by Joss Wood
“Do not tell Flick!” Sawyer hissed.
Axl watched as tension skittered through Kai’s body and he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. Kai’s eyes met his and he knew that something had happened to cause him concern.
“Okay, let me look into it, make a few calls. I’ll let you know,” Kai told Flick, and after a quick “Love you too” Kai disconnected the call.
“What?” Axl demanded.
“Rufus was with Reagan this afternoon, is that right?” Kai asked.
“Yeah. They were here at about two this afternoon, Reagan, Coe, and Rufus. Why?” Axl asked, his stomach twisting.
“Flick’s just told me that Rufus has just arrived at our place, soaking wet and his paws a bit scraped up, suggesting that he’s been running on tar and running for a while,” Kai said slowly, standing up.
Axl reached for his phone and immediately hit speed dial one and waited impatiently for the phone to dial out. He cursed when the phone went straight to Reagan’s voice mail.
“Call Knox. Check if she’s with him, whether Coe is with them.” Axl barked the order out and Sawyer immediately reached for his phone. Kai looked down at his screen and brought up the app that tracked their phones. He froze when he saw only two dots on the screen. He knew exactly where Sawyer and Axl were, but there wasn’t a third dot indicating where Reagan or, more accurately, her phone was. Kai forced his panic down as he checked her movement history, and the last position he could place her phone in was here on Caswallawn property.
In the parking lot, to be accurate.
“Fuck,” Axl muttered. “That was more than five hours ago.”
Axl looked up as Sawyer ended the call and he knew without speaking that neither Coe nor Reagan was back at the estate.
“Knox is frantic. He was about to call us, he can’t get hold of Reagan,” Sawyer said, confirming his worst fears. “He wants us to go out there.”
Axl, his mind working overtime, walked over to the window and laid his hands flat on the glass. Someone had her, and Coe, and God knew where she was or what he wanted. She’s not helpless, Axl reminded himself, she can defend herself. That being said, he also knew that Reagan wouldn’t do anything to endanger Coe; if their kidnapper threatened Coe then she would do whatever the hell he wanted.
For the first time in years Axl prayed to a God that he’d long ago stopped believing in. He closed his eyes and sucked in his breath and prayed like he never had before. He couldn’t lose Reagan, his world would stop turning if that happened.
“Is there any way to track her, to find out where she is?” Kai demanded, pulling his jacket off the back of his chair and pulling a sleeve up his arm.
“The vehicle she’s driving is one from the estate. We didn’t put a tracking device on it,” Sawyer responded.
“My fault,” Axl said, his voice hoarse. “Shit. We should’ve tracked all the vehicles on the estate.”
“We were prepared for burglars and attacks, Axl, not kidnapping,” Sawyer told him.
“I should’ve prepared for friggin’ everything,” Axl stated, his voice harsh.
“In a perfect world, maybe,” Kai said, his voice calm. “Grab your coat, let’s get out to the estate and see what we can find out.”
“Let’s check the surveillance cameras first,” Sawyer suggested, bending over his laptop, his fingers darting over the keyboard. Axl and Kai stood behind and next to him and watched as four screens appeared on his monitor. Sawyer asked what time Axl last saw Reagan and he punched in the time and the computer pulled up the footage from that period. They found Reagan leaving the building, watched her place Rufus in the trunk of the car, and then she walked around to the other side of the car. A man, wearing a ball cap and long coat, approached her on foot, and Axl cursed when Sawyer zoomed in but they couldn’t make out his face.
“He’s keeping the car between him and the camera,” Kai pointed out.
Axl watched as the top of Reagan’s head disappeared. “She’s dropped out of sight. Why?” he demanded.
“Weapons on the ground,” Sawyer replied. “He’s disarming her.”
Axl felt his teeth grind together, and he opened his mouth to try to relieve the ache in his jaw. He stared at the screen and wanted to howl as the SUV drove away. Sawyer leaned forward and tapped his finger against the screen. He zoomed in on the objects and saw that the fuzzy objects were Reagan’s weapons.
“Crap, crap, crap.” Axl leaned forward, squinting. “Are both the barrels pointing in the same direction?”
“East,” Kai agreed. He sent Axl a hard look. “Think she’s trying to tell us something?”
“Hell, yeah.” Axl nodded.
Sawyer pushed past Kai and Axl and headed to the door. “What I want to know is why none of our highly trained and supposedly observant agents and staff noticed two guns lying in the parking lot.”
“Good question,” Kai said, following his friend and partner out the door. “Let’s go get them before someone does find them. Then we’ll head to Callow and see if we’re any further down the line.” Axl watched them walk away and tried to get his feet to move, his head out from under the wet blanket it was wrapped in.
“I need to call my response team,” Axl said, patting his pockets for his phone.
Sawyer walked back into the room, picked Axl’s phone up from off his desk, and placed a hand on his back. “I’ll call the team, you just follow us. We will get her back, Axe.”
Axl tried to smile but couldn’t get his lips to cooperate. “That’s what I always say to the family.”
“Yeah.”
Axl shivered and felt utterly bleak. “Sometimes I lie, Saw. Sometimes they don’t come back.”
“This isn’t one of those times, bud.”
Axl wished he could believe him.
***
Oh, Mickey had planned this, Reagan thought, sitting in the corner of the leather sofa in the living area of the isolated cabin Mickey had directed her to. She was west of Mercy, not very far from the Freedman estate, but so isolated, so off the beaten track.
It was a cabin for lovers, she thought, and that was probably how Mickey played it when he rented the place. He and his wife wanted isolation and peace and quiet, complete privacy. Unfortunately, privacy was great for lovers but even better for kidnappers.
Mickey was so certain that they couldn’t be interrupted that she wasn’t restrained. Well, she was a little restrained. Her hands were bound together with cable ties, but they weren’t behind her back and her legs were free. Actually, she wasn’t that uncomfortable and she was still waiting for an opportunity to take the asshole down.
Reagan looked across the room to the big double bed in the sleeping area of the open-plan cabin, and relief swept over her as she watched Coe’s chest rise and fall. Soon after arriving at the cabin, Coe had been, understandably, upset and Mickey handed him a juice box. Coe soon fell into a deep sleep from the spiked drink, and Reagan feared that he’d been given too much, that he’d been overdosed and was slipping away. She’d worried for hours, but now Coe’s breathing was normal. He was deeply and solidly asleep and would probably remain that way for hours.
That was, to a certain extent, a blessing in disguise. Hopefully one of them wouldn’t have nightmares for the rest of their lives.
Mickey sat in the chair opposite her, his gun resting on his thigh, a whiskey in his other hand. He was looking at her with dark and brooding eyes, and she could see his mental wheels turning. She’d be lucky if she got out of this alive, Reagan realized. Mickey Kane wasn’t a nice man.
Tired of the silence and the lack of action, Reagan looked Mickey in the eye. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to call Callow and ask for the drive.”
“And when are you going to do that?” she asked. She glanced at her watch and sighed. “It’s nearly ten.”<
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“I’m letting him worry so that he won’t be inclined to fight me,” Mickey said. “Get him into such a state that he’ll do anything for his kid.”
“I promise you, right now, he’ll do anything for that kid,” Reagan told him. “So, what’s on the drive?”
Mickey sent her a quick look. “You don’t know?”
“I wouldn’t be asking you if I did.”
“Porn.”
Porn? She and Coe had been abducted because of a skin flick? Seriously? Porn wasn’t that big a deal anymore . . .
“This is about adult films? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless I tell you that the films were seriously hard-core. It doesn’t make sense unless you are a hotshot director and you don’t want people to know that you were, in a previous life, the star of the show.”
Reagan looked him up and down and couldn’t picture him naked. She really didn’t want to picture him naked. “Why would Sula have copies of your work . . . oh.”
“Oh, indeed.” Mickey lifted his hand off his weapon and rubbed the side of his head. She wanted to lunge for the gun but she knew that she was too far away for that to work. Shit. What would Axl do?
Axl would want her to think this through, to act when the time was right, and then not to hesitate. To get the job done . . .
She’d keep him talking, Reagan thought. She’d keep him distracted, and when the time came, she’d act. She wasn’t a defenseless kidnapee, overcome with panic. She wasn’t going to sit here and wait to be rescued. She’d do it herself. She was a kick-ass agent who could, and would, save herself.
In order to do that, she had to push aside her fear and panic and take control of the situation. “So, you and Sula were . . . ?” Lovers wasn’t an appropriate word.
“We worked together, making adult films. Freaky adult films.” Mickey looked like he was debating whether to tell her or not. “Sula, myself, and Marina.”
Reagan’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. Seriously? America’s sweetheart was a porn star?”
“And a damn good one.”
Porn and good one sounded like an oxymoron. “So how come nobody knows about this? It’s not easy to keep this sort of thing under wraps, especially since you are such big names.”
“I was very particular about who got to see us doing what,” Mickey admitted. “My clients paid big money for our work, and we only had a few. When we started getting legitimate work, I retrieved all the copies of our work out there.”
“How?” Reagan demanded, suspicious.
“Threats, blackmail, theft, coercion,” Mickey admitted, unconcerned. “A couple of years ago Sula called me, told me she was being blackmailed. She let it slip that she had her own copies of some of our work. Then she told me that she was going to tell her husband about her past, that she was sick of living a lie.”
“Who was blackmailing her?” Reagan demanded. She saw his slow smirk, evil smile, and her mouth dropped open. “You?”
“She was earning a lot more than me at the time.” Mickey shrugged. “She could afford it.”
Slimeball turd, Reagan thought.
“Then she had the kid and went off the rails. I stopped the blackmail but she kept calling me, telling me that she was coming clean, and the next day, the next hour, she said that she was going to keep quiet. She was so damn irrational that I had no idea what she’d do from one minute to the next.”
Did he kill her? Did Mickey somehow rig that vehicle so that Sula drove off the cliff? Mickey must’ve seen the horror on her face and shook his head. “I didn’t kill her. Not that I was opposed to doing it, but she took the matter out of my hands. She told me that she was going to give me the thumb drive, that she just wanted to forget about me, forget about our past. I said that I’d meet her at that parking lot. She was standing next to the car, the kid in his carry seat next to her feet. Suddenly she just hops into her car and roars off. Three minutes later I heard this God-almighty crash and I knew it was her.”
“You called the cops. You were the unidentified man who stayed with Coe, who handed him over to an EMT.”
Mickey shrugged. “Couldn’t leave a baby by himself. But I could’ve saved myself a lot of hassle if I knew the damn drive was in the bear.
“I wanted those final bits of film, that’s all,” Mickey told her, his expression earnest. “For a while after her death I convinced myself that she’d either hidden the drive or destroyed it, but after a few months, I started to obsess. What if Knox found the drive? What would he do, say?”
“You broke into his house.”
“Not me, personally. I had people do it. Then, on set, I saw the kid carrying the damn bear and it all, suddenly made sense. I knew, I just knew that the drive was in the bear.” Mickey leaned forward. “It was, wasn’t it?”
Reagan just sent him a cold, hard smile. “You almost killed a kid to destroy a bear? He’s four years old, you monster! An innocent, innocent kid! Are you telling me that your reputation and your past is worth a kid’s life? Lots of stars have less-than-stellar pasts!”
“I set that fire to destroy that thumb drive,” Mickey insisted. “I checked the trailer, saw the bear in his room. I didn’t see him or you, I thought you’d all gone to the wrap up party.” Mickey clamped his mouth shut, looking mutinous. “I just wanted to protect my career and free—”
Maybe he wasn’t a murderer—he had stayed with Coe, and she believed that he thought the trailer was empty—but he’d still kidnapped her and Coe, and that was unforgivable.
“What were you going to say?” Reagan demanded, knowing that she was missing a crucial bit of this puzzle. “I don’t think you are telling me everything. You wouldn’t have taken all these risks just for some porn. There’s something else.”
“There’s always something else.”
“What?”
“If what is on the thumb drive is what I’m looking for, then you’d know.” Mickey ran his hand over his face. “I’m tired of talking, I need to sleep. I’ll make the ransom call in the morning. I need to restrain you and the kid. Gag you.”
That wasn’t going to happen, Reagan decided. If he tied her up and did a good job then she was truly screwed. “And how do you intend to do that?” she asked.
“I intend to do it with this.” Mickey stood up slowly and loomed over her, the muzzle of his gun aligned with the spot between her eyes. It took balls to shoot someone between the eyes, Reagan thought. She now had no doubt that Mickey would do it if he thought he needed to.
“You make one move and I’ll place a bullet in your brain.”
“Reagan?”
Coe’s voice was no louder than a whisper but it was enough for Mickey to look around and his gun dropped a fraction. Reagan lifted her leg and plowed the heel of her boot into his scrotum. Mickey screamed and crumpled, his face turning a ghastly pale blue. Reagan gripped her hands together and swung at his jaw, ignoring the pain that ricocheted up her arm. She kicked the gun away from him, and seeing that he was still conscious, she placed a well-aimed kick at his temple. Mickey’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped sideways, out cold.
Reagan risked looking at Coe, who was sitting up in bed, his eyes as wide as saucers.
“Well, you kicked the crap out of him,” he stated, not looking at all traumatized. “You’re not too bad, for a girl.”
***
Bryn opened the door, his face ashen. Axl jerked his chin in a silent greeting and stepped into the hallway. Ignoring the muted greetings behind him, he walked down the passage and stepped into the least formal of the lounges, nodded at Knox, and ignored the woman curled up into the corner of the sofa, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Have you heard from them?” Knox demanded, jumping to his feet.
If he had, didn’t Callow think that he would’ve said something? Axl shook his head and held out his
hand. “Give me your cell.”
“What?” Knox asked. “Why?”
“Need to trace the ransom call,” Axl muttered.
Damn, he knew that he was being a jerk. He was normally a lot better at dealing with family members than this. But that was his woman out there, his best friend’s sister, the woman he’d promised to look after and protect. He had to find her, it was up to him to rescue her.
He’d failed with Mike, failed to protect him, and now another Hudson he adored was in trouble and it was his fault. He was living his worst nightmare, on the big screen and in fucking Technicolor. He had to find her . . . If he lost her he didn’t think he could look at himself in the mirror again. Failing his best friend was bad enough. Failing the woman who meant more to him than life itself would be untenable.
Her safety, and the kid’s safety, was all that was important right now. The way he could ensure their safety was by doing what he did best, tracking them down. After he’d found them, rescued them, he’d apologize for being abrupt. Maybe.
But not before he kissed her senseless and injected a tracking device under her skin. Knox placed his phone in his hand, and Axl sat down on the other sofa, placing a laptop bag on the coffee table in front of him. He pulled out his laptop, flipped it open, and pulled bunches of cords from an inside pocket, linking the phone to his computer.
“If a call comes in, I should be able to trace it,” Axl said, looking up at Knox. “My kidnap and rescue team will be here in a couple of hours, and they’ll get boots on the ground looking for intel. Oz and Mac are already out scouting for info, but my team knows all the right questions to ask. Hang tight.”
“He’s got my son, I can’t hang tight!” Knox shouted.
“He’s got my woman, so you damn well will,” Axl stated, his words sounding like he was grinding glass.
Sawyer placed a hand on Axl’s tense shoulder, a nonverbal command to keep his mouth shut. “If it’s any consolation, Coe is with the best person we have. Reagan will protect him until her last breath.”