Stolen

by Allison Brennan

  Suzanne continued, “Because we can do that for you. But it will take time, and Skye may get out of the country. We have two other people in danger.”

  “I thought they shot Sean, too. You’re going to get her, right?”

  “If you cooperate, we’ll do everything to find and stop the woman who shot your boyfriend.”

  Carol nodded and glanced at Noah, skittish.

  “Agent Armstrong,” Suzanne said, motioning with her eyes for him to sit.

  He took a deep breath. Suzanne was right. He was wound too tight. “Carol, would you please explain what happened tonight?”

  She bit her lip, but it was obvious she wanted to tell someone. It helped that she was emotionally wrung out.

  “After Hunter was killed, Colton moved up the plan by twenty-four hours. He was worried that someone in PBM had found out and had Hunter killed. Hunter had the security plans, so Colton changed the time, day, and even how they entered the facility.”

  “Who was responsible for what?”

  “Skye and Evan were supposed to go to the research director’s office and copy a specific file that was on hard copy only. Colton and Sean learned they were experimenting in bio-weapons and he wanted proof. Originally, all he wanted was proof that they had killed his brother—his brother, Travis, was in leukemia trials, and he died suddenly after using an experimental drug. The company swore the drug had nothing to do with it, but Colton didn’t believe them, and thought they knew that the drug had an adverse effect. But when he hacked in and found information on a bio-weapon, he said there was a bigger cause to fight for.”

  “Where did Sean Rogan fit?”

  “He’s Colton’s best friend. I mean, I don’t know why, Sean just left years ago and that hurt C. But when Sean moved to New York, Colton was so happy.”

  “What did Sean do for the team?”

  “I didn’t believe he was as smart as Colton made him out to be, but he is. They needed him to hack the external security feeds. He came up with this brilliant plan to loop the security cameras, you know, like they did in the movie Speed about the bus—”

  “We’re familiar with the movie,” Noah cut her off.

  “Oh. Yeah. Well, I thought that was just something that they did in the movies, but Sean not only knew how to do it, but said he could cover their tracks and no one would know they were there. And they needed him to crack the electronic safe. Colton is good with computers, but the safe is above him. Sean is an expert safecracker.”

  Great, Noah thought. One more list of crimes in Sean’s portfolio.

  “And did they get what they wanted? The guards said no one breached security.”

  “They got in, got everything, and got out. Sean was really angry with Evan. He asked several times what was in the backpack, why he was in the research lab when he was only supposed to go to the director’s office. They were fighting wh-wh-when Skye shot C.”

  “Do you know what was in the backpack? Did Colton tell Evan to take something?”

  “No. Colton just wanted proof that they were working with bio-weapons. He thought that more people would care about that than a long-ago drug trial that killed his brother. Colton just wanted to expose them for the corrupt pharmaceutical bastards that they are.”

  “What did Colton want in the safe?”

  “I—I don’t know if I should say.” She looked down at her hands, her forehead crinkled in doubt.

  Noah leaned forward. “Senator Jonathan Paxton is being arrested as we speak. So it would help us if you know what they took so we can find it.”

  Her almond-shaped eyes widened. “You know about him?”

  “We know he hired Colton to break into PBM and take something from the safe. What?”

  “He wanted a file that was in there, plus if there was a tape. From what I heard, Sean kept the files and Colton took the tape.”

  That meant everything was in the evidence room.

  “Did you hear anything else after Colton was shot?”

  “I started crying and they shut down communications. The last thing I heard was Skye telling Sean that she was in charge.”

  “Do you know this man?” Noah slid a photo of Kurt LeGrand in front of her.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Does the name Kurt LeGrand mean anything to you?”

  She stopped fidgeting. “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Skye’s fiancé is named Kurt. I don’t know his last name, but she talked about him once.”

  “So she wasn’t involved with Evan.”

  “They had a thing, but it was over. They both lived in the carriage house. Separate bedrooms.” Tears started running down her face again. “Why would they try to kill Colton? After everything he did for them? Let them live in the house for free? Gave them jobs, legitimate jobs, he didn’t have time for? Why would they do that to someone who loved them like he did?”

  * * *

  When the computer beeped, Lucy jerked awake, a sharp pain in her neck. She rubbed the pinched nerve and groaned. She’d fallen asleep at Sean’s desk and would be paying for it all day.

  It was a message from Rick:

  Your information is solid. We’re working on it.

  She let out a long, heavy breath and stretched. There was nothing else she could do now but wait.

  Lucy hated being stuck here, hated not being in the middle of the investigation. She needed to know what was going on, but she didn’t want to stop Noah or Suzanne or Rick from doing everything in their power to find Duke. She didn’t want to become one of their problems. She just wished that Sean would have called her and let her know he was okay. Just one word. But Noah would have told her if something was wrong.

  She frowned. Maybe not. They hadn’t told her about Duke. What if Sean was in trouble and they didn’t want her to know? Did they not trust her with the information? Did they think she would do something stupid?

  She stood and stretched. It was four in the morning. She’d slept for an hour at Sean’s desk, but there was no going back to sleep now.

  She went downstairs to make a fresh pot of coffee. The alarm panel was beeping on the front door. Had she set it right? Yes—she’d been here enough to know how Sean’s security worked. Hyper-alert, she tiptoed to the front door, not turning on any lights. She looked through the security hole. Two men in ski masks stood there, both focused on the lock.

  She pressed the panic button on the alarm as they popped the first lock and was about to run out the back when she saw two more men at the back door.

  Heart racing, she ran up the stairs to Sean’s office. She opened Sean’s bottom desk drawer, but his gun wasn’t there. She ran to the bedroom and shut the door. No locks. She pushed a chair against the knob and grabbed her cell phone. There was no signal. Could they have jammed it? What about the alarm? Could they have jammed that, too?

  There was a fail-safe in the alarm system; if the power was cut, the police were notified. If the system went down, the police were notified. The panic button was on a dedicated phone line.

  She heard people walking downstairs. Someone was on the staircase.

  She searched Sean’s room for another gun. His favorite Beretta was missing from under his bed, but she found a fully loaded 9mm in his closet.

  She tried to calm down, but the fear of being kidnapped by four men was real. She would die before she let them touch her. She couldn’t live through another rape. A scream caught in her throat as she stared at the door, frozen, her hands shaking.

  They don’t want to rape you; they want to take you to leverage Sean. Like Duke. That’s why they took Duke. Oh, God, did that mean he was dead? Did that mean they had Sean?

  The men were outside the door. She held the gun out, ready to shoot. The police would be here soon. She just had to hold off the men for five minutes. Ten at most.

  What if they were all armed? She couldn’t kill four of them while being so exposed. Think, dammit!

  Bathroom. There was a lock on the door.


  She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door, barely having time to lock it before they burst into the bedroom. The door wouldn’t hold against their strength. She stood in the corner, between the toilet and the shower, gun aimed at the door.

  “She’s in here!” one of them called.

  It took them two tries to break the door open. She aimed and fired. Two bullets at the first masked man. Two at the second. The first attacker screamed and went down, but the second had enough time to back out of the doorway. She was on autopilot, focusing on movement and sound. It was her or them. She did not want to die.

  The second man stepped in again and she fired at him at the same time he shot her in the shoulder.

  The pain was immediate, a burning pain, and she slid against the tile. A yellow plastic feather stuck out of her chest, blood dripping down her white tank top. She tried to shoot the bastard again, but she had no control over her limbs. He easily disarmed her.

  No, no, no.

  “Bitch shot me!” The man with the tranq gun backhanded her.

  There was more commotion and Lucy was fading. “Don’t kill her!” another man said while the fourth shouted, “Out the back, now! Cops have been dispatched. I thought you took care of it.”

  “No,” Lucy muttered.

  “The bastard has multiple layers of security.”

  “You can’t leave me!” the first man she shot cried out as another man picked her up. Her mind willed her body to fight, but she couldn’t even open her eyes, let alone move her arms.

  “You’re right,” someone said. She heard three gunshots, then nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sean woke up shivering.

  His eyelids felt like they’d been glued shut, and when he attempted to move, bile rose in the back of his throat. He swallowed and grunted as waves of pain coursed through his body. As his stomach settled, he moved his hands. They were handcuffed. That’s when he realized he wore two pairs of bracelets, one for each wrist, and his arms were splayed wide. He was slumped over and tried to straighten himself. The movement brought more pain.

  “Sean.”

  He heard a voice far in the distance. It sounded like his brother. Great, just what he needed, the Good Angel Duke sitting on his shoulder telling him he’d been an idiot.

  Wherever he was, he was freezing. It smelled like hay. Moldy hay. A barn? Maybe—there may have been animals here once, but no longer. It was drafty enough to be a barn. No insulation. It was still dark—at least he thought it was. He squinted his eyes open enough to know there was no light in here.

  “Sean, wake up.”

  I know; I know.

  He had to get his bearings or he wouldn’t be able to escape. He didn’t care how they’d cuffed him, he would find a way out. If his head didn’t pound like the world’s worst hangover, he might actually be able to think.

  “Sean! It’s Duke. Wake up.”

  “I’m awake,” Sean mumbled. His mouth was swollen and dry.

  Duke is here?

  Sean opened his eyes, and while they still felt heavy, he looked around and realized the light was changing. It was dark, no lights, but windows on the far side of the barn faced east and the sun was beginning to come out. What did that make it? Five thirty, six in the morning?

  “You’ve been out for hours.”

  “They shot me with a damn tranquilizer.” He coughed to clear his scratchy throat. A gallon or two of water would go down real good about now.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  Duke rarely swore, but when he did it was usually because Sean had screwed up. There was more than simple anger in Duke’s tone; an underlying hostility had Sean on edge.

  “I don’t know.” His head pounded and he tried to get his thoughts together. He took a couple deep breaths and moved his limbs. Nothing was broken, but his shoulder was sore from the Taser and his knee was banged up. They probably had dragged him over rocks.

  “You don’t fucking know?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  A testament to his being disorientated—he just realized his brother Duke should be in California.

  “I took the red-eye Tuesday night, first flight I could get after talking to that FBI agent, Deanna Brighton. She’s now dead, in your apartment. The two assholes who grabbed me shot her.”

  He absorbed everything Duke said and immediately understood the implications.

  “Brighton was at my apartment?”

  “Focus, Sean. Are you sure you’re okay?” The first hint of worry in Duke’s voice.

  “I’ll be fine. Why was she there?”

  “I have no idea, but they were expecting her.”

  “Someone sent her there? The mole?”

  “Mole? What mole?”

  “The FBI mole.” But that didn’t make any sense. No one knew where Sean lived, unless they’d followed him. Or maybe someone had put a tracker on him. Who? And why would the mole have Brighton killed? Unless Brighton was the mole and Paxton—but why would Paxton kill her? And, ultimately, attempt to frame Sean?

  And if they planned on framing Sean for her murder, then that meant they would kill Duke because he was a witness. So why keep him alive?

  Thinking wasn’t doing Sean’s headache any good. He took several deep breaths as a wave of nausea washed over him.

  “What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  Good question. He had no idea. Colton was dead; Skye and Evan had kidnapped him. If Noah made it to PBM it had been too late.

  “Why are you in New York?”

  “I just told you—”

  “Give me a sec; my head feels like mush.”

  Duke didn’t say anything for several minutes and Sean took the opportunity to shift and adjust, roll his neck, feel out his body for serious damage. And think.

  Duke came to New York because he thought Sean was in trouble with the FBI.

  Sean finally said, “It’s a long story, but trust me when I tell you I’m not in trouble with the FBI.”

  “I find that hard to believe, considering.”

  “There’s a lot more to this than you know.” How could he explain it?

  “You always think you know best. Action before thought. Do you know how many times I’ve had to bail you out because you didn’t think things through?”

  This time, there was nothing further from the truth than that statement. Sean had done nothing but think about what he was doing, from the minute Rick Stockton and Noah came to him with their plan.

  “I don’t want to talk about this here—I don’t know who’s listening—but you have to trust me!”

  “Trust?”

  As the sun rose higher, Sean could see his brother more clearly. He was handcuffed to two steel rings on the floor. Sean had no idea what they were used for. Sean himself was handcuffed to a horizontal pole. Maybe something that they wrapped horse reins around or a saddle or something. Sean had never been a horse or farm kind of guy.

  Duke was staring at him, disappointment and anger the dominant emotions.

  “Duke—”

  “I’ll never be able to trust you again.”

  Sean realized that Duke had never thought he had changed, had never believed he would stay on the right side of the law. Worse, Duke believed Sean was responsible for all this—and that hurt. It hurt as much as when he had walked away from RCK and led Duke to believe he was working for Colton again and Duke had said he expected it.

  Sean needed to explain to his brother what was going on. The way Duke must think of him—once he knew the truth, he would understand.

  Sean didn’t see or hear anyone but he kept his voice low.

  “We need to figure out their endgame. I need to give you the abridged version of events, because I don’t know how much time we have.”

  Duke stared at him. “You’ve never taken a job without knowing the endgame. Did you trust Colton Thayer so much that you didn’t find out what he was doing?”

  “This isn�
�t about Colton.”

  “Maybe it’s always been about you, always trying to prove to the world, to prove to me, that you’re smarter than everyone else.”

  “It’s never been about that.”

  “Bullshit.” Duke glared at him. Disappointment clouded his eyes. “You’re just like Liam.”

  Sean hadn’t been expecting the comparison to their other brother. Duke hadn’t spoken to Liam in years because of major business disagreements. “I’m nothing like Liam.”

  “You’re exactly like him. I just didn’t see it, because I felt responsible for you. He and Eden created their own business, they played by their own rules, and I understand them. Liam is in it for the challenge and the money, and he’s going to be caught one of these days—I thought you’d grown out of it.”

  “Please listen—”

  “I’ve always listened to you! I always defended you and stood by you because I blamed myself.”

  “Blamed yourself for what?”

  “Your crimes.”

  “I’m not a criminal.”

  Duke laughed. Really laughed.

  “That stunt at Stanford—”

  “That wasn’t a crime—”

  “Really? You would have gone to prison if I hadn’t stepped in.”

  “I’d never have been convicted. But I was seventeen. I thought what I was doing was right because too often the cops are tied with rules and red tape and that bastard was going to continue to hurt little kids.”

  “You can tell yourself that.”

  Sean hated that his brother thought so low of him, but now wasn’t the time to fight about it. He buried the pain, because pain and regret were going to keep him from focusing on getting out of here. Instead he focused on his anger.

  He said through clenched teeth, “I’m working with FBI Assistant Director Rick Stockton. Ask him when we get out of this mess.”

  Duke didn’t say anything for a long minute. “If that’s true, why didn’t you tell me?”

  If that’s true? That Duke even thought Sean was lying angered him more. “Rick wanted this operation to be completely undercover. Only Rick, me, and Noah Armstrong know the truth. Lucy didn’t even know until yesterday.” Get to the point, Sean told himself. No apologies. There would be time enough for explanation later.