A low-toned beep at three-second intervals. She opened her eyes to see the strobes set above each doorway flashing in time with the beep. “Michael…”
He lifted his head from her neck and looked at her, his face set in grim angles. Tight and resigned. The man she loved was suddenly gone, the ruthless killer he usually kept locked away taking his place in the space of a breath.
“Get the kids back here.” He stepped away from her and turned, lunch and everything in between, forgotten. “We have approximately fifteen minutes to get you secured downstairs.”
She slid off the counter, her boots hitting the floorboards so hard they rattled beneath her feet. Her shirt was open and she fumbled it closed, suddenly self-conscience.
“Michael—”
He barely spared her a glance as he moved across the room, reaching into the neck of the thermal shirt he wore to pull out his own brass key.
“No arguments, Sabrina. We don’t have time—get them back here, now.” He punctuated the last of his words by jamming his key into the lock that secured the weapons cabinet. He reached in and pulled out his own TAC 50 before stacking boxes of ammo on the kitchen table, next to the plate of forgotten sandwiches he’d made for lunch.
“Okay,” she said, using the word to propel herself forward. “Okay…” She nodded as she streaked across the kitchen, her steps so fast and heavy they rattled the dishes in the sink.
The alarm. The strobes. They were security measures. Meant to warn them. In the twelve months they’d been here, they’d never gone off. Not once. Three hundred eighty days of silence, suddenly shattered.
Someone was coming.
3
Sabrina stepped out onto the porch and looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to one o’clock. By 1:05, their canyon would be crawling with only God knew what. Pressing the blue button on the top of her watch, she watched the thick stand of trees to her left for movement.
They’d done so many drills. When they’d first gotten here it was once a day. They’d let the kids scatter, encouraging them to go explore their new home only to sound the alarm and time how long it took them to make it back, each time pushing them to move faster and faster. They set a perimeter—an invisible barrier deciding how far they could wander from the house. The quicker they were, the farther they could go. As soon as Alex and Christina could cover a half mile in under five minutes, the drills were cut down to once a week.
A year and a half later, with nothing but peace and solitude in between, the drills had tapered off into an occasional happening. Never more than once a month. They’d had their obligatory drill two days ago.
Christina burst through the trees with Alex in tow. She didn’t look alarmed. She looked annoyed. That changed as soon as their eyes met across the yard. Reaching behind her, she said something to Alex and doubled her pace, pulling him along. Behind them both was Avasa, alert and focused on the pair in front of her.
The children stopped on the steps directly below, tapping the red buttons on the side of their watches to stop the vibrations they emitted. It’d taken them less than two minutes to respond. “Inside,” Sabrina said and they moved without asking questions. Sabrina followed them through the door to find Michael had emptied nearly the entire contents of the weapons cabinet onto the kitchen table. The plate of grilled cheese lay broken on the floor, cold sandwiches scatter across the bare wood. Avasa didn’t even look at them.
“If I’m not down in thirty minutes, close it up without me,” he said, holding her TAC 50 in one hand and a stack of ammo boxes in the other. The alarm was still sounding, the strobes still flashing. “Sabrina.” His voice whipped out and grabbed her, shook her. She didn’t answer—she just took the rifle and ammo he held out to her without looking him in the eye.
Sabrina slung the strap of the TAC 50 over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said, moving across the room and through the doorway that led to the rest of the house, Christina and Alex following behind while Avasa stayed behind.
“You didn’t say goodbye.”
She kept moving. “What?” she said, crossing the living room toward the bedroom she shared with Michael.
“To him,” Christina said, her tone crowded with panic. “To Michael—you didn’t say goodbye.”
She skirted the bed they shared, refusing to even look at it as she moved toward the closet. She pushed the door wide and ushered them in. It was the kind of closet most women dreamed about. One-hundred and fifty square feet of shelves, racks and drawers—all stuffed with clothes and shoes she’d never wear. In its center was a storage island. Feeling along the wooden lip of the waist-high countertop, Sabrina dragged her fingertips until she hit a knot in the wood. She pushed it and the flat top popped open to reveal a motorized lift. “Let’s go, we’re out of time,” she said, shooting a hurried glance at Christina. As if on cue, steel security barriers began to lower over the windows. They were connected—once the lift was activated, the barriers were deployed, leaving only a few vantage points unsecured. Soon, the house would be on complete lockdown.
“Christina.”
The girl stuck her chin out, pretending the metallic screech of those barriers—what they meant—didn’t scare her. “You didn’t say—”
“Because I’m not leaving him.” She swiped a hand over her face. “I won’t… do you understand?” No time—there was no time left. “I can’t. Now, please—”
The girl threw her leg over the side of the lift and boosted herself into its center before holding her hand out to Alex. “What do I do?”
Relief flooded her system. Fifty feet below was a fifteen-hundred square foot bomb-proof bunker equipped with enough water and supplies to carry eight people through nearly three months of hiding. “Do exactly what I showed you. As soon as the lift stops, get into the bunker and shut the door. Set the timer for thirty minutes—if Michael or I don’t come back for you, it’ll activate on its own.” Without her or Michael to enter the deactivation code, it wouldn’t open for six weeks, no matter what. “If the lift is activated by anyone but us before the door is secured, hit the green button on the right—it’ll override the timer.”
The lift started its decent, startling the girl in front of her. “I’m scared,” she said, her dark eyes yanked wide, making her look years younger than she actually was. She clung to Alex who stood beside her. Sabrina caught his gaze and he let her hold it, like he was showing her something. He didn’t look scared or empty. He looked determined.
“Don’t be,” she said, peering over the side of the lift to watch as they disappeared down the shaft. “Michael and I won’t let anything happen to either of you. I promise.”
As soon as the lift hit the bottom, she lowered the lid to the storage island and set the lock before laying the TAC 50 across it. Tearing open the boxes of ammo Michael had handed her, she dumped them into her cargo pockets before heading back the way she’d come. Stopping in the doorway, she found Michael standing at the back door—feet still bare, his own TAC 50 positioned against his shoulder, its barrel aimed out the room’s only unprotected window, toward the canyon’s only road which lay in the distance.
“Goddamn it, Sabrina.” He said it without turning to look at her. His tone told her exactly how angry he was and that he was totally unsurprised she’d deviated from the plan he’d formulated months ago.
“I love you too,” she said, watching his shoulders slump slightly at her answer. She couldn’t help but smile a bit as she moved across the kitchen to stand beside him. “Any movement?”
He didn’t answer so she pulled the rifle off her back and pressed it against her own shoulder before fitting her eye against the scope. In the distance, she saw a truck, its dull green hood barely clearing the narrow canyon pass. It crawled along the wide dirt path leading to their house.
“Whoever it is, if they’re here to kill us, they’re sure takin’ their sweet Jesus time about it,” she said, lowering the rifle to wedge the stock under her arm. She popped the magazine from the
bottom of the rifle. “Could be a diversion for an aerial assault,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a handful of .50 cals and began feeding them into the magazine. “What do you think?”
“I think that if we live through this, I’m just might kill you,” he said quietly, eye still pressed to the scope of his TAC 50. “I think I love you so much it scares me.” He finally looked at her, the gray of his eyes gone almost completely black with anger. “I think that if something happens to you, it’ll probably be the end of me.”
“Well, which is it?” She refit the magazine to the bottom of the rifle, clicking it in place. “Do you love me or want to kill me?”
“Both. Almost always, both.” He shot her a smirk before refitting the scope to his eye. “Take high ground. If they decide to repel in from the cliffs, pick off as many as you can before they hit the bottom of the canyon.”
She leaned into him, kissing the hard line of his mouth. She pulled back, ready to go but he snagged onto her shirt and held her for a moment, looking her in the eye before letting her go. He opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off before he could get it out. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him. She wasn’t ready to hear it either.
“I want pancakes for dinner,” she said, giving him a wink before turning to head upstairs to the loft.
“Wait.”
When she looked back at him, his posture had changed, his spine less ridged. With a final glance through the scope, he dropped the TAC from his shoulder and reached for the door.
Her bravado left her—shoved aside by the kind of choking panic that could kill you if you let it. “Don’t go—”
Her words fell on deaf ears as he stepped out onto the porch. She followed, moving to stand beside him just as the faded pickup truck rounded a bend in the river, crossing over a wood and stone bridge loaded with enough C-4 to punch a hole in the ground the size of Rhode Island. Instead of detonating the explosives, Michael let the truck pass over it.
Seeing them, the driver picked up speed. “Do you know who it is?” she said just as the driver of the truck pulled up, less than ten yards from where they stood.
The driver’s side door popped open and a dusty boot stepped out, followed by two hands held aloft, and a black cowboy hat. “I’m not armed,” the driver said loudly, clearing the truck door to stand near the hood. “You remember me, boy?”
Beside her, Michael chuffed out a bark of laughter. “Kind of hard to forget you, Senator.”
Senator. Sabrina looked hard at the man in front of her. Older, for sure but almost unrecognizable behind the hat and sunglasses he wore. She’d only seen him on television but Michael had met him in person—the day he’d been asked to find and rescue his grandson, Leo.
Senator Maddox laughed, “Playin’ dead has a way of erasing a person’s memory. Wasn’t even sure I’d make it once I breached the pass.”
Michael made a sound in the back of his throat, readjusting the TAC cradled in his arms. “Almost didn’t,” he said, shooting a hard look at the truck parked in front of their house. “Nice ride.”
“She don’t look like much but she gets the job done.” Maddox slapped the pickup’s dull green hood and grinned. “How’d the winter treat you?”
“We’re still here,” Michael said, his eyes scanning the cliffs that towered over them. “Speaking of here… what can I do for you, Senator?”
Maddox chuckled. “I forgot how much you love small talk,” he said. “May I?” He tilted his hat toward the cab of his truck.
“Sure.” Michael’s tone was easy but between them she heard the distinct click of his flipping the safety off on the MAC 50 he held.
The senator must’ve recognized how thin his welcome was being worn because he reached a slow hand into the cab of his truck, pulling out something bulky and black. A satellite phone. Wedged in between the phone and Maddox’s fingers was a large manila envelope. Holding both out, he reached up with his free hand, peeling off his sunglasses to reveal a pair of dark eyes, razor sharp and aimed straight at her.
“Little lady—you have a phone call.”
4
“I still don’t understand, Senator Maddox—why would you drive over two-hundred miles to play secretary? We’ve never even met.” She could hear Michael in the kitchen, sweeping up the broken plate and smashed sandwiches off the floor. The kids were upstairs in the loft playing checkers. Avasa slept at her feet, relaxing in the afternoon sun. Everything was back to normal—and nothing would ever be the same again.
The satellite phone sat on the table between them, a living, breathing thing. Something that could hurt them. Something that could destroy everything they’d built over the last year. Beneath it was the folder, its flap secured shut by a bright red string wound around a circular tab. She didn’t want to know what was inside. Sabrina refused to even look at it. Instead she focused on the old man on the other side of the table.
“First off—it’s just Leon now. My civil servant days are behind me. I’m back to being what I was before I put on a suit and went to Washington.” Maddox smiled at her, trying to reassure her everything was going to be okay. That his being here didn’t mean everything had gone sideways.
“And what is that exactly?” she said, allowing herself to be distracted from why he was here, even if it was for just a few moments.
“Cattle rancher—same as you,” he said, his smile deepening into a grin. “Although, I’ll admit, my operation is a tad bigger than yours.” At less than 500 head of cattle, she would hardly consider them ranchers.
“So, after nearly twenty years in the Senate you just quit?” Sabrina could hear the skeptical edge in her tone but did nothing to temper it.
Maddox stopped grinning. “I’ve had my fill of politicking—left it to my son, not long after…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. He’d announced his retirement the day after his grandson had been returned home, naming his son, Jon, as his predecessor to finish out his term. Retirement had been the easiest way to dodge the top-secret appointment he’d been about to receive. The one that would’ve had him heading a committee designated to decide how the country’s 85 billion dollar black budget would be spent.
The entire reason his grandson had been kidnapped in the first place.
Now, he turned his gaze toward the yard, taking in the river. The towering cliffs in the distance. “As for why… well…” he looked at her again. “It took Leo a long time to talk about what happened. The kidnapping—he claims he doesn’t remember much of it. Said he felt sleepy a lot.”
She remembered dull green eyes watching her from across the dinner table. The way he plodded along beside the guard who moved him from room to room. “Reyes kept him drugged most of the time,” she said quietly, not sure how the old man would react to information about how his grandson had been treated in captivity.
Maddox nodded, his mouth stretched thin and tight across his face. “Yeah. That’s what I figured…” he knocked his hat back on his head, lifting the shadow it cast across his eyes so she could see them when he looked at her. “One thing he remembers clear as day—is you. You telling him you were there to rescue him. That you and your friend Michael would take him out of there.” He swallowed hard, looking away from her. “And you did. The two of you saved him from…” he nodded once, a hard jerk of his neck, meant to rein in his emotions. “So, no—we’ve never met, Ms. Vaughn but I know you…” He smiled at her. “And after what you did for me and mine, the least I can do is play secretary.”
Sabrina sat quietly for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Mr. Maddox—”
He didn’t let her finish. Obliviously, the subject of his grandson’s abduction was closed. “You and that young man in there have made a nice home here. You deserve it—both of you. The last thing I want to do is disrupt that.”
“Then why are you?” her voice was small, edged in fear. From the corner of her eye she could see the thin red string. It blurred against the bright yellow of the envelope
. The longer she looked, the more it looked like blood.
“He said you’d ask that.” He chuckled softly. “He also said you’d want the opportunity to hear the facts and choose for yourself, what happens next.”
Ben. She didn’t even have to ask. Benjamin Shaw was big on choice. The freedom to make them. A year, he’d said as much to her before he’d told her she’d have to decide what she wanted more—her old life or a new one with Michael.
“I made my choice, sir.” She pushed the words through clenched teeth. Ben had been smart to send the senator instead of coming himself. She’d been raised to respect her elders. If it’d been Ben sitting across from her, he’d have gotten a fat lip for his trouble. “I got on the plane that brought me here and I haven’t looked back.” Even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. She’d looked back plenty. Missed and longed for her old life. Her family.
In a perfect world, she would’ve been allowed to have both. She would have been able to find a way to be with Michael and still have Riley and Jason. Val and Nickels. Her old partner, Strickland. But the world wasn’t perfect and she’d had to choose. She chose Michael and even though she missed them all, she’d never regretted her choice. Not ever.
“I’m here because I owe a debt. To both of you... and to Benjamin,” Maddox said, cocking his head toward the kitchen. The sweeping sounds had stopped but Michael was still in the kitchen. Probably listening. “By paying on one, I have a feeling I’m adding to another but I agreed to deliver a message—not you. Once I’ve said my piece, I’ll be on my way. What you do with it is up to you.”
Sabrina finally let her gaze fall to the phone and the envelope, sitting on the table between them. “It won’t work here, you know?” she said. “Even if you could turn it on, which you can’t, you wouldn’t be able to get a signal. The canyon won’t allow it.”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 36
