by Lori Ryan
He slammed to a stop several rows down from her town house and exited his car, moving in a crouch to make his body as small as possible. He circled and crept up beside Jeff’s car, keeping one eye on the front door to Sam’s house and one eye on Jeff’s car. No sign of Jeff.
The front door stood slightly ajar and Logan stayed to the right of it, looking through the opening to the mirror hanging in Sam’s entranceway. If the man standing guard at the bottom of the stairs was any indication, these guys had come fully loaded. The lookout held an assault rifle as though it were an extension of his arm and a Glock 23 was holstered under one shoulder. A vicious looking knife was strapped to one leg, and that’s only what Logan could see. The man’s appearance screamed mercenary: killer-for-hire.
The man stood with his back to the door, looking up the staircase. What was the point of leaving a lookout at the door, if he kept his freaking back to it? Logan used the momentum of the door as he kicked it into the man’s body. Then a blow to the temple to stun, before grasping head and neck and applying pressure beyond the bounds where a person’s mind normally says to stop. Logan’s mind no longer sent that message. It was a move he had done in the past. Many times. The intruder’s neck snapped and Logan lay his body down to the floor, trying to remain as quiet as possible as he continued up the stairs.
With no idea how many were in the house, he was moving blind. Not a situation he wanted to be in. On an op in the teams, they would prep intensely ahead of time, gathering as much intel as possible. He’d have backup and, at times, even eyes inside through fiber optic scopes.
Logan paused five steps from the top of the first staircase and scanned the living room and dining area. There was very little cover for him on the stairs and he could hear a struggle taking place above him, but he stayed calm. He was in his element now, and even knowing Sam was up there facing a threat alone wasn’t enough to force him to act foolishly. He needed to stay calm and move ahead with caution if he was going to save her.
And he was going to save her. He focused on clearing one room at a time, even as he heard Sam scream above him. Christ, he needed to save her from whatever hell she was in, right now. The what-ifs tried to swamp his brain, but he shoved them back. He moved forward, his breathing steady and his mind clear, clearing the kitchen and moving up the second staircase to the third floor. If she’d had enough time to follow his instructions, she would have headed for the crawl space in her master bathroom. It sounded like that’s where the struggle was taking place.
Logan quickly cleared the guest bedroom and hallway bathroom. No other perpetrators. He entered the master bedroom. Two men in the bathroom now stood between Logan and Sam. Beyond them, he watched Sam kick and shriek and rake her nails down one of the attacker’s faces. Her screams were no longer simply cries of fear. She was in pain. A lot of it.
One man stood laughing while the other pinned Sam to the floor, backhanding her with such force the crack of the blow seemed to echo in the room, and she went eerily still. He couldn’t tell if she’d been knocked unconscious or had simply stopped fighting back. Or worse.
Logan wasted no time. He entered the room, and double-tapped the man closest to him in the back, dead center mass, then the head. As the first man crumpled to the floor, the other turned, raising a gun toward Logan. Logan didn’t give him a chance to use it. He didn’t want to take a chance at firing at this guy. He was too close to Sam. Logan’s free hand shot out, grabbing the man’s gun hand and pulling the attacker into him as Logan brought his other arm up, laying a fierce blow to the man’s face with his elbow. He followed with the butt of his gun, but the man’s own elbow shot out and struck Logan. Blood exploded from his nose as the two struggled above Sam’s limp form. When Logan was forced back toward the hallway, he knew he couldn’t take a chance on this guy getting back to where Sam lay defenseless. If the attacker tried to use her as a shield, Logan would be screwed.
Logan slid his knife from the sheath attached to his leg and thrust it up and into the man’s chest, catching him just to the left of the sternum. The man staggered and Logan landed several punches to his face before his opponent fell to the floor at his feet.
Before Logan could get to Sam to rouse her, the sound of feet and sharp orders for him to drop to the floor flooded the stairway behind him. Logan fell to his knees, hands laced behind his head, waiting for cuffs to be put on him, all the while talking to Sam.
“It’s all right, Sam. You’re safe now, baby.”
She didn’t move.
Someone’s knee was at his back, hand on his head. Hands pushed him down as a voice instructed him to lay face forward on the floor.
“You’re all right, Sam. Wake up for me, babe.”
“Stay down. Palms flat on the floor—” came a voice from beside him. In moments, he was lifted forcibly by two others and pulled from the room. Still more officers entered the room to check on Sam, but they’d pulled Logan from her line of sight. He couldn’t see into the room any longer, didn’t know what was happening to Sam.
“Sam! Sam! Is she awake? Is she breathing?”
No one answered and Logan began to feel the thin threads of the life he’d been painstakingly tying back together unravel before his eyes.
Chapter Fifteen
Logan sat in Sam’s bedroom with an officer at his side as an EMT tended to Samantha’s injuries. She’d come around almost immediately, so he suspected she wasn’t suffering any lasting effects, but he couldn’t see past the man working on her wounds to tell what was going on. Now that the threat to Sam had been eliminated, he felt panic rising in his throat at his lack of ability to control the situation. They hadn’t cuffed him yet and no one had read him his Miranda warning, so he must not be under arrest yet, but he wasn’t exactly free to move around. He was used to being in charge in a situation like this, not being shut down. Not useless, unable to defend Sam.
“Is she all right?” he asked quietly, hoping the officer standing next to him would answer. He’d already tried yelling at several of the officers, with no results. Apparently, this guy took pity on him because he nodded.
“She doesn’t have any signs of a concussion. They want her to go to the hospital for some stitches, but she’s giving them a hard time about it.”
“Stitches?” Logan didn’t want to know why she needed them, but he needed the answer at the same time.
“Seems they took a knife to her chest before you got here,” the cop said. Logan felt his whole body go cold and hard. If he hadn’t already killed the men who’d done this to her, he’d be tearing heads off. Right now, he needed to focus on getting to whoever was behind this. The men who’d attacked Sam didn’t come here of their own accord. They’d been sent and Logan needed to find out who was behind it.
“And Jeff? Have you guys found him yet?”
The cop’s mouth formed a tight, thin line. “In the trunk of the car. He’s being taken to the hospital. It looked like he’d been shot several times. He fought them first—”
They were interrupted by loud voices from downstairs and everyone seemed to freeze as they listened to the exchange.
“Who the hell called the Feds in?”
“I did, sir,” came the answer from a disembodied voice on the first floor. Logan assumed it was one of the responding officers. “With the firepower these guys were carrying, I thought the ATF needed to be called in. It’s not your average crime scene. Three purported assailants, all carrying assault rifles and explosives.”
“Crap,” mumbled the cop standing over Logan, under his breath.
Logan glanced up and raised an eyebrow. The cop bent at the waist a bit, speaking under his breath. “Eric Westbrook, the state’s attorney.”
Logan’s attention was pulled away at that moment by Sam, who pushed past the EMT working on her.
“What are you doing? Why are you holding him? He saved me, you idiots. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, looking from where Logan sat to the officer standing bes
ide him. Logan was relieved to see her looking and sounding so fierce. But then his eyes fell to the blood on her pajama top and the way she clutched the front of it closed. It looked like it had been torn loose from her. Christ.
It took everything he had to stay calm through the next few minutes. Between the state’s attorney puffing up and trying to toss out the two recently arrived federal agents, and Sam refusing—quite loudly—to go to the hospital and demanding they release him, things got loud. He hadn’t even been officially arrested yet, but he had a feeling that might not be far away. The cop standing over him had tried to ask him about the scene, but Logan had been too worked up to do anything more than demand to know what was going on with Sam. He knew if Sam saw him taken away in cuffs, she would likely refuse to go to the hospital.
“Sam,” Logan said quietly. When she didn’t respond, he spoke up, putting the kind of force behind the word that used to stop his men short, no matter the chaos around him. “Sam!”
The room went silent and he locked his eyes to hers. The officers in front of him wouldn’t let her come closer than a few feet away, but he had her attention now.
“Sam, I need you to go to the hospital for me.” When she tried to talk again, he cut her off. “If I’m going to get through this,” he said, knowing they weren’t about to just turn him loose, “I need to know you’re safe and you’re getting the care you need. I need that, Sam.”
He knew having to go through being restrained, detained, searched, interrogated and whatever the hell else was in store for him was about to stress every damned bit of control he had. Even sitting here waiting for the cuffs to come out, completely useless and defenseless, had tapped out most of his reserves. He couldn’t focus if he didn’t know she was safe.
“Get ahold of Chad and have him meet you at the hospital.” He turned to the officers standing in the room. “Someone will stay with her until her protection arrives.” He said it as a statement not a question, but they confirmed it and he looked back to Sam.
“I need you to do this, Sam. Please.”
She nodded, but he saw she was fighting back tears. “I’m fine, Sam,” he said despite the fact that he was anything but. He was so far from okay, he didn’t think there was any coming back this time. Not now. “I’m fine.”
He said it again as the federal agents now lifted him from where he’d been sitting and began to escort him from the room. Logan knew how this would go. When you’re taken away by these guys, you don’t go down to the local precinct. You’re taken to an “undisclosed location.”
He heard Sam call out one more time to him. “I’ll call Jack and have him get you a lawyer, Logan.”
He nodded even though she couldn’t see him any longer. A lawyer would be good.
Chapter Sixteen
“Oh, shit,” Peter said, looking up from his computer. Diya had been raging around the house, getting more and more ticked off. There had been no contact from the men Yoshi had hired to bring Samantha Page to her. For two days they’d been waiting. They couldn’t risk trying to contact them in case they’d been taken into custody and the police had the burner phones they’d been using. So she’d been stewing and waiting for word. She was about ready to send Yoshi to New Haven.
She turned to Peter, raising a brow with a look that should tell him to blurt out whatever it was he’d found, instead of just swearing at her.
“Oh, I uh…sorry. It’s just that I just saw a live news feed. Apparently the men you sent were, uh, well it looks like they were taken out by a guy.”
“A guy?” Diya asked, her tone sharpening as Yoshi entered the room, standing beside her.
Peter squirmed in his chair. She valued him for his hacking skills, but his weak temperament grated on her nerves.
“Just say whatever it is, Peter. I don’t need to play guessing games with you.”
He cleared his throat. “It’s uh, the state’s attorney or something. Eric Westbrook, the news says. He’s holding a press conference. He’s calling Logan Stone a vigilante. Said he killed three men instead of calling the police or simply disabling the men. Apparently, the Feds took over the case and they let Stone go once they discovered who the guys were. The Feds said the men presented a clear and present danger to Ms. Page and they saw no grounds to hold Logan. Westbrook is up in arms about states’ rights and the federal government making decisions that should be made on a state level. Um, he says the Feds let that man go up in New Hampshire recently and he—”
He stopped talking when Diya threw her glass across the room.
“Damn it!”
Peter cleared his throat again, but didn’t say anything.
“And now she’s probably crawling with body guards. No way for us to get to her now that those idiots screwed this up.”
Yoshi spoke from beside her. “It’s Stone again. Always—”
“No!” Diya cut him off and then raised a hand to her forehead and pressed shaking fingers against it, taking a deep breath.
Her father had given her so much. He’d done everything to make sure she’d have a good life. Her mother had surrounded her with love her whole life. They’d tried to do the same for her younger brothers, but their lives had been cut short in a brutally cruel fashion. And she couldn’t allow Logan Stone to continue to live his life without a care, while her family would never take a breath again.
“No,” she said more calmly, getting herself under control. “It was those men. They weren’t good enough. That much is obvious if Stone was able to take them down single-handedly. Now they’ve screwed up our shot to get to her. Stone won’t let anyone near her for a long time.”
She sat in the chair at her desk and tapped her nails on the surface. “We need to do better. We need to take care of this ourselves, Yoshi,” she said, turning to her cousin. His dark eyes met hers and he nodded. “We’re going to head to New Haven so we’re ready as soon as they let their guard down.”
“Peter,” she said, turning once again to the man sitting, as always, in front of a laptop. “Tell me what you’ve found on Samantha Page. Is she that hacker you thought she might be?”
“I don’t have any solid proof, but I did manage to connect a few dots. Hackers all leave a certain signature in their style. It’s possible Gl1nd4w1tch and blu33y3dphr3nd are the same person. Their styles aren’t the same, but it’s possible she was purposely trying to throw people off with the blu33y3dphr3nd identity. If she’s as good as they say she is, she’d be careful to make sure the signatures are distinct.”
Diya nodded and he continued. “I talked to a friend of mine who’s hacked into some of the files the FBI has on work Gl1nd4w1tch has done. They don’t name her identity, or even confirm if she’s a man or woman, but I got a list of the jobs she’s done.”
He stopped and glanced up to see if Diya was listening. She made a gesturing motion with her hand to get him to continue. For a smart man, he could be an idiot sometimes.
“Oh, so, anyway,” he said, ducking his head and looking back at the computer screen, “it turns out Gl1nd4w1tch was involved in bringing down this guy, Lazarus Alonzo. Well, she didn’t actually bring him down. She shut down large portions of his human trafficking ring and helped release a lot of the women. When the FBI couldn’t actually track him down, she managed to drain a huge portion of his money from his accounts. Rumor has it she pretty much crippled him on the run. He’s still out there, but he hasn’t been able to rebuild his empire.”
He stopped talking again and Diya rolled her eyes. “Tell me why I care about any of this.”
“Well, because Samantha Page works for Jack Sutton and Jack Sutton’s wife was one of the women kidnapped by Alonzo’s ring. Can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
He couldn’t have just said this to begin with? Diya shook her head, slowly. “No, it can’t be, but we need to figure out if that knowledge helps us at all. Yoshi, that name—Alonzo—that’s familiar to me. Why do I know it?”
Yoshi shrugged and shook his head.
&nb
sp; “I thought so, too.” Peter smiled smugly and began his incessant tap-tapping on his keyboard, before popping his head up again. “He’s in your dad’s database. Well, your database, but what I mean is, he was in your dad’s journals. He’s got all kinds of info on him. They did business from time to time.”
Diya stared off into the distance. Peter jiggled his foot back and forth, tapping the leg of the table he sat at, over and over. Diya stopped her thinking to glare at him. His leg stilled. She returned to her thoughts. It was moments later that it dawned on her. They could play the Alonzo connection to their advantage.
“Do you think it’s possible to track down Alonzo?”
“Yeah, sure,” Peter said with a nod. “There are code words here he and your dad used to get in touch. Post something in one or two chat rooms of a certain nature with those words, and he should get in touch.”
“What are you thinking, cousin?” Yoshi asked.
“We need to find a way to make Logan Stone think the threat to Samantha is gone. It’s the only way he’ll back off on protecting her and we’ll have a shot at grabbing her again. If we can lure Alonzo to that area and set it up so the trail of this last attack points to him, Logan will either kill him or capture him. I don’t really care which one it is. If Peter can manage to make it look like those men were sent by Alonzo, Logan will relax his security, and we can go after Samantha ourselves this time.”
Yoshi looked at Peter. “Can you do that?”
“Sure, that’s easy. Some emails and phone calls. Maybe some money transfers from Alonzo to one of the mercenaries, and we’ll be set. I already erased all evidence of any connection that could lead them back to us. Setting it up to look like him is simple, really.”