Two men climbed out of the damaged Humvee but stayed put.
“Whadya mean by running my men off the road like that?” Kelvin demanded.
“Just wanted to see what you were so fired up to talk with me about,” Grey said. “I figured that was the reason you and your boys were following me.”
“I got a right to drive where I see fit. Last I heard, it’s still a free country.” Kelvin broadened his stance. “’Sides, I saw you visiting a friend of mine. Thought it might have something to do with me.”
“Would this friend happen to be an orthodontist?” Grey asked.
He and Rachel had promised Dr. Wixell that they wouldn’t tell Kelvin about their visit to him, but it was too late for that. All they could do now was see how this played out and then make sure that the doctor and his family had protection.
Kelvin didn’t answer directly. “Checking up on me, were you? What did you find out?”
“That you and your boys like to play soldier.”
“We don’t play anything.” Kelvin’s lips stitched tight and his eyes narrowed. “We reenact scenarios from real battles. I’m the general of our group.” He preened, skimming his hand down the front of his too-tight shirt.
“Gave yourself a promotion, huh?” Grey asked. “Seems that I remember you didn’t make it past corporal before you were stripped of rank.”
“The men voted on the leaders.” Huffiness and more than a trace of anger laced Kelvin’s words. His neck grew redder with every moment. At the same time, he tightened his grip on the weapon.
“So I hear. You’re not dealing with some green wannabe soldiers here, like in your so-called army.”
Kelvin didn’t flinch. “Neither are you. I went through the same training you did. I know the moves, same as you.”
“Seems like we’re pretty well matched.”
“Who’s going to take care of the little cupcake if something happens to you?” Kelvin asked with a mocking look in Rachel’s direction. “She’ll be all on her lonesome if I decide to come after her when I take care of you.”
Grey watched as Rachel stood hip-shot and bared her teeth, sending a contemptuous look Kelvin’s way. Grey didn’t blame her. From Kelvin’s oily hair to his scuffed shoes, he made a disgusting picture.
“The little cupcake can take care of herself. And you, too. You’re nothing but an overgrown bully.” She widened her grin. “Taking down bullies is my specialty.”
Kelvin sent a venomous look her way and then ignored her. “My boys and me, we just wanted to tell you folks to mind your business. A friendly kind of warning, you might say, before anyone gets hurt.”
Grey put himself between Kelvin and Rachel. “It turns out that our business might overlap with yours.”
“Like what?”
“Like did you tamper with my brakes yesterday? That kind of business.”
Kelvin’s mouth pulled into a sneer. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be saying it to the likes of you.”
“Don’t you? The mechanic going over my truck thinks he can pull some fingerprints off the brake line.” The mechanic had said no such thing, but Kelvin didn’t know that.
The man’s face lost some of its color. “Let me know when you find out who tried to kill you. I’ll send him a thank-you gift.”
His left eye twitched, a tell Grey recalled. Kelvin’s left eye had always contracted whenever he lied. What was he lying about now? Was it because he was guilty of tampering with the brakes and last night’s explosion? Or something else? The smirk on his mouth said he knew something. Something important.
Kelvin lifted his gaze to somewhere over Grey’s shoulder and nodded slightly.
Grey turned and saw the two men making their way toward him and Rachel. They didn’t so much walk as swagger.
“Meet my friends,” Kelvin said. “Bobby Lee and Dutch.”
“Do you boys know that your friend here is involved in a couple of murder attempts?” Grey asked.
“Nah,” the one named Bobby Lee said. “Old Vic here w-wouldn’t do n-nothin’ like that. H-he’s g-good people. Ask anybody.”
He spoke slowly, the words stuttering out in broken sounds. Grey guessed that the man had taken a lot of taunts for his broken speech in his childhood and perhaps as an adult, as well.
“No? Perhaps you should ask old Vic about it.”
“Vic, you try to kill these nice people?” Dutch asked.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Kelvin said. “Why, Grey here and I served together. Back before the army and I parted ways. I wouldn’t hurt an old army buddy. No, sirree.”
“You’re going to find that our buddy status isn’t as firm as you seem to think it is,” Grey said.
Kelvin thrust his shoulders back and his chin forward. “What do you want from me?”
“Same thing I wanted yesterday. Did you have anything to do with kidnapping my daughter?”
“And I’ll tell you the same thing I did yesterday. No. I didn’t even know you had a daughter. If I wanted to come after you, I wouldn’t be messing with some little girl. I’d come straight at you. Same as today.”
Once more Grey had a feeling that Kelvin was telling the truth. About this, at least. “What about trying to blow me up last night?”
“Somebody tried to blow you up?” Kelvin sounded intrigued. “Not a bad idea.” He made a show of giving Grey a quick once-over. “Looks like whoever it was gave you some dings here and there. Too bad he didn’t succeed.”
“As I remember, you had some EOD training before you got kicked out.”
Kelvin’s lips tightened at the jab. “Yeah? So what? I was kicked out because you and that other loser couldn’t take a joke. If you hadn’t ratted me out, I’d be a ranger today.”
“So you’d know how to set a timer with a bomb.”
“Wish I could help you, Nighthorse, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’d do well to remember,” Grey said, “that attempted murder carries a hefty jail sentence.”
“You gotta prove it first.” The sneer was back.
“Don’t think I won’t.” Grey took Rachel’s elbow and started to walk away.
“What makes you think that you can turn your back on me like that?” Kelvin demanded, grabbing Grey’s shoulder and spinning him around.
Grey turned, fists raised. “This.” He didn’t need a gun to take down the likes of Victor Kelvin, even if the man was carrying a Mag-10.
He called up what he remembered about Kelvin. The man was proficient with weapons, but he had a tell: he telegraphed his intentions by shifting his gaze down and to the right. All of this was done in a microsecond, so quick that you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it.
The tell didn’t appear. Therefore, Kelvin didn’t intend on using the weapon on them. That didn’t mean, though, that he wouldn’t order his men to put a hurt on both Grey and Rachel.
Kelvin took a step back. “I got places to be.” He nodded to his men. “Take care of them. Don’t go easy.”
“W-what about the w-woman, boss?” Bobby Lee asked. “I don’t h-hold with hurting no w-woman.”
“She ranged herself with him,” Kelvin said, stabbing a finger at Grey. “She don’t deserve no special treatment.”
He crabbed by Grey and Rachel, climbed on the motorcycle and took off. Did he realize he’d left his men stranded with their Humvee out of commission? Grey wondered. Most likely, he didn’t care.
“You should know that I’m FBI-trained, and he’s a ranger,” Rachel said to the two men.
“Too bad it won’t help you none.” Dutch had a gap between his two front teeth, causing the words to come out in a watery hiss. So excited was he at the prospect of following Kelvin’s orders to take care of Rachel and Grey that he all but bounced on the balls of his feet.
He swallowed loudly, rolled his shoulders and then squared off from Grey while his reluctant partner did the same with Rachel.
“S...sorry, ma’am,” Bobby Lee stuttered. “D...don’t w...wanna hurt you none.”
“Why are you doing Kelvin’s dirty work?” she challenged. “Why isn’t he doing his own? Could it be he’s a coward? Or maybe he just wants you two to take the rap while he keeps his hands clean.”
“Kelvin’s g-good p-people,” Bobby Lee said again, but his face screwed up in a frown as though he was thinking through the probable sentence.
“Shut up,” Dutch ordered. “We don’t gotta talk to them. We just gotta mess them up some.”
“What do you get paid for messing us up?” Grey asked.
“That’s our business.” A condescending smirk leaked out.
“Since we’re the ones you’re planning on messing up, I think that makes it ours.”
“I don’t l-like the idea of hurting no w-woman,” Bobby Lee said once more.
“Quit flapping your jaw,” Dutch said. “We don’t get paid to talk. We get paid for doing the job.”
Bobby Lee shut up.
“You ought to ask yourself how much a stretch in pen is worth,” Rachel said. “Are you making enough to cover the time you’ll get for aggravated assault?” Aggravated assault could be anywhere from one to twenty years. With a record, it would be at the end of the range.
“I didn’t s-sign up for n-no jail time,” Bobby Lee whined.
“How many times do I gotta say it?” Dutch snapped. “Shut up.”
“I ain’t g-gonna shut up. These folks didn’t do nothin’ to us. Let’s let them g-go and g-get out of here. I done enough time in the slammer and don’t wanna go back.”
“Bobby Lee, you’ve got the right idea,” Rachel encouraged. “Things’ll go a lot easier for you if you walk away from this.”
Bobby Lee made to leave, but his partner held him back. “Never figured you for a coward. I should’ve known. You never was any good when it came to the rough stuff.”
“Okay, okay,” Bobby Lee muttered and pulled out a .45. It wasn’t as impressive as Kelvin’s weapon, but it packed a punch. “Let’s get done with it. Sorry, ma’am,” he said to Rachel with what looked like real regret in his eyes. “I ain’t g-gonna shoot you, lest you make me. But I g-gotta do what Vic says. Ain’t g-got no choice.”
He started toward her, and Grey knew that any hope of getting the man on Rachel’s and his side was lost. Bullied by both Kelvin and Dutch, Bobby Lee didn’t have the guts to stand up to them.
Grey wasn’t surprised when Rachel made her move, not waiting for Bobby Lee to reach her. She jackknifed her weight and rolled around Bobby Lee’s gun hand, throwing him to the ground in the process. She didn’t give him time to react, but hunkered down next to him, took his gun then put her forearm across his neck and pressed.
“Enough,” he said on a rasping breath. “Enough.” Clearly, his heart wasn’t in the fight, and he stayed down.
Rachel pulled out a pair of the flex-cuffs that she was never without and secured his hands.
With a shaved head and gristly hair that poked out of his ears and a nose that looked like he’d gone more than a few rounds in the boxing ring, Dutch moved in on Grey.
Grey had no intention of using a weapon on the man; instead, he kicked out a leg and caught Dutch in the gut. The man staggered back a couple of steps but didn’t fall, then lunged forward and came at Grey with both fists raised.
Grey sidestepped and let the man’s momentum carry him to the ground. Such was Dutch’s fury that he chopped up dirt when he got to his feet and went after Grey this time.
Grey charged forward and chest-bumped his opponent.
Taken by surprise, the man looked bewildered. Grey gave him a roundhouse punch, putting all his weight behind it and snapping out his hip at the same time.
Dutch, already winded by the previous fall, teetered then fell.
Grey used the time to yank his hands behind his back and bind them with his own flex-cuffs.
Rachel dialed 911 and reported what had happened. Within a few minutes a couple of police units showed up.
“We’ll take them off your hands, ma’am, sir,” an officer said. “Looks like you did some damage there.” He gestured to where the men sat, bruised and baffled.
“Not much,” Rachel said and showed the officer her ID. “They’re working for a man named Victor Kelvin.”
“We’ll look into it,” he assured her.
On their way again, Grey said, “If Kelvin’s behind the kidnapping, he’ll have more men in his pocket.”
“We still don’t know he’s involved,” she reminded him. “It seems to me that he’s all hat and no cattle.”
Grey smiled at the old-time put-down, but his smile died a second later. “He’s involved enough to send his two goons after us.” He gave her an admiring glance. “You handled yourself well back there.”
She shot him a look. “Again with the surprise that I know what I’m doing? I led an HRT unit for over a year while I was with the Bureau before I switched to work with child abductions.”
His words had plainly struck a nerve.
“Sorry. Again.” He understood the significance of Rachel being on the Hostage Rescue Team, one of the most elite law-enforcement units in the world. Many applied for it, trained for it, but relatively few made it. He also understood that she must have faced discrimination to make it in a field that was still predominately male.
Even with the advances women had made in the past decades, more than a few men still clung to the old boys’ club mentality. Law enforcement and the armed services were not immune to the antiquated thinking.
“I was only trying to say that you have what it takes.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all defensive.” Her sigh was ragged, and the slice of emotion in her eyes told him that she’d met some pretty heavy opposition in her time with HRT. “It felt good to take down those idiots, though I feel sort of sorry for Bobby Lee. Maybe this will convince him to find better friends. I only wish that Kelvin hadn’t gotten away.”
“I hear you.” Grey’s mind wasn’t on Kelvin, though. It was on Rachel and why she’d left a job she loved. Not his place to ask, he reminded himself, but there was pain in her expression. Pain and, unless he missed his guess, deep regret.
She was bright, confident and tough, yet there was a vulnerability to her that had him wanting to fold her in his arms and to protect her.
Forget it. Rachel was helping him find Lily. Nothing more. Yeah, right, an inner voice mocked.
He did his best to ignore it, but the voice wouldn’t quiet. No matter how many lies he fed it.
SIX
Grey resisted the urge to squirm as he was subjected to Rachel’s critical scrutiny.
“In the past two days,” she said, “you’ve been shot at, pushed off a roof, nearly killed in a runaway truck, survived an explosion and now this. You look beat. Shelley promised the doctor we’d see to it that you took it easy. So far we’ve done a poor job of keeping our word.”
He scowled. The last thing he wanted was to sit on his thumbs, but Rachel had a point. They didn’t have a lead to tug at the moment, and he was wearier than he could ever remember being in his life, even during the grueling days of ranger training. Exhaustion, intensified by grief and fear, pulled at him. That made for mistakes, and he couldn’t afford mistakes. Lily’s life was at stake.
Still, he felt compelled to protest. “Who said I’m tired?”
“You. Your shoulders are drooping, and you’re yawning your way through every other word. But there’s something we need to do before I take you someplace where you can rest for the night,” Rachel added.
He cocked a brow at her.
“We need to let Dr. Wixell know that Kelvin’s on to the fact that we’v
e been to see him. He may want to take his family out of town for a week or two. At least until we see what Kelvin’s up to.”
Grey slammed his fist into his palm as chagrin filled him. “You’re right. I should have seen it.” At any other time, he would have. Lily’s abduction had scrambled his brain until he could barely put two coherent thoughts to it.
“You’ve been a mite busy,” she said, “dodging bullets and bullies and bombs.”
They made the trip to Wixell’s office and told him what had happened.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Rachel said. “We promised we’d keep you out of it. Turns out that Kelvin was following us when we came here the last time. It’s on me that I didn’t spot him. I don’t know what he’ll do or if he’ll do anything at all, but he might retaliate. As you know, he’s mean and petty and vindictive. It might be best if you could arrange a trip for you and your family. Do you have family out of state whom you could visit?”
“I appreciate you letting me know.” Wixell scrubbed his face with his hands over and over, like he was trying to wash it without water. He must have realized what he was doing because he dropped his hands and studied them.
After a prolonged pause, he said, “I like to think that I’ve done some good in the world with my hands. I volunteer at a free clinic every week and once a year go overseas to Africa to treat children there. Why did I think I wanted to go off and play soldier? That’s just it—I wasn’t thinking. At least, I wasn’t thinking straight.” Another scrub of his face. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now is protecting my family.” He lifted his head. “Turns out my wife’s parents have been begging us to take the kids for a visit. This’d be a great time to go while school’s out. They live in Pensacola, Florida.”
“Perfect,” Rachel said. “And, again, we apologize. We had no intention of bringing this trouble to your door.”
“You’ve done me a good turn for making me see that I’m better off without running around the countryside shooting people with pretend bullets and now coming to me like this. You didn’t have to. I knew when you first visited me that you were okay. Turns out I was right.”
Stolen Child Page 6