by Dale Mayer
“A couple vendors are not too far from here, so we won’t starve.”
“Good,” Griffin said. “Just when I think that I’ve eaten too much, I remember Brandon, that little kid from the last mission, who never even seemed to slow down.”
“Are he and his dad okay now?”
“I think so. Although the father is trying to make his business a little more formally legit.”
“I’m sure Brandon and Amanda want to stay connected. They’re two of a kind.”
“They’re more than two of a kind,” Griffin said. “They’re seriously two halves of the same pea. That was amazing, just seeing how much brainpower was in that room.”
“Make you feel bad?” Jax asked.
“No,” Griffin said. “But it was definitely daunting to see just how much these people could change the world, what cures they could create, what new IT systems could be invented …” He shook his head. “It was pretty wild being around them.”
“And yet, they were normal?”
“So normal,” Griffin said. “Like unbelievably normal. Like you would have no clue that they were among the most intelligent people on the planet.”
“And what about our Lorelei, the tutor?” Jax asked. “Apparently she’s pretty smart too.”
“Yes, but big gaps are missing in her history. She has four years unaccounted for, from age twenty-three to twenty-seven. She never married, yet she’s thirty-two. And pretty. Don’t you find that odd? Although being a live-in tutor of an eleven-year-old kid would probably seriously interfere with dating.”
“If nothing showed up in the Mavericks background check, it was probably harmless stuff back then. Lots of us make mistakes when we’re young and stupid,” Jax said. He lifted his head, looked at Griffin, and said, “And I would think her not being married would be a plus in your view. Didn’t you do something stupid when you were young?”
Griffin nodded. “Yep, I married at eighteen because I thought she was pregnant.”
“But she wasn’t?” Jax stared at him, his eyebrows heading to his hairline.
Griffin smiled. “Her father might have had something to do with that quick service too.”
“And how long did you stay married?”
“Well, we were together for six months, but then I got into the navy, and, on the return from my first leave, I found her in bed with somebody else. Divorce proceedings started immediately after that, and I sent a picture to her father to let him know to get off my back as she’d already found somebody else.”
Jax let out a long whistle. “Wow, bet that went over well.”
“No clue if it did or not,” Griffin said. “She was too young to settle down, and so was I. And the father needed to let her live her life.”
“Have you seen her since?”
Griffin shook his head. “Hell no. Don’t care to either.”
“So you should be able to relate to Lorelei choosing not to marry young.”
He nodded. “I can. Something about her set of features …” He shook his head. “I’m not sure why, but she’s mesmerizing.”
Jax raised his eyebrows again.
Griffin laughed. “No, not like that.”
“It’s always like that,” Jax said with a smirk. “Kerrick was the same after seeing Amanda’s picture.”
“Well, I won’t be hooking up with this one,” Griffin said drily.
“But if she’s single, and you’re single …”
“Single and have been ever since,” he said. “Came close once or twice but I just couldn’t quite get myself to pull the trigger. Not sure why. I’m going on the assumption each wasn’t the right one. But then I did pull the trigger under coercion, and she wasn’t the right one either. So it’ll be a long, cold day in hell before I do it again.”
“Unless it’s the right one,” Jax said.
“Well, it won’t be her,” he said, pointing at Lorelei’s picture. “She looks like she wouldn’t be very easy to live with.”
“Or maybe she would be very easy to live with if it was the right person for her,” Jax said, “but hasn’t found him yet.”
“Whatever,” Griffin said. His phone buzzed once more, and the chat box on his laptop popped up again. He quickly reached over and hit the link. It was a picture of Lorelei and Amelia Rose walking around the beachfront in Thailand. “This is from one of the resorts less than one mile away from here,” he said slowly. “Taken four days ago.”
“They were free then?”
“Yes. How does that work? I thought they were taken before then.”
“Either this was for their good health and a ton of guards surrounded them or they escaped.”
Griffin quickly zoomed in on the image and caught the look in Lorelei’s eyes. “They’ve escaped. There. She’s terrified, and the little girl is barely walking on her own. She’s hanging on to Lorelei so tight.”
“Escaped and then recaptured?”
“Quite possibly.” He quickly asked that question in the chat box, and, when the answer returned in the affirmative, he nodded. “So she did her best to get them out of there, but now they’ve been recaptured and will be locked down even tighter.”
“Well, that’s not good,” Jax said. “But kudos to her for getting free.”
Griffin typed into the chat window. Location?
We’re getting a suspected location.
When it showed up one minute later, the link was a photo of guarded compound. Griffin flashed it Jax’s way. “It’s well-armed,” Griffin said. “Likely under heavy security.”
“And how do our people know that the little girl’s still there?”
Griffin typed in that question.
Chip, the chat box replied.
He sat back and looked at Jax. “That makes sense. The father probably had a microchip implanted in Amelia Rose to keep track of her, in case anybody tried something like this.”
“That brings up another point,” Jax said. He rose, went to his adjoining room, came back with his laptop, and typed. A few moments later, he lifted his head and said, “You mentioned this before. The father and his first-born son were kidnapped some thirty years ago. Gerard obviously survived, but his son didn’t.”
“Can’t imagine living through that,” Griffin said.
“And that explains the daughter’s microchip. So now we do have a confirmed location, via the chip. That’s huge. But why isn’t a bigger team going in to take them out?”
“Casualties? Small team is quiet, easier to hide—just the two of us.”
Jax stared at him. “I’d still feel better if we had more. Don’t we have backup?”
“Let me see what we’ve got,” Griffin said as he typed in the chat box. Reconnaissance tonight. Any backup for the plan?
No.
Griffin winced, and Jax’s jaw dropped in horror. “None?”
“Not at the moment.” Griffin shook his head.
“What about Kerrick?”
“Right. I forgot he was supposed to play a part in this.”
He typed in Kerrick?
That’s me.
Wish you were here, buddy.
Paris.
Damn.
Sorry.
We need somebody else.
Let me check availability and proximity.
“Kerrick’s on the other end of this chat,” Griffin said with a smile. “That’s good news. But then he’s in Paris, not here, and that’s the bad news.”
“First things first,” Jax said. “We need to set up a reconnaissance and take a look at exactly what we have for issues. I want satellite feed.”
Griffin quickly requested the feed. When the link popped up a few minutes later, he shared it with Jax.
“Let’s see what we’re looking for,” Griffin said. The compound itself appeared to be about ten acres total, had a high stone wall about eight, maybe ten, even twelve feet high all the way around the perimeter, with a walkway on the top. “Damn.” Immediately he typed into the chat window Can we narrow
down the girl’s location via her chip?
No. Either her location is somehow blocking her chip’s abilities or her chip can’t narrow down her location.
Griffin grumbled as he showed Jax the recent chat window conversation. Then Griffin pointed at the satellite feed. “Interesting design,” he muttered, while Jax sat again before his own laptop.
“Hey, the rules and regulations here are much less than at home,” Jax said. “And permits are a joke.”
“What permits?” Griffin studied the compound and said, “I’m seeing watch guards on each of the four corners and two dogs with handlers.”
“I’m seeing a third pair, a dog and his handler, in the back north corner at forty-five degrees.”
“Got him. So, three dogs, three handlers, and four guards.” He sat back, looked at Jax, and grinned. “That’s not a bad ratio. Seven men to two?”
“Make that eight, if the three dogs count as one man, if not more,” Jax said, “but definitely doable.”
“The trick is, we can’t be seen. Not per the Mavericks contact guy and not for our general health and not for the success of this rescue op. Yet no trees are around that wall. Scaling it won’t be a problem, but somehow we have to get up without any of the guards seeing us and none of the dogs smelling us.”
“And getting up won’t help if we’re not planning on going in.”
“Right. We don’t want them to detect us when we’re just in recon mode and then double up security before we get our rescue plan organized and put into effect. The house itself looks like it’s ten thousand square feet roughly.”
“Bringing up blueprints right now,” Jax said, tapping his laptop keys busily on the other side of the table. “Hard to say where the prisoners are located in this mausoleum though.”
A beep had Griffin checking the chat box.
Nobody local available. You guys are on your own tonight.
Griffin groaned, pointed at his drop-down chat box message for Jax’s benefit.
“It is what it is,” Jax said.
Griffin continued to study the external layout. “There’s one driveway in with double doors. Full-size, more like seen on a medieval castle. It’s pretty ironic considering they have a wall, not a moat. But the wall is too short to provide an adequate defense against a determined intruder and also too thin that it won’t withstand much.”
“C-4 then?”
“Potentially. We could set charges on all four corners, take down the perimeter wall, but we have to make sure that somebody’s already inside and uses that as a distraction to extract the girl and the tutor.”
“I think we both have to go in. Two victims, one a child, we need one man assigned per victim.”
“Then we have nobody on watch outside,” Griffin muttered. He grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down the details.
“We don’t have any time to waste either. These kidnappers have had the girl for way too long as it is.”
“Potentially we do have some leeway here, as long as the girl’s safely inside, and they haven’t done anything more to get themselves in even deeper shit. We need to make sure the girls don’t get moved again. We’re losing time with each change in location made. Or, now that we have a confirmed location for them, if the kidnappers do make a move, we catch them in transit.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter 3
Lorelei woke to the door opening. She lifted her head, groggy and disoriented, Amelia Rose still sleeping against her chest. A trolley was pushed into the room, and the same man who’d been here earlier motioned at it and said, “Eat.” Then he turned and walked out.
She stretched, kissed Amelia Rose gently on the temple, and said, “Wake up, little one.”
Amelia Rose nodded, reached up with a fist, and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes. She opened them to look up at Lorelei and around the room, only to have tears immediately flood her cheeks. Lorelei quickly pulled the child into her arms and said, “Yes, we’re still here. Yes, we’re still prisoners. But we had a chance to get some sleep. Today’s a different day.”
Amelia Rose looked up at her, and her bottom lip trembled. Then she saw the tray. And with the precociousness of a child, she asked, “Food?”
“Yes,” Lorelei said as she got up and walked over to lift the lids on the pans. It looked to be meat, vegetables, and rice of some kind. She pulled up a chair to the little trolley so Amelia Rose could sit down. Then Lorelei poured water for them both, grabbed a roll for herself, and stood on the far side. Amelia Rose immediately wanted Lorelei to sit down, but she shook her head and said, “I need to stretch my legs.” She grinned at her charge. Even with her tear-streaked cheeks, she was busy plowing into the food. “It’s good that you have an appetite.”
“We need the energy,” Amelia Rose said.
“We do,” Lorelei agreed. She walked over to the window with the fresh bun in her hand and studied the greenery outside.
“Do you know where we are now?”
Lorelei turned, keeping a bright smile on her face, and said, “No, but lots of nice trees are outside. And it’s a decent-enough room. We have our own bathroom. That’s something.”
“Is this a new hotel?”
“I thought so at first,” Lorelei said, “but now I’m wondering if maybe it’s a private home.”
One thing about Amelia Rose was, she didn’t think like a child. She stopped, looked at Lorelei, nodded, and said, “They can’t take the chance of us escaping again.”
“I know,” Lorelei said. “We had our chance.”
“It’s my fault we got caught.” Immediately the tears flowed again.
“Oh, sweetheart. No, it isn’t.” Lorelei rushed to Amelia Rose’s side. “They were looking for us. It was only a matter of time.”
“I was so scared,” Amelia Rose said, looking up at Lorelei and biting her bottom lip. “If I could have run, it would have made a huge difference.”
It would have, but no way would she let Amelia Rose take on this guilt. “We’ll be fine.”
Amelia Rose nodded and kept eating. “I don’t think anybody here will get a message out for us.”
“Probably not, no. Particularly since I’ve seen armed men who look like staff around here. If this is a private home, which I think it is, that’s most likely the answer. So I’m pretty sure the people here are paid to look after us, and they won’t betray the people who pay them.”
“Of course,” Amelia Rose said. As soon as she was done eating, she pushed the chair back and got up and walked to the window. “It’s so pretty here,” she said, “but I didn’t know it held such darkness.”
Immediately Lorelei placed a hand on the child’s shoulder and gently rubbed her arm. “You know your father’s looking for us,” she said. “Stay strong.”
“Do you think my brothers are too?” she asked in an almost muted tone.
Lorelei winced. Her brothers had been incredibly cold and standoffish all of Amelia Rose’s life, as if they hadn’t wanted or needed any more siblings. And Lorelei could understand their point. But it would’ve been good if they could have let a little girl into their world. This little girl could bring in the sunshine. “I think they’re probably rethinking their whole world right now,” Lorelei said. “And you know your mother must be missing you terribly.”
Amelia Rose’s bottom lip trembled again. “Then why didn’t she come with us?”
Lorelei didn’t know what to say. Although the girl’s mother did love her daughter, she wasn’t the maternal type. And traveling to Thailand at this time of year had not been on Wendy’s list of things to do. “I’m sorry. I’m sure she was just busy.”
“She’s always busy,” Amelia Rose muttered. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” Lorelei said, “it doesn’t, but it doesn’t make it wrong either. She knew that you would be with me.”
Amelia Rose nodded, squeezed Lorelei’s fingers, and said, “So is this where we stay now? I really could use a computer.”
“Well, you might want a computer,” Lorelei said gently, “but I doubt they’ll let us have access to the outside world. Obviously we’d try to send emails to escape again.”
“I know, but I do love my games, and they’re a great way to pass the time.” She returned to the food trolley and said, “Do you think anything else in here is edible?”
Lorelei laughed. “Normally you like trying foods in other places of the world.”
“Only if I know what they are.”
Lorelei lifted the rest of the lids from the dishes so that Amelia Rose could see. “There’s cake, cheese, and fruit,” she said. “What would you like?”
“I’d like a pot of tea, and I’d like some cake and fruit.”
There was a shelf below, and Lorelei bent to take a closer look and cried out in delight. “It looks like a pot of tea. It might be a bit strong though because we didn’t see it right away.” She pulled out the tea tray and set it on the floor. There were no dressers or night tables in this room. Nothing but the bed and now the trolley. She quickly cleaned off the dishes atop the trolley, then lifted the tea tray there. “And you know what? If we had thought of this earlier, it looks like this comes up.” She quickly pulled a swinging shelf, topped by a sheet of wood, and locked it underneath with the proper brace.
“That would help,” Amelia Rose said with a laugh. Sitting down again, they had tea and dessert.
They were almost done when the door suddenly opened again. Three men came in, and immediately Amelia Rose jumped off her chair and threw herself into Lorelei’s arms.
Lorelei smiled at the men and said, “Thank you for dinner.”
One of the men nodded, and the cart was taken away. Then, without hesitation, the door was slammed in their faces.
Amelia Rose looked up at her and asked, “Are they gone?”
She hugged her gently and whispered, “Yes, they’re gone.”
“I don’t like them.” Amelia Rose stepped away, looked around, and said, “At least they didn’t starve us. But I really wish I had a computer.”
“Or at least some books to read or a puzzle to do?” Lorelei teased. She wasn’t sure what to do with her charge. It was one thing to sleep eight hours in the day and to spend another hour eating, but that left an awful lot of hours left to do nothing. The room was bare except for the single bed.
