by Misty Evans
She lived on her phone and had tricked it out to handle just about everything in her life she could. Without thinking, she started to text him back, then caught herself. The phone was encrypted and had a variety of firewalls and security, but nothing was fail-proof. She had no idea who had been trailing her or how sophisticated their tracking abilities were. After all the things she’d heard about and seen in the halls of the NSA, she knew nothing was impossible when it came to tracking someone down and learning everything about them.
The thought made her shudder. No contacting anyone. That’s what Cal had said and he was right. Even if he was using a phone he’d just picked up, and no one could trace that, it was better not to chance a reply because someone could be tracing her outgoing communications.
Slipping the phone into a pocket, she thought about ways to contact Cooper instead. If she didn’t make contact soon with a believable, if false, story, the taskforce and their leader would go looking for her, and that would add to her and Cal’s problems.
She snapped her fingers. Upstairs, she’d noticed a laptop in the office. No one knew she was here, and Emit’s computer couldn’t be traced to her. She could use the laptop to send a message to Cooper saying she was sick and needed a few days off. If Tephra was tracking any of Cooper’s transmissions—phone, email, texts—and was able to follow the IP address back to this address, he’d hit a dead end. Bianca would be long gone with Cal, on her way to Sacramento, and there was no one here to be in danger from her visit.
On the kitchen wall, the landline rang again. Great.
As it continued to blare, Bianca grabbed two of the bags she’d loaded with food and hustled them out of the kitchen to set them by the door leading to the front driveway. She went back for the cooler of water, Maggie following on her heels, tail wagging.
The answering machine clicked on. This time when the message was done, the caller spoke.
“Cal Reese,” a man’s gravelly voice said. “Seems like the rumors are true. You’re almost the caliber of SEAL I was.”
Bianca froze in mid-step. The voice was American, and carried a slight Boston clip. She’d never heard it before but didn’t need her memory to tell her who the caller was. Her analytical brain knew.
Rory Tephra.
Oh God. How had he found them?
“Pick up the phone, Reese.”
Bianca’s fingers trembled as she reached for the island’s counter to steady herself. I’m going to die.
Her hand found the Glock and she pulled it out of her waistband. But not without a fight.
“You’re not an easy man to track down,” Tephra said. “No Facebook account, no cell phone, no credit cards. Hell, you don’t even own a goddamn car. Interesting. I suppose you’re a paranoid bastard like me.”
Here, the man laughed, like this was all good fun.
Next to Bianca’s leg, Maggie whined.
“So here’s the deal, Reese. I got a job to do. A job involving your old lady. I know your character well enough to know you’re going to get in the way of that, so take this as a courtesy call. You get in my way, you’ll end up swimming with the fish. Nothing personal. I’m doing my duty to our country.”
Duty? How was it that killing her was an honorable thing?
Righteous anger swelled in Bianca’s chest. With her free hand, she grabbed the handset off the wall, lowered her voice and spoke. “Why are you after me?”
There was a slight pause from the other end. “Well, well. The object of my affection. Hello, sweetheart.” She heard the smile in his voice. “How’s the cheek?”
She needed answers, and although it scared the beejesus out of her to talk to the assassin bent on killing her, he was the one person who had those answers.
Keep your voice calm. Don’t let him know you’re shaking like a leaf. “Who hired you?”
“Aww, now, come on. You know I’m not at liberty to say. But look, since you’re the wife of a fellow SEAL, I’ll keep it simple. Walk outside to the boat dock and I’ll make it a quick and merciful death.”
She slapped a hand over the phone’s receiver and pinched her eyes shut. Do. Not. Hyperventilate!
Run, all her instincts screamed. She wanted to. Fear was a powerful motivator.
Yet, deep down inside, a fresh rush of anger stabbed at her, making her want to rip the phone from the wall. She was about to die and she didn’t even know why.
Holding the phone out away from her face for a second, she took a couple of deep, shaky breaths, her heart racing. Her right hand squeezed the Glock hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Where is Cal?
Didn’t matter. He wasn’t here and Tephra was.
Bringing the phone back to her mouth, she crouched near the refrigerator, keeping clear of the windows. Maggie watched her with a curious look and Bianca steeled her nerves. “Go to hell, Tephra.”
“Now see.” He chuckled again, a deep, raw sound that made the hairs on Bianca’s neck rise. “They told me you had some fire in you. That you were smarter than me and you’d be a hard mark to hunt down. You know what I told ʼem? That if you were so smart, you’d realize the futility of running. You know there’s nowhere you can go that I won’t find you, right?”
Taunting her was a cheap ploy. She refused to fall for it.
Use it. Make him lose the bravado and he’ll lose his control. The more he tries to upset you, the calmer you need to become.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to sound confident. “Kudos to you, Rory.” Negotiations 101: use their name and make it personal. “You must be even better at wet work than the CIA’s top secret files claim. How did you find me?”
Another slight pause. Was he analyzing her like she was him? You bet he is. “You may be smart, but you don’t understand men like me. Men like Cal Reese. At least he can appreciate Grace and what it takes for me to shoot a moving target at a long distance. Where is he? Put him on the phone.”
“Who’s Grace?”
“My weapon.”
He’d named his rifle? Was that normal for snipers or was Tephra a fruit cake? She’d have to ask Cal.
If she survived this encounter.
I’m not going to die. “What does Grace have to do with tracking me to this house?”
A snort. “And here I thought you were smart.”
She was smart. Tephra thought Cal was inside the house with her. If he’d been watching the place for any length of time, he would have spotted Cal leaving.
Unless Tephra hadn’t seen him. Cal was one damn good SEAL. A pure ninja if he wanted to be. Either that, or Tephra had just arrived.
Which meant he hadn’t kept eyes on them the whole trip, and since he was only making contact now, she was sure that was correct. He’d only arrived.
If so, he had to have tracked them somehow.
A tracer. On the boat or on her?
Grace. A gun. A bullet.
The bullet. The one that left its calling card on her cheek and embedded itself in the wall of The Love Boat.
The memory of Cal digging the bullet out of the paneling flashed through her mind. Cal’s confusion. “You used a smart bullet,” she said into the phone.
Bianca had known a guy, Winston, who’d been on a team that had developed two types of micro-transmitting tracking bullets. While the general public didn’t have access to them, and there were plenty of people fighting against their use by law enforcement, there were multiple government entities already using the specialized bullets—CIA, NSA, and several special units the DoD ran under the radar.
“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!” His smugness grated on her nerves. “If they miss the target—and mind you, I’ve only missed three times in my career, you included—they leave behind a micro-transmitter that gives out a pulse. I even have an app for it. Oh, wait, you developed the app, didn’t you, Ms. Marx? Handy, I must say.”
She lowered the phone headset so he wouldn’t hear her swear under her breath. One of her first jobs for the NSA was to design an app agents
could use in the field to locate the tiny transmitters placed inside smart bullets. Why hadn’t she paid more attention to that damn bullet Cal had removed from the paneling?
She’d never seen the real thing up close and personal, only diagrams, so she might not have noticed any difference. Her skills had been focused on the technology behind the ammunition at the time she’d developed the app.
Some micro-transmitters stayed inside the bullets, others were ejected upon impact. The micro-transmitter inside the bullet Tephra had used must have disengaged from the casing when it hit the paneling, a tiny fish hook device embedding the miniscule tracker into the wall.
Bianca banged her head back into the fridge. Nothing like arming the assassin trying to kill you with a handy tracking device complete with a GPS app for his phone. “I’m glad you appreciate my hard work,” she lied.
Maggie’s head whipped around to look at something Bianca couldn’t see in the living room. The dog’s ears pricked, her focus intense on…what? The door? She stood alert but not barking, her head tilted slightly.
Cal.
Bianca rose, but stayed low in a crouch. She needed to warn him and distract Tephra. But how?
“Yes, well,” Tephra’s voice sounded slightly muffled. “Why don’t you come on out now? I need to wrap this up.”
Setting down the landline’s handset on the breakfast bar, Bianca fished out her cell phone. Stall. She raised her voice slightly and spoke to the landline. “You think I’m going to walk out of this house willingly and let you kill me?”
Maggie’s tail went up but didn’t wag. Bianca inched past the breakfast bar and tried to see over the dog’s back. Gun at the ready, she scanned what she could see of the living room, the patio windows that showed the beach, the long wooden dock, and the ocean. Craning her neck, she squinted around Maggie’s big, black head. A small, nondescript fishing boat had pulled up behind The Love Boat.
“Less messy,” Tephra said. “The government doesn’t like messes on US soil. Harder to clean up.”
Bianca found Cal’s last text and hit reply. But she couldn’t type with the gun in her hand.
She slid back over to the handset, and put her face close to it as she set down the gun and typed: T is here! What do you want me to do? At the same time, she said, “Harder to cover up, you mean.”
“Same thing,” he replied, then paused. “Your husband isn’t there, is he? You’re all alone.”
Bianca picked up the Glock and stared at her cell phone’s screen, willing Cal to respond. She kept her mouth close to the handset and took a steadying breath. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not coming out. If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me.”
Silence and then that awful annoying chuckle. “Suit yourself.”
The line went dead.
Bianca gritted her teeth. Stupid! Instead of baiting him, she should have kept him talking. She didn’t know any more now than she had two minutes ago.
Maggie let out a woof and started to run. She couldn’t get traction, nails clicking on the floor as her feet slid around underneath her. Bianca lunged for the dog’s collar, missed, dropping her cell phone. “Maggie!”
Too late. The dumb dog shot away from Bianca’s hands, one of her feet sending Bianca’s cell phone across the floor to the opposite wall as she shot forward toward the door.
Bianca glanced at the double-wide doors, saw nothing from her position on her knees. Maggie was going crazy now, barking and pawing at the doors. Bianca knew little about dogs. Was that an aggressive, don’t mess with me bark or a welcome back, Master, let me lick your face bark?
Against the far wall, her phone vibrated with an incoming call. From her position at the edge of the kitchen floor, there was no way Bianca could see what the screen said.
The only way to get to the phone was to belly crawl across the floor. If she did, she’d be in plain sight of the patio doors, making herself a slow-moving target. Better to stay on her feet and run. She could only hope Tephra didn’t take a shot through those patio doors. Maybe he wouldn’t…that would be one big mess for sure.
Maggie stopped barking and went from window to window, trying to see out. Whoever had been at the door had moved.
“Get away from the windows, Maggie,” Bianca said under her breath. Her phone continued to vibrate. Call, not text. She needed to answer. Cal was probably shitting bricks.
Not only that, the screen lighting up was like a bulls-eye for anyone trying to find her inside the house.
Maggie scampered back to Bianca’s side, licking her face and whining. “Go get my phone, Maggie,” Bianca said softly, pointing the dog in the direction of the phone. “Like you did before.”
Maggie sat down and panted in her face.
“Phone.” Bianca pointed and gave the dog a slight nudge. “Go get the phone.”
Maggie cocked her head sideways as if Bianca spoke in an alien dialect.
She’s a dog, idiot. Of course she doesn’t understand you.
Besides, some part of Bianca didn’t like sending the dog into the line of sight of a maniac with a gun. She patted the dog’s soft head and laid her forehead against it for a moment. Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird inside her chest. “Never mind,” she whispered. “My phone, my bad guy. I’ll do it.”
Scanning what she could see from her vantage point, Bianca duck-walked to the sofa, keeping low. She couldn’t see enough, so she raised her head ever so slightly, gun at the ready, to peer over the back.
Sea grass clumps blew in the wind. In the distance, the ocean waves rolled up to the beach and subsided.
Maggie trailed along, wagging her tail but remaining quiet. Bianca held her breath, listening and waiting. When nothing happened—no windows broke, no bullets came whizzing at her face—she let out the breath. Nervous energy burned in her veins and she couldn’t help the half-hysterical, half-relieved laugh that forced itself up her throat.
She didn’t know much about assassins, but she did know they were patient. Tephra probably had her in his scope’s sight already, but maybe not. Maybe he was still setting up Grace, or making a plan to enter the house and shoot her up close and personal.
Execution style. No broken glass, no bullets embedded in the walls or accidently hitting the vase on the coffee table and shattering it.
Much less messy.
Except, he didn’t know Bianca had her own gun. And the dog. She wouldn’t put Maggie in danger, but Maggie’s instincts might keep Bianca alive for another day.
Her wrist grew tired of holding the Glock. She ignored the ache. Keeping the gun in position, she eyed the phone. She wasn’t Cal, wasn’t a SEAL by any stretch, but thanks to an abusive mother, a SEAL for a husband who took personal defense training to a new level, and a job that required even office grunts to know the ins and outs of a survival course, she wasn’t a helpless maiden either.
One, two, three… She lunged for the cell phone.
Halfway there, she went down on one hip to slide by the purple plastic, letting her momentum carry her past the phone, her left hand grabbing it as she kept the Glock semi-trained on the door.
Maggie barked and ran after her, a game. Bianca ended up with her back against the stairway, the wrought iron bars and wooden treads providing only a skeleton of cover.
Not enough.
Acting once again like a fast-action movie star, Bianca gained her feet, and keeping low, made a dash back to the security of the kitchen island. She and Maggie fell into a tangled heap at the base of the breakfast bar, Bianca releasing another anxious laugh as she fended off Maggie’s playful face licks. They’d succeeded without a shot being fired.
Her glasses were askew. They hit the floor as Maggie’s excited ministrations knocked them off her face. “Sit, girl,” she said, fumbling to replace the glasses and look at the cell phone’s screen.
The dog did as instructed, a drop of drool hitting the screen as she panted over it.
The call had gone to voicemail, but it hadn�
�t been from Cal. Bianca hung her head. Cooper. He was persistent, that was for sure.
Tephra already knew where she was, so keeping her location a secret was a moot point. Cal wasn’t back and hadn’t responded to her text. When he did show up, he’d walk into an ambush. Would Tephra kill her and disappear? Or would he decide to take out Cal, too, assuming he knew too much?
Tephra’s kills always looked like suicides or accidents. Either that, or the target simply disappeared, never to be seen again. If he’d gotten to her sooner, he might have made her disappear. Now, he had Cal to worry about.
Murder-suicide. If she were him, that’s what she’d make it look like. The images played out in her mind. She and Cal were in the middle of a divorce. They’d argued, he shot her, then turned the gun on himself. Neat and convenient.
Damn. No way could she let Tephra get away with that.
Her hands shook and she set down the phone, using Cal’s T-shirt to wipe away sweat from her forehead. Queasiness ricocheted around in her stomach, the morning’s pancakes backing up in her throat.
The house had a high-end security system. It would take Tephra time to bypass it. Since he didn’t like messes, she guessed he wouldn’t want to trigger the alarm and send police their way. The time it took him to work on that, she needed to come up with a plan.
Booby-traps? She knew nothing about making them outside of the silly stuff she’d seen in Home Alone. She doubted in real life if any of those would work.
The ache in her wrist had turned into full-fledged burning. Off to her left, she heard the faint beep of the security system. Maggie’s ears rose and she stood. Bianca peeked around the corner, checking the door that faced the street. She didn’t see anyone through the frosted pane of glass in the transom, but saw the green light blink. Someone had punched in the code.
Cal. He was back. Had to be him from the way Maggie’s tail was wagging. The dog ignored the door across from the breakfast bar, though, and sprinted for the living room, leaving Bianca behind.
Yep, had to be Cal. Relief swamped her. Her shoulders slumped and her hand nearly dropped the Glock.
Pull it together. You’re not out of the woods yet.