Hard Core Law (Texas Rangers: Elite Troop)

by Angi Morgan

  Josh had his hands ready to push up from the bench and tackle the guy to the ground.

  “No.” Tracey pulled him back to the bench. “You heard him. He means it. We have to stay here and let him walk away. You promised to do whatever it took. Remember? So please just turn the phone on and get their instructions.”

  He listened to Tracey and stayed put. The phone had been handed to them with gloves. Most likely no prints, so he turned it on. He clicked through the menu, finding the gallery.

  There were several pictures of the twins playing in a room—sort of like a day care crowded with toys. The video shattered his already-broken heart. Sage was crying. Jackson was “vroom vrooming” a car across his leg and through the air.

  A voice off camera—the same as behind them—told them to say hi to their daddy.

  “I want to go home.” Sage threw a plush toy toward the person holding the phone. “Is Trace Trace picking us up?”

  Tracey covered her mouth, holding her breath again.

  “Can you remember what you’re supposed to say? You can go home after you tell your daddy,” the kidnapper lied.

  The twins nodded their heads, tucking their chins to their chests and sticking out their bottom lips. They might be fraternal, but they did almost everything together.

  “Daddy, Mack says to go to... I don’t remember.” Jackson turned to his sister, scratching his head with the truck. “Do you remember?”

  “Why can’t you tell him?” Sage pouted.

  “Come on, it has a giant bull.” Another voice piped in.

  “We’ve been there, Jacks. It’s got that big bridge, ’member?” Sage poked him.

  “Can you come there and pick us up, Daddy?” Jackson cried.

  “Maybe Trace Trace can?” Sage’s tears ran full stream down her cheeks.

  “You have twenty minutes to be waiting in the middle of the bridge. Both of you. No cops,” a voice said on top of the twins cries.

  The video ended. All Josh wanted was to rush to the Chisholm Trail Bridge and pick them up. But they wouldn’t be there. Instructions would be there. The guy who’d dropped the phone off would be watching them to make certain they weren’t followed.

  “Let’s go.” He wrapped his hand around Tracey’s. It killed him to hear his kids like that.

  “Are they going to keep us running from one spot to another? What’s the point of that? And why have us buy a new phone only to replace it with this one?”

  While they were leaving the mall in a hurry would be the ideal time for a kidnapper to try to grab one or both of them. He locked their fingers and tugged Tracey closer to his side.

  “Before we get to the car...” He lowered his voice and stopped them behind a pillar at the candy store. He leaned in close to her ear, not wanting to be overheard. “We need to look closely where he touched us. He might have planted a microphone.”

  He dipped his head and turned around to let Tracey check. She smoothed the cloth of his shirt across his shoulders.

  “I don’t see anything, Josh.” She shook her head and turned for him to do the same.

  He pushed his fingers through his short hair. Found nothing. Then ran them through Tracey’s short wavy strands and over her tense shoulders.

  “If I were them, I’d use this time to plant a listening device. I’d want to know if we were really cooperating or playing along with the Feds.”

  “Who are you playing along with?” She looked and sounded exasperated.

  “I’m on team Jackson and Sage. Whoever I have to play along with to get them back home. That’s the only thing that’s important to me.”

  “All right. So you think they’re planting something in the car?”

  “Got to be. Or this phone is already rigged for them to listen. Stand at the back of this store and keep an eye out while I call McCaffrey on his phone.” Josh took a last look around the open mall area to see if they were in sight of security cameras or if anyone watched them from the sidelines.

  Tracey smothered the kidnapper’s phone with the bottom of her shirt. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “So do I.” He waited for her to get ten feet away from him then took the FBI-issued phone and dialed the only number logged.

  As soon as he was connected he blurted, “They have a new phone listed in my name. Bought it prepaid at a kiosk. No idea what the number is. Handed us another and told us to head to the Brazos Suspension Bridge.”

  “You can cross that on foot. Right?” McCaffrey was asking someone on his staff. “You know they’ll be waiting on the other side.”

  Tracey kept watch, walking back and forth along the wall. She’d look out the storefront window, then make the horseshoe along the outside walls again to look out the other side.

  Josh kept his head and his voice down. “I can’t contact you on this again. It’ll be in the car.”

  “We’ll have men on the north side of the bridge waiting,” McCaffrey stated. “Trust me, Josh.”

  “For as long as possible.” He pocketed the phone, waved to Tracey.

  “Josh, the kidnapper called you Mack. I remember that they all called each other Mack.”

  “It kept them from using their real names. Helped hide their identities.” He didn’t speak his next thought—hoping that they kept their masks on in front of his kids.

  They both walked quickly from the mall toward the car.

  “We just used five of our twenty minutes. Aren’t you going to call Bryce and let him know where we’re headed?”

  “No need. If the Rangers are doing their job, they’ll already know.”

  Josh pointed to a moving van that matched the description Tracey had regarding the vehicle blocking the intersection. If law enforcement spotted it, they’d be instructed to watch and not detain.

  The truck pulled away from the end of the aisle as soon as they reached the car. He was tempted to use the phone, but he’d just proved to himself that they were being watched. He couldn’t risk it.

  Josh didn’t wait around to spot any other vehicles keeping an eye on them. He didn’t care if any of them kept up. “Flip down the visor, Tracey.” He turned on the flashing lights and let traffic get out of his way. “We’re not going to be late.”

  Tracey braced herself with a foot on the dashboard. “I’m rich. That’s my secret.”

  He slowed for an intersection and looked at her while checking for vehicles. She cleared her throat, waiting. Josh drove. If that was all the FBI could dig up on her, how could that be leverage?

  The flashing lights on his car made it easy to get to the bridge and park. He left them on when they got out. Tracey reached under the seat and retrieved a second Jackson emergency kit. He snagged the one he’d brought from the house.

  Armed with only a phone and his son’s emergency kit, they walked quickly across the bridge to wait in the middle of the river.

  “Not many people here on a Friday night.” Tracey walked to the steel beams and looked through. “I hope they don’t make us jump.”

  “That could be a possibility.” One that he hadn’t considered.

  “I don’t swim well. So just push me over the edge.”

  “You don’t have to go.” Josh stayed in the middle, his senses heightened from the awareness of how vulnerable they were in this spot. “How’s your head?”

  “Spinning. You grabbed extra insulin cartridges and needles. That’s what I saw, right? I think I should take a couple, too.”

  It made sense. He opened the kit. She reached for a cartridge and needle. If the kidnappers took only one of them, they’d each have a way to keep Jackson healthy.

  * * *

  TRACEY WAS SCARED. Out-of-her-mind scared. If today hadn’t happened, she would have felt safe standing on a suspension bridge above the Brazos
River in the early moonlight with Josh.

  But today had happened and she was scared for them all.

  “What kind of a secret is being rich?” Josh walked a few feet one direction and then back again. “I don’t get it. Why is being rich a secret McCaffrey would threaten you with?”

  “You really want me to explain right now?”

  “You’re the one who brought it up.” He shrugged, but kept walking. “It’ll pass the time.”

  “My last name isn’t Cassidy. I mean, it wasn’t. I changed it.”

  That stopped him. There was a lot of light on the bridge and she could see Josh’s confused expression pretty well. He was in jeans and a long-sleeve brick-red shirt that had three buttons at the collar. She’d given it to him on his birthday because she wanted to brighten up his wardrobe. The hat he normally wore was still at home. They’d left without it or it would have been on his head.

  “I ran a background check on you. Tracey Cassidy exists.”

  “It’s amazing what you can do when you have money. In fact, I could hire men to help you. My uncle would know the best in the business.”

  “Let’s go back to the part that you aren’t who you say you are.” The phone in his palm rang. He answered and held it to his ear. “We’re here.”

  Josh looked around the area. His eyes landed on the far side of the bridge, opposite where they’d left the car. Tracey joined him.

  “Whatever you want me to do, you don’t need my babysitter.”

  “No, you need me. I can take care of the twins, change Jackson’s cartridge.” She held up the emergency pack.

  “I don’t need any extra motivation. Leave her out of—” He pocketed the phone.

  “I’m sorry for getting you into this mess.” He hugged her to him before they continued across the bridge then on the river walk under the trees. The sidewalk curved and Josh paused, looking for something.

  Another couple passed. Josh tugged on Tracey’s arm and got her running across the grass toward the road. If the couple were cops, he didn’t acknowledge them. Their shoes hit the sidewalk again and a white van pulled up illegally onto the sidewalk next to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

  The door slid open. That’s where they needed to go.

  The blackness inside the van seemed final. But she could do this. She’d do whatever it took. Whatever they wanted.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a man approaching. Then another. The more the two men tried to look as if they weren’t heading toward them, the more apparent it was that their paths would. Maybe they were the cops that Bryce had arranged to follow them. If they got any closer, the men inside the van would see them, too.

  “What are those guys doing?”

  Josh looked in their direction, but yelled at her. “Run. I think they’re trying to stop us.”

  “But—”

  “Just run.”

  It wasn’t far. Maybe fifty or sixty feet. The men split apart. Josh dropped her hand. She ran. The van slowly moved forward—away from her. One of the men shot at the van. Then she was grabbed from behind and tripped over a tangle of feet. The man latched on to her waist, keeping her next to him.

  “Let me go. I have to get— You don’t understand what you’re doing.”

  Another shot was fired. This time from the van. The man’s partner fell to the grass. The guy holding her covered her with his body. These men weren’t police. The real police raced after the van in an unmarked car, sirens echoing off the buildings across the water.

  The man on top of her didn’t move and wasn’t concerned about his injured partner. She was pounding with her fists on a Kevlar vest trying to get the man off her when a loud crash momentarily replaced the police sirens.

  “Oh my God! What have you done?”

  Chapter Six

  Fire trucks. An ambulance. At least three police cars—maybe more—with strobe lights dancing around in circles. College students edging their way closer in a growing crowd. An angry FBI agent in her face. And a bodyguard who kept insisting that she was too open as she sat on a park bench.

  The lights, the voices, the desperation—all made her head swim. Of course it might have been a little remnant of the whiskey. Or possibly the head injury from the kidnappers this afternoon. Maybe both.

  Whatever it was, she didn’t like it. It was the reason she rarely drank at any point in her life. She simply didn’t like being under the influence of anything. Including her uncle Carl, who had taken it upon himself to dispatch bodyguards to protect her. They’d destroyed any chance of getting insulin to Jackson.

  The van lay on its side. The driver had escaped before anyone could reach the crash site. Both the guard and Josh had run to the scene, but he was gone. Vanished.

  “Miss Cassidy, if you’re ready to go. Your uncle instructed us to bring you back to Fort Worth as soon as possible. We’ve cleared it with the police to pull out.” The guard spoke to her with no remorse for what he and his partner had caused. As if she was the most important person in the entire group.

  She hated that. She always had.

  “How can you stand there and talk as if nothing’s happened? Your partner may have shot someone in that van. The driver’s disappeared along with the instructions to rescue the twins. What if the kids had been inside? If anything happens to Josh’s son—”

  “We were just doing our job.” He stood in front of her with his hands crossed over each other, no emotion, no whining—and apparently no regrets. His partner had his breath back—which had been knocked out of him by the bullets hitting him in the chest or him hitting the ground.

  Jackson and Sage were missing and now the kidnappers would be angry. What would happen now? She needed these men gone. There was only one way to do that. One man. One man could make it happen.

  “Let me have your phone.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I don’t have a phone. I need to borrow yours.”

  He reached inside his jacket pocket, turned on his phone and handed it to her. She searched the call history and found the number she’d almost forgotten. The phone rang and rang some more, going to voice mail, which surprised her. Unless he was with someone—then nothing would disturb him. Not even the fact that he thought her life was at risk.

  Hadn’t he sent the guards because he was worried?

  A more likely story was that he thought the kidnappers would find out who she was and try to extort money from him. Just the possibility of the family being out any cash would send him into a frenzy to get her safely back inside a gilded cage.

  Should she leave a message? She hung up before the beep. What she had to say didn’t need to be recorded.

  “Where’s Josh?” The men standing close to her shrugged in answer. “You do know which man I was with when all this began? The father of the children you just placed in more danger.”

  The big bulky bodyguard looked like he didn’t have a clue. He didn’t search the crowd. She followed his gaze to the edge of the people, then across the river where another line of people formed, then back to just behind her where the emergency vehicles were parked.

  “Hey. Don’t play dumb. I ask. You answer,” she instructed, using the power that came with her family name. “And don’t think I can’t stop your paycheck.”

  “They moved him to a more secure facility,” he finally answered.

  “You mean we’re trying,” Agent McCaffrey corrected as he approached. “I was just coming for you, Tracey. We’re heading back to Josh’s house. He insists on driving himself but would like to speak with you first.”

  The agent and bodyguard parted like doors when Josh barreled through them.

  “My car’s been brought to this side of the river. I’m heading back to my place. You ready?” He extended a hand and she took it.

 
What would she say to him this time? “Sorry. I should have told you about my powerfully rich uncle who might send bodyguards.” Those words didn’t roll off her tongue and she’d had no idea he’d send anyone to protect her. Actually, it seemed surreal that he’d found her so quickly.

  Josh put his hand on her lower back and guided her through the crowds. Her silent guard followed. The one who hadn’t been hit by two bullets in his chest ran toward the road, presumably to get their vehicle.

  Josh stopped and did an about-face. “I need to talk with Tracey. Then she’s all yours.”

  “What?” What did he mean? He was turning her over to her uncle? She’d been right. Josh wouldn’t forgive her this time, but she had something to say about where she went and with whom.

  “I can’t let her out of my sight, sir.” The bodyguard stood more at attention, looking ready to attack. Had he just issued a challenge to a Texas Ranger?

  “I don’t have time for this. I need to know how you found her.” Josh responded by placing his hands on his hips and looping his thumbs through his belt loops. Either to keep from dragging her the rest of the way to his car, or to keep himself from throwing a punch at the bodyguard. She would prefer that he not restrain himself from the latter.

  “We tracked her phone. We’re assuming it was in the van.”

  “How did you get the number?” she asked. “I didn’t give it to my uncle.”

  “I have a job to do. And I don’t work for either of you.”

  Josh’s hands were pulling the guard’s collar together before the man could nod at them both. The guard’s hands latched on to Josh’s wrists to keep from being choked. Agents who had been watching them closely as they approached the car began running.

  If any of them were afraid of what Josh might do, they didn’t shout for him to stop. Tracey couldn’t bring herself to call out to him, either. After all, it was this man’s actions that caused them to lose their main lead to the twins. It was this guy—she didn’t even know his name—who had flubbed everything up.