Brides of Bannack Box Set: Mail Order Bride

by Natalie Dean

  They got to her part of the department. She had a separate small room with a computer complex inside. Unlike many of the other techs, she had her own room that was locked down. Or at least it was supposed to be. Cat could never remember to lock it.

  “This it?” David asked, looking over his shoulder. Nobody was nearby. By that time, it was one or so in the morning. Most everyone had left hours ago.

  “Yup,” Adrianna said and pulled the door open.

  Or at least that was the plan.

  What actually happened was that she put her hand on the handle and tried to pull it open. The door didn’t budge.

  Cat had finally remembered to lock it.

  “Uh-oh,” Adrianna said. She pulled again. She didn’t know why. Those doors didn’t open without the proper code, period. She could tug all day, and it wouldn’t do a thing other than probably set off the alarm. “Uh-Ohh….”

  “It’s locked?”

  “It appears that way.”

  “I thought you said it would be unlocked.”

  “I thought it would be unlocked,” Adrianna snapped. “Okay, I got this.”

  She wracked her brain for the code. She’d seen Cat put it in a couple times. Typically, at about two or three in the morning, someone came around to check everything- lock doors, check for intruders, all that stuff. So although Cat always forgot to shut it down, someone else didn’t. Cat had to enter her passcode every morning, and Adrianna had seen her do it maybe ten or fifteen times.

  Adrianna was the kind of person that liked to memorize codes. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t like she was trying to be rude. She just really, really liked knowing codes. Her friends’ passwords for their phones. Laptop passwords. Door codes. She never did anything with them, but she could break into most devices that she’d seen with any frequency.

  She tried to enter the code. It was a four-digit code, attached to the wall with a little panel. The buttons depressed with smooth touch. When she’d entered the last number, she pulled her hand back and waited.

  It flashed red.

  Wrong.

  She didn’t panic. It wasn’t rare for an agent to enter their own passcode wrong. She was pretty sure she had three chances before someone came to check. Of course, she wasn’t sure which one of the four she’d missed, or if she’d been completely wrong and butchered the entire code.

  She wracked her brain. One, seven, nine, three… right? Or was it one, seven, nine, two? She’d remembered Cat’s password, but she hadn’t ever expected to actually have to use it. The pressure was extremely distracting. If she messed it up two more times, the gig was up. Someone would be sent to lock down Cat’s little room until she returned the next day. By that time, Adrianna and David would probably need to find a different way to do it, or at the very least wait until the next time Cat was gone to break in. By that time, they’d be already a day behind. They needed every minute they could get.

  “Do you know it?” David asked as she put her hand back towards the panel.

  “Hope so,” she replied. One. Seven. Nine. Two.

  There was a long moment.

  And then the panel flashed green. Both her and David let out a loud sigh of relief.

  “Oh thank the Lord,” Adrianna breathed.

  The locking mechanism inside buzzed as the bolt slid open. They were in.

  Chapter 6

  Inside the room was exactly as Adrianna had last seen it- a fleet of computer monitors, a fast, powerful, sexy computer that looked like it had been designed by Nasa, all packed into a small room.

  “Wow,” David said. He’d never seen the place before. He looked about as amazed as Adrianna had been the first time.

  “Pretty cool, no?” she pulled the door shut and fired up the computers. They were on in a second. They were top of the line tech.

  The password popped up. This one Adrianna remembered. As she put her fingers on the keyboard to type it in, she hesitated. She wasn’t a criminal yet, but the moment she used the government's computer without their permission, she’d become one. Getting into the room wasn’t illegal, but accessing government files without permission was.

  She looked over at David. He was thinking the same thing.

  She typed in the passcode.

  “Okay,” she said as the computer unlocked. “Keep your ears open. If you hear someone coming, let me know.”

  She fired up the street camera footage, which was a tricky little thing that Cat had taught her in exchange for Adrianna going to the shooting range and giving her some tips. She typed in the address, and boom…they were looking at the camera view from that traffic light. She narrowed down the time frame to sometime around the kidnapping and hit play.

  The video was painfully boring, even sped up. All that happened was countless people driving in, then driving out, then driving in, then driving out. They kept their eyes peeled for a truck. That’s all they knew right then- the kidnappers had used a truck. Luckily, their town didn’t have too many trucks. For some reason, most people had cars.

  A truck pulled in, and Adrianna inhaled. But then someone she knew got out and dropped his kid off at the party. A few false alarms later, there it was: the kidnapper’s truck. Although the camera couldn’t see the actual footage of the nabbing, they caught the truck roaring off, spinning its tires and spitting up gravel through a red light. A couple of vehicles swerved to miss it.

  “That’s our man,” she muttered, freezing the frame and zooming in. The frame inched closer. Cat had not told her how to control the viewing of the camera footage. In fact, Adrianna had never instructed on how to do it. It was easy enough, she just used the mouse to zoom in. The truck was a nice one. It had a glittering black paint job, which was fairly recognizable.

  The license plate got clearer and clearer, but the numbers were just the tiniest bit fuzzy. They could probably guess it, but Adrianna wasn’t willing to chase down the wrong truck based on a bad reading of the film.

  “Can you make it clearer?” David whispered over her shoulder.

  “Maybe…” Adrianna tried to remember what Cat had said about that. She’d said something. That much she knew… but what? She tried the first button combination. Nothing happened. Okay, not that. The second was also wrong. But on the third try, the image cleared up just the smallest bit. She kept hammering that button until the license plate was completely visible.

  She pulled up her phone and snapped a photo of the plate. In the incredible chance that the computer went down, she wanted to make absolutely sure that she had the plate.

  “Watch this,” she told him.

  Getting the plate was the easy part. The tricky bit was actually trying to find the truck. That’s where detectives in all those crime shows did all that crazy tech stuff. Five seconds later, they’d locate the vehicle. It didn’t work quite like that in real life. Contrary to popular belief, those street cameras didn’t read plates. They just filmed them. You couldn’t just track the plate. You could, however, find the owner of the truck.

  She entered the plate information in their databases. A little spinning circle came up as it searched. Finally, after about fifteen seconds, up popped the information she was looking for: the owner of the truck.

  Alexander Washington, small-time thief and renowned kleptomaniac. Looking at the list of stuff he’d stolen, Adrianna laughed. He had a list a mile long. Twenty-three generators. Tvs. Phones. Every movie known to man. Apparently, he’d been arrested a couple years ago. Like Jacob, he’d just gotten out.

  “Jeez,” David said, amazed. “Well, I’m impressed. I know that guy. They called him The Rat.”

  “Yet another animal pseudonym?”

  “The Owl was big on those.”

  She scrolled down. A comprehensive list of his crimes was helpful, sure, but she didn’t need to know that. She needed to know his house- where to find him, his truck, and hopefully Jacob.

  There! His address. It was on the far side of town, but at least he was in the city. They weren’t smart cr
iminals to have been identified that easy. A smart criminal would have covered the plates or something at the very least. That worried her. Stupid criminals tended to be more violent. They didn’t understand the ramifications of, say, murder as much as a smart criminal did. Ellie was their bargaining chip. A smart criminal would utilize her as long as possible, only killing under extreme duress.

  Stupid criminals, however, might get fed up with Ellie and kill her without thinking of the ramifications.

  That unsettled Adrianna. Hopefully, wherever she was, Ellie was the model prisoner. She’d be surprised if Ellie was acting good and charitable. She was probably acting like the time Adrianna had accidentally called her “cute.” Ellie didn’t tolerate people calling her cute. She’d lose it. “I’m not cute!” she’d scream. “I’m tough!”

  Adrianna shook the image from her mind. Ellie was alive. She had to be. If she let herself think the opposite- even for a second- she’d break down. No, she had to stay positive, as hard as it was at the moment.

  She snapped a photo of his address and logged out. They were lucky nobody had figured them out. Even though she’d entered it wrong only once, nobody was supposed to be in the room right then. In the odd chance that someone was paying attention and sent someone to investigate, David and Adrianna might soon have a problem on their hands.

  They hurried out of the room after making sure they left no trails. The computers were off. The systems were shut down. The door was locked. The lights were off. Adrianna never discovered if anyone came to investigate because they scurried out of the building subtly. Just to make everything look real if the guards questioned them about why they’d come, Adrianna grabbed her coat from the locker room.

  “Uh….” What are we doing?” David asked her as she switched on the lights in the locker room, casting the blinding white light across the lockers and showers. It was one part of the agency that shut off to save power during the night.

  “I’m getting my coat,” she replied, walking to her own locker and entering the code on the lock. The lock popped open, and she reached inside to get her coat. It wasn’t really her style, which is why it stayed in her locker. A good friend of hers had given it to her a few years ago. Otherwise it would have been donated long ago.

  “Adrianna,” David said as she pulled it out. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s hideous.”

  She snorted. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  She pulled it on over her shirt. Instantly, she felt warmer, but good heavens it was uncomfortable. Her friend made it as part of a knitting camp she’d gone to over the summer. She was absolute garbage at knitting, so a solid portion of it was coming apart over Adrianna’s midsection. The strings had started to separate, which a talented seamstress could have avoided.

  “Did you make that yourself?”

  She started back towards the exit. “Nope. A friend of mine did.”

  “Time to get new friends…”

  She punched him. “Jerk. She’s nice, even if she’s… not terribly talented.”

  “Ow.” He rubbed his shoulder. It was a routine of theirs. She’d taken to punching him affectionately. He’d taken great shots. Adrianna jabbing him in the shoulder didn’t do much more than mildly entertain him.

  They made their way back to the entrance of the agency. Adrianna kept worrying that someone would take them aside and question them. She never came here at night. Everyone at the office knew she got exhausted right as the sun went down. To see her that late must have raised some eyebrows.

  Her fears were realized as the doors came into sight.

  The two guards designed to protect the front entrance were talking, but when David and Adrianna got nearby, they silenced and turned towards them.

  “Say, Ads,” one said. Adrianna knew him. He was an old-timer at the agency, which is why he got to call her Ads instead of Adrianna or, as most people called her, Whetmore. “What are you doing here so late?”

  His eyes shifted over to David. “Here I’m being rude. My name’s Dawson.”

  “David,” David introduced.

  “You look familiar,” said the other guard. “Have I seen you around before?”

  “I’m an MMA fighter,” David replied. The guards couldn’t tell, but Adrianna noticed a shift in his personality. Every time someone said he reminded them of someone or asked where they’d seen him before, he did the same routine. “I go by The Celtic. You might have seen me fight.”

  “That’s who he is!” exclaimed one of the guards, the one that hadn’t introduced himself. Adrianna didn’t even know him. He must be new. Dawson was probably breaking him in. “Man, my wife loves you!”

  Adrianna felt a little spark of anger blossom in her chest. David was her man. Not anyone else’s. That was something she hadn’t expected to be so hard to get used to- sharing her fiancée with the news, the fans, and the world in general. As an FBI agent, she lived a very quiet life to purposefully not be recognized while in the field, but David was huge news everywhere he went.

  Dawson, however, wasn’t as star-struck. “Why are you guys here so late? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you make it here past nine or ten p.m.”

  She pointed to the sweater. “Had to pick up my sweater.”

  A normal person would have said something like “that’s nice” or “ok.” Dawson had known her for years. He didn’t go for the conventional. Instead, he waved his hands around in front of her, closing his eyes. “Lord,” he said solemnly, “remove this demon from my friend.”

  “Shaddup,” Adrianna said, batting down his hands. “Quit it. It’s not that bad.”

  “It’s pretty bad,” David said from the side.

  “You’re supposed to be on my side,” she protested.

  He held his hands up in surrender. “Just telling the truth.”

  Dawson eyeballed Adrianna. “You wouldn’t happen to be here because of that case, would you? The one Stone said to keep you away from.”

  “I’d rather not discuss that with you.”

  He understood. He gave Adrianna a sad smile and took her hand in his massive hands, gently, like a father would a daughter. “Glad to hear that, Ads. Stay safe.”

  “Will do, Dawson. Will do.”

  Dawson was one of her favorite people at the agency. He was, as he called himself, a buff puppy. He had a heart of gold, but Adrianna had seen him when situations got real. Heart of gold? Yes. But he sure didn’t mind charging an armed gunman if it meant his friends would be safe. He’d been shot two or three times before, but she was convinced he was dang near immortal. The man just plain didn’t die easily.

  Adrianna got out of there. The longer she stuck around, the more of an accomplice that Dawson became. Right then, if Stone came in, he’d have the excuse that he hadn’t had enough time to really grill her over the details of why she’d come to the agency. If she stayed to chat, a couple of things would happen. First, they’d be losing valuable time that could be better put towards tracking Jacob and his accomplice Alexander. Second of all, the more time they spent with the guards, the more that the guards could be held responsible for not stopping them.

  When they got back to the car, Adrianna felt like melting into the seats and staying there forever. Even with the adrenaline, she was exhausted. She shook it off. Ellie needed them.

  David looked wide awake. It never failed to impress Adrianna how late he could stay up. He was a night owl to the truest extent of the word. Here it was, early in the morning, and he was running strong. He wouldn’t be doing that in the morning.

  “We need rest,” he finally said, which surprised her. “You need rest. I’ll drive us there. Take a nap. I’ll wake you up when we get to his house.”

  “But don’t you need me awake? Directions?”

  “I’ll use my phone.”

  She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  He stroked her cheek. “Babe, you won’t be any use to Ellie exhausted. Get a nap. Don’t worry- I’ll get you up when I need you.”

&
nbsp; She wanted to say no, to nobly deny the nap and stay up to keep him awake. But then again, what he said was true… she needed sleep. She could already feel her brain starting to shut down. And they still had to track down Alex…and then find Jacob…and then rescue Ellie…and here she was, so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open.

  She snuggled up in the seat. It felt like heaven.

  “Sleep well,” David said.

  She was out in a minute flat.

  Chapter 7

  Adrianna’s dreams were understandably awful.

  She’d never been capable of sleeping in cars. Even back when she was a kid riding to soccer games on the bus, she’d never been able to fall asleep. She did, once. When she’d woken up, the other girls had drawn a mustache on her. That was the last time she’d slept on any sort of public transportation.

  However, she broke that trend in the car that day. As if the motion and sounds weren’t enough, she was incredibly stressed. Her dreams weren’t anything in particular. She couldn’t quite make out anything. The only thing defined about the dream was the feeling of being chased, of fear. She was running away from or towards someone. After a little while, her brain decided that it was the huge man from the mall- Jacob Jackson. To her dream mind, he wasn’t really a man.

  He lumbered and slobbered like a great wolf. He didn’t breathe. He panted- loud, slobbery pants as though he was a fearsome bear instead of a human man. Sometimes he was in front of her, and she was on his tail, and other times he was snapping at her heels as she ran, terrified.

  Finally, David woke her up by shaking her shoulder. “Hey, we’re here.”

  She blinked exhaustion out of her eyes. It was still dark outside, but her tired brain didn’t even think to look at the clock. “How long was I asleep?”

  “A few hours.”

  A few hours? He’d been driving for a few hours? She glanced at the clock. Yes.

  His eyes were tired, and his mannerisms were just a tad slow. He was exhausted. She was amazed he hadn’t fallen asleep, especially with her snoozing right next to him.