A couple of the men who entered she recognized from when they’d kidnapped her and Tate at the mine. Braden was in the middle of the group, not looking happy. She felt Tate’s reaction to seeing his brother with them. But maybe he wasn’t here because he wanted to be. She still couldn’t believe he would do this to a brother who loved him.
The lead guy said, “Where’s the boss?”
The group of Russians and Braden parted, and a woman entered, wearing tight black jeans, a turtleneck sweater, four gold rings on her hands and a long unbuttoned coat with fur around the hood.
Liberty gaped. “Natalie.”
Tate turned his head to her and said, “I think this is Natalia Standovich.”
Liberty figured he was right. She didn’t look like the woman with the small child they’d interviewed at home, who didn’t know where her loser boyfriend was. This woman was the powerful head of a group of Russians who’d sent federal agents on a manhunt across four counties.
But why?
“Good,” she said. “Everything is in place, then.” More of an accent came through than she’d had before, completing the transformation of this woman from single mom back into Russian powerhouse.
Liberty tried to wrap her head around all of this. She hadn’t thought Braden was any kind of mastermind, but neither could she imagine this woman calling the shots. Clearly Liberty had underestimated her.
“My part is done.” The gunman Liberty had kicked started for the door.
Natalia nodded. “You’ll be paid.”
Each of the guys who had kidnapped her and Tate followed him out the door. Liberty was scared to think about what was going to happen next. God, help us. Where was Locke? Surely they’d seen what happened and would follow Braden’s GPS to get here and find them.
“Why?” Tate’s one-word question startled her.
Natalia shrugged. “As though I have time to explain all that to you. I’m a busy woman.”
“I’m sure you are,” he said. “But I want to know before I die. Why pin all this on me? Why draw teams of federal agents to this area? I know it’s a smoke screen, but it seems risky to me. What is worth you doing all that?”
“You think I would bring them all exactly where I don’t want to be seen?” She smiled. “You must not credit me with much intelligence, Mr. Almers. My plan is sound.” Natalia lifted her wrist and looked at the face of a huge watch, much bigger than she needed. She noticed Tate’s attention was still on her. “You like?”
Liberty gaped. Was she flirting with Tate?
Natalia sauntered over and crouched to show him the watch. “It belonged to my father,” she said. “Now it’s all I have left of him, since I got rid of the other evidence.” Her smile was pure evil. She reached up and brushed hair off Tate’s forehead.
Seriously?
Liberty didn’t exactly want to get into a knockdown, drag-out fight with this woman, but she clearly thought she could do whatever she wanted. Kind of like the gunman had, and Tate fought the idea every step of the way. His reaction was probably a lot like the feeling surging up in her right now.
Tate jerked his head away from her touch, and she laughed.
Liberty bit her lips together because the alternative was telling the woman to get her hands off him. “So, what now? You kill us and then do whatever it is you have planned?”
Natalia looked at Liberty as though she’d forgotten she was even there.
“We know the plane was just a distraction,” Liberty said. “Still, it’s kind of overkill, don’t you think? A big splash, big headlines, big investigation. Search-and-rescue people. You probably got all the law enforcement personnel in the whole area in one spot looking for the plane.”
“And yet you found it.” She smiled, like she was proud of them.
“Not before you tried to frame Tate.” Liberty’s feelings were clear in her tone. “So what I want to know is what’s such a big deal you needed a distraction of that magnitude just to get the cops to look the other way?”
Natalia’s lips curled up. “Such a smart girl.”
Maybe, but it wasn’t Liberty who figured it out. It had been Tate. But she didn’t explain that—she just wanted Natalia to tell them what it was.
Instead, Natalia stood. She stared down at them in silence for a cool minute.
Uh-oh. That wasn’t good. Liberty figured she wasn’t going to like whatever happened next.
Natalia pulled a gun from the back of her waistband and held it out. “Braden.”
He stumbled, but caught himself as he walked over. His face paled, and his breathing was coming hard—white puffs in the cold barn. Natalia didn’t even look at him.
“Braden, shoot them both.”
NINETEEN
Tate stared at his brother. Was Braden going to do it? Would he shoot Tate in his own barn? That might be the end to this. If Locke was going to get here—if the GPS on Braden was working and hadn’t been discovered—then he would have been here already. That was how Tate knew the feds and the cops probably weren’t coming. He and Liberty were going to have to figure out for themselves how to get out of this, because the alternative was getting killed.
Braden didn’t take the gun. Instead, he grinned at Natalia and said, “Babe. You know I don’t like blood.”
“Yeah, I know.” Natalia didn’t look sympathetic or impressed by his humor. Her face was impassive, her tone completely neutral. “And I should also know I can’t count on you to do anything useful.”
“Seems like I did one thing, or you wouldn’t have Tasha.” That didn’t get a reaction either, though Braden thought he was funny. He kept going. “So I guess I’m not completely useless after all.” He folded his arms, a smug smile on his face.
Tate tried to figure out what on earth was driving his brother to play the situation this way. Braden wasn’t going to achieve anything other than making Natalia mad—which was happening perfectly, considering the tips of her ears were now red.
She moved closer to Braden. “If you want your daughter to know her father past her second birthday—” her tone was low, lethal “—then you pull the trigger and make this problem disappear.” She motioned toward Liberty and Tate with the gun. Liberty flinched and huddled against him.
Natalia said, “Because it seems to me like involving your brother, and now his Secret Service girlfriend, was your idea.”
“It was good. You said you needed a distraction, so I gave you a federal manhunt.”
“The downed plane and the missing people were the distraction. The videos, one better. Writing the blog and framing your brother did nothing but leave us in a corner, floundering to fix your mess. The fallout from your plan. While mine had none.”
Braden swallowed.
“Since it’s your mess, and we have yet to finish this job...” Natalia held up the gun. “Kill them now, and end this ridiculous attempt to improve your station.”
He took the gun.
Tate’s arm tightened around Liberty. There was no point pretending anymore that they weren’t free of their tape. His brother was really going to do it. He was going to kill the two of them because this woman asked him to.
Tate bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood.
Outside, a car pulled up. Natalia huffed out a breath. “I thought we were going to be done with this before the Venezuelans got here.”
That made Tate sit up. The ransom videos had asked for the release of a Venezuelan. He’d thought it could be a misdirect so the feds would be caught up in paperwork and not as many agents would be focused on finding the missing people. But if the Venezuelans were doing a deal with the Russians, Tate needed to find out what it was. He needed to know why they were here, in case it was the reason the pilot was bribed and those people taken hostage.
He’d been ri
ght. About his brother. About all this being a distraction. It wasn’t a comfort, though, not when he needed more answers still.
Natalia set her hands on her hips. “Finish them, Braden.” She didn’t try to lay on the charm like some women did to get their way. No, Natalia Standovich was 100 percent authority, even as she strode out of his barn.
Tate glanced at the shelves, the little cupboard underneath where he kept the radio. He didn’t use it often. If he was on call, then the shortwave radio was how the sheriff’s office contacted him, and he would stay in the house on those nights. Or use the handheld unit. But there was a radio in here, one he could use to get on the police band.
It was the only way they could get help.
No one stayed behind with Braden. His brother didn’t look exactly happy as he stared down Tate. Still, his joking demeanor had disappeared.
“I guess this is the end.” Tate’s voice came out entirely more grave than he’d have liked.
“It’s not like I want to do this.” Braden pulled out a phone with his free hand.
“You might not be able to use that. There’s no signal up here. The GPS we planted on you is probably not transmitting.”
“Natalia found that when we were in town,” Braden said. “Cuffed me across the face.” He turned his head slightly to show the reddening bruise on his cheek. Braden pocketed his phone, silent for a second before he said, “I’ve lost my way, Tate.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you don’t know much of anything about me.”
“Druggie. Moocher.” Okay, so these weren’t compassionate words, or even helpful ones, but the man was about to kill him. Couldn’t Tate say whatever he wanted instead of having to forgive right now? His brother didn’t need grace or Tate’s love, because he was going to carry out that woman’s orders regardless.
“What is it, Braden?” Evidently Liberty saw something different.
Braden glanced at her. “I’m sorry I hurt you more than you already were.”
“Thank you.” Liberty said the words quietly. So quietly they were almost painful to listen to.
Braden frowned, then glanced at the barn door everyone had disappeared through. Looked at Tate. “I’m DEA.”
“What?”
Liberty gasped.
Braden said, “I was given an undercover assignment.” He blew out a breath. “Eighteen months ago now. Get close to the Russians, report back with intel. It was all going fine until Tasha. That was a onetime thing, not planned, not repeated. I slipped, got too close to Natalia. Now I have a daughter.” He sighed. “Everything changed when she was born.”
“So you’ve turned?”
Braden flinched. “I would never do that. But I can’t bring down the Russians and keep my daughter safe when the person I’m trying to keep her safe from is her mother.”
“And you decided to make it so I was framed and imprisoned?”
“I needed you to see me. I needed you to help me get out of this, so I dragged you far enough into it that you couldn’t ignore me.” Braden ran a hand through his hair. “I knew it would be hard. It’s not like you ever do anything wrong. Or need anyone’s help. But I managed it.”
Tate said, “Give me the gun.”
“So you can kill me instead?”
“Just do it.”
Braden handed it over reluctantly. Tate fired two shots into the ground. “That’ll buy us a few more seconds, and save us from whoever she was going to send in to ask why you didn’t do it yet.”
“Maybe, but now she’s going to send someone to get me because it’s done.”
Tate shifted and got up. “I’d better move fast, then.” He opened the cupboard and turned the knob on the unit, keeping it low, and listened to the dispatcher talk about cows on the wrong side of a fence.
Tate butted in, explaining as fast as he could what was going on and requested all the backup he could get. He said he had DEA agent Braden Almers with him. He could hardly process the fact that his brother was a fed. It explained a lot, even while it contradicted everything Tate had ever believed.
“Copy that, Deputy. Help is on its way.”
Tate breathed a sigh of relief and sat back on the floor. “We just have to stay alive until they get here.”
Liberty shot him a look. “That’s going to be easier said than done.”
* * *
Liberty strode to the barn door, feeling every one of her aches and pains of the past two days. She opened it a tiny bit to peer out. She had no recourse if they tried anything, not when they had guns and she didn’t. Liberty would likely be dead in seconds. Still, she wasn’t going to sit around and wait for help while trying not to die.
Tate hissed something, probably for her to get away from the door, but she waved him off. Outside the Russians stood around a shiny Cadillac SUV. A dark-haired man in a cream suit talked to Natalia.
Liberty tried to listen, but all she could hear was the swirl of winter wind whistling in her ears. She couldn’t hear anything they were saying, but the conversation didn’t look happy.
She turned back to Braden. The DEA agent. Liberty certainly hadn’t seen that one coming. A man who’d lost his way and ended up tied up with the wrong people’s business? That she could see. The fact that he’d started down that road with the best of intentions was both honorable and the saddest story she’d ever heard.
She needed to know what he knew.
“What made you join a federal agency?”
Braden looked over at her. He knew what she was doing, and it wasn’t just a friendly chat between two people who would’ve been related except for a medical diagnosis.
Tate had sat down again, not looking well at all. This day had been harder on him than anyone, especially given the fact that she’d actually told him why she’d broken up with him. Hopefully now he’d see she was right. And yet, he looked at her with so much promise. Liberty couldn’t even think about them—the them that might be an us—right now.
Braden sighed and sat on an upturned barrel. “Tate had just finished with the army, and he was joining the Secret Service. I was floating around doing odd jobs. Mostly transport. One day I do this delivery, and the guy opens a crate before I leave. It’s all AK-47s. The place suddenly swarms with cops and I spend two days answering questions. It turned out I’d been hired to transport them by the DEA, if you’ll believe it. They needed some no-name who wasn’t connected to bring down this weapons dealer.
“They paid me for the job and about a month later called me again. Asked if I was up for another job. Over the next year it got pretty regular. Take this over here. Do a pick-up for this guy, but let us look at it before you drop it off, because we want to know what he’s selling.” Braden’s gaze had gone dark, as though he had seen things he wished he hadn’t.
“There’s no record anywhere of me working for the DEA,” he continued. “You won’t find it, no matter how deep you look. They keep me undercover almost constantly, but the work I do is good. It saves people’s lives.” He shot Tate a look. “Guess my cover is blown now, though.”
“No one is questioning the good you’ve done, Braden.” She needed to say it, because he looked like he needed her to say it. “I’m very proud of you.” Liberty shot his brother a look. “And so is Tate, I think.”
“Yeah, I am, Bray.”
His gaze flicked to his brother, a sheen of tears in his eyes. “But I lost my way, Tate.” He looked like a remorseful little boy. “And I don’t know if I can get back.”
“You have to.” Tate stood. “Because you need to go out there and act like we’re dead.”
Braden cleared his throat. He nodded.
Tate got up and pulled his brother into a hug. “I’m proud of you.” He paused. “Tasha is beautiful.”
Braden�
��s face twisted, and tears ran down his cheeks. Liberty wasn’t going to say it out loud, but that visible emotion would make his story about having killed them more believable. It might even buy them time to wait for rescue.
“Go now, okay?”
Braden nodded, and his gaze locked with his brother’s for a long moment. Then he walked out the door.
Tate tilted his head, motioning her over to him. Liberty didn’t have the strength to argue. He held out his arms and she walked into them on an exhale. His chest was warm under his sweater, and she slid her arms around his back underneath his coat. Tate leaned down and kissed her head.
“Thank you for being here. I don’t think I could’ve done that without you.”
She smiled against his sweater. “You’re very welcome.”
“I can’t believe he’s DEA. I didn’t even think of it. I just assumed he was a loser.”
“That’s what he needed you to believe, Tate. Because otherwise you’d have asked too many questions.”
Tate’s arms tightened for a second, making her hiss at the pain in her shoulder. “Sorry.”
“We’ll be out of here soon.”
“You need a doctor.”
She looked up, one eyebrow raised. “So do you, honey.”
Tate was quiet for a moment, and then said, “You haven’t called me that in a long time.”
“I know.”
She wanted to tell him she would stay. She wanted to, so badly, but he was the one who needed to be okay with the fact that they would never have children. If he wasn’t, Liberty didn’t know how she would ever get over him. It would take more than another year for her to grieve seeing him again, knowing all the feelings between them were still there.
“Liberty.” He shifted and took hold of her cheeks in the soft way he had with her and no one else.
She nodded beneath his touch. “I know.”
The door swung open and hit the wall of the barn.
They both turned around to find Natalia standing there, gun raised.
“I see,” she said. And then glanced back over her shoulder. “Kill him.”
Yuletide Suspect Page 17