Special Forces Savior

by Janie Crouch

  “Did you find Molly?” Derek wasn’t even to his desk before Jon caught up with him.

  “No. You haven’t seen her anywhere around here, have you?”

  Jon shook his head. “Nope. And I even went outside and looked after you called, just in case. I know Drackett was out at the explosion scene this morning.”

  Derek sat in his chair. “I checked the security log. No record of her scan card being swiped. I’m a little concerned that maybe she was more injured last night than she let on. Maybe something happened and she called for an ambulance or something.”

  “Let me call the local hospitals, see if she got brought in.”

  “Okay.” Derek nodded at him. “I’m going to go back to the lab, or what’s left of it, to see if she’s there. Maybe Steve knows something.”

  The director was outside, walking around the site of last night’s fire. He was talking with multiple people. Derek could only imagine the amount of paperwork headache something like this had to cause. He didn’t envy Drackett’s position, especially not right now.

  When he saw Derek’s nod, Steve excused himself from the group of people he was consulting with. “Everything okay inside?”

  “Is Molly Humphries out here with you?”

  “No. I haven’t seen her since you took her home last night.”

  That was not what Derek had been hoping to hear. “She seems to be MIA. I was supposed to pick her up this morning, but she wasn’t at her house. No record of her signing in here.”

  “It’s not like Molly to just not show up.”

  “Jon is checking hospitals. I’m concerned she may have been more injured than she let on.”

  The director grimaced. “I hope not. Keep me posted. I’ve got my hands full out here trying to figure out what happened and how to move forward. As a matter of fact, I could really use Molly’s input if she shows up.” The older man slapped Derek on the shoulder. “When she shows up.”

  Derek nodded, but wasn’t convinced. “I’ll send her out here when I see her.”

  By the time he’d made it back inside and to his desk Jon had a report. “Well, good news, or bad, depending on how you want to look at it. She’s not at any of the hospitals. I checked any Jane Does, too, just to be thorough.”

  The itch he’d had at the back of his neck since there’d been no answer at Molly’s door was back in full force.

  “Something’s not right. I just know it.” He looked over at Jon. “Am I overreacting?”

  “You told Molly you’d pick her up this morning? And she seemed fine when you left?”

  Well, no, actually she’d seemed a little upset because—jackass that he was—he’d told her he didn’t want to kiss her because she had plaster in her hair.

  “She didn’t seem injured if that’s what you mean.”

  Jon shook his head. “I’ve watched her hang on every word you say for the last three years. Watched her eyes follow you all around a room every time you enter it. Feelings which—congratulations to you for being such a good actor and fooling us all—I assumed were one-sided on her part.”

  Jon was a damned good behavioral analyst, but Derek didn’t like to find himself on the other end of Jon’s skills. “What’s your point, Hatton?”

  “Actually, my point is that I agree with you. I don’t think you’re overreacting. If you told Molly you would be there to pick her up this morning, there is not much that would keep her from being there when that happened if she had a say.”

  Derek wasn’t sure about all that, but he did know Molly was a considerate and kind person. She would’ve left a note, something if she knew she wasn’t going to be there for him when she said she would.

  Derek wasn’t ignoring his gut any longer. Yeah, they needed to get back out to the house in West Philly, but first Derek was going to make sure Molly was all right. He sat down at his desk.

  “What’s your plan?” Jon asked.

  “I’m going to see what sort of street-camera footage we have on Molly’s house. She has a stoplight nearby.”

  “Give me her address and I’ll help look, too.”

  Accessing camera footage wasn’t as easy or as simple as cop shows made it look on TV. Watching it was time-consuming and boring work, often leading to nothing.

  But not this time.

  If Derek hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have seen it since the perps hugged the shadows so well.

  “Jon. Look at this.”

  The traffic light camera provided footage of two men entering the alley behind Molly’s condo. Twenty minutes later they left down the same alley, but this time they were carrying someone between them.

  The expletives that flew out of Derek’s mouth were ugly. Jon’s weren’t much better.

  They watched it again.

  “Someone took Molly. Why the hell would someone take Molly?” Jon murmured to no one in particular.

  For the second time in twenty-four hours Derek had to completely divorce himself from his feelings. There was no room for panic. There was only room for the task at hand.

  Finding the bastards that took Molly and getting her home safely.

  Sometimes the toughest part of taking action was when you knew there was no action to take yet. The why of someone taking Molly was secondary right now to the who and the where.

  “I’m tasking every available camera in that area to see if we can get an ID or at least a vehicle.”

  “You take the ones running north and south. I’ll start east/west.”

  Definitely faster this way. Neither of them spoke as they used the computers to find and utilize any cameras near Molly’s house. And neither of them gave a damn that they didn’t have the necessary prior approval to do so.

  If Steve Drackett was pissed at what they were doing, Derek would take the heat. But they were already hours behind Molly’s abductors. Derek wasn’t going to waste time running outside to get Drackett’s written permission.

  Every second was precious.

  “I’ve got something. ATM camera.” Jon spun in his chair to face Derek. “Same black SUV leaving. Heading west down Monument Street at 5:12 a.m.”

  Five-twelve? That was barely fifteen minutes after he’d left Molly’s house. Derek clenched his fists. As if he hadn’t had enough reason to have wished he’d stayed.

  Derek concentrated his efforts on the cameras that would pick up the SUV. It was like piecing together a puzzle, figuring out which way the vehicle turned at an intersection, often by process of elimination.

  But as the vehicle headed farther out of the city, there were fewer cameras to track it.

  “We’re going to lose it.” Derek’s teeth were gritted as he made the statement. “It’s heading out of town.”

  Sure enough, within a few minutes they’d lost the SUV completely. There just weren’t enough cameras.

  Derek slammed his fist down on his desk.

  “Let me see if we can get anything by working with the cameras from different angles or with reflections,” Jon told him.

  It wasn’t as good as getting an actual location where the vehicle had stopped, but it may get them a usable photo of one of the two people who had taken Molly. Better than nothing.

  While Jon worked that, Derek went back to footage at Molly’s condo. He watched again as the men carried her out, one holding her legs, the other her torso. She seemed to be totally slack, not struggling in any way.

  If Derek was working this case objectively, looking at this footage and not knowing it was Molly, he’d say that there was every possibility that the two men were carrying out a dead body.

  But Derek refused to even consider that possibility now, even though the stillness of her body frightened him to his core. Damn it, why did it seem as if he was praying for Molly’s life to be spared so ofte
n over the past twenty-four hours?

  “I’ve got something!” Jon’s excitement was palpable. “A clear shot of the driver’s face.”

  Derek rushed over to Jon’s computer so he could see. “I don’t recognize him at all. You?”

  “No, nothing. But let’s run him through facial recognition and see if we get a hit.”

  It was a long shot, but it was the best shot they had. But it also meant more waiting.

  “This has to be tied to the lab fire last night,” Derek said.

  “Yeah, but maybe we were wrong about it having to do with the Chicago bombing case. Maybe it was someone trying to get rid of Molly, and when that didn’t work, they took her. There was a lot of evidence in that lab.”

  Derek had to admit it was possible. “Definitely an angle to consider.”

  “But it’s also a pretty big coincidence after everything that happened in Philly. Unless all the bad guys have gone overboard crazy at once.”

  “Right now, I’m not ruling anything out. I just want to get Molly back.”

  “Absolutely.” Jon pounded him on the shoulder. “I’m going to look over footage from last night’s fire. See if anyone was around.”

  Derek nodded. “I’m going to look through everything we have from yesterday at the house. If this is all tied together, maybe it could provide us with something.”

  What it could provide, Derek had no idea. All he knew for certain was that every moment he had nothing was another moment where Molly was in the clutches of some unknown foe.

  Using the same method they had earlier, Derek began looking for accessible cameras near yesterday’s house in West Philly. The area wasn’t nearly as busy, or as wealthy, as the area where Omega HQ and Molly’s neighborhood was located, so cameras were more sparse. Most of the ones he could find didn’t produce results of any value.

  He was about to call it a dead end when an unusual reflection caught his eye in one of the traffic cameras. A black car parked about two blocks from the site. Not an SUV like the one that had taken Molly, but a four-door sedan that looked completely out of place in that neighborhood.

  Derek watched as the camera’s canted angle showed the perpetrator who had eventually killed himself yesterday walking up to the car. The backseat window rolled down halfway, but Derek couldn’t see inside. After a brief conversation, the now-dead man ran away, toward the house where Derek, Jon and Liam would be showing up a few minutes later.

  The sedan quickly pulled away and Derek barely caught the most important feature as it sped up the street.

  “Jon, get over here and look at this.”

  “What?”

  Derek ran the footage for him and then paused it right at the end, pointing to the license plate of the sedan. A small sticker that made all the difference.

  “Secret Service.” Jon shook his head as he said it.

  “Somebody under Secret Service’s protection was meeting with the guy who’d rather kill himself than be taken into custody a few minutes before we got there.”

  The US Secret Service guarded a lot more than just the president. Their duties included protection of congressmen and senators as well as certain dignitaries. Hundreds of people.

  But it was definitely one more link strengthening the theory that someone pretty high in the US Government had some part in the Chicago bombing. They would need to get this info to Drackett as soon as possible.

  But it didn’t get them any closer to figuring out who took Molly.

  As if it could read Derek’s thoughts, his computer pinged. Facial recognition had a hit on the picture of the guy from the SUV that had taken her.

  Derek printed the findings of the facial recognition program. He and Jon stared at it, both of them trying to figure out the ramifications.

  The man they were looking at wasn’t important in and of himself. It was who he was a known associate of that drew their attention.

  The man worked for Pablo Belisario, a known drug lord from Colombia. Derek tried to wrap his head around that.

  What in the hell did a drug lord from Colombia want with Molly?

  “Belisario? Is someone in Omega actively investigating him?” Derek asked.

  Jon pulled up some info on his computer. “Not that’s listed. I guess someone could be doing undercover work. But what would that have to do with Molly?”

  Derek shook his head. “I have no idea.” Anything undercover wouldn’t be fielded through the Critical Response Division offices. Omega had its own main office in Washington, DC, for undercover ops, and they had their own labs. “I felt sure whoever had taken her was going to be tied into the terrorist attack in some way. But Belisario? He’s too chump change for something the size of Chicago.”

  Belisario wasn’t a terrorist. But he was known for his ruthlessness and violence. The thought of Molly in his hands—for whatever unknown reason—was sickening. Something had to be done.

  Right damn now.

  “We need to run everything we can about Belisario immediately.”

  Derek and Jon spent the rest of the afternoon tracking down every piece of information they could about Pablo Belisario. Derek found Liam Goetz, knowing the other agent had some background in Vice.

  “Belisario is continually on the DEA watch list,” Liam told him. “He’s become a bigger player over the last year. But I have no idea what he would have to do with Molly.”

  “Neither do I,” Derek told him. “I’ve run all the cases that were listed in the system that the lab was currently processing. Nothing to do with drugs or Belisario.”

  “Let me call in a few favors with some old contacts in the DEA. See what the current word is about it.”

  “Thanks, Liam. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I know we’ve got to get Molly back.”

  Liam picked up the phone right then. “As soon as possible. Because Belisario is one mean bastard. I can’t stand the thought of sweet Molly in his hands.”

  Neither could Derek.

  Within a few hours—long, agonizing hours for Derek—they had some answers. Belisario was under surveillance by local Colombians the DEA had carefully hired. They reported back daily to the DEA on Belisario’s movements. Over the past twenty-four hours there had been no word of Belisario leaving his well-fortified home. But there had been a report of a woman being dragged into the house this afternoon, unable to walk on her own.

  A white woman with long brown hair.

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as he heard the description of the woman, Derek was on his feet. He had no doubt this was Molly. It had to be.

  “Listen, man.” Liam put a hand on his shoulder. “Evidently women being dragged into Belisario’s house is not an uncommon thing. This may not even be Molly.”

  “A white woman with long brown hair just a few hours after Molly was taken by one of his known associates? It has to be her.” It was time to do something. He started walking down the hall.

  “Where are you going?” Jon called after him.

  Derek didn’t even slow down. “Drackett’s office. We all know that’s Molly.”

  He didn’t wait to see if the other two men were coming with him. He didn’t expect them to. Just like Derek wasn’t going to the director’s office to get his permission. He was going to tell him because he respected Drackett and his boss deserved to know why he would be MIA for the next unknown number of hours or days.

  However long it took to get Molly out of the hands of a sadistic drug lord.

  Derek knocked once on Drackett’s door as he was opening it. The director didn’t seem too surprised to see him.

  Derek, on the other hand, was a little surprised to find Jon and Liam had followed him into Drackett’s office.

  “I’ve already been apprised of the situation,” Steve told them wi
thout any formal greeting.

  Derek should’ve known Drackett would be aware of what was going on, even with the chaos from last night’s fire to deal with. That’s why he was the director.

  “DEA contacts put a Caucasian woman with long brown hair being forcefully taken into Belisario’s estate a couple hours ago,” Derek reported.

  “Knowing we wouldn’t be able to confirm if that was Molly or not—”

  “Steve—” Derek didn’t need confirmation. He was moving regardless of whether they were 100 percent sure.

  Steve held up his hand and started over. “Knowing we wouldn’t be able to confirm if the woman was Molly, I immediately tasked a satellite to give us footage of his property as soon as I got word of that.”

  This was why Steve Drackett was the director of one of the most important law enforcement agencies in the country. The man made decisions and didn’t waste time. Derek was tempted to lean over the desk and kiss him.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Drackett told them. “I was still unable to confirm it was her. But I was able to positively confirm that this man was present on the premises this afternoon.”

  He slid a picture across his desk.

  “That’s Santiago. He’s the one that was at Molly’s condo last night. We had positive ID on him.”

  Drackett nodded. “I know. Which is why I agree that Molly is the woman spotted by the DEA contact being taken into the estate.”

  Derek had been prepared to move at much less confirmation than this. “I’m going down there.”

  Drackett stood and looked Derek directly in the eye. “We have zero jurisdiction down there.”

  “I don’t care.” Derek knew where Molly was and he was going to get her out. Or die trying.

  “No agency of the US Government can send in a team into a situation like this. Not if we don’t know for sure who the woman is or why she’s there,” Jon chimed in.