Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  His arms encircled her upper body, and he hefted her feet off the pavement. Another hand cut off her screams as he hauled her feet over the lip of the trunk. Madison kicked out with everything she had, her heel flying into the middle of the road. This had been a quiet neighborhood until a couple of hours ago when a bomb had detonated a few houses down, and now she was being taken in the middle of broad daylight. Someone would hear her. Someone would see what was happening and tell the police. Rough interior fabric burned the backs of her legs as her abductor forced her into the small, dark compartment. She clawed at him, so consumed with the need to get out that she didn’t notice the back of his hand swinging toward her face.

  Lightning exploded behind her eyes, and she fell back into the trunk. Pain ricocheted through her head and blacked out the edges of her vision. In a swirl of dizziness, she stared up at her attacker, but couldn’t judge how far he stood from her. She blinked to clear her head. In vain. He was going to lock her in. He was going to kill her. Madison tried to sit up, but her balance had been compromised. She reached out. “Wait.”

  “That’s going to cost you, Counselor.” He slammed the trunk closed, throwing her into darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jonah crouched in front of the device in full bomb squad gear. The weight of the Kevlar and Nomex increased the tension in his wounded shoulder. Every muscle in his body shot into awareness of the fact one wrong move on his part would kill him and bring this entire house down on top of the team at his back. The device was crude, poorly constructed, but, combined with the container of ammonium nitrate, it’d get the bomber’s intended destruction done. The remains of the stolen thermite, a deep red-colored powder, had been packed around the secondary explosive inside a large metal can. With another cell phone acting as remote detonator and a battery duct-taped around the outside of the container, all he could do was try to disassemble the pieces before that phone started ringing.

  He set the portable X-ray machine on one side of the device and the phosphorus panel to capture the image on the other to get an idea of anything he might’ve missed from a visual inspection, and stepped back. Whoever’d designed the bomb had placed it in plain sight. They’d wanted law enforcement to find it, and by setting it up inside the house, they ensured a live technician would have to be time on target. That he would have to approach the package in person.

  His earpiece crackled from inside the heavy-duty visor, drowning out the soft whirl of the internal fan built into the helmet. He took the photos, then slowly removed the panel and the portable X-ray machine.

  The cell phone screen lit up.

  Jonah braced for the same ringtone he’d heard seconds before the bomb had been triggered at the courthouse. He couldn’t wait to have the X-rays developed to see what they were dealing with. He had to neutralize the threat now.

  The thin balaclava under his helmet absorbed the sweat beading in his hairline as he set down the phosphorous panel and X-ray machine and reapproached the device. He couldn’t use the bomb squad’s pan disrupter as he had on 90 percent of the IEDs he’d come into contact with to set off the device from a safe distance. Not without possibly triggering a thermite burn, and a mineral water bottle packed with C-4 wouldn’t extinguish the chemical reaction either. It’d most likely increase the bomb’s blast radius.

  There was no playbook in the FBI that would tell him how to neutralize a thermite bomb. He’d have to do this one by hand.

  He reached for the grouping of wire leading from the back of the phone into the center of the container. He forced himself to breathe evenly, to stay in the moment instead of worrying if Madison and the baby were safe outside in case he made a mistake. Dylan Cove and the rest of the marshals in his division would make sure she kept a safe distance.

  His earpiece crackled again. “Watson...problem.”

  He was running out of time. Any moment that phone could ring and trigger a detonation ten times as destructive as the one from the garage. He traced the brightly colored wiring with the tips of his fingers. “Remi, say that again.”

  Static filtered through the radio. This secondary device had been positioned in Harvey Braddock’s basement. The signal couldn’t get through the foundation cement.

  Three wires. Three options to disarm the bomb. One mistake, and he’d never hold his and Madison’s son. Never have the chance to become the father Noah had deserved in the first place. Red. Green. Yellow. He unpocketed a razor from his toolkit and sliced the duct tape holding the phone to the container apart. Carefully, going slower than he wanted to go, Jonah peeled the phone from the tape.

  All three wires popped free.

  His heart shot into his throat. Seconds ticked by, a minute. No detonation. Pulse pounding hard behind his ears, he sat back on his heels. Confusion pushed out the logical answer for a split second, but he couldn’t ignore the truth staring him in the face. “It’s a dummy.”

  That didn’t make sense. Why trigger a very real bomb in the garage, but set up a dummy in the main house with three times the amount of the stolen thermite?

  “Watson...now!” Deputy Chief Remington Barton’s words sliced through the focused haze he’d developed over countless bomb calls throughout the years. Something was wrong.

  The device had never been connected to the power supply, which meant...the bomber had never intended to trigger the device. Realization hit, and he shot to his feet as fast as he could under one hundred pounds of Kevlar and Nomex. Walls with black-and-white photos blurred in his vision as he climbed the stairs from the basement to the main level. Sunlight pulled him toward the open back door, where firefighters were still battling patches of the initial blaze. Two Portland Police Bureau technicians converged on him to help him out of the suit as Remington and Special Agent Collin Jackson jogged to meet him.

  He pried the heavy helmet from his shoulders—pain shooting through the wound—and stripped the balaclava from his head. Burnt spring air rushed to cool the sweat building at the base of his neck. He shook his head as he handed off the helmet to one of the other techs. “The device is a dummy. The power supply was never connected. The bomber... He set us up.”

  “I think you’re right.” Remi cut her gaze to the special agent at her side. “We believe the thermite was specifically used to lure you to this scene, Jonah. You’ve worked with this composition before, and the bomber must’ve known that. He stole the thermite from that warehouse last night in an effort to pull you out of hiding. With your witness.”

  He froze. Madison. His nerve endings caught fire as he pinpointed his SUV. Empty. He scoured the scene, his heart thrown into overdrive, and noticed Deputy Marshal Dylan Cove. Alone. He shook his head. No. “Where is she?”

  “She’s missing,” Remi said.

  A high-pitched ringing filled his ears.

  “Jonah.” Remi’s warning tone barely registered. “It wasn’t his fault. He used appropriate response when he couldn’t get the rest of the team on the radio.”

  Jonah stripped out of the rest of his gear as rage exploded in his chest. He crossed the property faster than he thought possible and pulled his fist back before Cove turned to face him. He socked the deputy with a strong right hook. The former private investigator collapsed to the ground, but before Jonah had a chance to strike again, Remi and Agent Jackson pulled him back. He lunged again. “You were supposed to stay with her! Where is she, Cove? Tell me where she is!”

  Cove rolled onto his side, hand massaging his jaw, as Deputies Foster and Reed helped him to his feet. The newest recruit into the Oregon division wrenched out of the other marshals’ hold and faced Jonah with nothing but blood on his mouth and a stiff expression in place. “I don’t know. The entire scene had gone into overdrive when you’d found the second device inside the house, but the radios were out. I couldn’t get a hold of anyone, including you, to find out what was happening. So I made a call. I instructed her to secure herself
inside the vehicle and not open the doors for anyone but you and myself. When I returned to the SUV, I noticed the passenger door open and what was left of the window all over the street. She wasn’t inside.”

  Every word out of the marshal’s mouth twisted the invisible knife in Jonah’s gut deeper. Madison was gone. He closed the space between him and Cove, Remi’s grip on his arm tighter than before. He didn’t care what kind of dysfunctional relationship she and Dylan Cove had or what’d happened between them for her to take the marshal’s side. He’d spend the rest of his life making sure the deputy never worked a federal case again. “I told you if anything happened to her, I would personally hold you responsible.”

  Cove held his ground. “I believed you.”

  “Enough.” Remington inserted herself between the two of them. The hard set of the deputy chief’s mouth told each of them that was an order, and if any of them took it as anything less, she’d deal with them herself. “We have a very pregnant deputy district attorney missing and a bomber still out there. Blaming each other for what happened won’t get us anywhere. Jonah, take Finn with you to search your SUV. There might be evidence in there that will give us an idea who’s behind Madison’s abduction. Beckett and Cove will gather statements from the officers and civilians outside the perimeter and find out how our suspect managed to slip in and out of this scene without raising suspicion. Stay in radio contact and move quickly. Let’s bring her and her baby home as fast as we can.”

  “It’s my baby.” Jonah couldn’t keep the truth from them any longer. The men and women circled around him had risked their lives for each other over the years. He trusted every single one of them to have his back in the field, only now he needed them to care about Madison as much as they cared about him. He needed them to bring her back. “Madison is pregnant with my baby. She didn’t want anyone to know, but I need for you to understand what’s at stake for me. I will do whatever it takes to get them back. With or without your help.”

  “Oh, hell.” Beckett Foster, a deputy who’d once carried out fugitive recovery assignment for his own pregnant ex, threaded one hand through his dark hair. The marshal was expecting a daughter in less than a month, and Jonah now understood how insane Beckett had been driven to keep Raleigh and their baby safe from the threat that’d come for them both a few months ago.

  The former combat medic and serial killer survivor, Finnick Reed, whistled. “Well, that explains your foul mood over the past few months.”

  “I’ll help you find her, Watson.” Dylan Cove stepped into him, then extended his hand toward Jonah in truce. “Even if it’s the last thing I do for the marshals service. I give you my word.”

  Staring down at the deputy’s hand, Jonah latched onto the calloused offering and shook. The rage that’d flashed hot and fast fueled a new burst of adrenaline. “Grab your gear.”

  * * *

  SHE ROLLED ONTO her left side as the vehicle made a sharp turn. She couldn’t tell how long they’d been driving. Minutes. Hours. Time had dissolved to where seconds ran together. Madison groped for something—anything—she could use to pry the trunk lid open, but her abductor had cleaned the space too thoroughly.

  Her kidnapper hadn’t targeted her randomly. This had been premeditated from the beginning. As soon as she’d walked out of those courthouse doors on her own feet yesterday, she’d acquired a target on her back. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until the bomber decided otherwise. She traced the wiring from the ceiling of the trunk down to the right taillight. Her mother had smuggled her out in the trunks of random vehicles to escape her father enough times in the middle of the night for her to remember the setup of most cars. Manufacturers were mandated to install emergency release tabs more than twenty years ago due to the high number of accidents that occurred with children locking themselves in trunks, but the spot where she expected the release tab to be sliced into her hand. Her abductor had removed the tab.

  “Don’t panic.” Flipping onto her back, Madison closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe in the small space. She wouldn’t run out of oxygen here, but she still had to stay focused. The more adrenaline she used, the less energy she’d have to escape once the vehicle stopped. She was going to get out of here. There wasn’t any other option. “Think, think, think.”

  Feeling along the crease where the back seat met the trunk, she slid her fingertips over cold metal. Seat locks. Relief smoothed the jagged edges of panic. She pulled the first one out.

  The vehicle’s shocks engaged as the car took another unexpected turn onto uneven road. The back seat fell forward, revealing her masked kidnapper behind the wheel. Dirt kicked up alongside the side of the car through the windshield. Not enough to pinpoint where he’d taken her, but she filed the information for later use in case she had to run. She scanned the car’s back seat for a weapon and wrapped her fingers around a heavy piece of metal. A crowbar.

  Slowly, keeping her eyes glued to the rearview mirror for any sign her captor was aware of what she was doing, Madison pulled the steel across the seat. A metallic hiss as the crowbar caught on the seat’s fabric reached her ears but didn’t draw the attention of her attacker. Not yet. The car bounced over rough terrain, and she lost her grip on the weapon. It fell forward onto the floor with a deep thunk, and light green eyes locked on hers in the mirror.

  “Aren’t you resourceful?” He slammed on the brakes, throwing her forward, and pushed the vehicle into Park. Shouldering out of the car, her abductor raced around the driver’s side toward the trunk.

  The moment he hauled that lid open, she’d be out of time. Leveraging her feet against the floor of the trunk, Madison kicked to thrust herself into the back seat. Metal dug into her oversensitive baby bump halfway through as cold air rushed around her ankles. Strong hands wrapped around her calves and struggled to pull her back through the opening. The crowbar. Her heart thundered behind her ears. Stretching one hand down onto the floor, she searched for the weapon blindly while kicking as hard as she could to throw off her attacker. She caught him in the jaw, and he fell back. She dived for the crowbar with one hand and unlocked the passenger side back door with the other. Dragging herself from the vehicle, she stumbled forward. Foreboding knotted tight in her chest. “What...? No.”

  Trees stretched in each direction. The crush of the nearby falls filled her ears. He’d brought her out into the middle of the wilderness. The sun had already started trailing across the western half of the sky. In a few hours, darkness would consume this entire side of the mountain and temperatures would drop. She wouldn’t survive out here on her own. Not before Jonah and his team of marshals had a chance to find her. Madison rolled the crowbar in her hand, twisting as gravel crunched from behind. She didn’t have a choice. The woods were her only option.

  Sprinting as fast as she could to the trail leading farther up the incline, she held her large pregnant belly with one hand and the crowbar with the other. She’d kept in shape over the last few months, but her workouts had been more weight centered, not sprinting up the side of a mountain, but she pushed herself harder. The iconic Benson Bridge, surrounded by walls of greenery, a white wall of water and rock, overlooked the lower falls and gave her the only chance of cover. She could make it. She had to make it. For her baby. For Jonah to have a chance to be the father that’d been taken from him after Noah had died.

  “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be, Madison.” Her captor’s voice hissed through the trees. “There’s nowhere you can run that I won’t find you, and when I do, you’re going to wish the bomb at the courthouse killed you first.”

  Cold blasts of wind and spits of water from the falls slapped at her exposed skin. Her fingers numbed from her grip on the crowbar, but she couldn’t look back. Snow had started melting weeks ago. The incline was slick with water and mud that suctioned at her bare feet. She was out of breath, running out of energy. Her abductor was more physically fit, not pregnant and c
losing in fast. She couldn’t stick to the trail. She didn’t have any skills when it came to hunting, but she understood the basic concept of following a prey’s tracks. She was making it too easy for him. Her lungs burned, her throat on fire. She wouldn’t make it to the bridge at this pace.

  Slipping off the edge of the path, she crept as soundlessly as possible deeper into the wilderness surrounding the falls. Twigs and sharp rocks cut into her feet, but she forced herself to swallow the discomfort. She leaned into a tree slightly thicker than her hips and faced away from the main trail. The crown of her head scratched against rough bark as she clutched the crowbar to her chest.

  Footsteps echoed off the rocks around her, and a sob built in her chest. From the last remnants of adrenaline leaving her system or the massive amount of hormones singing through her blood, Madison didn’t know. She didn’t care. Surviving. That was the only thing that mattered. Her kidnapper was closing in, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

  Filling her lungs with humid air, she let out her breath as silently as possible before creeping deeper into the woods. She kept the tree she’d used as cover between her and the main trail and slipped off her coat. Instant warning charged through her as she set the heavy material at her feet. Temperatures dropped well below freezing out here in the high wilderness after the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, but the color was too bright compared with the shaded greens and deep browns around her. Without it, there was less chance her attacker would spot her on the run. The sound of her breath strained in her lungs, nearly overtaking the rush of the falls. She stepped back, completely focused on the tree she’d left behind.

  A twig snapped under her heel.

  Movement registered off to her left a split second before a fist slammed into the side of her face. Lightning shot behind her eyes as the ground rushed up to meet her. Foliage and cool, damp earth plastered against her skin. How? How had he gotten through the woods without her noticing? The black ski mask she’d memorized the moment she’d met him slowly came into focus.