Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  “I didn’t want to have to do that, Madison, but you’re not cooperating at all as I expected.” Her attacker’s knees popped as he crouched beside her. Brushing a section of her hair out of her face with a gloved hand, he fisted a chunk in his grip and forced her to meet his gaze. “Now the medical examiner is going to be able to tell you were hit in the face, and my whole plan of making your jump from the falls look like a suicide won’t be believable. I guess if your body is tossed around a few times, she won’t be able to tell the difference. Either way, you’re off the Rip City Bomber case.”

  That was what this was about? That she’d been the prosecutor assigned by the district attorney’s office to try the case? The DA had personally handed her the case six months ago with his full support, a career-changing case that would ensure she could raise this baby on her own. Only now, her attacker made it sound as though she’d been targeted because she’d stepped into the limelight.

  The bomber hadn’t wanted a mistrial from the charges the DA’s office had brought against Rosalind Eyler. He’d triggered the bomb in the courthouse to designate a specific prosecutor at the helm, to get her out of the way. Madison locked onto his wrist with both hands to ease the pain spreading across her scalp, but she wasn’t strong enough to loosen his grip. There was only one reason someone would go to these lengths to assign a certain prosecutor on the biggest case the state had seen in a decade. The same reason she’d taken on the case in the first place. To use it as a stepping-stone to district attorney when Pierce Cook retired. “You want me off the case so you can be the one behind the prosecution’s table when Rosalind Eyler is sentenced.”

  The list of suspects she carried around in her head narrowed considerably but expanded with the possibility of seventy-two new names. One name for each of the deputy district attorneys in her office. Madison ran through all the prosecutors she’d worked with over the years. “And Harvey Braddock was helping you until you detonated a thermite bomb in his garage to tie up loose ends.”

  A gut-wrenching amusement filtered into those light green eyes, and Madison braced for the next hit. Her hand brushed against something solid on the ground beside her as her abductor straightened. A phone. He must’ve dropped it and hadn’t noticed it’d fallen from his coat when he’d crouched beside her. “Unfortunately for you, he wasn’t the only loose end.”

  “Don’t let the baby bump fool you.” She swept the phone into her hand while keeping total eye contact with her attacker. It was an old but successful trick she’d picked up from her father when he’d asked her to be the lookout at the convenience stores around their house. “I’m not going to make this easy for you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There was no way to track her location.

  Jonah had confiscated her phone at the courthouse and taken the battery out to keep the bomber from being able to follow her movements. A lot of good that’d done. He’d been the one to bring her out in the open.

  He brushed through the shattered glass over the passenger side of the SUV, his instincts on high alert. He had to catalog everything. No matter how small. One piece of evidence was all it would take to tell him who’d put his hands on the mother of his baby. Her tablet pencil stood stark white against the leather of the seat. She must’ve been working on her tablet when the attacker had surprised her by knocking out the window, but where was it? He hauled her bag from the floorboards and emptied the contents onto the seat. Wallet, car keys for a vehicle he was pretty sure didn’t exist anymore, perfume, various shades of lipstick, a brush. “It’s not here.”

  Her abductor wouldn’t have taken the device. All the marshals service would’ve had to do was ping the tablet’s whereabouts to narrow in on his location. Jonah ran his hand down between the middle console and the seat. And hit something solid. Tugging the tablet from the depths, he tipped the screen toward him, but was immediately denied access due to facial recognition. A nine-button keypad appeared on the screen. Madison hadn’t dropped the tablet when she’d been attacked. She’d hidden it. Why?

  Marshal Dylan Cove searched the back seats, the pavement, behind the vehicle, any possible angle their suspect might’ve approached the vehicle. “I’m coming up empty. You?”

  “She hid her tablet between the console and her seat. There’s something on here she thought was important enough to make sure I found when I discovered she’d been taken.” Jonah slammed the door closed behind him harder than he’d meant. Someone had broken into his vehicle, had put their hands on Madison and taken her from the scene. And it would be the last thing they did in this life. “The company who makes these is well-known for not giving access to their customer’s devices, especially to law enforcement. The tech experts won’t be able to break into it in time, and I obviously don’t look remotely like Madison. I need the passcode.”

  “Has to be something she uses every day.” Cove unpocketed his phone. “I’ll call the tech guys to see if they can pull keystrokes off of her work computer and laptop.”

  “She won’t make it easy to guess. Not with confidential case files and documents from the district attorney’s office.” Which meant no birthdays, no social security numbers, nothing a hacker or opposing counsel could search personal information for to make a guess. “Three wrong entries will lock us out and wipe the memory. Damn it.”

  They were running out of time. Every minute she was out there was another minute her and the baby’s lives were in danger, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it until he figured out the message she’d tried to leave behind for him. She was out there, alone, fighting for her life, and the thought of not finding her in time ripped the deep cuts in his heart wider. He’d already lost her once when she’d cut him from her life. He couldn’t lose her again. The hollowness behind his sternum throbbed with the ticking clock. He brought the device up again, cursing the nine-button keypad. This wasn’t going to work. He needed another angle, another—

  Lines of light blue and white spread out from behind the numbered buttons on the screen followed by deep wells and curves of darker color that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Small letters edged the perimeter of the background image. Madison’s name, two separate dates, a gray scale and what looked like a bunch of numbers adding up to latitude and longitude. “Women’s Healthcare Clinic.”

  The background photo wasn’t a map. It was a sonogram of their baby. Jonah swiped at the screen to get the full picture. The outline of a small gray alien life-form curved around the bottom of the photo. A round head, perfect nose and full lips drew him in before he spotted the six-digit due date typed beside their son’s feet. It was worth a shot. The longer they stood here, the higher the chance Jonah wouldn’t get to Madison in time. Wouldn’t get to his son in time. He tapped the screen to resurrect the keypad and punched in the due date.

  The sonogram and keypad disappeared. A white document filled the screen. The Rip City Bomber case file at first glance with notes at the bottom in Madison’s handwriting. He turned the device to get a better angle on three words underlined multiple times. “It’s a setup.”

  Shock coursed through him, and he raised his attention to the scene where firefighters had finally extinguished the last of the thermite fires around Harvey Braddock’s property. Forensic units had been given the go-ahead to assess the garage and start collecting evidence. All of it, this entire scene, had been made to look like Harvey Braddock had been involved in the attacks and had possibly made a mistake assembling a second bomb if the remains inside the garage turned out to be him, but Madison had figured it out. “She knew this device was to get me into the field and leave her unprotected before he came for her.”

  A ping registered from her tablet. An incoming message with an attachment. He didn’t recognize the number, but that wasn’t surprising. Madison had plenty of contacts, private investigators and law enforcement personnel she worked with on a daily basis. He tapped the attachment and a file filled the screen.
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  A photo of a location he recognized. He wasn’t sure how to explain it, couldn’t possibly convince anyone else, but his gut said the message had come from Madison. She must’ve gotten a hold of her abductor’s phone. “Cove!”

  Jonah wrenched open the driver’s side door of his SUV and climbed inside. Dylan Cove collapsed into the passenger seat. In seconds, the engine growled to life. Jonah shoved the vehicle into Drive and ripped out of the neighborhood with a cloud of burnt rubber behind them. Grip tight on the steering wheel, he pushed past the legal speed limit as he wound between Portland traffic and headed toward the highway out of town. He tossed the tablet into Cove’s lap, the photo from the unknown number stretched across the screen. “Multnomah Falls.”

  “You won’t get there any faster if you’re dead, Watson.” Cove latched onto the handle above his head as Jonah wrenched the wheel to climb onto the highway on-ramp in front of another car.

  “Watch me.” Tires on asphalt droned in his ears, but his head was far from the miles of road in front of him. He should’ve known the thermite explosive had been set up to lure him and Madison to the scene. He should’ve seen it before now. Madison had. Right before the bastard had abducted her.

  A deep well of desperation honed his senses into hyperfocus. He’d already lost one child because he hadn’t been there. He couldn’t lose another, couldn’t lose Madison. This wasn’t just about the pregnancy or his fear of reliving the past. These past eighteen hours of her falling under his protection, of having her this close, had resurrected those first tendrils of feelings he’d closed himself off from when Noah had died. She’d done that. She’d helped pull him above the secrets of his past and breathe renewed love and excitement into the life they’d created together. Something he’d never imagined he’d feel again. Without her, he would’ve drowned in the hollowness Noah’s death had left behind, and he wasn’t going to let anyone take her from him. Ever.

  “The trailhead to the lower falls is up ahead.” Cove unholstered his weapon, checking the safety. “The photo was taken close to the bridge over the falls. If he’s got her higher up the rocks, he’ll see us as soon as we hit the trail. What’s your plan here?”

  “You take the main trail. I’ll come up through the trees on the south. We can cover more ground that way, but believe me, if I know Madison, she’ll make damn sure we know where she’s at.” Jonah pulled the SUV over and slammed the vehicle into Park. His boots hit the ground, and he brought his sidearm up. The heaviness of the steel tugged on the wound in his shoulder, but he bit back the pain. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes. Not with Madison’s life in the balance. Cool mist settled against his neck and face as he and Cove closed in on the trailhead.

  Elongated shadows stretched across the dirt trail. The sun was setting. Five—ten—more minutes at the most and they’d lose the small amount of light outlining the path in front of them. Jonah slowed, crouching behind the largest rock blocking his view to the river. The steady rush of the falls drowned out any other sounds around them. The perfect location for an ambush. High sight lines, spotty reception, plenty of trees and rock for cover. So different from the bare landscape of Afghanistan. No sign of their bomber or Madison along the higher rocks or on the bridge, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out here. Radios wouldn’t do them any good. They’d have to revert to signals.

  Her message had come through a little more than thirty minutes ago. Was he already too late? Unclipping his phone from his vest, he brought up the trail map of the area. Jonah tapped Cove on the shoulder from a few inches behind the marshal. He motioned to the slick, well-worn main trail with two fingers, then nodded his intentions to take up the lesser-known path approximately fifty feet to the south of where they were standing.

  Cove understood and fell into a steady pace along the main trail while Jonah diverted to the south. Thick trees and roots would slow him down, but nothing would stop him from getting to Madison. He headed straight into the trees with the trail map fresh in his head. If he hiked farther up the incline in this direction, he should hit the lower falls bridge before Cove’s hike from the main trail. His boots sank a few inches at a time as he wound through overgrown trees and dead branches. His lungs burned with exertion with the added weight of his vest, but he pushed forward. He had to get to her. That was all that mattered.

  A scream pierced through his loud breathing, and he locked on movement from the bridge. Two figures shifted through the trees, and Jonah pumped his legs as fast as they could go up the side of the mountain. “Madison!”

  Twenty feet. Ten. He was almost there.

  “Jonah!” His name tearing from her throat out of fear rocketed his pulse into his throat. She twisted out of her abductor’s arms from the center of the bridge and took one step toward him as Jonah burst from the tree line.

  Just before her attacker pushed her over the edge.

  * * *

  GRAVITY DUG ITS CLAWS into her muscles.

  Madison reached for the marshal she’d trusted to save her a split second before her kidnapper pushed her over the side of Benson Bridge. The tops of the trees ringed her vision as she stared up in the sky, her scream cut off by the thundering beat of the falls six hundred feet below.

  Seconds distorted into a full minute as the world slowed. She was falling, with no chance of survival once she hit the river.

  “No!” Jonah had been running toward her, but he’d been too late.

  She stretched out both hands, her fingers skimming down cold steel and concrete as panic charged through her. Her fingers spasmed at contact of the inner arch beneath the bridge, and Madison latched on for dear life. She’d caught herself. Her bare feet swung beneath the bridge—back and forth—as momentum and gravity combined forces to pull her free. The edge cut into her hand as she tried to adjust her grip on the frame, but she wouldn’t be able to hold on for long. She wasn’t strong enough. Her bulging belly brushed against the girder as she set her head back between her arms. Hot tears slipped down her face and into her hairline, immediately cooling with the help of the wall of water below her. “Jonah!”

  The sob clawing up her throat was swept away in the rush of freezing water. He couldn’t hear her, couldn’t see her without looking directly over the bridge. There were two other arches to her right. If she could swing her feet onto one of them, she could slide across the girder to the rocks on the other side.

  Her fingers were losing friction as water collected on the underside of the bridge. She adjusted her grip, kicking wildly to push momentum up her body and into her hands. Reverberations pounded through her from the bridge. She stared straight up and caught sight of two outlines throwing fists as the sun dipped beyond the horizon. Shadows chased across her vision from the dwindling light.

  Jonah landed a hard right kick to her attacker’s chest, forcing the masked bomber who’d taken her toward the center of the bridge. He blocked an incoming kick to his shin but failed to dodge the solid punch to the right side of his face. Her abductor followed through with an elbow into Jonah’s head, and her marshal slammed into the side of the bridge above her. “Madison, hang on! I’m coming for you!”

  Her abductor’s shadow solidified behind the marshal. Dying sunlight glinted off a small piece of steel.

  “Jonah, look out!” Her right hand tensed around the steel support girder as she loosened her left to reach for him, but she couldn’t reach him.

  Jonah straightened, his head thrown back onto his shoulders, as the steel disappeared into his side. His guttural scream cut through the constant pound of water on rock below and echoed off the rocks around her.

  “No!” Her blood ran cold as he stumbled back, out of sight. Madison blinked through the mist of water sticking to her face, but she couldn’t see him. “Jonah!”

  One hand slipped from the girder, and the whole left side of her body plunged to drop. The phone she’d taken from her abductor fell from her pock
et and disappeared into the raging waters below. Jonah was hurt. She had to get to the other side of the bridge. Her hand ached from the weight tensing her frozen fingers. She could do this. She had to do this. For Jonah. For her baby. She angled her head up toward the top of the girder and hauled her dislodged hand back into place. The tears dried as she focused every ounce of energy into sliding across the beam. Cold steel aggravated the cut at the base of her fingers as she pushed one hand over a few inches, then followed it with the other. The shape of the arch dipped down, and her fingers slipped along the wet metal until she hit the divider built between the arches. Her heart shot into her throat, but she’d managed to slide a few feet closer to the edge of the rocks.

  Two feet of steel separated her from the next arch to her right. She’d have to move one hand at a time and pray she was strong enough to hold on.

  Heavy footsteps pounded across the bridge, and she looked up in time to see a third shadow separate from the tree line and collide with her attacker. “Watson, get to Madison! I’ll hold him off!”

  Recognition flared as Marshal Dylan Cove caught the bomber around the middle and hauled him across the bridge, all the while taking hit after hit to the top of his spine. Another round of fists flew before they fell out of sight onto the other side of the falls, but she didn’t hear Jonah respond. Had Cove been too late?

  Her hands hurt, every muscle in her arms shaking under the pressure. She had to keep moving, had to get to him—

  “Maddi, take my hand!” His command claimed every cell in her body as Jonah stretched over the side of the bridge and down toward her. Crystal-clear blue eyes targeted her with nothing but determination, and a flood of sobbing relief washed through her. He was alive. He was going to get her out of here. “You can do this. I know you can do this.”