Guarding Cindy (Special Forces: Operation Alpha)

by Paige, Victoria

  “I appreciate the fashion advice,”—and the backhanded compliment, Cindy didn’t say as she turned to face the woman—“but we’re two different women, leading two different lives. You’re bohemian chic, and you pull it off well, and it’s you. But I’m not you. I like my Southern roots, and I’m as all-American as apple pie with a bit of Yankee thrown in.”

  And with that she changed the subject. “Can we draw up the blinds in the kitchen and let some light in?”

  “I always keep those closed.”

  “Why?” She looked around for the elderberries and didn’t see any boxes. The oven was off, which was weird if she hadn’t sterilized the bottles yet and there was no sign of said bottles anywhere. On the countertop was a plate of brownies and a pitcher of limeade. Strange that the oven wasn’t even warm if the brownies just came out of the oven.

  “Because I hate seeing Mrs. Jung and her house.”

  “I don’t get your problem with her. I would think because you’re both into homemade stuff you’d get along.”

  Something occurred to Cindy. Was it a competition? To see who was the Martha Stewart of the neighborhood? She decided to test that theory. Maybe poke the bear a little. “Her kimchi tastes amazing. You should try it.”

  The scowl on Angela’s face was priceless. Her host turned her attention to the refreshments. “Limeade? Brownies?”

  “I’m fine.”

  As if she didn’t hear her, Angela poured the juice into a glass and pushed it toward her. “Here. It’s hot outside. You must be parched.”

  “And I said I’m fine.” Cindy looked around. “Where are the elderberries?”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. We need to talk about your idea about homemade.” Angela raked a shaky hand through her hair. “Not all food is created equal. She shops in that big Korean market. God knows what pesticides they use on their produce. How can they keep the prices so cheap? Have you thought of that? And you put that crap in your body.”

  Her brows shot to her hairline. Was that a rhetorical question? Because Angela loved baking and Cindy thought consuming all that sugar was just as evil.

  “To each her own?” Cindy pointed out. “I prefer shopping at the farmer’s market, but for hard-to-find ethnic ingredients, I go to the Korean store.”

  “No. No.” Angela gripped her hands together and started pacing. Cindy was getting weirded out. “Only organic. That’s why I grow most of my vegetables. And meat. Don’t eat too much of it. That chicken pot pie you sent home with Danny? I threw it out.” She cast her a disapproving look. “I know you keep feeding my son that poison.” She stabbed a finger in Cindy’s direction. “We need to work on that.” Angela’s eyes dropped to the glass of limeade. “Drink that.”

  For real?

  “Do you need help with the jam or not?” Cindy asked. “Where are the elderberries? Do you even have them?”

  Angela pursed her mouth in displeasure, staring at the damned glass of juice, before awarding Cindy with a glare. “I will go and get the boxes in the garage.”

  “I can go get—”

  “I said I will go get them!” Angela snapped.

  Startled by the woman’s outburst, Cindy raised her hands in a placating gesture, but her instincts were screaming for her to get out of there. “All right. Should I turn on the oven?”

  “For what?”

  “To sterilize the jars. That’s your preferred method, right?”

  The older woman gave a shake of her head. “Oh, yes. Go ahead.”

  “Two fifty?”

  “That’s correct.”

  While Angela disappeared into the garage, Cindy switched the knob of the oven to the desired temperature and pondered her neighbor’s increasing eccentricity, and if she was honest, psychotic behavior. Maybe she was experimenting with a natural remedy she concocted. Danny told her more than once that some of her remedies backfired and made his mother depressed. Yes, this could be a side effect of depression. She looked around for baking sheets and the bottles. Opening and shutting cabinets, she found the pans, but couldn’t figure out where the jars were.

  Closing the last cabinet door, she jumped.

  Danny was standing in front of her.

  “Shit.” She instinctively clapped a hand to her chest and let out a shaky laugh. “I didn’t hear anyone come in.”

  Angela stood behind her son and there was something up with Danny. He was usually all smiles whenever he saw Cindy, but his face was unusually stoic.

  She smiled tentatively. “What’s going on?”

  “Mother said you wouldn’t cooperate.”

  Mother? Since when did he call … Cindy gave another short laugh and backed away. Fight or flight kicked into high gear as she nonchalantly headed for the door. “I’m out of here. This is too weird. Your son—”

  Danny rushed her and she stumbled back, but not before he grabbed her arm. “Not so fast—wife.”

  Her breathing came in rapid pants, blood drained from her head and she felt dizzy as a realization hit her.

  “You’re my stalker.”

  His smile transformed him into a stranger. Or maybe it was his eyes. A manic look she’d never seen before.

  “Let me out of here.” She shoved against him but he was an immovable shroud that wrapped around her and choked her with escalating fear.

  Cindy screamed. It was cut short by a hand over her mouth as she was dragged back into the center of the house.

  She clawed at him, trying to yank her arm out of his grasp. She heard Danny curse, his mother yelling instructions. Her body hit the floor and pain robbed her of breath. A heavy weight straddled her, her wrists caught on either side of her head.

  Angela pinned her right wrist with a knee, while Danny held her other wrist. Fingers pinched on either side of her jaws, forcing her mouth open. Bitter liquid trickled into her mouth, and before she could spit it out, her mouth was forced shut.

  “There … there…” Danny’s face came closer, his crazy eyes getting crazier. Sweat dripped from his forehead to her face. “This will make you feel better. You should have just drunk when mother offered.”

  Cindy shook her head in panic as her bodily reflexes caused her to gulp and whatever he gave her burned down her throat. Her eyes pleaded with whatever was left of the old Danny in the stranger holding her hostage. Anything to buy her time until her protection detail would come looking for her.

  “Sanchez and Hutch won’t be coming to your help,” Danny said as if reading her thoughts. “They’re sleeping cozily in their car.” He smirked. “I still can’t let you scream in case our nosy neighbor Mrs. Jung hears it.”

  Cindy made sounds beneath his palm.

  “What was that?” Danny angled his ear toward her in a taunt. “What am I going to do with you?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought I told you. You’re going to be my wife for as long as I want. I prepared our new home. Obviously, we couldn’t stay here and we need to lie low for a while. It’s not the first time we’ve done this.” He laughed.

  She didn’t know how long they’d been staring at each other, but an insidious numbness snaked its path into her limbs. Cindy didn’t know if it was the effect of the drug or of Danny’s heavy weight pressing down on her.

  “We need to get going, Danny boy,” Angela said.

  The man before her sighed. “You’re right, Mother.” He searched Cindy’s face, a sinister smile playing along the edges of his mouth. “I have a feeling it’s goodnight, Irene, for you.”

  She tried desperately to cling on to her wakefulness, terrified that if she lost consciousness she would never wake up, or worse, be trapped in a dark basement she could never escape.

  Her peripheral vision began to dim.

  No. No. No.

  Her body left the ground as if she were floating.

  The voices around her muffled and her world tunneled into darkness.

  Chapter 14

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  Keith
finally came clean about all the information he’d collected on Cindy. Her RightSpark account, her appointment calendar, her background, education and medical records. If that wasn’t enough, he had files on almost everyone related to her. Trevor, her friends like Izabel, her neighbors, including Marcus, although what the kid had on him was sparse.

  “I was trying to find out who was stalking her,” Keith mumbled. “I realize this looks bad.”

  “No kidding,” Tex piped in. “If that ain’t stalkin’, I don’t know what is.”

  “I’m not the guilty party here, I’m trying to establish data for a link chart.”

  Marcus’s brows shot up. “You trying to pull a Law and Order, kid?”

  Keith’s face flushed. “No. I didn’t have to go that far. I came across information about Danny Tilley.”

  “Our surfer dude?” Tex asked and glanced at Marcus. “He’s at the top of my list. Something wasn’t checking out with his background.”

  “Yes!” Keith said excitedly. “May I?” he said, referring to the keyboard.

  “Go ahead.”

  Keith’s fingers flew over the keys and a screen was brought up with a logo of a cartoonish detective. “I’ve been tracing his packets—they’re heavily encrypted. He’s a tech guy like me, but I’m smarter.”

  Well, Cindy must have been mistaken about his lack of confidence.

  “There’s been chat about Riddler_X on the dark web. He manufactures fake identities for criminals wanting to escape to Canada or Mexico. He’s not at the top of the Feds’ cyber security most-wanted list but he is on it.” Something must have clicked for Tex because he began tapping away on his keyboard—Danny Tilley just became a priority.

  “He travels out of town frequently, mostly on the weekend,” Keith said. “I was supposed to track him this last time, but I got shot.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Tex muttered.

  “Find something, bro?” Marcus asked.

  “Tilley’s mother moved into the Sunny Ridge neighborhood two years ago. That much is on record. Her son moved in a year after because of her fibromyalgia. With this new information Keith has told us, I’m assuming they’re working on false identities, so I hacked into the tech school Tilley was supposed to have graduated based on the resume he had with the cable company…”

  “Let me guess … you found nothing,” Marcus said.

  “Yup.”

  “Why are you only finding this out now?” As soon as the question left Marcus’s lips, he regretted it.

  Tex narrowed his eyes on him. “Not making excuses but I’ve got priorities in terms of national security so forgive me if Danny Tilley is not high on my list, but he is now. I prefer going through proper channels first before going the illegal route, and the school hasn’t gotten back to me.”

  “Sorry, man,” Marcus apologized. “Go on…”

  Before Tex could continue, an alarm went off coming from his friend’s system.

  When the former SEAL’s eyes returned to him, Marcus had a sinking sensation.

  “A nine-one-one call just came from the Sunny Ridge neighborhood originating from a Mrs. Jung.”

  His chest tightened as Tex’s following words echoed around him.

  “Cindy’s been abducted.”

  * * *

  Rage.

  Panic.

  Helplessness.

  These were the emotions that coalesced in the pit of his gut when he arrived at Cindy’s neighborhood.

  Angry flames shot out from the Tilley home, dark clouds of smoke billowing above and around the structure. Fire trucks were already on the scene as well as ambulances. Several officers were lying on the ground.

  What the fuck?

  Did they walk into a trap? Had there been an explosion?

  In the chaos of spectators and first responders, Marcus spotted Mrs. Jung arguing with a uniform.

  Drake pulled up at the same time he did. Izabel was already jumping out of the car, ignoring her husband’s shout and raced toward the Korean woman.

  “I’ve got Tex on standby,” Marcus told his partner as they converged in the middle of the street and headed to the officers. “He’s busy trying to piece together Tilley’s identity.”

  “Heard that.”

  When they got to Mrs. Jung, he was shocked at the state of her face. The left side was scraped, and her lips were bleeding.

  “Mr. Harrelson!” she cried, turning away from the cop she was talking to. “Tell them that what I say is true. There is no one in the house. I see Danny and his mom drive away.”

  “But she didn’t see Ms. Lake,” the officer spoke over her chatter.

  “Where the hell are Sanchez and Hutch?” Marcus growled when he noticed none of the officers sprawled on the ground was them.

  “An ambulance took them to the hospital. Mrs. Jung found them unconscious and called it in.”

  “Cindy wasn’t home,” Mrs. Jung said. “Then I see Danny and Angela pulling away from their house in a blue van. Not the one he used for work.”

  “The cable van is currently burning in their garage. When the responding officers tried to break in, the house exploded.”

  With the way Drake looked at him, he figured his partner arrived with the same conclusion. They were erasing traces of their old life.

  “What happened to you?” It wasn’t only Mrs. Jung’s face but her whole arm was covered in a rash.

  “They tried to run me over …” Her face was solemn. “I was going to ask if they’ve seen Cindy. Danny’s eyes …” Her voice faltered and her body shuddered.

  “She’s been taken,” Marcus clipped and turned away, heading for his SUV. Standing around here wouldn’t help him find Cindy. The thought that she was in the hands of an obviously deranged mother-and-son-team worsened the sick feeling in his gut. He had to find her and soon, and Tex—maybe Keith—was his only hope.

  He got back into the vehicle. Drake got in right beside him.

  “I’m leaving my car with Izabel,” his friend said. “She’s taking Mrs. Jung back to the house after the police interview and will wait for news there.”

  Marcus mounted his phone on the dash and swiped Tex’s number. His face came on the screen.

  “Found the van,” Tex said. “It’s heading west on I-64.”

  “Do we know who the hell Danny Tilley is?”

  “I’ve tapped into state and federal databases with their faces. It’s gonna take a while, Harrelson. The original background I dug up on them was a plant. The Tilleys are ghosts, but we’ve gotten another lead. Mrs. Tilley was sloppy with her online website, not shutting it down. Keith is looking into that now as well as checking the signal from her phone.”

  “Let me know as soon as you find information.”

  “Roger that.”

  Tex blinked out. Marcus gunned his engine. Making a three-point turn, he maneuvered the SUV out of the neighborhood, cursing at the traffic backing up because of the fire.

  “We’ll find her, Commander,” Drake quietly said beside him.

  Marcus was clinging to all hope that they would.

  * * *

  They’d been on the road for two hours and had just passed Richmond, VA. The blue van was heading toward the Shenandoah Valley. Marcus made the decision not to involve the cops and Drake and Tex agreed. Until they knew what type of crazy they were up against, he wouldn’t trust anyone else to confront the Tilleys. For all they knew, they were a suicidal pair. No way were they taking Cindy down in a ball of fire if their van was also rigged with the same explosives that blew up their house.

  In some way, Marcus was thankful for Keith’s stalkerish behavior in that he’d installed little cameras around the Sunny Ridge Subdivision. One of those cameras caught the van leaving the street of the neighborhood including the plates and, fortunately, they weren’t fake. There was one problem. The vehicle transponder had been tampered with—a device that IDs the vehicle, its location, and navigation. Tex and Keith were working to get it back online.

&n
bsp; His phone flashed on the dashboard and when he answered it, Tex filled the screen.

  “They’d passed the Rockfish Gap.”

  “Do you have them on tracker yet?”

  “Almost, brother. Mrs. Tilley has shut off her phone, so that’s a dead end.”

  Dammit. “If they get off sixty-four we could lose them.”

  “And if you put the tracker on her like I told you to, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Marcus clenched his jaw. He was so careful not to move too fast with Cindy that it might have cost her her life. No. That was no way to think. Once he got her back, that device was going on. He doubted she’d be balking at the idea after this abduction.

  “Anyway, I think I’ve pieced together what we’re up against.” Tex broke through his self-flagellating thoughts.

  “The Tilleys could be Daniel and Angie Gregory of Newton, Kansas, they could also be Daniel and Angie West of Plano, Texas. Daniel Gregory of Kansas had been expelled from high school for hacking into the school’s computer system and changing grades, but there were also accusations of rape of a local girl. He ended up marrying her and they moved. No trace of them afterward. The Wests of Plano, Texas, were there at the time when a series of coed abductions and murders took place. Get this, the victims all bore a resemblance to Cindy. Tall, blonde, all-American. The abductions and murders stopped five years ago. The Wests stayed on another two years and disappeared.”

  Having this intel did not make Marcus feel any better. He needed to compartmentalize this shit before he lost his damned mind. He overtook a trailer and moved back to the right lane. “Disappearing takes money. How were they able to come up with funds?”

  “My guess? Riddler_X is Danny Tilley. I had Keith check the dark web chatrooms. He can make anywhere from forty to fifty K a month doing that shit.”

  “Damn,” Drake muttered.

  Tex disappeared from the screen for a while. When he came back on, he said, “We got them. They’re turning into Route 340. I’ve started search of real estate sales in those private mountain properties. You two taking them on?”