He went downstairs, and Gunner handed him a glass of white wine in silence.

  “Ahh, adult time,” Chas sighed in relief.

  “Quite a set of lungs that kid has on her,” Spencer commented wryly.

  Chas responded by draining his wine and holding out the glass for a refill. Gunner grinned and obliged.

  “Ready to hear the plan we’ve put together?” Gunner asked him when he’d put a dent in the second glass of wine.

  “So the wine wasn’t a reward for a good day’s parenting but rather a bribe to liquor me up before you tick me off?” he asked.

  Gunner shrugged. “I’ve been taught to use every tool at my disposal to achieve my objectives.”

  “Then you should have taken me to bed,” Chas snapped.

  Spencer laughed behind him, and Chas whipped around, his face hot. Their host was kind enough not to tease him about it, however, and merely said mildly to Gunner, “I like this man.”

  “Glad you approve,” Gunner grumbled.

  Spencer said, “Dray and I are starting a small security firm and were thinking about hiring a few people we know and trust from our former government careers.” He added with a smile, “And once we get on our feet, the pay will be considerably better than Uncle Sam can offer.”

  Gunner glanced over at Chas thoughtfully before saying, “Tell me more.”

  Spencer and Gunner took off talking about the types of jobs they could do, and Drago came over to refill Chas’s wineglass to the brim.

  “Are all of you in on the plot to get me drunk before you spring your plan on me?” Chas asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Drago replied, grinning. “It’s actually part of the plan.”

  Chas exhaled hard in disgust. “All right. Lay it on me. How dangerous is this plan of yours, and how likely am I to be maimed or killed?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  GUNNER POINTED the car to the west and accelerated away from the luxurious estate where Poppy was now safely installed. Charles Favian had called a woman he knew—a training officer with the CIA’s Special Operations Group—to come act as her temporary nanny and bodyguard. The SOG was generally considered to be among the best of the best in the Special Forces community.

  It surprised him when a middle-aged woman had shown up at Spencer and Dray’s place and tartly informed Gunner that she had grown children of her own and was plenty old enough to be Poppy’s grandmother.

  He’d been even more surprised when Spencer and Drago had driven them all out the front gate and directly across the street to another tall iron gate. The estate they’d wound back into had been so elegant, it was frightening.

  Drago explained that the neighbors, Jessica and Gershom Brentwood, had hired their fledgling security firm to beef up their estate’s security, and that he and Spencer had turned the property into a virtual fortress. They couldn’t think of anywhere safer to put Poppy until the mess surrounding her was sorted out.

  Gunner quizzed the security guards closely, and it turned out that Spencer and Drago had been running weekly exercises with them for several months, teaching them all kinds of advanced surveillance and security protocols.

  “You’re sure Poppy will be safe?” Chas asked.

  Gunner snorted. “Are you kidding? She has her own personal sniper for a nanny. Not to mention, the Brentwood home has every security bell and whistle money can buy, and their staff knows how to use it all. Besides, who’s gonna look for a missing kid at the estate of a stupidly rich, gray-haired hedge fund manager and his much younger trophy wife?”

  “I hope you’re right,” Chas fretted.

  “I’ll miss her too,” Gunner said quietly.

  “Bet you never thought you’d say that in your lifetime.”

  Gunner glanced over at Chas. “Nope.” He added reluctantly, “In the past week, I’ve been saying and doing a whole lot of shit I never thought I ever would.”

  “Sheesh. The munchkin is gone for two minutes and you’re already back to swearing like a sailor.”

  “In case you forgot, I am, in fact, a sailor.”

  Chas rolled
his eyes and laughed. “Did you like being in the Navy?”

  “The general Navy is okay. Being a SEAL is nothing like that.”

  “What’s it like being a SEAL?”

  Gunner frowned, searching for words. It wasn’t something he’d ever talked about. He just did it, and everyone he worked with just did it too. “It’s… hard. Every day is hard. New challenges, new things to learn, new problems to solve. It’s a constant fight to be stronger, faster, better, stay healthy, ignore pain.”

  “It sounds miserable.”

  Gunner shrugged. “I guess it would be for most people.”

  “What does that say about you, then? Do you have a mile-wide masochistic streak I don’t know about?”

  “No. Although I admit, I wondered about that during BUD/S.”

  “What does that stand for? ‘Beating up dumbsquats’?”

  Gunner grinned. “Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL. It’s the initial training course to become a SEAL. It was… not fun.”

  “Then why put yourself through all of that? Were you punishing yourself or something?”

  The notion startled him. “Not that I’m aware of. It was a challenge. A personal mountain to climb. And it looked like interesting work. The kind of job that would be all-consuming.”

  “So much that you would never have time to stop and admit to yourself that you were gay?”

  “Damn, Chas. Do you have to dissect me like some dead animal?”

  Chas sat back, looking smug.

  “Fuck off,” Gunner mumbled with no heat.

  “Right back atchya, big guy.”

  “So why are you a kindergarten teacher? On the list of most masochistic professions, that has to rank high.”

  “Why do you say that?” Chas asked, sounding surprised.

  “Screaming kids running all over the place. You’re basically babysitting twenty heathens all day long.” He shuddered just thinking of it.

  “Aww, they’re not that bad. You do have to establish authority with them right away, of course, and it takes a world of patience. But they’re fun. They’re still innocent at that age. The world is still a good place for most of them. I enjoy their optimism and enthusiasm. Five-year-olds aren’t self-conscious yet. If you ask them who can sing or dance, they all raise their hands. I love nurturing that. And they’re endlessly curious—” He broke off. “Sorry. Little kids get a bad rap. It’s a pet peeve of mine.”