Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  “Look, I’m his mother, and I need to hold him. You can take those guns you’re carrying and shoot us all, but then you won’t get the code, and you probably won’t make it out of here alive—or you don’t know Montana.”

  “If you think you can touch that baby without first giving us what we are here for, then you don’t value his life. You really think it’s worth taking the risk?” the man asked, arching a brow.

  She reached down and grabbed her phone, but she didn’t take her gaze off of Joe. He looked so peaceful, so blithely unaware of the drama that had surrounded him and brought him to this moment.

  “Before she gives you anything, we need to make sure you know that once we give it to you, that’s it,” Mike said. “We are out. No more harassing us or putting your hands on Joe. If you touch him again, I will kill you. Got it?” He put his hand on hers before she had a chance to activate her phone to retrieve the information.

  The man who had been carrying Joe chortled. “Man, if you think we want to babysit ever again, you are bat shit crazy.” As the man peered over at them, she could make out the dark circles under his eyes, which were normally indicative of a new parent, or in this case, an underprepared kidnapper. “But first we gotta get what we came here for.”

  Whatever Joe had put them through, these jerks had had it coming.

  Noticing the tiredness in their features, a sense of vindication filled her. At least Joe hadn’t made it easy on them.

  Good job, baby. She smiled in Joe’s direction. Hopefully he would never lose that fighting spirit. Well, unless she was the one fighting him. Then she prayed he would take it just a little easy on her.

  The man nearest the wall pulled out a small tablet she hadn’t noticed him carrying and brushed aside a few crumbs the busser had neglected to wipe away.

  “Rico here is going to check your code. If something is up, if it doesn’t look exactly like it should, then we will kill the baby.” The man nearest to Joe pointed at the car seat. “And believe me, we will be more than happy to do it. That little bastard kept us up all night and we haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m pissed...so don’t screw with us.”

  No matter how uncomfortable and pissed off these guys were, it paled in comparison to everything they had put her through. If he thought he was scaring her, that he had any power over her now that Joe was so close, he was wrong. All she cared about was that baby.

  But then, she wasn’t going to get out of here if Kevin had screwed her on this. And Kevin and the DTRA had already made a mistake in failing to understand or to foresee the consequences in her data breach and theft. If they’d had their acts together, she, Mike and Joe wouldn’t be in the position in which they now found themselves.

  Could she really trust that Kevin had done everything in his power to make things right? Or had he and his IT team just phoned it in?

  “Where do you want me to send the code?” she said, careful to keep her voice down.

  The man pushed a slip of paper across the table with an email address. “Send it here.”

  She opened up her phone and clicked on the file Kevin had sent her. With a few more presses of buttons, the file was in cyber space and moving toward the kidnappers. “You should have it.”

  Her heart thrashed in her chest. This was the moment. The moment everything could go wrong. The moment Joe could be hurt, and it would all be her fault.

  Had she been wrong to trust? Had she been wrong to come here? Had she been wrong to think that agreeing to lie to her enemy was the best course of action?

  The man tapped a few keys on his tablet as Rico watched over his shoulder. They looked like two nervous schoolboys, which made her wonder exactly how high up in the ranks they were. Based on their fumbling of the kidnapping and this, it was easy to tell these two men were nothing more than the instruments of someone else’s will...someone who didn’t want their name or face to be known. The thought helped ease some of the tension Summer was feeling.

  Hopefully these two didn’t know good code from bad.

  The man looking over the code turned to Rico and gave him a stiff nod, seemingly pleased with the information she had forwarded.

  Without another word, the man slid out of the booth and stood. Rico gave her a vicious smile. “Here’s hoping we never have to see you again. If we do, you and everyone you know will wind up dead.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To say things had gone unexpectedly was a bit of an understatement. In his wildest dreams, Mike would not have imagined that he and Summer would simply get Joe and be on their merry way within minutes. They had been fighting this so hard, and struggling to find workarounds, that the answer and the handoff just seemed far too simple.

  He didn’t trust it.

  Nothing of value was ever that easy. Especially not when it came to the safety of the people he cared about most.

  Arriving back at Summer’s apartment, he helped her bring Joe inside. Neither had said more than five words to each other since they had left the restaurant. From the worried expression on Summer’s face, he wondered if she was feeling the same way. It surprised him that she had wanted to come back to her apartment at all. If he had been in her shoes, he would’ve bugged out and found himself on the next plane to South America.

  She carried Joe in his car seat to her bedroom and he could hear her unclipping the seat belt and Joe gurgling as she must have lifted him out. She hummed as she set about working. Mike walked down the hall, stopping at her bedroom door and peering inside.

  Joe was lying on the bed, kicking his feet in the air as he blissfully watched his mother take a suitcase down from her closet. After it was down, she grabbed a diaper to change her son, but Mike stepped in to take over.

  “Thanks,” she said. “He is acting pretty good, but I want him to be clean and dry when I hit the road.”

  So, she was planning on leaving. And Mike couldn’t ignore the fact that she had only said I. Did that mean she had no intention of taking Joe with her, or was she planning on taking Joe but not him?

  “Where do you think you are going to go?” Mike asked.

  “If those guys are smart,” she said with a dark laugh, “then by now they probably know that something is up with the code.”

  She hadn’t answered his question.

  “Do you really think they figured out it was bad code that fast?” He took the diaper she held, along with the bucket of baby wipes and the mat.

  He glanced at Joe. They exchanged a look with one another like each knew exactly how poorly this diaper change was about to go. While he had changed a diaper in the past, it had been at least twenty years ago when he’d taken home a lifelike doll from his health class and put it through the ringer. And while the requirements for a good diaper change were probably the same, he wasn’t sure whether diapers were or not. In fact, he couldn’t remember or not if he actually used duct tape last time he’d been asked to do this.

  “Rico and the other dude may not have figured it out, but whomever they are working for probably has...or is probably about to. All they have to do is run it on a big enough server and they are going to encounter errors.”

  “You are assuming the information they are looking for isn’t buried deep.” As much as he thought he understood IT and cyber security, he still felt out of his depths. “What exactly was the coding used for?”

  “IGS,” she snapped.

  “That, I’m more than aware of. I know it’s for the information gathering systems.” How could he forget a bug that could infiltrate anyone’s home and life? “I guess what I’m asking is why they couldn’t just write this code themselves, or find someone who could?” he pressed, hoping for a real answer this time.

  “Does it matter?” She raised her arms akimbo, giving him that cute look that used to make him forget what he was doing and sent them straight to the bed...t
he bed that was now hosting a wiggly baby.

  Joe made a little raspberry sound as he stuffed the back of his fist into his wet mouth.

  “Even you know she’s being ridiculous, don’t you, little guy?”

  Joe kicked his feet as Mike went about stripping him down, making getting his little doll-size clothes off something closer to a rodeo event than the blissful moments he’d seen on television commercials.

  “You want to put the extra diaper under his bum, and get a wipe ready for the splash zone.” She motioned at her undercarriage.

  Yep, this was definitely something he could imagine at the annual Arlee Rodeo. He could almost imagine the announcer talking through the tinny ring of an outdated sound system, his words coming faster and faster as he neared the eight-second mark.

  He pulled out a wipe after slipping the clean, open diaper under Joe. Joe tried to roll, forcing Mike to hold him in place with one hand while trying to close the open lid of the container with the other. Apparently, juggling was also part of this rodeo act; and...well, he was quickly starting to feel as if he was playing the clown.

  Summer put down a shirt that she was folding and stepped forward as if she was going to take over the operation.

  “Nope,” he said, putting his hand up to stop her. “You do your thing. Joe and I’ve got this.” He smiled down at Joe. “If we are going to be buddies, then I’m going to have to figure this dad thing out.”

  Summer turned away from them, but not before he saw a pained expression flash across her face. She had brought him here and into their lives with all kinds of talk about him taking on an active role as Joe’s father. But now that things were getting a bit more complicated, it felt like she was driving a wedge between them.

  What else was there to say? What could he do to reassure her and make her see that he was going to be in their lives, and protecting them as long as he needed to?

  “I know you’re scared right now, but I told you before that I got you. If I need to get STEALTH on board for security or whatever...we can do it. We specialize in helping people in situations all too much like this.”

  She didn’t turn to face him, just waved her hand in acknowledgment.

  He opened Joe’s sodden diaper and set about changing him, moving as rapidly as he could to keep from getting the mess anywhere it shouldn’t be. Joe looked up at him with wide eyes, his lower lip starting to quiver as he grew chilled.

  He let out a long wail, followed by a stream of warm liquid...hitting Mike’s center mass. “Oh! Oh crap...” he said, covering Joe up with the clean diaper as fast as his hands would allow. Joe stopped wailing as Mike fastened the last strip over the baby’s waist and slipped his pants back on over his flailing legs. Picking him up, he held him in one arm.

  Joe’s wail stopped and he went back to sucking on the back of his hand as Mike looked down at his soaked shirt.

  The damage was done.

  From beside him, Summer’s laughter rang through the air. “I told you to watch out for the splash zone!” she said between laughs.

  “A little splash zone I can deal with, but this—” he motioned toward his shirt “—was like sitting front row on Splash Mountain.”

  “No one said you weren’t going to get your hands dirty,” she teased. “I offered to take over, but no...someone was trying to be all cute and charming with his little fatherly act.”

  Mike wasn’t sure if he should be offended or bemused, so he went with the latter. “Cute, huh? You think me getting peed on is cute?” He picked up the sodden diaper and wrapped it into a little ball.

  “Don’t you dare throw that at me, if you do...”

  “What?” he taunted, holding it up a little higher in a mock threat. “What would you do to me?”

  She stepped closer to him and they stood chest to chest, with her looking up at him. “You think you are real tough, don’t you?” There was a look in her eyes that made him temporarily forget everything other than her and the boy in his arms.

  That look. He loved that look; he had seen a flash of it last night. But this time it was different. This time it didn’t carry the pain of the past; instead it only spoke of the present and begged for a future.

  “I’m always stronger when I’m with you,” he whispered into her hair after leaning in.

  She melded into him, Joe between them as she wrapped her arms around Mike and he took her with his free hand. This. This was his family. No matter if they were married or not married, in a relationship or not. These were the people he would happily lay down his life to protect and love.

  There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

  “Babe, I hope you know how much I love you.” The pressure that had been building in his chest from the first moment he had seen her in the parking lot released as he spoke the words.

  There was a long silence. The only sound was of Joe making smacking noises as he sucked on his hand.

  Summer didn’t have to say anything back. He didn’t care. He just couldn’t hold those words in any longer. Not when they had already gone through so much, and not with her leaving without him.

  She needed to know the truth—that his love for her hadn’t gone anywhere and hadn’t diminished with time. His love for her would be with him until his dying day, no matter the status of their relationship.

  There was a bang on the apartment’s front door and Summer jerked out of his arms. “What the hell?” Her voice sounded strangled by fear. “You don’t think Rockwood found us already, do you?”

  That was fast, but so was everything else in their lives.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, handing her Joe. “You just take him and go into the bathroom. Get into the tub in case things move to guns. No matter what happens, I will deal with it.”

  “You can’t go out there alone.” She pulled Joe against her body, wrapping her arms around him like she was his shield.

  “And we can’t risk Joe getting hurt or taken again. If they get their hands on any of us, I have a feeling we aren’t going to make it out of this alive.”

  Her eyes widened as his words struck home. “You...you have to be careful.”

  There was another series of bangs on the door, the sound reverberating through the apartment like church bells beckoning from their tower.

  He nodded, motioning her to hide in the small en suite bathroom. “Go.”

  Watching to make sure the door clicked closed behind her, Mike made his way out of the bedroom and into the living room. He stared at the white door for a long moment. If he looked out through the peephole, he was the perfect target for anyone standing on the other side just waiting for the right moment to pull a trigger.

  If there was a suppressor on the weapon, no one in the apartment complex would even know what was happening. The attackers could shoot him, come in and kill Joe and take Summer. Or, they could kill them all.

  Summer was strong, capable, smart, and myriad wonderful things, but he was more practiced and physically stronger and, right now, he was their first line of defense. He couldn’t just let an attacker get a bead on him, not when so many lives were at stake.

  He rushed to the back door, silently closing and locking it as he slipped outside. The night air had the bite of coming frost and carried with it the unmistakable odor of danger.

  The alley behind the apartment building was empty and he was careful to step lightly as he made his way down the potholed road and around the side of the building. Thankfully all the apartment blinds were closed. He made sure to remain concealed as he glanced around the side of the building. Standing in front of her door was a man, late fifties, gray hair, and he was wearing a suit jacket.

  Though the man didn’t look like either of the men who had taken Joe, Mike couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t their boss or someone else from the Rockwood organization. If anything, it was smart to send someone they didn�
�t recognize, someone who could get in and get out without really being noticed.

  Then again, if this guy was going for being unnoticed, what was he doing banging on the door? If the man was like Mike, he would have slipped in through the back of the apartment, done what needed to be done, and then slipped out into the darkness of the night.

  Their murders would have gone unsolved forever.

  It struck Mike how wrong it was that he was, in fact, planning their deaths.

  He was warped. Yet it was this ability to think about the unthinkable and to plan for the worst that had made him effective as a military contractor. Death was inevitable; it was just how one got there that was up for grabs. And today, he would be pushing it away with both hands and maybe a foot to the ass.

  The man banged on the door again, looking over his shoulder as if he could feel Mike watching him in the moonlight. It was odd how the human being had a sixth sense when it came to danger and yet rarely actually listened to it.

  Yes, the man was right to be afraid. If he was smart, he should have listened to the fear and turned tail and gone back to where he had come from.

  Tonight, he was playing with fire.

  The man shifted slightly, his back to Mike as he looked out toward the main road. Mike slipped around the side of the building as he unholstered his gun and stalked forward. The man had pulled his phone out of his back pocket and was hitting buttons as Mike drew nearer.

  He was so close that he could smell the man’s expensive cologne and make out the faint red line on the back of the man’s neck where he must have recently gotten a haircut. The guy put the phone up to his ear. “She’s not here. Are you sure this is where you tracked her phone to?”

  Oh crap.

  Mike wished he could hear what the other person was saying, but all he could catch was a guttural moan escaping the man’s throat. “I’m sure that she is going to go underground, given what happened to her son. We’ve trained her well enough.”