Trap, Secure: Navy SEAL Security

by Carol Ericson

  “I never thought I was.”

  It didn’t matter now, anyway. She had no future with Gage. She’d been a fool to even imagine that could be a possibility. He wanted to make sure she’d fall on the side of the good guys, and he’d been prepared to do anything to make that a reality.

  Even if it broke her heart.

  When Elle had closed the door between the two rooms, Gage turned to her. “Do you want to eat first or visit Jessica?”

  “It’s getting late. Let’s go to the hospital first. You haven’t heard anything from Mrs. Bloom, have you?”

  “No, but tonight may be the night Jessica comes out of her coma. You never know.”

  Twenty minutes later, Gage pulled his rental car into the parking structure of the hospital. A smattering of people wandered the halls of the ICU and clusters of visitors dotted the waiting room. Orderlies whisked patients back and forth, and the nurses at the station scrambled to handle all of the details.

  Randi approached the counter. “We’re here to visit Jessica Lehman.”

  A different nurse from the one last night pulled up a computer screen. “Name?”

  “Miranda Lewis.”

  The nurse pointed at Gage. “Him?”

  “Oh, I don’t think Jessica’s mother put him on the list.”

  “Sir, you’ll have to wait in the waiting room.”

  “Okay.” Gage shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his chin toward the hallway. “You go ahead. I’ll be right out here. Don’t leave the room until you see me in the hallway.”

  “Okay. Nurse, has Jessica come out of her coma yet?”

  “Not yet, but the signs look encouraging.”

  Randi grimaced at Gage. “I probably won’t be too long.”

  He nodded and she sailed down the hallway. Maybe with a few memories coming back, seeing Jessica would prompt a few more.

  She tiptoed into the room, though she should’ve be stomping her feet to wake her friend. Jessica’s mother must’ve been in for a visit, as she’d left a few grooming items on the table beside Jessica’s bed.

  Randi pulled up a chair, sat down and leaned toward Jessica. “What a pair we make.” She took Jessica’s hand, warm with life. “I’m so sorry I got you into this mess, Jessica. You must be a loyal friend to protect me. I saw the picture of the two of us in Cozumel. Maybe when this is all over, we can go back.”

  Randi drew her brows together at the rustling of paper from the other side of the curtain dividing the room. It hadn’t occurred to her that the other patient might have a visitor.

  She put her lips close to Jessica’s ear. “Wake up, Jessica. Let’s get out of this together.”

  A man coughed and murmured a few words on the other side of the hospital room. He was trying to get through to his loved one, too.

  Randi returned her gaze to Jessica’s serene face. “I need your help, Jessica. I need to remember everything. I need to know what I was doing in that household.”

  The metal hooks holding up the curtain tinkled and a soft footstep shuffled on the floor.

  Randi looked up at a tall, bald man bunching the curtain in one hand.

  He said, “Sorry to disturb you. This is hard, no?”

  The man had an accent Randi couldn’t place. She nodded. “Yes, it’s very hard.”

  The man shuffled closer, and the scent of his cologne wafted across Jessica’s bed, hitting Randi full force. Her nostrils flared. Prickles dashed across the back of her neck. She reached behind her and slid the metal nail file from the table into her back pocket.

  “All we can do is talk to them. Share our memories and hope they respond.” Taking another step forward, he shrugged a pair of huge shoulders in his orderly scrubs.

  Randi licked her lips. Was he a visitor or did he work here? She scooted the chair back from the bed and glanced at the closed door and the blinds pulled down over the large window onto the hallway. “That’s right.”

  “Remind them of the good times, no?” The man’s next step brought him almost to Randi’s side.

  His overpowering cologne caused a shaft of pain to pierce her temple, and she pressed a palm against the side of her head.

  The gunshot. She heard the gunshot and the children’s cries.

  The man loomed over her. “Only you can’t do that, can you, mademoiselle?”

  By the time she’d worked her mouth open for a scream, he clamped his hand over it. Then she felt the prick of a needle in the side of her neck.

  Another damned needle.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gage paced in front of the hallway that led to the ICU rooms and checked his watch for the hundredth time. She should be out soon. If Jessica had regained consciousness, Randi would’ve come out to tell the nurses.

  Unless seeing Jessica again had prompted some memories to return. Elle had told him anything could prompt the memories—the sight of something, hearing a noise, tasting a special flavor and even smelling something familiar.

  Randi’s explanation of the scarf and her insistence that the children didn’t belong to her and that she didn’t belong to Zendaris had given him hope. Zendaris could’ve been married and had those children. What did they really know about him?

  Not much. Not enough.

  Another session with Elle, and Randi just might break through that barrier. She might break through the trauma of the shooting and fall to reach back and remember everything.

  The hospital loudspeaker filled the ICU. The announcement mentioned a car on level three in the parking lot, and Gage paused and cocked his head.

  A car had been hit in the parking lot and the alarm wouldn’t quit. The location and the description of the car matched his rental.

  Digging his keys from his pocket, he strode to the nurses’ station. “My friend, Randi, is visiting Ms. Lehman in room five twenty-eight. If she comes out while I’m gone, can you please tell her to wait right here for me?”

  The nurse glanced up from her paperwork. “Sure.”

  “Right here.” Gage pounded the counter.

  The nurse raised one brow. “Sure.”

  Gage jogged to the elevator and smacked the button for the parking garage. When he got to his parking level, two security guards were standing near his blaring car.

  He pointed his remote and clicked. The alarm stopped.

  Approaching the security guards, he said, “What happened?”

  “This happened.” One of the men aimed a boot at the crumpled bumper of Gage’s rental.

  “Where’s the person who hit it? I don’t think I even got the extra insurance from the car company.”

  “Sorry, sir. It was a hit and run. We just heard the alarm and came over to investigate. I’m assuming this dent wasn’t here when you left the car.”

  “Nope.” Gage ran a hand through his hair, and his gut knotted. “Anyone see anything? Security cameras?”

  “Nobody has come forward, and the cameras don’t operate in this area of the garage.”

  “Not much good then, are they?” Gage kicked the bumper and turned back toward the elevator. The adrenaline pumping through his system had nothing to do with the accident. It was the coincidence of the accident occurring at the hospital that had the blood racing through his veins.

  He marched to the nurses’ station and flattened his palms on top of the counter, hunching forward. “Did my friend leave Ms. Lehman’s room yet?”

  The nurse eyed him as if he were a lunatic. “No. She’s still in there.”

  He smacked his fist into his palm, and the nurse jumped. “It’s been almost an hour. What’s she doing in there?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question, sir? Because I’m sure I don’t know. Visiting hours are still going on and she has every right to be there.”

  But he didn’t.

  “Call her if you’re in such a big hurry.”

  Randi hadn’t gotten a phone when she got to the States. She didn’t need one. Who would she call? He was the only person she knew, and he’d stuck by
her side night and day.

  Until now.

  “Can you check the room for me? Tell her I’m waiting?”

  “I’m not in the habit of interrupting patient visits, and I have work to do.”

  “Is there another exit from the ICU? Could she have walked out a different way?”

  “This is the only way out, unless...”

  Gage’s heart slammed against his rib cage. “Unless what?”

  The nurse cupped her hand around her mouth. “Unless you’re dead. There’s an elevator to the morgue at the other end of the hallway.”

  A chill snaked up Gage’s back. He had to get into that room if only to calm the insistent thrum of dread in his chest.

  If he demanded the nurse let him in there and she refused, she’d only be looking out for him later.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, she didn’t go out that way. I guess all I can do is wait.”

  “You’d be surprised how long people spend with comatose patients. It’s that desire to try anything.” She tapped a file folder on her desk and swiveled her chair in the other direction.

  Gage backed up toward the waiting room and made for the stairwell. On the floor below the ICU he sidled along the corridor, checking doors. On his fourth try, he found a white doctor’s coat on a tree.

  On his seventh try, he scooped up an orderly’s badge.

  He took the stairs back up to the ICU. He slouched by the restroom in the waiting room until a couple checked in with the nurses’ station. When the couple started down the hallway, Gage joined them, dipping his head over his phone.

  Only one nurse at the station glanced up when they walked by. He must’ve passed muster because she went back to her computer screen.

  The couple peeled off to enter a room, and Gage continued two doors down. Pressing his ear against the door, he tapped.

  When Randi didn’t answer, he tapped louder. “Randi, it’s Gage.”

  His mouth dry, he eased open the door. Jessica reposed on the hospital bed like Sleeping Beauty, Sleeping Beauty with no visitors.

  Gage stepped into the room, his gaze darting to the four visible corners. “Randi?”

  He yanked at the curtain dividing the room, and an empty bed stretched in front of him. Hadn’t there been a patient in there last night?

  Two long steps took him to the window where he placed his hands against the tempered glass. Five stories up with a sealed window and no ledge.

  He spun around, crashing into a cart and knocking its contents to the floor. If she hadn’t gone past the nurses’ station, she was in one of these rooms...or she’d gone down to the morgue.

  He careened up and down the hallway, poking his head into rooms, startling visitors and patients alike. When he ran out of rooms, he faced the elevator at the end of the corridor. He jabbed the down arrow, but the car didn’t budge.

  He traced the slot beneath the button and then slipped the stolen badge from the plastic lanyard. He slid the badge into the slot and pressed the button. The elevator cranked into gear.

  Gage held his breath. The car settled on the fifth floor and the doors shifted apart. With a backward glance, he entered the empty elevator and pressed the only available button—M for Morgue.

  The car trundled past the rest of the floors without stopping and burrowed into the bowels of the hospital. When it came to a stop, Gage pulled out his weapon and aimed it at the door, the old metal throwing back his distorted reflection.

  The doors creaked open onto an empty hallway. Gage eased out of the elevator, leading with his shoulder, clutching his gun.

  The silence closed around him. The chill seeped into the marrow of his bones.

  And it smelled like death.

  * * *

  SHE WAS IN A COFFIN.

  She drove the heels of her hands into the lid of the coffin and the clanging sound rang in her ears.

  She was in a metal coffin.

  Yelling and screaming, she kicked her feet against the base of her prison. The sound reverberated all around her, suffocating her.

  Her teeth chattered and her knees shook, but it was the cold and not the fear causing her reaction.

  She heard a noise like a latch being lifted, and her coffin bed rolled into the light, a dim light in a white-on-white room. She bolted upright and squinted at a figure in the shadows.

  “Who are you? What am I doing here?”

  A looming shape stalked forward, his musky, spicy scent heralding his presence. The same cologne of the man in the hospital room. The same cologne of the man who’d locked her in the nursery and had ripped the children from her arms.

  Costa.

  She scrambled off the slab where he’d stashed her as if she were a dead body. But she wasn’t dead yet.

  “It’s too late, Costa. I remembered everything. I told them everything.”

  A tsking sound came from a darkened corner of the room, and Randi spun around. She peered at the man lounging against the wall, but he was behind a bright light shining into her face and she could see nothing more than his outline.

  “She’s lying, boss. I heard her in that hospital room talking to her friend, asking for help, asking to remember. She remembers nothing.”

  The man in the corner sighed. “Apparently, she remembers your name, you fool.”

  “Maybe when she saw my face, but she doesn’t have the rest of it.”

  “I believe you’re right, Costa. My dear, if you’d told them everything, I’d be feeling the heat, and—” he shrugged “—I feel no heat.”

  Nico Zendaris. The room just got colder. “Th-they just want you to believe that.”

  “Hmm, now why would Prospero want me to believe you had no memory of me, of our life together? The sooner you regained your memory, the safer you’d be. Are you trying to tell me that the gallant agents of Prospero aren’t concerned with your well-being?”

  “We’re talking about national security—and we had no life together.”

  He chuckled. “Are you sure about that, my dear?”

  “I was your children’s nanny.”

  “My children?” His cold tone sent more chills coursing down her back. “What are their names, nanny?”

  “I—I don’t remember their names, but I read to them and your daughter had a pink scarf, a pink scarf with silver thread.”

  “Did you try to tell that nanny story to the CIA? They obviously didn’t believe you, since they planned to use your pregnancy to lure me out.”

  Randi gasped. “How did you know about that?”

  “Do you think Gage Booker is the only one with friends in high places?”

  Gage. Where was he? How had Costa gotten her out of Jessica’s room without everyone seeing them?

  “Those rogue CIA doctors may not believe me, but Ga—Prospero does.”

  “And that’s why Booker is trying so hard to protect you, a nanny?” He snorted. “What would a nanny know about me? Ah, but a mistress, a beloved mistress privy to all of my intimate details...”

  Nausea swept through Randi and she swayed against the body drawer.

  “Mark my words. Prospero knows you’re my woman, and that’s why Booker is hell-bent on protecting you. And once you fully regain your memory, don’t think Prospero isn’t going to use you. Oh, they may not impregnate you, but they will systematically break you down. And when they get what they want?” He brushed his hands together. “They’ll toss you out or lock you up.”

  “Boss.” Costa stepped toward the door, cocking his head, which gleamed like a dome in the darkness. “I hear the elevator.”

  “It’s either Booker or one dead coroner.” Zendaris pressed back into the corner of the room and slipped something out of his pocket.

  Randi made a dash for the door, but Costa lunged toward her and hooked her around the neck with one beefy arm, his gun pressed to her temple.

  Randi held her breath, praying. Don’t come in here, Gage. Don’t come in.

  The door inched open, and Costa released the safety on h
is gun. The click echoed in the room.

  The barrel of a gun poked through the crack in the door, and Costa dragged Randi into the shaft of light that beamed in from the corridor.

  “Drop your weapon, Booker, and kick it across the room. Come inside slowly, or your witness gets a bullet—in the head this time.”

  “Don’t do it, Gage. Run!”

  The gun dropped and then skittered across the floor as Gage kicked it into the room. He emerged from the door, hands held high. “Are you okay, Randi?”

  “I’m fine, Gage. Zendaris is here. In the corner.”

  Costa choked off her last words by tightening his arm around her throat. “Shut up!”

  Gage said, “We meet again, Zendaris.”

  The voice came from the corner of the room, muffled now. “We never met that day five years ago. I slipped out of your grasp, just like I always do. Prospero doesn’t call me the Phantom for nothing.”

  “You slipped from our clutches but we still disrupted your deal, set you back a few years.”

  “But now I’m back, and if you thought I was going to allow you to abscond with my treasured mistress, Miranda, you are not thinking straight.”

  Gage gave a sharp bark. “Randi’s not your mistress. She’s your children’s nanny. Did you think you could hide the fact that you had children at your compound?”

  “Not my children.”

  “Don’t worry, Zendaris. Prospero doesn’t operate like you. We’d never harm a child to get to you.”

  “Really? You’d never harm a woman, either?”

  “We don’t have any intention of harming Randi.”

  “I’m not talking about Randi.” Zendaris paused before continuing. “Do you remember the burned-out munitions factory?”

  “How could I ever forget it?”

  “You remember the bodies, burnt beyond recognition?”

  “Of course I do, but that’s on you. You had those people working there, all of them criminals.”

  “Not all.”

  Randi’s stomach churned and she shot a glance at Gage, whose face had whitened in the gloom.

  “If they were working for you, they were all criminals.”

  “But they weren’t all working for me.” Zendaris slammed his fist against the wall.