by Cindy Gerard
Huge score. They could not only hide the Expedition inside but enter the house through the garage and not be spotted.
Relieved, he trotted back to the SUV.
“We’re good,” he said, and she handed him the keys.
Five minutes and two more drive-bys later, he cut the Expedition’s lights and pulled up in front of the garage. He hopped out and keyed one of the combinations he’d committed to memory into the lock pad on the driver’s side of the garage door. The door opened quietly, and Talia slipped over to the driver’s seat and pulled inside.
Only after the door was shut behind them did he turn on a light so he could find his way into the house and breathe a long breath of relief.
And only after they were safely inside, with all the blinds pulled down and a single light burning in the small kitchen, did he let the ringing in his ears and the pounding in his head take him down. He’d taken a beating in the bombing, and adrenaline could only power him up for so long.
He needed to call Nate Black, the leader of both the Black Ops Inc. team and the ITAP team, and fill him in. See what resources he could offer. But first, he needed five minutes of being horizontal.
He dropped to the long tan sofa, covered his eyes with a forearm, and let the fatigue and the pain consume him.
Five minutes—to take a breath, to get ahead of the fatigue, to come to terms with everything about this day that had started with a handshake from an old friend and ended up a living hell.
Five minutes. Then he’d figure out how to find his boy.
* * *
Talia stood just inside the door, exhausted, raw, and terrified for Meir. She watched Taggart collapse on the sofa. She knew he hated her, and she couldn’t blame him. And she envied his ability to let go of the horrors of the day and fall immediately asleep.
Envied that he could compartmentalize everything that had happened—including finding out that he had a son—and then lock it away so he could rest.
It wasn’t fair that she also resented him for it, but she did. Meir was out there. Afraid. He’d seen Jonathan brutally murdered. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jonathan, either, although there was nothing she could do for him.
She had to think about Meir. Had they hurt him? Was he even alive? Was he crying for her? Wondering why she hadn’t come for him?
Helplessness and fear for him clutched her chest, tightened her throat until it ached. A fear she hadn’t let herself completely bend to until now. Now, knowing they had him, not knowing if he was alive or suffering, it finally broke her.
Her heart felt as though it had splintered into a million pieces, as horrific images of what they could be doing to her sweet little boy sped through her mind.
A sob welled up in her chest, painful and huge. She fought to hold it in, but it was too strong. Too raw. And she was too weary. In too much pain.
Drowning in utter despair, she covered her mouth to muffle a sound that soon became a keening cry. Her knees folded, and she dropped to the floor, no longer recognizing the sounds pouring out of her, not knowing how to stop them.
Then she felt him there. Taggart.
On his knees beside her. Pulling her into his arms, then holding her as she clung to him and let the anguish consume her.
“I’m his . . . mother,” she cried. “I should have protected him. Now he’s . . . now he’s . . .”
“We’ll get him back,” he whispered against her hair as sobs wracked her body. “We will get him back.”
18
Déjà vu all over again.
Here he was, exactly where he should not fucking be after picking her up, carrying her into the bedroom, and laying her down.
He’d had no intention of staying with her. But she’d clung to him, her body shaking so violently he was afraid she’d come apart if he let her go.
So he stayed. Held her. Remembered another time. Another place. Another moment when she’d cried and he’d kissed her for the first time. When he’d been blissfully unaware that what he felt for her and what he thought she’d felt for him was all a lie.
But the longer he lay there, the softness of her body nestled against him, her bare arms and legs locked around him as though gravity had pulled her in and held her tethered to him, the easier it was to think about forgiveness. And forgiveness made him feel weak. And ashamed that she could so easily bring him to his knees. Again.
Steeling himself against emotions she didn’t deserve, he pried himself away as soon as she fell asleep. Then he left her there, his gut knotted with emotions that ran the gamut from anger to empathy to self-disgust.
He walked through the small house and collapsed back down on the sofa, knowing he was in danger of getting in way too deep with this woman again.
Horizontal lasted all of a minute. Suddenly, he was too tired even to sleep. Restless, he rose stiffly to his feet again and started searching the house. There had to be a phone—a secure phone, and he wasn’t certain that hers was. There also had to be weapons. Clothes. Food.
In the small kitchen, he hit the jackpot. He snagged an energy drink from the fridge and downed half of it while he snooped through the cabinets. Military-issued Meals Ready to Eat, dried fruits, and nuts. All the essentials to refuel and power back up.
He’d tear into one of the prepacked MREs later. Right now, he needed to find that phone. And since he still had another combination of numbers in his memory, he figured there must be a safe tucked away in the house somewhere.
Because he knew how some of the top minds in U.S. covert ops worked, he found it a few minutes later. The planked bamboo floors in the living room were highly polished. He moved the low, wide coffee table off the area rug that lay in front of the sofa, then flipped back the rug to expose the floor. Then he lay down on his stomach, his cheek pressed to the wood, and searched the boards not only by sight but with his fingertips, until he found the slightest gap between the seams.
After that, it was a matter of carefully prying up one section of board at a time, and bam. There was the safe, sandwiched between the floor joists.
He made quick work of the combination lock, whipped it open, and hoo-ah! Inside, along with a satellite phone, were enough weapons and ammo to level the playing field.
* * *
Every member of ITAP knew the number to call when the shit hit the fan and they were out of options. Satellite phone in hand, Taggart closed the bedroom door so he wouldn’t wake Talia, then, to be doubly safe, opened the sliders at the back of the house and stepped out onto a small, secluded deck.
Although the sun had set an hour ago, the desert heat hit him like a tank. The weight of it made it difficult to breathe—as did the smell of burnt gasoline in the air.
In the distance, he heard the muffled sound of traffic, but here, in this residential neighborhood, the night was quiet.
He punched in the number and hit send, then waited for Nate Black to pick up.
Black was smart, tough as gravel, and he had been there, done that, with the scars and nightmares to prove it. There were very few people who could rattle Taggart, but Black was one of them. Black subscribed to General James Mattis’s axiom: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
Like Mattis, Black didn’t have a problem stacking bodies high and deep if he thought it was necessary.
He finally picked up on the third ring. “Black.”
“It’s Taggart.”
“About damn time,” Black said, covering what Bobby knew was concern with a clipped reprimand.
“Sorry. Been a little busy.”
“So it would seem.” Black would have kept himself well apprised of the embassy bombing. “Good thing you called,” he went on. “Since we hadn’t seen your name on a survivor list, the boys were setting up a lottery to see who got your new desk chair.”
A laugh burst out, th
e first honest relief Bobby had felt since he’d come to in that bombed-out building. “You tell my ‘buddies’ to keep their mitts off my chair. I waited six months for that bad boy.”
“Bound to be disappointment all around.”
“I’m sure they’ll recover,” he said, feeling the same affection for his teammates that he knew they felt for him.
“So . . . you okay?” The flat-out concern was back in Black’s voice.
“Yeah. Fit and fine,” he lied, then asked the big question. “Any news on Ted Jensen?” He held his breath and, in the background, heard the familiar squeak of Nate’s desk chair.
“He’s alive.”
The relief he felt could have filled a football stadium.
“In serious but stable condition. Barring any complications, they say he’ll pull through.”
Thank God. “That’s good. That’s very good.”
“What’ve you got going, Bobby?”
“A fucking nightmare, that’s what I’ve got.” Where did he start? “I need help, sir. Assets. Intel. A team on the ground. Infrared cameras. Hell, a drone if you can make it happen. Whatever you’ve got, I need it. Yesterday. Only there’s one catch.”
“Hold on while I get hold of Rhonda. Sounds like she needs to be patched in on this.”
Taggart had a special friendship with Rhonda, the wife of his friend Jamie Cooper. Like Coop, she was also a member of the ITAP team, one of their go-to girls when it came to intelligence gathering and organization. As a field operative, she’d take a pass. But in truth, the blond bomber could hold her own with any of the guys. More important, she could work spooky magic with a keyboard. And the fact that Black was willing to bring her on board immediately told Bobby he’d bring the full weight of both his BOI team and the ITAP team to the table.
He only hoped he’d get the same response when Black knew the whole story.
“Sir. Um . . . hold on before you connect Rhonda.” He stopped, swallowed.
He hadn’t yet fully processed the implications of Meir’s existence in his life; he wasn’t even close to being ready to share it with others. But he was fully invested in his son’s safety. “There’s something I’d like kept between the two of us for the time being, if you don’t mind, sir. The team doesn’t need to know. Not yet.”
“That would be the catch, I take it?”
A smart man, Nate Black. “Yeah. This is . . . this is personal, sir. One hundred percent. DOD would never sanction what I’m about to ask of you.”
The silence on the other end of the line was so thick he figured it was all over but the apologetic refusal. And he respected Nate Black too much to make him say the words. “Look. It’s okay. I know you can’t—”
“Taggart.” Black cut him off. “What did I tell you and Brown and Cooper when you agreed to come on board with me? We have complete autonomy over what we choose to do and not do. Now, tell me what I can do to help you, son.”
19
Fifteen minutes later, Bobby had filled Nate in on the bombing and Talia’s and Meir’s connection to it, as well as their certainty that al-Attar Hamas followers were behind it all. After a quick search of the Expedition, he found Talia’s cell phone and fired off the photos he’d taken of the Golf’s license plate and the four dead men. Rhonda would make short work of pinning them down. He hoped.
When he disconnected, he felt as though the weight of the bombed-out building had been lifted from his shoulders. Nate hadn’t browbeaten him about his involvement with Talia six years ago; he hadn’t heaped on guilt about being so irresponsible that he’d fathered a child. Most of all, Nate had assured Bobby that he’d dump everything—maybe even with DOD’s approval—into a transport plane that would arrive within twenty-four hours with as many team members as he could gather.
“What’s the situation with the boy’s mother?” Nate had asked with straightforward concern after Bobby had explained about Talia and Meir.
“It’s complicated,” Bobby told him, echoing Talia’s words.
“Yeah. That much I’d figured out.”
Ordinarily, Bobby would have smiled.
“Can you work with her?”
“Yes,” he’d said without hesitation. “If she can pull herself together. You can imagine, she’s terrified for the boy.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to find him. I need to find him. Alive. But I need something to go on. Someplace to start looking while I wait for you to get here.”
“I’ll get Rhonda right on it. Stay by the phone,” Nate said, and disconnected.
Feeling his first glimmer of hope, Bobby headed for the bathroom and a shower. They’d sketched out a strategy, and Nate had assured him that they’d go all in on Meir’s rescue.
Energized, he rummaged around in the hall closet and found T-shirts, jeans, dress pants, shoes, underwear—all kinds and sizes.
He also found traditional Omani attire. The dishdasha was a white, ankle-length, collarless, long-sleeved gown. He considered slipping one on; it would feel a helluva lot better on his nicks and bruises than street clothes.
In the end, he grabbed a black T-shirt and jeans. After downing a couple of painkillers and applying some antiseptic salve and a fresh bandage to his head, he felt like a new man.
Almost.
He peeked in on Talia and found her tossing the covers back, about to get up.
“You’re awake.” He’d thought she’d sleep for some time yet.
“How long was I out?” She sat up stiffly, blinking the sleep from her eyes.
“Less than an hour.”
Plenty of time for him to contemplate, again, that this had been the second time he’d taken Talia Levine to bed and held her while she’d cried herself to sleep. Her grief tonight, however, had gone beyond anything he’d ever experienced.
What’s the situation with the boy’s mother?
Bobby still didn’t have a clue. She looked pretty fragile—not a word he’d ever associated with her before.
A vindictive man would say she’d brought this all down on herself. He’d thought he was that man, but it turned out he wasn’t. He didn’t know what he was or what he felt for her, either.
But more important right now was how she felt. Could she come back from a breakdown that brutal? Her heart and her soul both seemed as shredded as her feet.
“You should get cleaned up, take care of your feet before the cuts get infected,” he said, schooling himself, for God’s sake, not to let her affect him again like she had when she’d clung to him, her body trembling and convulsing with anguish. “There’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom medicine cabinet.” He cleared his throat of his suddenly scratchy voice.
“I don’t have time to shower. We have to—”
He held up a hand and cut her off. “What we have to do is regroup and recover. And wait—for now,” he said quickly when she opened her mouth to object. “Then we have to discuss our next moves. I’m already working on a plan, okay?”
She dragged the wild mass of her hair away from her face. “What kind of plan?”
“I found a floor safe with a SAT phone, weapons, ammo.” He looked down at his jeans. “I also found clothes. The kitchen’s stocked with food. More important, I spoke to my team leader in the States. I’ll fill you in later, but for now, just know that they’re using every resource they have available to help find Meir.”
“They? Who are they?”
“The good guys, Talia.” Both Nate’s direct team and the ITAP team were highly covert units. Only a handful of people in the Pentagon were on the need-to-know list, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her. “That’s as much as I can give you.”
She didn’t look convinced. But the soldier slowly surfaced, and she apparently accepted him at his word.
Then she eased unsteadily to her feet.
And d
amn, what a striking, wretched mess she was. Her skirt had ripped all the way to the top of her thigh. Her silk top was filthy and torn. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. She was bandaged and bruised and covered in ash and blood. And yet she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever—
Fuck. Do not go there again.
“Do you need help?” He hoped she could make it on her own, because if she was so physically and mentally beaten that she’d accept his offer of help, he was afraid she wouldn’t rally at all. And she needed to. Just like he needed to keep his damn distance.
“I’m fine.” She wasn’t, but she wanted him to think so, as she took step after careful step toward the bedroom door, her jaw clenched in pain.
That was the best reaction he could have hoped for. She was tough.
Still, he had to stuff his hands into his pockets to keep from picking her up and carrying her into the bathroom to get her off those feet.
* * *
He sorted through the stack of dishdashas and found a small one he thought might work for her. Then he grabbed the smallest pair of boxers he could find and rapped a knuckle on the bathroom door.
“Found something clean for you to wear. I’ll leave it on the floor outside the door.”
It wasn’t long after that she stepped out of the bathroom, scrubbed clean, her long, wet hair falling around her face. Her feet were still bare. Her face hadn’t been spared, either. Here and there, he spotted nicks and bruises that had been hidden beneath the grime.
She looked lost in even the smallest dishdasha. The loose-fitting garment was made of soft white muslin and designed to mitigate the burn of the Omani heat. It made her look tiny, even waiflike, and he felt that catch in his chest that came at the oddest times.
“Eat while we can,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry. Sitting down on a stool at the kitchen counter, he tore into his second energy drink and an MRE—and damn near burned his tongue.