Hard to Come By

by Laura Kaye

  “Hey, Emilie, I—”

  “Crap. I’m sorry, Derek. I’m going to have to call you back. I’m getting pulled over by a cop. Not sure what I did.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Emilie said as she glanced in her mirror. She was on a busy three-lane road heading out of Baltimore, and there was no curb lane to safely pull over. “Listen, Derek,” she said as she finally turned into the parking lot of a small industrial park. “I’m kinda in the middle of something today, aside from getting pulled over, I mean. I’ll call you when I can, but I gotta go.” She put the gearshift into park and glanced in the mirror again. The officer appeared to be looking at something on his dash. One of those squad car computers? Probably. He was likely running her license plate.

  “Where are you, Emilie?”

  “Um,” she said, distracted by the search for her registration in the glove compartment. “Heading out of Baltimore. Shit,” she said, fumbling the paper. It fluttered to the foot well in front of the passenger seat, forcing her to undo her seat belt. Leaning way over, she finally grabbed it. As she pushed herself back up, her elbow knocked her cell out of the cup holder and onto the floor below her feet. “Damnit.”

  “Emilie,” Derek said, concern creeping into his tone. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m having a day here,” she said, glancing behind her again to find the cop getting out of his car. Damn. If she fooled around reaching for her phone, would that seem suspicious to him? No sense taking the chance. She planted her hands at the ten and two on the steering wheel. “Um. The officer’s coming, Derek, but I dropped my phone. Just hang on until I’m done, okay?” She unrolled her window and looked at the approaching man in her sideview—

  Wait. That was Jeffers. Why would a detective pull her over for a traffic violation? Emilie’s instincts sprang to life and made her scalp and neck prickle.

  When he neared the window, she turned to look at him. “Detective Jeffers, did I—”

  A gun appeared in her face, sending Emilie’s heart beating into her throat. “Unlock the back door.”

  She made some sort of incoherent noise of fear and with shaking fingers hit the unlock button. “I—I don’t understand,” Emilie said, her voice breathy and tight.

  “Emilie, who’s there? What’s happening?” Derek said in her earpiece, his tone lethally serious. Her mind raced, trying and failing to find an answer to that second question. The whole thing was so surreal, she was having a hard time processing it.

  Jeffers got into the backseat right behind her and slammed the door. Emilie jumped. “Do exactly what I say and maybe you won’t get hurt,” he said.

  “Emilie!” Derek said.

  Shaking, she turned to look at Jeffers, but the gun’s muzzle planted itself against her temple. “Did I tell you to turn around? Oh, and you won’t be needing this.” He ripped the earpiece from her ear and threw it out the window.

  “Ow,” she said, cringing and cupping her ear.

  “Where’s your phone?” he asked, his voice one step up from a growl.

  “I knocked it on the floor when I got the registration out of the glove box. I think it went under the seat,” she said, her voice shaky, her throat dry. If he took the phone, he’d find out she was mid-call. What would he do then? Cut off her lifeline to Derek for starters. Oh, God, Derek, don’t stop listening, she thought, hoping he’d be able to realize she was in trouble.

  “Good enough,” Jeffers said. “Now drive.”

  “OH, FUCK,” MARZ said, jumping to his feet and pressing his cell harder to his ear. The sound from their call had blinked out for a second, but then returned, more distant and tinny than before. What the hell was going on?

  “What’s the matter?” Charlie said, looking up from his computer.

  Fear and anger skittered down Marz’s spine and heated his blood. He muted his phone’s mic. “Go get the guys, Charlie. I think Emilie just got carjacked by a cop.”

  “What?” Charlie said, rising.

  “Go, Charlie. Hurry.”

  Charlie bolted across the room and wrenched open the door.

  This couldn’t be happening. If something happened to Emilie, Marz would wonder if he’d brought the danger to her door until his dying day.

  Think, Derek, think. The tracking device! The one he’d planted on her car the night he and Beckett staked out her house. But he couldn’t open the app connected to the device while he was on his cell phone. Goddamnit, he needed the guys here and he needed them here right this minute.

  “Where are we going?” Emilie said, her voice brittle but her courage so obvious to Marz.

  “When you need to know, I’ll tell you. Now drive and shut the fuck up. And if you do anything erratic to attract attention, I’ll put a bullet through your brain and then find your brother and mother next,” the male voice said. Jeffers, he thought he’d heard her say?

  The threat made Marz’s breath catch in his throat. A long silence followed during which Marz nearly lost his mind.

  Across the gym, the door burst open and the whole team streamed in, Beckett at the lead. Every man’s face bore the same mix of emotions—concern, anger, and a readiness to fight. For him—and for what he cared about.

  Marz lowered the phone, yanked a cord from underneath a pile on the desk, and used it to connect his cell to the computer’s speakers. Then he put the call on speakerphone, sure to keep the microphone off.

  “Was on the phone with Emilie when she got pulled over by a cop,” he said as his friends, old and new, gathered around the desk. “She called him Detective Jeffers. From the sound of it, he demanded entrance to her car, threatened her, and is making her drive somewhere.”

  Making. The ways in which someone might compel such a thing were too infuriating to contemplate, but Marz’s mind was filled with images of some monster holding a gun to Emilie’s lovely brown waves.

  “I’ll call Miguel and see what he knows about this Jeffers,” Nick said, whipping out his phone.

  Marz looked at Beckett—and found total, lethal engagement and commitment hardening the angles of the man’s face. “I need you,” Marz said, his brain momentarily glitching on what to do next.

  “Name it,” Beckett said in an unwavering statement of solidarity that made Marz feel, for that instant, that they were their old selves again. Back before the ambush and Marz’s amputation. Best friends and brothers who had one another’s back no matter what.

  “I put a tracking device on her car the night we watched her house. Can’t get to the app because our call is still connected. Don’t want to hang up in case they say anything else.”

  “I’m on it,” Beckett said, finger flying over the screen of his cell. Beckett had the app, too, as he’d bought the devices.

  Marz nodded, his heart was a freight train in his chest, and each fast chug seemed to rip at something inside him.

  Please don’t take her from me, too. Hadn’t he lost enough? Hadn’t he been alone enough? Marz blew out a long breath. Tension grew so thick in the air, he could’ve cut it with a knife.

  “Shit, Miguel’s not answering,” Nick said. “Told him to call me.”

  “I got it,” Beckett said, rounding the desk to stand beside Marz.

  Without a second thought, Marz unhooked his phone again. “That’s all we need. I’m going after her.”

  Beckett planted a hand on his chest and nailed him with a hard look. “Not alone, you’re not. I’m going with you.”

  “Let’s all go,” Nick said. “You’ve got no idea where he might be taking her or what you might be walking into.” He turned to Charlie. “Go down and tell Jeremy and Ike what’s going on. Tell Ike to stay alert.”

  “On it,” Charlie said, taking off across the room.

  “Good,” Marz said. “Then arm up and let’s roll.”

  Chapter 14

  Marz sat in the front passenger seat of Shane’s pickup, wound tight as a fucking top. Shane whipped around a turn in the road, and Mar
z grabbed onto the hand strap, fully appreciating that his friend was hauling ass. The only reason Marz hadn’t flipped his shit over the four minutes it’d taken them all to get their gear and pile into the truck was because the tracking app revealed that Emilie’s car traveled in an easterly direction across Baltimore. In other words, in their general direction.

  “People we care about being attacked is becoming a pattern I’d like to break,” Easy said from the backseat, his voice like gravel.

  “No fucking lie,” Beckett said from right behind Marz’s shoulder, one big hand gripping the leather of the seat.

  Marz couldn’t agree more, but he was concentrating too hard to make small talk. He held his cell against his ear so tightly the cartilage was starting to ache, and his eyes remained glued to the screen of Beckett’s phone, where the app showed Emilie’s car as a small blue dot moving across a map of Baltimore City. “Turn left at the next light,” Marz said. “Let’s try to intercept them before they get to their destination. Wherever that is.”

  “Roger that,” Shane said.

  From his cell phone, Marz heard a male voice bark, “Turn here.”

  “I can’t get over,” Emilie said.

  “You will if you want to live,” the man said. “Turn here.”

  Hang in there, Emilie. You got this. Just stay calm and do what he says. I’m on the way. Marz’s chest throbbed against the noxious mix of sympathy, fear, and anger filling him.

  Horns blared through his cell phone speaker. She’d obviously had to cut someone off. Marz wished he could see her to tell her how well she was handling this situation. Damn how he hoped he’d get the chance.

  Watching the map, Marz saw Emilie’s car turn north. Marz and the team pursued for a few more minutes, pushing hard to gain on them and adjust to further turns Emilie’s car made.

  Instinct pricked at something in his mind until Marz frowned and zoomed the map out a little. Ice sloshed into his gut. “Shit a fucking brick,” he said. “What are the goddamned chances that they’re headed toward the neighborhood where Church’s storage facility is located and not going there?”

  “None. Tell me what to do,” Shane said. “Can we cut them off?”

  Marz studied the map and tried not to think about that fucking storage facility. The one where Charlie had been held captive. The one where he’d seen several women locked up in the basement, too. Given that their badly outnumbered team had witnessed Church load the unconscious bodies of nine women onto boats belonging to drug dealers, it didn’t seem a stretch to think that being sold or traded away was the likely fate for women the gang held as captives.

  That couldn’t happen to Emilie. That wouldn’t happen to Emilie. Over Marz’s dead body.

  He bit out directions that Shane followed to a tee.

  Marz had already sacrificed himself once for those he cared about. And he was more than willing to do it again.

  EMILIE HAD NEVER been more terrified in her life. Of the gun muzzle planted against the base of her skull. Of the dirty bastard of a cop sitting in her backseat. Of the possibility that her phone had dropped Derek’s call and she really was totally and completely alone in this situation.

  A situation somehow related to her brother.

  A situation his actions had somehow caused.

  Anger and resentment rushed through her veins, and she reveled in their hardness and their heat. Those emotions strengthened her and sharpened her senses, and so were much more useful than the terror and powerlessness that she’d allowed to sneak in and take over. No more.

  Even if Derek was still on the line, he wasn’t here to help her. Which meant she’d have to help herself. But how? She could jump out of the car and take a chance at Jeffers shooting her or another car hitting her. That seemed fraught with danger. She could somehow work the name of the street they were on into a comment or question to Jeffers in the hopes Derek would hear, but that was likely to make the cop suspicious. He might be crooked, but he wasn’t stupid, and he’d probably realize why she’d said it—namely, that she was trying to communicate with someone else.

  What else?

  Maybe she could ignore his directions and make a turn he hadn’t commanded, buying her more time before they got wherever he was taking her. But if he shot her or busted that gun against the back of her head, she was going where he wanted whether she wanted to or not.

  But would he really shoot her while she was driving and he was in the car? Emilie didn’t know, but it was a choice between bad options and really, truly terrible options.

  There had to be something, didn’t there?

  Heaving a shaky breath, Emilie glanced in the rearview mirror. “Does this have to do with my brother? Maybe I can help.” A mix of old commercial establishments and run-down rowhouses lined the street, but she wasn’t familiar enough with all of Baltimore to know exactly where they were.

  The muzzle jabbed against the back of her head, making her suck in a breath. “You have a comprehension problem, Ms. Garza?”

  “It’s just,” she said, hearing the shake in her voice even as she pushed on. “Maybe I can help without all this.”

  He chuffed out a humorless laugh. “Oh, I’m counting on you helping, sweetheart.” The malice in his tone unleashed goosebumps all over her body.

  Emilie inhaled to try again, knowing she was treading on thinner and thinner ice.

  Screeching wheels against pavement. Blaring horns. Emilie gasped and her gaze flew to the rearview again.

  A big black pickup truck shot out of a cross-street and fishtailed onto the road behind her.

  Jeffers lurched around in his seat and bit out a curse. The gun jabbed harder into her head. “Drive faster or die.”

  Emilie flattened her foot against the accelerator and the car jerked forward. Red glowing taillights formed a wall ahead at a stoplight. “There’s traffic,” Emilie said.

  “Go around it,” Jeffers growled.

  “What?” she said. “How am I—”

  “Just drive around the fucking cars!” he roared in her ear.

  She flinched and gripped the steering wheel so hard her fingertips went numb. Turned out she didn’t have to worry about how to stop or slow him down, because they were going to get broadsided running a red light. There was no way Emilie could do this. Unconsciously, her foot eased off the gas pedal.

  Jeffers came up over the back of the seat, hovering over her as he shouted in her ear. “Go. Just go. Do you fucking hear me? Drive!” He punctuated his words by jamming the gun’s muzzle against the side of her head.

  Emilie pressed her foot down on the pedal, veered out into the wrong lane to go around the stopped cars, and barreled into the intersection.

  “JESUS,” MARZ SAID, his heart lodged in his throat as he helplessly watched Emily’s Camry jerk out into the wrong lane and head for the intersection with no signs of stopping. Of course, she was just doing what Jeffers had told her to do. No, what he’d commanded her to do.

  “Fucking hell,” Beckett said under his breath.

  The Camry shot into the intersection. Into oncoming traffic. Amid a cacophony of angry horns and squealing brakes, one car skidded to a stop just in time, another spun out of control and slammed into the stopped car, sending it careening into the back quarter panel of Emily’s car. The Camry’s rear end swerved and she appeared perilously close to losing control, but then the car jerked straight again, rocking on its tires.

  “If I stop, we lose our gain, so hang on,” Shane said, abruptly shifting into the wrong lane to pass the stopped traffic, just as Emilie had been forced to do. Luck was on their side, because the combination of the accident and the changing lights cleared the way for them to cross the intersection without a problem.

  Jeffers’s continued shouting came through Marz’s cell phone as the guy berated and badgered Emilie into doing what he wanted.

  “Is there any way to cut him off from getting to the storage facility?” Shane asked, his focus and concentration like the sharp blade of
a knife.

  “No,” Marz said. “It’s about six blocks from here, but I don’t want to lose sight of her. Not with the cop forcing her to take these risks. If she loses control of the car . . .” Marz shook his head, his gut souring. “Stay with her.”

  “Okay,” Shane said.

  Up ahead, the Camry flew through the tail end of a yellow light. Before they could get there, a tractor trailer started across the intersection.

  “Sorry, Marz,” Shane said as he nailed the brakes, sending them all jerking forward.

  Gaze fixed on the map on Beckett’s phone, Marz said. “They’re straight ahead. Go when you can.”

  When the light finally turned green, Shane gave an impressive demonstration of aggressive driving, passing everywhere he could until they got around all the law-abiding drivers and were flying up the busy road.

  “They’re turning,” Marz said, his gaze lifting from the map to scan the street ahead of them. Sure enough, about a block up, a white car was making a lefty across the road—and into one of Church’s four front establishments called U-Ship-n-Store. “Just once it would be nice not to be right,” he said. “It’s the goddamned storage facility.” Who the hell knew how many Churchmen they might face inside.

  “I got ’em,” Shane said. “Get ready.”

  A lethal, focused calm flooded through Marz, and the feeling was like an old friend. It was the feeling he’d always gotten before an op when they’d still been in the Army, his body’s way of cutting through all the bullshit and paring things down to the essentials. He palmed his gun, itching to get off the busy strip, where an exchange of gunfire wouldn’t be as risky to bystanders as being out on the open road.

  They came to a rough stop across from the storage facility’s parking lot, nonstop traffic coming the other way, preventing them from turning. “Come on,” Marz said as he watched Emilie’s car careen around the back of the main building. He put his hand on the door handle, one command to his muscles away from jumping out and making a run for it.

  Fingers gripped his shoulder. Marz jerked his head around to find Beckett watching him and fully aware of what he’d been planning. He gave a single shake of his head. “Patience. We’ll get her, but let’s be smart so we don’t lose any of us.”