“So what do you know about those two military guys that Jacey named?” Marina finally asked. “Algodones and Paulsen, right?”
Bones sighed. “They certainly had ties to some unsavory businessmen throughout Asia.”
“The kind of businessmen that deal in human cargo?” Marina asked softly. “Are these the names you’ve been looking for?”
“Those two don’t have diplomatic immunity. I would say we’re looking at the next layer up the chain.” Bones considered that for a moment.
Beside him, Marina downshifted and got on the highway. “So these bad boys made some friends while they were overseas, and now they’re all working together. Like this diplomatic guy has the hookup or something.”
“More like he can’t be prosecuted so they just use him for a figurehead,” Bones mused.
“Uh, Bones?”
Marina’s tone told him something was very wrong. He looked over at her and realized that she was staring into the rearview mirror and biting her lip as though she were seeing something she didn’t like at all.
“We’ve got company. Two black SUVs closing in really fast.” Marina downshifted the sporty little car once again and began swiftly moving in and out of traffic.
The highway wasn’t particularly busy this time of day, but the evening traffic was just beginning to mass and it was certainly no time to be in a high stakes chase with people who were probably following the orders of someone they considered very much “in charge”.
“Where should we go?” she asked in a voice laden with tension.
Bones sifted through possibilities in his head. “Just keep going south. Let’s see if we can lose them if we get off the highway downtown.”
“Downtown?” There was an awful lot of doubt in her voice.
Bones wished it were Romero or Sparks behind the wheel. But Marina was smart and quick. She could do this. He knew it. “We’re a lot smaller and a lot more maneuverable.”
“Oh. Okay. Got it.”
Marina stomped on the gas, and the little car really picked up speed. The short wheelbase combined with the high-performance four-cylinder engine and the manual transmission gave her a distinct advantage over the massive SUVs behind them.
“Coming up on the right,” Bones told her.
She dropped the shifter, and the engine whined as the car slowed down. “Got it.”
Marina deftly positioned them between two other vehicles. The move caused the SUV to slam on its brakes. The chain reaction made the traffic around them explode into a cacophony of blaring horns and squealing tires.
Waiting until the SUV was focused on trying to get out of its companion’s way, Marina shot forward so that the tiny car left the SUVs far behind for a short while.
“I can’t keep doing that,” Marina panted. “They’ll figure it out pretty quickly.”
Bones knew she was right. “Take the next exit.”
Marina swerved off the road and flew down the ramp at twice the recommended speed. “There’s a red light!”
“Just keep going.”
“Right or left?”
“Left!”
Marina started cursing in Spanish as she braked hard and violently turned the wheel to make the left hand turn.
Traffic scattered as the little car barreled through the middle of the intersection. Marina headed for the shoulder before briefly winding up on the wrong side of the road. Cars honked and swerved out of the way before the median ended and she could swerve back to the right side.
Bones turned around in his seat, craning his neck to see the SUVs. One made it through the intersection. The shriek of metal told Bones that the driver had bullied his way right through the waiting cars. His companion wasn’t so lucky.
The second SUV launched into the left hand turn at far too fast a rate of speed. The big vehicle went up on two wheels. For the span of a few moments it looked like the driver might pull off the maneuver. Then the weight of the top-heavy SUV took it all the way over. The rolling SUV completely blasted through the cars waiting on the other side of the road. The last Bones saw of the second SUV was the bobbing wheels as it rocked back and forth on the roof.
Chapter Eleven
Marina’s heart was pounding so hard that she could barely catch a breath. She wasn’t qualified to be driving in a high speed chase with people that were likely to be ex-military! She wasn’t even that good a driver!
Her hands were sweaty on the wheel as she followed the directions that Bones continued to deliver in his low voice. That tone was the only thing that kept her from panicking. He sounded so damn confident. Right. Left. Turn coming up. Now stop here and back into this alley. He made it all sound so normal!
Building facades whipped by and other cars honked and swerved as they sped through downtown on some twisted path only known to Bones. She just tried to follow directions and hoped that she didn’t accidentally make a fatal screw-up.
Finally he gestured to a parking garage deep in the city. It had been nearly five minutes since she had caught a glimpse of the SUV in her rearview mirror. Marina pulled the car into the building’s squat lower level and drove deep into the gloom of flickering overhead lights and faint daylight that filtered through the sparse windows.
“Okay. Let’s park,” Bones suggested. “We can wait just a little while and see what happens.”
Marina did as he asked without a word. She was shaking. There was so much adrenaline in her body that she was certain she was about to explode. That combined with the fact that they were deep underground was making her feel the first vestiges of a full panic attack.
“Are we trapped here?” she asked, hoping that her voice didn’t sound as crazy as she felt.
Bones was staring at her. She could feel the weight of his gaze. It might have been the only thing keeping her from getting out of the car and bolting toward daylight. It was so heavy in here. She could actually feel layer upon layer of concrete and glass above her. The whole thing could come down, and she would be buried alive. It would be all over.
The odor of dingy harbor water began to saturate her senses. They weren’t near enough the water for her to smell it, but that didn’t matter. She’d long ago realized that her sense of smell went completely crazy when she began to panic. The dank fish smell shifted and she caught a whiff of human refuse and death. She was shaking, and the whole car was shaking with her.
BONES DID NOT have to be well-versed in PTSD symptomology to see that Marina was about to have a full blown flashback. In the dim glow of the dash lights he could see the sheen of a cold sweat on her skin. She appeared pale and clammy. Her hands were clenched on the steering wheel, and her gaze was focused on something very far away.
“Marina,” he said softly. “Marina, we’re going to be all right. It’s safe here. The building is stable. There is no danger.”
“It’s so close in here,” she whispered hoarsely. “I can’t breathe.”
“Tell me what you feel.” He struggled with the need to ground her and the need to comfort her all at the same time. This was not the time to let his emotions cloud his practicality. “You’re holding the steering wheel. Tell me what it feels like.”
“Hard.” The word came fast. “There are bumps underneath, and I can feel where my fingers usually sit.”
“Good,” he encouraged. “What else?”
She shuddered and sucked in a ragged breath. “The grooves are deeper in those places and the leather is worn thin. The cover is smooth, but there’s stitching around the edges of the steering wheel, and that makes it feel like there are sharp spots that sort of cut into my hand.”
“What about the seat?” he encouraged. “What does it feel like?”
“It’s squishy. The fabric is soft and worn. I can feel it against my legs. I think there’s a butt print because I’ve had this car so long. My feet are flat on the floorboard. It feels firm. Kind of secure, you know?”
There. She was calming down. She was being more conversational. That was a good si
gn. He ventured further. “What do you hear?”
“Your voice,” she responded immediately. “It’s low and nice to listen to. You sound very certain.”
“What else?” He didn’t want to talk about his certainty or lack thereof.
She cocked her head. “There’s a humming noise. It’s not the engine. I turned the car off. It sounds like the lights or something, maybe more like a buzz than a hum.”
“Okay. What do you smell?” He well knew that this was a loaded question. She could very well only be capable of smelling something from her flashback, but he needed her to separate reality from the nightmare.
Marina’s moan raised the hair on the back of his neck. “Fish. No, wait. That’s not right. I smell the air freshener, the one that’s clipped to my vent. Cinnamon and apple. Although I’ve always thought it smells like pie.”
“What kind of pie?” Bones felt a grin stretch across his lips. “I like pie.”
“My mom makes apple pies. They taste so good, and she uses so much cinnamon that you can practically taste them with your nose when they’re baking.”
“Good,” Bones chuckled. “I’m going to have to get me a piece of that pie you’re describing.”
MARINA FELT DRAINED. The tension had left her body and the panic was well under control, but she felt as though someone had loaded her up with sedatives. Her eyelids were heavy, and she could barely hold up her head. Resting her forehead on the steering wheel, she exhaled a long, slow breath.
“Better?” he asked quietly.
She reached across the center console and groped for his hand. Without even considering how forward she was being, she twined her fingers with his. “Now I am.”
He gave her hand a little squeeze, but said nothing more. There was a long pause of silence in the car, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. She could hear her breathing and feel her heartbeat slowing down. Then, when she had calmed a little more, she could hear his breathing. It was slow and methodical. One might have been able to believe that he only required a few breaths every few minutes.
She shivered a little. In the aftermath of her panic attacks she always felt cold. In direct contrast she could feel the blazing heat waves sizzling off Bones’s big frame. It was very tempting to curl up in his lap and just go to sleep. Then she might actually be able to sleep. Like last night, she would be able to forget everything that tortured her mind and just rest.
They had come into this tomb for a reason. Marina struggled to recall everything up to this point. “Do you think they’ve stopped chasing us?”
“I think the last SUV lost track of us. I don’t think it’s over,” he qualified.
“So do you believe they’ll be on us as soon as we try to leave?”
“No.” He seemed to be really thinking this through. The expression on his face was intense. “I think they’ve given up for the moment, but I do think they’re on to what we’re doing.”
“And what are we doing?”
“We’re connecting the dots between Algodones, Paulsen, Whiteside, and whatever diplomat they’re using for cover. We have information from the harbormaster’s office that we need to research. They obviously don’t like us talking with Whiteside’s wife. So they certainly won’t appreciate us trying to find the registered owner of the shipping containers.”
“Who are they?” Marina whispered. “We keep talking about ‘they’ and ‘them’, but we don’t know who is actually following us or making threats. How do we stop them if we don’t know who they are?”
“I don’t think their identities are important,” Bones mused. “I’m starting to believe that all of these underlings are nothing but layer upon layer of defense. It’s like the people in charge have been throwing cannon fodder at us and hoping we get too distracted with the little people to take a look up the chain of command.”
“You mean like Whiteside?” Marina wondered out loud. “His only purpose was to provide the name of Algodones and Paulsen. Once that is done he doesn’t matter anymore, and neither does his family.”
“Exactly.”
BONES HAD TO admire how her brain worked. Even when she was still so close to her moment of losing it, she could make clear associations and observations about her surroundings and her situation.
“You’re an incredible woman, Marina,” Bones murmured. “I hope you realize that.”
“What?” She screwed up her face in a frown. “Are you kidding me? Look at me! I totally freaked out when we came in here. I’m still sitting here wondering if I’m ever going to get out of this place alive. Every instinct in my body is telling me to open the door, get out, and spring for the exit.”
“But you’re not.”
Her words stopped her cold. “Well, no. That wouldn’t be a good idea right now. I don’t know if I’d be running out there and possibly bolting right past that SUV. I don’t know if they know what I look like. They have my license plate number, which means they could potentially pull up a driver’s license picture, so I guess it’s safe to say they most likely know what I look like. I don’t know why they’re chasing me, though, and that’s kind of a big deal.”
“So everything you just said,” Bones drawled. “Does any of that sound crazy? Is it ridiculous? Is it wrong?”
She paused. In fact her brain basically cranked to a complete halt right then and there. “Uh. No?”
“Exactly.” He gave a slow nod, and then a smile stretched across his features. She got distracted by how soft and welcoming his lips appeared. Then he continued, and she had to pay attention. “Everything you just described was a very lucid and realistic list of concerns about your current situation. There was no clutter of past injustices, events, or problems. It was all right here in the moment.”
“I smelled fish,” she said flatly. “There are no fish in here.”
“You said it,” he agreed. “Then you corrected yourself because why?”
“Because there are no fish in here, and my mind was just playing tricks on me because I was scared.” She felt dull and disappointed in herself.
“Marina.” Bones reached over and put his finger beneath her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “That’s reality. That’s lucidity. You just made an in-the-moment observation about an element of your flashback. You identified it as false and then discarded it with decisive purpose. That’s huge!”
“Really?” She was starting to feel as though she might be less crazy than she’d thought.
“The first part of getting control of PTSD is being able to recognize when the symptoms are manifesting and messing with your mind.”
“I thought I was supposed to try and suppress it and just get over things,” she whispered. “I try, but it just seems to make things blow up worse.”
“No. Never pretend it’s not there. PTSD never goes away, Marina. It just becomes manageable. Getting better doesn’t mean it’s just gone. It’s psychologically impossible, and”—he touched her cheek—“that would sort of be taking away everything that your experience taught you about survival and strength. Don’t you think?”
Chapter Twelve
Marina was speechless with the power and veracity of her emotions in that moment. Bones understood her as no one else in her life ever had. For the first time she had hope that somehow she was going to get out of this situation. It was going to end. They were going to discover the person behind all of these abductions, and they were going to bring down a human trafficking ring and save thousands of lives. Of course, they just had to get out of this damn parking garage without getting killed first.
“This is insane,” she whispered. Somehow, saying it all out loud in her head made it seem an impossible task.
“No.” He gave one shake of his clean-shaven head. “Not impossible. We’re already so much further than we were last week, and eons ahead of where we were when Romero first began.”
“That’s the man who was sent to investigate your commanding offer’s missing sister first, right?” Sometimes Marina had trouble keeping
them all straight. “Do you think it’s good that there are now so many people poking around?” Marina bit her lip, wondering. “When I first started looking into my own case after Baltimore PD refused to take it seriously, I felt like I was better off on my own. No red tape.”
His low chuckle sent a shiver down her spine. “Oh, believe me, sweetheart. We don’t worry about red tape.” He glanced at his watch. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”
“You think we can drive out of here?” She felt kind of panicky. “What if they’re waiting right outside?”
“Then they would have already come in looking.” He moved his big body around, appearing to take in as much of the surroundings around her little car as he possibly could. “And there’s an exit sign over there. So that means there’s a second way out of this place. Let’s exit onto a different street and just try heading back to my place.”
“Your place?” She swung around and stared in surprise. “What about my loft?”
“If they are following us, I don’t want to chance leading them back to your loft. That’s your sanctuary. So for a little bit we’re going to move operations to my place.”
“Which is where?” She was genuinely curious about that. What sort of place did this incredibly intelligent and yet strangely secretive man choose to call home?
Marina started the car and eased it into gear. Carefully heading toward the exit, she held her breath and tried to decide what was worse. Was it the feeling of being in an underground tomb that was about to swallow her whole, or the fear of being discovered and murdered in her car?
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