by Amy McKinley
Kneeling, she took care not to brush up against the trees. They looked harmless in the dense night with the light of the moon as her only guide, but they weren’t. There was a tree in the jungle teeming with bacteria-covered spines. One brush against its spiky needles, and it would be over for her. Infection would set in almost immediately, sped up by the hot and humid climate, then run rampant through her bloodstream.
Her hand came into contact with a hard object, and she almost fell over. She withdrew it from the bag, unscrewed the canteen’s top, and took a long swallow before recapping it and stowing it. She stood and slung the strap over her shoulder. From her memory of the coordinates the pilot had given and the compass she’d taken, she angled her hike to the approximate place Chris should be.
A few hours passed, and light trickled through the canopy above her that acted as an incubator. The sun climbed in the sky, and she kept going.
With a glance at the compass, she pressed on. She put the team behind her with her goal clear in her head. The jungle was full of the cadence of monkey calls, chirping birds, and the buzz of insects. The ground still felt slick beneath her boots from the rain that had fallen not too long before.
A twig broke, and she stopped. The birds fell silent. She strained to hear if it was an animal or human that crashed through the jungle. Footfalls echoed, and she turned to see who was after her with her gun aimed in the direction of the noise.
Not after me.
Someone else.
A woman sprinted along with wide eyes, her mouth parted and fear etched across her features. One of the guerillas chased her. The woman slipped, going down on one knee. But she popped back up, and her feet pounded the slick ground once more.
Hannah narrowed her eyes. She could let him catch her, and no one would know she was even there. He would have overtaken her in a matter of seconds. Or not. She shifted her angle and shot him.
A small yelp sounded from the man’s prey as she darted behind a tree. “Come out,” Hannah commanded.
This could work. The woman was exotic with a will to live that exuded from her perspiring and shaking form. And she needed help, something the ex-Navy SEALs excelled at. It was exactly the type of situation she needed to distract Chris. She would make her checkpoint the next day—just without Chris.
Chapter 10
Russia
Hannah—10 years old
I wanted to cover my ears to block the yelling. I didn’t. My sister, Elsa, and I sat on the living room floor in front of the coffee table, working on the puzzles Dad gave us. They weren’t typical games. They were blocks of mixed shapes that we had to construct into a tower, balancing each piece against another until they formed the figure we were told to make. If the right pieces weren’t fitted together, the entire effort would crash down. It wasn’t very hard. I squinted to the side to see how Elsa was doing.
The room was bright with the curtains open and the sun streaming in. Maybe they should have been closed. The view of the austere stone cathedral framed in the window seemed to distract Elsa.
I caught her glancing at it again. “Finish. If you don’t, Mom won’t be the only one he yells at.”
The sound of our parents screaming at one another carried through the walls of our home. Elsa and I remained as quiet as possible as we worked on aligning the blocks.
“It’s time they go.” Our dad’s booming voice carried through the paper-thin walls.
“They are our children, Ivan,” Mom countered for the hundredth time. The argument wasn’t new. “Not only that, but they’re Olympic hopefuls. You know they’re better off with me guiding them in their pursuit of the gold. I’ve been there before and know how to help them.”
“Yes, I do understand all that. And if they weren’t gifted in other areas as well, Arina, I would agree. But you know as well as I do that they’re special. Hannah’s performance was less than perfect at the conference meet. She is better than that. The school will nurture her abilities and mold both our girls into the best versions of themselves.”
“I will not give up my babies. Not even for our country.”
The sound of our mom’s weeping grew in volume, and we bent our heads and focused on fitting together the odd-shaped blocks. It took only a few seconds before I was done.
“How do you do that?” Elsa whispered. “I hate doing these. They don’t make sense.”
With my index finger touching my lips, I warned her to be quiet. I shifted so I was closer, our arms and legs almost touching as we sat side by side. With a glance under my eyelashes to the closed door that shielded us from our parents, I pointed to the one she should pick up next then gave a slight shake of my head when she went to put it on wrong. She flipped the rectangle and held it in place. I pointed to the next. When she had that one in position, she let go. She sent me a quick smile. The blocks stayed in position.
The puzzles were easy for me. I liked to imagine how the pieces fit, and if I saw something once—anything, really—I remembered it exactly, like a picture I could easily pull up in my mind when I needed to.
Our dad said it was important we worked with the puzzles he gave us several times a week. They started out as simple towers then became more complicated designs that he wanted us to master. We asked why once and got an answer that didn’t make sense. Something about cognitive reasoning and spatial awareness, whatever that meant. He said it would help with gymnastics. I didn’t see how.
A block tumbled from Elsa’s puzzle, and we both held still. Silence stretched. The door opened, and Dad’s gaze fell to the table. “Almost done?”
Elsa nodded.
He moved through the family room. After he stopped by the stereo, the soft strains of Mozart took up the awkward space. Then he pulled over a bin full of Legos. When he straightened, he pointed out the window at the old cathedral. “When you’re both finished, duplicate that.”
Challenge accepted. I stole a quick glance at Elsa and saw her face fall. She didn’t like the games.
Our dad went back into the room where Mom was and shut the door. The yelling went up a notch, and a shiver coursed through me. I hated it when they fought. It wasn’t terribly often, but when it was…
“I don’t ever want to get married,” I whispered to my sister.
Elsa paused, her fingers on the fallen piece. “I want that more than anything. How could you think like that?”
“Listen to them, El. This started because of me. He is screaming at Mom because I slipped on the beam and fell off. They fight all the time. I don’t want that.”
“Oh.” Elsa slipped the next block into place, and it held. “They weren’t always like this. Don’t you remember? A few years ago, they barely raised their voices.”
I lined my pieces up, and the block tower was complete, perfectly balanced. I glanced at Elsa’s. She wasn’t good at it, but the puzzles seemed very important to our father, and I didn’t want Elsa to get into trouble. I leaned over and pointed once more to where she should stack the next piece, turning it when she went to put it on the wrong way. “I don’t remember that.”
“Oh, that’s right, you were probably around five. Well, we did a lot of things with Mom, like cooking, and gymnastics was fun then. She smiled and laughed a lot. It wasn’t really until you jumped up ahead of everyone on the team that Dad took notice and was home more.”
Everything in me froze. “It was my fault?”
Elsa’s eyes widened as she clasped onto my hands, the puzzle forgotten. “No. No… I didn’t mean it like that. He probably just doesn’t need to be at work as much. I don’t know. But it’s not you.”
It was. With cold certainty, I knew it was me who caused the majority of the fights between our parents. I never want to get married.
Chapter 11
Jack
Coffee in hand, Jack slid into the chair on Rich’s right. Trev, Liam, and Liv were already in the conference room, drinking coffee and studying a few maps that were spread out on the conference table. The large warehouse
, located where Liam’s farm ended, on the edge of his property and adjacent to Jack’s, served as their base. Maine was where the entire team converged. They were currently under plans to expand so that all of them would have space if they chose to make a permanent home there as he, Liam, and Liv had.
As at the meeting before, Rich had a file in front of him. “Good, you’re here,” Rich boomed in a gravelly voice.
“What do you have for us?” Jack asked as Rich flipped open the file and spread the pictures out before them. The coffee cup froze halfway to his mouth when he saw the images, specifically the partial profiles captured within the frames.
The stirrings of relief mixed with fury churned in a dangerous concoction in his gut. I thought she was dead.
He’d pulled her from the ropes that bound her. She’d been dirty, with a slight bruise forming around her eye, a scabbed cut along her hairline, and a cracked lip. He wanted to kill every last one of the insurgents that’d even looked her way or dared to touch her. Finding or witnessing a woman being mistreated always brought out his inner monster. And he wanted to make them all pay.
For a brief moment in time, she’d been his.
That night flooded back to him in agonizing detail. When he’d secured Henry and turned for Hannah, she wasn’t there. The open expanse of the jungle floor and the clearing where the insurgents had camped was devoid of her presence. Without a trace of her, he’d assumed the worst—that she’d perished in the explosion.
Not only did he lose two people he cared deeply for, but they failed to locate the briefcase that held the weapon. On the return flight, he’d mourned their losses—or the possibility of them. He still held out hope that Chris was alive. A fierce warrior, Chris stood an excellent chance of survival. But Hannah wasn’t trained like they were—she was in administration, a goddamn secretary. He should’ve done more and not trusted that she would be safe right behind him. I know better!
He saw a future with her once. But she’d broken it off.
His hand balled into a fist at his side. Something was very wrong.
Rich tapped one side of the satellite picture of the small town in Colombia. “As you can see, there were guns fired over in this area. We have more shots of that, but it doesn’t appear to be related to the part of town where Hannah and Chris were identified.”
Jack reached across the table and dragged the picture close. Several buildings lined the street. The gunfire was captured from a rooftop. But what held his focus was the woman walking across the street. He’d recognize her face anywhere, even with the different hair color. It wasn’t blond any longer, but a rich brown.
“She has a gun at her side.” It wasn’t pointed at anyone but down by her thigh as she’d begun to turn her head to look in the direction of the attack on the far side. Her feet were pointed away, and it looked as if she were on a course to stay out of danger. Several feet away, Chris’s profile was caught as he hovered by the side of a building.
“Right, but we don’t have any pictures of shots being fired from her position. It appears as if she had the gun out for defensive purposes. What’s at odds is where Chris is while Hannah is out in the open when shots are being fired.”
Liam lifted another picture, taken from a wider angle that showed the town and all the surrounding areas. “This is quite a ways from where we were deployed.” His Irish accent thickened as the tension increased in the room.
“There’s been enough time since the failed mission for him to have traveled this distance,” Hawk chimed in.
Trev’s usual laid-back manner was still MIA as he slumped in the chair next to Hawk, his eyes riveted on his brother’s face. The relief emanating from him affected all of them. While the thought of something happening to Chris terrified and saddened each and every one of the team, the brunt of the emotion would fall to Trevor, as Chris was his flesh and blood.
Jack dropped the picture onto the table, scrubbing his hand over the morning stubble on his chin. Something didn’t add up about the pictures they stared at. Why hadn’t she checked in with the Pentagon if she’d gotten free? Could she be the reason they hadn’t found the briefcase with the weapon?
He voiced the thought he would have preferred to keep to himself. “We need to consider that Hannah may not be what she seems. Being spotted in town, there would have been some way to communicate they were alive.” He tapped the position Hannah was in before running his finger to Chris’s location. “Is Chris following her, tracking her? What are we missing?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out. Your mission will be to bring Chris back and find out what Hannah is up to. She would have known to check in—from what I know of her, this isn’t consistent behavior.” Rich picked up the empty folder, leaving them the pictures, and grasped the handle of his briefcase. Glancing at the Rolex on his wrist, he headed for the door. “I have a meeting this afternoon in DC I need to get to. If there is anything else you need, let my secretary know. Otherwise, I will assume you’ll be on your way before nightfall.”
As Liam walked Rich out, Jack allowed himself one more moment to drink in the picture with Hannah in it. The words she’d uttered on their last date echoed through his mind: “Nothing can come of this. My life is not my own.” From the time she’d spent working and her dedication to the job, he’d thought that was what she meant. He wasn’t so sure anymore. He wondered whether she’d known when they’d begun dating that he would be the one coming for her.
Jack met up with Liam, Hawk, and Trev by the farthest building to the north, where they’d started their search in the small Colombian town. The heat was oppressive. Sweat ran in a constant trail down his chest and back. He swiped a hand over his brow to wipe the perspiration away. He’d acclimate in time, just not yet.
They’d split up and questioned shop owners and any residents who were out and about to see if they recognized Hannah or Chris. The people were wary, especially after the explosion they’d heard earlier, but if the men flashed money, the villagers’ tongues loosened.
Liam handed him some water, and he tipped the bottle back, grateful for the cool liquid that ran down his throat and took the edge off his thirst. Their time in town drew to a close. He’d learned something about Hannah but not Chris.
Hawk grabbed one of the sandwiches they’d purchased. “Chris was here, but only briefly. Seems he and a dark-haired woman bought some supplies. She doesn’t fit Hannah’s description.”
“What’d he buy?” Trev leaned forward, the sandwich frozen halfway to his mouth.
Hawk grinned. “Nitromethan and ammonium nitrate. Not from the store exactly, but from a contact the owner had. Probably a cartel member.”
“Well, damn. Sounds like that little explosion we heard earlier was from our boy.” Jack laughed. “Wonder what trouble he’s landed himself in.”
“Still doesn’t explain why he lost contact with us and didn’t call in.” Trev frowned, his usual laid-back vibe still missing.
Liam shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know, but we’ll find him. We know he headed out of town toward the marina over there.”
“It’s fitting that the explosion was from that area.” Jack took a hearty gulp of water to wash down his food. “Seems we have a problem, then. Hannah was seen here too, but she went in the opposite direction.”
“We’re going after Chris,” Trev growled, throwing his sandwich and raking his hands through his hair.
Jack leaned against the side of the building and gave Trev his full attention. Trev’s nostrils flared, and the whites around his eyes were riddled with red. He got it. Trev was worried about his brother. But Hannah posed a problem they couldn’t ignore. One of them had to do something about her, and he was the best choice since he knew her—he’d thought so, anyway. “I agree. Chris is a priority, Trev. You all need to go after Chris, find him, and bring him home. Makes sense for me to go after Hannah. We’ll keep in touch with our phones.”
“I don’t like it. We shouldn’t split up, and you shouldn’t b
e on your own.” Hawk frowned.
“Look, Trev is right about Chris being our main objective. More of us should be there to back him up, and from the explosion that happened earlier, it seems like he’s headed for or already involved in a fight.” Jack leveled a stare at all of them to make his intentions clear.
“I’m not crazy about it either, Jack.” Liam crumpled the wrapper from his food, his brogue thickening even more. “But if that’s the way we’re going to do it, then let’s get moving.”
Trev’s normally easygoing expression was pinched with worry. Jack thumped him on the shoulder. “He’s alive. You know there had to be a reason he didn’t come back with us.”
Chapter 12
Jack
The late-afternoon sun was still high in the sky. It was the hottest part of day. Jack took a long pull from his canteen and relished the feeling of the water sliding down his throat, a small relief from the stifling humidity. Determination spiked in his blood, and he put the map he’d been studying back in his pack. Two people he’d questioned about Hannah pointed him in the same direction—east and out of town. Dressed in military pants and an olive-green T-shirt, he set out after her despite the trepidation of his teammates.
The next town was several miles down a dirt road where the occasional Jeep or car would fly by, stirring up a welcome, if hot and dusty, breeze. With each step closer to where Hannah could be, his mind turned over all the details he remembered about her just before she went missing from the rebel camp. His heart rebelled against the possibility of treachery, but his common sense acknowledged the probability due to her actions, especially since the briefcase containing the weapon was missing.