Secret Maneuvers

by Jessie Lane

  “Our informant got us a message ten minutes ago that says they’re moving the shipment today. Commander Wall is with the team already in position for surveillance of the bar. Since that means he’s basically on communications black out, I’ve sent him a text message letting him know what’s going on. Our SAC wants us up at the Big Bull Bar in half an hour to play surveillance from the inside. Get your ass in gear and I’ll see you there.”

  The dial tone sounded as I glanced at the microwave clock. Two in the afternoon and Seth was getting ready to go over to the neighbor’s house to hang out with his buddy, Josh. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about where he was. Heading towards the back of the house where our bedrooms were, I stopped to knock on his door.

  He quickly popped the door open and stood there with a book bag slung over his shoulder. “You spending the night at Josh’s?”

  Rubbing his finger over his bottom lip and almost looking guilty he muttered, “Yeah, did I forget to ask if that was okay?” I looked at my son closely because my Mom Radar was pinging like crazy. He was up to something and I didn’t have time for this. Seth squirmed under my scrutiny. “Mom, are you just going to stand and stare at me or what?”

  “Work just called me in. When are you heading over to Josh’s?”

  “Now, if that’s okay with you?”

  Placing a hand on his shoulder, I looked him straight in the eye. “Please, tell me you’re going to stay out of trouble. I won’t be able to concentrate on work if I’m worried about you.”

  The left side of his mouth tipped up in a smile. “No worries. We’re just going to play on his Xbox and eat pizza.”

  Maybe I was wrong. Seth had never really given me problems before, so perhaps it was just my paranoia. I gave him a playful punch to the shoulder. “Alright, big man, I’ve got to hurry and get ready to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I turned around in the hall to head into my room when he called out to me. Looking back over my shoulder at him, I watched as his face displayed some internal war he was waging before going blank. “Be careful out there. I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Seth.” Giving him a reassuring smile, I walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me to get dressed. I was running out of time and it was best to keep this simple, so I left on my jeans and strapped my gun, already in its ankle holster, on. Then I changed my tank top out for one of my Texas Longhorn, fitted, short-sleeve shirts and slipped my feet into my tennis shoes. Since football season had just started, no one would think twice about me showing up at the bar dressed like this. I didn’t have time to do much else, so I left my hair long and curly, hanging down my back.

  Adrenaline was already pumping through me. This could be the day that we closed this case, which was what I’d been working hard to do for a long time now. Of course, if the case was over, then so was our need for the Ex Ops Team. What would happen with Bobby when he had to go home?

  No. I couldn’t do this to myself right now. The case needed my focus. Everything else would just have to take a back seat until later. As I stepped out of my house and walked towards my truck, I readied myself. It was time to put my kick-ass, bad mama-jama face on and get to work.

  Bobby

  The familiar rumble of Belle’s truck echoed through the trees around the bar where the Ex Ops Team was hidden. When Jaxon had come over the comm. link to inform us of the possible extraction of the weapons, it was also with the news that Belle and Boyd would be onsite shortly for internal surveillance of the bar. My stomach immediately went into knots. The thought of her in the building while the transaction was happening, with the ruthless criminals that would be moving the guns in attendance, damn near made me break out in hives. Not that I could say anything. Or stop her, for that matter. This was her job and I would be a hypocrite to say anything about my dislike for putting herself in dangerous situations when my job description required the same thing.

  It took every ounce of will that I had not to get up from my position behind the building and stalk into that bar to drag her out when Riley reported her clothing description and disappearance into the bar moments later. I’d be a good, little soldier and stay out here where I was supposed to be, but God help anyone in that bar that harmed a single hair on her beautiful head because there’s not a rock on this earth I wouldn’t look under to rip them to shreds.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Annabelle

  The Big Bull Bar was already half-full of customers sitting at the bar or tables—drinking beer and watching ESPN—impatiently waiting for the Longhorn’s game that was due to come on later that day. Ignoring the crowd, I made my way up to the bar where an empty stool sat in front of Travis Henderson, the bar’s manager, and our primary suspect. He glanced up at me when I sat down, asking me what I’d like to drink without an ounce of recognition of having to push me out from the back of his bar a couple of weeks ago, which was good. If he had recognized me, it would have made me nervous.

  An exit sign at the end of the hall flashed for a brief second as the metal door beneath it swung open. Two men, wearing faded blue coveralls and baseball caps, emerged from the sunlight, each pushing a hand truck loaded with a keg a piece. The guy in the front did a chin lift to Travis, who quickly placed my drink in front of me before walking off down the hallway. Travis must have finally learned to lock up after himself after I’d stumbled into his back storage area a few weeks ago because I watched him grab his keys from the front pocket of his jeans. His walk was unsteady, yet quick, as he made his way towards the delivery men with fingers shaking so badly that they fumbled a little as he shoved the key into the lock.

  Looks like I’m not the only one who’s nervous.

  Travis then used something to keep the door held open and moved out of the way to let the two delivery men through the door and into the back. I slowly began to sip my Coke while I kept my eyes on the TV situated in the corner closest to the hallway. I watched the pattern of the two delivery men bringing their kegs into the bar through the hallway exit, disappearing into the back, before turning around to go outside for another load. Ten trips. Twenty kegs total. That’s a lot of beer for this small town bar. Shit, it would be lucky if the bar patrons could finish three in two days, let alone ten for a regular weekend. It wasn’t even a holiday, but it was game day and where the hell did Travis go, it’d been forty-five minutes and my ice had already melted. A few cheers erupted around me as the game finally began and the Longhorns took the field. Perfect timing.

  I weaved my way past the cheering fans, whose eyes were glued to the cheerleaders on the screen, to the long hallway off the side of the bar, and towards the illuminated exit sign. I passed Boyd and slyly slid my palm across his shoulders as I walked behind him. Something just seemed off as I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

  My mind seemed to lose focus and kept rewinding to the other day, watching Bobby and Seth interact with each other. Like it was going to be the last time that I would ever get to see or be a part of something that wonderful again. Pushing that thought to the back of my mind, I forced myself to focus on the job at hand.

  I blinked at the sun’s blinding light as the door swung open again and one of the delivery men in coveralls came through. Keeping my head down, I brushed past him, and quickly pushed open the door to the ‘Lil Cowgirls Room’, stepping into the dimly lit bathroom. Keeping the door cracked open about an inch so that I could get a peek into the storage room diagonally across the hall. The same room we found the weapons in from our previous visit to this bar. The delivery guy scanned up and down the hall, looking around suspiciously, as if he were doing something wrong and not wanting to get caught, before he finally disappeared around the room’s corner and out of sight.

  I was going to have to get closer.

  Standing there for a few minutes, I waited to make sure no one was coming before easing the bathroom door open. After double checking up and down the hall to see that no one was watching, I crossed over to the door that led into
the back. Keeping my body hugged up against the wall, I started slowly moving down towards the room where we had found the guns stored in before. It didn’t take long before I could hear them.

  Their voices were muffled by the sounds of the game and the men screaming at the wide receiver, who had apparently fumbled the ball, but it was still easy to distinguish them from the rest, mainly because of the heavy, Spanish accents filtering through the crack in the door. From what I could see, the kegs were surprisingly empty upon arrival, instead of full. The lids looked different, too. Like they were screwed on and didn’t have the normal spout for a tap. This wasn’t your normal beer keg delivery after all.

  I held my breath when I saw Travis open the crate on the far side of the room and begin to dismantle the weapons. The men in the room had positioned themselves to set up a little assembly line, with Travis at the crate separating the guns, then handing them down the line, ending with the familiar faced guy, who was arranging them into the now lidless keg. Where the hell had I seen that man before? It took me about a minute as I stood there watching them dismantle guns and pack them away in the kegs before I remembered. He’d been one of the civilians standing outside the homes in the neighborhood from the Alamo Heights bust by the DEA. Oh shit. He’d been under our noses almost the whole time and we’d missed him.

  Ten kegs down and ten to go.

  Pain exploded in the back of my head as I felt the blunt end of something connect with my skull. It’d been fifteen years since I’d last felt that kind of pain in a shitty, rundown trailer in Georgia. Before the blackness closed in on me from all sides, I saw the evil, sneering smile of the second suspect we’d watched here at the bar weeks ago with Travis. Where the hell had he been this whole time? I hadn’t even realized he was here. How stupid of me. I vaguely heard him ordering the others to strip me down.

  My last thought before I lost consciousness was, Dag-gum, I’m in serious trouble.

  Bobby

  “Two men. Bluish coveralls and baseball caps. Jesus, they could be the start of their very own bar joke. ‘Two men walk into a bar—’” Declan snickered into the comm.

  “Can it and finish the damn ID,” Jaxon snapped.

  “Make that three men,” Chase spoke quickly in my ear. “He always forgets the driver.”

  Declan kept going as if he hadn’t heard them. “Does anyone else have a bad feeling about this? I mean twenty kegs for this hole in the wall? It only had the two taps that I saw the other night and they weren’t even the good kind. Shitty beer is a travesty.”

  My mind was racing and wouldn’t slow down. My ability to control it was gone the second Belle had walked into the bar. My instincts were telling me that something wasn’t right. The hairs at the back of my neck were on end and my insides felt like they were tied up in about a million knots. When we were together in Georgia and I was in the presence of that asshole of a father Belle had, I used to get that feeling. That kind of internal alarm that screamed danger was in the room. Right now, it was back with a vengeance, making me sick to my stomach.

  Forty-five minutes passed before we saw anymore movement. By then, it felt like my head was going to explode with anticipation. I watched silently from the trees as the delivery guys started to bring presumably empty containers back out of the bar. They marched their hand trucks up the small ramp and into the truck. The sounds of them strapping them in echoed off the metal walls of the vehicle. They disappeared back into the building and once again we waited to see what they would do next.

  My angle of sight wasn’t the best if I had to take a shot for any reason because of how the truck was parked, but it was good enough for surveillance purposes. The door opened again and two men came out. The taller delivery guy was holding the smaller one’s waist and helping him into the truck. Accident on the job by the looks of it. All twenty kegs were strapped in and ready to go. The three men quickly jumped into the truck and left the parking lot with a small dust cloud following them. It was all very anti-climactic after working myself into such a snit.

  Only a few minutes had passed before I heard Jaxon over the comm. link, “Boyd’s checked the bar twice. No sign of Belle anywhere.” I felt the blood drain out of my face and my heart started to pound away in my chest. Then Jaxon barked, “Shit. He found her clothes.”

  Fuck protocol. I saw nothing except red as I jumped up from my secure position and ran towards the bar searching for Boyd. He should have had her back! A partner always had your back. Where the fuck had he been? I felt two sets of arms drag me backwards before I even made it to the door.

  “Belle’s missing, Bobby! Beating the shit out of Boyd isn’t going to find her,” Chase hissed into my ear. “Calm down, brother. Get it together. I’ve already activated the tracking devices.”

  I glared at the door as Boyd stepped through with Jaxon and Riley. The three were locked in a heated argument as to why Boyd couldn’t go to Mexico with them, if that’s where they were headed to get Belle. There was a reason the ATF had contracted the help of the Ex Ops Team. This was just one of the many scenarios for why our group was needed. Boyd had no jurisdiction, nor the means or training to slip in under the radar like we did. Belle’s partner wasn’t liking being shut out like this, but then, he didn’t have to like it and none of us had time to sit around to hold his fucking hand until he felt better about the reality of the situation.

  “Back to the hotel. Pack and gear up. We lift off as soon as we can figure out where they’re going,” the Commander growled out. He gave jerky nods to my detainers as they forcibly turned me and shoved me towards the truck.

  I exploded. “FUCK! I knew something wasn’t right, Dec. How the fuck am I going to explain this to my son? Tell me what the hell I’m going to say to Seth!”

  Planting his hands on his hips he growled back, “You don’t. Tell him, you and Belle are going to be out of town for a few days for work and have the Sheriff keep an eye on him. Don’t make the kid worry until he absolutely has to. Keep him out of it.”

  Without second guessing myself, I pulled the comm. link out of my ear and placed the phone there. Hearing only one ring before the Sheriff’s voice answered sharply, “What do you want?”

  I took a deep breath to calm my out of control heartbeat and chaotic thoughts.

  “I need a favor…”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Annabelle

  “You spoke the truth, she is very beautiful. With that long, blonde, curly hair, creamy skin and delicate features, she looks… cómo se dice? Girl next door? Or is it all-American girl?”

  The heavily-accented voice broke through the unnatural fog in my head. My eyelids were too heavy to open and I couldn’t remember where I was or who the voice that had been speaking belonged to.

  “And you say she showed up with the ATF when they found the shipment in Alamo Heights?”

  A string of rapidly spoken Spanish answered his question, which sucked because I’d failed that class and couldn’t understand a lick of what was being said. My SAC had always told me it was going to bite me in the ass for not taking the time to learn the language when we lived so close to the border. It wasn’t so much a bite in the ass I was worried about now, but a bullet to the head. The one word spoken I did understand was enough to scare me shitless.

  Because it was a name. Rivera.

  Flashes of hazy memories started rolling in. Going to the Big Bull Bar because our source had tipped us off that the shipment there would be moved. Sneaking into the back area of the bar where I’d watched as Henderson helped others break down the rifles to store them into empty kegs. Then feeling a sharp pain to the back of my head before everything went black.

  Waking up disoriented, I realized I was lying on the floor of the delivery truck. I watched one of the men arguing with a Border Patrol Agent who was shaking his head no and pointing a finger at me. My kidnapper said something to him that made him pale considerably before the agent held out a shaking hand that was quickly filled with a thick envelope a
nd he turned to hop out of the truck.

  As I watched the agent leave, I started struggling against whatever held my arms and legs immobile. Screaming against the gag duct-taped to my mouth. Thrashing about to make as much noise to attract as much attention as possible. Hoping another agent, who wasn’t obviously dirty, would hear me before we left. It seemed like only seconds before a needle was shoved into my arm, the plunger pushing a burning liquid into my body, then a sudden rush of fire spreading through my veins, enveloping me until a feeling of floating euphorically had taken over. I have no idea how long I laid there, high as a kite on God knows what, watching the men talk around me as if I were a piece of trash they couldn’t bother themselves with picking up.

  I should have known at least some fear when it became obvious to me that some of what they were saying and laughing about was me. Their leering looks started to linger longer and longer as they licked their lips and wiggled their tongues out at me in blatant taunting. One going so far as to whip his dick out and shake it in my direction as the others laughed at his antics, but with whatever they’d given me working its magic, I had not a care in the world. Eventually, there was the nothing except blackness washing over me again.

  When I woke up, I was more than likely somewhere outside of Matamoros, Mexico; in the hands of the Miguel Rivera. One of the most powerful drug lords in the world. To hell with shaking in my boots, I was so scared that I was shaking clear down beneath my skin to my dag-gum bones. I needed a miracle to get me out of here alive. Hopefully, that miracle was going to come in the form of some bad to the bone men who took on hostage rescue missions just so they wouldn’t get bored. I absolutely refused to die here and leave my son behind, wondering what had happened to his mother. Sure, it was comforting that he had Bobby now in his life, so that if anything did happen to me, he wouldn’t be alone in this world. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to fight tooth and nail to stay alive and make it back to my boy. All I had to do was survive until the Ex Ops Team could come and get me.