by Natalie Dean
“No. What are these things for?”
She dashed back towards the living room. The killers hadn’t come out yet. Probably fifteen seconds. And they wouldn’t come in. There was too much of a threat for them. They’d just rip the house up from the road and then come in, sweep it, and leave before the cops arrived.
“Look,” she said hurriedly to The Celtic as she laid a hand on the door. “This is a flashbang. When I give you the signal, close your eyes so you don't get blinded.”
Back to the present. They were sitting in the limo of The Owl, renowned crime boss, two bodyguards on either side, and two more in front of those. The Owl was directly in front of them, waiting for a response for his proposition.
Adrianna flashed her eyes down to her watch. Twenty seconds. When she’d quickly set the watch, she’d had no idea how long to expect. It would be useless if the flashbang went off while they were being searched for weapons, so she had been careful and set the timer for longer. “What makes you think I can trust you? All you’ve done is try to kill us.”
“An interesting question,” he said. “I suppose you’ll simply have to trust me.” Again, his lips were just a shade off, like a movie that hasn’t quite synced up right with the audio. It was close enough where Adrianna wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it or not, but something seemed amiss.
Eight seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two.
Adrianna kicked The Celtic from beside him. A stealthy sign. She’d realized that she hadn’t planned on what the signal would be, so if she gave him a subtle one, he might miss it and get stunned with the others. Together, they might be able to take the guards by surprise, but her by herself would be doomed.
She clenched her eyes tight and hoped The Celtic did the same. She’d been around flashbangs before in training exercises. They were nasty, nasty beasts. Even with her eyes closed, she could see blinding light, heard shouts of surprise and anger, and thrashing.
The bodyguards figured out in a hurry what was going on. They’d be blind for quite a while, but the inside of the limo was only so big. At their impressive size, they could span most of the room. The one to her left threw his arms around her and got her in a bear hug almost before she had opened her eyes. A good bodyguard. A dangerous one.
She tried to slip out, but he was quite strong, even for his size. She couldn’t pull away, and her broken rib started yelling at her again in pain. She elbowed him in the face to no avail. She was starting to run out of air. He was incredibly strong. There was a solid chance he’d break another one of her ribs, but at the last second, she wormed her way out of his grasp. He lunged for her again, but she ducked him and grabbed his gun.
That’s when stuff got real.
She fired off a single shot at the gorilla. There was essentially no way for her to miss at that close of range, and his yell proved that she hadn’t missed. Utter chaos ensued. The blinded bodyguards didn’t stand much of a chance. They couldn’t even find their guns.
Moments later, the whole thing was over.
The Celtic had evidently taken a handgun and poked the end of the gun towards the driver. “Drive! Get us out of here!”
Adrianna and The Celtic took The Owl hostage. “Do what he says!”
The driver looked like he was considering running for it, but at the last second gunned it and slammed his foot on the pedal. The Owl started struggling in The Celtic’s arms, but The Celtic whacked him on the head with the handgun and he slumped to the floor limply.
“Well, that was surprisingly easy,” The Celtic said from the limo floor.
“It’s not over yet,” Adrianna snapped. Even through the tinted windows, she could see the fleet of vehicles giving chase. Someone shot at them, stupidly. If The Owl was still inside, he might easily have been shot. Somehow Adrianna doubted that such a move would have been wise. Luckily, though, the Hummer limo was bulletproof and the round bounced right off with a clink.
“Drive!” she commanded the driver.
“Where?”
“Anywhere!” She looked around, trying to focus on where they were. “Right! Take a right up here!”
They sped through the city. She was thinking that the thugs would quit chasing them once they made it into the heart of the city, but she had evidently been quite wrong. They sped right after them, swerving right and left and clipping half a dozen cars.
“They’re still behind us!” The Celtic said.
“Really?” the driver said sarcastically.
“Take a left!” The Celtic said.
The driver slammed on the brakes and drifted through a red light to take a left. Someone honked, but they stopped the moment that they saw the chase going on. The thugs were still firing at them. Worse, they were starting to get smart. The windows were bulletproof. The whole Hummer wasn’t. The bullets were starting to break open the car’s chassis, nearly pegging a couple of them.
“Right! Left! Straight! Straight! Left!” Adrianna kept ordering the driver to keep taking turns. She hoped she knew where she was. She was pretty sure she was headed the right way, but it wasn’t like she had enough time to get on Google Maps and see if they were going the right way towards the Calidad FBI headquarters. She’d driven all over Calidad, but never under such pressure and never from that way.
One of the cars beside them swerved a little too hard trying to take a right, skipped through the yard of a bank, and slammed into the bank’s columns. Even going at the speed it was going, it barely did anything. It just wrapped around the marble columns, scaring some people, but doing very little damage.
They were getting closer. She was starting to recognize places. Luckily, they weren’t in rush hour, so there wasn’t as many cars on the road as there could be. Most cars swerved away to avoid them, but so far there hadn’t been any awful crashes.
Finally, she spotted some flashing lights. The police had finally caught on, but they chased after all of them. Unsurprisingly, nobody pulled over. The whole group—the Hummer limo with The Owl, The Celtic, Adrianna, and the driver, the cars and vans chasing, and the policemen chasing all of them—went roaring along down the road. A short while later, a helicopter was up in the air, probably filming it live.
She was doomed. She suddenly realized that. She’d essentially handed in her resignation when she’d gotten them started on a big chase. Just because she was an agent of the FBI didn’t mean that she got to do stuff like that.
Finally, she spotted the agency building up ahead, looming over the interstate with dozens of floors. They were close. The big problem was that there happened to be a football game at that time, so fans were everywhere. The limo driver started swerving to try to avoid plowing anyone, overcorrected going up a hill, and started to flip.
Adrianna’s heart rose into her throat as the limo started into a whirlwind of rolling. She had no idea what happened to the driver, but she, The Celtic, The Owl, and all the bodyguards flew around in the main compartment. A couple of the windows shattered, tossing glass all over them. Adrianna hit what she thought was a door and one of the dead bodyguards slammed into The Celtic. He slammed into Adrianna, nearly tossing both of them out of the window.
Finally, the limo came to a painful, crumbling halt a hundred feet away from the agency. Adrianna clawed her way out from under the bodyguard to the top, gasping for air. The Celtic emerged too, pulling The Owl up with him.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“I think,” she groaned in response. The inside of the Hummer limo was crumpled up like a crushed soda can, having jagged edges sticking out violently. She could hear shooting outside, but from her position, she couldn’t push open the hatch. They were stuck inside. Trapped.
The firing continued. The FBI had to have the upper hand. There were hundreds of agents inside that building, but there was only a small army that was working for the now-unconscious Owl. Sure enough, after a few moments, the shooting died off, there was a loud squealing of tires, and everything got very quiet except for the shouting and the
sirens.
She heard something bashing on the chassis, then someone ripped open the metal. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she recognized Agent Stone.
“I found The Celtic,” she said.
Agent Stone immediately arrested them both.
Chapter 13
Four months later, Adrianna found herself waiting in the elevator as it slowly climbed higher and higher. She impatiently checked her watch. A little late. Not bad, but closer than she’d like.
Finally, the doors slid open, and she found herself where she had been months before—the building where The Celtic lived. She had started calling him by his real name instead of his fighting alias. David just had a better ring to it. More personal. That was good since over the last few months they had grown more and more personal.
When she’d first heard his name, she’d thought it a common, boring name. But as it turned out, his parents had named him that because David meant “loved one” in Hebrew. So it was a little cooler after that, but it had still taken her a while to get used to calling such an extraordinary man by such a common, everyday name.
She found herself walking down the long walkway to his apartment, thinking about the first time she’d been there. At first, she’d seen it as a dark place, somewhere that had once been happy and vivacious before a criminal stole the happiness away. The longer she spent there, the more that feeling of violence faded away in her eye and the public’s.
Right after The Owl had been arrested, dozens of fighters had emerged to testify against him. Apparently, he’d been a busy boy. Threatening. Punishing. Killing. All that stuff had finally caught up with him. The courts had given him life without the possibility of parole.
She came to the door of the apartment and rang the doorbell. She flashed back to the first time she’d been there, searching out with her powers to judge whether someone was inside, whether the criminal had left any obvious clues. Now, she’d grown to love seeing that door. It meant she could escape from her troubles and have someone to cherish. Two of them, actually, but each in very different ways.
She knocked.
“Come in!” she heard David say from inside.
She twisted the handle and walked on in. Inside, David, aka The Celtic, was sitting at the table. He glanced up at Adrianna and winked affectionately before focusing back on his daughter. Ellie was sitting on the floor, using crayons to continue her artwork on the wall. The art had grown since Adrianna had first seen it.
“Hey, sweetie,” Adrianna said as Ellie came sprinting up to her and tackled her leg in a hug. “How’s the little artist?”
David kept working on the laptop on his table. Apparently, he’d been an aspiring writer. A writer of what? Romances, of all things. Adrianna had laughed when she first heard that, making him blush. She’d apologized and explained: he was all-so-perfect to start with. It only made sense that he was a hopeless romantic just to top everything off. Even though he was still fighting professionally, Adrianna had inspired him to try to continue his otherwise untouched passion.
“Oh,” he said as he typed away madly. “She’s been working hard. Look at the end.”
Adrianna followed the trail of artwork. Initially, David had attempted to keep Ellie from drawing on the white walls, but he’d finally given up. She tended to follow a surprisingly linear fashion, moving from left to right. Walking along it, you could see her art getting better. You’d also see some important events. They weren’t normal events like “ the first day of school!” but tended to be more like “that time that we went to see that cute puppy at school!”’
As Adrianna traveled down the trail, she found herself feeling happier and happier. At first, she’d been completely oblivious. It was pretty primitive stuff. Just some random lines with a couple distinguishable pictures. But the more time she spent with them, the more she became an expert in child-art reading. Not much, but she was able to pick out a couple different animals: dog, cow, fish, and some people. The most obvious was David, and every now and then a couple friends from school.
But then, at the most recent art, knee-high on the wall, Adrianna found a new person.
Her.
Her breath caught for a second. It was the first time Ellie had drawn her.
“Oh, baby,” she crouched and looked Ellie in the eye. Ellie sheepishly studied her little shoes. “That’s so beautiful! You’re so talented. Can you give me a hug?”
Ellie shuffled in. When Adrianna was just walking around, she was more than happy to come sprinting up to tackle her. But when Ellie was actually asked for a hug, she suddenly became the literal embodiment of shyness. Finally, after months of inching closer, she buried her head in Adrianna’s chest. She was so small that her arms could barely reach all the way around.
“Hey,” David said. “I got you a present.”
“Yeah?” She ruffled up Ellie’s hair and joined him at the table. “What’s the occasion?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said frankly. “Just thinking about how beautiful you are.”
She pecked him on the cheek. “You’re so sweet. You’re a real romantic, you know that?”
“Sweet like candy.”
Adrianna tried to make that jump and failed. “Um… why?”
“You know, like one of those lollipops with the chewy centers? Hard on the exterior and soft on the center? Don’t worry about it. It sounded better in my head.”
She patted her hands on the table. “I believe you were talking about a present?”
“Oh, yeah.” He laughed. “I forgot already.” He pointed to his head. “Too many concussions and all that. It’s in the bedroom.”
She stood up, giving him a funny look, and walked towards it. She had no idea what on earth to expect. He was very unpredictable in his gift-giving choices. One time he’d given her chocolates and roses, then the next time he’d given her an entire dress made of balloons in traditional balloon-animal style.
She’d worn it one time. He’d snapped a few pictures for gags, then started poking her dress with a paperclip. She had been forced to retreat to the bedroom before she was standing in the living room, completely naked.
So she was understandably wary of this new one.
She rounded the corner and pushed open the door very, very cautiously. She looked back at David, who was staring at her with a big ole’ grin. She couldn’t read him.
The door swung open.
There, sitting on The Celtic’s bed, was the biggest teddy bear Adrianna had ever seen. It put normal, real bears to shame. Its giant head scraped the ceiling, it’s fluffy paws wider than a man’s height.
“Oh.” She said. She had no other words. “Oh, my goodness.”
She laughed. She tried to avoid it, but she just couldn’t help herself. “What on earth, David? Where’d you even get this thing?”
“I found it online,” David said as she walked back over to him, still chuckling from the big teddy bear. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” she said. She reached across the table, stealing his hands from the keyboard. She squeezed his hands affectionately. “I love you.”
“I love you more,” he said.
As Adrianna sat there in that chair, watching Ellie become an expert artist on the walls that David had tried so very hard to keep clean, watching David follow his dreams by writing, Adrianna finally realized something.
That was where she belonged.
Sure, she’d taken some twists and turns in her life. She’d become an agent of the FBI. She’d never had time for romance or for children. Part of her had always wondered if she would ever find time for them. But meeting David, aka The Celtic, had taught her something.
She never found time for love. She just didn’t have enough seconds in the day to stumble upon any extra time.
Adrianna learned that to find love, you must take the bull by the horns and make time. She was busy. She still had her job. She still had a life apart from them, but she’d decided to just find a way to make time for them.
And she had a funny feeling, the likes of which she hadn’t had in years, that everything was going to turn out all right.
THE END
The Missing Girl
Book Description
THE MISSING GIRL
Book 2 of the Innocent & Missing Series
A Romantic Suspense Novella
Even though she isn't my daughter, my motherly instincts have kicked in... someone took her, and it's up to me to find out who.
My intuition had been telling me something was off...we shouldn't have left Ellie there.
If it weren't for David, Ellie's MMA fighter dad, who also happens to be my hot fiancé, I wouldn't even have her in my life. Now she's GONE, and I'll do anything in my power to keep her from getting hurt. Even if it means risking my job and my life...AGAIN.
My boss has forbidden me to be involved with this case...he's sadly mistaken if he thinks I'm just going to sit by and wait for those other incompetent agents to find her.
Time is running out. We have to find Ellie, and we have to find her now...
Chapter 1
Adrianna was at the mall when she felt a dark soul wash over her.
She was used to sensing auras with her sixth sense, but to feel one so potently twisted was something of a shock. It stole the breath from her, so much that she had to stop and look for it.
Ellie caught onto her uncomfortableness. Adrianna was swiftly learning how perceptive kids are. Ellie could pick up on things that adults couldn’t. She didn’t say anything. She just tugged on Adrianna’s shirt with those big eyes, trying to make whatever it was better.
Adrianna brought her in close and kept scouring for the owner of the aura. She spotted a young man by a clothing shop. No. Not him. An older couple. Not them. She had scanned half a dozen passerby before she spotted him.
He was a bigger man, misshapen and broken. She couldn’t distinguish any particular features, but there was no doubt about it- that was the one. Even in the bright light of the mall, he was shadowed by the hoodie that covered his eyes. She couldn’t even pick out his skin tone.