Asher (The Mavericks Book 5)

by Dale Mayer

  “I know. I was thinking of that,” Ryker said. “And we also have an awful lot of dead bodies to let everybody know about.”

  “I’ve been keeping a tally going,” Asher said, “and letting our team know, but this will get a little bit ugly.”

  “What about the brother?” Ryker asked. “Will we try to deal with him?”

  “You know what? I thoroughly suspect that we won’t even get a chance to talk to him,” Asher said.

  Just then the traffic came to a complete stop with an accident up ahead, blocking off travel in the other section. Swearing, Ryker checked the satellite feed to see what was going on and said, “I see a couple big traffic accidents. I don’t know how to get out of here again.”

  Asher squeezed past another vehicle and turned around and headed back the way that they’d come. That meant a big detour and more time lost.

  “We won’t get back in ten minutes now,” Ryker said, reprogramming the GPS. “I bet we’ll be at least thirty or forty minutes.”

  “Which means they’ll get in ahead of us, won’t they?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Ryker said. “They will, indeed.”

  “We can have men waiting at the hotel, but I suspect that, all of a sudden, the twins will appear, and Edward will be the one riding to victory,” Asher said. “We need to be on damage control.”

  “Damage control?” She looked at him hesitantly. “What does that mean?”

  “Your worst fears,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can, but there’s been a complete shift right now. We need to regroup.” He looked at Ryker and said, “And, if we can, we need to get in quietly.”

  “Do we still have our hotel rooms?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Ours for sure. I don’t know about the one that you had with the twins.”

  “No, probably not,” she said. “Oh, man, this just went to hell real fast.” She yawned and reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. He realized just how tired and worn out she was and also how nervous and worried she looked.

  “The good news is that the twins should be okay.”

  She beamed a bright smile. “And that is the bottom line,” she said firmly. “If we’ve got them back, and they’re healthy and fine, all the rest of it’s extra.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “What we can’t do though is end up in trouble over this.” He instructed Ryker on what to do.

  With his phone open, Ryker quickly sent as many messages as he could with as much of the information as needed. His last line was We need new rooms at the hotel.

  When Ryker got an answer back a few minutes later, Asher said, “We’re not returning the same hotel. We’ll take one over.”

  “That’s a better idea,” Ryker said. “And now the traffic’s moving on this side too.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Asher pulled up to the new hotel. Ryker went in as the other two quickly grabbed up their bags and went through the back door, where he led them to a room on the second floor. It had a balcony facing the hotel where they were at.

  “Shouldn’t I go over there?” she asked nervously. “Not to mention to retrieve my bag.”

  “We’ll come with you. Make sure you have your purse.”

  She had her big bag with her with all her traveling documents and her medical kit. “If I get a chance to go in that jet tonight, I should go, shouldn’t I?”

  “Not unless we are going with you. Let me confirm that,” he said, checking his watch. “It’s almost an hour since you talked to her. Let’s go.”

  They walked down the stairs of the hotel across the street and walked into the reception area of their first hotel. Asher led her to the elevator, and nobody stopped them. Nobody seemed to care. He checked and said, “We should still have the rooms here too.”

  “So why aren’t we using them?” she asked. Then she looked around. “Where’s Ryker?”

  “Taking care of business,” he said calmly. When she continued to stare at him, he added, “He’s checking out Chandra’s most recent hotel room.” They headed first to the men’s floor, where he checked to make sure the rooms were still as Asher and Ryker had left them, which was ready for the next occupants, as the guys had all their stuff with them. Then he nodded, and they headed back to the elevator and went up two more flights. There they stepped out onto the penthouse floor, but there was already a hollowness to it.

  Mickie studied the hallway and shook her head as she raced to the room where Chandra had originally been staying and knocked on the door. While Chandra had booked another room in a nearby hotel, she had maintained this one, in case needed once the girls returned. She had told Mickie that the three of them might spend the first night together as a family, to calm the girls down. She had also instructed Mickie that some of Chandra’s personal toiletry items and a few of her clothes had been left here, so that Chandra could switch between hotel rooms without too much inconvenience.

  When there was no answer, Asher moved her slightly back and using his tools, opened the door, stepped inside. Not only was nobody here but he saw no bags, no luggage, no personal belongings. Mickie spun around, stared at Asher in shock. “Did they leave? Without me? Already? How?”

  “Well, they’re gone from here,” he said with a nod. “And Ryker just confirmed her room at the other hotel has been cleared out.” He waited for Mickie to react. “Remember that she didn’t necessarily have you booked on that private jet anyway.”

  She stared at him in shock.

  He opened his arms, and she ran into them. He held her close while he tried to figure out what was going on. “Let me check to see if they left anything,” he said. He quickly did a search, his instincts saying that they bolted rather than were kidnapped.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked anxiously. She stood in place, her arms wrapped around her, and her fingernail in her mouth as she chewed on the tip.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure they left voluntarily and haven’t been kidnapped.”

  As her jaw dropped, he nodded. “We can’t take any chances at this point.”

  Then she raced around to help him. He quickly sent a message to Ryker to tell him the hotel room was empty.

  “What about the room that the twins and I had here?”

  “Let’s go check,” he said with one last glance at the huge suite. They stepped out into the hallway and made their way down to the room that she had shared with the twins. She still had her key, so she quickly unlocked it and stepped inside. “Well, they’re not here,” she announced.

  “And neither is their luggage,” he said. He walked over and found Mickie’s luggage instead.

  She cried out, “Look.” He turned and saw an envelope on her pillow. She walked over, picked it up, and said, “It’s got my name on it.”

  “So open it up,” he said. “Let’s see what it is.”

  She found a note from Chandra. He sat here and waited while she read it, and she looked up at him with shock on her face. “She said that she trusted the information on finding the twins. They were meeting somebody who was bringing the twins back, and she was taking them out of the country immediately. She’s sorry she didn’t have room for me on the private plane too, and she would send information on a new flight for me to get home.”

  “But she hasn’t actually sent you that flight info, has she?” he asked.

  She checked in the envelope and shook her head. “Nothing else is here.” She pulled out her phone and quickly sent a message to Chandra, asking where they were.

  “She can’t answer you if they’re already in the air. And,” he added, “chances are she won’t answer you anyway right now because her focus is on getting the twins out.”

  She swallowed, nodded, and said, “Still sucks.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But it’s not the end of the world. We can deal with this.”

  She nodded. “I hear you, but I’m a little unsure that she’ll send me that ticket.”

  “What did you text her?”

  “
Just asking where she was,” she said. “But I’m now asking for a flight home as soon as possible too.”

  “Well, hopefully she does that for you,” he said. “Does she have a secretary or somebody to arrange that for you?”

  She nodded and quickly switched to a new contact. “I’m doing that right now too.” Then she looked around the room and said, “I don’t even know if I’m allowed to stay here anymore.”

  “I suggest we go downstairs and find out the details,” he said firmly. “An awful lot of rooms are here that potentially are empty and are not paid for—or are empty and paid for—that we can use if need be.” He tossed a final glance around the empty room. “Okay. Let’s go find out, and we’ll come back and get your luggage if need be.”

  Downstairs at the reception desk, he asked for Chandra and was told that she had already checked out.

  Then he gave the clerk the room number that Mickie was in and asked how long it was paid for. The clerk checked it out and said, “It’s been canceled. The cleaning crew is supposed to go in there later this afternoon, as it’s been booked already for this evening.”

  Beside him, she swallowed hard.

  “I see,” he said. “Well, we’ll grab her luggage then. Sorry for any inconvenience. And what about these rooms?” He quickly asked about the other two rooms assigned to him and Ryker.

  The clerk looked those up and said, “Those have been canceled and turned over as well.”

  “Meaning, new people are coming in sometime this afternoon?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Fine. Here are the keys for those rooms. We’ll get her luggage, and then we’ll hand over the keys to her room.”

  With that, they dashed upstairs and grabbed her luggage, then came back down and returned the key. Asher led her out of the hotel and over to his newly booked rooms.

  “Did that just happen?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And it makes me leerier of the fact that you may or may not have a flight home.”

  He could feel her tense up. It was one thing to be deserted in another country. It was completely different to be deserted in a foreign country where you didn’t speak the language and when a trail of bodies had been left behind. If you were one of the visible faces on the case was an entirely different scenario too.

  Back in his new hotel room, he dropped her luggage on the side and said, “Now I need you to sit quietly while I make some contacts and phone calls.”

  She looked up at him and nodded. “Are you planning on leaving without me too?” The cry from her heart broke his. He walked over and wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

  “I couldn’t do that to you,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it to you ten years ago, and I couldn’t do it to you now.”

  She whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For walking away last time,” she said. “I knew immediately it was the wrong thing to do.”

  “And yet, you didn’t come back and tell me that,” he said with a note of humor in his voice.

  “No, because I firmly believed that you were better off without me.”

  He tilted her chin and kissed her hard. “So maybe you should rethink that now.”

  She stared up at him. “Really?”

  He nodded. “I guess I haven’t found anybody else to love in all these years, so maybe, just maybe you’re the only one for me.”

  And he kissed her again. This time she wrapped her arms around him, held him close, and kissed him right back.

  Chapter 16

  And what a kiss it was, Mickie thought.

  Still crappy timing as Asher gently nudged Mickie toward the bed, but she went willingly.

  “Why don’t you sleep a bit? Things will look better when you wake up.”

  She could only hope for that. They’d crossed a divide and were at someplace new.

  Someplace new.

  She had never expected to get here. But since then, she couldn’t resist it as an option. She had never lost track of him and had never lost sight of him in her heart. He’d always had a place there, and she’d struggled hard to find somebody else, but it never happened. Asher was a very special man, and she’d been a fool. And she couldn’t believe how she was so lucky to have him right now.

  At the same time, she was devastated that Chandra had left Mickie behind, not even paying for her hotel room. She had money of her own, but she wouldn’t have ready access to it right now. Sure, her credit cards could be used, but this wasn’t part of her job description. It wasn’t the deal. And she hadn’t had a chance to make sure that the twins were okay either. That was devastating. She loved those two women. Sure, they were not the easiest people to handle, and she hadn’t worked with them for all that long, but they were very special. Their hearts and souls were pure delight, and Mickie would miss them.

  But, after this stunt, no way would Mickie work with Chandra again. And Mickie was afraid that it would get much worse before it got any better, particularly if Edward was involved. She’d been around him a couple times, but he’d been notoriously unnoticeable. He was just a man, yet another one busy in business who didn’t give a damn about anything but himself. And that was real life.

  Still, she was stuck now and was not sure where she was supposed to go or what she was supposed to do or who would even have a return flight booked for her. She sure hoped that Chandra arranged one for her, but what if Edward said that he had already, and she’d left him to handle it all? And what if Edward didn’t plan on getting Mickie home at all? What if he planned on making sure she never made it back anywhere?

  Being left as the culprit for all these murders in China was one thing, but what if Edward had something much uglier planned? What if he planned to make sure that she just was another body in the long trail? No answers, no questions, no leads, and everything would go cold. She’d be yet another statistic in a country full of foreigners’ deaths.

  Depressed and upset, she sagged onto the bed and closed her eyes. All she could wish for was that maybe, just maybe, Asher would lie down and hold her close until it would all be okay. Because she knew in her heart of hearts that maybe they’d get there, but, right now, there was absolutely nothing okay at all.

  Asher watched as she crashed on the bed. This last couple hours had been shock upon shock upon shock, and he could well understand her feeling completely abandoned. What he didn’t know was whether Chandra was behind it, or if her son Edward was behind it, or if they were both in this together, or whether they were just so focused on getting the twins out of the country that they had forgotten about Mickie—or had they completely planned this from start to finish? Because of all the people who had arrived in this country with Chandra, the only one not leaving was Mickie, which deserved an awful lot of explanation, and yet, Asher didn’t have the answers.

  As a matter of fact, with a little bit of work on Chandra’s and Edward’s parts, they could leave enough evidence behind to make it look like Mickie was the culprit all along. While Asher waited for answers, he had already made plans to get them out of the country on the sly themselves. He needed to head back to the US base in South Korea as soon as Ryker checked in. And that would take a little bit of doing too. Just then his phone buzzed. It was Ryker.

  We need to leave now.

  Swearing, he hopped up, walked over, gently rolled Mickie onto her back, and gave her a hard kiss. As her eyes opened, he said, “We must go, and we must go now.” She stared at him in shock and then bolted upright. “Use the washroom and maybe get a drink of water, then we’re out of here.” He grabbed their bags and condensed them down into something he could easily carry on his back. As soon as she came out of the washroom, he grabbed her hand, and they disappeared out into the hallway.

  Even though they had paid for their room here, unlike where Chandra had supposedly paid for their rooms in the first hotel, Asher knew that either the local police or the Chinese military or another paid entourage that he didn’t wa
nt to meet were coming to this hotel. It wouldn’t take the armed men long to get past the front desk either.

  Once in the hallway, he headed out the back exit, worrying that he would even now be too late. He raced down the stairs, his heart pounding, knowing that she was doing her best to keep up with him, and he wasn’t giving her any opportunity to slow down. He hung on to her hand firmly. When he hit the second floor, he stepped onto what was a small deck and dragged her with him on the steps, straight down and out into the back garden. He didn’t change direction. He didn’t even look around. He kept on going, keeping her firmly at his side. When they were finally around a corner, she asked him, “Are we safe?”

  “Not safe enough,” he said, his tone curt, urging her forward still. “I don’t know who or what that was about, but I got word that we needed to get out, and so we’re out.”

  “Police?”

  At her quavering voice, he realized she was on the edge of losing control. He pulled her a bit closer, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and just hugged her tight but kept her feet moving forward. “It’ll be fine,” he said.

  “How can you say that?” she cried out.

  “Because I’ve been here before,” he said. “I’ve never yet not made it home.”

  At that, she looked at him, nodded, and put a little more juice into her footsteps, so he didn’t feel like he was dragging her down the sidewalk. “Where are we going?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “The fastest way to do that is to cross the water.”

  “To the base again?”

  “If we’re lucky,” he said. They were still several blocks away from the water, and he kept up his zigzag motions as he tried to find his way to get them across.

  “Ferry?”

  “No,” he said, “likely private.”

  “That’ll leave a trail,” she warned.

  His phone buzzed. He dropped his arm from around her shoulder and pulled out his phone and saw it was Ryker. He swiped his phone. “Hey, we’re about two blocks away from the fish market. Where are you?”