by Misty Evans
The weapon fell to the bed and he backed away, a look of abject horror on his face.
“It’s okay,” she said, rising slowly. “You had a nightmare and were having trouble coming out of it, that’s all. No harm done.”
The look on his face said differently. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, flattened himself against the wall. “I’m sorry.” He turned a tortured face to her. Maggie whined up at him. “I would never hurt you. Never. I would never lay a hand on you like your mother did.”
She couldn’t help herself. She launched herself across the space between them and threw her arms around him. “I know that. Stop beating yourself up.” She pushed her hands through his hair, holding his head so he had to look her in the eyes. “You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine.”
Maggie jumped up on both them, barking and acting like it was a game. Bianca laughed and bent to hug the dog. Her presence had seemed to snap him the rest of the way out of it.
Cal scratched the dog’s ears and took a deep breath, his body sagging slightly with what appeared to be relief.
Bianca almost mentioned the PTSD, then decided against it. After her mother had committed suicide right in front of her, the one thing that pissed her off was the clinical jargon the medical and psychiatric experts threw around. As if grief and anger and the awfulness of such a thing could be summed up by a sterile, unfeeling label. As if she, the victim of her mother’s neuroses and final act of desperation to escape them, could ever get over it without industrial-sized therapy. Maybe not even then.
It would be best to let Cal talk if he wanted to and to leave him alone if he didn’t.
On the other hand, Cal excelled at Houdini-ing his real thoughts and emotions. Now you see them, now you don’t. She’d never known him to admit anything was wrong, ever. Never in a million years would he voluntarily mention his feelings and emotions.
He needed to talk about what had happened. Needed to express the anger and terror and shock of what he’d lived through, and she was probably the only person he would ever confide in. Yet, she couldn’t force him to do it. The best way to get him where he needed to be was to simply open the door and let him walk through when the time came.
If it ever did.
“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.” He ran a hand over his face. “What was I thinking?”
“You were exhausted, and I was wide awake. Energized. I didn’t mind staying up.” It was true. After their love-making, she’d felt animated. Ready to take on Tephra and the whole goddamn US government. “I kept an eye on things, and Maggie was with me.” She patted the dog’s head. “We make a good team.”
He was still in his underwear, his broad shoulders and naked chest rippling as he moved to the bed to grab his clothes. As he pulled up his pants and worked his shirt over his arms, something dark and delicious quivered between her legs. Of course, he had to get dressed, but what a shame.
She touched her lips, remembering the feel of his against them. The control he always took of her in bed. As he finished dressing and headed to the bathroom, she sat on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes. The smell of sex emanated from the sheets and she rubbed a hand over the spot where Cal had lain, the sheets still warm from his body heat. If only they had a little more time to keep this rekindled flame alive.
No more if onlys. By God, if it killed her, she would keep this flame alive. No more giving up; she was going to fight for her marriage, whether she had a day left or another fifty years.
“Hey, I almost forgot.” Cal came back from the bathroom, holding out a piece of paper. He appeared back to normal, his interior armor back in place with his usual confidence. “This was on the kitchen island at Emit’s place after Tephra ran. Is it yours? Didn’t look like your handwriting, but I grabbed it anyway.”
She took the paper. Two strings of numbers were written on it, the impressions made from a black ink pen deep.
418531
876121
A heavy hand had written them.
Tephra.
She glanced up and saw the same conclusion in Cal’s eyes.
“What do they mean?” she asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me. Is it a code or something?”
She read the two lines of numbers again, her brain breaking and regrouping them into plausible combinations. Not a phone number, social security number, or bank account number. Not any type of cipher or computer code she’d ever seen.
And yet, there was something familiar about them. Two lines, six numbers each.
Damn. She looked up. “I need my phone, but since we don’t have that, how about a map?”
Cal frowned. “Of California?”
She shook her head. “The world.”
Chapter Twenty
There were no maps at the cabin, world or otherwise. Who needed a map to fish?
No computer either, and the cheap burn phones Cal had bought didn’t have internet service.
Bianca was sure the numbers were a longitude and latitude location. Missing from the two sets of numbers were the degrees, minutes, seconds, and directions, but if they had a map, they could pinpoint the possible locations and theorize which was most likely to be the right one.
What did it mean, though?
Cal didn’t have the answer, but he did have Emit’s team. He replied to the text he’d slept through earlier. Bring a world map.
Exfil teams like Emit’s were run on the same premise the SEAL teams used. How they performed the job depended on whether or not their target was hostile or friendly, the type of terrain—sea, air, land—and whether they were under fire or sneaking in.
The team meeting them at the cabin was labeled Tier Three. Since Cal and Bianca weren’t under fire, the team probably expected an easy mission.
However, Bianca still hadn’t warmed to the idea of going off with them to a safe location, so when the black SUVs pulled up outside, she gave Cal a look that brokered no argument. “I’m not going to a safe house.”
He had to make her see reason. Not only would she be safer with Emit’s team, she’d be safer away from him. My God, I almost shot her.
His skin crawled. The nightmare had sucked him in again. The same one he’d had every single night since the mission. At least on his boat he’d been able to drown the sharp edges with alcohol. Here, his stepmom had removed the bottles of alcohol long before his father died from liver failure.
The only way to make sure he didn’t inadvertently hurt her was for Tier Three to take her away. His phone buzzed with a text. All clear?
From behind the curtain, he watched one man from each of the two SUVs exit their vehicles. Dressed in black, they moved with the precision of trained operatives. Hyper-alert, the one in front held up a hand to stay the other who had an M4 sweeping back and forth over the drive and woods.
Cal typed back. Clear. Front door is open. “You can’t stay with me, B. Not after tonight.”
She stood near the kitchen table, hands on hips. “What are you talking about? We had an amazing night.”
“I knocked you down and pulled a gun on you.”
“You would never harm me.”
I almost killed you. “You don’t know that.”
The leader of TT moved to the door, the other man covering his back. Standard protocol. Cal had his gun in his hand hanging by his leg. He turned the knob and opened the door as Bianca huffed. “I do, too, know that.”
TT’s leader moved into the room slowly, nodding at Cal and sizing up Bianca and the dog. His hair was Marine short, his body built like a semi-truck. His left earlobe was pierced with a tiny gold hoop.
Maggie started to lunge forward but Bianca caught her by the collar and told her to stay. “I’m not going with you,” she promptly informed the guy.
His gaze cut to Cal as he held out his hand. “Hubble Warwick, Tier Three team leader. What’s our status?”
Cal shifted his gun to his left hand and shook Warwick’s. He’d hand off Bianca in a minute. “Did yo
u bring the map I requested?”
The man closed the cabin door and withdrew a paper map from inside his black jacket. “My men will watch the place, but I’d advise we move out quickly.”
Cal took the map and smoothed it on the coffee table. Bianca allowed Maggie to greet Warwick as she knelt on the floor next to Cal.
Her finger found the latitude line she was looking for, running horizontally across the map. “Let’s initially assume the coordinates are in North America…”
Warwick approached watching. “What are you looking for?”
She stopped her finger and handed him the piece of paper with the numbers. “I believe these correspond to a location.”
“Longitude and latitude?” he asked.
She nodded.
He pulled out his phone. “I have an app for that. Let’s type it in and see what we get.”
“We don’t know the directions,” Cal said. “North, South, East, or West.”
“Doesn’t matter. It will give us a list of possible places.”
Bianca sat back on her heels, smiling like Warwick had just given her a box of her favorite chocolates. “That’s all we need.”
A second later, Warwick turned the display so they could see it.
Bianca scanned the results and her smile faded. “Oh crap.”
“What?” Cal said.
She pointed to a Chicago address.
“McConnell Place?” He shrugged. “What’s significant about that?”
“The president will be there tomorrow for his last election speech before he returns to DC,” she said.
“And?” Warwick asked, seeming to be as lost as Cal was.
Bianca put her face in her hands and released a heavy sigh. “That’s where he challenged Otto Grimes to a showdown.”
Warwick gave Cal a look that said he still didn’t understand. He wasn’t the only one. “Grimes can’t get in the country, B. The president isn’t at risk.”
She lifted her eyes and met his. “Oh, but I think he is.”
Chapter Twenty-one
0900 hours
San Diego
He couldn’t believe they’d lost the Chevelle.
A yellow ’69 Chevelle that should have stood out like a sore thumb.
Cooper stood at the window of the office in the low-rent district part of town his team met at each morning for their situation report and stared out at the parking lot. The building housed the social security office and a chiropractor; the majority of people coming and going were well into middle, if not old, age.
Ronni stepped up beside him and handed him a fresh cup of coffee. “Bobby will be in shortly. He just got a call from the team hunting for that fishing cabin.”
Her voice conveyed that she thought it was good news. Cooper wasn’t holding out hope. So far, they had nothing. Most of the crime scene reports weren’t back yet. The car had last been spotted off Interstate 680 near Freemont, then disappeared. Cal Reese and Bianca Marx seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.
Bobby, Ronni, and ICE agent Nelson Cruz had worked all night digging up information on Cal and Bianca’s families, past history, and possible locations they might go. The fishing cabin was in Bumblefuck, USA, way out in the rolling hills of Northern California, but Cooper prayed that’s where the two had holed up for the night.
When Bobby rolled in a minute later, Nelson was with him and Cooper could see from the look on both men’s faces that there was no happy ending in sight.
He just hoped Bianca was still alive. “What’d you find out?”
“Cabin was deserted,” Bobby said, “but someone had recently been there. Embers in the fireplace were still warm. My guys found a long, blond hair on the couch and several in the bed.”
Ronni’s face lit up. “Bianca’s? The CSI techs found several of her hairs in the shower drain at Emit Petit’s.”
Nelson drew out a chair and rubbed his eyes as he sank into it. “Won’t know for sure unless we run a DNA test. There were also other short, dark hairs found on the floor at the cabin. Similar to those found at the beach house. Guessing a dog.”
Cooper set his undrunk coffee on the conference table. Cal Reese was a dog alright. “Any blood? Any signs of a struggle?”
Bobby answered. “None.”
Cooper could see his friend was holding something back. “But…?”
“The team I sent is thorough. Very thorough. They found some, uh…something that appears to be bodily fluids. On the bed sheets.”
Ronni took a seat across from Bobby. “Semen?”
Thomas, who’d been dozing in the corner after their all-nighter chasing the Chevelle, opened his eyes and cracked a grin. “Bianca, you naughty girl.”
If he could have reached Thomas, Cooper would have smacked him upside the head. “We don’t know it’s them, and even if it is, as long as it was consensual and Bianca’s not a kidnapping victim, that’s none of our business.”
“It’s them,” Bobby said, setting his tablet on the table and scooting it over to Cooper. On the screen was a picture. “They found the Chevelle.”
Thomas meandered over to peer at the photo of the yellow car, half covered with vines and tree limbs. Reese had hidden it. “They left on foot?”
Bobby touched the screen, flipping to the next photo of tire tracks. “Two vehicles stopped in front of the cabin. Those tracks were made from some heavy-duty, off-road terrain tires. One of my guys is a car nut. Says the treads belong to something that works off-road as well as on. GMC Yukon, Range Rover, that sort of thing.”
Cooper leaned on the table, staring at the photo. Two vehicles, no signs of a struggle, semen on the bed. “Any idea which direction they went?”
“Yep.” Bobby tapped the screen again and a grainy satellite shot of a highway with two burgundy-colored Land Rovers, one behind the other, appeared. “This might not be them, but if it is, they’re headed north on I-5.”
Ronni frowned. “You snagged satellite images? I thought that’s what we had Bianca on the taskforce for. Spying on people.”
Bobby smiled. “She does it legally. I do it…well, less legally. Besides, you didn’t really think the NSA sent her to help us, did you? She was sent to spy on Dupé.”
“Holy shit,” Thomas said. “I didn’t know that.”
Neither did Cooper, and it gave him pause. “Spy on him for what?”
“Maybe someone doesn’t like the way he’s running our taskforce?” Bobby offered.
“How do you know that’s why NSA sent her?” Cooper asked.
“I’m a hacker, remember?” Bobby tapped the side of his head. “And I’m smarter than all of you put together. I know things.”
“Did she find anything on Dupé?” Ronni asked.
“Not yet.”
Nelson, seemingly unconcerned, passed Cooper a piece of paper. “I ran the plates on the vehicles in the photo. They belong to Roman Enterprises.”
“What’s that?” Thomas asked.
“A shell company for several businesses owned by someone you might be interested in.”
For the first time in the past twenty-four hours, Cooper felt a ray of hope. “Who?”
Bobby rubbed his hands together with glee. “Emit Petit. Along with a couple of other businesses, this guy runs a security service. High-end. He only takes rich and/or famous clientele, and his employees all happen to be former Special Forces men. A few of them were referred to him by Reese.”
“So Emit and Reese have something going and they’ve taken Bianca along. Why?”
“She’s NSA,” Ronni said. “She knows everything and can hack into anything they want.”
Cooper ignored the scenarios that particular comment sent running through his head. “What’s north?”
“Sacramento.”
“What’s in Sacramento?” Ronni asked.
Bobby shrugged. “No idea. Neither of them has any ties to the area that I can find.”
“Any government installations?” Cooper said. “Anything th
ey would need Bianca’s expertise for?”
“Nothing I’ve found so far.” He took back his tablet and rubbed his eyes, mimicking Nelson. “I’ll keep digging.”
Cooper paced to the window and back. “What about the guy who was in Petit’s beach house? The one who got injured? Any ID yet?”
“Let me check.” Bobby tapped a few keys, entered his password for his email. His eyes scanned the incoming mail and he shook his head. “Nothing yet.”
Thomas held out his hand to Cooper. “Looks like a road trip to northern Cali. I’ll drive.”
Driving would take too long. “We need to get ahead of them. Get to Sacramento ASAP.”
Ronni pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll call the airlines about flights.”
“No,” Cooper said. “Call Dupé. We need a helicopter.”
Bobby looked up from his email. “Sacramento’s a big place, Coop. You need a starting point.”
Bobby was smarter than all of them put together. Didn’t mean Cooper liked it. “Do your best to track those vehicles and alert Sac PD. If they spot the cars, they should contact us and not engage. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want Bianca in the line of fire. I want to know what Reese and Petit are up to first and have a solid plan in place before we go after them. Clear?”
A knock sounded on the door behind him. Through the plate glass, Cooper saw a figure. No one visited this office except for Dupé, unless it was an aging senior citizen who got lost looking for the social security admin office.
Nelson and Thomas both went on alert. Cooper made a hand signal to stand down and both men returned to their relaxed positions. Cooper didn’t buy it. He knew they had their hands on their weapons. But at least they wouldn’t give some poor old woman a coronary.
To his surprise, it wasn’t a senior citizen on the other side of the door. Instead, he found a man in navy whites. From the insignias decorating his jacket, he looked to be an officer. “Is this the SCVC Taskforce?”
“It is,” Cooper answered.
The man removed his hat and ran a hand over his short hair. “I’m looking for Bianca Marx.”