“It could be something other than what you’re thinking. But the neighbors all said the same thing. Natalie has a varied social life, but she’s a good mother. One of the neighbors said ‘competent.’”
If she wasn’t neglecting Tasha, at least it was something.
“There’s more,” Dane said. “One of the neighbors reported a late-night argument with a visitor. And get this—apparently they were yelling in Russian.
“Natalie Stand doesn’t exist except for a driver’s license and the birth record for Natasha Stand. She has a rental agreement, utilities. But nothing else. No birth certificate for Mom, or where she went to school. After the neighbor told me he heard Russian from one of her visitors I followed a hunch. Found a sealed juvenile record in Chicago for a Natalia Standovich. First driver’s license photo she’s a purple-haired sixteen-year-old, but it’s her.”
“So she came here to start over?” Tate said. “Maybe the Russians found her. Like her past caught up with her.”
“Maybe.” Dane didn’t sound convinced. “The BOLO is out, and there’s a deputy sitting on her street in case she comes back.”
Tate wanted to nod but he was trying to avoid moving his head at all. “If she’d run, she would’ve taken Tasha.” He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the signs that Natalie had been hiding her Russian heritage. She might have just moved on from the life, but it was also possible it hadn’t severed all ties with her. Natalie—or Natalia rather—might be as involuntarily caught up in this as Tate was.
“Locke and his team are headed to the same place we are. The last place on the list they think those three people might be.”
“They’re probably on the road in a van.”
The videos were made on brief stop-offs. Tate wasn’t convinced they would find those people in time. Whoever was behind this wanted a Venezuelan released from jail and had a working relationship with the Russians. “If they keep them mobile it’s harder to find them because they’re constantly on the go. It’s what I’d do.”
“Then let’s pray they aren’t as smart as you.”
Dane parked just down the street from the library. The parking lot was full of vehicles, state police and government SUVs. The front door was open, and agents in vests were stationed by the door.
“They must have breached already.”
He cracked his door and listened to the far-off cries of, “Clear!” Then finally the last call came. “Found them!”
Tate crossed the parking lot with Dane. The Secret Service agent on the door was a former colleague. The man lifted his chin but said nothing as Tate stepped inside.
At least fifteen agents filled the small-town library. On the cushioned chairs in the center sat the missing people: Edward Frampton, Bethany Piers and Anthony Wills. All three were tied up and gagged. The agents began to assist in untying them. Across the room Director Locke had a man facedown on the floor. His knee was planted in the middle of the man’s back as he secured the guy.
Tate looked around for Liberty.
“I’m surprised you’re out of the hospital. I heard you hit your head pretty hard.” The female agent motioned to the bandage wrapped around his head.
“It’s the latest fashion, you know?” When she cracked a smile, he asked, “Alana, right?”
“Alana Preston.” They shook hands.
“You caught the guy holding these people?”
She nodded. “Not sure he’s the head of the snake, as it were. But at least we’re one step closer.”
“Any idea where Liberty is, Alana?”
“Agent Westmark wasn’t part of the breach due to her injuries. She waited outside by the vehicle.”
“I didn’t see her outside.” He frowned, but it hurt his head. Tate turned and found Dane still behind him.
“You okay, buddy?”
“Where’s Liberty?” He didn’t like not knowing where she was. When this was done, she would leave with her team and take his heart with her. Still, she had to be safe and alive in order to live the life she wanted.
He strode to the door and scanned the outside.
Where was Liberty?
* * *
She planted her feet, but the man continued to drag her down the street.
Liberty had tried everything to get away. All because she’d been an idiot and actually hidden when she’d seen Tate and Dane show up. She was such a chicken she couldn’t even face him. He was out of the hospital! She’d been torn between rushing over to help him, and what had been her final decision—crouching behind a car so he didn’t see her.
That was where this guy had found her. Hoodie pulled so low over his head it cast his face into shadows, he’d hit her with a stun gun. Liberty moved at the last second, so the blast wasn’t full force. She’d managed not to black out, but her legs crumpled and she’d hit the ground.
Then he felt around her. What on earth was he...? The man pulled out her gun and tossed it aside. So that’s what he’d been doing. Thank You, Jesus. She tried not to think about what could’ve happened when he hauled her to her feet.
Liberty swayed, and he grabbed her. The wound in her shoulder pulled like the stitches were going to rip out. She tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. The stun gun’s effects made her brain fuzzy, but she could still think. She just couldn’t do anything, or say anything. This man was going to take her away, and no one would know where she was.
She wanted to scream that she was being kidnapped and alert someone to what was happening. Tate was here. Why wasn’t he saving her?
The man dragged her to his car, all the while muttering and cursing about how heavy she was. Excuse her for enjoying a doughnut sometimes. He didn’t have to be mean about it.
Maybe Tate wasn’t going to come. She’d have to get herself out of this.
Liberty gathered herself enough to finally be able to cry out. And she did. She screamed like her life depended on it—which she figured it likely did. She hadn’t liked the feeling of not being able to speak at all, which added more volume and frustration to her fearful cry. The man slapped a hand over her mouth, muting the scream.
Liberty bit the hand.
He cried out and slapped her across the face. His grip on her never loosened, no matter how much she struggled to get away. Who was he?
“Let me go!” she yelled.
Please, God. Let someone hear me.
He lifted her off her feet and she flung her legs all over the place, trying to kick him. The man shifted her, then all of a sudden let go. Just dropped her. Liberty fell on her rump on the sidewalk. She cried out when pain shot up her spine.
Boots pounded the pavement, but she didn’t have time to turn around. The man’s body jerked, ready to run.
“Don’t think about it, Braden.”
Tate’s brother?
Liberty sighed with relief that Tate was here. He’d heard her.
She shifted on the ground and found Tate and Dane both behind her, guns drawn. Tate was so good-looking. She tried to remember why it had been so important to leave him at the hospital, all alone, instead of staying and taking care of him.
Adrenaline bled from her muscles, and her shoulder sagged. Neither of them looked at her. “Hey, guys.” She gave them a little wave. “Nice to see you.”
Dane chuckled. “You okay down there, Liberty?” He asked the question as he stepped past her and cuffed Tate’s brother.
Tate had a bandage around his head and looked as in need of a nap as she was.
She said, “Should you be out of the hospital?”
He held out one hand to her, his dark gaze on his brother. Liberty didn’t pull on it too much and got to her feet using mostly her own steam. He ignored her question. “What just happened?”
“Well, I was—”
“Not you,” Tate cut her off. “Braden.”
Dane pulled him closer to Tate, and Liberty slipped around behind him. She was hiding from his brother, but she’d had a hard day. Liberty wanted to sit down. Instead she hugged Tate’s waist from behind and leaned her forehead on the back of his coat. It was still damp. And cold. But the chill injected some life into her cloudy brain and woke her up a bit.
“Well?” Tate said. He shifted his arm so it held up her bad one, taking the weight off her wound.
Liberty didn’t look around him at his brother. She just listened as Braden said, “Look...I don’t know what I was doing.”
“You were kidnapping her.”
“I was helping!”
The sheriff made a scoffing noise. Tate’s whole body stiffened. “Explain.”
“They’re trying to kill you guys. I had to get Liberty away from it, so I figured if I just stunned her and found a place to stick her until it blew over then she’d be good.”
“She’s a Secret Service agent, Braden, with a team to protect her. Not to mention me.” Her heart swelled. Even if she didn’t want to accept it, she had help. A family of people around her who were ready to close in if she needed them. She only had to ask.
“You’re not up to it,” Braden said. “You got blown up.”
Tate shifted. “Who wants her dead?”
“You know who.”
“You work for the Russians?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Where is Natalia Standovich?”
Braden sucked in a breath. “How do you know about her?”
“I know a lot of things,” Tate said. “Like the fact that you have a daughter.”
“So?”
Tate repeated his brother’s word. “So.”
“What does it matter if I have a kid?”
Liberty swallowed. More people approached, which meant she needed to let go of Tate. She shifted away from his back, though she wanted more than anything to just live there. Maybe forever. Ugh. Why did he have to make her feel like this when no other man ever had? If he were anyone else, she could have walked away. Her reasoning would be the same, but it wouldn’t hurt this much. The pain was tangible.
Tate shifted and clasped her right hand. “Not so fast,” he whispered. “Not again.”
Locke strode over. “What’s going on?”
It was Dane who answered. “I’m taking Braden in. Attempted kidnapping.”
Locke lifted one brow and glanced at her. Liberty nodded. The director said, “We’ll follow you and bring the guy we have from the library. Are you set up to question two suspects separately?”
“Sure thing,” Dane said. “Whatever you guys need.”
“Did you find them?”
Locke glanced at her. “Yes. We rescued the missing three people, Agent Westmark. They’re safe now.”
Tate shook his head. “I still think it’s a smoke screen for something else.”
Beyond him, Liberty watched Braden smirk.
She said, “You know what it is.”
Braden shrugged. “So what if I do?”
He’d just tried to kidnap her—even if he claimed it was to protect her—so she didn’t particularly want to talk to him. But she needed to. Liberty put on her “agent” face, and said, “If you do, then you can tell us how to stop it. Tell us who you work for...or, better yet, help us bring down the whole operation.”
Braden paled. “I don’t...”
“That’s not going to happen,” Tate said. “We’re not trusting him, Lib. He just tried to kidnap you. Braden doesn’t come near you ever again, or he’s going to have more serious problems than the load he has right now.”
“What?” She pulled on his hand instead of setting it on her hip so he knew she meant business.
“No way, Lib. I’m not letting go.”
“Braden can help us.” Tate wasn’t worried his brother would get hurt, was he? “He can be the bait in our trap to bring them down.”
“There’s no way my brother’s being bait. He’ll sell us all out and pocket the cash on the deal.”
“It’s our only option for—”
“The answer’s no, Liberty.”
Director Locke said, “Actually, it’s a good idea.” He looked proud of her, in a weird way. It wasn’t a look she’d seen more than a handful of times. “Let’s do it.”
SIXTEEN
“Don’t doubt yourself now, Agent Westmark,” Locke said. “Your instincts are right on.”
Pride for Liberty, and how good she was at her job, swelled in Tate despite the fact that he didn’t think this was a good idea at all. She looked nervous. Tate tugged on her hand so she’d move closer to him, so she could feel him beside her as she carried on the conversation with her boss.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tate saw Dane’s attention was on him. The sheriff had better focus more on making sure Braden didn’t get loose. He might have his hands cuffed behind his back, but Braden was wily. He could slip away.
Tate glanced at Dane and saw the man smile. Tate shook his head at whatever the sheriff was thinking. It became apparent when Dane motioned to Tate’s hold on Liberty with a lift of his chin.
Tate shrugged one shoulder. Whatever pain obliterator he’d taken—painkiller was too benign for the warm numbness of what they had given him—had started to wear off. The throb at the back of his head was growing steadily more unavoidable. Kind of like a train bearing down on a car, stuck on the tracks.
No escape.
Too bad there was no time to worry about injury right now.
The conversation between Liberty and Director Locke ended, and the man walked off. Tate stepped closer to Braden. He felt Liberty flinch beside him but wasn’t about to let her go. He’d done that when he’d been unconscious, and he’d woken up in the hospital to the world he’d lived in the past year. The one where she was absent, and he was completely, unavoidably alone.
There was no way he would allow that to happen again.
Braden looked everywhere but at Tate. Still, he faced down his brother. They needed information. “Was that you in those videos?”
Braden said nothing.
“He said he was me.” Tate paused. “It was gonna be a different guy just now, but the one I saw looked like you.” Liberty was the one who’d pointed it out, but he didn’t want to draw attention to her right now. He wanted Braden’s attention on him. Not on Liberty, scaring her more than she already was.
“Did you do all of the others, or just that one?” Braden still wouldn’t look at him. “You’re in this deep enough. You were with those prisoners at one point, which means you aren’t going to be able to skirt out from under this one. Three strikes, isn’t it? Means you’re going away for a long time, Braden. You might as well tell me who has you involved in all this.”
“And get killed in prison?” Braden’s expression was incredulous. “No thanks.”
“So instead you’ll protect people who pull you into a threat on government personnel, like you don’t know that’s going to carry the maximum sentence?”
Braden’s eyes were hard now. “Maybe it was my idea.”
Tate tried to steel himself, but his body was just weak enough that he couldn’t hold it together. “Why?” His voice was full of unshed tears.
“You’re gonna cry for me now? Because I’m such a disappointment to big brother Tate, who never did anything wrong in his life.”
That was what Braden thought? “Look—”
“No, you look,” his brother said. “This ain’t about you. Much as you want to think everything revolves around your so-much-better life.”
“I’d have been fine if it didn’t involve me, but I’ve been pulled into this at every point. They planted the
flight recorder in my house, tried to kill me and Liberty—”
“I tried to stop it!”
“Because you cared so much that you needed to kidnap her?”
Braden let out a cry of frustration.
“I think you’re in deep and you needed leverage. Cold feet?” Tate waited to see what reaction his brother would give him, but it didn’t confirm or deny his suspicions. “Or you want to rise in the ranks so you were going to bargain your way up? Maybe secure a deal for Natalie, is that it?”
If his girlfriend was Russian, and she was perhaps on the run from her past, Braden could be involved in this as a way to secure her freedom. Oddly enough it would make Tate feel better, knowing his brother had done all this for noble reasons. At least then he would be able to understand it, instead of being completely perplexed over the fact that this man in front of him was actually his brother—his flesh-and-blood relative.
Otherwise Tate would spend the rest of his life wondering why.
But Braden gave him nothing. Not even when he was carted off to the sheriff’s office to be detained.
Liberty drove the two of them in one of the Secret Service vehicles, since Tate refused to let her out of his sight. She didn’t argue, but he didn’t miss the look she shot him. The frown. He knew she was worried about his mental state with this head wound, but he was keeping it together. As long as the concussion didn’t turn into anything more serious, he was more or less functional. He smiled to himself, then felt it leave his face. Didn’t she want to stay? She’d left him at the hospital and was probably only not arguing now because he was hurt.
“Lib?”
She pulled up outside the sheriff’s office and turned to him. “What?”
Her phone rang. “Hold that thought, I guess.” She didn’t look eager to know what he was going to say. She looked relieved.
Tate got out and waited by the hood for her to be done with her phone call, then walked inside with her. “Something important?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Are you okay?”
Tate shrugged, not feeling the need to share right now.
“Is that even the truth?”
Yuletide Suspect Page 14