She closed her eyes for several long moments, breathing deeply. Telling Danny goodbye was going to break her heart, but she had to be ready. No crying. No curling up in a ball. She had to be ready to lay down cover fire.
Danny’s pinky slid around hers again, and she smiled down at the most amazing thing that ever happened to her.
“I’ll see you at the safe place, Mommy.”
She bent down and kissed him hard, then forced the word “go” through her throat.
In the blink of an eye, Alex had Danny over his shoulder. He let loose a spray of bullets, then took off at a dead run.
One last look at her son’s terrified face, then a movement in the trees. She aimed, fired, then fired again at a muzzle flash.
Grace heard herself scream. It was a primal sound of maternal outrage and fear, and she couldn’t say if it actually came from her mouth, or only her mind. She didn’t care.
She killed two quickly, and a third would need either a good doctor or a priest, but she didn’t leave her post. There had to be more, and she could do nothing until she knew Danny was safe.
“Helo, come in,” she said into the headset over and over, but her only response was silence.
Seconds passed and she moved out into the clearing, running at a low angle toward the trees. A click sounded to her right and she turned, registered the threat and fired, dropping the guy without even pausing. They should be in range of Gallagher’s cover fire by now, but she kept on—not rushing, but scanning constantly for threats.
“Package intact and on board,” crackled over her radio just as she threw herself to the left, rolling and firing at the target who’d fired a split second too late.
Gaining her feet, she saw the new threat almost immediately. A man stood at the edge of the grove, lifting a hand-held rocket launcher. She screamed, jerking his attention away from the mechanism and then she fired. She fired again and again until the gun did nothing but click and the body didn’t even twitch on the ground.
Then she broke through the trees and saw it—the flash of a black helicopter streaking away toward the horizon. Relief stole the strength from her legs and she sank to her knees in the sand. The sob that had been trapped in her throat broke free and she barely heard the gunshot behind her.
“She’s still taking fire,” Gallagher shouted into Alex’s earpiece.
He jerked up on Danny’s harness one last time, trying to ignore the terrified eyes and the trembling lower lip. Danny was safe and that’s all that mattered. There would be times for hugs and kisses and reassurances later. What was important now was making sure those reassurances came from the boy’s mother.
“Make a circle and drop me off-shore,” Alex ordered. “I’ll get her and we’ll take one of the boats out.”
“Negative.”
His head came up from the repelling harness he was inspecting. “Negative? What…did you just tell me no?”
“Negative is no, affirmative is yes. Geez, Rossi, and all this time I thought you were a pro.”
“I’m going back for her, you son of a bitch. If I have to hold a gun to your head to get you to bring this tin can around, I will.”
“Look. You’ve got a scared kid back there and an agent sitting on poison back in the hotel. And you run the joint. I’m the only expendable personnel on board this bird.”
Alex shook his head. “I’m not leaving her behind.”
“No, you’re not. You’re sending me in after her and you trust me with your life so you’d damn well better trust me with hers. And I promised her she could trust me with her kid. I guess that means not letting his…you get killed, too.”
Alex dropped the harness with a sigh. The damn beach bum was right. As much he wanted to rescue her himself, that wasn’t what was best for Danny and he slid into the co-pilot seat. “Give over control and get ready.”
Gallagher clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Dude, if this goes bad…get the boy a dog and name it after me, okay?”
“We’re all going to have a long talk about insubordination when this is over.”
“I hope so, man.”
“Bring her back,” Alex said, leaving whether she’s alive or not unsaid.
A final handshake and Gallagher moved back in the bird, checking his weapons and the harness. Alex heard him speak quietly to Danny, but he couldn’t hear what his best friend told his son.
His son. That was his boy back there, pale as a ghost with his little hands clutched in his lap. And what the hell would he say to him if Grace didn’t make it? He was a total stranger to that boy.
As Sean Devlin, he’d received the sealed package detailing the arrangements she’d made regarding her son in the event of her death. He’d assumed the documents left custody of the child and all of her possessions to her parents. Now he wondered. Was there a letter in that packet addressed to Alex Rossi? Or would she have even gone to her grave without revealing her secrets if Danny hadn’t been kidnapped?
‘Yo!” Gallagher called to him from the open hatch.
Alex tamped down on the questions and focused all of his attention on flying the bird. He came around and concentrated on coming in to the island low enough and slow enough to allow Gallagher to repel down and release the harness over the water without being low and slow enough to be a good target. Ideally, any men left alive on the island wouldn’t even know there was a man in the water.
It went down smoothly and Gallagher came though the headset seconds after hitting the water. “Go!”
And he went. Leaving two of the three most important people in his life behind.
Chapter Six
He’d known she was alive. Gallagher had been in contact several times since he’d dropped into the water. But not until Grace appeared at the end of the long hallway flanked by Gallagher and a military guard did he allow the relief to come.
She was smiling, no doubt anticipating the reunion with Danny. But she was favoring her right leg slightly, and she’d changed her shirt. He could barely discern the faint outline of a bandage on her upper arm. A minor flesh wound, Gallagher had reported, but he still shuddered at the thought of the nightmare that could have been.
Even favoring her leg, Grace moved like a cat. An exotic and lethal cat with very sharp claws. He was willing to risk the scratches and when she was near enough, he grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. Her hands snaked around his neck and he just held her for a long moment.
“Don’t ever make me leave you behind again,” he whispered against her ear.
“I don’t intend to.” She pulled away and smiled up at him. “Where’s Danny?”
“Down the hall. Your parents arrived about fifteen minutes ago.”
A shadow passed over her face. “I suppose they’ve been filled in.”
“We tried to be vague about the details, but they’ve been with Danny for ten, so…”
“Great.” She shrugged, then winced a little. “I guess I should go and supply the last pieces of the puzzle.”
“Hold up. The clock’s still ticking. Until that biotoxin loses its potency, they’re going to keep coming after it, and that’s our best bet for getting them. I’m leaving soon, but first we need to talk about what’s going to happen when this over and I come looking for you.”
“You don’t have to come looking for me. I’m leaving with you now.”
No. Over his dead body. “You are staying here with our son and then, when you get the all clear, you’re taking him home.”
“I didn’t ask your permission, Alex.”
He heard that tone in her voice that meant he may as well beat his head against a brick wall as continue this conversation, but he had a very hard head. “After all he’s been through, you’re just going to leave him here alone?”
Her cheeks reddened and he braced himself for her swing, but she only crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Ricardo Escobar almost took Danny from me while he was still in my body. Now, eight years later, he did take him from me. I am going to h
unt that son of a bitch down and I’m going to kill him. And then I’ll take my son home.”
There was no way in hell he was going to let the mother of his child risk her life taking Escobar down. And the thought of losing another woman he cared about to the bastard behind it all made fear burn like acid in the back of his throat.
“So what was all that about before, Grace? All that stuff about being a good mother and doing what was best for Danny. Now that you’ve gotten out of the kitchen and had some fun, you don’t care about that anymore?”
“Fun?” She put both hands on his chest and shoved him hard. “Screw you, Rossi. I tried. I tried to play nice with the PTO and I tried to bake cookies and I tried to like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spy Kids and I couldn’t do it. But this…this I can do for him, Alex. When I take Danny home and tuck him in to his own bed, I’ll be able to look him in the eye and promise him that bad guy will never, ever hurt him again.”
He was losing. Again. He’d rarely, if ever, totally lost his cool, but now he turned and beat the living hell out of the vending machine. Plastic cracked and splintered, and packaged snacks flew around inside of it, and it didn’t even help.
“What if you die?” he yelled, shoving his hands deep in his pockets because he wanted nothing more than to shake her until her eyes rolled back in her head. “What if you don’t come back, Grace? It doesn’t hurt any less when your mother dies taking a bullet for you. She’s still dead.”
He saw the question in her eyes, but it went unasked. “I could end up just as dead crossing the grocery store parking lot—”
“Don’t. Don’t even feed me that weak bullshit, Grace. I was the one in that helo with Danny wondering how I could face him if I had to tell him his mommy wasn’t ever coming back. What the hell is he supposed to do without you?”
“My parents love him like he’s their own child. They’re very close and he’d have a good life with them. And there’s an account set up for them if they should have to do that.”
He told himself not to ask, but like always he reached right out and put his hand on that hot stove. “That envelope Devlin has…is there a letter in there for me?”
At least she looked him in the eye when she said, “No.”
And he knew why, so he pushed the hurt down and went back to the issue at hand. “I am begging you to stay with Danny, Grace. Please.”
The pleading was useless. He knew it, but did it anyway. If there was even the slightest chance it would keep her safe here with their son he’d throw himself at her feet.
If she wasn’t a mother now, the tone in Alex’s voice would have had Grace giving him anything he asked of her. Everything about Alex Rossi was fierce, but his pride most of all.
But she had to do this. It was time for her to brandish the sword of maternal vengeance and slay the monsters. Still she couldn’t say the words. He’d never begged anything of her before.
He knew, though, because he gave a half-shrug and turned away. “You can explain that to your son.”
When Grace was cleared into the dorm-style room holding her son, he exploded up off the chair he’d occupied and wrapped himself around her like he had on the island. “Mom! Nana and Grampa are here!”
She kissed his hair and looked to her parents, but they were both busy watching Alex, who had come in behind her. The resemblance between father and son was just too strong. She wasn’t going to have a secret left to herself by the end of the day, dammit.
Finally her mother turned, and the look—the “Ohmigod are you okay because I’m going to kill you and how dare you worry me so and I love you so much” look—almost undid Grace entirely.
Here was a woman who did it right. She baked perfect cookies in a perfect apron in a perfectly spotless house behind a white picket fence and had probably never felt an urge to pack the vacuum with C4 and be done with whole damn thing. And even though Grace had put that perfect white bread existence behind her as soon as she was of age, she now wished she could be half the mother Liz Nolan had been.
“I should have known those stories about doing diplomatic work were a crock,” her mother said now. “You haven’t been diplomatic a day in your life.”
Even being shot didn’t suck as much as being bagged in a lie by a parent, Grace thought. “Sometimes I worked for diplomats,” she mumbled.
“Somehow I have a very difficult time imagining Shirley Temple Black jumping out of a helicopter.”
Grace swallowed the smart-ass retort that almost sprang from her tongue. Her parents had just been more or less abducted from their home and put on a helicopter to rendezvous with their kidnapped grandson before they even knew if they’d get him back or not. A little terseness on her mother’s part was far less than the emotional reaction Grace had expected.
Her dad’s gaze was bouncing around from Grace to Danny and Alex and back to Danny again. “Hey, Dad.”
Instantly she was pulled into his arms, wrapped in an Old Spice-scented bear hug she hadn’t realized she’d needed desperately. She sniffed back tears and let him hold her for a good long time.
Finally he pushed her gently away and looked her over with fatherly concern. “I never should have let you watch those John Wayne marathons with me.”
They all laughed then, and breaking the tension set Danny off. His words tumbled over each other in his rush to tell all about the plane and the guns and the helicopter and Mom’s Matrix moves. By the time he was done, Grace’s mother had found herself a chair to collapse into.
“At least it’s over now,” she said.
Grace took a deep breath. Now came the hard part.
Alex stepped forward before she could speak. “Mr. and Mrs. Nolan, I’d like a few moments of your time, if you don’t mind.”
Grace tried to show her gratitude in a brief smile. Telling Danny she wasn’t staying would be hard enough without her mother and father going hysterical. And considering she heard her mother muttering about how he didn’t look like a doctor on their way through the door, she knew Alex would be saving her from further explanations, as well.
“Are the bad guys gone now, Mom?”
She looked into his sad, dark eyes and knew it could all end right here. If her little boy cried and begged her to stay, every word she’d said to Alex would cease to matter.
“Some of them. But the head bad guy is still out there.”
“Are you going to go get him?”
She sat on the cot next to him and tucked his head under her chin. “I want to, but only if it’s okay with you to stay here with Nana and Grampa until I get back.”
Only a few seconds passed before he nodded, his soft hair tickling under her chin. “They said I’m even better guarded than the president. And I missed Grampa and Nana. You won’t get hurt, will you?”
She squeezed him just a little too hard and he squirmed. “I’ll try not to get hurt, honey. It’s dangerous, but I did this job for a lot of years before you were born, and I know how to take care of myself. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“And no matter what, you remember I love you more than anything. Even more than Doritos.”
He giggled and pulled out of her embrace. He was reaching the age at which he’d only tolerate coddling for so long. “Is Alex going with you?”
“Yes. We’re kinda partners. Or we used to be.”
“I’m glad he’s going with you.”
Something in his voice made her wonder if something besides being impressed with Rossi’s abilities was behind his words. “Why?”
He shrugged, trying for casual, but not quite getting it. “He looks at me a lot. Like watching me and staring, and it’s kinda creepy.”
At least he had good instincts, she thought. Clearly the apple hadn’t fallen from either branch of the tree. “I know you’re a little shaken up right now, honey, but do you remember when I told you your father was a doctor?”
Danny nodded, frowning. “And you couldn’t find him, so he doesn’t know ‘bout me.”
He didn’t say anything, so she pressed on. “We used to work together and we…liked each other a lot. But we lost touch right before I found out I had you in my belly. He didn’t know about you until after the bad guys took you and I needed help to get you back.”
“So you knew where he was if you could ask him to help get me back.”
Ouch. “I knew how to contact people who knew how to find him. I thought…I thought he had done a bad thing, but now I know I was wrong. I’m so very sorry, baby. I’m sorry about all of this.”
He shrugged again, and this one translated as he was confused and hurt and needed some time to think things through. And Grace was thankful her parents were just the kind of warm and intelligent people to talk him through what was happening.
“Can I talk to him before you leave?” Danny asked, and Grace nodded.
“Everybody’s just down the hall. Let’s go find them, okay?”
Alex was relieved to see Grace and Danny join them in the big rec room, but confused when she veered off toward him and Danny walked alone to a couch at the far end and sat. He’d figured the kid would still be refusing to let go of her. In fact, he’d been counting on it—his last hope for changing her mind.
“He wants to talk to you,” she said quietly, and he noted the pinched look her face always took on when she was trying not to be emotional.
“Did you tell him who I am?”
She nodded. “I thought it was best. You were staring at him a lot and he was beginning to think you were a creepy child molester.”
“Good instincts,” he said, and then his brain caught up with his mouth. “I mean, not that I’m a pedophile, but it’s good he was aware I couldn’t stop watching him.”
She laughed at him, some of the color returning to her cheeks. “So stop watching him and go talk to him.”
72 Hours Page 6