by Zara Keane
He opened the back door slowly and surveyed his surroundings. A glint of silver winked at him from the grass at the bottom of the steps that led from the kitchen to the garden. Cash bent down and picked up Mindy’s silver charm bracelet. So she had been outside. Had she dropped the bracelet to leave him a clue? He scanned the grass. Sure enough, a ring glinted in the sunlight, followed by a second ring a few feet from the wreck of a shed he’d checked out earlier.
He blinked. What the hell kind of kidnapper hid out in a place that Cash was likely to check? Even if Mindy hadn’t left him a breadcrumb trail of jewelry, the shed would have been one of the first places he’d look for her. A trickle of sweat wound its way down Cash’s back. Was the shed rigged with explosives? He hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary when he’d checked it a while ago, but something about this situation didn’t feel right.
He sidled up to the shed. Through the window, he spotted Mindy, bound hand and foot to a chair. Her mouth had been sealed with duct tape and her eyes were wide with fright. Cash’s hands tightened around his gun and his mouth went dry. He’d kill whoever had done this to her. Maybe not literally, but the guy wasn’t getting out of this situation without a few injuries. Despite his best efforts, Cash couldn’t see Mindy’s captor through the shed’s lone window, which meant he or she must be on the other side of the room. Taking a deep breath, Cash moved to the door. On the count of three, he kicked it in and leaped into the shed, gun cocked.
A stranger lounged in a chair to the far side of Mindy, looking unruffled and eerily calm. He had a gun pointed at Mindy. “You took your time,” the man said with a sneer. “Did you call the cops first? They won’t get here in time.”
Mindy struggled to speak through the duct tape, her plaintive noises wrenching at Cash’s heart. He continued staring down the man in the chair. “Let Mindy go. If you’re a true fan, you won’t want to hurt her. You just want to be near her, right? You don’t mean her any harm.”
Shaking with laughter, the man got to his feet. “You fool. I’m not a fan. I’ve never even seen that stupid show that made Mindy famous. In short, I don’t give a fuck about your ex-wife.”
Cash’s grip on his weapon tightened. “Then why kidnap her? Why go to all this trouble to lure her into your trap?”
“I said I didn’t give a fuck about her.” The man smirked and moved into the patch of light provided by the shed’s only window. “Do you recognize me now, Lieutenant Kincaid?”
11
Cash stared at Mindy’s captor, searching his memory for a nugget of information that would shed light on the man’s identity. “I’m not Lieutenant Kincaid anymore,” he said, buying time. “Just plain old mister.”
The man laughed, taking obvious delight in Cash’s confusion. “You haven’t a clue who I am, do you? How about when I use my normal accent?” he asked, dropping his Irish lilt in favor of an Australian accent. Or was it South African? Cash always struggled to tell those two apart.
And then a memory hit him: a small boy, wheezing and struggling to keep up in the dusty heat. “The little boy who died,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You’re his brother.”
“Finally, the penny drops.” The man took a step closer to Mindy and every atom of Cash’s being went on red alert. “Do you even remember my brother’s name?”
“Joshua,” Cash said softly. “His name was Joshua Halpern.”
“So you do remember.” David Halpern stood beside Mindy now, his hand hovering over her shoulder. “I was away at college when your commanding officer made pat condolences to my parents. You didn’t have the guts to face them.”
He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I couldn’t. I was in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound.”
Halpern’s face twisted into a grimace. “A gunshot wound you recovered from, unlike my brother.”
Every single night, Cash replayed that awful day in his nightmares, trying to go back in time and change the outcome. It never worked. “I tried to save Joshua. I tried to save all the kids.”
“And yet my brother was the only child who died, courtesy of your fuckup.” David Halpern’s knuckles turned white as he squeezed Mindy’s shoulder. “You left my brother behind to die and then collected a fucking medal for bravery.”
“I was injured,” Cash said in a thick voice. “They dragged me onto the chopper unconscious. I couldn’t go back. And I never wanted the damn medal.”
Halpern snorted. “Excuses. You got the other kids out safely. Why not Joshua? He was just back to school after a bad asthma attack, and you told him to run. How the fuck was that going to work?”
“I didn’t know about his asthma. I acted on the intel I had at the time, and we had to get in and out fast.”
“Lest it should lead to a ‘diplomatic incident’? That was all our respective governments cared about. They sent in an undermanned team of macho idiots who fucked the whole thing up.” Halpern slapped Mindy across the face, leaving an angry red welt on her right cheek.
Cash itched to lash out and punch the man for hurting Mindy, but he had to keep the guy talking until the police arrived. Just a few more minutes… “We were ambushed. Someone ratted us out to the enemy. The rescue operation was fucked before it began. It’s nothing short of a miracle that more kids didn’t die.”
Halpern’s lips retracted to form a snarl. “You should have gotten my brother on that helicopter.”
Weariness and grief weighed on Cash’s shoulders. “Like I said, we walked into a trap. There was nothing we could do. That so many of us got out alive is sheer dumb luck, not bravery on my part.”
The other man’s face contorted and his eyes flashed with rage. “Your sheer dumb luck destroyed my family. My father killed himself a year later, and my mother drank herself to death. They felt guilty for taking their family into a region known to be hostile to the West. But none of this would have happened if you’d carried Joshua.”
He reached for the duct tape that covered Mindy’s mouth and pulled it off. “No need to keep you silent any more. My plan to surprise Cash worked, and there’s no one else to hear you scream.”
Mindy treated the man to a look that could wither the hardiest of souls, and then turned her attention on Cash. “You need to get out of here, Cash. Quickly. The police aren’t coming.”
He gave her a reassuring smile. “We’ll walk out of here together. I’m not leaving you.”
Mindy shook her head. “Backup isn’t coming. Whatever number you thought you rang was connected to Derek’s—David’s—phone. He pretended to be one of Inspector Tobin’s team.”
Cash’s stomach lurched. He whipped his gaze toward Halpern. “What did you do? Tap our phones?”
The man smirked. “Hacking is one of my talents.”
Cash swore beneath his breath. The one saving grace was that Inspector Tobin was due to call him in a few minutes. If he didn’t respond, Tobin would contact the local police. He just needed to keep the guy calm for a while longer…
Halpern cut the rope that bound Mindy’s wrists and ankles and yanked her up, pressing his revolver against the side of her head. Cold sweat beaded on Cash’s forehead. “Please let her go. She has nothing to do with this.”
“Put your gun and your phone on the floor and kick them toward me.” Halpern jerked Mindy’s head back, making her gasp in pain. “Now, or I swear I’ll shoot her.”
Cash obeyed. As if in slow motion, he placed his firearm and phone on the filthy floor.
“Now sit.” Halpern gestured to the now empty chair where he’d bound Mindy. “If you’re so keen to be taken hostage in Mindy’s place, be my guest.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Don’t do it, Cash. It’s a trap.”
Cash looked her straight in the eye, willing her to understand that help would be on the way very soon.
“Sit the fuck down,” the man snarled at him.
With a last warning look at Mindy, Cash obeyed. Still pointing the gun at Mindy with one hand, Halpern slapped
a handcuff onto one of Cash’s wrists with his free hand, and secured the other handcuff to the handle of an old fridge door. “That should keep you busy for a while. Even you can’t Houdini yourself out of handcuffs in a few minutes.”
Not in a few minutes, no, but given time, Cash could get himself out of most binds. But today, time was not on his side. With a smirk, Halpern pocketed Cash’s phone and pistol, letting his backpack drop to the floor in their stead. “A parting gift, Kincaid. The bomb is due to detonate in fifteen minutes. While you’re waiting to die, you can watch me kill Mindy.”
Cash spotted the rusty nail clutched in Mindy’s hand a second before she plunged it into David Halpern’s thigh. The man roared in pain as a red splotch of blood seeped through his denim jeans. “You bitch,” he shouted at Mindy before lunging at her.
Cash pulled at his restraints, but the handle of the fridge door wouldn’t give. With a sensation of helpless frustration, he watched Halpern and Mindy roll around on the floor. Cash’s heart leaped in his chest when Mindy pulled a pistol from the back pocket of Halpern’s jeans, aimed it at the man’s chest, and pulled the trigger.
The blast of the gunshot echoed through the shed, sending Cash’s blood pressure soaring. “Get him off you and get out of here, Mindy. The bomb is due to go off any minute.”
Gasping for breath, Mindy pushed David Halpern off her and struggled to her feet. “I need to find the key to your handcuff,” she said as she searched Halpern’s pockets. “Where the hell did he put it?”
“Forget the key,” Cash said, the urgency in his tone making her jerk to attention. “Shoot the fridge door. And if that doesn’t work, forget me and save yourself.”
“I’m not leaving you to die,” she said in a shaky voice. “The key has to be here somewhere.”
“There’s no time,” he repeated. “Aim for the handle.”
Trembling, Mindy obeyed. It took three shots and a lot of mess before the handcuff fell free. Cash was on his feet in an instant, feeling for Halpern’s pulse. “Run, Mindy. I’ll deal with him.”
Her expression was one of absolute horror. “You can’t be serious. He tried to kill us.”
“He’s shot but still alive. I can’t leave him here.” He’d say the same of any man, good or bad. No matter what Cash thought of David Halpern’s actions, he recognized grief when he saw it. The man was deranged, but he was hurting for his lost family. Even if he ended up spending the rest of his life locked up, Cash couldn’t walk out of here knowing the man was still breathing.
Mindy yanked open the shed door. “If you’re determined to save him, you’d better hurry up.”
Cash hauled Halpern onto his shoulders and jogged into the garden. “Head for the car,” he shouted to Mindy. “We’ll drive him to the hospital ourselves.”
They’d barely reached the car when a blast shook the ground. “The bastard said he’d set the bomb for fifteen minutes,” Mindy exclaimed. “That was more like ten. Are you sure we want to save him?”
Cash opened his mouth to respond when a knife plunged into his back. The searing pain caused him to stagger under the weight of his assailant. Black spots floated before Cash’s eyes moments before he crumpled, unseeing, onto the ground.
12
Mindy’s scream caught in her throat. David Halpern’s menacing figure loomed before her, brandishing a bloody knife. The same knife he’d held at her throat earlier. How could she have been so stupid? She should have frisked him for the knife before they’d left the shed. But if she’d done that, The voice of reason in her head reminded her that if she’d delayed their departure from the shed, they’d all have died in the blast.
“Drop your gun and get in the fucking car,” David Halpern snarled, aiming Cash’s firearm at her head. He must have removed it from Cash’s holster when she wasn’t looking, just as she’d snagged Halpern’s pistol from his pocket.
She hesitated, desperate to go to Cash and check that he was still breathing. Her heart leaped when a bullet whizzed past her and shattered the back window of the car.
“I told you to drop the gun,” Halpern repeated. “Do it now or I’ll shoot you.”
“Can I check to see if Cash is okay?”
Halpern gestured with his gun. “Step away from him and drop the bloody gun.”
Her eyes flew to Cash’s prone form and the pool of blood forming underneath him. Her legs shook so much she wasn’t sure they’d bear her weight for much longer, but she forced herself to keep calm. “Please. He’s bleeding.”
“Of course he’s fucking bleeding,” snapped Halpern. “That was the whole idea of stabbing him. Now don’t make me repeat myself again. Drop the damn gun and get into the car.”
Heaving a sigh of resignation, Mindy obeyed. She cast a last, terrified look at Cash. Was he already dead? Or was she signing his death warrant by leaving? Halpern pocketed the discarded gun and shoved her into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut. A moment later, he slid behind the wheel and started the car with the key he must have snatched from Cash’s pocket.
Mindy swallowed hard. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere I can dump you and get away,” he said, pressing the gas pedal and accelerating down the road at an alarming speed. “You’re my ticket to getting out of the country. Unless you want me to kill you, you’ll cooperate.”
“I thought you wanted me dead.”
He sneered. “Only if Cash was around to watch you suffer.”
“Your accent has changed. You’re not Irish.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I am Irish, actually,” he said as they swerved out of a curve. “I’m a dual national. My father was Irish and my mother was South African. It’s easy for me to slip into either accent.”
“Why did you go after Suzie? Wait a sec…” She blinked, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place to create a story with a few gaping holes. “Suzie called you the morning she died. To say Alfonso was looking for me.”
Halpern’s laugh was cruel. “No, I called her. I told her you kept a spare key for your car under your makeup box and that you wanted her to collect you. The tablet I slipped in your drink the night before had you out for the count.”
No wonder she’d felt like crap the morning after Alfonso’s birthday. The jerk had spiked her whiskey. “So you took the spare key from Alfonso’s safe. But why kill Suzie? She was a threat to no one.”
“I needed to make sure Kincaid took the threat against your life seriously and stuck around Ireland. It worked.”
Poor Suzie’s life was cut short as part of a madman’s evil machinations? Mindy tasted bile just thinking about the unfairness of it all. “You’re crazy. Totally insane. If you’d wanted to hurt Cash, why didn’t you go to America? Why did you lure him all the way to Ireland?”
“Because I have a criminal record. I can’t get past U.S. Immigration. Ireland lets me in because they have no choice—I have an Irish passport.”
Suddenly, a shot rang out and blasted the side mirror. Halpern swore and temporarily lost control of the vehicle. They swerved into oncoming traffic. Mindy screamed and tried to open the passenger door with her elbow. It remained stubbornly locked. She reached for the hand brake, but he slapped her away.
“Stay still,” he snapped, back in control of the car but seriously pissed.
A second shot took out the passenger side window and damaged the door. Mindy caught sight of a motorbike following the car. Cash. He was alive. And coming to rescue her. It was too far away for her to be sure, but it had to be him. Hope soared within her, giving her renewed energy. With all her strength, she bashed against the passenger door, but it still refused to open.
They’d left the town behind them and were following a narrow country lane that ran along the coast. Without warning, Halpern swerved into the ditch and hopped out of the car. He ran to Mindy’s side and dragged her out of the car, kicking and protesting. A couple of minutes later, the motorbike jerked to a halt and Cash leaped off it, brandishing an assault
rifle.
“Let her go, Halpern,” he shouted. “This is over. The police will be here any second.”
“It’s not over until I decide it’s over,” Halpern roared, shoving Mindy to her knees and hitting her across the head. She felt nauseated and saw stars. “I want you to suffer like I’ve suffered. I want you to lose someone you love. If you’re still alive, Mindy is still of use to me.”
“We’re divorced,” Mindy said quickly. “He’d be thrilled if you killed me. We hate each other’s guts.”
Halpern laughed. “You’re lying. Jason told me you still carry a torch for Cash, and he for you. He says if it hadn’t been for your bitch of a mother, you’d still be together.”
Dammit. Jason couldn’t have known his new boyfriend was a murdering psychopath, but jeez. Why had he discussed her and Cash with him? Mindy bit her tongue. Probably because David Halpern had seduced and charmed him and persuaded him to talk about Mindy. “How did you figure out Cash was the Navy SEAL who’d rescued the kids?” She was babbling now, desperate to keep his attention.
“His name was all over the news when he got the Medal of Honor. The story as to why he was getting it was doctored, but I read through the lines. Once I had a name, it didn’t take too much research to confirm he was the guy.”
“He’s a good man, David. If he’d been able to save your brother, he would have. It’s unfair to blame him. Why don’t you focus on the terrorists who kidnapped your brother in the first place?”
“Because they’re all dead,” he snarled, “and Kincaid is very much alive. Kincaid was supposed to be one of the good guys, and he fucked up.”
“Drop it, or I’ll shoot,” Cash said.
Halpern’s maniacal laughter gave Mindy the shivers. “Go ahead. You pull your trigger and I’ll pull mine.”
Mindy spotted the second gun in his pocket and didn’t hesitate. She grabbed it and shot David Halpern in the leg. He went down roaring. Mindy raced across the road to Cash. “Is your back okay?”