Rescue Mission

by Danica Winters

  “There is being prepared and there is putting crap out into the universe that doesn’t need to be put out into the universe.” She was aware she sounded paranoid, but more times than she could count, when people put energy behind something, it tended to happen.

  Losing Joe wasn’t something she wanted to even imagine. Right now, they were just watching him...they would give him back. All she and Mike had to do was give them the information they wanted in exchange.

  He put his hands up in surrender. “I hear what you are saying and I get it, but know that no matter what happens, I will be here for you.”

  She couldn’t help but notice that for a split second Mike made it sound like Joe wasn’t just as important to him as he was to her. Opening her mouth to argue, he stopped her with a glance.

  “I know what you’re going to say and you don’t need to say it. If something happens to Joe, you know it will hurt me just as much as it may hurt you.” His eyes shone. “I never thought I could instantly love anything or anyone like I love him. I know I’ve missed so much. And I wish I could have been there for all the milestones that I have already missed with him...” He hesitated, like he was attempting to collect himself, and it pulled at her heartstrings.

  It was reassuring that he was just as invested. Though she hadn’t been sure things would go this way when she had gone to see Mike, she was glad that he had so quickly embraced fatherhood. He had exceeded her expectations in his ability to be open and kind, generous of spirit and soul.

  Since he’d left her at the altar, all she had done was focus on all the mistakes he had made in their relationship. She’d focused on the times he’d forgotten to text her back and had said the wrong things at dinner parties. She had spent all of her energy trying to stoke the fire that would burn away the love she had for him, and yet there standing with him, she was reminded that all it took was one spark to start a wildfire of passion. And damn, did this man know how to set her entire being ablaze.

  “Nothing is going to happen to Joe,” she said, choking on all the emotions that filled her.

  “You know it,” he said, wrapping his arm over her shoulders and walking her to the passenger side of the car. “Why don’t you let me drive? Then you can work on getting the handoff scheduled.”

  She clicked on her seat belt as she waited for Mike to walk around and get into the driver seat. It was like the old days. They had slipped back into their habits so rapidly, and as much as she wanted to be annoyed—she had changed so much since they had been apart—she found solace in the familiar.

  They had gotten answers. They were going to get Joe back, and yet she wasn’t excited. If anything, she was terrified. What if something went wrong? What if Kevin didn’t get her the information like he promised? What if the kidnappers didn’t show?

  She hated to get her hopes up.

  She stared down at her phone, wondering what she should do next. Kevin was working on sending her the information she needed. There was only one thing she needed to do to get the ball rolling. She opened up her message app and tapped out a note to the number the kidnappers had used to contact them.

  I have the code. Meet us at the Roadhouse. Half hour.

  She waited for a reply as Mike fired up the engine and drove out of the bay and toward the road. He turned in the direction of her apartment, and she wanted to tell him not to, to go anywhere that would potentially lead them toward Joe, and yet she remained quiet. Just because they were driving, moving, it didn’t mean they were moving in the correct direction.

  Her phone’s screen turned off.

  What was taking them so long to get back to her?

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, her phone beeped with a message.

  They would meet them there in an hour, Joe in hand.

  All they had to do was not screw this up. Get the code to the people, get Joe, and get out.

  Doable. Very doable.

  She raised her phone so that Mike could see the message. “The Roadhouse is only twenty minutes from here.” She pointed for him to take the next left, leading them in the direction of the restaurant.

  Mike smiled as he glanced over at the phone screen. “Good job.”

  She’d half expected him to say “here’s hoping,” but was glad when he didn’t and instead let the air go still between them.

  They rode in silence, the road noise filling the car. Her mind wandered to the restaurant, the layout. If they sat near the door, they would be in full view of everyone in the place. With witnesses came some level of additional safety. They could get Joe, get out.

  Her phone pinged with a message from Kevin. The file was now in her hands and, with it, some of her fear lifted, just barely. So many things could go wrong, but she had to focus on getting everything just right.

  The restaurant’s parking lot was mostly full, but they found a spot not too far from the door. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched people walking in and out of the place, some getting in their cars while others chatted with friends before saying goodbye. Life was happening all around them.

  No one knew about the terror and fear she had been feeling, only Mike. Was he feeling the same pressure, the clenching feeling, like everything in her future—and in Joe’s—depended on this single meeting?

  There was so much at stake, one wrong word or careless action could lead to her son’s death, not to mention her own. Her life was of no consequence—she had chosen to put herself at risk thanks to her job—but Joe was innocent in all of this.

  “Kevin sent the code,” she said, forcing herself to focus on her phone in preparation for what she hoped would happen.

  “If something goes wrong, and things come to guns, I want you to promise me that you will do everything you can to just get the hell out of there. I will take care of Joe—”

  “I promise to get out of there, but only after I get Joe. I’m not letting him out of my sight ever again.”

  Mike smiled. “College is going to be really uncomfortable for him then.”

  She let out a laugh, the sound too sharp for the moment. “Think of all the things that I could save him from by always being there,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “He would be a chaste forty-year-old with a mommy complex for sure.”

  She laughed. “Oh, when you put it like that...”

  Mike stepped out of the car, walked around and opened the door for her. He put out his hand. “Normal, happy couple. In and out. In ten minutes, Joe will be back in your arms and everything will be okay.”

  She smiled at the thought as she slipped her hand into Mike’s. His hand was strong, just like the man.

  This would all be okay.

  Making their way inside, they chose a seat near the door so they could have full view of everyone who came and went from the restaurant. The eatery was busy, and the sounds of people talking and the smells of food cooking comforted her with their reminders of normalcy.

  He took a seat next to her, sliding into the vinyl booth seat like they were out at just another dinner. Yes, she just had to fake it. Put a smile on her face and act like they weren’t giving false information to a terrorist group to get an infant back from kidnappers.

  Just another day. No big deal.

  How had her life gotten to this point? At what moment had things taken this dark turn? And how could she avoid ever finding herself back in a moment like this?

  She picked up a menu after a server brought them their drinks. She stared at the pictures of food and the letters that she knew spelled words, but she wasn’t reading. All she could think about was how her hands were trembling and how she had to force them to stay as still as possible so as to not raise any sort of suspicion.

  The front door of the restaurant opened and two men came in. In their arms was Joe’s gray car seat.

  What if they were playing a trick on her? What if
Mike was right and they had hurt Joe?

  Until now, she had thought waiting for the men and counting down the seconds until they arrived was the worst part. But now she was sure it was this moment that was the most painful. Being close enough to her son to almost see his smiling face and yet far enough away that he could be gone in an instant made her feel as if she was staring into an abyss.

  The man closest to them looked over, spotted them and said something to the man carrying the baby. Their faces were tight and, as the second man looked over at them, a dark cloud rolled across his features. They walked like they were half dead with exhaustion.

  They trudged toward them and, as they moved, she could make out the unmistakable bulges of guns tucked into the waistbands of their pants near their appendixes. Her throat tightened. She and Mike weren’t the only ones ready and willing to fight.

  Mike reached down, under the edge of the table, and put his hand on her knee like some kind of steadying force to remind her that everything was okay. “We got this,” he said under his breath.

  She didn’t dare look away from the men approaching their table, but she answered Mike with a slight nod. One way or another, they were going to do this thing. Here was hoping that the three of them made it out of this alive and the two men who had dared to steal their baby would end up paying for their actions.

  “Evening,” the man carrying the car seat said, but there was only falseness in his tone.

  He and his friend slipped into the booth as a hostess brought over an antiquated wooden high chair and helped them set the car seat up at the end of the table. Summer stared at the car seat as the hostess lifted it into view, but she could only see the gray polka-dotted coverlet she used when Joe was sleeping.

  “Thank you,” she said, dipping her head toward the hostess as she turned to leave.

  The woman smiled at her like she was just another customer on just another day.

  Summer wrapped her foot around the base of the high chair and pulled the wooden stand closer to her.

  “Hold up,” the man across the table said, grabbing the high chair and stopping Summer from moving it any closer to her.

  “Look, it’s not like I’m going to pick Joe up and just go running out of here. We have a deal, but before I agree to anything, I have to know that my baby is all right.” She scowled.

  The man raised his hands in surrender, letting her pull the high chair over to her. “Just know that if you screw with us, we will hunt you down. Next time, we will kill the kid and you.”

  She could feel the blood rush from her features as she thought about the ruse she and her DTRA team were playing on the men, but she forced herself to focus on Joe.

  She opened the coverlet. Joe was inside, his eyes closed and a pacifier in his mouth. The pacifier was the cheap plastic kind found at any big-box store, not the usual blue silicone ones that he preferred. Reaching in, she ran her thumb across Joe’s warm cheek. As she touched his soft skin, he let out a contented sigh and his lips pulled into a smile, the pacifier teetering on his lower lip.

  Joe was fine. The men had kept their promise and kept her and Mike’s baby safe.

  The heaviness that had filled Summer ever since Joe had disappeared started to lift. They were all going to be okay as long as they could make it out of this restaurant without a problem.

  “You’ve seen him,” the man said, pulling the high chair away from her and forcing her hand from her baby. “Now, you need to give us the code.”

  “Look, I’m his mother, and I need to hold him. You can take those guns you’re carrying and shoot us all, but then you won’t get the code, and you probably won’t make it out of here alive—or you don’t know Montana.”

  “If you think you can touch that baby without first giving us what we are here for, then you don’t value his life. You really think it’s worth taking the risk?” the man asked, arching a brow.

  She reached down and grabbed her phone, but she didn’t take her gaze off of Joe. He looked so peaceful, so blithely unaware of the drama that had surrounded him and brought him to this moment.

  “Before she gives you anything, we need to make sure you know that once we give it to you, that’s it,” Mike said. “We are out. No more harassing us or putting your hands on Joe. If you touch him again, I will kill you. Got it?” He put his hand on hers before she had a chance to activate her phone to retrieve the information.

  The man who had been carrying Joe chortled. “Man, if you think we want to babysit ever again, you are bat shit crazy.” As the man peered over at them, she could make out the dark circles under his eyes, which were normally indicative of a new parent, or in this case, an underprepared kidnapper. “But first we gotta get what we came here for.”

  Whatever Joe had put them through, these jerks had had it coming.

  Noticing the tiredness in their features, a sense of vindication filled her. At least Joe hadn’t made it easy on them.

  Good job, baby. She smiled in Joe’s direction. Hopefully he would never lose that fighting spirit. Well, unless she was the one fighting him. Then she prayed he would take it just a little easy on her.

  The man nearest the wall pulled out a small tablet she hadn’t noticed him carrying and brushed aside a few crumbs the busser had neglected to wipe away.

  “Rico here is going to check your code. If something is up, if it doesn’t look exactly like it should, then we will kill the baby.” The man nearest to Joe pointed at the car seat. “And believe me, we will be more than happy to do it. That little bastard kept us up all night and we haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m pissed...so don’t screw with us.”

  No matter how uncomfortable and pissed off these guys were, it paled in comparison to everything they had put her through. If he thought he was scaring her, that he had any power over her now that Joe was so close, he was wrong. All she cared about was that baby.

  But then, she wasn’t going to get out of here if Kevin had screwed her on this. And Kevin and the DTRA had already made a mistake in failing to understand or to foresee the consequences in her data breach and theft. If they’d had their acts together, she, Mike and Joe wouldn’t be in the position in which they now found themselves.

  Could she really trust that Kevin had done everything in his power to make things right? Or had he and his IT team just phoned it in?

  “Where do you want me to send the code?” she said, careful to keep her voice down.

  The man pushed a slip of paper across the table with an email address. “Send it here.”

  She opened up her phone and clicked on the file Kevin had sent her. With a few more presses of buttons, the file was in cyber space and moving toward the kidnappers. “You should have it.”

  Her heart thrashed in her chest. This was the moment. The moment everything could go wrong. The moment Joe could be hurt, and it would all be her fault.

  Had she been wrong to trust? Had she been wrong to come here? Had she been wrong to think that agreeing to lie to her enemy was the best course of action?

  The man tapped a few keys on his tablet as Rico watched over his shoulder. They looked like two nervous schoolboys, which made her wonder exactly how high up in the ranks they were. Based on their fumbling of the kidnapping and this, it was easy to tell these two men were nothing more than the instruments of someone else’s will...someone who didn’t want their name or face to be known. The thought helped ease some of the tension Summer was feeling.

  Hopefully these two didn’t know good code from bad.

  The man looking over the code turned to Rico and gave him a stiff nod, seemingly pleased with the information she had forwarded.

  Without another word, the man slid out of the booth and stood. Rico gave her a vicious smile. “Here’s hoping we never have to see you again. If we do, you and everyone you know will wind up dead.”

 
; Chapter Fifteen

  To say things had gone unexpectedly was a bit of an understatement. In his wildest dreams, Mike would not have imagined that he and Summer would simply get Joe and be on their merry way within minutes. They had been fighting this so hard, and struggling to find workarounds, that the answer and the handoff just seemed far too simple.

  He didn’t trust it.

  Nothing of value was ever that easy. Especially not when it came to the safety of the people he cared about most.

  Arriving back at Summer’s apartment, he helped her bring Joe inside. Neither had said more than five words to each other since they had left the restaurant. From the worried expression on Summer’s face, he wondered if she was feeling the same way. It surprised him that she had wanted to come back to her apartment at all. If he had been in her shoes, he would’ve bugged out and found himself on the next plane to South America.

  She carried Joe in his car seat to her bedroom and he could hear her unclipping the seat belt and Joe gurgling as she must have lifted him out. She hummed as she set about working. Mike walked down the hall, stopping at her bedroom door and peering inside.

  Joe was lying on the bed, kicking his feet in the air as he blissfully watched his mother take a suitcase down from her closet. After it was down, she grabbed a diaper to change her son, but Mike stepped in to take over.

  “Thanks,” she said. “He is acting pretty good, but I want him to be clean and dry when I hit the road.”

  So, she was planning on leaving. And Mike couldn’t ignore the fact that she had only said I. Did that mean she had no intention of taking Joe with her, or was she planning on taking Joe but not him?

  “Where do you think you are going to go?” Mike asked.

  “If those guys are smart,” she said with a dark laugh, “then by now they probably know that something is up with the code.”

  She hadn’t answered his question.

  “Do you really think they figured out it was bad code that fast?” He took the diaper she held, along with the bucket of baby wipes and the mat.