Military Grade Mistletoe

by Julie Miller

  Muffy gave a sharp yelp as if the little dingbat understood the urgency firing through his blood. The rest of the troops were in agreement.

  He could be wrong. The fractured bits of his brains had messed with his perception of the truth lately. But neither a dog, nor his gut, had ever once given him bad intel. And if Daisy was in trouble, he couldn’t run away from the fight.

  Harry made a U-turn at the next intersection, pulled his Beretta from the glove compartment, and raced back to the school.

  * * *

  DAISY KNEW IT was a trap the moment her foot touched the basement’s concrete floor. The stairs had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape from the fire, but someone had torn through it and come down the steps.

  “Hold up,” Eddie warned her from the top of the stairs. He’d been trying to raise Bernie on his radio to tell him that she and Eddie were tracking down Albert. “Coach isn’t answering. Daisy?”

  “Tell whoever’s listening that we need an ambulance.”

  The door to the storage room had been propped open with a concrete bucket, and the entire locking mechanism had been removed. The char marks had been painted over with more of that gloomy gray paint. But a fresh coat of paint couldn’t hide the reminder of one man’s obsession with her.

  Mine.

  She was frozen in place—her blood, her breathing, the sharpness of her senses locking up with fear. And while she desperately wanted to turn right around and run up those stairs and out the front door, she couldn’t. She couldn’t run away from the trap, because she was a teacher, a caring person, a human being—and one of her students was lying unconscious in the middle of the floor. A gash dented his curly dark hair, and his yellow ball cap lay on the floor, soaking up the blood dripping from his head wound.

  “Albert?” She forced her feet to move forward, slowly approaching his unmoving body, scanning all around him for any sign of the bomb or Bernie Riley. Albert hadn’t made that bomb. He was as much of a pawn in all this madness as she was. And no one wielded more control over this young man than the coach. She was vaguely aware of Eddie relaying the request for medical help. If Eddie had seen Albert with the bomb, it hadn’t been by choice. No doubt the young man had been coerced into giving Eddie, and subsequently her, a message that would not only keep her in the building, but bring her down here. “It’s Ms. G. I’m here.”

  Seeing nothing that looked like a pipe or briefcase, like the bombs she’d seen on television shows and movies, she knelt beside him. She pulled back the collar of his team jacket and pressed her fingers against his neck. Thank God. He had a strong pulse. But he certainly wasn’t able to answer any questions for her.

  “Albert?” She petted the back of the unconscious teen’s head. “I’m so sorry you got hurt. I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

  The sirens of the vehicles she heard pulling up outside reminded her that she wasn’t alone. The noises also reminded her that it was far too quiet down here.

  “Eddie? I need your help to move...” There was no answer. No sound of footsteps following her down the stairs. Had her friend abandoned her? Oh, God. Had something happened to him, too? “Mr. Bosch, answer me!”

  Silence.

  Daisy got up. But when she turned toward the storage room, she instantly retreated. Now that looked like something she’d seen in a movie.

  There it was, sitting in the middle of the floor beside one of the folding metal chairs. A bomb. It was wire-y and liquid-y in clear tubes bound together with duct tape attached to a doughy-looking brick and a cell phone. The screen was flashing a series of numbers—32:26, 32:25, 32:24. A countdown. She didn’t need to know how the thing worked. She just believed that it would.

  “Oh, my God.” She needed to call Harry. She needed him here. To hold her. To take charge. To make the fear go away.

  She imagined the words in his letters, offering solutions. Assuring her that her problems could be fixed. Telling her that she had the power to do anything.

  32:13

  The bad guys don’t get to win.

  “We have to get out of here.” Daisy hurried back to the fallen student.

  She knew that moving an injured person wasn’t the recommended procedure, but with a bomb ticking down just a few feet away, she’d make an exception. She wrapped her hands around Albert’s wrists and pulled. His head lolled between his arms and he groaned as she dragged him toward the stairs. Good grief, he was heavy. Not just tall, but solidly built. When the back of her boot hit the bottom step, she gently lowered him to the floor and rolled him onto his back.

  “Come on, Albert, wake up.” She slipped her hands beneath his arms. With a mighty push of her legs, she got his bottom onto the first step before she had to set him down and lean him against the wall. Unless he regained consciousness, there was no way she was going to get him up these stairs. “Eddie?” she shouted up the stairwell. “I need your help. Can anybody hear me?”

  Maybe she shouldn’t keep yelling. If something had happened to Eddie, then she was alone in the building with a man who equated rape and violence and fear with some sick kind of love. And she was only giving away her position to him.

  “Ms. G.?” Albert slurred her name out on a moan of pain. “You gotta...”

  “Albert?” She knelt beside him, capturing his face between her hands, willing his groggy brown eyes to stay open. “Can you stand if I help you?” His eyes drifted shut. “Albert!”

  His eyes opened for one fierce warning. “Get out.”

  Something hard and unyielding whacked her in the back of the head. Fireworks exploded behind her eyes as she collapsed over Albert’s body and everything went dark.

  Chapter Twelve

  Harry recognized a command center when he saw one. He could also identify the men in charge by the way everyone else scurried to do their bidding. He parked his truck behind the last police car in the circular driveway in front of Central Prep Academy and crossed the median to reach a group of men that included Daisy’s principal, a black-haired cop in a SWAT uniform, John Murdock from the KCFD, Detective Nick Fensom and his brother-in-law, Pike.

  SWAT? That explained the number of first responders.

  His heart squeezed in his chest. Scenes like this were only supposed to happen in a war zone. He needed eyes on Daisy. Now.

  Probably because he wore a gun like all the other cops here, and moved with an air of purpose and authority, no one stopped him until he reached the back of the SWAT van where the men in charge were going over building schematics and access points.

  “Let him through.” Nick Fensom waved him over. “He knows one of our hostages.”

  “Hostages?” He didn’t bother asking if Daisy was safe. He knew she’d be in the thick of whatever was happening inside that building.

  “We’re not saying victims yet.” John Murdock from the fire department exchanged a nod of recognition with Harry. “But our guy won’t talk to us. He’s cut off all communication. We don’t have many details other than most of the students and staff have been evacuated and are safe in the church on the other side of the school.”

  “All he wants is Daisy.” Of that, Harry was certain. “If anyone else has been hurt, it’s collateral damage.”

  “Agreed.” Nick scrubbed his hand over the dark stubble on his jaw. “Our concern is that when a stalker reaches this level of violence, he’s usually got an end game.”

  He’d seen friends brought down by sniper bullets and roadside bombs. He’d lost part of his face and half his soul over in Iraq. Whatever Nick was trying to find a delicate way to say wouldn’t shock him. “Meaning?”

  “Most of these situations end in a murder/suicide.”

  “Like a suicide bomber. Or an insurgent waiting to detonate an IED when it’ll do the most damage.” Harry weathered the emotional punch of knowing Daisy wa
s in a similarly volatile situation right now. He waited for the flashback to take hold, but it never came. This was a mission briefing. All he needed were his orders, and he could take action. Daisy was too important for him to sit on the sidelines and nurse his mental wounds or second-guess himself. He was getting better. He needed to be a part of this. “You said hostages, plural. This guy’s got someone else in there with him?”

  “One of the students,” Pike answered. “We believe our perp used him as a decoy to bring Daisy to him.”

  “You got an ID on this guy?”

  Pike shook his head. “There are two faculty members besides Daisy who haven’t checked in yet—Bernard Riley and Edward Bosch. The student is Albert Logan.”

  “Unless Logan’s our bomber?” Nick suggested.

  “He’s a good kid.” Harry had worked with the teen enough this week to suspect Albert just needed the right thing to motivate him, and he’d turn his young life around. He’d had good instincts with the dogs, and had been interested enough to ask Harry where he’d gotten his training. “Rough around the edges. Makes some bad choices. But he wouldn’t hurt Daisy. What about his brother?”

  The principal piped in. “Angelo is fine. He and Albert were working with Coach Riley before school and were on their way to class when the bomb threat came in and I sounded the evacuation order. Angelo told one of the teachers at the church that Mr. Bosch asked Albert to help with a student who’s wheelchair-bound. The handicapped student is accounted for. Angelo is pretty concerned that he hasn’t seen his brother. I haven’t told him about the hostage situation.”

  Harry had seen the pictures. He’d seen the fire. He’d seen the terror Daisy lived with every day because of that bastard. “You have to get her out of there. This guy’s got a temper. He’ll hurt her.”

  The nametag on the SWAT cop’s uniform read Delgado. “We can’t risk a full assault or he might blow everybody up.”

  Nick glanced around at all the swirling lights and imposing vehicles. “He already knows we’re here. It’s a little late for stealth mode.”

  “And, we don’t know their exact location,” John Murdock reminded them.

  “They’re in the basement,” Harry said, knowing he was right on this. He was learning this enemy, and he wasn’t all that unpredictable. “I don’t know if the bomb is there, or if there’s more than one. But that’s where he’ll be. With Daisy. I’m familiar with that area of the building, and one man won’t be detected—especially if you’re making some noise and talking at him out here. Let me go in.” He turned to his brother-in-law. “You got some spare gear in your truck?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That I know how to find an insurgent and an IED.”

  In a matter of minutes, his credentials were approved and the plan was set. Harry went with Pike to his KCPD unit. They suited up in protective gear, while Pike’s German shepherd, Hans, danced around inside his cage, sensing he was about to have a job to do. Donning the flak vest, gloves and helmet, Harry felt like he was slipping into a familiar uniform.

  “Daisy means this much to you?” Pike asked.

  “That woman saved me more than once. I owe it to her to do the same for her.”

  “You love her?”

  Harry checked the radio unit on his vest and slipped a pair of protective goggles over his eyes, ignoring the question. He hadn’t told Daisy how he felt yet, not in real words. Not out loud. It didn’t feel right to say it to anybody else first.

  Pike clapped him on the shoulder, forcing him to look at him. “You can’t go in there if your head’s not clear.”

  Harry pulled the extra K-9 ballistic vest from the back of Pike’s truck. “Did you know you were in love with Hope before you rescued her from that jackass who kidnapped her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it stop you from getting the job done?”

  Pike grinned. “Hans and I will be ready to go in with SWAT as soon as you radio that you’ve secured the hostages. Just get them out. We’ll clear the building, do a bomb sweep and neutralize the perp. Keep your com open so we know each other’s twenty and don’t have any surprises. You’re okay to do this on your own?”

  Harry went to his own pickup and opened the door, revealing Caliban in the passenger seat, eagerly sitting at attention. He slipped the vest over the dog’s back and clipped it into place. “I won’t be alone.”

  * * *

  DAISY WOKE TO a hundred fireworks shooting off inside her head. Where was she? What had happened to her?

  She mentally shook off the confusion and opened her eyes. She was surrounded by a sea of gray. And as she focused in on her outstretched arm, she saw spots of red on her new coat. Was that blood?

  Wait. Blood?

  The nightmare came flooding back. Albert. Bomb. Mine.

  She pushed herself up to a sitting position. She was in the storage room, surrounded by windowless walls and stacked-up chairs.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come back to me.”

  Her groan was half headache, half heartache. She’d suspected a lot of people of stalking her over the last couple of weeks, but not this one. “Eddie?”

  “Merry Christmas, my love.”

  He was sitting in a chair near her feet, holding two walkie-talkies in his lap, one which she suspected he’d stolen from her desk. He cradled a cell phone in his hands. Her cell phone. She raised her gaze above the blue school jacket and loosely knotted tie and saw a smear of pink lipstick across his mouth. Her color. She touched her fingers to her own mouth and cringed at the thought of him kissing her while she’d been unconscious—at the thought of him kissing her, period.

  The bomb with the different colored liquids and ticking timer sat on the floor beside her. Instinctively, she scooted away from the deadly thing.

  14:25 and counting. And Eddie sat between her and the metal door he’d pulled shut behind them. Had he found another way to lock it? She was surrounded by solid walls and a room full of potential shrapnel. This bomb wasn’t about bringing down the school or hurting anyone else. This was all about her. Daisy thought she might be sick. It had always been about destroying her.

  She flinched when she felt his hand on her hair. “Why don’t you say Merry Christmas to me? I’ve seen your room and your house. I know how you love the holidays. You’re the only gift I want. I love you.”

  Ignoring the swimming focus of her vision, she stood. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We’re exactly where we need to be. Together.” His tone was so patient, so sweet, so creepy.

  “How long was I out?”

  “A few minutes. Long enough for me to make sure we won’t be bothered in these final, precious moments.”

  “Final?”

  He stood and came toward her. “It’s the only way we can be together.”

  She backed away from his outstretched hand until she ran into a rack of chairs. Everything around her rattled, giving her an idea. A heavy metal chair could be as effective as a baseball bat if she could get her hands on one. The knot on her head and the wound on Albert’s scalp told her Eddie had probably already thought of that.

  Albert. “Eddie, there’s a student on the other side of that wall. You don’t want to hurt him.”

  “I’ve done my calculations. Albert finally served a meaningful purpose.” Bait to lure her down here was hardly something to brag about. “He and Bernie were wastes of time and space in your life.”

  “Bernie? You hurt him, too?”

  Eddie touched the front of his coat. “Once I borrowed his jacket again, I didn’t need him anymore.”

  “It was you the night of the fire.”

  “I was afraid your soldier boy saw me.”

  “He did. But he couldn’t identify you. We suspected Coach Riley. His jacket...” she inha
led a sniff of the stale air around her “...that jacket smelled like smoke.”

  “Do you honestly think that blockhead knows anything other than sports?” Eddie snickered as he rested his hand on the rack beside her head and leaned in. “I’ve borrowed his hat and coat a couple of times since his wife kicked him out and he’s been keeping an extra set of clothes at school. It’s a smart way to divert suspicion off me, don’t you think?”

  Yeah, Eddie was smart. Crazy. But smart. She eyed the tubes of chemicals on the floor behind him. “Now you’ve built a bomb. Is there more than one?”

  He grabbed her chin and forced her gaze back to his. “We just need the one.”

  She nearly gagged at the taste of his mouth sliding over hers. Although she suspected she needed to stay calm and try to talk her way out of this, she couldn’t squash down her fight-or-flight response. She shoved him away, slipped to one side, grabbing a chair off the rack. Several more chairs crashed to the floor, forcing him another step back, giving her a chance to swing the chair in her hands. The blow caught him in the shoulder, knocking him to his knees.

  Daisy scrambled toward the door. But the very chairs that had created a barrier between them now became a blockade she had to push aside and climb over. Before she could touch the metal latch, Eddie’s arms closed around her from behind, lifting her off her feet before he slammed her into the wall beside the door. She screamed at the pain of her head knocking into another hard object. Her glasses got knocked sideways. But she pushed back. “Let go of me!”

  Eddie threw his whole body against hers, crushing her against the wall. He spat against her ear. “You held me the night I told you about Jenny—how she left me.”

  “Your fiancée died.” It was hard to talk with her face mashed against the wall.

  But Eddie wasn’t listening. “I was there for you after that Brock fiasco. I was at your father’s funeral, holding your hand. We have a connection you can’t deny.”

  “We were friends.”

  “I love you.”

  “I don’t love you.”