by Lori Ryan
She licked her dry lips ad raised her voice. “Murphy. It’s not too late to let us go. I know you don’t want to do this. I can see it. Your grandmother wouldn’t want you to do this either.”
He went still beneath the loft and she hoped she had his attention, had him thinking.
“It’s not too late Murphy. You can let us go and I can tell everyone we came here for a camping trip and Prentiss got lost. We just need to go find her. She’ll come to me if she hears me calling and we can put this behind us.”
Still nothing from Murphy.
She softened her tone. “Your grandmother wouldn’t want this, Murphy. She wouldn’t want you to do this.”
“I did it for her,” he said quietly, his voice breaking and thick with emotion. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No one was supposed to be hurt.”
Lyra heard the sound of soft sobbing from below. She prayed that meant he would help them. She needed to get her girls out of here before Damon came back. Somehow she knew, deep in her gut, that once Damon was back, there wouldn’t be any getting out of this. “No one has to be, Murphy. Let us go and we can all go find Prentiss. I’ll tell everyone we went camping. You came with us. She got lost and you helped me find her.”
“I already found her,” he called up.
Lyra’s heart froze, dread whirling and circling through her in a dizzying sickening spin.
“You found her?” Lyra didn’t look at Alyssa as she asked the question.
“She made it to a neighbor’s cabin. She’s inside with them. I couldn’t get to her.”
The relief that coursed through Lyra was so sudden and overwhelming, she felt flush and weak. Prentiss had made it to safety. Whether she got help to her and Alyssa in time, at least one of her girls was safe. It was a moment of hope in what seemed an endless stream of darkness.
The moment was short-lived.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Luke,” Samantha’s voice came through the speakerphone when they were minutes outside of the small town holding the cabin Prentiss had fled to. “Jax got me Damon’s credit card information and I was able to get into his accounts online. It wasn’t that hard. His login info was Qwerty and his birthday.”
Qwerty was a common piece of passwords used by people too lazy to come up with something unique. It was basically the six letters on the top left-hand side of any keyboard. Adding his birthday did little to ward off a brute force attack at cracking it.
Sam didn’t wait for his response. “Damon gassed up at a gas station thirty minutes from the cabin you’re headed toward. The charge went through about forty minutes ago. He should be at the cabin by now.”
Luke cursed. They were five minutes out from the cabin Prentiss was in and he still needed to track her movements back to where Lyra was being held.
“I’ve sent Zach and Logan your way, but they’re behind you by about an hour or more.”
“Thanks, Sam.” Luke disconnected. As much as he wanted backup, having Zach be so far away was a good thing. If he got caught up in what was about to go down, his career would be shot to hell. It was better for Chad and Luke to handle this and try to explain their way out of shit with the local police department after the fact.
He dialed the number for the man who’d found Prentiss and listened to it ring. He needed to buy some time so the man didn’t get suspicious and call the police.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Luke Reynolds, Prentiss’s uncle. How’s she doing?”
The old man spoke softly. “She was really worn out. She fought it, but she’s fallen asleep on the couch with my wife. I think once she warmed up and got some food in her stomach, she couldn’t fight it anymore.”
“Good.” Luke was relieved to hear it. It was better Prentiss wasn’t awake and anxious about her mom and Alyssa. And the man was right, she probably desperately needed to sleep right now. “Listen, we’ve hit a roadblock here. There’s an accident they’re working on clearing, but it’s going to slow us down for a bit.”
He apparently didn’t sound as nonchalant as he thought he had. There was a heavy pause on the line, one thick with the knowledge that something wasn’t right.
“Mr. Reynolds, I served in the 23rd Infantry for three years in Vietnam and that was only the tip of my service. I saw plenty of action before my retirement. I don’t know what’s going on, so I’m just going to tell you this. If you’ve got something you’ve got to go take care of, that little girl’s going to be safe here with me. You rest assured about that.”
Luke closed his eyes, thankful for his years in the service in a way he’d never been. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be there for her as soon as I can.” He wasn’t going to offer details but he appreciated the man letting him know.
Chad didn’t comment, even though the phone had been on speaker. He offered a raised brow with a little nod and kept right on driving toward their destination. They had family to rescue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The door to the cabin flew open, slamming into the wall behind it, making Lyra jump from her spot in the loft.
Damon’s deep voice echoed as he spoke. He shoved someone toward the couch on one side of the room. The woman’s hands were bound and there was a hood over her head.
Lyra couldn’t make out much from where she sat, but it only took Lyra a moment to process what was around her torso. Explosives. A lot of explosives.
“What the hell did you do, Murph? What do you mean the girl’s at another cabin?”
Lyra held her breath and locked eyes with Alyssa. The little girl had fallen asleep for some time, but she was awake and alert now. Damon stood in the part of the cabin they could see from their position in the loft, but Murphy remained out of sight.
Damon’s eyes were swollen and angry looking. Whoever he’d just brought in had fought him. Hard.
“Damon, man,” Lyra heard Murphy say, “this isn’t right. I didn’t sign up for this. This is crazy. We can’t—”
Damon strode forward, moving out of Lyra’s sight, but the crack of a fist on flesh was unmistakable and Murphy’s grunt of pain confirmed he’d been the one to receive the blow. As if it could have been any other way.
“We do this and we do it through to the end.” Damon’s voice was low and deadly. There was a kind of calm to it that belied the situation, making him all the more frightening. “There isn’t any turning back now.”
The last of this was said with the kind of sneer in his tone that said he’d listened to Lyra trying to talk Murphy into letting them go. Damon threw her words back at Murphy. There isn’t any turning back now.
“Now, tell me where the hell the girl is.”
Murphy relayed what had happened with Prentiss.
“You let a four-year-old get the better of you?” The anger whipping through Damon’s voice seemed to lash at the air, palpable and terrifying. If Lyra thought she’d been frightened before, she was mistaken.
Murphy didn’t try to justify his actions. “She’s in a cabin a few minutes from here. I saw her through the windows, but she’s with some people. We can’t go after her, Damon. They’re an old couple. We just need to let her go, get the auction done with and then take off.”
Lyra could read Murphy’s mind. He was thinking of his grandmother. He’d said he did this for her, but she didn’t know at all what that could mean. Money. It had to be money, but for what, she didn’t know.
Still, going after someone else’s grandparents—innocent people who’d only had the misfortune to be in the wrong cabin in the woods when her daughter fled their captors—wasn’t sitting well with Murphy.
Despite his obvious reservations, Lyra didn’t have to wonder if Murphy had the backbone to stand up to Damon. She knew he didn’t have it in him. He was done. They’d argued before, but Murphy had backed down at all turns, and she knew he would do the same now. He wasn’t going to be the one to get them out of this.
“I don’t give a fuck who the hell they are. You get over there and you
take care of them. All of them. I’ll run the auction from here and then we’ll close this shit down and get to the boat.”
There was silence. If Lyra wasn’t sure he’d just told Murphy to kill Prentiss, she might have given more thought to the mention of a boat. As it was, her heart seemed to have fallen into her belly and she felt only an overwhelming dread at the thought of Prentiss out there and alone. Of Murphy coming to find her after she thought she was safe. After she’d thought she had escaped this hell.
“Go!” Damon shouted, and Lyra heard shuffling as Murphy presumably moved toward the door.
She closed her eyes. She was out of ideas. It was down to a miracle now. In her head, she pictured Luke.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Luke reminded himself to buy Prentiss an endless supply alarm clocks and DVD players to disassemble to her heart’s content when he got them out of here. The girl had marked her path well.
How she’d kept her head and marked the path despite how frightened she must have been, he didn’t know. He did know she was one hell of a girl, and he was so damned proud of her.
He and Chad moved through the woods from one pile of stones or sticks to another, being careful not to miss any in the dark.
Luke raised a hand to the near-silent Chad. The man had been an Army Ranger. Luke had always heard their ability to melt into the darkness, to hide in plain sight, was crazy, but the way that man could move his large frame through the woods without a sound was unreal.
Chad came up beside him and Luke pointed. Lights. The outline of a one or two room cabin ahead. And two cars in the open space in front of it.
Voices rose from inside, the heat in them making the argument going on inside the small space apparent. Good. If they were arguing, they would be off their game.
The door opened, light spilling out as a man exited. The door shut behind him before Luke could make out anything inside the space.
He and Chad moved back, splitting apart and taking cover in the brush.
The man raised his hands to the top of his head in a move that telegraphed frustration and slowly circled as though arguing with himself now. When he turned, the outline of the rifle on his back became more apparent.
For one split second, Luke swore the man was staring directly at them, but he looked away.
Whoever he was, he turned back at the cabin for a full minute, before cursing and heading for a spot in the woods not ten feet from Chad and Luke.
The look that passed between the two men was unnecessary. They backtracked silently, staying ahead of the man with the rifle as they circled to come around on either side of him.
When he passed between them, Lyra’s neighbor’s grandson didn’t know what hit him. Luke stepped in to take him down and he and Chad carted the man off, away from the cabin, deeper into the woods. Deep enough to make him talk.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Wild eyes looked back at Luke.
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth and you’re going to keep it shut, you hear me?” Luke ground out.
Murphy Lawson nodded, as defeat and resignation washed over his expression.
“It’s over, Murphy. The only way for you to help yourself now is to help us out.” Luke eased up on the pressure on the man’s mouth and Murphy nodded again.
It was almost comical how much Chad dwarfed Murphy as he held him, arms pinned at an awkward angle behind his back.
Luke let his hand drop from his mouth and stepped back as Chad continued to hold Murphy secure. “Are Lyra and Alyssa in the cabin?”
“Yeah,” Murphy choked out. “And your niece. I swear to God. I didn’t want any of this to happen. He said he just needed to scare Billy into keeping quiet. He said it was all for show. Things just got so out of hand.”
Murphy was blubbering like a baby now, and it wasn’t attractive.
"Damon? He has Naomi in the cabin, too?”
Murphy nodded.
“Tell me where everyone is.” Luke needed positions and as much information as he could get.
“Lyra and Alyssa are tied up in the loft.”
“Is it on the left or right side when you enter the cabin?” Chad asked quietly from his position behind Murphy.
“The left. Up a ladder. They’re not hurt, I swear. I didn’t touch them.” His eyes flicked away from Luke and Luke knew he was lying. His blood turned to lava and rage tried to take over, but he shoved it aside. He’d give this guy so much hurt and pain when this is over for each hair that was hurt on his girls’ heads. For now, he needed to focus.
“Where are Damon and Naomi?”
A buzzing in his pocket made him stop and pull the phone out. Another alert from Damon. The online auction had begun. Bidding would end in thirty minutes.
Shit. He hoped like hell Samantha was taking over for him. He’d given her his login and password and told her to bid whatever the hell she needed to. He was going to see to it that Damon was never paid.
He shoved the phone back into the pocket of his BDUs.
“Now,” he looked back at Murphy with eyes he knew would tell the man he was running out of time. “Tell me exactly where everyone is in the cabin.”
Murphy did, explaining that Damon had been on the lower level in the living room with Naomi on the couch at the back of the room.
“But, he…” Murphy seemed to stumble over his words and Luke felt a hard knot form in his gut. “He…”
“He what?” he growled. If Naomi was dead, he’d tear this man’s head off. To hell with the consequences. His niece was everything to him.
“He’s got a bomb strapped to Naomi.” The words rushed out of Murphy. “I swear to God, I didn’t know anything about that. It wasn’t in the plan.”
This man was going to need to beg God instead of continuing to swear to Luke. Maybe God would have mercy on him. Luke sure as hell wouldn’t.
Luke let his lips curl into the kind of feral grin he hadn’t felt since he’d left the teams. “A bomb, huh?”
Murphy’s nod was quick and Chad caught Luke’s eyes and smiled.
Explosives. Now that was something a SEAL could deal with.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
When Murphy had told them all he could, Luke and Chad secured him to a tree with materials from the Mary Poppins backpack Chad had slung over his shoulders.
They moved into place, with Chad heading up the side of the cabin to enter through the window at the top of the loft. Log cabin construction had the advantage of providing foot and hand holds they could use to their advantage. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Chad’s backpack also contained climbing equipment, ropes, and a small metal piston for breaking out the glass window.
Time to rethink his assessment of the man’s addiction to gadgetry. Luke set the charges on the hinges of the door. He’d like to have body armor, but this would have to do. He moved around the side of the building.
Luke would bet Damon wasn’t willing to blow anything up while he was still in the building. The man was too in love with himself to risk that.
Luke was doubling down on that bet, choosing to go straight through the front door using a small charge of his own as a distraction. A low whistle told him when Chad was in place outside the window. He would use the sound of Luke’s small explosion to cover the sound of the breaking glass.
Luke froze. He could hear the quiet sounds of Naomi singing, her voice shaky. Chase all the clouds from the sky…
He closed his eyes. He’d sung that to her a hundred times. The memory washed over him as he opened his eyes and focused on what needed to be done.
“Shut the fuck up!” Damon’s angry shout cut of Naomi’s song and Luke took the moment to blow the charge.
In seconds, he was around to the front door and up, one swift kick taking the door the rest of the way down, weapon drawn on Damon.
“Drop it.”
Damon stood halfway between the couch and a table where his laptop sat open. He held a gun, pointing it first on Luke, but swinging i
t back toward the couch. Murphy had been wrong. That, or he’d lied. Not that it mattered.
Damon had moved Lyra and Alyssa to sit on either side of Naomi on the couch. His niece’s face was battered and bruised, blood crusting her chin and he swallowed against the urge to run to her, to assess the damage.
Luke burned at the site of the swelling on Lyra’s face. He wanted to rush to her and hold her tight. All of them. He wanted to pull them all into him and whisk them out of there. Alyssa was the only one not banged up. Her precious eyes met his and he saw hope burning there. Hope and a fierceness that made him proud.
“Not gonna happen.” Damon held up a small black garage door opener. “You shoot me and they’re dead.”
“That right, Damon?” Luke let a slow smile take over his features and wondered if Damon had ever seen a man go down from a head shot. He would sink to his knees instantly, before falling over in a boneless heap. And that wasn’t a dead man switch the asshole was carrying. If he wasn’t alive to push the button, that thing wasn’t going to go off.
That didn’t mean he wanted to gamble on a clean head shot right now. Not until his backup was inside the cabin.
Luke kept his eyes on Damon who had begun to ease back to the laptop. He didn’t look up, not letting his gaze give away Chad’s position as he moved into place above them in the loft.
“The auction’s not going to happen, Damon. We’ve got people working on shutting it down right now. They’ll move in on your bidders before they know what happened.”
It wasn’t exactly true, but he was hoping Samantha would be able to gather information on each of the bidders so the commander could move on them. It would be a bonus if they could take down more than just Damon and Murphy. Of course, everyone in the Brain Trust who had shared confidential information gleaned from their positions could be facing charges, as well. At the very least, there’d be civil suits and their jobs would be shot to hell.