Hero Undercover: 25 Breathtaking Bad Boys

by Annabel Joseph

  What the hell? Oh God. Save me.

  It all happened in seconds. She couldn’t say anything. She was too shocked, too afraid. Too betrayed. He’d shot some drug into her body, maybe to assault her. Maybe to kill her. She reached for the door handle but it was locked. His face swam before hers, pinched with concern.

  “Listen to me, Rowan.” He touched her knee as she struggled to keep her eyes open. “I’m not going to hurt you. That’s not what this is about.”

  She tried to find the door handle as Chad rebuckled her seatbelt, but when she grasped at it, nothing happened. The door was locked.

  She needed to fight him, demand that he release her, but her arms were so heavy, like bricks were lying on them. His car was revving faster now, merging onto the crowded interstate. She finally gave up the struggle and closed her eyes.

  10pm

  Rowan drifted in a terrifying dream. Her fish were rampaging around their tank with open, piranha-like mouths, trying to eat each other. But I don’t have fish. I don’t have fish…

  She started awake and grasped for the bedcovers when one of the fish turned into a shark. She felt wetness on her face, saw dingy clapboard walls and faint lamplight from across the room.

  Then a face moved into her line of vision, a face she knew, and yet…

  Chad. The dead battery. The syringe.

  Then what?

  She tried to sit up, only to be pushed back. “Take it slow,” said a deep voice. “You might feel a little woozy, but everything’s okay.”

  How was everything okay? Where was she? She did a quick, frantic check of her circumstances. She was clothed. Thirsty. Hungry. Not bound in any way. She felt weak and groggy, but she was alive. Chad sat in a chair beside the bed, but she had no idea where she was. The wetness on her face came from a soaked cloth he was holding in his right hand. Trying to drug her for a second time? He moved it toward her and she warded him off.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m bathing your face with cool water. It decreases the chance of an adverse anesthetic reaction.”

  “Adverse anesthetic…” She got tired just saying the words. “Fuck you. Where the hell are we?” Her voice sounded thick, and her head throbbed with a low-grade ache. Nothing in his sober expression changed. “What did you do to me?”

  He offered her a glass of water, which she refused. “We’re at a cabin, Miss Park, in a very out-of-the-way place.”

  Every creepy serial killer story, every sex-captive saga ran through her brain. “Holy shit. Please don’t kill me. Please—”

  “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “You drugged me.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  She gawked at him. “You’re sorry? That’s all you have to say? I need to know why you brought me here, what you want. Oh God, give me that water. My throat’s so dry.” She took the glass he offered. “Is there anything in this? Are you going to drug me again?”

  “Not unless I need to.”

  Was he joking? He didn’t sound like he was joking. In fact, he bore no resemblance to the friendly custodian from work, a persona that had apparently been a lie, a disguise. She gulped water, studying her surroundings. High ceilings, wood slat walls, a kitchen in one corner. She looked back at him, wondering who he really was. Friend or enemy? Sane or psycho? Why hadn’t she paid attention in her kidnap-and-torture seminars? “My head hurts,” she said.

  His eyes sharpened. “How much?”

  He wouldn’t look that concerned if he meant to kill her, would he? “Not horribly,” she said. “But enough.”

  “You’ll feel better soon.” He handed her the cool cloth so she could use it to mop her forehead. “Knocking you out wasn’t the ideal way to do things, but you started freaking out and trying to unlock the car. I thought you might try a jump-and-roll.”

  “I was going to try a jump-and-roll.” She balled up the washcloth, glaring at him. “I don’t know who you are or why you brought me here, but I want you to take me back to Tech-C immediately. Where’s my phone? I need my phone.” She ran her hands over the bed, the table, but her phone and bag were missing. Her voice rose along with her fear. “Where the fuck is my shit?”

  “Calm down.” His level voice did nothing to decrease her agitation. “Here’s the deal. Are you listening? Look at me.” He captured her hands to stop her frantic movements, and held them in a firm grip. “I work for the U.S. Government. I’m here to help you and protect you, because there’s been a threat against your safety. I couldn’t let you go to Livermore’s. They knew you would be there—since you go every Thursday night—and they were waiting for you outside.”

  “They?” Rowan pulled her hands away, searching his eyes. “Who’s they?”

  “North Korean agents. You’re their kidnapping target.”

  “What?”

  “They were actually waiting in the parking garage stairwell.” He shrugged as she began to shake. “It’s okay, though. The FBI will talk to them and figure things out. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  She stared at him, trying to understand how Chad, the Tech-C custodian, could say things like that with such gruff assurance. “What branch of the U.S. Government do you work for?” she demanded. “Why am I supposed to believe a word you say?”

  He reached in the pocket of his blue-collar work pants and thrust out an ID card. “I work for the Department of Defense, in conjunction with the CIA. I’m a national security agent, and you’re a…” As she studied the photo on the ID, he stood, putting distance between them. “You’re a matter of national security. I’ve been keeping an eye on you at the hangar, along with another agent in my group.”

  “Another agent? Who?”

  The man on the ID, who was not a custodian, walked to the one window in the room and drew back the curtain. “The guy from Big-O Catering.”

  “The bagel and coffee guy? He was, like, super nice.”

  He let go of the curtain and turned back to her. “Super nice, and super lethal. We’ve been watching your arrival and departure from Tech-C since we started hearing chatter about a possible kidnapping attempt.” His eyes narrowed. “Read the ID. I’m exactly who I say I am.”

  She squinted at the small print on the badge. He crossed back and turned on the light beside her bed so she could see it better. She studied it for long minutes, but her brain was either messed up or in shock. She couldn’t reconcile the laid-back custodian from work with the tense federal agent standing before her.

  But it was his picture, his ID. Like the one she carried, it looked very official.

  “Special Agent Chadsworth Collins III,” she read. “Seriously?”

  “You can call me Chad.”

  There was no sign of softness, no friendliness in his stern features and curt movements. The transformation scared her, and she dealt with it in the usual way: snark. “Someone named not one, but three human beings ‘Chadsworth Collins’?” she said as she handed back his identification. “Wow.”

  His expression didn’t change. “You’re making fun of my name? ‘Rowan Park’ sounds like a Civitan playground project.”

  She swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Her head was feeling better, but her mood was worsening. “Park is the third most popular Korean surname. Lots of Korean-Americans have it.” She stood and went to the window, to look out as he’d done.

  “Get away from the curtain.”

  His sharp command froze her hand. That was a special-agent voice. She dropped her arm and turned to him, trying to govern her emotions. “So you and Agent Bagel Man have been watching me all this time?”

  “His name is Paul Wyckoff, and he’s a twice decorated war hero and former Secret Service agent. Yes. We’ve been monitoring you at Tech-C for about—”

  “Six weeks. I know when you showed up.”

  She knew because it was the day she’d started looking forward to work just a little bit more, the day she’d started logging more after-work hours so she could watch him emp
ty her trash can. And the damn bagels. She’d gained ten pounds since last month.

  “You may not realize this,” said the different, scarier Chad, “but there are a lot of people on the periphery who are monitoring the real-life people you’re hacking. What you do doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You affect people’s lives. You piss people off. You piss governments off, and they have a lot of power to make things happen, things that don’t serve either of our purposes.”

  By our purposes, he meant her and him. She knew bad things could happen when you operated in shady parts of the establishment, but she’d felt so safe in her quiet, security-lined airplane hangar in coastal Oregon. The North Korean government had been plotting to kidnap her, had already set the plan in motion. They wanted to kidnap her badly enough to track her movements, her weekly activities. She hadn’t even known.

  “So I would have shown up at that parking garage and what… been shoved into a black van?”

  “Yes, pretty much. It helps that you visit the same bar every Thursday at the same time, and park on the same level of the parking garage.”

  Was she that careless, that predictable? Jesus, she was trash, and the friendly custodian act had been a lie all this time. He wasn’t interested in being her pal or taking extra time to empty her trash can. He didn’t care if she had a boyfriend. He was probably remotely monitoring her phone and computer.

  “I can’t believe no one told me about this kidnapping shit,” she said. “No one warned me I was under surveillance.”

  He went to the kitchen to refill her water glass. “Not surveillance. Protection. There’s a difference.”

  “Protection. Whatever. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Because it would have changed your behavior.” He returned, speaking with exaggerated patience. “We’re not going to find the people who are after you if they know you have protection around the clock.”

  “Around the clock?”

  He held up a hand to calm her. “The point is to protect you, while making them believe you’re vulnerable enough to grab. Based on recent intelligence, we know an extensive team was sent from Pyongyang to acquire your services. Illegally. By force.” He frowned. “Otherwise known as kidnapping you, secreting you into North Korea, and making you work for them under threat of torture or death.”

  She wasn’t tough. She never would have been able to withstand torture. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Believe it. Skills like yours are hard to find. Forcing you to work for them not only gives them a leg up in the cracking game, it prevents the U.S. from deflecting their infiltrations as easily.”

  The more she thought about it, the more feelings she had. Shock, anger, outrage. “I wouldn’t have worked for them,” she said. “I would have found a way to make it look like I was helping, while I was secretly sending messages back home.”

  He gave a mock salute. “I’ve heard you’re the best, soldier, and I appreciate your courage, but I think you underestimate the tactics they’d use to break your spirit and sow fear.” He looked at her for a long moment. She stared back, trying to reconcile the facts in her mind. He was a secret surveillance agent, one who’d brought her here by force, and who still might be lying about who he was and what he wanted.

  No, she couldn’t think about that. She had to be safe with him, or she’d lose her mind.

  “Okay.” She stood up, straightening her rumpled dress and sweater that had looked so cute when she put them on that morning. “I have to pee. Where’s the bathroom?”

  He pointed to a door in the rear of the cabin, and Rowan discovered a very nice bathroom with a large sink area, a misting shower, and a Jacuzzi tub. But it had no windows, which made her feel trapped.

  She glimpsed her face in the mirror and scowled. Her mid-length black hair was a disaster, and she still looked pasty-green from her slumbering drug trip into fish-tank hell. How dare he drug her? Why not just tell her what was going on a few weeks ago, so she would have been ready for an emergency escape?

  After she used the toilet, she tried to fix her appearance by splashing water on her face. There was finely milled, hotel-style soap in the soap dish and all the necessary toiletries spread out on the counter. By the time she emerged, she felt more human, but no less angry. Chad was over in the kitchen area, eating a sandwich. He gestured to the small, two-person table.

  “Are you hungry? I can make you something. The cabin’s fully stocked.”

  “With what? Lies?”

  He ignored her dig and went to the refrigerator. “There are eggs, and meat and cheese for sandwiches. Want a salad? Carrot sticks? Yogurt?”

  I want to go home. But she couldn’t go home. She finally accepted some toast that he foisted on her in a businesslike, special-agent manner, but then she couldn’t eat it because the crumbs stuck in her throat. She drank more water instead, scowling across the table at him.

  “How long do we have to stay here in this fucking roach trap?”

  “Watch your language, Miss Park. And we’ll stay here until we’re cleared to leave.”

  “Which is how long, Agent Collins?” she said, sarcastically mocking his drawl.

  “It could be a couple days. It could be a week. It could be longer. It depends how long it takes the DOD to get the foreign agents to talk, to give up their personnel and reveal the extent of their plans.” He leaned back in his chair, pursing his lips as he regarded her. “Whatever happens, I suggest we treat each other with civility, and remember our manners. Otherwise, the time we spend here is going to feel twice as long.”

  Rowan was ruffled. She was an experienced government agent, just like him, even if she was wearing a drinks-after-work dress and black fingernails. “I’d be happy to remember my civility, if you’ll remember not to talk to me like I’m a two-year-old child.”

  “You’re giving off more of a rebellious teenager vibe, which doesn’t flatter a thirty-year-old woman.”

  He was dancing on her last nerve, and she wasn’t in the mood for a cha-cha, not after all that had happened. “Don’t come at me with your authoritative, angsty government-agent posturing.” She looked around their claustrophobic cabin. “I’m not in the mindset to put up with it.”

  Far from being deflated by her scathing warning, he leaned in on bulging arms and pinned her with his gaze. “Sorry to be so authoritative, Cracky, but I’m in charge of your safety.”

  “Did you just call me Cracky?”

  “Until we get the all-clear from the DOD, you’re under my protection.”

  “I didn’t ask for your fucking protection!”

  His blue eyes darkened as he frowned. “I asked you not to use coarse language, Miss Park. Here are the rules of our sojourn together, which you will follow whether you like it or not.”

  As she spluttered in irritation, he leaned an elbow on the table and ticked off each order on his fingers. “Number one, we respect each other. That’s non-negotiable. Number two, no leaving this cabin, not for any reason. Number three, no contact with the outside world. You can’t leave any physical or digital footprint that might be traced.”

  “But my friends, my parents, when they can’t reach me—”

  “We’ve left an outgoing message on your voicemail and email, letting everyone know that you’ve taken an impromptu cruise to the Bahamas. Wyckoff’s watching your apartment and picking up your mail. If anyone gets suspicious, the security division will take care of it. They know how to make it look like people aren’t missing.”

  “This is bullshit. All of this is utter, freaking craziness.”

  He sighed. “Language. This is your third warning.”

  “My third warning?” She snorted. “I know you’re old, but you’re not my dad. You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “I can, to an extent. I’m your commanding officer right now, and I make the rules.”

  “What if I don’t follow your rules?” Rowan sassed, not quite recklessly enough to add an expletive. “What happens then? A court martial?”


  She could see, visually see, some last tendon of patience snap behind his patrician regard.

  “If you keep pushing me, you’re going to end up over my lap, getting taught some manners for both our sakes. And it won’t be one of those fun spankings you perv on your phone in the break room. It’ll be the kind that makes you wish for a court martial instead.”

  Holy fucking shit. She couldn’t believe he’d said that. She couldn’t read his face very well, since she didn’t know him anymore, but she was pretty sure he was sorry he’d said it, too. He’d just admitted to spying on her porn in the break room. The filth on her personal phone was her own business, and the idea of him spanking her for disciplinary reasons brought equal parts embarrassment and dread.

  “I need to get out of here.” She pushed away the paper plate in front of her and started pacing. “I’m sorry, I just can’t be here with you. It’s… it’s upsetting me. I can’t deal with it.”

  When he answered, his voice sounded sympathetic for the first time. “You have to be here with me. We’re stuck here for now, for your safety.”

  “But look at this place.” She swept an arm around the rustic surroundings, indicating the deer-antler chandelier before gesturing at the two twin-sized beds. The headboard and footboard were crafted from polished logs. “We’re supposed to sleep in the same room?”

  He looked around. “There isn’t any other room, by design. You have to be near me, in case—”

  “In case the North Koreans come barging in here in the middle of the night? How would they find us, in some cabin in the middle of nowhere? You won’t even tell me where we are.”

  He shook his head, stern again. “There are cameras, tracking devices. We may have been followed. They could have moles on the inside. It’s not likely, but—”

  She cut him off, enraged by the phantom threat and her damned vulnerability. Would she have to look over her shoulder forever? Because she wasn’t willing to live like that. “This is stupid.” She paced to the wall and slapped it. “I want my phone. Where is it?”