Zero Hour: Brotherhood Protectors World

by Holt, Desiree

  “You have no idea how angry that made him, that they wanted to report my injuries. If not for Geoff Miller, his driver/bodyguard, pointing out to him that if he made things worse, he’d be all over the news and possibly be arrested, he might have killed me when we got home.”

  Lainie could still remember the rage.

  “But this time,” Drea pointed out, “however you managed it, you got here by yourself. It’s the perfect time for you to do a disappearing act.”

  “I know.” The nausea came roiling back, and she swallowed again. “Could I have some water, please?”

  “Of course.” Drea held the paper cup with a straw up for her to sip. “Slowly, please.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s a damn good thing you aren’t married yet.” She stopped and looked at Lainie. “You aren’t, right?”

  “No. I just—”

  “Never mind. I’ve been thinking about this while you were getting patched up and drugged to make the pain a little easier to bear. I have a way out for you, and you need to take it if you want to stay alive.”

  Lainie tried to shift in bed only everything hurt even worse whenever she moved.

  “But what? How? I’m desperate enough at this moment to do anything, but what? Where can I go? No one will take me in, knowing what Sonny would do if he found out. I don’t want to endanger them, anyway”

  “Got it taken care of. I have someone who won’t be afraid of Sonny and can get you out of here before that man even knows you’re gone.”

  Lainie was almost afraid to hope. “Who would that be?”

  “Remember I mentioned my brother, Zane, when we were still able to spend time together?”

  “I do. The SEAL, right?”

  Drea nodded. “Former SEAL. He’s been medically discharged because of injuries from his last mission, but he’s still in pretty good shape. Well, he’s going to Montana to some rural area to get his act together. I’m going to get him to take you with him.”

  “What?” Lainie gasped. “But he doesn’t even know me. Why would he do that? And what happens when we get there. Is he just going to leave me on my own? I can’t—”

  “Don’t panic.” Drea took her uninjured hand. “He’ll make sure you’re set up there, and he’ll protect you, at least until you can make some decisions for yourself.”

  “He’s not going to want to take a basket case like me with him.” But god, on its own, a little hope wriggled through her.

  “He will,” Drea assured her. “I promise you he will. SEALs are big into protecting people. US Navy SEALs are the most elite combat unit in the world, and they carry it into their personal lives.”

  “And what about when Sonny comes looking for me here, like he always does?”

  “Rick will handle it while I make myself scarce. As far as that asshole Sonny Fitzgerald is concerned, you merely walked out of the hospital and no one saw you leave. Rick and I have it all worked out.”

  “You don’t know Sonny,” she protested. “He can turn on the charm one minute and cut your throat the next.” She grimaced. “Too bad I saw only the charm until it was too late.”

  “We all do stupid things,” Drea assured her. “Sadly, yours turned out to have danger attached to it. But you don’t worry about Sonny Fitzgerald. Dr. Carvallo can more than handle him and give him plenty of misdirection. And he made sure my name doesn’t appear anywhere on your treatment chart, in case he remembers we’re friends.”

  “Drea?”

  “Yes, Lainie?”

  “Listen.” How could she phrase this? “You should be aware of this. Sonny did something really terrible. Worse than just hitting me because he feels like it. If he finds me, I know he’ll kill me.” She stopped to take a breath. “And he could easily kill anyone who helps me.”

  “What did he do?”

  Lainie squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t tell Drea. It would put her in jeopardy, too.

  “I can’t tell you. But if it gets out—Anyway, I had a tiny window of opportunity, and I took it. But I have to get away. This is way more than his usual stuff.”

  Drea’s mouth tightened, but then she squeezed Laine’s hand.

  “Then it’s a good thing I have a fearless SEAL for a brother to take care of my friends.”

  “Are we?” she asked. “Still friends?”

  “Honey, we will always be friends, no matter what. So. How about resting here for a few. I’m going to call Zane.”

  “He won’t want to get involved with this,” she protested. “I’m a stranger.”

  “Not to me. Now lie there and rest while I work things out.”

  “I—I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Letting me get you out of here is thanks enough. When I come back from my phone call, we have to get your stuff together. Then I want to give you a pill for the pain so you can handle the shifting around and walking out of here.”

  “I can pay him,” Lainie said quickly. “I’ve been hoarding money, and before I managed to get out of the house this morning, I stuffed all of it into the pocket of my jeans. Will you check—”

  “Already got it.” Drea pulled an envelope thick with bills from her pocket. “And I can tell you he won’t take a dime. But Jesus, Lainie. How long have you been squirreling this away? And how did you do it?”

  “Six months.” Lainie closed her good eye. “Pretty pathetic, right? Sonny didn’t stop me from going to the grocery store, and I always got cash back. Not enough to raise his eyebrows when he checked the account.”

  “Lord, Lainie. Why didn’t you drive to a police station? Or come to me?”

  Lainie sighed, the effort hurting her chest. “He always had someone following me. And do you think the cops in this city would go against the great Sonny Fitzgerald? He’s an icon. People fall all over themselves to curry favor with him. I still don’t know how you’re going to pull this off, even if your brother is stupid enough to agree to it.”

  “My brother is far from stupid, and, like I said, he’s a former SEAL. Protecting people is their first order of business.” She let go of Lainie’s hand, placing it on the sheet. “Let me go make that call. Then I’ll be back to get things rolling.”

  “W-What are you going to tell Sonny? I know he’ll show up here when he discovers I’m gone.”

  “We’re going to tell him you walked out of here and we have no idea where you went. Period.” She handed Lainie a gel pack. “Meanwhile, hold this on your bad eye.”

  Lainie lay back against the pillows, trying not to think about the pain and her dangerous situation. After his temper tantrum last night, Sonny had left her alone to crawl upstairs to their room. He hadn’t even bothered to ask how she was in the morning, just told her she’d better heal herself because no more hospital visits. Then he dressed and left for his office. Thank the lord she was able to call an Uber and get out of the house before he came back to check on her.

  When she’d first gone to work as Sonny Fitzgerald’s paralegal, she couldn’t believe her luck. She’d spent ten years at two law firms making herself the best paralegal possible, looking for a big break. And the same amount of time looking for her dream man. She’d been drawn to Sonny like a magnet. He seemed to have it all, the things she’d been searching for all her life—big successful law firm, money, a place at the top of society, good looks. She basked in his attention, thrilled when he offered a job working for him come work for him and even more excited when he started asking her out.

  Before she knew it, he’d asked her to marry him and insisted she move into his house. She was ecstatic, thinking she’d plucked the gold ring from the merry-go-round. But when her new role turned into a tool for him to woo clients and polish his image, she realized that once again her antenna had been off and she’d made a mistake. If only she’d known what was hiding behind that public mask and the hell she was descending into. By that time, however, she’d been trapped, desperate to find a way out.

  Especially when she discovered his anger had
a brutal side to it.

  Of course, it wasn’t as if she had the best history when it came to picking men. She’d begun to think there was something wrong with her, that men who either cheated on her or left her hanging were the ones she seemed drawn to. Good looks, smooth personalities, a sense of power—those had been on her unconscious to-do list. At least the others hadn’t had anger issues.

  Now here she was, lucky she wasn’t already dead, and wondering how Drea thought someone could sneak her out of the city without a trace. And then what? Sonny had a history of getting rid of people who could do damage to him. Could Drea’s brother protect her from that?

  She was lying there trying to will the pain away and ignore the swelling in her left eye when Drea came back into the room with something folded under one arm and slid the glass door closed. She set a little pill cup on the nightstand, pulled the lone chair up to the bed, and leaned close.

  “Okay, my friend, it’s all set. Zane will be here in fifteen minutes. In a second I’m going to give you this pill to help the pain. Rick won’t give you a shot because it would knock you out too much, but he’s getting enough meds to take with you for the next couple of days.”

  Lainie tried not to get too excited. She might actually be getting out of here and away without Sonny’s knowledge?

  “Your brother will do it?”

  Drea nodded. “He’s a very good guy, and he’ll keep you safe. This is going to work, Lainie. I want you to listen to me. I cleared it with Rick and Maggie. As far as anyone will know, you said you were leaving and that was that. We can’t prevent you from doing that. The only way we could stop you is if you had psychiatric problems.”

  Lainie sighed. “Some people might say that’s my problem. Otherwise ,why would I have stayed with Sonny all this time?” She looked up at Drea. “And thank you for not asking.”

  “That’s because in my illustrious career as a nurse I have too often seen how one person can exert control over another so insidiously the chance to leave is gone before the person realizes it.”

  “So, you do understand. Thank god.”

  Lainie nodded and held up a pair of scrubs. “This is your exit wardrobe. You’ll merely be another ED employee to anyone who sees you. We keep extras of these around here in case patients’ clothes get ruined or whatever. And I managed to snag a set. We’re so busy today no one’s going to give you a second look anyway.” She held up an employee badge and waved it in front of Lainie. “One of the idiot orderlies dropped this somewhere so, lucky me, I found it and can attach it to your clothing.”

  Lainie looked at her friend. “I don’t know how to thank you. Even after I walked away from our friendship—"

  “As far as anyone up here will know, you got up and walked out of here. You weren’t forced. Period. Sonny Fitzgerald won’t be able to prove any different. And speaking of walking, you’ll have to move semi-decently until we get out of here. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll make myself do it,” Lainie answered, her voice fierce. She wasn’t going to blow this one chance.

  “Good. Take this pill first. It usually starts to work at once and will dull the pain enough to help you move. Come on. Let’s get you into scrubs. Then we’re going to get you to a back entrance where my brother will pick you up. I know where all the security cameras are to avoid them. We only have to get to a rear door. Can you do it?“

  Laine nodded. “I can do anything to get me away from him.”

  “All right, girlfriend. Let’s get it done. Here. Take this pill.”

  Lainie swallowed the meds then let Drea help her into the scrubs. Was this really going to work?

  * * *

  When his cell phone rang, Zane Halstead was standing in the living room of his month-to-month apartment checking to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. The furniture was rented, so nothing to worry about there. This morning he’d packed up the truck with everything he owned, which wasn’t all that much, and he was in the middle of doing one last check.

  Renting a place in Tampa near his sister hadn’t been a much better idea than going home to the horse farm his folks owned in Ocala. He’d been far from ready to leave the SEALs, and dealing with the injuries that forced him out wasn’t helping. He’d gone to the VA hospital here like the doctors at Walter Reed had ordered and tried to do what he was supposed to. After weeks of physical therapy, his arm and hip were as good as they were going to get, but that wasn’t enough to keep him with the Teams. When that last mission had gone to shit, and he’d been badly wounded, he’d known his days in the service were numbered. But knowing it and dealing with it were two different things.

  Dr. Andrew Ryan, the shrink they’d sent him to, wasn’t half bad. He’d recently transferred to the VA hospital in Tampa from another posting and seemed to know more than most what Zane was going through.

  “You need a new purpose,” he kept telling him. “There are plenty out there.”

  Yeah, right. The problem was finding one that was the right fit.

  He really had no idea what he was going to do next. He’d never developed a serious relationship, so he had no woman waiting to help him rebuild his life. His most marketable skill was identifying and killing bad guys. He knew some former SEALs had gone to work for security agencies but, for whatever reason, that hadn’t appealed to him. So, he’d hung around doing not much of anything, driving himself nuts and wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his life and how he’d fit into society. And then he got The Email, from Alex Rossi, sheriff of a small county at the foothills of the Crazy Mountains.

  The only thing he knew about that area was that another former SEAL, Hank Patterson, had built a security agency out there called Brotherhood Protectors. All the agents were former military, mostly SEAL. Despite the fact that a friend had highly recommended them, he still had no interest in that kind of situation. So, what did the local sheriff want with him?

  He clicked on the link to open the email.

  Don’t delete this before you read it. I’m a former SEAL myself, and rebuilding the sheriff’s office here. Long story. Like you, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself after the Teams, and I was lucky to land this job, even though the place is a mess. I’m hoping I can talk you into at least a trip out here to look the area over. You might find a new purpose, even if it’s nothing more than raising horses, which are in high demand. I hear you’re very good with horseflesh. There’s a house on six acres you can use rent free while you look the place over. It comes with two horses that need a caretaker soon. If you’re interested, my phone number’s beneath my signature. Give me a call. It’s my cell, so I answer all the time.

  Alex Rossi.

  Zane thought it was the craziest thing he’d ever seen or heard. This guy contacting him out of the blue like this? But the more he looked at the email, the more he thought, Why the fuck not? He wasn’t doing himself or anyone else much good hanging around in his own private pity party. Maybe a change of scenery would do him some good. If he didn’t like it, he didn’t have to stay. Right? And maybe, away from his family who tiptoed around him, and his friends who treated him as damaged goods, he might actually find a life again. Maybe.

  The first thing he did was an Internet search for the man, stunned at what he saw. Alex Rossi had been appointed sheriff by the county commissions when the previous sheriff had been sent to prison, and for a horrendous reason. A group of uber wealthy men for twenty years had made a game of raping young teenage girls, always approaching from behind so their identity was concealed. Threatening death if they reported it, on the chance that a victim might have some clue as to who they were.

  Apparently the former sheriff had been paid off to overlook things. Worse than that, to let the men know when a girl had enough courage to report it. It seemed Sheriff Alex Rossi had cleaned up the mess and made sure the men were punished. But what really stuck out was the fact that Bill Schroder, Rossi’s father-in-law, was a member of the wealthy elite participating over the years in
the rapes. A situation in which Micki, unbeknownst to her father, had been a victim when she was fifteen. And that her father been killed to shut him up. It had been Alex’s big case right after he came on the job.

  The information that made his head spin was the fact that after the killer was arrested and half the sheriff’s deputies fired, Alex turned around and married Micki Schroeder. Knowing all of this he couldn’t wait to meet this woman who had survived a rape, the knowledge that her father belonged to the group, was murdered by them, and survived it all to marry the sheriff. Apparently she’d also supported him in the restructuring of his office and setting a new tone for it. A man certainly couldn’t ask for a better leader.

  The thirty-minute phone call gave him a good feeling about the man and, an hour, later he had agreed to the crazy idea—crazy like the mountains?— said he’d stay in the house, and set about informing his family. It was a testament to how concerned they were about him that neither his parents nor his sister tried to talk him out of it. Well, maybe he’d figure out the rest of his life in Montana and everyone, including himself, could breathe again.

  He was getting ready to walk out for the last time when his phone rang. The readout had his sister’s name on it.

  “Drea? What’s up? Aren’t you at work?”

  “I am, but Zane? I really, really need your help. And please don’t say no until you hear it all. Okay?”

  “Jesus, girl. What have you gotten yourself into now?”

  He listened while she laid out her story for him, especially Lainie Taggert’s condition and why her fear of Sonny Fitzgerald was so intense. As she outlined the plan, his stomach knotted, and his fingers tightened their hold on the phone.

  “You’re kidding me, right? This is a joke to yank my chain.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Her voice was low. “I’m dead serious. Dead, by the way, being what this woman will be if we don’t pull this deception off and sneak her out of Tampa. Please, Zane. She has no place else to turn. “

  He wanted more than anything to say no, but it wasn’t who he was. He knew this last-minute call from Drea might screw up his plans. He also knew she wouldn’t ask unless she was desperate. Take a strange woman to Montana with him to a situation he wasn’t even sure would work? What the hell?