Feel the Heat

by Desiree Holt

  Apparently Olberman had already contacted him to make preliminary arrangements to fly Lauren to the island as soon as she was available.

  Available!

  Lauren snorted. She wouldn’t exactly call what she was “available”.

  The file contained copies of the boy’s extensive medical records, along with notes made by various doctors. She kept the reality of her situation at bay by studying all of them and focusing only on the patient. But for all the sleep she got, she could have stayed up all night.

  In the pantry closet she found a Keurig coffee machine with a variety of K-Cups. Selecting a flavored one, she brewed it, took it into the other room with her and booted up the computer. She had noticed a number of medical books on the shelves and, with the file open, took down the most promising ones and began to research the boy’s medical condition.

  She was engrossed in the reading when a knock sounded on her door and she froze. Reid again? Now what?

  “Miss Cahill?” A woman’s voice. “This is Vivian. Mr. Olberman’s assistant. May I speak with you for a moment?”

  Lord. She wasn’t even dressed yet.

  “Can you come back later?”

  “I need to speak with you now. I’m going to open the door.”

  Right. Because everyone had a key to the door except her.

  “Fine.” As if she had a choice.

  The door opened and the woman she’d barely glimpsed yesterday walked in. She was taller and was dressed in a business pantsuit. Her blonde hair was ruthlessly pulled back in a French twist and she wore only the bare minimum of makeup. Lauren grudgingly admitted the woman was very attractive. She supposed Olberman wouldn’t want to waste his money looking at an ugly woman.

  She studied the woman’s face, hoping to see a little compassion for her situation, but the woman’s hazel eyes were glacial, her features set in an expressionless mask.

  What is it with the people here? Are their faces frozen?

  “Your breakfast tray will be up shortly,” Vivian announced. “Since this is your first morning here, we had no idea of your preferences, so we’ve given you a rather large selection.”

  “My breakfast tray? I was under the impression I was having a command performance with Mr. Olberman at breakfast.”

  Vivian gave her a condescending look. “He’s had something come up and I assume you don’t plan to starve yourself to death. There is a program loaded onto your laptop that will allow you to select each day’s menu in advance. It’s hooked to the internal server. You will use it for all your meals, beginning with lunch today.”

  “A program?” Lauren felt like an idiot parroting the woman’s words back to her, but she was trying to take it all in.

  “Mr. Olberman expects you to join him each evening for dinner.” She took in every inch of Lauren’s body with an assessing gaze. “Properly attired, of course.”

  “Of course.” She spat the words out. “We wouldn’t want to upset Mr. Olberman.”

  Vivian gave her another of those assessing looks, as if studying a bug under a microscope.

  “I’d learn to be a bit more accommodating if I were you. I’m sure Mr. Olberman has explained that any negative actions on your part will have consequences.”

  Consequences. So. Apparently Vivian was as cold and ruthless as her employer. If Lauren had hoped to find help with her, she realized that was an unrealistic expectation.

  “Is there anything else?” She wanted this woman gone as soon as possible. She needed to get back to reading the medical books as well as trying to figure a way out of this impossible situation.

  Where are you, Troy?

  “Yes. Mr. Olberman would like you to inventory everything he’s provided for you and let me know if there’s something you need that isn’t there.” She pointed to a telephone on the credenza. “Just dial my extension and I’ll take care of it for you.”

  “What if I want to get it myself? Go to a store?”

  The look Vivian gave her was just short of pitying. “Now, you know that’s not an option, right?”

  Lauren stared at the woman, trying to find a clue to her personality. “Are you aware of what your boss intends to do with me?”

  Vivian’s expression bordered on a sneer. “I know everything that goes on with Mr. Olberman.”

  “And you condone it? His kidnapping me? Threatening me and my family? Using me like this?”

  The woman just stared back at her, not saying a word.

  Lauren blew out a breath. “Is there anything else?” She wanted this woman gone as soon as possible. She needed to get back to reading the medical books, preparing herself just in case Olberman managed to get her to the sick child before Troy found her.

  “Not at the moment. But I hope you don’t plan to sit around in that robe all day. Mr. Olberman disapproves of that.”

  Vivian closed the door and Lauren heard the lock engage. She dropped into one of the armchairs, consumed by a feeling of hopelessness.

  No. I won’t let myself feel this way. I won’t let Olberman defeat me.

  He could temporarily have charge of her body, but not her mind or spirit.

  Okay then. Get up. Get dressed. Read. And mostly…think.

  * * * * *

  Because it was fully dark when Ed Romeo arrived with the helicopter the night before, the decision was made to grab a few hours of sleep and head out at first light. But sleep had been elusive for Troy. Every time he closed his eyes, Lauren’s face swam before him, her soft lips so ready for his kiss, her eyes sparkling with merriment. His hands itched to touch her body, his cock ached to thrust inside her.

  Finally, at three o’clock, he headed down to the kitchen to make coffee—as if he needed any more—and found all the men except Ed working on their laptops. On the counter sat a rectangular metal box. So ordinary looking, for its sophisticated insides. All security systems worked on some kind of radio frequency. It was the only way to get point-to-point signal. The trick was to find something even better that could disrupt that signal.

  Dan saw him looking at it. “We brought it back from the airfield with us. I don’t like leaving that baby any place except where I can see it.”

  “Didn’t you guys ever go to bed?”

  Rick glanced up. “I don’t think we’ll get much sleep until we’ve got Lauren back. We’ve been exchanging information all night with Andy. Whoever this sonofabitch is, he’s buried himself so deep he could be at the center of the earth.”

  “Anything?” Troy asked.

  “Working on it. Getting close, I think.”

  Troy took in the litter of paper on the table, the tablets sitting next to the laptops, the cell phones, the coffee cups. No matter how long he lived, he’d never be able to thank these men and their wives for this. The five of them had a bond that went far beyond friendship, and he’d never take it for granted.

  “We tried to get the women to go home,” Mark told him without looking up, “but they weren’t having any of it. Faith and Mia are in one of the guest rooms.”

  “Kat’s napping on the couch in the den,” Dan said. “She got a little more information.” He pointed to a sheet of sketching paper next to him. “More details about the house. Take a look.”

  Troy had just picked it up when Dan’s cell phone rang.

  “Yeah? What? Okay, hold on. Hold on a minute.” He punched the button for the speaker. “Go ahead, Andy. Everyone’s here.”

  “I just sent everything to your tablets.” Andy’s voice was edged with both fatigue and excitement. “This was a damn fucking puzzle within a puzzle, but I finally managed to peel back all the layers.”

  “You’ve identified the person behind this?” Troy almost couldn’t breathe.

  “Finally. Check your tablets, everyone. I just sent you the file on Kurt Olberman.”

  “That’s Mia’s O,” Dan commented, his normally even voice holding a hint of excitement. “Andy, walk us through the info on this guy.”

  “He’s about the nasties
t dude on the planet.” Excitement was overriding his fatigue. “At fifteen, he was living on the streets. At seventeen, the rumor mill credits eight kills to him and he’d put together a gang of thugs. Oh wait, do people say thugs anymore?”

  “Keep going,” Dan said.

  “You can see for yourselves in the timeline I sent that he progressed from street crimes to something more sophisticated. A man named Harold Deville apparently plucked him from the streets at age twenty. Deville was in the process of building an empire based on drugs and illegal weapons. I guess in Olberman, he saw someone who could keep people in line.”

  “I guess that didn’t work out so well for Harold,” Rick broke in. “I see here that after five years, Harold’s deader than a doornail and Olberman’s running the organization.”

  “That’s right,” Andy agreed. “From there, you can see how he moved on, buying and selling people, companies, countries, whatever. He’s got a law firm that he pays millions just to keep him buried beneath layers of corporate shells. His best friends are drug cartels, international arms dealers and countries with rich mineral deposits that give him the opportunity to take control. You know, all that shit. We see it all the time, only this guy does it bigger and better than anyone else. He’s worth billions. Mega billions.”

  “You’ve got his home location?”

  “No pictures yet, but yes, he’s in Colorado. About a fifteen-minute helicopter ride from Grand Junction. Word is the place is more than a hundred acres and protected like a fortress.”

  “What about his security?” Mark wanted to know.

  “That took a lot of digging and finagling. I’m telling you, this guy invented the word secret.”

  “And we appreciate your efforts, as always,” Dan said. “So what’s the deal?”

  “I’m sending you all the specs on his security system. It’s easier than trying to talk you through it. But it’s way past anything we’ve met up with before.”

  “And human protection?” Troy asked.

  “My source on that tells me he’s hired all former Special Forces guys. I hate thinking that men who were out there protecting our country are now working for a piece of shit like him.”

  “Unfortunately,” Mark put in, “not everyone in the military has the highest set of morals. I wish it was different, but that’s the sad fact of it. So he’s got guys who are trained in just about everything, right?”

  “You got it. Look over everything else I sent and if you’ve got questions I’ll be here.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not going home until Miss Cahill is back. Safe.”

  Troy’s throat closed up. This was the kind of loyalty you couldn’t buy with money. And maybe that was their secret weapon. Men like those who worked for Olberman could be bought and sold, but not Phoenix. Not even their extended staff.

  Andy’s voice came through the speaker again. “Sending his picture right now. Andy out.”

  Troy looked at the photo as it unrolled on Dan’s tablet screen. It wasn’t so much that the man was ugly as that he had an oily look to him. Dark hair shot with gray framed a face that wore what Troy could only call a smirk. A look that said, “World, go fuck yourself.” The eyes that looked out through rimless glasses seemed to carry the same message.

  “Living, breathing evil,” Mark said.

  “Okay, everyone.” Dan’s voice cut into the air. “Let’s get our shit together here. Andy included more specific coordinates, so I’m giving the information to Kat to see what she can come up with. We need to study the specs on the crazy-ass security system and figure out which of our toys will work most effectively against it.”

  “When we get that together, I’ll wake Ed. We need to do a high-altitude flyover to get visuals on the place before firming things up.” Mark was already scrolling through his tablet again.

  “And we have to figure out where the fuck he’s keeping Lauren,” Troy spat out. He rubbed his hands over his face. “God, god, god. How the hell can we find her?”

  “Troy.” Mike rose from his chair to face him. “We’ll do it. We always do. It’s what we do. Go take a shower and get your shit together. You can fall apart after this is over. Right now, we need you to be at the top of your game. Lauren needs that. So go. Shower and change. We’ve got this.”

  Troy was torn between hovering and knowing what Dan said made sense.

  “And you’ll give the new info to Kat?”

  “We may have something by the time you get back down here.”

  The shower actually did him more good than he expected. It rinsed away the fatigue and got his blood flowing again, especially after he turned it to ice cold for two minutes. He didn’t bother to shave. Later, when he had Lauren back with him, he’d make himself presentable. For her.

  Pulling on jeans and a t-shirt, he headed toward the stairs, bumping into Faith and Mia just coming out of one of the guest rooms. Faith had apparently raided Lauren’s dresser drawers for sleep shirts for them.

  “Troy?” Faith touched his arm. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you.”

  “I know. I just—I know.” He hurried down the stairs.

  Dan was leaning against the counter, studying a sketch when he walked into the kitchen. Kat sat at the table, a glass of orange juice in her hands, fatigue lining her face. But she managed a smile for him.

  “I got you a really good image, Troy. The guys said it’s as good as a photo.”

  He looked over Dan’s shoulder and had to agree. He knew Kat would have gone through a series of sketches, some of them more symbols than anything else, to finally get to this one. But what they had now was a drawing of a massive house rising in a forest, the hint of landscaping around it sketched in, and the hint of a wall that surrounded the perimeter.

  Holy shit!

  He could barely wrap his mind around the billions it had cost for a place like this. The Phoenix partners had seen their share of opulence and wealth, but this setup trumped everything else. This would take careful planning and they had a limited amount of time to accomplish that.

  “There’s more,” she added. “I also saw a balcony and armed men. Four. Lauren’s on the second floor of the house. The rooms she’s in have that balcony, but I saw armed men on the ground below her. Two, but there may be more.” She let out a deep sigh. “I’d hoped to get you a better visual like I did with the scene in Mexico, but that’s as much as I could pull into my brain.”

  Troy hugged her to his side. “Thanks, Kat.” He cleared his throat, rough with emotion. “You don’t know how much I appreciate this. And this is a lot more than we had.”

  “We’re all family, right?” she reminded him.

  “Yes. And the best family a person could have.” He looked at Dan. “So what’s next?”

  “Now we get moving.”

  Ed had joined them by then, nodding to Troy as he helped himself to coffee.

  “Good day for flying. And for rescuing a beautiful lady.”

  “Amen to that.”

  In minutes, they were loaded into Dan’s SUV, each man with his own handgun plus extra ammo clips. Everything else they would need was already on the helicopter, locked inside it. No one said a word on the drive. There was nothing left to say. They’d do a recon flyover, land someplace to finalize plans and kick it into gear.

  Every muscle in Troy’s body was tense. If this didn’t work—

  Don’t even go there.

  He had to believe in just a few hours Lauren would be back in his arms. Then he’d keep her there. Forever.

  * * * * *

  Olberman sat behind his desk, his chair turned so he could enjoy his favorite view of the sweeping lawn and thick forest. He got the same thrill from the evidence of his wealth that others derived from sex. He’d had plenty of women in his life, but none of them satisfied him the way this evidence of his achievement did.

  And soon his wealth would grow larger, his influence stronger. Before long, he would be the most powerful man in the world, more than presidents, kings and s
heikhs. Because he had the ultimate prize—someone who could cure the incurable. He salivated at the thought of the money that would roll in and the influence he would acquire. There would hardly be anyone in a position of power who would not be indebted to him.

  It annoyed him that Lauren Cahill didn’t realize how to make her gift pay off. Or accept the fact that he’d successfully acquired her, and she was now his for as long as he chose. He’d read enough to know that while the rare occasion might occur that her healing gift wouldn’t work, ninety-nine percent of the time it did, as long as she poured her energy into it. Threatening him with anything less than that was not acceptable.

  He looked forward to dinner that evening, seeing her at the table with him. He even anticipated sparring with her verbally, as long as she still remembered her place.

  Vivian had given him her assessment of the woman and it jibed with his. Tomorrow, when she’d had twenty-four hours to settle in and he’d taken a fuller measure of her, he’d place the call to that island kingdom in the Pacific and move forward with his grand plan.

  * * * * *

  They flew in from the east, on the chance that anyone might spot them. Whoever it was would have to look directly into the rising sun and that would distort the image long enough for them to be gone. Everyone inside was strapped in, the cabin doors open on both sides, long-range cameras pointed in each direction. Ed flew the helo, Mark and Troy operated the cameras and the others crouched behind them with assault rifles at the ready.

  The guns were just in case. They hoped they wouldn’t have to use them. Any kind of gun battle would send a signal to Olberman, who might decide he was better off to kill Lauren and dispose of her body. Then he could just claim a bunch of crazy men tried to shoot up his estate for no reason.

  Ed had checked with the locals and knew that the weather helicopter flew over the estate sometimes, also the ones with spotters during forest fire season. So a whirlybird in the air wouldn’t be such an anomaly as to call specific attention to it. Nevertheless, those birds took care of business as quickly as possible and got the hell out of there.