Defense Breach

by Lisa Phillips

  One who needed his help.

  The driver made a right turn, and the wheels hit gravel. They crunched along the loose stones at a much slower speed than the man had been driving on the road. Where were they? Wherever it was, they were close to the end. The driver was going to stop the van soon. And then he would make his move. He would try to kill Skylar and Grady.

  And if he succeeded, those guys would get away with everything.

  *

  Skylar watched the decision move across Grady’s face. The resolve she saw there was almost scary, had she been the one on the receiving end of everything this Secret Service agent could do. She knew enough about him from this morning to know he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. He also wasn’t going to let any of these people get away.

  For a split second, she wondered what it would be like if there was something romantic between them. If the man was capable of that much purpose in taking care of the people around him, then it would be amazing to be on the receiving end of it, coupled with love. But she had promised herself that love would never cloud her judgment again. She’d made so many bad choices that she hardly even wanted to entertain the idea of exposing herself to the possibility of being hurt.

  Despite the fact that she knew full well romance could be sweet and wonderful, there was no way Skylar would put herself in that position again. It didn’t matter if Grady was the nicest man in the world. Skylar could not let anyone have that much power over her personal life and her emotions. Finding out her husband had been cheating on her had been nothing short of devastating.

  The van slowed to a stop but the driver didn’t put it in Park. Simmons got out and slammed his door. Skylar lifted her head and looked out the front windshield. She didn’t see him. She looked to the back window, but no shadow darkened the frosted glass there.

  “Where did he go?”

  Grady shook his head, lifting up to sit. “I don’t know.”

  Skylar sat up as well. Her head swam with the aftereffects of being zapped with so much electricity. Her muscles were tight from the quick spasms coupled with lying here on the floor of the van. She scooted across the floor toward the driver’s side. As she moved she looked around for a toolbox. A knife. Even a sharp piece of metal would help her break the ties that secured her hands and feet.

  Before she could reach for the driver’s seat to climb in the front, the van started to move.

  “What—”

  “He’s pushing us.”

  Skylar lifted up and looked in front of the vehicle. The wing mirror. “There’s a drop-off, a boat ramp. It goes down to a river.” Her stomach bottomed out.

  Grady’s gaze darkened. “Gravelly Point. He’s going to drown us in the Potomac.”

  She hadn’t wanted to say it and wasn’t all that glad Grady had voiced it out loud. Skylar had never considered the fact that she might die like this.

  She was going to be a Secret Service agent soon. She wouldn’t be on the president’s detail straight away, but intended to work her way up to it. And she could spend the interim years doing that, being the best agent she could be. It was supposed to be a long and impressive career, if she did say so herself. She was not supposed to drown weeks away from becoming an agent.

  Skylar hauled herself up and climbed into the front. But it was too late. Water hit the hood of the vehicle. She was thrown into the driver’s seat at an odd angle, her legs still twisted in the back. She reached under her knees and pulled up the emergency brake, but they were already in the water. The vehicle sank into the Potomac, and water started to pour in.

  While Skylar wrangled her legs into the front seat, the water level outside hit the windows. This was a nightmare. It was every scary dream she’d ever had, wrapped up in one incident. “What are we going to do?” She looked back at Grady.

  He was up by the back doors, working at the latch. “I can’t get it open.” The wound on the side of his head bled down his cheek.

  “We could wait until the van fills up with water and then get the windows open, right?” Weren’t there pointy metal rods on the headrests they could use to break the glass? She twisted to grab one, but there were no headrests. Whether it would’ve worked or not, she didn’t even have the tool to try.

  “I don’t know.” He sounded more mad than scared to her. Because he didn’t know how to get them out of this?

  Skylar reached for the glove box. All that fell out was papers. Nothing she could use to cut her bonds or get them out of here.

  Water splashed against her feet on the seat, and she gasped. It was freezing. She bent to reach down and felt under the seat, anyway. Just in case something useful had been stashed down there. As she reached under the passenger seat, the van jolted again. Her hip slammed against the dashboard, and she winced. That was going to leave a bruise.

  Grady was still working on the back door. She agreed it was probably their best chance but was willing to try to find another option. The floor under the passenger seat wasn’t any help either. She looked around the back of the van again and prayed she would find something.

  There! “Hand me that wrench.” When he didn’t move, she said, “Grady!” loud enough to jog him out of his concentration on the door. “The wrench.”

  “What?”

  Skylar pointed at it with both hands. “Give that to me. I’ll use it to break the front window.”

  “That will just let the water in.”

  “And it will let us out, so give it to me.”

  He grabbed it and shuffled his way to her. “I’ll do it.”

  She shook her head. “I’m closer.”

  He clearly didn’t like it, but he gave her the wrench. Skylar held it with both hands and jabbed at the top corner of the windshield. It took a minute solid of her hard slams before the window cracked. Water started pouring in across the dash, right onto her lap. She punched out the rest of the window and hoped they wouldn’t get cut up too badly swimming out. How far down were they?

  The water was up over the seats now. She ignored that and hauled herself out of the window and through a torrent of incoming freezing water that took her breath away. She heard Grady yell something but just headed for the surface. She needed air.

  When her head emerged, the cool air of morning smelled wonderful. A second later a gunshot pinged the water. She felt Grady move up beside her and shoved him away with her hands, then kicked at him with her feet. She heard him swallow a mouthful of air, then water, but there was no time to explain.

  Skylar ducked underwater and pushed him, then she swam as best she could still tied up. He broke the surface again, and she followed. Two more gunshots echoed through the air. She felt something hot sting the back of her leg but kept kicking. It was hard to ignore the pain, but it was better than allowing herself to be killed here, where no one would know the truth.

  “Go.” They would have to swim to the other side of the river if they were going to get away from the gunman. The driver of the van.

  “He’s running.” Grady gasped, water running down his face. “He’s going to try to cut us off.”

  There was no escape. Whichever way they went, Simmons was going to find them.

  And he was going to kill them.

  SIX

  Answering gunshots echoed through the morning air. She heard someone scream. Skylar’s feet touched bottom as she reached a spot close enough to the bank she could quit swimming. Unfortunately, that meant dragging herself out of the water with her hands and feet still bound.

  Grady coughed and landed on the dirt beside her. “Someone is here. They must’ve heard the gunshots.”

  Skylar glanced around, trying to figure out where their assailant had gone. Also trying to ignore the trickle of blood on her leg. Not a bullet wound. She must have scraped it on something under the water.

  More gunshots sounded, and she fought for the strength to pull the zip ties apart hard enough to break them.

  The whole area around them was flat, and there weren’
t many trees. Just cars and the footpath. Would someone riding their bike to work see them?

  Grady said, “We’re near the Pentagon, and the Mount Vernon trail runs close to here. That trail is as busy with bikers and runners at rush hour as the street is with cars.”

  Traffic whizzed past on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. She said, “A driver could see that we’re in trouble. But only if they look over at the right moment.”

  Breaking free of these ties was going to hurt a lot. Thankfully Simmons had secured their hands in front of them and not behind their backs. With their wrists secured together, not overlapping one on the other, it was only a matter of snapping the ties. Tape was easier, but it was still possible.

  The ones on her feet would be more difficult, though. Maybe impossible. Skylar prayed someone was calling the police from their car even now.

  If they got free, would it only be so they could die unbound? Where had Simmons gone?

  Grady lifted both hands, brought them down hard over his bent knee and snapped the ties. He winced, then glanced at her.

  Skylar tried the same move but only succeeded in bruising herself. Figures. She hissed out a breath. “How are we going to capture him if we can’t even get out of these ties?” Yes, she was mostly just referring to herself, but she needed to feel like they were a team right now. The only problem was she was letting the team down.

  “We’ll have to—”

  An armed man ran from behind a tree, right toward them.

  Simmons in his army uniform. Had he stayed to make sure they were dead? He lifted his gun. Grady yelled, “Don’t!”

  Skylar’s breath escaped her throat, nothing but an exhale and a moan. She’d been sure she would die in the van, and now this? There was nothing they could do to stop it.

  “Put the gun down!” Someone else was here?

  Skylar whipped her head around in time to see a fourth person. The man who stepped through the trees into view held a Sig Sauer like it was the most natural thing in the world. He wore jeans and a blue button-down shirt, his age somewhere north of fifty.

  Beyond the end of the barrel, Simmons’s mouth crept up in a sneer. Didn’t he care about this newcomer? She saw the gleam in his eyes. He was going to kill them anyway, despite the new man’s arrival.

  Skylar had to say something. “Don’t—”

  A single shot rang out. From the new guy’s weapon. Their captor dropped to the ground, and the man who had saved their lives kicked his gun away, while Simmons groaned and clutched his leg where he’d been shot.

  Grady exhaled. “You just saved our lives. Who are you?”

  “Niles Ford,” the man said, holstering his weapon behind his back. “I think my ride-share spilled his coffee all over the interior of my new truck, but I never figured archivists were made of particularly stern stuff. They just look at paper all day.”

  Skylar stared up at their rescuer. “Is any of that supposed to make sense to me?”

  Grady ignored her question and asked Niles, “You got a knife?”

  Niles produced a pocketknife from a pouch on his belt. Grady used it to cut the ties on his ankles and then helped Skylar get free of hers.

  Grady said, “If you have a phone, too, we should call this in. Get Secret Service police here.” He pointed at Simmons. “He needs medical attention first, but I sure have a lot of questions.”

  Niles cocked his head to one side. “Secret Service?”

  Grady nodded. “I’m Agent Farrow, and this is Acting Agent Austin.” They both rose to their feet.

  Skylar brushed herself off, but the reality was she had more bruises than friends right now. And she was soaking wet. They shook Niles’s hand, and she thanked him for saving them. “We really appreciate it.”

  “Perhaps you can appreciate it enough not to mention my name in any of this?”

  Grady said, “You discharged a weapon.”

  “When ballistics come back, my employer will take care of the situation. So long as your statement of events and what I explain to him matches up, everything will be fine.”

  Skylar shook her head. Who was this guy? Sure, this was Washington, DC, and he could work for any branch of government she knew about, or one that she didn’t even know existed. But still, not waiting for the police?

  Grady stepped closer to the man. “At least call it in for us. We have no phones, and only Simmons’s gun to maintain this situation. If you hadn’t shown up, we’d be dead right about now.”

  She wondered at him not telling the man about the hostage situation at the White House. Maybe it was to save face because the Secret Service had been outwitted during a mere exercise. But maybe Grady just didn’t want the information leaked since it didn’t need to be common knowledge. Niles definitely seemed like the kind of person who lived with enough constraints of his own that he might understand.

  “I’ll call in an anonymous tip. Should only take them a couple of minutes after that to find you.” Niles glanced behind him. “I’m actually surprised no one else ran after me. You can’t turn around in this town without finding a tourist with their cell phone taking a picture.”

  Grady started to speak, but Skylar cut him off with her hand on his bicep. “We appreciate your help, Niles. But really, if we don’t know who you are, then where do we send the fruit basket to say thank-you for saving our lives?”

  Grady looked at her like she was nuts, but Niles laughed. He pulled out his wallet and took a card out. He handed it to her.

  On the card was the name Niles Ford and a phone number. Nothing else. “If you need anything, call me. I’ll only be in town for a few days.”

  “Taking in the sights?” Skylar asked.

  Niles laughed. “You kids take care.” He disappeared almost as quickly as he had shown up.

  Grady shook his head and went to retrieve the injured gunman’s weapon. “That was probably the weirdest conversation I’ve had in my entire life. If I didn’t owe the man my life, I would’ve probably tried to arrest him.”

  Skylar waved his card. “Maybe later when we’re done with all of our immediate problems.” Yes, Niles had saved their lives, but Grady had been with her every step of the way so far. They’d saved each other over and over again this morning. And he was the one still with her now.

  Simmons had passed out, blood coating his right pant leg. Niles had shot him in such a way that Simmons was hurt, but it wasn’t life-threatening. Skylar checked his pulse just in case, and it was steady.

  “He needs an ambulance.” Not wanting to leave Grady’s side, she searched through the gunman’s pockets and found a wallet and cell phone. Even though Niles had said he would provide an anonymous tip, she called a number Grady gave her. A couple of minutes later, Secret Service Uniformed Division showed up, along with two Arlington County sheriff’s deputies.

  They debriefed with the officers, while EMTs checked them out. Skylar held the business card Niles had given her out of sight, not wanting to expose the man’s involvement unless it was absolutely necessary. She would put it in her pocket, but she was soaking wet. As they loaded Simmons into the ambulance, he started to wake up.

  Skylar went to climb in, but Grady brushed past her and moved to the gunman’s side. “Tell me about Wilson. He wanted us gone. Is that his real name?”

  The gunman just glared at him.

  “Why did he want us dead?”

  Simmons shifted his glare to Skylar. She shivered, and not from the cold. He still wanted them dead, but he would be in police custody now.

  Wilson was calling the shots, and Simmons had carried out his orders. Was he a true believer, or simply being paid well? How many others had Wilson brought around to his way of thinking?

  She said, “What were you going to get out of the deal? Whatever it is, I don’t think you can spend it in prison.”

  *

  Grady pushed out a breath and tried to calm his nerves. He wanted to wring this man’s neck. The guy had pushed the van into the river and then wa
ited around to make sure they were dead—just in case the river didn’t claim them. He probably figured he’d have been long gone by the time their bodies were fished out of the Potomac.

  And now Grady’s life was in debt to a mysterious man who had called himself Niles Ford. This did not sit well with him, considering he was a senior agent. And that wasn’t pride talking. It was his job—his responsibility—to ensure the safety of this junior agent.

  He channeled the frustration into questioning this man. “Who is Wilson? Is he really the man with the English accent? Why does he want a clock from the White House?” There were a million things in that building worth stealing. And yet the guy was going after one particular item, ignoring countless other priceless artifacts.

  Simmons said nothing. Just closed his eyes and kept his lips shut. He could exercise his right to stay quiet all he wanted. The Secret Service would get to the bottom of this. And when that was done, Grady would find out who Niles Ford was. He was fine with the idea that the man was driving by and happened upon an attempted murder in progress. What bothered him was that it was this man in particular. One clearly trained, and wishing to remain anonymous. The coincidental nature of his arrival didn’t sit right with Grady. Something more had to be going on he wasn’t seeing.

  Did Grady or Skylar—or both of them—have a secret guardian they weren’t aware of? This was Washington, DC. Backroom deals abounded. What it had to do with the English guy using the exercise as cover for a theft and a murder Grady didn’t know. But he was going to find out.

  “You’re going to prison. You think he’s going to retain his loyalty to you? You think he’d keep your name out of it?”

  Army guy opened his eyes. “A job’s a job.”

  “The clock?”

  “You think I care about that? If the two of you aren’t dead, I don’t get paid. Wilson can go jump off a bridge, for all I care.”

  “That’s his real name? Wilson?”

  Surely when the man found out Simmons had failed, he was going to send someone else to finish the job. It was nearly all Grady could think about.

  Simmons nodded, no longer caring how much he said.