When Amy told Nate Kyle revealed confidential information about Sarah to Chris Jeffries he’d been ready to murder the little shit. But it had been nothing compared to the rage Cyrus expressed. The only thing that saved Kyle when Cyrus had made it to Atlanta was Lila Johnson. She stepped in when Cyrus had gone after Kyle.
Nate watched the whole thing, but he’d seen something that hurt Kyle even worse than his brother’s anger—his mother’s disappointment.
“Sierra, tell them what you discovered,” Nate asked quietly.
“We already know it was Jeffries who contacted Rixitron. Hell, he made twenty calls to the company two days before the kidnapping.” Everyone nodded. “I finally hacked into their headquarters’ security cameras and discovered out who he met. It was a guy named Lee Stovers. He’s a junior VP in Pharmaceuticals. He’s relatively new only been there two years. He wasn’t on our radar.”
“Where is he? Where’s Jeffries?” Cyrus’s questions were rapid fire.
“Stovers is up in Vancouver meeting with a group of executives in the nanotech division of Rixitron,” Sierra said.
“Fuck, I was supposed to be on that detail.”
“Brice is there,” Nate reassured Cyrus, referring to another team mate who was on leave from the SAS and was found as well.
“That’s good,” Cyrus said giving a grim smile.
“What about Chris?” Kyle asked quietly. Nate and Cyrus both glared at him. Finally Sierra answered.
“We think he’s dead. We saw him go down in the elevators with two men when he left Stover’s office. He got into a Town Car with them and hasn’t been spotted since.”
“Good. I hope the bastard suffered,” Brayson said.
“So Stovers is our best bet in finding Sarah. We leave for Vancouver in three hours.”
“Great, I’ll go pack and meet you at the airport,” Brayson said, as he stood up.
“Not you or Kyle. I’ve never worked with you on an assignment. This is too important to have newbies working with us,” Nate kept his voice even.
“But…” Brayson started.
“He’s right,” Kyle interrupted his brother. “They need the best team possible. They’ve worked together for almost a year some of them longer. We’d be a liability. We need to do what’s best for Sarah.”
Brayson turned to his older brother, who nodded. “Okay Cyrus, but please, you’ve got to find her.”
“We will Bray. , I promise you, we’ll find her,” Cyrus said in the confident tone of a big brother.
“Brayson, I know this seems like a lifetime but it’s only been five days.” The lie almost choked Nate, it really seemed like an eternity, but he needed to calm the troops, it was his job as the leader.
Nate continued. “We have to remember they wanted her alive and unharmed. These are very good signs. Let us track Stovers and then we can get to Sarah, I’m sure of it.” Nate was satisfied when the young man sat down beside his brother, Kyle. “Okay, I’ve arranged for someone to meet us when we get off the plane. They’ll have everything we need for the operation. Sierra, if you can get us some sort of cover at the hotel where the executives are still booked, that’d be great.”
“Kota, it looks like you and I are going to be married again,” she said grinning at her silent naval team mate. He nodded. “Did you see the enthusiasm everyone? I’m going to wear him down yet.” Sierra gave a sideways smile to Kota.
Cyrus gave a weary chuckle at her antics and even Kota grinned a bit. Kyle and Brayson just looked confused. Nate appreciated her effort to lighten the mood, but there was no way he was going to be able to smile about a damn thing until he had Sarah safely back in his arms.
****
Sarah woke to the sound of voices outside her room. They’d been right to give her the paralytic, she’d been thrashing around and no fucking wonder. She remembered everything. She kept her eyes closed and listened.
“I’m the one who helped develop this drug. She won’t regain her memory.” It was Dr. Simms talking.
“You don’t know how a member of the found will react to it,” a man’s voice responded.
“Oh for God’s sake, Stovers makes them sound like the second coming. They’re people just like us. Now shut up and let me give her a dose before she wakes up.” That was Simms again.
“Do you think you’re giving her too much?” The man sounded worried.
“Jesus Pheung, which way do you want it? Am I giving her too much, or not enough?” Simm’s sounded pissed.
“Lower your voice.”
“Let me do my job. I’m the scientist, you’re nothing more than my goddamn assistant who is only playing the part of a neurologist so you better listen to me.” Yep she sounded really pissed.
“Well Miss High and Mighty Scientist, have you thought about how this will interact with the fertility drugs?” Interesting, it sounded like the man wasn’t afraid of Simms after all.
“If you talk to me like I’m stupid once more, I’m going to have you thrown off this project. Of course I’ve thought about it and tested for it.”
“Well so did I. I’m showing some anomalies I’m going to bring to Stovers attention.”
Sarah waited.
“Pheung, let’s go back to the lab and you can show me your findings. There’s no need to bring Stovers into this.”
They walked away from her door. She’d been holding perfectly still during the entire conversation, praying they wouldn’t come in. Now she opened her eyes and really took in her environment for the first time. It was supposed to look like a hospital room but some of the things were wrong.
No hospital room she’d ever been in had this nice of a TV mounted on the wall. The sheets were a dead giveaway too. What were they five hundred thread count? If they told her she was in some sort of private clinic she could buy this shit, but they’d told her she was in a hospital.
Where was she really? Why the elaborate ruse? Why not just throw her in a cell and pump her full of hormones and take her ovum? It’s what they really wanted. They wanted to breed her. Sarah gritted her teeth, fighting down the tears of anger and fear. Where was everybody? Nate had to be coming to get her, she’d seen his face when she’d been pulled onto the helicopter. He was going to come for her. But in the meantime, she better start thinking of a way to save herself.
Looking down, she started to slip the shunt out of the vein in the back of her hand, then she looked back up at the television. Dammit, she’d bet money there were cameras in the room, and nobody offered to turn on the television, and no TV remote control in sight. Great, there was a camera in the TV.
It was a good bet it was mostly just saline in the drip at the moment but the next time they inserted drugs into the IV, she should be able to dislodge the needle from her vein without being too obvious. If she did it now, there’d be a puddle on the floor to explain. She’d have to wait until she had a plan of escape.
She rested her head on the too soft pillow. Closed her eyes and imagined Nate’s face as she last saw it. Where was he?
****
Nate and his team were in a private room in a downtown restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was in the same complex of office buildings with the hotel where they and the Rixitron executives were staying.
Sierra had given an update explaining how Lee Stovers was planning on leaving two days before all the meetings were done. He was due to take the corporate jet straight to Atlanta, and to her mind they had nothing to lose by taking him and questioning him.
Nate looked across the table at Sierra and every fiber of his being wanted to do exactly what she suggested. But years of leading teams told him it was the wrong move, and Sarah needed his head leading this team not his heart.
“What are your thoughts?” he asked, nodding to Kota and Cyrus.
“Fuck, I’m sure I’m with you on this. I want to do exactly what Sierra is saying, but my training says no. We have to finesse this guy. I just don’t know how,” Cyrus sounded tired and worried, he k
new the feeling.
“Kota?” Nate asked.
“You’re asking me? You know I like the direct approach.” Nate smiled at the lie. The only time Dakota Blackthorne liked the direct approach was when there was a woman involved.
“Sierra, you don’t really think grabbing him is the right way to go, do you?” Nate asked.
“Do you know what they’re going to do to her? They’re going to be breeding her. They are going to be implanting babies in her. Fuck yes, I think grabbing him is the right thing to do. I want her out of their hands yesterday.” For the first time ever, Nate saw a sheen of tears in Sierra’s blue eyes, before she turned away from the table.
Kota put an arm around her, and she shoved against him but he held on. Nate heard him whisper, “Pretend I have a Scottish accent,” and finally Sierra relented, taking comfort from her team mate.
Cyrus and Nate just stared at one another. No words were necessary.
“So finesse. You’re talking about a con. What do you have in mind?” Cyrus asked.
“Seems to me that Rixitron had its sights on another found baby not so long ago,” Nate said slowly, “What if we were to get good ol’ Lee to think he had a shot at the baby again? Do you think he might change his plans? Do you think he might lead us to where Sarah is?” Nate shook his head the same time Cyrus shook his.
“But you’re onto something Nate. Rixitron has been after found, but they wanted to breed Sarah in particular. How did they figure she could heal? Is that the reason they wanted to breed her?” Cyrus said thoughtfully.
“When we analyzed why she was a target before we figured it was because she successfully cleared so many cases they realized she was using some found ability to heal. If they discovered another found with a similar set of circumstances, perhaps they would target them as well.”
“Imagine if it was a man, Stovers would be wetting himself if two found healers would produce a baby,” Sierra interjected.
“Now you’re talking in the world of make believe. We don’t have time for this kind of crap,” Cyrus said in frustration. “Stovers knows all the found there are to be had, and he knows none of them have healing capabilities like Sarah.”
“Hold up Cyrus, we could plant someone for him to discover. Someone with a background similar to Sarah’s,” Sierra said.
“How in the hell could you do that? Better yet, how could you do it in time to help Sarah? I don’t want fucking pipe dreams,” Cyrus snarled.
Nate and Sierra looked at one another.
“What?” Cyrus demanded.
“It’s a longshot,” Nate warned.
“Tell me,” Cyrus demanded again.
“When Rixitron Pharmaceuticals first got on Sakuro’s radar, we had Sierra start monitoring every system she could. She found a real interesting one about six months ago,” Nate explained.
“Will you just spit it out?”
“Tell him, Sierra.”
“First, it was a pretty old program. Rixitron’s been tracking the found for over three years. At least they’d been attempting to. They were combing through records all over the world. Newspaper articles, adoption records, baptismal certificates, school and hospital records. Basically anything their computer program could find with specific parameters. They based it on the five publicized found children, and their lives, thinking similar types of situations would have happened for other found children who weren’t publicized.”
“Fuck, that’s ingenious. Did they find children?” Cyrus moved in closer.
“Yeah, some were dead ends, but early on, it looks like they discovered a couple, and then all of a sudden the program stopped working properly. I couldn’t figure it out. Then we met Max.”
“What does a found guardian have to do with a Rixitron computer system,” Cyrus asked.
“Use your head,” Nate bit out, and then calmed himself. He really was stressed about Sarah. Cyrus didn’t look like he had taken offense, and his next words proved it.
“Just talk to me like I’m a newbie. I really don’t get it.”
“When Max entered the scene and explained he was a guardian sent over from the alternate universe to guard the found children, we knew he kept his memories intact. He has been monitoring the children who came to the United States, and he’d been watching out for those people and organizations who have been looking to harm any of these children.”
“Yeah, I knew most of that, but are you saying he discovered what Rixitron was doing?” Cyrus sounded more and more excited with every word Sierra said.
“Yep. He found out two and a half years ag, and put a bug in their code so they no longer discovered any more found.”
“But had they been successful before that?” Cyrus wanted to know.
“He and some of the other guardians have been working on that problem,” Sierra answered. “But now, we could use this program for our purposes. We can feed in that someone is a found healer.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to put someone into place. We have to talk to Sakuro maybe they have someone we can use,” Nate interrupted.
“I say it should be me.”
“Dammit Sierra, you just said the best bet would be to have it be a man, so Stovers would be tempted to make a superbaby.” Nate’s stomach churned at the thought.
“I know,” she said dejectedly. “But we have to move fast, Stovers is leaving tomorrow.”
“I can do it. I have the right history. It should be easy enough to insert me into Rixitron’s computer program,” Kota said quietly.
“What are you talking about?” Sierra asked, but Nate knew. He’d heard Kota’s story once. It wasn’t pretty.
“I was adopted. I was dropped off at the reservation clinic when I was six years old. It was summer. I didn’t speak for the first year,” Kota said it quietly and captured everyone’s attention.
“What year was that?” Cyrus demanded. “What day?”
“It was the Fourth of July same year as the others. I know the found showed up June 19th, so me showing up Independence Day is really close.”
“Oh my God, are you found?” Sierra stared at him as if she could see all of his secrets.
“No.”
“Where did you come from? Who was your Mom? Your family?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. But you can see how it will work for our purposes.” Kota’s answer didn’t allow for any follow-ups.
Sierra pulled out her laptop and booted it up.
“I’m really sorry Kota, that’s rough. But for what we need this might really work. Hold on and let me get logged in. But we’re going to have to do more. We need to show you have found abilities.” She bent over her laptop for a few more minutes and then looked up.
“It will work,” she confirmed.
Nate thought for a minute. “Kota, let’s house you close. I’m thinking Bremerton, it has the huge Navy Installation, and it’s not too far over the border in Washington State. That way Stovers doesn’t have far to go and get you.”
“It also has the big naval hospital,” Sierra said, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “It should be easy enough to plant some records of him around patients who had miraculous recoveries.”
“Wait, don’t you need to make him a doctor?” Cyrus demanded.
“We can’t change his whole background, we have to just slightly alter some aspects so that it seems plausible. All of our unit has training as medics, so Kota having worked some of the time at the hospital will be believable. I can make sure he is recorded as having been in the hospital at the same time as those patients who had fantastic recoveries.”
“I don’t know how in the hell you can do that kind of thing Sierra,” Nate said in amazement. “but please do.”
“How soon do you want me to flag Kota as one of the found?” Sierra asked.
“We should be able to get him down to the Bremerton in six hours by car. How soon can you have the records altered?”
“I can have Kota’s records altered to look li
ke a found in about two hours. Then it will take me another two hours to feed it back into Stovers’ program.” Nate loved working with Sierra, she could work miracles.
“Okay, let’s say eight hours, so we ensure Kota is in place.”
“How do you know Stovers will take the bait and take Kota to where they’re keeping Sarah?” Cyrus asked.
Nate and Kota looked at one another, then Kota answered. “I’ll have to end up with an injury. Then he’ll want to make sure I’m immediately taken someplace safe. It’s a good bet it will be where Sarah is.”
“That sounds too risky.” Cyrus looked at the three members of the naval unit and saw the same determined expressions.
“Trust Kota, he knows what he’s doing. Hell, if he gets to plan a hit, instead of just taking one he doesn’t see coming, he’ll be fine. Cyrus, it’s not just that they’ll take Kota to the same place as Sarah, they’ll want Sarah to heal him. You know it, I know, we all know it.” The whole thing made Nate want to throw up. The idea of Kota getting injured, and then Sarah having to heal him and making herself sick. All of it was a nightmare, but it was what needed to happen. They were all looking at him. He nodded.
“Sounds like a plan,” he agreed.
Chapter Eight
“No!”
“Grab her.” The beefy orderly pulled and twisted her wrist. A white spear of agony went up her arm. She didn’t stop struggling.
“Sarah, you’re just making this hard on yourself,” the Simms woman said in a phony kind voice.
“You’re not going to shove more of that shit into me,” Sarah had enough.
“We could have done this the easy way, but it’s your choice to make it hard.” Sarah should have known there would be restraints on the bed. The night nurse named Tom helped the hulking orderly strap her down, cuffing her wrists and ankles. She winced at how tight the fucker strapped her left wrist, he was obviously a sadist, because it was already bruising.
“Are you sure this won’t mess up the fertility drugs, Simms?” Sarah asked with a sneer.
Healed (The Found Book 3) Page 9