The Protector

by Marliss Melton

  There came a muffled thump and a sliding sound. Winston prowled toward the door, his hackles rising. The lock gave a click and the door swung open.

  A glimpse of Caine’s blond hair had her releasing her held breath, but then he slumped out of sight, and a stranger stepped over him. As he leapt nimbly into the RV, his face still in shadow, the air surged back into Eryn’s lungs. Her blood froze as she recognized his silhouette.

  The taxi driver.

  Shock rooted her. He was older than she’d imagined, with salt-and-pepper hair, a hooked nose, and an oddly benign countenance. He closed the door behind him, holding up a blood-streaked knife. Caine’s blood, Eryn realized, nearly fainting. In his free hand, he carried a briefcase.

  Suddenly, with a loud snarl, Winston lunged at the man, just the way Ike had taught him.

  “Winston, no!” Eryn flew into action, grabbing her dog around his midsection and pulling him away from the terrorist’s flashing blade.

  Winston’s claws scrabbled on the fiberglass flooring as he fought her hold.

  “Get him away!” ordered the stranger, sounding panicked. He glanced briefly at the blood appearing on his forearm then pointed with the knife at the bedroom behind her. “Both of you. In there, now,” he said, in peculiar-sounding English.

  She was quick to obey him. Menacing the dog’s nose with his bloody knife, the terrorist pursued them. Eryn tried snatching up her purse as they passed the restroom, but with the knife so close to Winston’s nose, she opted for retreat.

  No sooner had they entered the dark recesses of the back room than the terrorist slammed the door in her face and locked it from the outside.

  Get help. The words seemed to come from a part of her brain that remained untouched by the drama.

  Eryn cast her gaze about. Beams of sunlight skimmed through the cracks at the edges of the blinds. In lieu of a bedroom, she found herself in a space crammed with consoles, computers, and monitors. Hence, the lock on the outside of the door, keeping out unauthorized persons.

  Spying a phone on the far wall, she lunged for it, only to hang it up again in despair when she heard no dial tone. The cell she’d taken from the vineyard had been confiscated yesterday. Even if she had her purse with her, she’d have no way of getting help.

  A throaty rumble and a sudden vibration under her feet robbed her of logical thought. In the distance, she heard the wail of an approaching siren, but her relief was short-lived, for the RV lurched suddenly into movement. She stumbled, falling into one of the seats bolted to the floor.

  Numbness seeped into her bloodstream, desensitizing her to the situation at hand, but also silencing the reasonable voice inside her head. She felt detached, like this was happening to someone else, only she knew it wasn’t.

  Her mind looped away to the haunting dreams of her nightmares. Was this real or was she dreaming? She’d been abducted by the terrorist who’d killed Itzak. The man had plunged a knife into Caine without hesitation, just because he could. There wasn’t a doubt that he would kill her just as heartlessly.

  As the RV gained speed and swerved out of the motel parking lot, the sound of the siren grew more and more faint. Her hope diminished with it. The police had failed to intercept the RV. Nor would Ike be coming to her rescue, not if the FBI was arresting him. All she had was Winston, who leaned heavily against her legs, panting as if he’d gone for a long run. She was utterly alone.

  Tears of terror clouded her vision. Her throat felt tight as she tried to swallow the lump that threatened to choke her. “God, help me,” she croaked.

  **

  There was only one way to stop the Pontiac before it lured them farther from Eryn.

  Ike tugged on the zipper that kept the Jeep’s canopy secured. It flapped loudly in the chilly breeze. Then with a ripping sound, it pulled away from the zipper and sailed out of sight.

  The frigid air stung Ike’s eyes and numbed his ears. Drawing his Python from the holster under his arm, he negotiated another sharp turn with his left hand while releasing the safety with his right. All four tires squealed. When he finally hit a straightaway, he strained upward in his seat, aiming over the windshield at the Pontiac’s right rear tire.

  Crack! One discharge from his double-action revolver shattered the Pontiac’s taillight. Crack! The second round punctured the rear tire.

  With a shriek of rubber on slick asphalt, the Pontiac slid into an embankment at over fifty miles an hour. Ike saw what was coming next and winced. Sparks flew into the air as the vehicle careened into the guard rail. It bounced off it and wobbled wildly to the other side of the road where it plowed headlong into a wall of blasted granite. Crash!

  Slowing to avoid the spray of metal and glass, Ike swerved onto the opposite shoulder and set the parking brake. With his gun still drawn, he leaped from the Jeep and sprinted toward the crumpled vehicle.

  The driver’s side of the car was stove in. Anyone in the front seat had to be dead. With his gun still drawn, he took a peek and saw a disfigured body covered in blood that gleamed wetly in the rosy light of dawn. The airbag had failed to deploy.

  Ike dropped his gun and turned away. Christ, he hadn’t meant for that to happen. He’d have preferred for the terrorist to rot in jail.

  With a bitter taste in his mouth, he noted the Taurus pulling up behind his Jeep, catching the accident and his lone figure in the full glare of its high beams. “Freeze!” shouted a voice. “FBI. Drop the weapon and back away from the vehicle. Put your hands on your head!”

  Fuck it. Ike let the Python clatter onto the roadway, where a river of oil had begun to ooze downhill. “Set some flares,” he cautioned, “before we cause another accident.” Backing away from his weapon, he laced his hands together on top of his head and struck a docile pose.

  “I’ll get them,” said a second voice.

  “You.” The first agent approached him warily, gun pointed at Ike’s chest. His hair looked tussled, and his glasses sat askew on his narrow nose. He warily snatched up Ike’s weapon then peeked into the crushed car. “What the hell did you do? Jesus.” He averted his gaze.

  “He was tampering with your RV.” Ike assessed the man automatically. “Call your leader. Warn him about the RV. Tell him not to start it.”

  The tussled agent just stared at him, then looked to his partner, who jogged up to him, handing him two lit flares.

  “Isaac Calhoun?” It was the agent he’d shot at. The man stuck out a hand unexpectedly. “Jackson Maddox.”

  Noting that he’d omitted his title of special agent, Ike accepted the man’s firm handshake.

  “Maddox,” said the first man. “Look who the driver is.” He held up a flare so his partner could see inside.

  Jackson winced and looked away. “Shahbaz Wahidi.” He flicked Ike a grim look. “We could have used him alive.”

  “Didn’t mean to kill him,” said Ike, experiencing very little remorse. “He was pulling away from us. We need to get back to Eryn.” In that exact moment, he detected the wail of sirens coming from both directions.

  “You can stand at ease,” Jackson said, betraying his military background. “Just don’t try anything.”

  Ike lowered his arms. “Call your other man,” he urged again. “Tell him not to start the RV. “

  “I heard you,” the agent said, reaching for his phone. “Don’t worry. The LE was on their way when we left.”

  That’s because I fucking called them, Ike thought with exasperation. Anxiety made his blood pressure rise. He hated feeling helpless.

  Instead of reaching for his phone, Jackson pulled out a set of handcuffs. “Sorry, but I was told to bring you in,” he said with a grimace.

  “Just make the fucking call.” Ike didn’t care what happened to him. It was Eryn who was vulnerable right now.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Caine’s still not answering,” Ringo stated, as they flew down the winding highway back to Elkton Motel.

  Jackson flicked a nervous glance in the rearview mirro
r. Isaac Calhoun sat in the middle of the seat behind him with his hands cuffed behind his back, his green stare fixed on Jackson through the mirror. They had called their supervisor two times already at Calhoun’s urging. The tendons in the man’s neck were standing out, his jaw muscles jumping.

  “Maybe he can’t get cell reception,” Jackson suggested in an attempt to dispel the man’s palpable concern.

  Or maybe Wahidi wasn’t alone in targeting Eryn.

  The unspoken possibility was etched all over the former SEAL’s taut face, making Jackson nervous as hell. It was all he could do to concentrate on getting them down into the valley without swerving off a cliff. His phone rang unexpectedly, making him heave a private sigh of relief. That had to be Caine.

  But he didn’t recognize the number. “Special Agent Maddox,” he clipped, slowing on a particularly tight turn. All four tires squealed.

  “Yes, this is Hugh, the paramedic.”

  “What have you got?” Before they’d left the crash site, Jackson had tasked one of the paramedics to type Wahidi’s blood in the hopes that it matched the blood on the holly bushes, left by Mustafa Masoud’s killer, the same man who’d likely killed four others, including Pedro the Landscaper and Itzak Dharker.

  “The victim’s blood type is A-negative,” the man announced.

  Jackson swallowed against a suddenly parched throat. “Thank you.” He dropped his phone into his lap. “A-negative,” he croaked to Ringo.

  “Oh, shit,” Ringo exclaimed.

  Shit was right. The killer’s blood type was O-positive.

  “Wahidi didn’t kill our asset,” Ringo stated aloud.

  Jackson tightened his grip on the steering wheel and gunned the accelerator. “Call Caine,” he pleaded, avoiding eye contact with the man glaring into his rearview mirror. “Put him on speaker phone. I’ll tell him.”

  In the tense silence now in the car, Caine’s phone rang and rang. A rumbling voice not belonging to Caine finally answered. “This is Sheriff Olsen.”

  “Sheriff?” Jackson flicked the phone in Ringo’s hand a puzzled glance. “This is Special Agent Maddox,” he said, speaking up in order to be heard. “I was calling for my supervisor.”

  “He can’t take calls at the moment.” The Sheriff sounded like he’d been chewing on gravel.

  “Why? What happened?” Jackson asked.

  “You’ll have to see it to believe it.”

  Goosebumps sprouted all over his body. “Is Miss McClellan there?” He prayed for an affirmative.

  “Negative,” said the Sheriff.

  A glance in the mirror showed Calhoun looking as wound up as a pissed-off rattlesnake.

  Jackson wet his lips. “Where’s the RV?” he asked.

  “Don’t see the RV anywhere. Just a body sittin’ in a pool of blood next to copper wire and a puddle of gasoline.”

  “Fuck!” Jackson exclaimed.

  “We’ll be right there.” Ringo said for him, severing the call.

  Jackson left twin strips of rubber on the last tight turn. Holding down the horn, he overtook a slower car and swooped into the Shenandoah Valley on the final straightaway. One more mile and they’d be back at the motel.

  “We fucked up, didn’t we?” Calhoun’s voice struck them like the tip of a whip.

  At least, the man had included himself in the subject of the sentence. “Yes, we did,” Jackson admitted.

  **

  Where is he taking me? Eryn struggled to raise the blinds at the back of the RV.

  As her initial shock began to wane, it had occurred to her that she could signal for help through the large rear windows. Surely other drivers would see her and call the police. But once the blinds were raised, the expansive windows revealed nothing but an empty road behind them. It was too early in the morning for commuters to be going to work. Nor would they later because it was Sunday, she realized, stricken by a yawning sense of isolation.

  Her gaze fell to the myriad monitors and computers jammed into the tight space. She sought every power button she could find, booting up instruments she couldn’t name let alone operate. Who knew, maybe one of them would signal her location.

  Abruptly, the RV slowed, turning onto a road that climbed to higher elevations. Forest hemmed it in on both sides. The engine roared to battle the grade. With a stab of poignancy, Eryn thought of Ike’s mountain and wondered if she would step foot in his cabin again, ever sleep in his bed, in his arms.

  How could I ever forget you? She never wanted to forget.

  Shivering with fear and grief, she nonetheless noticed that the powerful engine had begun to sputter. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she watched out the back window, waiting to see what would happen next.

  The motor coach was losing momentum. Minute by minute, its speed declined, until it rolled to a crawl, then stopped altogether in the middle of the road.

  Eryn’s heart seemed to stop, as well. As long as the terrorist had been driving, she’d been safe. But she could hear him now, engaging the parking brake, moving down the length of the RV. He paused in the galley, his stealthy movements terrifying. What the hell was he doing, fixing himself a sandwich?

  It was Ike’s voice inside her head that seemed to growl this question. She would have given anything, anything to have him there in person. Her respite was coming to an end. All too soon, the terrorist would unlock the door and...

  She refused to picture what might follow. If she didn’t think of something, she would have to fight for her life with her bare hands. Ike had tried to prepare her for this moment. But could anyone truly ever be prepared?

  Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, she tried to remember everything Ike had taught her. All that came back to her was: Stop and feel, and you’ll end up dead.

  **

  Sitting handcuffed in the rear seat of the Taurus, Ike could see enough of the body being bagged to tell that the blond FBI agent’s neck had been slit wide open.

  As firefighters went to lay foam on the spilled gasoline, Jackson patted down his pockets, failed to find what he was looking for, and strode back to the car. His swarthy complexion had taken on a yellowish hue. Flicking Ike a wary glance, he reached through the driver’s window, found his cell phone, and walked a few yards from the car to make a lengthy phone call.

  Ike’s temples throbbed. There wasn’t any time for lollygagging. The terrorist had taken Eryn away in the RV. They had to fucking find her, now!

  Finally, Jackson’s call ended.

  “Take these cuffs off me,” Ike demanded, recapturing the agent’s attention.

  Jackson sent him a distracted look, reached into his pocket, and tossed a set of keys onto the rear seat. He then called Ringo over.

  As Ike groped for the keys, awkwardly inserting them into the handcuffs, he could hear Maddox telling Ringo that their field office was trying to ping the phone aboard the RV, but with only one cell tower within a five-mile radius, the signal couldn’t be triangulated.

  “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Ringo muttered, jamming his hands into his pockets.

  “Hostage Rescue’s been alerted,” Maddox added. “It’ll take them thirty minutes to get a chopper out here.”

  “We’re not waiting thirty minutes.” Ike shoved out of the back seat. Fueled by a desperate, nerve-fraying need to take action, he studied the spot where the RV used to be parked. The rank smell of gasoline was in no-way relieved by the foam now billowing across the lot.

  Remembering Wahidi under the chassis, Ike realized the leak had been made by him. And given the length of copper wire still lying on the ground, he must have been trying to rig the RV to explode upon ignition. His gaze went to the dark stain zipping out of the compound onto Highway 33.

  The gasoline leak was dissolving the asphalt, creating tar. Well, I’ll be damned. Heart thumping, he swiveled, stalking back to Jackson and Ringo. “We don’t need to ping the phone,” he said, pointing at the stain on the road. “The RV left a visible trail.”

>   For a full second, Jackson didn’t seem to grasp what he was saying, but then his gaze slid up the highway, and he bolted for the driver’s seat. “Let’s go!”

  Ike slapped a hand on the lid of the trunk. “Open up first,” he demanded, wanting the weapons and rucksack that had been taken from him.

  Jackson hesitated.

  “Just do it!” he raged. “Hostage Rescue isn’t going to get here in time. I’m the next best thing you’ve got, Maddox.”