A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera)

by Isabella Maldonado

  Kent tilted his head toward hers, trying to listen in. “Forge?”

  “Is that the Viking you were jogging with yesterday?” Forge said. “Get rid of him.”

  “He’s my partner,” Nina said.

  “This is between you and me. He’s not welcome.”

  “Can’t make out what he’s saying,” Kent whispered to her. “Put him on speaker.”

  Nina looked pointedly at the bellman.

  Kent took the hint, rounding on the kid. “Go stand by the front desk. I’m not done with you.”

  Nina tapped the speaker icon. “What is it, Forge?”

  “Check your text messages. I sent you an image.”

  She clicked over to messages and opened the only file. “I can see the photo. It’s . . .” She leaned closer and sucked in a breath.

  “What?” Kent said, crowding her.

  “It’s Selena,” Nina whispered. “Forge has Teresa’s daughter.”

  Chapter 56

  “Let her go.” Nina barely managed to choke out the words as she extended her hand to show Kent an image of Forge holding a gun to Selena’s head.

  “Do what I tell you,” Forge said, “or your cousin gets hurt.”

  Her cousin. Of course. That’s what this was all about. That’s why he had targeted Selena. She forced calm into her voice. “What do you want, Forge?”

  “A trade.”

  “Trade?”

  “For you, Agent Guerrera.” He paused for emphasis. “Her life for yours.”

  “I’ll do it,” Nina said without hesitation. “But you’ll have to let her go first.”

  She saw Kent’s entire body tense as he stood next to her.

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” Forge said. “You have five minutes to go out front and hail a cab. I have people in the hotel watching you. Once you are in the cab, call me and I will give you an address. Have the driver take you there.”

  Too bad the fake taxi they had set up earlier was already back at the police impound lot. There was no time to get it back.

  “Oh, and Agent Guerrera”—he paused a beat—“leave the Viking at the hotel. I’ll know if you’re in the taxi alone.” He disconnected.

  Kent went straight to DEFCON 1. “There’s no way you’re doing this.”

  “He’s holding a gun to my pregnant cousin’s head.” She deliberately mentioned the family connection, reminding him that Forge had chosen Selena for a reason. “There are two lives at stake here.”

  Even if he couldn’t condone her actions, she hoped he could admit he would react the same way under similar circumstances.

  She turned toward the door, and Kent latched on to her arm. Hard. She looked up at him. His mouth had flattened into a tight line. She considered her options. He could easily overpower her physically. This was a fight she could not win using conventional warfare.

  So she fought dirty.

  She redirected his protective instincts from her to where they belonged. An innocent woman and her unborn child.

  “Kent, I have to do this. He took Selena because of me. I’m the only one who can save her . . . and the baby.”

  “We don’t have time to set up an operation like we did this morning,” he said. “I won’t let you walk in there with no plan, no backup, and no exit strategy.”

  He had unwittingly given her an opening.

  “Then be my backup.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? He’s going to make sure you come alone.”

  “We still have our com systems.” She tapped her ear. “All you have to do is call Buxton and Harper to have them reactivated.”

  He appeared to give it some thought. She saw the wheels turning and sensed the moment he caved.

  “Buxton is going to have my ass,” he said, then released her arm. “I’ll have the com links up and running ASAP. In the meantime, stall long enough for me to get in the car. I’ll follow you from a distance. Once you hear someone in your ear, find an excuse to repeat your destination.”

  She didn’t wait for him to change his mind. Turning, she marched past the young bellman on her way out to the taxi stand. Her five minutes must almost be up.

  The valet ushered her into a yellow cab idling at the curb. As soon as he closed the door, the cabbie glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Where to?” he said in a dense accent she couldn’t place.

  “Hold on a sec.” She pulled out the phone and tapped the speed dial.

  “The meter’s running,” the driver said over his shoulder.

  She held up a finger, silently asking the cabbie for one minute while the call connected.

  “I hope you didn’t waste time planning any surprises,” Forge said. “I wouldn’t like that. Neither would your cousin.”

  She glanced through the rear window to see Kent across the parking lot, getting into the Suburban, cell phone to his ear, talking fast.

  She made sure her earpiece was on, ready to pick up transmissions when it was reactivated. “The cabdriver wants an address,” she said into the phone. “What do I tell him?”

  “Tell him to take you to the intersection of Mariposa Avenue and Saguaro Street. Once you get there, call me.” He disconnected.

  She repeated the instructions to the driver, who pulled away from the curb, a quizzical expression pinching his features.

  Within five minutes, she heard Buxton’s voice in her ear. “Agent Guerrera, do you copy?”

  She didn’t want the cabbie to think she was talking to herself, so she put her phone to her ear. “Glad you called, boss.”

  He picked up on the situation immediately. “All right, I understand you’re not alone. We’ll play this like a phone call.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Agent Kent filled me in. He’s a few car lengths behind you. I’ve contacted Agent Harper, and he’s got the HRT rolling. You’ll be able to hear him on the com system shortly.”

  “Got it.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  She gave him the cross streets. “I’m supposed to call when I get to the intersection.”

  The cabbie’s bushy brows snapped together as he glanced at her in the rearview again.

  “Copy that.” It was Harper’s voice this time. “That location won’t be the final destination. Sounds like the subject is going to use countersurveillance measures.”

  She agreed and pretended to end the phone call.

  “We are here, miss,” the cabbie said a few minutes later. He pulled to the curb near the corner of the two streets and idled. “That will be sixteen dollars and—”

  “I need to go somewhere else,” she cut in. “Let me make a quick call.”

  Forge picked up almost immediately. “Tell the driver to take you to 1312 Paseo Drive,” he said. “Call me when you’re standing in front of the main entrance to the building.”

  She repeated the address for the driver and for the team.

  “You’ll be there in less than three minutes,” Harper said. “We’re going to run on parallel streets, so he won’t see us. As soon as you stop, we’ll set up a perimeter. We have hostage negotiators with us ready to take over.”

  A hostage situation. Damn. Her mind went back to the bank at Hogan’s Alley. She’d had no idea she would end up in a real scenario a few short days after her training fiasco.

  When the taxi pulled to a stop, she pushed thoughts of Quantico from her mind and tossed the driver thirty dollars.

  She stepped out and stood in front of a sleek, modern office building with a glass front. After watching the cab pull away, she took out the cell phone and held it up so Forge’s voice transmitted over her mic, but on the opposite side of her head from the earbud so he couldn’t overhear what Buxton or Harper said to her.

  “Where are you, Forge?” she said, looking around.

  “Your cousin and I are waiting for you inside.”

  She stalled for time, giving the team an opportunity to set up. “I’m not going in until I know Selena is okay.”
/>   After a momentary pause, she heard a loud slap followed by Selena’s voice screaming obscenities in the background.

  “As you can hear, she is alive and will stay that way if you follow my instructions.”

  She used every ounce of self-control she possessed to quell an angry response. “Let me talk to her.” The words came through gritted teeth.

  “You can talk to her when you come in.”

  He wanted her in that building, and he wanted it now.

  “How do I get inside?”

  She tried to provide the responding tactical team with as much intel as possible about the building in case they had to make a rapid entry.

  “I have temporarily unlocked the main front doors,” Forge said. “All you have to do is walk up to the sensors. They’ll open automatically.”

  She kept up her delaying tactics while pretending to comply. “What happens when I go inside?”

  “You will drop the phone, place your handgun on the floor, and kick it away. Then I will give you further instructions.”

  That meant he would be within talking distance once she got through the door.

  “How do I know you’ll let Selena leave after I go in?”

  “The only thing you know for sure is that I will definitely kill her if you don’t,” Forge said. “I’m going to count to ten, and then I will begin by shooting her in the abdomen.”

  Nina heard Selena’s panicked shriek in the background. Forge was tormenting both of them.

  Harper spoke into her earpiece. “This was not part of the plan, Guerrera. You were supposed to lead us to the suspect so HRT could make the apprehension. Do not, under any circumstances, exchange yourself for a hostage.”

  “I’m pointing the gun at her belly now,” Forge said, then began a slow, deliberate count. “One, two, three, four—”

  According to accepted hostage crisis protocol, Harper was correct. Acceding to Forge’s demand would involve disarming herself and probably ending up as an additional victim.

  Because such exchanges only served to bolster the hostage taker’s position, law enforcement officers were never supposed to swap themselves for a hostage. The rules were sound, and they had been created for a reason.

  This was not a practical exercise in a scenario, however. This was her cousin. Part of a family she had longed for. Someone whose sole crime was being related to her. Inside Selena was a precious life. Another life put in jeopardy because of her.

  Fuck the rules.

  Nina drew her gun from its holster and stepped toward the wide glass front doors.

  “Six, seven—”

  The doors slid open and she stepped onto the threshold.

  Buxton’s voice halted her. “Agent Guerrera, I am ordering you not to—”

  Static filled her ear. Forge had jammed the transmitter. She had no communications, no way to call for backup, and—once she entered the building—no weapon.

  “Eight, nine . . .”

  She walked inside.

  Chapter 57

  As Nina crossed the threshold, the static in her earbud dropped to a barely perceptible hum. While effectively cutting her off from the team, Forge had also saved her from disobeying a direct order. She was grateful for that small favor because she had made up her mind to go in.

  “Your gun, Agent Guerrera.”

  The voice had come from her left. She whirled to see Forge step out from behind a lush indoor green space filled with flowering shrubbery and tall palm trees in the building’s large atrium. He held Selena tight to his body, the muzzle of his semiautomatic pistol pressed against her swollen belly.

  In one fluid motion, Nina dropped the phone to the floor and raised her Glock, training the sights on Forge.

  He narrowed his eyes on her. “Don’t try it.”

  She performed a rapid mental assessment of her situation. She had no idea what the team was planning, what Forge would do, or how Selena would react. The only thing within her control was her own actions.

  Forge seemed to be thinking along the same lines and was doing everything he could to reduce her options. Taller than Selena, he hunched down enough to keep his head behind hers. He didn’t discourage Selena’s panicked thrashing, which kept her body in a constant state of motion, shifting around in front of him. Eliminating any hope of a clean shot.

  If Nina fired her weapon, she risked either hitting Selena or failing to incapacitate Forge, who would then pull the trigger. Forge was forcing her hand, but she knew the drill.

  Never give up your gun.

  Relinquishing a weapon only made a bad situation worse. Law Enforcement 101.

  “You can tell your FBI friends outside to back off too,” he said.

  So he knew she wasn’t alone. She had wondered why he hadn’t already shot her. Now she had her answer.

  The soft glow of monitors emanated from the reception desk beside him. Forge had watched her arrival, then spotted HRT personnel setting up on the building.

  “I took the precaution of jamming all signals inside the building in case you brought company,” he said. “Because it pays to have a backup plan.”

  The mention of a plan made her wonder what his original strategy had been, and how she might thwart it. She sought to draw his focus away from Selena and onto her.

  “What’s your endgame, Forge?” She kept her gun on him as she spoke. “Why go to all this trouble to get me here?”

  “To separate you from your team, of course,” he said as if the answer were obvious. “If you had come alone, I would have killed both of you and gotten away clean.” His expression hardened. “But you lied to me, so now I need one of you with me to make sure your friends out there don’t get trigger happy when I walk out the door.” He jerked his chin at Selena. “This one would slow me down, which is why I’m willing to make a trade. That offer will, however, expire soon.” He paused a beat. “What’s it going to be?”

  If Nina surrendered, what would stop him from shooting Selena? Compassion? The idea was laughable. She thought about Forge’s profile. Only one thing would motivate him. Self-interest.

  “If you fire a single shot, the tactical team will make immediate entry,” she said. “They already have the building surrounded. There’s no way out for you unless I cooperate. And I won’t do that until you release Selena.”

  The snick-snick of a hammer cocking was his only response. He didn’t need to cock the hammer to fire the weapon. The trigger was double-action, which meant it only required a slightly stronger amount of pressure to pull it the first time. The move had been a threat. An unmistakable signal of deadly intent.

  She tried to view the situation from Forge’s perspective. Using his cold, calculating logic, she arrived at an inescapable conclusion. He had two objectives. First, to get away, then to kill her. He needed a hostage to escape. He had expressed a preference for Nina, but if she refused, he would use Selena. Either way, his plan involved Nina’s death.

  Looking into his eyes, she had no doubt he would pull the trigger without the slightest remorse. She saw the flatness that Robert Cahill had described.

  The eyes of a snake.

  He could not feel or understand human emotion. Love, compassion, and empathy were a dark void in his soul, notable only by their absence. Like a computer programmed with AI, he had the ability to calculate how someone might react to a situation and adjust his strategy, but he could not account for the unpredictable. The illogical. He expected human behavior to fall within certain parameters he had observed over a lifetime. Realization erupted to the surface, breaking through the logjam in her mind.

  Forge had a blind spot.

  Nina reflected on what she had learned from Wade and Kent. Forge would do whatever possible to manipulate the situation to his advantage. He planned to get out of this alive. The only way she would have the upper hand is if she did the opposite. If she made a deliberate choice to sacrifice herself, she would have a chance at saving Selena and her baby. Forge lacked the capacity to anticipate suc
h a move because—like a snake—he would never willingly give up his life to save another.

  Once she made her decision, a plan quickly took shape. Had she stalled long enough for the team to get in place? For her next move, she counted on Forge’s well-honed survival instincts. It was in his best interest to release Selena after Nina was disarmed, then take Nina hostage. He would not shoot Selena while she was still inside the building, knowing a swarm of tactical personnel would rush in before he could grab Nina.

  For the plan to work, she had to give up her weapon. Steeling herself, Nina took her finger off the trigger, squatted, and laid her Glock on the floor, keeping it within reach. Time seemed to stop. She was a trapeze artist flying through space, blindly clutching for the other bar.

  “Okay,” she said to Forge. “Now aim your gun at me and let Selena go.”

  He kept the muzzle against Selena’s protruding abdomen. “On your knees.”

  Forge apparently knew action was faster than reaction. He could pull the trigger faster than she could grab her weapon from the floor, aim it, and fire.

  She sank to her knees.

  He swiveled his arm to point the gun at Nina and used his free hand to shove her cousin away. Selena stumbled, then regained her footing.

  Nina cut her eyes to Selena. “Walk out the front door with your hands in the air,” she instructed her. “They’ll take care of you once you get outside.”

  She did not want Selena suddenly bursting through the front doors, unwittingly drawing fire.

  Selena clasped her hands protectively around her belly. “Agent Guerrera, I—”

  “Go.” Nina watched her cousin take several ungainly steps toward the front door before she turned her attention back to Forge. He had used her momentary distraction to silently close the distance between them and now stood at point-blank range, looking down at her.

  “Up on your feet.”

  She stood. Her gun, which now lay at her feet, might as well have been in another room. She faced Forge, returning his gaze.

  His voice was deadly calm. “Time to go.”

  He clutched her elbow and pulled her in close. She offered no resistance when he wrapped a muscular arm around her midsection and yanked her backward until her spine touched his chest. She felt the sights of his gun dig into her temple as he jammed the barrel against her head.