Phoenix

by Crouch, Janie

  * * *

  Less than an hour later, they were in the air on their way to Egypt. Looking around him, it was easy to see why the guys of Linear Tactical had been so effective as Special Forces soldiers.

  They were like a well-oiled machine.

  Zac, Gavin, and Wyatt pored over the electronic plans Kendrick had sent, discussing different infiltration points and their pros and cons.

  Dorian, who Riley hadn’t seen in more than a year, had arrived with a petite woman in tow, ready to help. Dorian introduced her as his wife, Ray.

  Riley hadn’t even known Ghost had a wife.

  Ray and Dorian were in the back with Finn, sorting out weapons and gear.

  The help didn’t stop there. Back in Oak Creek, Baby was making calls on behalf of Linear Tactical, reaching out to military and government contacts they had. Linear had done a lot of favors for a lot of people over the years, and if they had to cash them all in now, they would.

  Lyn, Gavin’s sister, and her fiancé, Heath, were busy translating anything and everything Kendrick and Neo could provide concerning Sayed, since they were both fluent in Arabic and Lyn was an expert in Egyptian culture.

  Riley just wished he had a job, something to keep his mind off Wildfire.

  When his phone buzzed in his pocket a few minutes later, it almost startled him. It was an unknown number.

  Zac looked up. “Kendrick worked his magic so you can receive calls on your phone.”

  “It’s an unknown number.”

  “It could be Sayed,” Gavin said. “It would be about the right amount of time. You’ve got to play it cool, Phoenix. Our biggest advantage is that he doesn’t know you’re so close behind him.”

  Riley nodded. He hit the receive button. “Hello. Who is this?”

  “It’s Sayed. I thought you’d be expecting my call.”

  Riley swallowed the string of curses he wanted to throw in Sayed’s direction. Everybody on the Linear Tactical team had a job. He did too. It was time to do it. “Sorry, Sayed. I don’t have time to talk about motocross racing right now. My girlfriend is missing.”

  Wyatt and Zac both nodded.

  Silence rang out from the other end of the line and Riley was worried for a moment he’d played it the wrong way. “Did you not receive my note?” Sayed said.

  “We got a note, but it was hard to make out the signature and a drink got spilled on it. That was you? What the hell, Sayed? What’s going on?”

  “You took from me. And now I take from you. It’s that simple.”

  “Dude. Are you pissed because you lost that race? Jesus, man. I thought better of you.”

  “I know what you did.” Sayed’s voice was cold. “You were a front. You distracted me so that others could slip in and take what was mine.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking ab—”

  A sob rang out on the other end. Wildfire’s sob.

  “Your woman seems so strong. It’s a shame you care so little about her well-being. She bleeds such a pretty red.”

  “Goddammit, Sayed!”

  Wyatt got right up in Riley’s face, mouthing for him to stay calm.

  Staying calm while someone hurt Wildfire might be beyond what he was capable of.

  “Do you still want to say you had nothing to do with the departure of my previous guests?” Sayed asked.

  “No. Fine. Whatever. I admit it. Somebody paid me some money to distract you. But I didn’t know they were stealing from you. And she has nothing to do with it. If you’ve got a problem with me, take it out on me.”

  “See? Now we are talking like reasonable men. I will trade Miss Wilde for you.”

  Riley didn’t hesitate. “Done. Name the time and place, and I’ll be there. Is she still in Wyoming? Are you in Wyoming? I’ll drive wherever you want.”

  The Linear guys were nodding. Wyatt circled his finger in the air, telling him to continue that line of conversation.

  “Riley—no!” Wildfire’s voice called out. “He’s going to kill you. We’re already on a plane—”

  The sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh filled the cabin before Wildfire cried out once again.

  “Don’t you touch her, Sayed! I’ve agreed to meet you. Leave her alone.”

  Wildfire, be quiet, baby. Don’t be your brave self.

  “Like I said, she’s strong. And she’s right, we are no longer in your beautiful Wyoming mountains.”

  “Fine. I’ll get on a plane and come to you. Just tell me where.”

  “No, I think I’ll send my jet to get you, the one you were so adamant about not utilizing last time. And I don’t want to give you a chance to pull any of your famous Phoenix stunts. You will come to me the way I insist, and Miss Wilde can go free.”

  Wyatt made an exaggerated what the hell face, obviously wanting Riley to pretend to be skeptical of the plan.

  “How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you’ll let her go?”

  “Unlike you, I’m a man of honor. I do not arrive at a home under the guise of accepting hospitality and then steal from others.”

  Riley rolled his eyes. Yeah, Sayed was a prince among men.

  “Subterfuge is not my way,” Sayed continued. “If I’m going to shoot you, you will know it is me. That is true power, looking your enemy in the eye as he dies.”

  The man obviously meant every word, Riley had to give him that.

  “Fine. You’re a man of your word. You trade her for me.”

  “My jet will be there to get you in twenty hours. Be ready. If you’re not at the Reddington airport, I’ll assume you’ve decided Miss Wilde should die slowly and painfully.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I’ll assume the same if I get word of any law enforcement or government intervention in my direction. No tricks this time, Phoenix.”

  “Just don’t hurt her.”

  The phone went dead.

  There was silence all around him as he stared at the phone.

  Zac broke it. “Okay, people. Phoenix bought us a few hours. Let’s not waste them.”

  “Ray and I will inventory exactly what weapons we have,” Dorian said. His hand hadn’t moved far from his wife’s the entire time they’d been on the plane. Riley had never seen any two people so in sync with each other.

  “I’ll help them.” Finn jerked his thumb toward the back, face tight. “Let us know what the plan is, and we’ll be ready.”

  It couldn’t be easy for Finn, not after what had happened to his wife Charlie when she’d been kidnapped last year.

  “Our best bet is to infiltrate as soon as possible,” Gavin said.

  Good. As soon as possible Riley liked. It meant less time Wildfire was in that bastard’s clutches.

  Wyatt placed the electronic tablet on the small table between the four chairs facing each other. “Sayed’s security is pretty much impossible to get around from the outside. It’s why we used Phoenix in the first place to get the kids out a couple of weeks ago. We needed to get inside.”

  Gavin nodded and pointed to an area on the screen. “The one weakness is near the southwest corner. It’s hard to guard with manpower, ironically because of Sayed’s motocross course. But to make up for that, he’s bulked that area up with electronic security. Security that can only be accessed from inside. Cutting the feed and alarm from the inside is our best bet.”

  “Okay.” Riley nodded. “How do we get inside?”

  Wyatt and Gavin shot each other a look. That wasn’t good.

  Wyatt shrugged, then ran a hand through his black hair. “Probably paying someone off. Someone local. I can already tell you it’s not going to be easy—people around there are pretty terrified of Sayed. We weren’t successful when we tried before.”

  Gavin sat down in one of the seats and turned the screen toward Zac and Riley. “The next best option would be to sneak in as workers ourselves. But Sayed will be on alert for something like that, and it won’t be as fast as we need it to be. He isn’t going to allow any unknown e
ntities inside right now.”

  Zac picked up the tablet. “Okay, he’s highly fortified. What are our outside-the-box options?”

  Both men were silent for long minutes. Riley stood and started to pace, biting his tongue to stop demanding a plan. Everybody here was working toward the same goal.

  “Single parachute in the dead of night,” Wyatt finally said. “We considered it very briefly, but then decided it was too risky. It’s not much more than a suicide mission.”

  Riley stopped pacing. “Would it work?”

  Wyatt shrugged, shaking his head. “Possibly. But we eliminated it because the level of expertise required in skydiving was beyond us. Even with the hours we logged in the army.”

  Riley leaned against the table and looked at the guys. “It’s not beyond me.”

  Every stunt he’d ever completed, the hours of work preparing and practicing and bleeding, not just in skydiving but in it all, was coming down to this. “I’m one of the top ten skydivers in the world. If it’s doable, I can do it.”

  Gavin shook his head. “That’s just it. We don’t know for sure that it’s doable.”

  Fuck that. “If it will save Riley, I’ll make sure it’s doable. The slimmest of chances is better than no chance at all.”

  Zac nodded. “Okay, then unless we come up with another plan in the next hour, we go with this. Wyatt, Gavin, get us all up to speed on what’s going to happen once Riley successfully parachutes into Sayed’s property and cuts off that security feed. Let’s figure out what we need.”

  Riley nodded, glad Zac was treating it like a foregone conclusion that he would be successful.

  Because he would be.

  Chapter 28

  Riley applied pressure to the knife wound on her arm. One of Sayed’s men had thrown a cloth napkin at her and yelled something in Arabic, which she assumed meant to stop bleeding all over the place.

  The cut could probably use a few stitches, but it wasn’t going to kill her. This Sayed guy really had a hard-on for jerking Boy Riley’s chain. She was just the most convenient tool for doing that.

  The one good thing that had happened since she’d woken up on a plane surrounded by people who wanted to kill her? It definitely put her MS in perspective.

  Sitting here in this plane with this psychopath, she could die any minute.

  She wanted to live, MS or not.

  She peeked out from under her hair at Sayed to where he sat across from her on his luxury jet that was all champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Seriously. There was gold-plated stuff everywhere. Sayed might as well take out a billboard with his picture and the words Hey, I’m rich.

  She didn’t talk to Sayed, hadn’t said anything since he’d backhanded her in the mouth when she’d tried to warn Riley he was in trouble. She needed to be smart. Stay alive for…however long it took Riley to get to her.

  It was just a matter of time before that happened. She knew about the undercover work he’d done with Linear Tactical, and that he loved it. They would get her out. Plus, he owed her one, right? They’d agreed she’d saved his life twice, and he owed her.

  Looked like he’d be paying that debt sooner than expected.

  Her job was to stay alive until he arrived. Pretend to be passive. Weak. Lie. She’d certainly had enough practice over the past week doing that—but lying to the wrong person.

  No more lying to Riley, no more hiding.

  As long as she got out of this alive.

  “Nothing more to say?” Sayed raised a dark eyebrow at her. “American women always have something to say.”

  She had a role to play in her own rescue. Convincing Sayed that she was weak and terrified and useless didn’t make her weak and terrified and useless; it made her smart. Yelling to try to get information to Riley had been a mistake. She needed to be careful not to make another one.

  So she didn’t respond to Sayed’s question, just kept her head down and wounded arm pressed against her chest.

  “I’m going to teach Phoenix how to be more polite. Not to ignore, how do they say it, cultural norms. I’m going to teach him respect.”

  She had to bite her tongue to keep from asking him why he didn’t just ask Phoenix out on a date. Sayed was obviously obsessed with him.

  She whimpered, shying away as he reached for her, fighting every instinct to use the multiple self-defense moves she knew. She could break Sayed’s arm and then probably his nose in under ten seconds.

  But that wasn’t going to get her off this plane.

  Save it.

  “Phoenix will do anything for you, won’t he?”

  “He’ll give you money if that’s what you want.” She purposely made her voice shaky. “But he’s not rich. Not rich enough to afford a plane like this.”

  “I don’t need money. I’m not interested in his money at all. I am interested in teaching a young, brash American what happens when he disrespects someone of importance in my culture. Do you know anything about my culture, Miss Wilde?”

  She really should’ve listened to her friend Lyn more closely when the woman had rambled on about ancient Egyptian ideas and languages, her dissertation topic. The most Riley really knew about Egyptian culture came from an online quiz she’d found that determined how many camels someone was worth.

  That probably wasn’t what Sayed was talking about.

  Terrified. Passive. She shook her head. “No.”

  “So many nowadays think we should be more progressive, but I believe the great Egyptian culture should go back to its basics. There are reasons we are one of the oldest cultures in the world. Because of our strengths. Some would call it barbaric what used to be done to those who did not respect our ways.”

  He touched her shoulder, and she couldn’t stop her flinch.

  “I’ve done nothing the past two weeks but think about the ways I could make your Phoenix understand the true price of insulting someone the way he has insulted me.”

  Sayed removed his hand and settled into the chair beside her. “In your culture, everyone is so quick to forgive after an apology and charming smile. In my culture, in the real Egypt, such a thing is unforgivable. It is paid for with one’s life.”

  Sincerity and belief fairly dripped from Sayed’s words. He was absolutely committed to what he was saying. He planned to teach Riley this “lesson” in the most painful way possible.

  “If hands were cut off for stealing a loaf of bread, how much worse should it be for someone who enters a home under the guise of friendship and then commits robbery?”

  She shook her head, keeping her gaze lowered.

  “Undoubtedly your Phoenix thinks he can talk his way out of this, charm me with his American wit, and a wink as he has to so many of his YouTube followers. Not this time. Not again.” He stretched out his legs in front of him. “The myth of the Phoenix was of a creature that burned, and then rose from the ashes. This time, Phoenix will only burn.”

  Riley glanced over at Sayed to find him smiling with authentic joy.

  Suddenly, passive and terrified didn’t require any acting at all.

  * * *

  Phoenix was about to make the jump of his life and there wasn’t a single camera anywhere in sight to capture it. No doubt the sheer risk alone would have garnered millions of hits.

  Riley had learned early in his career that nothing brought out viewers like the possibility of serious hurt.

  In this case, he might get seriously dead.

  So many things could go wrong with this jump. The wind was already too high to be considered safe. The pilot was nervous and a little sketchy.

  Then, once Riley jumped, he had to land with precision. The rooftop he had to land on was roughly the size of a postage stamp. And all it would take was one person of the dozens and dozens Sayed had on his property to look up into the beautiful Egyptian sky and it would be all over for Riley. Gavin hadn’t been kidding when he’d said this jump was just short of a suicide mission.

  This was not the type of jump he’d norm
ally be willing to risk no matter how many views it got him.

  But he was willing to try anything for Wildfire.

  Any jump. Every jump.

  He double-checked his parachuting rig again. It was just him and the pilot on the plane. The rest of the team was on their way into Sayed’s compound by land, ready to rendezvous once Riley had interrupted the alarm in the security room.

  According to the heat signature scan information Kendrick and Neo had provided—Riley didn’t know how they’d gotten that information because it meant hacking a military satellite, but he was damn glad they had—it looked like Sayed was keeping someone in the same holding cell where he’d kept his kidnap victims last time. Wyatt and Gavin had both agreed that Sayed would like that sort of symmetry, and that it was very possible that’s where he was keeping Wildfire. It would be the first place they would check, and then they’d go from there based on what they found.

  But everything hinged on Riley being able to shut down that security feed and alarm in the southwest corner.

  Then the plan was what it always tended to be when he worked with Linear Tactical: get in and get out before anyone was aware.

  As much as he’d like to stick around and kick Sayed’s ass, all that mattered was getting Wildfire out.

  But if Sayed had hurt her… If she was dead…

  Riley couldn’t even let himself think about it.

  But if the worst had happened, that motherfucker was going down.

  He had to focus, had to believe that Riley was going to be okay, and he was about to get her out of here.

  He touched the long-range comm unit in his ear. Everyone on the team had one.

  “Cyclone, my flight should be in range in about five minutes. I’ll be going hands-free.”

  He would need both his hands to successfully land on the roof. His comm unit would run the whole time.

  “Roger that, Phoenix,” Zac said. “Everyone will maintain mission-critical communication only. We’ll all be hands-free.”

  “Roger that.” Riley swallowed. “Zac, if I don’t make it… If something happens…”