Trap: A Salvation Society Novel

by Jennifer Rebecca

  “This is S-2-Lone Star requesting permission to return to base immediately. I have catastrophic engine failure,” I say into my coms as I do my best to steer my baby back toward the base.

  I’m not going to make it. I’m too far away.

  Fuck fuck fuck!

  “Mayday! Mayday!” I call out into my coms. “I repeat, this is S-2-Lone Star. I have catastrophic engine failure. I’m going down. I repeat, mayday. Mayday!”

  Can no one hear me? What is happening? The only thing I know is that if I can’t right this bird, I’m headed for a crash.

  “Mayday! Mayday!” I repeat, and finally the radio crackles to life, and I think, Thank God. Help is coming.

  “No one can hear you,” a familiar voice says over the radio.

  “What?” I ask as a cold chill skids over every inch of my skin. I’m frozen to the core. No no no. This can’t be happening. I trusted him. He was supposed to be my friend.

  “I’m sorry, Mack. It has to be this way,” Woody says, and it sounds like he really is sorry, but still. This can’t be happening.

  “What way?” I ask. “I don’t understand, Wood. What’s happening?”

  “They need you to get to the president,” he explains, and I know then I’m not coming back. My life was forfeit when I climbed in my plane today. I just didn’t know it. The decision had been taken out of my hands. No matter how well I fly, I’m going down.

  “Why?” I demand. “Why are you doing this?”

  “They have my wife and daughter,” he answers sadly. “I had to.”

  And then the coms cut out again.

  The thing about these new planes is there’s no pull switch or lever. Once the aircraft recognizes it can’t be salvaged, it will eject the pilot automatically. Fancy technology to save the life of the pilot, even if the eighty-million-dollar plane gets smashed to bits.

  I realize about two seconds before it happens that we’ve reached that level of the game; there’s no coming back. The canopy flies off just before my seat hurtles me through the opening. The seat falls away, and my parachute opens. I watch my baby crumple into the mountainside and catch fire. A strangled sob erupting from my chest. I couldn’t hold it back if I wanted to.

  By now, I’m so far out past enemy lines that it’s scary. Anyone with working knowledge of the F-35 Lightning and its operation systems could tamper with the aircraft and time it just right based on the flight plan I was given—the wrong flight plan—because if I had been on the right one, Cinco and Hoots would have seen my bird crash. They still might have, but who knows? At this point, I have no idea how far off my flight plan is from theirs. I only know now that I was given a different one.

  I stumble as I come down on the rocky hillside that’s made up of dry brush and sheer rock. I lose my balance and come down hard on my side, the air is knocked out from my lungs, and I slide down the rocky terrain as I try to grab onto anything to slow down my momentum. All I do is slice up my hands as it cuts through my gloves.

  I flip and tumble and then finally land, clipping my head on a rock face. I feel the blood from the cuts on my hands drip down the sleeve of my flight suit, and my head feels like it’s still bouncing around in my helmet like a pinball. My chest is tight, and it hurts to breathe. I’m sure I cracked some ribs on the way down the mountainside.

  I look up and blink away the overly brightness of the sun, when the figure of a man steps into my view, blocking out the light like a solar eclipse. If I had any breath left in my lungs after the fall, it would have whooshed back out again, because I can’t help but feel like this man knows exactly who I am.

  What am I thinking? He obviously does. This man was working with Woody to have me taken. I can’t believe he purposely sabotaged my airplane. The man opens his mouth and speaks, and my vision starts to go fuzzy and fade in and out.

  “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  And then it’s lights out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kyle

  Lock it down

  Three days later…

  Something is definitely fucking wrong. I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it. But something is just… off.

  I’m working backup for a protection detail this week in California. Some celebrity needs security. Sean is all over it. I guess he’s been a fan since he was a kid. It’s funny as hell to watch him fangirl all over this poor pop star all grown up. Sean doesn’t care one bit. He has no shame, no cool, no nothing, he’s practically vibrating with excitement every time he sees her. Since we haven’t been with the company long, we’re just backup, filler, until we find the areas we’d like to work in.

  She’s at lunch with a “friend,” and I use the term loosely, because this other woman has used every opportunity granted to her to sling mud at our client. I grit my teeth each time she brings up career missteps or weight gain. Are all women really this mean? Fuck, I hope not. Although I have a feeling that they are. It’s like watching the Mean Girls movie in real time but with grownups and not bitchy high schoolers. I have never been more thankful that MacKenzie is like no woman I’ve ever met before.

  But thinking about her now reminds me that she didn’t call the other day like she said she would. That’s not like her. I can tell our relationship and how fast it happened, how serious it became, scares her. She doesn’t hide her feelings from me, and her need for some space isn’t unusual, but I figured being half a world away was enough of a distance. At least it is to me. But when she says she’s going to try to call, she does. She finds some way to connect with me one way or another, even if it’s just a quick email, it’s still something. But this is just nothing, it’s like she’s disappeared completely.

  I also know that time can become a blur when the op tempo is high. More than once, hell even more times than I can count on both hands and feet, I’ve lost track of time and space while on an op, so it’s not unheard of that she could just be busy. But still, I have a feeling in my gut telling me that something is really fucking wrong.

  I can’t help but feel like I’m headed for a crash. It’s almost poetic that the first time I fall for a woman, when I finally find one I want to get to know, to give my time and attention to, she breaks my fucking heart. I guess it’s like they always say—life’s a bitch and then you die.

  Sean’s phone rings silently, because he pulls it out of the pocket of his jeans, slides his finger across the screen to unlock it, and answers.

  “Erikson.” Whoever called him says something that has his face pulling into a frown. For as long as I can remember, Sean has been a happy-go-lucky guy. Even on deployment, he’d find reason to smile. So whatever it is that has him looking like this is not a good thing. And then he blinks and his face just goes blank. I’ve never seen him clear his expression like that. “Call in the B team. We should be there in thirty.”

  “What was that all about?” I ask when he slides his phone back in his pocket.

  “We’re needed back at the office,” is all he says. “B team is taking their shift early today.”

  That’s it. That’s all I get. No details other than the two guys who relieve us on this detail are coming in early—as in really fucking early—so we can get back to the offices PDQ. I wonder if we’re being moved to a new job. It’s not the norm for us to transition from one job to another before the first is complete. If the new job is high priority, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that management would reassign and prioritize. But still… I have no idea what’s going on and I don’t like it.

  Our relief shows up at the restaurant and seamlessly takes our place. Sean nods to me to follow him out of the building. He drove today, so I climb in the front passenger seat when he beeps the locks with his key.

  “So what’s going on?” I ask him when he climbs in and starts the engine.

  “We’re needed back at the office,” he explains with the same line he’s already given me, and it has the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. What I do know is he d
rives with a purpose. There is no slow going to get back to work. Something is waiting for us. Something bad. I just won’t know how bad it is until I walk through the doors.

  He pulls into the parking lot and shuts the engine off. I unbuckle and climb out of the car. Sean does the same, and as we begin our walk into the building, he stops and looks at me. “You know I’ve got your back, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answer immediately, because it’s true. I’ve known him since we were kids, and I’ve trusted him with my life more times than I can count. “What’s all this about?”

  “I just need you to know that I’ve always got your back,” he replies cryptically. There’s a burning in the pit of my stomach. My spidey senses are on high alert and I kind of feel like I might throw up.

  “Okay.”

  If we did more secretive shit than we do, I’d be wondering if I was about to get iced, but I know that can’t be right. Sean would find a way to tell me if someone was about to put a bullet in my brain.

  When we walk in the front door, the receptionist takes one look at me, and I swear something flashes deep in her eyes. I don’t know her well, and I haven’t been with the company very long, but I swear it’s there before she hides it. And then, just like Sean did at the restaurant, she puts it away and carefully blanks her face. There’s something they don’t want me to know.

  “They’re waiting for you in the boss’s office,” she says. “Go on in.”

  I nod and make my way through the office. I knew something wasn’t right. I knew it deep down in my gut; I just didn’t know what. That is until I walk into Jackson Cole’s office and see him sitting at his desk with a pained expression on his face. I look around the room and see a lot of guys I’ve come to know over the last couple of months working for Cole Security, like Mark Dixon and Quinn Miller. Or guys I’ve served with, like Dreamboat and Surfer.

  But I turn around and see a man I’ve never met before but know instantly who he is, how powerful he is, and why he’s here. Because looking at me with an expression mixed of wanting to tear the room apart piece by fucking piece and cry like a baby is none other than Ryan Black, the president’s right hand man and my woman’s older brother.

  It’s then I know that she’s dead. Mack’s been taken from me and I’m half a world away and helpless to stop it. I should have told her I loved her so that she knew. Fuck how scared she was, I should have told her. I shouldn’t have been pissed and moody that she threw up her walls to protect herself the night before she left. I should have taken her to dinner, I should have made love to her on the beach or the balcony off of her bedroom. There’re a lot of should haves and they’re all going to fuck with me until the day that I die.

  “Lock it down,” Cole says from behind me, but I can’t hear him clearly. All of the blood in my body is rushing through my ears. My head is swimming, and the room is spinning. I like to think I’m a tough guy, a badass who can stand tall in any situation, but right now, my knees are shaking in a way that I know my legs are about to give out. “Goddammit! I said lock it down.”

  Hands grab me, and I try to shake them off. I throw a punch or two, and an eerie scream comes up from my belly as I fight and claw and yell. I have to. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to, so I don’t even try. I mean, what does it matter anymore if the only woman I have ever loved is dead, and she died not knowing how I felt about her? But now she’s gone, and I’m the one who has to find a way to survive it. That is if I even want to.

  “Fucking hell,” someone bites out. “Will someone fucking grab him already.”

  Strong arms like fucking Amazonian pythons grab me from behind, and I know that Sean has me. He said he’d have my back, and now he’s holding me down when I want to rage against the world and everyone in it. Anyone who lived when she didn’t is fair game in my mind, but he doesn’t seem to agree. I guess it was all bullshit. How dare he restrain me when I need to rage. I need to rip the world apart, light it on fire and watch it burn.

  “Let me go,” I growl. Fuck him, fuck everyone in this room. I don’t care anymore; I don’t care about anything. I want to hit him, making him feel a little bit of the pain that I feel ripping my heart in two. And then I want to go home, back to her space and get fucking drunk and cry. I want to be alone when I let the grief take me, not here in this fucking office. Fuck this and fuck them.

  “No,” he says. “You need to listen.”

  “Fuck that,” I bite out. “She’s dead. I don’t need to know how. I need to get drunk.”

  “She’s not dead,” Black says, and everything in my body stills. The world quiets.

  “What?” The word feels torn from the very depths of me.

  “She’s not dead,” he repeats.

  “Then what is this all about?” I ask. He seems to hesitate for what feels like years but, in reality, it’s only seconds before he comes to his decision. What is this fucked up game he’s playing at? Because if she’s not dead, then…

  “She’s been taken.”

  “Where?” I demand. “By who? Tell me everything.”

  Black looks over his shoulder to Cole, and I just about lose it all over again.

  “No,” I bark out. I make a dangerous move challenging the two top dogs in the room for dominance but who the fuck cares now when MacKenzie’s life hangs in the balance? She’s the only thing that matters to me. “Don’t look at Mommy for permission. Answer me, Goddammit.”

  “You need to lock it the fuck down,” Cole says, his voice low and vibrating with authority that I want to bristle against. But I know I need him and the other men in this room in order to find out what’s going on, so I nod in acceptance and bite back my angry retort.

  “Tell me.”

  “Yesterday, a group orchestrated her capture by tampering with her aircraft so that it would crash once it was behind enemy lines,” Cole says.

  “Who?”

  “Chatter says they forced a mechanic by the name of Allan Woodruff to fix her plane so it would fail,” Surfer adds. “She was also passed a false flight plan so that once she crashed, she was out of contact and sight with her relay men.

  “Why?” I demand. I need to know why someone would harm what’s mine, and there better be a damn good reason.

  “They have his wife and kids,” Dixon adds, and I close my eyes, because I can’t hate the man. I can’t even say that in his shoes I wouldn’t do what he did, because I know there is no end to what I would do or where I would go to save the people I love.

  “So what happens now?” I ask, and I hate that the words coming out of my mouth sound so weak and desperate, but I am a desperate man. I need to get to Mack and ensure her safety. I need her back here with me where I can protect her until the day that I die. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll bring her home safely.

  “We get her back,” Miller says.

  “Thank fuck,” I bite out, feeling relief pour through my body. If ever there was a group of men who could handle a job like this, it’s this motley crew.

  “It’s time to set a TRAP,” Sean says happily.

  Chapter Eighteen

  MacKenzie

  Crashed

  Blurry.

  The hazy gray and blue colors of the room twist and swirl all around me. I blink to clear my eyes and clench my teeth against the wave of nausea that grips my belly. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me. Maybe not enough fluids this morning before a hot day in the cockpit. Anything is possible when we’re over here. The only thing I know is that I have to get it together. I have an early morning flight, and I can’t be a mess or command will ground me.

  And one thing I’ve known since I was just learning to fly—I’d rather be dead than grounded. I would do anything in the world to keep from being grounded. I need to fly.

  I blink again and try to chase the last bit of sleep away from the nightmare that still has me caught in its teeth. I had the craziest dream last night. I dreamed that Woody was turned, and he sabotaged my plane so that I would cras
h. That’s crazy. Woody is a friend. He would never sell me out like that, right?

  But it’s when I open my eyes that I realize it’s not a nightmare but my real life.

  No.

  It can’t be.

  The steel bars of the cell clank, and I hear harsh-sounding words uttered in a language I don’t know. A tray of food is dropped onto the concrete floor next to the door before it’s slammed closed again. The contents of the tray have me puking my guts up where I lay.

  Crashed.

  I crashed an eighty-million-dollar airplane. Not only did I crash a plane, but I was taken for reasons outside my control. My brother. Poor Ryan. I hope he never learns that I was taken so they could use him to get to the president. Ryan would never turn his back on the president or his country, but he would be tempted for family—for me. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he knew he was the reason I was taken, and I take a moment to pray to God that he never learns.

  This is my fate.

  My story will end here in this cell. But I knew when I joined the marines that it was a dangerous job. I knew this was always a possibility. I knowingly took the risk, and that’s not on anyone else but me.

  And now, I’m nothing more than an animal in a cage.

  I should have told Kyle that I loved him. I could tell he was waiting for me to grow confident in my feelings for him, but I was too chickenshit to say how I really felt. He was showing me every minute of every day with his actions and the tender way he treated me and with his body, his touch, and the way that he made love to me. I will never forget him, and I will die thankful that we had that time together.

  Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe he’ll be able to move on from this, from me and whatever we were or were heading toward, because as I struggle to sit up from where I’m lying on the cold, hard floor of this cell, I know without a doubt this is where I’m going to die.