by Paula Graves
“There’s something else you need to know,” Terry said, his gaze encompassing all three of them. Annie felt Wade grow tense beside her.
“What?” Isabel asked.
Terry looked straight at Annie. “Fort Payne authorities have found your mother.”
Chapter Twelve
Annie’s grip on Wade’s hand tightened in a painful vise. He looked away from Terry’s grim face to Annie’s and saw her fear playing out across her face like a movie.
“Is she dead?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“She’s alive,” Terry said quickly. “That’s all Jesse’s text said.”
Annie turned to look at Wade. “I have to go to her.”
“It could be a trap,” Isabel warned.
“That’s what Jesse thinks, too.” Mac spoke for the first time, his low, gravelly voice forceful, despite its quiet tone. He met Wade’s gaze in the rearview mirror, his eyes speaking volumes.
“She needs me,” Annie insisted. She let go of Wade’s hand, edging away from him as if setting up defenses against all of them.
“I know she does,” Isabel soothed, “and as soon as we can prove it’s not a trap, we’ll get you to her.”
“I need to go to her now!” Annie’s voice rose. She made a visible effort to control her spiraling emotions, her chin trembling. “If she knows anything about what happened to her, I may be the only person she’d tell.”
“Let’s just get to Cooper Security and see what’s what,” Wade suggested. He reached out to take her hand again, but she pulled it away. He let his hand drop back to his lap.
“Fine,” Annie said in a low, tight voice. “But the decision is mine.”
He looked at Isabel. She gazed back at him with a mixture of curiosity and understanding.
“Okay,” he said, even though the thought of letting Annie put her life in any more danger made his stomach hurt. “The decision is yours.”
The drive from the truck stop to Cooper Security took another hour, longer than it would have if Mac hadn’t doubled back a few times and taken a circuitous route to make sure they hadn’t been followed. They also had to drop off Terry and Isabel at the wasting shell of Old Saddlecreek Church, an abandoned church nestled in the shadow of Gossamer Mountain. It hadn’t seen a congregation in years, but the weathered clapboard building still stood, sagging a bit and marred in places by local teenage vandals.
As soon as Terry and Isabel were out of the van, Mac drove on, not waiting to make sure they got safely to the waiting car. They had a job to do, and so did he. If Isabel and Terry needed backup, they’d put out a distress signal and backup would be on the way.
“Did the call about my mother come in while you were at the truck stop?” Annie asked. She still sat stiff and distant, even though she was buckled into the bench seat only a few inches away from Wade.
“Jesse sent a text. I couldn’t make a big deal of looking at the text, in case anyone was watching.” Mac glanced at them in the rearview mirror. “We ate as fast as we could to get back here to tell you.”
“And she’s definitely alive?”
“Yes. Jesse said to be sure to tell you that.”
She took a long, shaky breath, and Wade felt a strong urge to put his arm around her and pull her close. But she showed no signs of softening her rigid posture, so he kept his hands to himself.
They reached Cooper Security just as sunrise was beginning to peek through the trees to the east. Mac pulled the van into the covered parking garage at the far end of the building and found a space near the elevators.
“Home sweet home,” he murmured, getting out of the van.
Wade turned to look at Annie and found her gazing back at him. “Home?”
He nodded. “Come on. Let me show you a part of Cooper Security that most folks don’t know anything about.”
* * *
THE WHOLE WEST END OF Cooper Security, all three stories of it, seemed to comprise a dormitory, Annie discovered as she followed Wade down a wide corridor just off the elevator alcove.
“Technically, there are enough rooms to accommodate every Cooper Security agent and his or her immediate family in the case of an emergency,” Wade explained as he stopped at one of the doors, numbered 321. “This is my designated room.” He pulled his keys from his pocket and unlocked the door, revealing a small, spare bedroom inside.
There was a smaller room, barely larger than a closet, that contained a toilet and a sink but no tub or shower. “There’s a communal shower for men at the north end of the hall on this floor. The south end has the women’s shower. Some cases, we’re working a lot of hours and it’s just easier to grab a few hours of sleep and a quick shower than to go home and come back.”
“And in the case of a terrorist attack—”
“We can bring our families and loved ones here where they’ll be safer.”
“So you can do your work without having to worry about them.”
He smiled at her. “That, too.”
She looked at the lone bed, a comfortable-looking full-sized bed that could easily accommodate one but might be a close fit for two, and drove the obvious question from her mind. It didn’t matter anymore. Not until she saw her mother. “I need to see Jesse.”
Wade nodded and crossed to a phone on the bedside table. He picked up the receiver and punched in a number. “We’re here,” he said a moment later. “She wants answers.”
He hung up. “Jesse’s on his way.”
While she stood at the end of the bed, trying not to let the trembling in her knees take over the rest of her body, Wade put their supply bag on the bed and unzipped it. “I’ll leave your stuff inside,” he said, starting to remove his own extra clothes and their supplies from the bag.
Before he had finished, there was a sharp rap on the door that made Annie’s nerves rattle.
Wade put his hand out to stay her automatic move to the door and crossed in front of her, checking through the peephole in the door. She hadn’t even noticed it there before, she realized, wondering just how much danger these people expected that they’d put a peephole in an internal dormitory door.
Wade’s posture relaxed and he opened the door, admitting the dark-haired man who’d driven the getaway car that had aided their earlier escape from the hospital—his older brother, Jesse, the CEO of Cooper Security.
Jesse gave Wade a quick, fierce hug and then turned quickly to Annie. “I guess you have questions.”
“I want to see my mother.”
“I’m sure you do, but I need to give you all the facts before you do anything.”
“You’re stalling me.”
“Annie, just listen—” Wade put his hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged it off. “Don’t try to handle me.”
“Your mother is in good condition, but she doesn’t remember anything about what happened,” Jesse said. “The FBI got to her before we did. Luckily, our cousin Will was one of the agents assigned to talk to her, and the FBI has given him permission to share the basics of their conversation with your mother with us.”
Annie swallowed her impatience, beginning to understand that throwing a fit wouldn’t make Jesse Cooper reveal the information she wanted any faster. She took a deep breath and asked the most important question. “What are her injuries?”
“She doesn’t have a concussion or any major injuries. She’s dehydrated, and like you, she has some ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, but no signs of torture or other physical mistreatment.”
“So why doesn’t she remember?”
“The doctors think she may have been kept sedated the whole time she was in captivity,” Jesse answered.
“Put on ice,” Wade murmured.
Annie whipped her gaze around to look at him. “Put on ice?”
“You were the more obvious leverage against your father,” he said. “A man’s desire to protect his child is even stronger than his desire to protect his wife. You’re also younger, which meant you could probably
take more abuse than your mother could, for a longer amount of time.”
“Plus, you’re a journalist who covered the Barton Reid story,” Jesse added. “It’s more likely you’d know more than your mother did about what your father was hiding.”
“Mother made a point of maintaining ignorance of my father’s secrets,” she admitted. “She was his safe haven where he could leave that all behind.”
“The doctor wants to keep her overnight tonight to make sure she doesn’t get any more dehydrated,” Jesse said. “Meanwhile the FBI has her under guard and plans to take her into protective custody as soon as she’s cleared to leave the hospital.”
“How did she get away?” Annie asked. “Does she remember?”
“She doesn’t know,” Jesse told her. “She told Will that she woke up in a field at the side of the road just outside Fort Payne. She managed to flag down a passing car. The occupants called paramedics and the police. But she has no idea how she got to the field.”
Which meant she hadn’t escaped, Annie realized. She’d been let go, left at the side of the road to be found.
She sat heavily on the end of Wade’s bed, realizing suddenly why nobody at Cooper Security wanted her to rush off to her mother’s side.
“It’s a trap,” she said.
“That’s what we think,” Jesse said quietly.
Annie looked from him to Wade. “Does my mother know I’m safe?”
“Will told her you had escaped and were in protective custody,” Jesse answered. “It seemed to calm her quite a bit, though she is obviously still distressed about your father still being missing.”
Her mother wasn’t alone in that concern. Annie wasn’t sure how to interpret her mother’s unexpected release. Did it make her father’s continued existence more vital than ever? Or was he now considered expendable?
Wade touched her shoulder once more. This time she let his hand remain in place, feeling ashamed of her earlier prickliness. Wade was not her enemy. On the contrary, he was about the only person she trusted at the moment to have her best interests in mind.
Including herself.
Left to her own instincts, she’d have hurried right to her mother’s bedside, the risk to her own life be damned. But looking at the situation more rationally and less emotionally, she could see that her mother’s unexpected release, so close to where Annie herself had turned up only a few days earlier, almost certainly was a trap to lure her back into her captors’ control.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“I’ve rerouted Troy and Delilah,” Jesse answered. “They’ll head for the hospital in Fort Payne to see your mother. I have five other agents trailing them, looking for an ambush.”
“I don’t like them putting their lives in danger for me that way.”
“They know what kind of work they signed on for,” Wade said quietly. “We all do.”
“So in the meantime, what do we do?”
Wade’s grip on her shoulder tightened. “We wait.”
* * *
“WHO’S LEFT IN THE BUILDING?” Wade paced in a tight circle near the end of the hallway, just a few feet from the women’s shower room, within easy earshot. Clearly, Jesse thought, his younger brother didn’t like the idea of letting Annie Harlowe out of his sight for even a few minutes. But she’d pleaded for a hot shower, and, short of showering with her, standing guard outside was the only way to appease Wade’s need to keep her safe.
Jesse watched him pace, a hint of amusement mingling with the overriding weight of responsibility he felt for not only the hunted woman inside the shower room but also his brother. Jesse had been the one who’d convinced Wade to stop beating his head against the Marine Corps wall and join Cooper Security instead. He had begun to wonder if he’d made a mistake, but Wade’s brief stint as Annie Harlowe’s personal guardian had done wonders for his brother’s demeanor.
“Three guards—Hotchkiss, Fordham and Fiorello,” he answered Wade’s question. “I plan to stick around for the night, too. Oh, and I think there may be somebody left in the accounting section, too. I noticed lights on down the hall.” Quarterly reports were due by the end of the month, although the staff rarely stayed this late in the evening.
“Three guards, plus us? Is that it?” Wade asked. Jesse didn’t miss his brother’s look of displeasure.
Annie Harlowe emerged suddenly from the showers, her hair wrapped in a towel. She wore a T-shirt and a pair of soft yoga pants and looked stronger than she had before she went into the shower. “There are only three guards here?” she asked, looking alarmed.
“We wanted to keep a low profile.” Jesse lowered his voice by habit, even though the three of them were the only people in the dormitory wing.
“So they don’t realize I’m here?” Annie guessed.
“What if they figure out she’s here and decide now is the perfect time to strike?” Wade countered, his jaw squared rebelliously. “We’d be outnumbered and then what?”
“We still have layers of security they’d have to get through. And an arsenal of weapons at our disposal.”
“If we have time to get to them.”
Jesse didn’t miss the way his brother’s gaze kept gravitating to Annie Harlowe’s pale face. So Wade did have a personal stake in this case. Not the ideal situation—Jesse much preferred his agents to be levelheaded and logical rather than emotional about their jobs—but he couldn’t begrudge his brother a little bit of happiness in life. If Annie Harlowe turned out to be the girl for Wade, he could do worse.
And he’d certainly have extra incentive to keep her safe. Since she might be Cooper Security’s best chance of getting her father back alive—and getting access to his part of the code— it was in all their best interests to keep Annie Harlowe alive and kicking.
“I’m going to head back to my office for a while. I have some paperwork piling up. Call if you need anything.”
“Wait.” Wade grabbed his arm. “Have you talked to Luke?”
“Of course.”
“Aren’t you freaking out about Rita being a target? They had the date of her upcoming wedding written down, along with the church where it’ll take place.”
Jesse tried to hide his feelings. He knew he was probably unsuccessful, though his voice came out calm enough. “I heard. They’re probably going to try to make a move on the Marsh family during the wedding. Unfortunately, none of us is invited.”
“Evie will be there,” Wade said.
She was an accountant, not a security agent. “I know she’s had training, but—”
“I just meant, maybe you could talk her into taking you for her date.”
“Oh.” It was worth a try, he supposed. “Whether she will or won’t, I think we should have a presence there. Out of sight.”
Wade nodded. “Absolutely.”
“It’s on my to-do list,” Jesse told his brother, hoping his anxiety didn’t show. He knew his siblings still worried about how his breakup with Rita had affected him, even though it had happened years ago. But none of them could afford the distraction.
“Thank you for your help,” Annie said.
“You’re welcome.” He clapped his brother’s back and headed for the stairs at the end of the hall, bypassing the elevators. Since trading in his combat utility uniform for civilian clothes, he’d found it harder and harder to keep his fighting shape, even with an on-premises gym. So he made a point of eschewing the elevators and taking the stairs.
It wasn’t quite the same as a trek up a snowy mountain in full gear, but it was better than nothing. Especially with a full load of adrenaline coursing through him, thanks to his worry about Rita and her family.
He reached the second floor offices and had started toward his big corner suite when he noticed lights still on in the accounting section. Curious, he reversed course and entered the communal office where the company’s number crunchers carried on their work.
The office was empty save for a small, dark-haired woman sitting at a comput
er near the back. Her shoulder-length hair was twisted up at the back of her head, anchored there by a pencil, and her dark blue eyes were focused on the computer screen that lit her face pale blue.
So intent was her focus that Jesse made it within a few feet of her before her gaze snapped up and she gave a small start, pressing her hand to her chest. “God, Jesse, could you make a little noise next time?”
“Situational awareness is vital for all Cooper Security employees,” he said softly, quoting the company employee manual.
She made a face he wouldn’t let most employees get away with. But Evie Marsh wasn’t most employees. She was the sister of the woman Jesse had once thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life loving.
And he just might need her help protecting her sister at her wedding.
“I’ll put in extra time at the training session next week,” she promised. “Actually, I’m glad you’re still here. I need to show you something.”
“What kind of something?”
Evie’s brow furrowed as she met his curious gaze. “I hate to say it, but I’m beginning to suspect one of the employees is up to something fishy.”
* * *
“HOW LONG DO YOU THINK it will take your friends to get to the hospital?”
At Annie’s question, Wade stopped unpacking their things and turned to look at her. She sat in the middle of his bed, her legs tucked under her. She looked tired but beautiful, and Wade wondered if it would be safer for both of them if he called Jesse and asked him to provide another room for Annie for the night. “I don’t know. It depends on how far north they got before they got the call to reverse course.”
“My mother must be terrified. All alone, nobody there for her but armed guards.” Annie shook her head. “She was so relieved when my dad finally retired from the Air Force that she nearly threw a party.”
“She didn’t like his being in the military?”
“No, I don’t want to make it sound like that,” Annie said quickly, shaking her head. “Mom was very proud of my dad and his service. She was proud of being an Air Force wife and keeping the home fires lit. She took it very seriously—doing her patriotic duty just as my dad was doing his. She always made sure I understood why my dad had to be away from home so much. She was a rock. But having him home all the time, not having to worry when he went out the door to his job—I know it was a huge relief.”