Everyone waited for a response.
It was immediate.
“He’ll wait an hour for our response. He’s not making another deal.” Declan read another text. “He said he’ll disappear with the kids. We’ll never see them again.” His tortured gaze met Gabby’s.
There was a stretch of silence as everyone considered this.
“What”—Declan gritted finally—“do I tell him?”
“Use me,” a voice said from the hallway.
Ariana.
“Make the deal.”
29
Route 15 was an almost three hundred mile stretch of highway that began in San Diego and ended in Nevada. It took Gabby almost two hours from 210 to get to the junction right outside San Bernardino where the road cuts into the last big town of Victorville. After that, twenty-five miles of desert loomed before them.
Seated beside her in the Honda SUV was Ariana.
The rest of the team was tracking them at a safe distance. Kelso and Garrison choppered it to Baker, landed on an airstrip, and took a vehicle to the property where Ortega was suspected of holding Theo and Emma.
Nadia was already in the area. To Gabby’s surprise, she was Garrison’s analyst. Nadia confirmed Ortega's presence on the property using one of her high-tech Wasp drones.
She also confirmed that the crime lord had left in a convoy of three black Escalades. He and the kids were in the middle one.
Levi was with Declan in one vehicle while Bristow was with Migs in another. Once they had passed Victorville, their vehicles split up, taking different routes to the meeting location.
“I’m getting out of the vehicle first,” Gabby reminded Ariana.
“You shouldn’t have agreed to his demands,” Ortega’s sister said. “Theo needs his mother.”
“I’m not expecting Ortega to let him go,” she said as she made a turn into the dirt road that would lead to their rendezvous point. “It has always been me and Theo he wanted to destroy. I bet he was the one who ordered the hit on our car. Peter’s death wasn’t enough satisfaction for this perceived transgression.” All because Claudette had an affair with a dangerous person.
The ride was bumpy. The sun wasn’t going to rise for another few hours. Headlights shone over bushes and thirsty earth. This area between Victorville and Barstow was what Division called the desert somewhere on Route 15. The place was a keeper of secrets. The birds of prey circling above during high noon or the coyotes hunting at night bore witness to lovers burying their trinkets of true love, friends burying time capsules, or hitmen burying their victims.
“Ortega’s convoy is splitting up,” Nadia said. “Do you have a twenty on them, Kelso? My signal is breaking. Switching to satellite communication.”
“Roger that,” Gabby replied.
There was static on the line and then Declan’s voice came on. “Levi and I are on high ground at the rendezvous point. Vehicles are approaching.”
“Did they see you?” Garrison barked.
“Negative,” Declan replied. “Went dark when we turned off the main road.”
“Same. Moving into position,” Migs said. “Coming in from the east. They turned off their lights too.”
“Sync up SatComs,” Garrison ordered.
Gabby had taken a crash course on the fancy equipment Garrison unpacked for them to use. She had to fumble with some buttons before she got the devices in sync and saw where the others were.
“Can we keep these after this gig?” Nadia piped in.
“Focus, Powell,” Garrison snapped.
“Roger that, boss.” There was sarcasm in the analyst’s tone.
“I see headlights at five hundred yards,” Gabby said, putting in the device’s earpiece. “Everyone hear me?”
She heard varying affirmative answers.
“Stay frosty, Angel,” Declan said gruffly. “We got you covered.”
“Thanks.”
“Park behind those rock outcroppings. It’s the perfect spot for our plan,” Nadia said. “The terrain behind it is hard to set up. Doubt that’s where Ortega’s men will go.”
“She’s right,” Migs said. “They’ll take the West hills that have flatter elevated surfaces.”
“Amateurs,” Levi muttered.
Gabby blew out a breath to steady her nerves. Her overwhelming confidence in the team kept her calm all throughout the drive, but as the headlights of the vehicle bearing Theo grew closer, her anxiety spiked.
They were a strange squad—this mishmash of CIA, disbanded mercenaries, and LAPD cops. Declan and Migs had clashed earlier, but when there was doing to get done, they set aside their egos and worked like they hadn’t almost come to blows earlier.
And Nadia, how the hell did Garrison rope her into this? And why?
“Maybe I should go first,” Ariana whispered. “It’s me they want. You don’t have to get out of the car.”
“Hell, no,” Gabby said. “Ortega wants me dead, so we’ll make him think he’s getting everything he wants.”
“He won’t fall for it.”
“You’re forgetting your brother’s ego.”
“You have a point.”
Gabby parked the SUV right by the cluster of boulders that Nadia suggested. Close enough so when she opened the door, it would provide a shield. The way the land formation curved, it protected much of her rear. Keeping the headlights on pretty much blinded any sniper that wanted to shoot her from the front.
The other vehicle stopped, and the driver stepped out.
“Detective Woodward!”
She got out of the SUV. “I have Ariana with me. Where are my son and Emma?”
“Send Ariana over and I’ll give you your son back.”
“Are we honestly playing this game?” Gabby called out. “You know how this works. We trade at the same time.”
The driver appeared to confer with a passenger behind the driver’s seat. Gabby squinted her eyes. “Nadia, are the kids in the back seat? I think Theo is in the front passenger one. Can anyone confirm?”
“Looking through my scope,” Levi said. “Looks like Theo. Not a hundred percent. The headlights are glaring.”
“El Jefe agrees,” the driver said. He leaned into the open window of the car, giving instructions to the front passenger. Doors opened and two familiar silhouettes emerged.
“It’s Theo and Emma,” Levi said.
Her son immediately pulled Emma protectively to his side, but the driver ordered them to break up.
“You’re up Ariana,” she told Ortega’s sister who was already stepping out of the SUV.
Theo said something to the driver causing the man to point his gun at the boy.
Gabby’s throat closed.
“Jesus Christ, Theo,” Declan growled. “Stop mouthing off.”
“Move.” The driver waved his gun.
Ariana started walking, so did Theo and Emma.
They were slow. Cautious. Anxiety clotted the air between the vehicles and Gabby forced herself to breathe, her gun already drawn and pointed down, hidden behind the open car door.
Whoever took the first shot would dictate how this fight was going down; she had no doubt Ortega didn’t expect them to be alone.
Ego.
Or maybe he had no choice and this was his last stand.
Pop!
Pop!
Emma screamed and went down. Theo tried to catch her, sinking to his knees.
“No!” Gabby cried.
Gunfire erupted all around them.
Breaking cover, her own weapon raised, she started shooting at the driver who ducked behind his vehicle door. Ariana sprinted over to help the kids.
“You’re gonna be all right.” Theo’s panicked voice reached her. A force threw Gabby to the ground and an unholy pain seared through her chest, robbing her of her breath.
She was shot!
“Gabby!” Declan roared as anguish crackled in her ears.
Shit! Shit! She couldn’t breathe. Did the vest stop the bullet? Sh
e lay paralyzed on her back.
“Theo!” Emma cried.
Gabby blinked back the black dots from her vision and saw a brute of a man—not the driver—drag Theo to his feet, putting him in a chokehold and backing away from them, using her son as a shield.
“Kill her!” someone yelled.
The rush of voices in her ears retreated as her eyes focused on the muzzle of the gun Brute Man was pointing at her head, then pointing at Theo’s. Her own gun was out of reach.
Gabby’s eyes locked with Theo’s.
I love you. Her mind whispered.
Theo’s jaw jutted out in determination. Quick as a flash, his right arm came over Brute Man’s, twisting it and at the same time jerking his head forward and dislodging the arm around his neck.
Gabby fought through the pain in her body and rolled for her gun.
Bang!
Her eyes flew to Theo and his assailant, shocked to see her son had control of the weapon, Brute Man falling on his back.
“Fuck!” Gabby pushed up unsteadily to one knee. “Get over there!” She pointed to the shadow of the bushes and desert plants.
As a hail of bullets rained down on Ortega's vehicle, Theo and Ariana helped Emma towards cover. Gabby dove behind a boulder.
“We’ve neutralized our targets,” Bristow’s words joined the cacophony in her ear.
“How about Ortega? Is—” Gabby asked.
“Are you all right?” Declan’s exasperated voice cut her off. She had a feeling he’d been repeating that question for a while.
“Just peachy,” she retorted. “What do you expect? I got slammed by a forty-five caliber, looks like.”
“She’s got her bitch on,” Kelso said. “She’s fine.”
Despite the pain in her chest that made it difficult to draw in a breath, she smiled. Then she asked the all-important question. “So, who’s coming to get us?”
“Coming for you,” Declan told her. “Stay where you are and don’t move.”
“Aye, sir.”
30
“Walker, Bristow. Keep your eyes on Ortega's vehicle. Levi and I are heading in.”
“Copy that,” Bristow said.
“We need him alive,” Garrison told them. “If possible,” he added.
Declan didn’t answer him but double-clicked his mic to let Levi know he was breaking cover and for him to keep a look out for stray hostiles. The plan went totally FUBAR when Migs slit the throat of one of Ortega's snipers. It alerted the others on his crew that one of them was dead. That was when all hell broke loose and Emma got shot. Garrison said something about the biometric system these death squads were using as a way to respond to stealth attacks.
High technology was no longer the realm of the military or CIA. But technology would only get someone so far.
Declan and the rest of the team relied on old-fashioned special ops training and that was where their group excelled. As he trekked down the slope, skipping over the rocky terrain, he thanked his numerous deployments to Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush mountain range that prepared him for this day—the day when he fought to get his family back.
He passed the bodies of two of Ortega's men—one of them he recognized as Claudette’s missing bodyguard. He managed to instantly neutralize the man who shot Emma, but the muzzle flash of his M4 carbine revealed his position in the darkness. It took experience to shoot and dodge. But even that experience was shaken when he saw Gabby go down, when he saw a man hold a gun to Theo’s head, when he didn’t have a shot as the man pointed that same gun at the love of his life, getting ready to shoot her from five feet away. Then came his son’s heroic display of courage that saved his mother’s life and killed their attacker.
Taking a life would hit Theo hard, but Declan would be there for him and help him through it.
Ducking behind a boulder, he clicked his mic again, signaling Levi to come down, and scanned the area for lurking bad guys. Not accounted for was the driver—who was sitting inside the car—dead or alive—and Ortega.
As Levi hunkered beside him, Declan yelled, “Theo, how’s Emma?”
“We stopped the bleeding, but she’s passing out.”
“I’m on my way,” Bristow said through comms.
“Help’s coming,” he assured his son. He wanted to rush over and check on them, to make sure with his own eyes and hands that they were really okay, but he needed to eliminate the threat of Raul Ortega once and for all.
“Ortega! Come out of the vehicle with your hands up,” Declan shouted. “Tell that man of yours to do the same.”
There was no movement for long seconds.
“You’re surrounded. All your men are dead. Come out now. Don’t make me come and get you. That’s gonna piss me off.”
Finally, the rear passenger door opened. One leather shoe and then another stepped down, the man’s choice of footwear so out of place on the desert dirt. Raul Ortega appeared, wearing a suit jacket over a white unbuttoned dress shirt with gold chains hanging around his neck.
He held his hands up in the air.
Declan’s scope was on him. “Where’s your driver?”
“Dead.”
“Open the front passenger door—slowly.”
He did as he was told and revealed the body of his driver slumped across the seats.
Shouldering his rifle, Declan emerged from behind concealment and approached. “Come five feet closer and get on the ground, face first, hands behind your back.”
Ortega took one step and started to kneel.
Warning bells jolted through his system. “Closer, Ortega!”
He ignored Declan’s order and searched the rocks, getting fully on his knees. “Ariana,” he called. “I’m so sorry, hermana de mi corazon, lo siento mucho.”
The alarm in Declan’s gut went full throttle.
From his peripheral vision, he could make out Gabby’s approach. “Stay back, Gab! Something’s not right.”
“Raul!” Ariana emerged from the rocks, her arm outstretched. She spoke in rapid Spanish, telling her brother to surrender.
“Get up.” Declan snarled at the crime lord, but at the same time took a step back, glancing briefly at Gabby, something passing briefly between them.
“Tell her to stand back!” Migs shouted into their device.
“I’m picking up a signal and it’s” —Nadia’s urgent voice came over the satcom—“Get out of there! Now!”
Both Declan and Gabby scrambled for cover.
It was too late.
An explosion rocked the night.
Ortega was dead.
A large piece of the fucking Escalade landed on him.
As for Declan, his ears were ringing. Parts of his body bitched at him, but he was otherwise unharmed. Though it had been a close call, he didn’t pass out either. Gabby and Levi reached him at the same time and were speaking, but he couldn’t understand a word they were saying.
He was deaf.
Which was probably a good thing because Gabby seemed angry, grabbing him by his ballistic vest and yelling into his face as she leaned over him. He grabbed her too, and kissed her hard while the rest of the team milled around them.
He and Gabby were oblivious.
Hungry for each other.
The near-death experience had reduced them to an elemental need.
Gabby pushed away from him first and said something about Theo. She helped him up and there was his son diving into him and crushing him in a hug. When he leaned back, Theo was talking rapidly, eyes brimming with unbreached tears.
“Can’t understand you.” Declan pointed to his ears.
Theo gestured to where Bristow was working on Emma. Then his gaze landed on Ariana kneeling in front of the wreckage and sobbing. Migs was standing behind her, a hand on her shoulder.
The three of them walked over to check on Emma. She was pale, her smile pinched, but she was putting on a brave face.
Declan looked around for Levi and saw him with Kelso securing the scene. Garrison was
nowhere in sight.
The explosion could be seen from Route 15. Keeping this op under radar was wishful thinking. The highway patrol would come, and heads would roll.
He slung his arm around Gabby, and she leaned into him. Theo sat beside Emma, giving her encouraging words.
He was proud of his son and the man he was going to be.
If Gabby never saw another hospital for the rest of her life, it would be too soon. They’d been given a special room to wait their turn to talk to Emma. The doctor had already come in to tell them she was fine, but Mr. Haller, being family, went in to see her first. He had a lot to answer for. It took all of Gabby’s willpower not to punch him in the face.
There was a knock on the door and Emma’s father stepped in. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked miserable.
He exhaled heavily as he closed the door. “I don’t think my daughter will ever forgive me.”
No one said a word, but Gabby felt the rage vibrating from both Declan and Theo.
“I’m sorry, Theo. Ms. Woodward.” He flinched when he looked at Declan. “Mr. Roarke,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “I panicked. I knew what this group was capable of and I thought—”
“You should have gone to the cops.”
“The cops?” Mr. Haller chuckled bitterly. “You think they’d be falling over themselves to help a defense attorney? And the dirty cops? They’d snitch on me if I had. They nearly killed you and your partner. Mitchell is dead and I’m not sure about the other two.”
“Chen and Delgado are good guys.”
“You sure about that?” He shook his head, looking lost. “Anyway, I came here to apologize.” He looked at Theo. “Go to her. She needs you.”
Their son didn’t need a second prompting and left the room.
“They’re keeping her overnight. She wants Theo to stay with her. Her mom is flying in from Hong Kong as we speak.”
“Kelso is waiting to take you to the station,” Gabby said.
Mr. Haller gave a jerky nod. “I know. He’s in the waiting room.” Emma’s father put his hand on the knob and looked back at them again. “Thank you for getting my daughter back.” Then he left the room.
The Ex Assignment (Rogue Protectors Book 1) Page 27