Survive By The Team (Team Fear Book 3)

by Cindy Skaggs

  “And then they found out what you were doing. Odds are, they listened to any and all calls.”

  Oh, heck no. The blood drained from Mandi’s face. “God, I’m an idiot.”

  “What?”

  Heat washed over her body. “They sent Echo to the funeral because they knew it would work.”

  “How so?”

  Mandi dug her hands through her hair. It had dried and hung smooth to the shoulders of the borrowed scrubs. She really didn’t want to answer, but it was all part of her current problem. “I broke up with someone recently. On the phone. We argued about every problem we had in our relationship. Maurice was creeped out by the funeral home. Shortly thereafter, Echo asked me out during a funeral, thus proving he wasn’t like Maurice. I even remember thinking what a nice change that was. God. And then there was the coffee shop.”

  “Maurice had a problem with coffee?” Stills asked.

  Tears stung her eyes. Not tears for Maurice, or not directly, but the shame burned. Maurice had been ashamed of her. “He didn’t like being seen with me. When it started, he made it seem like he was doing me a favor by keeping our relationship low key.”

  “How is that shit doing you a favor?”

  “Long story.” She started shivering, her entire body racked with chills that had nothing to do with the temperature. Someone had listened to the most humiliating call of her life. “And then I saw Maurice out with Tina and I realized he wasn’t doing me a favor. He was making it easy to cheat. I was some dirty little secret.” She curled her feet into her body, getting as close to a ball as the car allowed.

  “He’s an ass,” Stills said.

  She nodded. “But if Echo heard that call, they knew my triggers. They knew sending some guy who wasn’t turned off by the funeral home and who wanted to meet me in public would be hard to deny.” They had put a well-built man in front of her and waited for her to salivate like some pathetic old maid. “God, he even used Maurice’s cologne. And then he tried to kill me.” Talk about your bad first dates. She even screwed up the ones she ran away from.

  “The truck that hit you last night was wiped clean. No fingerprints. Anywhere. No car is that clean. Plus, according to the deputy, the truck was stolen. Pushing you off the road is their MO. They tried to do something similar to Ryder’s wife. If the dust storm hadn’t come along, you’d be dead on the side of the road. Another random accident in the middle of nowhere.”

  Her hands shook, so she wiped them down her thighs. “That’s a heck of a picture you paint.”

  “I’m not done, because Echo isn’t. He tried to finish the job in the hospital.”

  “Tried and failed. Twice.”

  “Don’t let his failure fool you. He’s smart, trained, and without remorse. He didn’t know I was at the hospital. He won’t make the same mistake again.”

  Mandi wasn’t sure Echo had made a mistake. “He could have killed me in the morgue after the funeral. Or finished me off after the accident. He walked away from his wreck and I was knocked out.” The thought of it made her want to vomit. “I think he let me live.”

  “The rescue came faster than he anticipated.”

  She shook her head to disagree.

  Stills turned into a flat parking area outside of a public library. “I get your point. You were bait. The team is off the grid, so they’re stirring things up to force us into the open.”

  He maneuvered the car into a spot near a dumpster and what she guessed was an employee exit in the back. A large park extended off the back of the library, but after ensuring the area was clear, Stills motioned her away from the open green field.

  “You’re paranoid,” she pointed out.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Not everyone I know.” But the past few months had nearly driven her there.

  Stills grabbed her hand as they crossed the parking lot. The surprise move jolted her and reflex had her pulling her hand back, but he held firm. Her hand trembled.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s stupid.” She rolled her eyes at the sheer stupidity of her response. He’d held her hand when he led her through the hospital as well. He probably didn’t know he was doing it, but for a girl who hadn’t held hands in public since senior prom, the gesture meant something.

  “Is it this?” He lifted their joined hands in front of them as they walked. “I’m just keeping you close in case.”

  No need to ask in case of what. Someone had already tried to run her down outside of the hospital. “Of course.” See? Stupid. Her cheeks stung with rising shame. Hopefully he thought the cold brought the color to her cheeks.

  He pulled on her hand to go the long way around a parked van. “Does it bother you?”

  The strength of his big hand engulfing hers made her feel safe. She flexed her fingers, but his grip didn’t loosen. “It’s just been a long time.”

  It wasn’t just holding hands that had been a long time. A new wave of heat went all the way to the roots of her hair. Didn’t matter how cold it was outside, she was burning with embarrassment, but Stills didn’t appear to notice. He zigzagged them in a seemingly random pattern until they reached the front. They walked into the library and a gust of heated air welcomed them inside.

  Safe. The idea was ridiculous given her current situation, but nothing bad had ever happened to her in a library.

  “There’s a place to eat.” He pointed to a few open tables near a small café. He let go of her hand to pull out his wallet and hand her some bills. “Order us some lunch. I’m going to use the computer lab. Let me borrow the drive.”

  Mandi hesitated. The drive held the answers she’d been looking for since Danny’s death. Glen was now on the run because of it. Giving it up was risky. Of course she trusted Stills—when she was with him—but blind trust could get her killed. “We should stick together.”

  “I need to send the information to the team. They might be pissed at me, but they’re the ones with the resources to investigate this while we get to safety.”

  “We should go together.”

  “Fine. Then we skip lunch. Time is critical.”

  “Honestly?” She glared at him. “You’re an ass.”

  “Never claimed to be anything different. It’s your call.”

  She mashed the drive into his open palm. “What do you want to eat?”

  He gave her a quick order and disappeared in the direction of the computer lab. Mandi ordered and then sat at a table where she could see him when he came back. The seat had an added advantage of a clear view of the front door, because she didn’t want Stills to ditch her. And also, she wanted to make sure Echo hadn’t found them.

  To think she’s nearly gone for coffee with a psycho.

  Okay. She’d dated plenty of psychos. There was the necrophiliac who thought she’d give him access to bodies. The druggie who thought he could transport meth in a coffin. And Maurice the cheater. She was an idiot when it came to men.

  She fidgeted in her seat until Stills returned with a few sheets of paper. “Where’s the drive?” she asked.

  “Destroyed.”

  “What?” She raised her voice so the people at the adjacent table glanced at her. Obviously she wasn’t using her library voice. “What happened to it?” she whispered.

  “I got the information we needed. Sent the file to a secure chat room where the team will find it. Debug it if there’s a Trojan Horse attached.”

  Well that thought hadn’t occurred to her. “Glen wouldn’t put a virus or anything on there.”

  “No, but Echo knows he’s accessed the information. They might.”

  “What’s in the report?”

  “Eat your lunch first.”

  Well, that probably meant something bad. Mandi sucked on a strawberry shake that was possibly the best thing she’d ever tasted. Between drinks, she ate a croissant loaded with tuna and cheese. She wanted answers but didn’t know how to begin, so she stared across the stacks of books. Stills finished his meal fir
st, but he was never at rest. Between bites he kept his eyes moving around across the bookshelves and at the library patrons.

  The constant vigilance set her pulse to an erratic pace.

  He was as big as Glen, but didn’t have Glen’s teddy bear demeanor. The bruises on his face hinted at a man who didn’t back down from a fight. He jumped right in when Echo chased after them. No hesitation, but he hadn’t beaten Echo and that was terrifying. “Are they stronger than you?”

  “Who?”

  “The men from Team Echo?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  “Then how did he get the upper hand?”

  Stills cursed, drawing the irate glances of a mom’s group at the next table. He lowered his voice. “Poor impulse control, remember.”

  Yes, he’d warned her. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “I ditched the team to come help you rather than risk a delay while they strategized. I left my weapons in the car that got towed, so I was momentarily without.”

  “Does that mean...”

  “I found a replacement. It won’t happen again.”

  She looked him over to see if she could see a gun, but it was well hidden in the voluminous folds of his hoodie. He looked... like a malevolent force to be reckoned with. For some twisted reason, she found his bruises more attractive than a pretty face. With windblown red-blond hair, unshaven face, and cocky bearing, Stills had that James Dean Rebel Without a Cause look going for him. Except, something told her he had a cause; one he wasn’t willing to share. Not even with his team. He exuded the same kind of innate strength Danny had had. It wasn’t something the Army trained into a man. A man was born with it.

  Mandi picked a chip off her plate and chewed pensively. She’d made a choice to go with Stills. To trust him. And that meant sharing information. Sure, the ex-soldier was deadly. No one could dispute the shadow of death in his eyes, but he was also sexy in an unconventional way. Or maybe she was warped. From the first date to her last, she’d always chosen the wrong man. The charming doctor with the perfect smile did nothing for her. Not even the good-looking deputy. Stills, however? Butterflies on steroids.

  Attraction to the deadly soldier was foolhardy. Stupid, even. He was a stone-cold killing machine, and the cracked lip that was starting to scab gave him that devil-may-care appearance that lit her hormones on fire.

  She crunched another chip and let the salt linger on her taste buds. She glanced over at the counter, wondering if they had time for dessert. It had been too long since her last meal.

  “Good to see you eating. You’ve lost weight.”

  He sounded like Danny. She swallowed the chip with a quick drink of her shake. “How would you know?”

  “The picture of you.” He took a sip of his soda. “We didn’t think any of this would land back on you. Never occurred to me. To anyone.”

  “Tell me about Danny’s military team.”

  “Team Fear.” He laid it down for her while she finished eating. In hushed tones, he told her that Danny had joined an elite team. Captain Johnson, the man who had saved them outside the hospital, recruited them. Once recruited, they volunteered for medical experimentation. “We all believed that what we were doing was for the greater good, but when the shit hit the fan over in the Stan,” he said, using the shortened version of Afghanistan, “Gault knew shit wasn’t right. Maybe the paranoia started when we were still overseas.”

  “You lost me there. I thought you said paranoia was a side effect.”

  “Yes. And no. The side effects happened after, when they cut off the medications. Paranoia. Anger.” He stole a chip and chewed on it to delay his answer.

  “What medicine? I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “The company—the people Captain Johnson works for—poked and prodded us, injected us with an experimental drug that inhibited the physiological reaction to fear.”

  “Do you mean Danny didn’t feel any fear when he faced down the police?”

  “Probably not.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Anything is possible,” Stills answered. “If you have the money. Someone did. They sold the idea to the Army. We volunteered. Every last man. We believed in the mission, and most of us needed the money.”

  Mandi dropped back in her seat. That’s about the same time Ellie had needed therapy. The poor kid had endured so much in her short life, and they were trying to get her back up to the level of other kids her age. And Danny had found the money. He’d never say how. “He didn’t need money for himself. He needed it for Ellie.”

  “Who is Ellie?

  “Danny’s daughter.”

  Chapter Seven

  The news astounded Stills. He froze while he considered the ramifications of her announcement. “Gault has a kid?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” His best friend hadn’t bothered to tell him. Stills rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he could rub out the pain. “How old?”

  “Six. Her mom was never in the picture. Two months after Ellie was born, Heather bailed.” Mandi shoved the rest of her plate back. “Danny joined the Army so he’d have medical insurance for Ellie. She was born premature. Had developmental and health issues. She’s only six, but she’s already had six surgeries to repair a hole in her heart and related medical issues.”

  “And when Gault joined the team? You said he needed money.”

  “Ellie needed speech therapy. Lots of one-on-one. Seriously expensive given where we lived. There weren’t any base facilities nearby.”

  The assholes that recruited them to the team would know Gault needed money. Fucking Johnson knew what buttons to push to get them to sign on the dotted line. Now Echo was using the teams’ psych evals to go on the offensive.

  Mandi took a deep breath before continuing. “Ellie spent so much time in hospitals that it was a miracle she was healthy enough to go to school. We needed to get her back on track so she wasn’t behind her peers academically.”

  “We?”

  “I raised Ellie.” Mandi blinked tears away before they fell, but her eyes were bloodshot. “Danny was deployed so much that her day-to-day care fell to me. Now that he’s gone...”

  The ramifications kept coming, now didn’t they. It was like snapping out of a bad dream to find himself in a dark dystopian world. There were dozens of twists and turns, and Echo was ahead at every one.

  The day on the Chinook took on a new significance. Gault had warned him, or tried. He hadn’t meant that Mandi was some lonely cat lady. He’d meant that she was alone in the callous world where shit rained down on the innocent. Stills knew firsthand how hard life was on single mothers, because working her ass off had put his mother in an early grave.

  “Ellie is all I have left of my brother.”

  “Fuck me.” Stills fell back feeling like he’d been sucker punched. Gault hadn’t wanted to tip his hand that day on the helo—who the hell knew if their conversations were recorded—but if Stills had followed up after Gault died, he would have known the truth. That kid was a big-ass target.

  There was an enormous difference between flying by the seat of his pants and flying blind. He was on the wrong damn battlefield because he hadn’t seen the full scope of the operation until this very second. He’d been blind. The target wasn’t Mandi.

  It was Ellie.

  He tossed his napkin to the table. “Where is she now?”

  “I left her with Miss Connie next door. She used to babysit Danny and me. She’s—”

  “Who knows where Ellie is right now?” He grabbed her by the arm, ushered her out of the library, and toward the stolen SUV.

  She stumbled to keep up with him. “No one knows where Ellie is. I mean I work in a funeral home. It’s not like I have a boatload of friends to gossip with, and no one believed me when I said what happened to Danny was sketchy.”

  Someone believed her or Echo wouldn’t target her. Stills climbed into the front seat while Mandi entered from the othe
r side. The torn vinyl seat poked at his thigh and was cold enough to freeze his dumb ass. Angry—at himself more than anyone—he twisted the key. The engine coughed to life. He’d chosen a vehicle that no one would miss, at least not right away, but he was regretting the loss of the drug-mobile with each passing moment. “Did you tell Glen over the phone about where Ellie was staying?”

  The bruises on her pale face grew darker as blood drained from her face. “You think they’d go after Ellie?” Her voice cracked.

  Members of Team Echo were psychopaths. They’d already killed Madigan’s wife and baby. “Ellie is the one thing that would motivate you. Am I right?”

  “I need to call Miss Connie.”

  Stills handed her the pink cell phone. “Make it quick.”

  Hands shaking, Mandi dialed, but hung up almost instantly. “The call went straight to voicemail.”

  “Would she screen calls if she didn’t know the number?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Call back. Leave a message. Make it long enough that she can reach the phone to answer.”

  While Mandi made her call, Stills pulled a nondescript burner phone from his pocket. He stared at the ugly hunk of metal and electronics as Mandi begged Miss Connie to pick up the phone. After a minute of tearful message—and no answer—Stills pried the phone from Mandi’s cold hands and clicked END.

  He wiped it down with an oil-coated cloth from the back of the SUV. The tears coursing down her cheeks were an indictment on his soul. “Stay here.”

  The weight of the situation slowed his movements. The slam of the door sounded muted, and didn’t click in his brain until he was already headed to the park behind the library. The walk to the pond in the center slowed like a surreal dream where he ran but never moved from one spot. The park was empty—it wasn’t a picnic in the park kind of day—and the swing set on the far end of the park clattered in the wind that whipped the trees into a frenzy. Stills didn’t feel the wind or the cold. He’d been numb for so long he barely felt his feet jogging through the dead grass to the center pond.

  He didn’t mind facing Echo alone. Hell, he looked forward to killing the evil fuckers. That’s what had sent him off half-cocked when he’d heard about Mandi’s accident.