Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  “Are you absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure that it’s Rockwood behind Joe’s kidnapping? You are sure that Ben wouldn’t have done this?” Mike countered. “You know I’ve always said that usually the most obvious suspect is the perp.”

  “I know you don’t like Ben, neither do I. But he loves Joe and I truly believe he wants me to be cleared of being a double agent. He wants me to come back to him. He is volatile, and he is angry, but he wouldn’t compromise Joe like this. And he wouldn’t compromise any possible future the three of us could have together. He loves us.”

  Mike nodded, but she could tell he didn’t really believe her. Or maybe it was that he just didn’t like what she was saying.

  “Ben is a lot of things, but I really don’t think he’s behind this. I don’t think he’s the bad guy here.”

  Mike shook his head. “I am not trying to make Ben the bad guy. I just want to make sure that we don’t waste time chasing the wrong people. But you seem to want to defend him all the time... If you still love him, that’s fine. Just admit it and then we can move forward with that awareness in place.”

  “I don’t love Ben.” She could feel the truth of her words, but she wasn’t sure Mike could feel them as well. “Ben was just a space filler, a soft landing, if you want to call it that. I needed someone who could staunch the loneliness in my heart after losing you, and he seemed to love me. Having him as my boyfriend made it easy to spy on Rockwood. Things with him checked a lot of the boxes for what I needed in my life.” It ached to admit her folly.

  “Summer...” Mike slipped his hand into hers.

  There was that touch. That damned touch. He was a master of making her forget herself with that simple thing. And he would always have that power over her, no matter how much she knew she shouldn’t let him.

  “Let’s just get Joe back, then we can think about everything else. As it stands, let’s just call a truce. Fair?”

  From where she stood, it was more than fair, it was a million miles past fair, given the circumstances. It was better to be a team than to fight with the one man she had always loved and always would.

  Mike could never know, but it was so easy for him to see if he wanted to—her love for him would always mean sacrifices. Sacrifices she would gladly make if it meant having him in her life.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Women made no sense at all.

  He’d always hated when other men had said things like that to him, but now that he was standing there and forced to see everything that was Summer, Mike really understood it. She was just a little bit, albeit justifiably, crazy. Luckily, she was the right kind of crazy for him.

  “Let’s go inside. I can make some phone calls to see if we can get my team on this and then we will go from there. How does that sound?” he asked, trying to help.

  She nodded. “I think we need to talk to the neighbors to see if anyone saw anything.”

  They could work on securing the scene all they wanted and collecting eyewitnesses, acting like this was a regular investigation that didn’t personally impact them. But this was their child and they needed to fly under the radar. The second they started going around and knocking on doors, their ordeal would be out in the open, and that could trigger police involvement. Whatever anonymity they’d been hoping for would be gone.

  There was a certain amount of power that came into play outside the rules and regulations of the legal system. And they would need all the leeway they could get when he got his hands on whomever had thought it acceptable to steal a baby out from under their noses. There was a certain level of hell reserved for people like that, and he would make sure they had the chance to experience the heat.

  Mike shook his head. “There wasn’t anyone around that I noticed. Whoever did this wouldn’t have been stupid enough to be seen and, as much as I want to ask around, I doubt we’ll get anything—the kidnapper seemed smart enough to watch for nosy neighbors. Plus, I think it’s best if we are just quiet and lay low a little bit. Like you said, we just need to wait for the call.”

  As if on cue, Mike’s phone pinged. The number, from Montana, was the generic type likely generated by some kind of app. He would have his team look into it, but he’d done this enough to know a spoof when he saw it.

  He clicked on the message; it was simple and yet terrifying.

  Baby safe. For now. You have 46 hours. Anything more and baby loses toes.

  Summer gasped audibly when he showed her the text.

  Yep. Someone was going to die for this. Actually, there would probably be several before he was done.

  He dialed the number, wanting to hear the voice of the person responsible for the hell he was going through. A man picked up, but Mike didn’t recognize the voice. “I assume you got our message and that your little girlfriend told you about what was going on and how she appears to have been playing on both sides of the fence. As it is, she is lucky to be alive.”

  “If you don’t return Joe in the next ten minutes, it is not us who need to be worried. It will be you and your damned crew. We will hunt you down—”

  “Hold it,” the man said, cutting him off. “Do you think it’s a good idea to threaten the person who has your girlfriend’s baby?”

  Damn it.

  Rational. He needed to be rational.

  First, he’d called Summer his “girlfriend,” which meant that he was either downplaying Mike and Summer’s past and using it to demoralize and deride him or that he had just been watching them for a finite period of time and had made incorrect assumptions.

  Second, the guy had called Joe her baby and not his son, which had to mean he didn’t know the truth. Together, this was good. Whoever it was didn’t have all the answers, which meant he hadn’t infiltrated Summer’s life too deeply. He was still only at surface level, which meant Mike and Summer had some degree of autonomy and leverage.

  Third, Summer had been right: the kidnapping couldn’t have been perpetrated by Ben. Mike had introduced himself to Ben as Joe’s father. Therefore, someone else was behind the kidnapping.

  The only good news was that their enemy didn’t know he could use Joe against him; as it was, he was looking at Mike like he was just a passive outsider—a mere boyfriend with little skin in the game. Well, he could play off their ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy.

  “Before you make any more demands, I need to know Joe is alive and doing well. What can you do to prove that he is safe?” He forced himself into negotiation mode.

  “We don’t wanna hurt the baby. Our primary objective here is to get the information we need and that’s it. Summer is lucky. We need the information she stole from ConFlux or she and the baby would already be dead.”

  “Who are you?” Mike asked, though he was more than aware these people were likely from Rockwood.

  The man grunted. “Don’t interrupt me again, or the baby will pay.”

  He shut his mouth.

  “Now, your little girlfriend has come into some information. Codes...” The man paused. “If she gives us those codes, we will keep your baby alive. If she doesn’t, we will make you all pay.”

  “Before we agree to do anything, you need to prove to me that Joe is okay.” He was careful to use calculated statements, ones all about the man he was negotiating with.

  The most crucial key in successful negotiation was for the negotiator to solve the problems and to always push for additional time. But this kind of crisis response was difficult in even the best of times, times when there wasn’t such a deeply personal tie. Negotiating was going to be nearly impossible if Mike kept putting things in terms of this being his own child.

  “What do you want with the baby?” he asked, trying to find a baseline on their hostage taker.

  “Well, the last damned thing I want is to wake his ass up to prove he is unharmed and then have to deal with a crying baby for the next few hours.”


  Interesting, so the guy didn’t want to hurt Joe or, at least, to cause himself too much unnecessary stress. This was good.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but then thought about his many hours of training. One of the first practices for negotiating in this type of circumstance was to follow the 80/20 rule. A negotiator had to keep the hostage taker talking eighty percent of the time; he should only do twenty. Next, he had to be a strong, active listener and hear the things not being said in addition to what was.

  The man on the other end of the line huffed. He sounded annoyed, as if having to wait for Mike to speak and give him feedback was more than he could handle. “Look, I can send a picture of the baby. But there are conditions.”

  “What are the conditions?” he asked, carefully mirroring the man’s language so he would feel validated.

  “We want to make this as simple as possible. If you give us what we want, you can have the kid back in a matter of hours.” The man halted, but Mike didn’t say anything. Instead he let him continue with his demands. “We need all the codes that were taken from the ConFlux system.”

  “You need all the codes.” Mike pushed the speaker button on his phone so Summer could listen in; the more ears he had on this, the better. Maybe she could pick up something he missed and make sense of this in a way that he was unable. “What are you planning to do with these codes?”

  “That’s none of your damned business, Mike.”

  The man had used his name. It didn’t come as a huge surprise, but it was jarring, like this guy had somehow just made things a degree more personal and threatening. More, the man had used his name on purpose. Mike had clearly stumbled onto something that had caused the guy to lash out and get emotional.

  “How do you think we should get these codes?” he continued, trying hard to restrain his own emotions. He couldn’t backslide, they were making progress, but he needed more time and more information to safely get Joe back.

  “That isn’t my damned problem. My problem is that you are apparently a freaking idiot.”

  Okay, he needed to dial it back a bit and deescalate. “I’m not trying to be stupid, just trying to get all the facts and to fully understand your demand. This is about you, what you need.”

  “No, this is about the kid.” The man sounded frantic, and Mike didn’t try to dissuade him. Some amount of stress on the other end of the phone was good, as long as it didn’t lead to Joe’s being hurt. Stress led to poor negotiation skills, which could definitely be to Mike’s benefit just as long as he was careful.

  Summer moved closer, as if to say something, but he stopped her with a shake of his head. She was far too angry and far too close to the situation. He pushed Mute on his phone so the man on the other end couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “Summer, you need to just listen. Please. I’m going to see if we can get this guy to fold without having to play into his demand. We need Joe to be safe. If you get involved, get emotional, these guys will have us at their mercy.”

  She nodded. “If they hurt Joe...”

  “They don’t want to hurt Joe. But you and I are both going to have to be patient. This is a dance marathon, not a sprint. The longer it takes, the better. We can wear them down and keep Joe safe.”

  “How do you know they aren’t going to hurt him?”

  “They didn’t even want to wake him up.”

  “That was more about them than it was for Joe.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but she did give him an idea.

  “We need to make them feel something for him,” Mike said with a subversive laugh.

  “You think that will work? That they will be that easily coerced?”

  Love always had a way of making a person do things that went against reason. He’d once heard that feelings were thoughts of their own and to negate and devalue feelings would only limit a person’s intellectual abilities. In essence, to avoid feelings stunted a person.

  He wasn’t sure if he bought into the philosophy in its entirety—whenever he had been able to avoid feelings, it had been an asset rather than a hindrance—but then he could hardly be thought of as the perfect specimen of man. Regardless of his personal introspection, love could be the answer to most of life’s problems.

  “Helloooo? What in the hell! Did you hang up?” The man on the other end of the line spiraled into a full meltdown. “Rico, they effing hung up, man. How in the hell are we supposed to work with these people?”

  Rico. The man had a partner named Rico.

  Mike clicked off the Mute. “I’m right here. I was just trying to think of a solution to the problem with Joe.” He paused.

  “What problem?” the man answered, too quickly.

  “Well, he is going to require a lot of care,” he said, thinking about all the baby-related items he’d seen around Summer’s house. “He is going to need a bottle, diapers, and someone to take dedicated care of him. Can you provide him with those basic necessities?”

  There was a long pause. “You think I care if the baby eats?”

  “You may or may not, but I think you are going to care when he is crying because he’s hungry.” He turned to Summer. “What kind of formula does he drink?”

  There was so much he didn’t know about his son.

  She nodded. “He has a sensitive stomach, so I can only use the formula from Costco, the one with the yellow lid.”

  Oh, this was going to be good. These guys clearly hadn’t put a lot of thought into the actual logistical needs of taking care of a baby as young as Joe. And yet, that added level of need and dependence was going to also be what put Joe into additional danger. It took a lot to raise and care for a baby, and these guys knew maybe slightly less than Mike did.

  “Did you hear Summer? The baby has special dietary needs. What can we do to get you the food Joe is going to need?”

  “We don’t need jack squat. If the baby cries, he goes outside. Plain as that.” The man’s voice sounded strained, as though even he knew that what he was saying was a bad idea. If someone heard a strange baby crying outside, that would pull in all kinds of attention. The only humans who would be pushed outside would be the kidnappers.

  Mike paused, letting the lie sink into the man’s psyche as he thought about the reality in which he had just placed himself. The expression “bit off more than they could chew” came to Mike’s mind. But this was all good, all things he and Summer could use to buy time and even maybe to get to Joe all without giving the kidnappers the ransom they were asking for.

  There was a rattle and the sound of a hand being placed over the phone as the kidnapper must have turned to his cohort, Rico. “Dude, do we have diapers? You know anything about where we can get some?”

  Mike nearly laughed out loud as the bumbling kidnappers argued with one another about buying diapers at a gas station.

  Summer covered her mouth as she nodded excitedly.

  They had found the weak point in the other party’s negotiation that would clear the barriers and give them the in that they needed.

  “Look. I know you don’t want to hurt the baby. That would land you in more trouble than I think you care to take on. So let us help you with him. We can bring you everything you need for Joe for the next two days, while we also work on getting you the codes. What do you think?” Mike hoped these idiots would see the advantage of keeping Joe well fed and looked after.

  The man mumbled something Mike couldn’t understand. “We are going to need some time. Let me talk to my people. We’ll be in touch.”

  The phone line went dead.

  Damn it. He hadn’t meant to run the kidnapper off; all he had wanted to do was to get him to give them a little wiggle room.

  He stared at the lit screen until it went dark.

  There had to be something they could do, something that would help them take back control.

  CHAPTER TE
N

  Hours later, Summer’s phone rang and she hesitated to look at the Caller ID. Her only hope was that it was the kidnappers and they were coming back with a list of demands—demands that would bring Summer and Mike closer to getting their son back.

  And yet, as she looked, she saw that it was her boss, Kevin Warble, from the DTRA. Luckily, as Mike glanced over at her phone from his seat next to her on her couch, all the screen said was Kevin. Mike couldn’t know everything, not yet and maybe not ever. She had been doing the best she could, right up until her enemies had taken Joe. Now everything she had been trying to do, every safety precaution she had thought she’d had in place, was out the window.

  She stood. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Mike, quickly making her way down the hall to her bedroom where she could find a little bit of privacy for the call that would now have to take place.

  This one was going to hurt. She’d reached out to Kevin earlier when Mike was doing a perimeter check of the apartment complex after they’d received the ransom call.

  Closing the door, she answered the phone. “Hey, thanks for getting back to me. I know you said you couldn’t get me the codes, but there has to be something you can do. Something we can trade with these guys in order to get Joe back. Some innocuous codes. Anything...”

  “Whoa. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You know that isn’t a possibility. Can you imagine if the code used by high-level, security clearance military engineers got into the hands of America’s enemies? It would be a nightmare.” Kevin sighed as though just the question of him getting her the codes exhausted him. “Have you had any other contact with the kidnappers?”

  “No. Not yet. Have you had any luck tracking down the phone number or location of the device Rico and his buddy used to call?”

  Kevin groaned. “Like we had assumed, it wasn’t a number registered to any known phone. However, we have figured out the source app and have contacted the designers. They are looking into things to see if they can identify the phone assigned the number. But unfortunately, you know how all this goes. It’s a waiting game.”