A sob ripped through her as she released him and buried her face into her brother’s chest. Jacob couldn’t face yet another failure and turned from the scene, his emotions threatening to take over. He’d have to mourn Martin later. Tonight, he had lives to save.
He went into overdrive. These men would pay and pay dearly for thinking they could get away with this. Not only did they kill an innocent man, they had Lee.
He stilled as Walsh came running out of the house. “Jacob! Son, they got Kyle, too.”
Jumping to his feet, ignoring the dread plunging through his body, a deadly calm settled in his nerves. He refused to lose more family.
“Where are you going?” Walsh demanded when Jacob marched back up to the house.
“I’m finishing this.”
“What do you need me to do.”
“Stay out of my way.” He reached the door and hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. “This isn’t your fight.”
Walsh’s voice caught his attention. He had his phone to his ear. “TREX. Bravo-Lima-Two-Seven-Four. We have a situation.”
Bravo? Jacob turned and headed toward him. Bravo meant… “You’re a frontline agent?”
“Spec ops, son. Born and bred. Frontline agents begin, and end, with Bravo. I never thought I’d ever have to call in a situation ever again.” Terror flashed in Walsh’s eyes. For a man trained to be on the frontline, he didn’t hide it well. Did he even try? Maybe that was why he’d moved to the Farm. He never wanted to be put in a situation like this again.
Maybe he’d forgotten what it was like to have chaos and fear surround him.
Jacob hadn’t and held out his arm. “We end this tonight.”
Walsh gripped it, forging their alliance.
Whether it ended in the deaths of their enemies or their own, it ended tonight.
Jacob paced and chewed the shit out of his nails as Ron and Rich Neely argued over where to start looking. TREX still hadn’t come up with a tactical approach, so the team took things into their own hands.
They’d all gone to Clint’s penthouse to be in the city and away from the Farm in case the attackers returned. Clint stood leaning against a far wall, out of everyone’s way, but kept a cautious eye on his husband as Evan kept trying to insert himself. This was no place for an untrained associate agent. For what they had to do, they needed a team trained in special operations.
Like TREX Team Two.
Vince Granger, decked out in full gear, including head-to-toe Kevspa, paced by the giant window overlooking the waterfront as daylight slowly blanketed the city. “I don’t see why we can’t just barge in there and take them all out.”
“You don’t see that?” Jacob asked harshly. “Really? Barge in where?”
“I don’t know.” He snarled. “It’s not my job to run planning. I’m more of an ops man.”
“You’re being a pain in the ass.”
“Blow me.” He half-grinned before resuming his pacing.
God, it was good to be back with his team.
“R&R,” Jacob barked. “Got anything?”
“No, sir,” they replied in unison.
Sir? Where’d that come from?
“Son, I hate to have you go back into that dark place you were when you first came to the Farm, but if you don’t, we won’t find them in time.”
Jacob knew that and hated it as well. But for Lee and Kyle, he’d not only return to the hell he once called his life, he’d stay there if it meant bringing them back home safely. They’d been at this for what seemed hours, anxiously awaiting TREX’s tactical plan to call in the cavalry. They were done waiting. If the agency didn’t like it, the team would ask forgiveness. It was easier—and faster—than asking permission.
“He’d take them somewhere with enough privacy to torture them.”
“They could be anywhere,” Granger said with an exasperated sigh. “How do we even know he took them into the city?”
“Because that’s what I’d do,” Jacob snapped. Even at six in the morning cars crowded the streets, people hurrying about their business without regard to what went on around them. When they spotted something out of the ordinary, they quickly turned the other way and ignored it, the fear of getting involved and something happening to them too great for them to do anything about it.
“You’re positive this is Sergio’s work?” Walsh asked him.
“The men who attacked us Sunday worked for Sergio. The attack at the Farm was in retaliation for what I did to them. Sergio thought I was dead. When I took out his men, he realized I wasn’t.” He thinned his lips and stood next to his unit partner. Granger slapped him on the shoulder, letting him know he wasn’t going anywhere until this ended.
“He took the two most important people to me.” He glanced Evan’s way as he reached for Clint. “He’s going to keep coming after us unless we stop him. He’s already taken too many lives.”
For a moment, no one said anything.
“How long will she be out?” Walsh looked at Clint as he nodded at the bedroom where Maria lay resting.
“I gave her enough Valium to keep her out for a while. She’s not going anywhere. When she wakes, I’ll be here.”
“You won’t be able to stop her if she wants to leave,” Jacob pointed out.
Clint rested his dark eyes on him. “Then I guess you’d better do what you need to do and get your ass back here before she wakes up.”
Walsh cleared his throat to break the thick tension. “Burns, tell us where you’d take them if you were Sergio.”
As much as Jacob swore he’d never go back, he forced himself to slip into the frame of mind he’d kept for so long working for Sergio. He’d start by scaring the shit out of his victim. Kidnapping them right out from underneath the noses of the very men protecting them would do the trick.
Then he’d start the torture. He’d keep them somewhere far enough away so no one would hear the screams of agony yet close enough so the sounds of the city would drown them out. He’d need space. Darkness. Privacy.
A ferry blasted its horn in the distance, and Jacob stiffened. He whipped his attention out the large window facing Elliott Bay, focusing on the row of warehouses lining the waterfront. Half were fenced off, prohibiting any curious onlookers from catching a glimpse of what went on inside. The sounds of the viaduct. The traffic on Alaskan Way. The ferries. Even the constant chatter of the tourists walking the waterfront. It all contributed to the perfect storm of noise-covering conditions.
“He’s got them somewhere close to the water. The loud noises from the constant activity will cover any outbursts. The close vicinity to the water gives him an easy dumping ground and will wash away any trace evidence he may leave behind.” But hell, did they have to be right back on the waterfront?
“Why not take them to the mountains?” Granger asked. “Why bring them into the city? Too many vantage points. We hate conditions like this. TREX goes out of its way to avoid any sort of retrieval in the city. We’ll even drive the targets out, force them away from populated areas, just to avoid collateral damage.” He lost all expression as he whipped his attention to Jacob. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean… Shit.”
“No, you’re exactly right.” He didn’t have time to take offense or feel sorry for his damn self. Granger didn’t mean for it to come out as a dig. Jacob didn’t take it that way. “Sergio is counting on that. Guaranteed he’s got men watching every angle in the hopes we’ll drop in unannounced, waiting to pick us off one by one.” Jacob put his hands up on the window, palms flat against the cool glass, as he ran his gaze up and down the dozens of warehouses, trying to feel Lee. He was down there, Kyle too, enduring God only knew what, all because of him. The guilt ate at him and washed across his skin, centering in his soul. He punched the glass.
“If you break that window, being spec ops won’t save you from a fall this high.” Walsh, always the voice of reason, lectured. “We’re all pissed they got the drop on us. Let’s just work on getting our family back.”
“Pretty much what we had when we got here,” Granger offered with a grim frown. “Jack shit.”
It couldn’t end like this. Why couldn’t Jake have a mind like one of the intel agents? Why couldn’t he somehow align the stars and come up with a brilliant plan to save the day?
He didn’t have a mind that worked like that. He worked on instinct, on guts. He sensed danger before it came—tonight being the exception. He was so damn tired from the events of the past twenty-four hours, he’d fallen into a deep, deep sleep.
What he needed was a brain like Lee’s. Someone smart. Someone who thought like an intel agent. Jacob couldn’t, but he knew who could. He personally knew the top intel agent in all of TREX. He just didn’t know how to contact him without going through HQ.
Good thing they had an SAC in their presence. Special Agents in Charge weren’t required to patch through HQ, weren’t required to have the agency listen in on their every word. Jacob faced Walsh. “Get Chris McKoy on the horn.”
Walsh didn’t question the ask as he dialed and put the phone on speaker. “McKoy, it’s—”
“I know who it is. You’d better have good reason to call me at seven in the morning. You woke my son.”
“Chris,” Jacob jumped in. “They have Lee. They have Kyle. I need your help, brother.”
“Shit. Give me a sec to get to my system.” McKoy silenced. After far too long of a pause, the echoes of fingertips flying across a keyboard sounded over the line. “You were supposed to bring me in if shit got real.”
“I’m bringing you in now. Find me a location. I’ll take it from there. I’m thinking somewhere on Seattle’s waterfront.”
“You really think they’d be somewhere so public?”
He had no idea, but they had to start somewhere. “Try checking the warehouses.”
“Checking the heat signatures in all the buildings supposedly vacant.” More clicking. More typing. “Looks like we have two without leases. Checking heat sigs now. Shit. They’re all cold. They’re empty.”
“Damn it.” Jacob shoved his fingers through his hair, his frustration mounting.
“What about ones already leased?” Evan spoke up. When every set of eyes turned to him, he went on. “If I wanted to stay hidden, knowing TREX would pull out all the stops to find me, I’d hide in plain sight. Those warehouses are huge and usually only have one or two nightguards patrolling. It wouldn’t be that hard to sneak past them.”
“That’s billions of square feet to search,” McKoy challenged. “We don’t have that kind of time.”
Evan didn’t back down. “Recently leased, then.”
“Evan, you’re not an agent. You’re just a—”
“Chris,” he cut him off. “Just do it. Please.”
Clearly the cousins had serious issues to work through. With a deep sigh, McKoy typed. “Fine. There are three leased within the past six months. One by a shoe company, another by some company with more consonants than vowels, and the last a holding company by the name of Wentworth Industries.”
“Branson Wentworth?” Clint pushed away from the wall, his attention on the phone in Walsh’s hand.
Branson? Wasn’t that the name of Lee’s business partner? Jacob’s gut tightened. No way was that a coincidence.
More typing came across the line. “B. Wentworth, so yeah. Probably. Sending you what I have now.”
They all turned when a laptop open on the long kitchen counter suddenly glowed to life. The login screen disappeared, and several pages popped up in its place. Clint’s mouth fell open as he hurried over. “How’d you do that?”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy. You said you know this guy?”
Clint nodded as he tapped at the keys, flipping between the screens Chris hacked into and placed on his computer. “He’s some English snob who pretends to fit in when in reality no one likes him. Everything about him is fake, from his blond dye job to the blue contacts, the daVinci Veneer teeth to the surgically altered physique. Even his accent sounds fake. I met him once. He’s a pretentious son of a bitch.”
The hair on Jacob’s neck stood up as he stiffened. “Accent?”
“That’s right. He claims to be English but he rolls his rs. I’ve traveled around the world enough to know the English barely pronounce their rs, let alone roll them.” He kept scrolling through page after page.
Something was off. Who the hell was this guy, and why did he need a warehouse on Seattle’s waterfront? A deep foreboding ate at Jacob’s insides. He knew another accent, one that did roll the rs. He moved next to Clint to stare at the laptop. “What are you looking for?”
“A picture.”
“Ask and ye shall receive.” Chris clicked a few keys. “Coming now. Is that the guy?”
“That’s him,” Clint answered. “That’s Branson Wentworth.”
Jacob’s lungs seized as his heart rate spiked. Branson Wentworth wasn’t how he knew him. “Goddamn it!” He ran to the elevator. “Come on!”
Granger joined him without asking why.
The Neelys, of course, asked. “What did you find?”
“I know where they are.”
“How?”
“Because most may know him as Branson Wentworth, Lee’s business partner.” He grabbed a gun and cocked it. “I know him as Sergio.”
“Sergio?” Chris asked through the line. “Our intel never picked up on that.”
“Trust me, McKoy. It’s him.” Why wouldn’t the damn elevator doors open? He had to get to Lee and Kyle before that psychopath hurt them any more than he already had.
“What do you need from TREX?”
“To look the other way.” He stabbed at the button requesting the elevator cart again. “That man has crossed me for the last time.”
23
Lee blinked awake and lifted his head, immediately wincing at the explosion of pain from the movement. It felt like the drum line from the world’s angriest marching band pounded inside his brain.
He squinted and looked around, wondering where he was and how he got here. The sparse lighting made it hard to see, but he spotted stacks of pallets everywhere inside a building large enough to house, well, stacks of pallets everywhere.
Smooth cement beneath his feet. With a deep breath, he swore he smelled saltwater. When he heard the blast of a ferry horn, he called it. They took him to a warehouse down at the waterfront.
“Where am I?” A tiny voice sounded behind him.
He turned when he realized he wasn’t only tied to his chair. They had tied someone behind him, facing in the opposite direction. “Kyle? Is that you?”
“Leland? Where are we?” His voice came out even, without an ounce of the fear ripping through Lee’s system.
“I’m guessing at one of the piers down on the waterfront. Can you break free?”
“Not hurting you.”
“I don’t care about me. Get yourself free and get to Jacob.”
Kyle shook his head. “Not hurting you.”
“Do it.” He closed his eyes and braced himself for whatever pain coming his way.
“It won’t do you any good.”
Shock numbed Lee as Branson Wentworth walked out from behind a pallet. Only he sounded different. Off. It was his accent. He still had an accent but no longer sounded English. He sounded more like the count from Sesame Street.
“Will hurt him,” Kyle muttered softly.
“If you attempt to escape,” Branson stated in amusement, talking over the young teen. “I’ll kill Lee in front of you. Now tell me, little one, is that what you really want?”
Kyle simply repeated, “Will hurt him.”
“Do you really think you can hurt me tied to a chair?”
He remained silent. Still. Beaten.
Lee set his jaw. He’d be dead before this ended and had nothing to lose.
“Goddamn you, Branson. Leave him alone. He’s just a kid. What kind of monster are you?”
Branson took his time walking over to Kyle. Lee glanced over his shoulder as Branson knelt and hooked his finger under the teen’s chin. “Those who work for me need to learn to toughen up.”
“Not working for you,” he replied evenly. Since their hands were tied together, Lee reached for Kyle’s and squeezed. “You’re a bad man.”
“That really depends on who you ask. If you ask that traitor you so affectionately call your big brother, he’ll tell you I’m not such a bad guy.”
“Bad men lie.”
“Oh, don’t be so quick to make up your mind.” Branson walked over to Lee’s side and knelt to be eye level. He shook his head. “You really don’t deserve to be where you are, you know that?”
Deserve what? To be tied to a chair? Wondering if he’d ever see Jacob again? “I’ll switch you places.”
He laughed and straightened, backing away until he leaned against a large pallet. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this day?”
Lee closed his eyes against the reality. This man used to be his lover, his friend. How could he be the bad guy? He opened his eyes and rested a burning glare on Branson.
“Take a look, Lee. You may recognize what’s on these pallets.”
He flipped open a knife, and Lee jerked at the sound. The blade caught the sparse light and gave it an ominous flash. Oh dear God. What did he plan to do with that?
Branson sliced a hole through the plastic wrapping and reached inside, pulling out a shrink-wrapped flash drive. “Do you know what this is?”
He refused to give Branson what he wanted and wouldn’t so much as look at him.
“I see. Silent at last, eh? Well, I am not. I’m just glad I no longer need to talk with that annoying British drawl. Questo è il vero me, Lee. ¿Ti piace? This is the real me. Do you like it?”
“Since everything else about you is fake, what’s one more thing?” He had no idea where he came up with retorts, considering he couldn’t even think straight from the fear racing through his body.
Jacob Page 21