by Elle James
“Where did Charlie say she was going tonight?” CJ asked.
Cole’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “She’s at an event where the president is speaking.”
“We have to get there.” She leaned forward as they caught up with the children and teenagers walking down the middle of the road, heading for the highway.
They wore T-shirts and shorts, most barefoot, their eyes wide and scared. They looked like ghosts.
CJ’s chest tightened. They would need years of counseling. What they’d gone through would have serious effects on them, much like PTSD for battle-weary soldiers.
She didn’t have time to worry about them now. She had to gather the other men of Declan’s Defenders and get back to the city before Carpenter’s prediction came true and they were too late.
Chapter Twelve
Cole pulled up beside Mack, Mustang, Gus and Jack, each carrying a barefoot child piggyback. Sirens blared as fire trucks, law-enforcement vehicles and first responders pulled onto the dirt road leading to the compound, lights flashing like a parade with fast, colorful floats.
“We have to go,” CJ said as the road became congested with people and vehicles. A smaller fire truck with paramedics on board was the first to reach them. The four Defenders handed over the children on their backs. Gus, Mustang and Jack got into the back of the SUV.
Mack gave the paramedic a brief explanation of what had happened and then backed away, slipping silently into the SUV.
Cole edged through the crowd of young people and headed for the highway, his pulse pounding, his hands holding the steering wheel so tightly he thought it would break. They couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Charlie had done so much for them. They couldn’t let her down.
Jack was on his cell phone, desperately trying to contact Charlie, Roger or Declan. None of them was answering their cell phones. They would have made it to the downtown event center. Roger would be inside with Charlie. Declan would be with them, if Charlie arranged to have more than one escort. If not, he’d be nearby in case anything happened.
As soon as they reached the highway, Cole pressed the accelerator to the floor, sending the vehicle blasting toward the dog trainer’s property and the waiting helicopter. Mack had called ahead to warn the pilot that they’d need to take off immediately.
The chopper was ready, the blades turning, when they pulled into the field.
Everyone bailed out of the SUV as soon as Cole pulled to a stop.
CJ and Cole hunkered low and ran toward the helicopter, climbing in.
Cole buckled his safety harness. When CJ fumbled with hers, he leaned over and pulled her harness over her shoulders. His hand brushed against warm, sticky liquid on her left shoulder. He leaned closer, staring hard at her in the limited lighting. “You’re hurt.”
She shrugged. “It’s just a flesh wound.” As if to prove it, she lifted her arm up and down. “See? I can still use it.”
“We need to get you to a doctor.”
“After we make sure Charlie and the president are okay, we’ll have plenty of time to stick a bandage on this scratch,” she said, her chin lifting in challenge. “Not any sooner.”
Cole didn’t like it. CJ was bleeding. She could have lost a lot of blood already.
As if reading his mind, she touched his arm. “If I’d lost a lot of blood, I wouldn’t have been able to run to the helicopter. I was more worried about my ankle than my shoulder and it’s fine. Both are fine. I’ll survive. It would take a lot more to bring me down than a bullet or a 150-year-old tree.” She cupped his cheek and smiled into his eyes. “I’m okay.”
As soon as everyone was on board, Mack yelled into his flight headset, “Go! Go! Go!”
The chopper left the ground and rose into the air, turning in a tight circle toward the bright lights of the downtown area.
Because of the air restrictions around DC, the closest the pilot could land was at the Leesburg Leesburg Executive Airport. When the helicopter touched down, they dived out and ran for Charlie’s SUV.
Mack drove, weaving in and out of traffic toward DC and the hotel hosting the event.
“We’ll never get there in time,” CJ said.
Traffic into the downtown area had thinned, allowing them to make good time, but they couldn’t be certain they’d arrive before whatever Trinity had planned started.
Cole pulled out his cell. They couldn’t wait another minute. “I’m calling in a bomb threat.”
“We’ll never get in after that,” Mustang pointed out.
“No, but maybe they’ll get out before Trinity attacks,” Cole said.
They were five blocks away when police, fire trucks and ambulances raced past them toward the hotel. Traffic came to a halt.
“We have to get through before they barricade the streets,” Cole said.
“Time to bail.” Mack parked along the side of the street. The team got out and ran the remaining five blocks to the hotel.
By the time they got near, the police were setting up barricades across the road. Fire trucks and law-enforcement vehicles made it impossible for any other vehicles to access the hotel.
Guests streamed out of the hotel dressed in their finest. Men in black suits, wired with radio headsets, scurried around the entrances. Secret Service.
Cole stopped a man and woman walking away from the hotel. “What’s going on?” he asked, knowing for the most part why they’d been evacuated.
“Someone called in a bomb threat. They’ve evacuated the entire building.”
The woman shivered in the cool night air. “They wouldn’t even let us get our coats.”
“Did they get the president out?” Cole asked.
The man frowned. “The Secret Service gathered him and the vice president and took them out of the ballroom through the rear exit. I’m sure the president is back at the White House by now, sitting in front of a fireplace keeping warm. Unlike the rest of us.” He draped his arm around the woman’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Come on, we’ll find a cab a couple blocks away from this nightmare.”
“I can’t walk too far in these shoes,” she complained as they continued away from the hotel. “I wasn’t expecting to hike in this outfit.”
“What if they didn’t get the president out of the hotel?” CJ said.
“We don’t know how they plan to kill the president. It could be with explosives or they might plan on a sniper taking him out as he leaves.”
“Carpenter said they would eliminate Charlie as well as the president,” Mack said. “How would they do that and spare the others?”
Cole swore. “I might have made it that much easier for them by calling in the bomb threat.”
“How are we going to get in?” Mack asked.
“Come on,” Cole said. “I have an idea.” Weaving through the crowd leaving the hotel, they found an ambulance parked near the entrance, a stretcher unfolded and ready for anyone who might need assistance. An EMT had just climbed up into the back of the ambulance for supplies, leaving the stretcher unattended.
Cole grabbed the stretcher and rolled it past a police car. “Mack, get the other end,” he said. CJ swiped the EMT’s tool kit and hurried after them.
With Cole walking backward and Mack pushing the other end, they walked right past the police but were stopped by the Secret Service men guarding the front of the building.
“We were told Charlotte Halverson is in need of medical support. Please, step aside,” Cole said.
“We can’t let you inside,” the man in the black suit said.
“Mrs. Halverson funds half the hospitals in the DC area,” Cole said. “Do you want to be responsible for her death and the cessation of funding to those hospitals?”
The man stood tall, his chest puffed out, a rifle in his arms. “Can’t let
you in.”
“Very well,” Cole said. “Let it be on your shoulders when she dies.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” CJ jerked and clutched her shoulder. “I’ve been hit!” She dropped to the ground and moaned. “They’re shooting at us. I’ve been hit.”
The agent crouched and looked up at the buildings surrounding them. “Get down!” he called out. Everyone within earshot ducked. Women dressed in evening gowns screamed and dropped to their knees.
In the confusion, the five Defenders slipped past the guards, entered the hotel, sidestepped the metal detectors and kept moving, following the signs leading to the ballroom. The first chance they got, they ditched the gurney.
Cole didn’t like leaving CJ outside the hotel, but knew they had to get to Charlie and the president.
“CJ? Are you okay?”
For a moment, he thought their headsets had quit working. But then he heard the soft sound of her voice,
“I’m okay. I’ll see you inside.”
“Don’t try. We’ll take care of this.”
A bad feeling hit Cole in the pit of his belly. What were the chances that CJ would stay put outside the hotel?
Slim to none.
If Trinity had its people inside and they ran into CJ, they’d take her out, as well.
Damn.
Cole fought the urge to turn around and run back out to the front of the hotel. They had a job to do. The fate of the nation and Declan’s Defenders rode on the outcome.
Secret Service agents combed the ballroom. Several had bomb-sniffing dogs, checking every square inch of the room.
Cole stopped one of the agents. “Did they get the president out?”
The agent frowned. “Of course. Who the hell are you and how did you get in?”
“We’re from the bomb squad,” Cole lied. “We’re here to defuse the bomb when you find it.”
“Good. I’d like to keep all my parts in place.” The agent nodded toward the rear of the ballroom. “They took POTUS and the VP out that way, along with that billionaire philanthropist, Halverson, and some guy.” He shrugged. “Not sure why they took her. Maybe the president wants her to fund his next election campaign.”
“Why that way and not out the front?” Cole asked.
“They have several escape plans for each event the president attends. Going out the front, going out the back and going up. If they go up, they have to hold until Marine One can get here. If the helo can’t land on the roof, they’ll call for a Navy SEAL team to extract them.”
“We’ll be around if you find anything,” Cole said. “All you have to do is yell.”
“Don’t go far. If a clock is ticking, we might be on borrowed time,” the agent said. He went back to work searching under chairs and tables draped in fancy white linens, set with gold charger plates and crystal glasses and candelabras.
A man in a black suit was on a ladder in the middle of the room, checking out the huge crystal chandelier.
Cole, Mack, Mustang, Jack and Gus moved through the room to the rear exit. Mack pulled out his cell phone.
“Calling Declan?” Cole asked as they pushed through the double doors into a hallway.
Mack nodded. “I don’t know why they’re not answering. If they were evacuated, they’d have been outside by now.”
“Try Arnold,” Cole said. “He was Charlie’s date.”
Mack dialed the butler’s number.
A moment later, he looked up. “Nothing.”
Then his phone pinged. Mack stared down at the screen. “It’s a text from Declan.”
The men gathered around Mack.
Head for the top. Trinity has POTUS, VP, Roger and Charlie. Take stairs.
“They’re headed for the roof,” Cole said. “Find the stairs.”
* * *
AFTER CJ FAKED being shot and had everyone ducking to avoid being hit, she rolled away from the guard at the door and ducked into the building following another Secret Service agent. She dodged the metal detectors to avoid setting off an alarm with the gun she had stashed beneath the jacket she wore that was splattered in her own blood.
She’d listened to the one-sided conversation she could hear as Cole spoke with someone about them being part of the bomb squad. She chuckled as she headed down a hallway. When she heard them talk about the text from Declan and needing to get to the roof, she found a stairwell and started up. She ran, though her ankle hurt and her shoulder throbbed. They were the least of her worries. Charlie was in trouble. And Trinity was planning to kill the president and possibly the vice president.
If they both died, the speaker of the house was next in line for the presidency. Had the speaker of the house been the leader of Trinity all along? CJ thought about who that was and shook her head. The speaker of the house was a man who had been married to the same woman for thirty years, had two beautiful daughters and five grandchildren. He went to church on Sundays and volunteered at children’s hospitals in his home state and in the DC area. He couldn’t be the Trinity leader.
And the vice president had been kidnapped by Trinity along with Anne Bellamy just a little while ago, a plot foiled by the Declan crew. Trinity wouldn’t kidnap their own leader, would they?
Unless they wanted to throw others off. Who would believe they would kidnap their own leader? No one. But they hadn’t killed him when they could have. They’d used the VP and Anne Bellamy to lure CJ out of hiding.
They’d succeeded in that effort. CJ wasn’t hiding anymore. But they hadn’t been quick enough to kill her. She’d stayed one step ahead. With the help of Declan’s Defenders, she’d gotten that much closer to learning who was in charge of Trinity.
She’d hoped that when she’d discovered Chris Carpenter in the main house on the compound, that he would prove to be their leader. But he’d been pretty confident that Trinity would have someone in the highest office in the US soon. Since he wasn’t with the president at the time, nor in position to take over the presidency, he clearly wasn’t the guy.
Which brought it down to one of two people. The vice president and the speaker of the house.
CJ’s money was on the vice president. The sooner she got to them, the sooner she’d find out.
Taking the stairs two at a time, she ignored the pain in her ankle and in her shoulder and powered through, climbing the eight stories to the top, her breath fast and heavy. When she reached the eighth floor, she found a smaller stairwell with a locked gate in front of it. A sign read Authorized Personnel Only.
CJ vaulted over the gate, landing on the first stair leading upward. Since she hadn’t heard anyone in the stairwell or seen the others of her group, she assumed they were climbing a different set of steps to the roof. She hoped they arrived around the same time as she did. They’d all need backup.
If it was true the Secret Service had evacuated the POTUS, VP and Charlie, they were probably Trinity sleeper agents who’d managed to get past the background checks to become Secret Service staff members. They’d be highly trained as assassins as well as having gone through specialized training for the Secret Service. They’d be formidable foes in hand-to-hand or weapon fights.
When CJ reached the top of the stairs, the door led out onto the rooftop of the hotel. A rectangular window allowed her to peer through before she made her move to step out onto the roof.
As far as she could see, there were air-conditioning units jutting out of the roof near her end of the long, rectangular building. A structure graced the other end of the building. It appeared to be a rooftop bar with large windows on the side she could see. Outside the windows, there was a patio area with tables, chairs and potted plants in large concrete containers. Based on the direction the bar faced, it had a view of the city customers would pay top dollar to admire.
“Declan just texted.” Cole’s voice sounded in her earbud headset and made her feel warm all over.
“They’re in the rooftop bar. He can see them through the window. The men dressed as Secret Service are holding the president, Charlie and Roger hostage.”
“What about the vice president?” one of the guys asked.
CJ waited, her heart pounding, hanging on the edge, eager to hear Cole again.
Cole swore. “He’s calling the shots.”
CJ nodded. As she suspected. Vice President Gordon Helms would be next in command should the president die. He’d be the leader of the US until the next election.
“That’s our guy. The bastard we’ve been searching for,” Gus said in his gruff voice. “How many guns?”
Another pause before Cole answered. “Six men in black. And the VP is carrying.”
Six. The trick would be to get inside the bar without being detected.
If they made too daring a move, Trinity would push the process forward and kill the president, Charlie and Roger before they had a chance to rescue them.
“How do we want to handle this?”
“None of us was able to bring in the rifles. All we have are small arms. We can’t pick them off without several sniper rifles going at the same time.” It was Mack’s voice. “We have to get inside or get close enough to shoot through the glass.”
“There are planters, tables with umbrellas, and chairs on a patio close to me,” CJ interjected. “I can low-crawl to within a few feet of the windows.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Cole said.
“I can do it,” CJ insisted. “Going now. I’ll let you know when I’m in position.”
“CJ,” Cole said.
She ignored him and slipped out of the door onto the roof. Keeping low, she moved in the shadows of the AC units until she reached the edge of the patio, partitioned off by a wrought-iron railing. CJ crept alongside the building where there were no windows and rolled over the top of the railing, landing on the patio. She lay still, listening for movement from inside. When she thought all was quiet, she low crawled on her belly, moving from the cover of a giant pot to the shadow of a table to another giant pot until she was close enough she could see through the windows to the people gathered around.