Alex grabbed the laptop and shoved it in her tote. “C’mon, baby. Time to go.” She nodded and followed him to the door. Moving in a haze of horror as the scene on the video replayed over and over in her mind, the menace in the man’s voice, echoing in her head. “You’re next, bitch!”
Chapter Ten
The ride to the Eagle Security & Protection’s offices was a blur. At some point, she’d started shaking. She vaguely heard Alex tell Chase she was going into shock. Shock? It that what this was? So cold. Her teeth were chattering.
They were in Chase’s office, but she didn’t remember getting there. He walked through the door carrying a blanket and handed it to Alex. He draped it over her shoulders and then pulled her into his lap. Finally, she wasn’t shivering as much. A glass was pushed against her lips. Alex’s voice sounded far away when he encouraged her to take a drink. But she listened.
The liquid burned as it hit her throat and she choked. It did the trick. The warmth of the scotch spread through her body, thawing her in a way nothing else could.
“Better?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She should sit in her own chair, but Alex’s lap felt so warm. And safe. Safe was good. She needed safe right now. It would be okay to stay there for a few minutes, right?
“Lily, do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
“I think so. I don’t know. I’ll try.”
“Do you want another swig of scotch, Lilybee?” Just hearing him say her nickname was comforting. She’d forgotten how much she’d missed it over the last few months. Damn, even her inner thoughts were rambling. Focus, Lily. You can do this.
“No, thank you. I’m good.” She wasn’t but maybe if she said it often enough she would be.
“Are you sure it was Enid Mercier? She’s Walcott’s assistant, right?”
“Yes, she is, was, and yes, I’m sure. She was wearing that suit when I saw her on Friday.” She shuddered, the horror still front and center in her brain.
“Okay. This is probably the last thing you want to do but focus on the voice on the video. Did anything about it sound familiar?”
“No.”
“Take a moment and focus.”
“Babe, I know it’s hard, but try. I’m here with you, you’re safe.” His arms held her a little closer. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the voice. Deep, gravely and dripping with hatred. Had she heard it before?
“I don’t think so. Well, maybe. No. Shit. I don’t know. It kind of sounded like one of the guys yelling at Chandler in the Walcott parking lot. But I’m not really sure. I wasn’t close enough to hear them clearly, just what carried over to me.”
“Okay. Did you get a good look at any of them? If you saw any of them again would you recognize them.? I can have Ethan or Steele bring over a book of mugshots.”
“I’m not sure. I mostly noticed Chandler. Can’t you pick him up and make him tell you.”
“We’re not the police, we can’t ‘pick up anyone,’ but I could have a talk with him if we could find him. Terrence Walcott seems to be missing too. Neither of them are at their homes or answering their cell phones. They didn’t show up for work today either.”
“You found all of this out already?”
“I told you we were good. This is what we do. I have a couple of the guys on it. If they’re in Willow Haven, we’ll find them.”
“Okay. I guess it was too much to hope for that this could be resolved easily.”
Warm at least, she pulled out of Alex’s arms. It was time to pull up her big girl panties. She could handle this. She was the tough one. Settled in a chair next to Alex and across the desk from Chase. Almost immediately she missed the warmth of her husband’s arms. Maybe they could sit on the couch and snuggle later? Focus, Lily. Her thoughts were never so disjointed. Was it a result of the shock? How long would it last? Shit, Chase was talking to her.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat what you said?”
“Sure. Lily, I’m sorry you’re going through this, but you’re not alone. Remember what I said. You’re one of us. Have been since you married into the ‘family,’ you just haven’t needed us until now.”
Nodding she crossed her arms over her chest, feeling the chills starting again. “Thank you. But I have always been able to take care of myself. Ask Alex.”
“I don’t have to. He bitched about it enough last night.” Chase chuckled, it was a comforting sound. Low, rumbling, and happy, and the opposite of the voice on the video.
His cell rang, and he held up his hand to stop what she was going to say next. “Brennan. Yup. Gotcha. No, not yet. Good, thanks. See you soon.”
“That was Steele. They found signs of a struggle in Enid’s office. And both her and Walcott’s office had been trashed. They’re figuring it had to be Chandler since security is so tight in that building. If not him, someone else on the inside.”
“What kind of a business are they running? I know construction can be related to the mob, but this is Willow Haven. The boring elbow of Florida. Nothing happens here.”
“Don’t say that to Ethan. You weren’t here when Anna was kidnapped, and he had to bust the burglary ring. It’s not the quaint little beach town it once was.”
“I guess not. So, what’s next?”
“You and I are going in the tech area and see if we can get a match with facial recognition. I don’t expect to, he made sure he was in the shadows the whole time. But if we’re lucky it might be possible, or at the least maybe we can get him from his voice. You’d be surprised what we can do now.”
“No, I wouldn’t actually. I used a lot of that equipment.”
“It’s like that, huh?”
“Yeah. It is. And not anything I can discuss either. You know the routine.”
“Me too. I know that routine all too well. What am I supposed to do while you two are off computer sleuthing?” Sounding coherent for the first time since she’d gotten to Chase’s office, she surprised them. It was obvious from the looks on their faces.
“I can set you up in the conference room if you want to try to do some work. Do you have something other than the Walcott’s stuff? I’m not sure what’s going to happen with any of his holdings by the time this investigation is completed. You may not want to waste the time.”
She hadn’t thought about that. Shit. Oh well. It wasn’t toast yet, maybe all of this could work out somehow. Fuck. Who was she kidding? It was a ginormous clusterfuck squared. Luckily, she did have a few other customers who’d sent some work her way. She might as well get it done.
“Okay, I can do that. Thanks. If I don’t do something besides sit here, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Alex leaned over, kissed her forehead, and whispered, “It’ll be okay. I promise, Lilybee. You’ll see.” She followed them out of Chase’s office and down the hall to the conference room all the while praying he was right.
Alex and Hunter followed Chase further down the hallway after dropping Lily off in the conference room. He wasn’t thrilled about leaving her there alone, but he doubted anything could happen to her at ESP. Chase was right, it was much easier to think of it as an acronym than the whole name, and ESP was kind of cool too.
Stopping in front of a door, Chase typed in a keycode and led him into a room that rivaled any command center he’d ever been in.
“Okay Ranger man, show me your mad skills. Rock will set you up on a system.”
“Rock?”
“Yeah. Don’t ask, he’ll rip off your head.”
“Gotcha.” Alex looked at the man sitting at one of the computers. At his name, Rock turned around. Shit. The man was huge. He should have been called mountain instead of rock. He came over to shake Alex’s hand.
“Good to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“No reason for the sir here. Alex is fine, uhhh Rock, is it?”
“Yup. Okay, I’ve got you all coded in here. I uploaded the video into the system and started running the recognition programs.” He h
anded him a small piece of paper with Alex’s password. “Memorize it.”
That was nothing new for Alex. He wasn’t worried, though. He had a photographic memory and passwords were cake for him, although this was a little more complicated than his usual. “Got it.”
Rock took the paper and tossed it into an astray and lit it on fire.
“I guess I’m fucked if I forget it, huh?”
Chase howled with laughter from behind him. “Enough, Rock. If this were any other case, I’d say go for it, but it’s his wife.”
“You fuckers. You had me going.”
“Well, that really was your password. But if you forget it I can get you back in,” Rock said with a grin, flashing large white teeth that reminded him of the big bad wolf from Red Riding Hood, and he liked him right away. If he took the job after all of this was done, he’d have a team to work with again, and he had missed that.
Taking his place at the workstation, Alex’s hands flew over the keys. He’d missed this, too. The thrill of the hunt. Then he remembered who they were hunting. The stakes were much different this time. He’d been on his share of rescue missions and a few others he didn’t even want to think about. Most turned out fine, but he and Logan had been in their share of clusterfucks too. Mostly because of bad intel. It had been the main reason he’d taken the extra training. He’d never been sorry either.
He pulled up the video and messed with the contrast, noise and was able to get a slightly better image of the asshole threatening his wife.
“Shit. You’re good. I’ve been messing with it for the last forty-five minutes, and I couldn’t get it that clear,” Rock said with awe.
“Not bad at all. I guess you do know what you’re doing.” Chase laughed when Alex gave him the finger over his shoulder. With Hunter lying by his feet and his fingers at home on the computer keys he felt useful for the first time since he’d been blown halfway across the base. The explosion had changed him in more ways than physically, and that had been the hardest part to deal with. Maybe taking this job was what he needed.
The program was running the facial recognition on the updated picture Alex fed it. Now it was a waiting game. It could happen fast or three days from now, or never. It all depended on whether the guy was in the system. The voice was even harder, and Alex suspected that he’d used some kind of a modulator to disguise it on the video. He obviously was into scare tactics.
He was good, managed to cover his digital trail pretty well, but Alex was better. After digging around in the metadata, Alex was able to find the asshole’s first mistake. Now they knew where the video was shot and after a little back tracing, they got a location. Chase put a call into Steele, and he and Ethan were on their way to check it out. It was probably too much to hope that they’d find the asshole there and finish it all at one time.
They didn’t want to tell Lily until they knew for sure one way or the other about Enid’s condition. He’d never seen her like that, but it gave him a pretty good idea of how she’d been when she found out he was wounded. Logan had explained it to him, but seeing it first hand was heart wrenching. To know he’d put her though all of that. He’d find a way to make it up to her.
But for now, it was just a waiting game. Would Enid Mercier be alive? Would there be any hints to the location of Chandler or Walcott, and would they find anything to help figure out what or who was behind all of this?
Rather than wait in the command center, Alex told Chase he wanted to be with Lily. He wanted to be there when she heard the news good or bad. He hadn’t decided if he wanted to tell her they’d figured out the location or not. He was leaning towards not, so she wouldn’t sit and dwell on it until they had more information.
In the end, it didn’t matter. When he and Chase got to the conference room, it was empty. Where the fuck was his wife? And why hadn’t she texted or called to tell him she was leaving?
Chapter Eleven
After Alex and Chase had gone off on their bad guy hunt, Lily had pulled out her laptop and started working on an ad campaign for a local cupcake store. Their cupcakes were freakin’ amazing, but they weren’t getting the traffic they wanted or needed to pay their rent. Lily had a few ideas up her sleeve to help them generate more business than they could ever want.
Deep in design heaven, she was playing with different images of the cupcakes she’d taken before she’d gone to Maryland to be with Alex. Photoshop was one of her favorite programs. Making new pretty things always made her feel better. Sometimes she wondered why she took on all the marketing too. She didn’t like that as much, but then again it usually paid a lot better.
At first, she didn’t hear it, she was so engrossed in her work. Finally, the ringing of her cell cut through her concentration. Chloe’s smiling face popped up, and she answered without a second thought.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I’ll tell you what’s up.” Fuck. It couldn’t be. How? Was he at Chloe’s house? Had he hurt her, or the babies?
“What do you want, asshole.”
“Brave, huh? You won’t be for long once I get my hands on you.”
“You better not have hurt her. I’ll kill you myself.”
“She’s fine, for now. But don’t push your luck. Meet me at the Fitness Center in ten minutes. If you’re late one of the kids will die.”
“I’ll be there.” She didn’t have time to think, or even tell Alex. Chase’s office was further than ten minutes away and she didn’t have a car. How the hell was she supposed to get there?
Her guardian angel, fairy godmother, or someone wonderful must have been listening. Another man mountain knocked on the door and came to check to see if she needed anything. When she said a ride, he tossed her his keys. Chase had forgotten to put her on lockdown. Thank God. She left the laptop but grabbed her phone and purse and was out the door without a second thought. No way would Chloe suffer because of her. If he harmed one hair on her or any of the kid’s heads, she would kill him.
In the parking garage, she clicked the unlock button and was thrilled when a black Lexus RC’s lights flashed. She’d hit the jackpot. Hopefully, she didn’t wreck it on the way. She climbed in and was out of there without a second thought. She had seven minutes to get to the Fitness Center.
Making it to there in six minutes really did make her think she had a fairy godmother. It should have taken at least twenty, but somehow there was no traffic, and she made every light. “Whoever you are, thank you. Now show me where Chloe and the kids are, pretty please?”
Parking at the back, as the voice instructed, she got out and made her way into the vacant, unfinished building. The first time she’d walked through the doors she’d been full of excitement. The thrill of new possibilities. This time only dread rode on her shoulders. As she walked toward the back offices, she looked around. It was almost ready for the finishing touches and staging. It would have been a great addition to the town. But she had her doubts that it would ever happen now.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t turn into her final resting place. Thinking about it, made her wish she’d had one more kiss from Alex before she left. There was a very real possibility she’d never see him again. Her only chance was for him to track her phone. She’d kept it on and in her pocket, and if his computer skills were as good as he implied it should be enough. It was the only ‘breadcrumb’ she could leave.
The building was eerily quiet as she made her way into the administration area. He was waiting for her as she entered the back hallway. She didn’t recognize him at all. Who the fuck was he, and where were Chloe and the kids?
“Where are they, you motherfucker. If you hurt them…”
“Relax, bitch. As much as I’d have enjoyed gutting the noisy brats, they’re fine. I cloned her phone. They were never here. But you are, and no one is going to be able to help you.”
Sheer relief filled Lily before she realized what a mess she’d gotten herself into. Now she had to pray that Alex would be able to figure out where she was. In the m
eantime, she had to hold on, stay alive, until her Ranger could rescue his damsel in distress.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You can thank Walcott. He knew better than to hire you. We had a deal. He blew it off. Chandler knew better, too. But Walcott wouldn’t listen. We needed to launder the money through the design company. At least until the fitness center opened. The drugs were coming in faster than we could handle it.”
“This is over drugs and money? I don’t get it. I’m a design firm.”
“Yeah, but not ours, which was our front. Walcott decided to double cross us. He was out of his fucking mind. Sonny took care of him and the stupid bitch who worked for him. She squealed like a pig when we gutted her.”
“Why did you have to kill her? What did she do to deserve that?”
“Bitch, in my world I decided who lives and dies, and I don’t need a reason for either. She got in our way. Threatened to go to the police when she figured out what we were doing. Chandler was easy. He was all about the money, but Walcott was harder. We took his brother and had to send him a few fingers before he’d cooperate.”
“So why did he bring me into all of this?”
“Beats the fuck out of me. Maybe he was hoping you’d figure something out and help expose it to get him off the hook. Who the hell knows. But it’s too late for him too. No one will ever find him, he was a good meal for a few sharks the other day.”
The blood drained from Lily’s head, and if he hadn’t been dragging her across the room, she’d have fallen. How could he be so cruel? She’d never met anyone who was such pure evil and all for money.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“I told you, you’re next, bitch.”
“What if I just walk away. I don’t know who you are. I’ll drop the project. You can do whatever you want.”
A Soldier's Triumph: An Eagle Security & Protection Agency Novel (Beyond Valor Book 3) Page 10