Full Force

by Elle James

  After the hour was over, she asked her students to put away their books and get out their pencils.

  Her teacher’s assistant handed out the scanner test forms while Emily distributed the actual tests, face-down.

  Once each student had a form and a test, Emily walked to the front of the class, glanced at her watch and then looked up. “You have one hour to complete the test. You may begin.”

  For the next hour the students worked through their tests at their own paces. By the end of the hour, they trickled up to the front of the room, handed over their completed forms and the test, and left, walking past Mustang as they went. Male and female students only gave him a brief glance as they exited. They appeared to be deep in thought, as if second-guessing their answers.

  When the hour ended and there were still students at their tables, working on their tests, Emily cleared her throat.

  “Time’s up,” she called out. “Put down your pencils and bring your tests and answer sheets to me.”

  The remaining handful of students submitted their papers and left the room.

  Emily and her assistant stacked the tests and the scanner forms. After Emily tucked them into her satchel, she thanked the assistant and told him he could leave.

  The assistant brushed past Mustang, eyebrows raised. But the young man didn’t comment. Instead he left, letting the door swing closed behind him.

  “I need to take my forms to my office and run them through the test-scanning software.” Emily looped the satchel’s strap over her shoulder and started up the aisle toward Mustang. “The students will want to know their grades as soon as possible. Then we can go see Jay Phillips, the private investigator.”

  Mustang nodded and held out his hands. “Do you want me to carry anything?”

  Emily smiled and shook her head. “No need. I do this all the time.” When she started to pass him, he put out his arm.

  “Let me go first.”

  With a sigh, she hung back.

  Before Mustang could put his hand out to open the door, it burst outward.

  He shoved Emily behind him and dropped into a ready crouch, his hand going to the gun beneath his jacket. He had it pulled and pointed at the intruder before she was completely inside the classroom.

  The young woman stood no more than approximately five feet tall with pitch-black hair, ice-blue eyes and pale skin. She stopped short, the door swinging closed behind her. “Oh!” she said and took a step backward, raising her hands, her eyes wide and frightened. “I’m not here to hurt Miss Chastain,” she said with a heavy Russian accent. “I need her help.”

  Mustang refused to move. “Who are you and what do you want with Miss Chastain?”

  The woman shot a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Please,” she said softly. “If they find me, I won’t be able to speak freely. I need to talk to Miss Chastain.” She held up her hands higher. “I am not armed.”

  Emily touched Mustang’s arm. “Let her talk.”

  “She might not have a gun, but she could be carrying a knife.”

  “You can...how you say? Frisk me. But please, away from the door. If my bodyguards find me, they will take me back to the embassy.”

  Emily stepped around Mustang. “The Russian embassy?”

  The woman nodded, shot another glance over her shoulder. “I told my father I wanted to enroll in classes. I ran away from my bodyguards. It is only moments before they find me.” She pressed her hands together. “Please, I must speak with you, Miss Chastain. It is a matter of life and death.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You must be Sachi,” Emily said and moved forward.

  Mustang shot out his arm to keep Emily from stepping past him.

  “It’s okay,” Emily said. “Sachi is Russian Ambassador Nikolai Kozlov’s daughter.” When she tried to lower his arm, it remained firm.

  “You can’t trust anyone,” Mustang said. “Not even another woman.”

  “Miss Kozlov won’t hurt me,” Emily said and turned to Sachi. “Will you?”

  Sachi stared at Emily wide-eyed. “No, no. Of course not.”

  “Still, I’d rather make certain she isn’t carrying a weapon.”

  Sachi held out her arms and spread her feet apart. “Please hurry. If my bodyguards find me, I will not have another chance to speak to Miss Chastain.”

  Mustang ran his hands lightly over her arms, along her sides, down to her shoes and then checked inside her jacket. When he was done, he stepped back and allowed Emily to move forward. “She’s clean.”

  Emily closed the distance between her and Sachi.

  Sachi moved away from the door into a corner of the classroom while Emily flipped one of the light switches near the entrance, plunging that corner into darkness. Then she followed Sachi, with Mustang close behind. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”

  Sachi glanced over Emily’s shoulder toward the door before she spoke. “My father has made it impossible for me to get out of the embassy alone. He treats me like a child, when I am twenty-six years old.”

  * * *

  SACHI COLLAPSED AGAINST Emily, sobbing. Emily wrapped her arms around Sachi and looked over her head into Mustang’s eyes.

  “Is your love the journalist Tyler Blunt?” Emily asked.

  “Yes,” Sachi said. “He is. And my father is furious. He thinks Tyler is a risk to his position as the ambassador.”

  “Why does he think that?” Emily asked.

  “He thinks Tyler is only seeing me so he can get bad information about what the Russians are doing in the United States.”

  “And do you think Tyler is using you?” Emily asked.

  “No, of course not.” Sachi shook her head. “Tyler loves me.”

  Emily didn’t bother telling the young Russian girl that journalists sometimes could be quite crooked and start relationships with people just to use them for a story. What good would it do when Emily knew nothing of Tyler’s true intentions?

  Sachi frowned and stared into Emily’s eyes. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Emily said. “Question is, what do you want me to do about it?”

  “My father said he hired a private investigator to follow Tyler,” Sachi said. “Who was the private investigator?”

  “I’m not at liberty to reveal anything about my conversation with your father,” Emily said.

  Sachi grabbed her hands and squeezed. “Please, you need to tell me. I think the private investigator might have seen something. Might know something about what Tyler was working on. Maybe he knows something about why Tyler disappeared.”

  Emily shook her head. “I signed a nondisclosure agreement with your father. If you want to know who the private investigator is, why don’t you ask your father?”

  “He won’t tell me,” Sachi said.

  Again Emily shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t tell you.”

  More tears welled in Sachi’s eyes. “It could be the difference in life and death for Tyler,” she said. “What if he’s been kidnapped? What if he is being tortured?”

  Emily pressed her lips together. “Talk to your dad. I can’t say anything.”

  Sachi dropped Emily’s hands, turned and paced a few steps away. Turned and came back. “Tyler said he was working on a project that could have some very serious ramifications. He seemed nervous about it. He thought it was really dangerous.”

  “Did he say anything about what it was?”

  Sachi shook her head. “He didn’t want me to know. Not until he had all the details.”

  “And you think this project that he was working on may have gotten him in trouble?”

  Sachi nodded. She ran a hand through her rich black hair and sighed. “I wish he would have told me what the project was. Then at least I would have some kind of place to start looking for him.”
/>   Standing in the shadows with the Russian ambassador’s daughter, Emily could feel the tension and the fear. If the man she loved had disappeared like Tyler Blunt had disappeared, she, too, would be searching for answers. But she couldn’t violate her nondisclosure.

  Emily sighed. “Sachi, I can’t tell you who the investigator was. That information you will have to get from your father. However, I can check with him and see if he knows anything.” She had been going to go talk with the private investigator anyway. It wouldn’t hurt, and it wouldn’t violate the nondisclosure agreement for her to talk to the investigator. Especially now that she knew who he had been talking about during the interpretation session—Tyler Blunt.

  Sachi grasped her hands once again. She stared at Emily. “Please, you will tell me if you learn anything about where Tyler might be?”

  Emily nodded. “I’ll tell you what I can. But I’ll need some way to contact you.”

  Sachi took a business card from her wallet. She pulled a pen from her purse and wrote a phone number on the back of the card. “Call me if you learn anything.”

  Emily reciprocated and gave Sachi her number, as well.

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway. Sachi heaved a frustrated sigh. “I have to get back to my bodyguards. My father will be angry when he finds that they lost me. I can take his anger. But it isn’t fair to the bodyguards when he gets angry.”

  “Will you be all right?” Emily asked.

  Sachi nodded. “As well as can be expected. I will not rest until I find Tyler.”

  She squeezed Emily’s hands one more time before she released them, turned and hurried toward the exit doors. As she reached out to open them, they pushed outward and two burly, heavyset men entered.

  Mustang started after Sachi.

  Emily’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm.

  The ambassador’s daughter spoke in fluent Russian to the two men. They responded also in Russian. And soon all three left the auditorium. Mustang’s gaze followed Sachi out the door. He turned to Emily. “I’d follow her to make sure she’s all right, but that would leave you exposed.”

  Emily shook her head. “She knew the men. She spoke to them as if she had a long-standing relationship with them as her bodyguards.”

  “Still, she looked scared.”

  Emily nodded. “She is scared. But not for herself, for her lover, the journalist Tyler Blunt.” Emily shook her head.

  “Let me guess, you want to go talk to Jay Phillips now?” Mustang said.

  Emily’s eyes narrowed. “You bet. Your team wanted to follow up with him today anyway. So, we’ll do it.”

  “Okay,” Mustang said. “I’ll let Declan know we’ll handle it.”

  “And then we can stop by the office that hired me to translate for the embassy.” She met Mustang’s gaze. “With as much trouble as I’ve been having lately, do you think Sachi is in trouble, as well?”

  Mustang shrugged. “I don’t know. But she has two bodyguards. They should keep her safe.”

  “I’m kind of worried about her,” Emily said.

  “Do you think her father had something to do with Tyler Blunt’s disappearance?”

  Emily’s lips pressed tightly together. “I don’t know, but it’s all pretty suspicious. Considering I saw Blunt being led deeper into the embassy instead of out of it.”

  “Sounds to me like the Russians had something to do with Mr. Blunt’s disappearance.”

  Emily nodded. “You should have seen how mad the ambassador was when he found out that his daughter had been having an affair with the man Jay Phillips had been tasked to follow.”

  “All the more reason for us to get to this private investigator and ask a few questions of our own.”

  Emily nodded, slipped her satchel more firmly over her shoulder and started for the door. Mustang beat her to it and stepped outside first. After he had checked both directions of the hallway, he opened the door for her and led her out of the building and back to the lot where he had parked his truck.

  He had just settled Emily in her seat when a loud bang sounded, echoing off the walls of the parking garage. Glass shattered the passenger window of his truck just as she was bending over to retrieve a paper that had fallen from her satchel. Instinct took over as he shoved Emily sideways in the front seat and then crouched low behind the metal of the door. Another shot rang out, hitting the front windshield.

  Emily shuttered her hand out. “Give me your truck keys,” she said.

  “Why?” Mustang asked.

  “Just do it,” she demanded.

  He handed her the keys. She scrambled across the console into the driver’s seat. “Get in,” she ordered.

  Another shot pierced the front and back windshields leaving small holes with cracks like spider’s legs reaching out. Emily jammed the key into the ignition and turned on the engine.

  Mustang scrambled up into the passenger seat and closed the door, still remaining low, out of range of the windshields.

  Emily slammed the gearshift into Reverse. She backed out of the parking space, shifted into Drive and hit the accelerator, shooting the truck forward toward the exit. She didn’t let the fear of being shot slow her down. She kept her foot on the accelerator, taking turns in the parking garage at a much too fast pace to make her comfortable. But she had to get out of there before someone finally hit their target. Her.

  While Emily navigated getting out of the parking garage alive, Mustang was on his cell phone dialing 9-1-1. “I’d like to report an active shooter on campus at the university.”

  Emily was so angry at herself as she pulled out of the garage and onto the campus street. If she hadn’t showed up that day, insisting her students needed to take their tests to get the grade for class, the campus would not have had an active shooter. She was in trouble and had brought that trouble to the campus, putting the students at risk.

  As she left campus she vowed not to return until her attacker was captured and put behind bars. She’d get her test results in electronically somehow.

  * * *

  MUSTANG HAD INSISTED Emily keep going until they were miles away from the university campus. He didn’t want to stop at all, but he knew they would have to file some kind of report with the police since he had called in the active shooter. He was proud of Emily for keeping a level head and getting them out of the parking garage and off the campus. She was still driving at a fairly fast rate, at the same time not erratic enough to run over pedestrians. He looked back every few minutes to make sure they were not being followed. When he felt certain they were safe, he had her pull over at a gas station, where they arranged for the police to come and question them about the incident.

  After Mustang gave his statement to the police, he placed a call to Declan and explained their situation.

  “I’m glad you got out of there alive,” Declan said.

  Mustang glanced over at Emily. “So am I, dude. So am I.”

  “Do you need me to send another one of the guys out to help protect Emily?” Declan asked. “Or Mack and I can interview Phillips.”

  Mustang debated taking Declan up on his offer, but they needed to talk with the private investigator, and he might get spooked if there were too many people bombarding him at once. “No, I think we need to do this, just me and Emily.”

  “Fair enough,” Declan said.

  “What I need from you and the others is information. Give me the address of this private investigator, Jay Phillips.”

  “I’m on my way to you,” Declan said, “and I’m texting you Phillips’s address. Good luck getting information from him. Most investigators don’t share private data of the people they investigate. Of course, unless you’re the one paying him to do the investigation.”

  “I don’t know why they’re targeting me,” Emily said as she wrapped her arms around her middle and moved closer to Mustang. �
�Nothing in that report seems worth all this.”

  He put his arm around her. “You’re safe with me and my team,” he said into her hair. “I won’t let you down.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Minutes later Declan joined Mustang and Emily at the service station as the police wrapped up their investigation.

  “Thought you might need another vehicle,” Declan said. He tipped his head at a dark gray sedan pulling into the parking lot. “Charlie sent a backup car. She could have sent a truck, but she said this one blended more easily into the DC traffic.”

  Mustang shot a glance toward his pickup with the bullet holes in the windshield and side windows. His stomach roiled. Any one of those bullets could have hit Emily. “Tell Charlie thanks.” His gaze shifted to Emily. “It might be a good idea to take Emily back to the Halverson estate. She’s not safe out here.”

  Emily shook her head even before he finished speaking. “I’m not going to sit back at Charlie’s and wait for the trouble to miraculously disappear. I want to have a word with Jay Phillips. And if that isn’t any help, I’m going to request a meeting with the Russian ambassador. I have to get to the bottom of this.” As she spoke, her anger became more evident and a bright fire burned in her eyes.

  Mustang couldn’t help but think how very sexy she was when riled. He chuckled. “Okay. You’re staying with me. But we might need to get you into a bulletproof vest.”

  “Whatever it takes,” she said.

  Mack climbed out of the dark gray sedan and handed the keys to Mustang. “She’s all yours while your truck in is the shop.”

  “Good.” Mustang cupped the keys in his palm. He filled Declan and Mack in on the rest of the details of their encounter with Sachi Kozlov.

  “So, she was having an affair with Tyler Blunt.” Declan shook his head. “I can understand her concerns. From what Cole has learned, the man has yet to turn up.”