“I feel so helpless.” And worse, so much worse. “I gave up two years of our life together to keep her safe, and I’m back less than twenty-four hours before she’s in their hands.”
Mac patted him on the shoulder. “I know, boy. When Tina nearly burned alive, I wanted to tear the world apart to save her, and my zeal nearly cost us both our lives.”
“But it didn’t!” Gordon slammed his hand on the tabletop, rattling the coffee cups and spoons. “You went through fire and smoke to save her. You risked your life. And you never abandoned her. The story is legend in the family.” His voice broke on a sob. “I left her for nothing. I should have taken her with me, but I believed she would be safer and happier here. I thought she’d move on and forget me eventually. It nearly killed me to do it.” He buried his face in his hands, fingers open just enough to see Mac stand and carry their cups to the coffee pot to refill. Gordon’s nerves already zinged with excessive adrenalin, and more caffeine would only exacerbate the issue, but he didn’t care.
“Son,” the older man said, “you can’t dwell on the past. I know you. Even when you were a child, you put others first. You were kind to spiders and frogs, even those blundering june bugs, as well as the cuter animals. And your cousins, even when they were selfish little monsters. I know you made the decision to leave for Jenna and the rest of us. You gave up any semblance of happiness so we could continue to enjoy the things we loved.” He set the cups back on the table, steam rising from the owl-faced mugs.
“Jenna bought those cups the day after they acquired the inn. She was planning a theme, she said. Luckily, she got over it or we’d be surrounded by owls. But she used one of those mugs every day for her coffee.”
“Uses, Gordon.” Mac’s stern voice rolled over him. “Don’t employ the past tense. We’ll get her back.”
Gordon dropped his hands, despair weighing him down until he thought he’d never be able to stand again. “I—”
Mac gripped his arm. “Hear me out. Your wife is a smart cookie.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” He grabbed at a final straw. “Maybe I should give them the information they need.”
“You don’t mean that for a minute. You’re a patriot not a fool. They’d take the information, use it against our country then kill her anyway.” Mac’s eyes flared. “She will find a way to get word to us.”
“I wish I could believe that…”
A car door slamming brought him to his feet, but it was only Caroline. She tripped up to the door, carrying a backpack and an overnight bag, and came in without knocking.
Setting the backpack on the table, she eyed them. “Don’t let me slow you down, gentlemen.” She opened the pantry door and stepped inside with her bag. “I’m going to change into something more practical, but I can hear you. Bring me up to speed.”
Unfortunately, they didn’t have much to tell her, so when she rejoined them wearing black jeans, a baby-blue fitted T-shirt, and military-style boots, fastening an equipment belt around her waist, they’d run out of facts to share.
“Now I feel like myself.”
“If this is you, young lady, you’ve had us all fooled. Gordon told me you had a military background, but it sure doesn’t show in those pretty dresses and high-heeled shoes you wear.”
Caroline pulled pins out of her hair and plaited it in a single shiny braid hanging down her back. “Then I was playing the role correctly. Mind if I help myself to coffee?”
Gordon waved her over to the counter. “Anything you want. Scott isn’t seeing anything yet?”
“No, he—” She reached for a mug in the open cabinet just as the landline hung on the wall shrilled. They all froze and looked at one another.
Then Gordon jumped on it. “Hello?” Nothing. Then a klunking noise. “Hello? Jenna, is that you?” Nothing else followed, and he started to hang up.
“No! Gordo, don’t do that.” Caroline grabbed his arm. “Let me listen.” She relieved him of the receiver and held it up to her ear. “I can’t hear anything, but Scott can tell us where the call is originating.”
Mac chuckled. “He’s tapped the phone?”
She shrugged. “No. That would be illegal. So, of course not.” She spoke quietly and seriously into the phone. “Jenna, if this is you, and you can’t talk for some reason, can you make any noise? Thump the phone on something?” Her eyes widened. Pressing the speaker button, she hung up the receiver. “Jenna, I’ve got you on speaker. Do that again.”
A muffled grunting sound emerged, and Gordon’s heart leapt. “Jenna, baby. I’m here. Just stay on the line if you can, but whatever you do, don’t hang up. Scott is trying to trace the call to where you are. Jenna, we’re going to bring you home, and we’ll never be apart again.”
A long silence preceded more grunting, and Gordon wished he knew what she tried to tell them. “Jenna, are you gagged? Wait, I know you must be.” He’d kill every one of the bastards, strangle them with their own intestines while they were conscious enough to appreciate his anger. “I’m afraid they will find you talking to us. Can you make it so they can’t see the phone is off the hook? The longer you keep the line open, the better chance of Scott finding you.”
He said more to her, but he’d never remember what it was. Words of encouragement, nonsense, loving syllables as he tried to keep her spirits up until they could find her. Mac echoed his sentiments when his voice choked off.
Caroline spoke into her cell phone in a low voice. Finally, she gave them a thumb’s up. “Scott says she’s at the motel by the highway.”
“Let’s go.” Gordon was halfway out the door before he remembered the open phone line. “Did you hear that, Jenna? We found you, and we’ll be right there. Sit tight and don’t do anything.” He couldn’t bring himself to hang up the phone, a greater connection to her than he’d been able to enjoy for two long years.
Forever. He’d not take good-bye for an answer. He’d prove himself to her if it killed him, do anything she asked. Hell, he’d sleep in the Sierra Room forever if it meant he could sleep under the same roof with his beautiful, brave wife.
Racing out the door, he hollered over his shoulder. “We’re coming! Stay strong.” Swallowing past the huge lump in his throat, he added, “I love you, Jenna.”
Caroline grabbed his arm as he started for the bike. “Let’s take my car. It’s loaded for bear, as they say in the sticks.”
Mac snorted, catching up to them. “Not in these sticks, they don’t.” He climbed in the front seat of the Land Cruiser. “I should have guessed by your car you weren’t some fancy city lady. But you were doing such a great job on the weddings.”
As Gordon swung into the backseat, Caroline hopped behind the wheel and turned the key. “Hang on, gentlemen. This baby is just a little out of the ordinary.” She peeled out, bouncing down the drive while Gordon sorted through the small armory on the seat with him and behind it.
“Dang, Caroline. With all the guns and ammo back here, I think we could take over California.”
She giggled, sounding like the wedding planner again. What a chameleon. “If you like, but let’s save your wife first, okay? I like to do things in order.”
Mac had his cell phone in hand. “I’m going to call the local authorities. For sure, my department needs to get an ambulance down there, and the police chief is an old friend.”
“Can you get them to stay out of sight until we make our move? If they descend on the place, Jenna could get killed. They threatened as much.”
“Our cops and firefighters are intelligent folks. I’m not having criminals threaten my family and then walk away. You get your wife then we’ll take down the rest of them.”
The older man’s vigor was that of a much younger person. But he’d solved a lot of problems and saved a lot of people in his time. Despite his practice with his PTSD neighbor, Gordon’s field experience was limited. His Omega Team work had been more keyboard than swashbuckling. “I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there, but
let’s see.”
Nothing could have prepared them for the sight that greeted them in the motel parking lot.
After hearing Gordon’s voice, Jenna could not “sit tight.” If the criminals came back and got in here with her, bad things would happen. She needed to be outside when her husband arrived. Along with Mac and whoever else had been there. A woman…and someone named Scott who had tapped her phone at the inn?
She started to get mad then realized how quickly insanity set in. Right now, someone listening to her order flour and office supplies via her land line should be less of a concern than the joy that someone had been able to determine her location. And if she valued her life and Gordon’s, that location had better be the parking lot.
With more determination and strength than she’d thought she had left, Jenna began to work the chair the last few feet to the door. By moving sideways, she managed to grip the knob and twist it with her left hand. Another ten minutes of bouncing and rocking back and forth and she got the door open, during which time nobody seemed to notice the craziness in her doorway. Sure enough, the Do Not Disturb hung on the outside knob. What room had the hooker and her date used? She felt fairly sure it was not the one next door or she’d have heard them banging on the wall by now.
Just as she emerged partway into late afternoon sunshine, an SUV and late model sports car with rental plates zoomed into the lot, nearly slamming into one another. From both vehicles emerged people with guns. Gordon, Caroline the wedding planner, and Mac from one. Two dark-haired men from the other. As she sat, bound to her chair in the doorway, they faced off.
Where did Gordon get a gun all of a sudden?
Then things got crazy. Fire trucks, lights blazing and sirens screaming, shot into the parking lot between the two cars. She had just long enough to see Mac’s grin before a stream of water shot directly at the dark-haired men, bowling them to the pavement. A line of police cars followed, and, within a minute or two, the bad guys were handcuffed and lying facedown in a puddle. She hoped the water liquefied every kind of nastiness after what they’d put her through.
Before she finished wishing them covered with painful boils, her handsome, amazing husband arrived at her side. He took hold of the duct tape covering her mouth and gave her a sympathetic smile. “This is going to hurt, baby.”
And it did, but the instant it left her lips he replaced it with his warm, sensual mouth, kissing her so hard she couldn’t breathe. And she didn’t care.
Chapter Ten
Mac MacKay had a bride on each arm as they marched toward the front of the rows of chairs where two grooms waited with an army of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Fairy lights strung in all the trees provided a magical atmosphere for the MacKay brides. Never had two more glowing young women paraded toward their future. And rarely had more people gathered to wish them well. The enormous tents set up for all the food surrounded the open square where dancing would go on until dawn.
They’d sat up all night, after the rescue, and he’d filled her in on all the details he’d promised. He hadn’t been kidnapped by aliens, but the real story was almost as strange. And, as she’d decided while escaping from her kidnappers, she’d have taken him back under almost any circumstances. The face he’d been so selfless only made her love him more.
The most remarkable thing was that his family seemed to accept Gordon as if nothing happened. Even his mother handled it better than expected. They’d gone to see her yesterday afternoon, and the woman had wept happy tears and then shooed them off to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. Jenna and Gordon received a special invitation, despite not being part of the bridal party, and he’d gotten to make his first appearance in advance of the formal ceremony.
“Reminds me of our wedding day,” Gordon murmured to Jenna as they sat in the back row, ready to head out so she could supervise the serving of all the dishes she and her staff and an army of volunteers had prepared in a day and a half.
“We had a few less guests at our ceremony.” She smiled, though, at the memory. “It was the second most special day of my life.”
He laid an arm over her shoulder. “Really? What’s number one?”
“The day you came back to me from the dead.”
“I was never dead.” Mac, in full dress uniform, handed the two girls off to their grooms. He and Tina had raised them as their own after their parents’ tragic death when they were little girls. But nobody could have loved them more or taken better care of them than Chief MacKay and his wife.
“Look at Caroline.” She gestured to where the drill sergeant-turned-wedding planner hovered to the right of the wedding arch. “Did you hear she’s going to stay and keep her business going?”
“I did,” he murmured, his breath tickling her ear. “Old Sarge has a soft side, I guess.”
“And enough business to keep her hopping for the next three years. She’s the MacKay wedding planner now.” She grinned at him before turning her attention to where the brides were having the living daylights kissed out of them. Jenna shrugged. “I gather she’s still going to be an Omega Team member as well.”
Holding hands, they rose as the brides and grooms ran down the aisle to thunderous applause. “Of course,” he said, speaking louder to be heard over the noise. “Grey wants to establish a larger West Coast presence, you know. Scott’s staying, too.”
“Of course he is. He’s good at Internet detective work, although he still can’t figure out how the camera feed was hacked with the note on the church door. But he’s working on it. He solved the mystery of how the hackers tracked you down. If you hadn’t kept the bike, they’d never have found you. Somehow the electronic trail from the registrations was legible to their guy.”
“One more good reason for keeping Bianca. Especially now that I’ve gotten all those flowers off it. Did you know they’re practically coated in syrup, they’re so sticky?” Shaking his head, he eyed her. “And you are certainly full of information. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re likely to be joining the Omega Team.”
“Grey said I had some kind of security clearance, so Caroline filled me in.” She suppressed a grin. “Anyway, Scott’s sweet on her.”
Gordon blinked at her. “He’s crushing on Sarge?”
“On Caroline. Don’t be mean. She’s entered a new phase of life. An elegant phase. Her days of barking orders at troops are over.”
Gordon chuckled. “Think so?” He pointed to where she was marshaling the giggling bridesmaids into a line. “I think she’s just using her skills in a new way.” The wedding party would be taking pictures for a while, but Jenna and her team had to add final touches to the trays of hors d’oeuvres and other delights for the mob who would descend immediately. Kat and Brigit had been adamant nobody had to starve waiting for their triumphant entrance. “You sure had a lot of help show up to get all the food ready on time.”
“I did. Those two ladies who had to room together called in their own troops.” As they slipped through the crowd, she leaned close to him to be heard over the happily chattering guests. “I noticed you weren’t anywhere to be found while we were cooking up a storm.”
He escorted her to a small tent being used as a kitchen and turned her to face him. “I was finishing my project.”
“The one the hackers wanted?”
“Yes. It is now successfully in the hands of the US military, and, since I destroyed my only copy, nobody can try and get it from me again.” He ruffled her hair. “From now on, it’s smooth sailing for the MacKays of Foothill Inn.”
And what will you be doing with your time while I inn-keep?” she demanded.
“Since I got paid an amount equivalent to what they contracted with the other companies to create this software, I don’t have to work. They’ve also started the paperwork to bring me back to life Social Security wise, etcetera.”
She faced him, serious now. “You don’t want to sit around all day and be retired, do you?”
“No. I want to continue to do some work for
Omega as well as complete a game design I’ve had in mind for a long time. I’ll set up an office in the inn somewhere.” Kissing her forehead, he pulled her close. “And I might make more furniture.”
She pulled back. “Really? Another table?”
“I’m thinking maybe a crib.” He pulled her close and kissed her, his lips moving over hers as they had since the very first time. Familiar and hot and sexy all at the same time. When they paused to breathe, he watched her anxiously. “What do you say, Jenna? Shall we make some little MacKays?”
She waved at the mob scene outside the tent doorway. “Sure. Another generation and we should be able to take over the world.”
“I’ll settle for sleeping in your arms every night and making love to you whenever we please.” He kissed her again, and she thanked everything good and beautiful for bringing him back to her. She’d wished for one more kiss, one more night, and she’d been given a lifetime.
Kate Richards
Kate Richards divides her time between Los Angeles and the High Sierras. She would gladly spend all her days in the mountains, but she’d miss the beach…and her very supportive husband’s commute would be three hundred miles. Wherever she is, she loves to explore all different kinds of relationships in her stories. She doesn’t believe one-size-fits-all, and whether her characters live BDSM, ménage, GLBT, spanking, or any other kind of lifestyle, it’s the love, the joy in one another, that counts.
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The Omega Team: Hidden Asset (Kindle Worlds Novella) (MacKay Destiny Book 8) Page 6
