“Make for the garage,” he told her, trying to keep his voice down. “I don’t know who the shooter is, but I swear they can’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
Isabella said nothing, but she followed behind and managed to stick right by him. They darted from cover to cover amidst a rampant barrage of gunfire that still hit nowhere near the mark. A copse of bushes, a clump of trees, and even a big pile of rocks kept them out of reach until Trapp made a final dash for the garage door. He keyed in the code, put in his handprint and shoved the door open just in time. The final shot pinged off the garage wall and richocheted into nowhere.
“That was a little better,” Isabella gasped as she slammed the door behind them. “Do you think they were missing on purpose? Were we being herded her or something?”
“I don’t know and I’m not sure it matters,” Trapp said hurriedly. “This is where the vehicles and guns are.” He gestured to the lockers on the far wall. “Grab what you can and get into the big truck. We’ll head out fast and we won’t stop until we’re back in DC.”
She was muttering to herself as she began loading guns and ammo clips into a big black duffle bag. Trapp left her to it and ran to the armored truck. The big vehicle was on a regular chassis, but with a bulletproof body. It had been brought back from some excursion to the Middle East and bought as salvage. Sometimes having the inside hook up made all the difference.
He pulled the keys and started the engine. It was roaring by the time Isabella began loading up all the bags. He helped her settle that and their go bags in the back before they both strapped into the front seats.
“Uh Trapp?” She sounded hesitant. “Are you going to open a door? The fumes are going to get bad in here.”
“I think at this point we might as well just make our own door,” he told her grimly. There was no point in trying to explain that if they’d been found here it meant there were crosshairs on them at all times now. Someone was watching and that someone knew him awfully well.
“All right then.” She leaned back, obviously bracing herself. “It’s your truck and your garage. I won’t bitch about your driving as long as I’m still alive when we get out of here.”
He laughed. Not because it was funny but because he had to do something to siphon off some of the tension. He missed his men. Not because Isabella wasn’t good in a fight, but because they had a camaraderie that transcended all this bullshit. They never worried any more if they were going to die. It just didn’t even register. Life was too precious every single minute to waste a second thinking about what was on the other side. Yet somehow having Isabella here threw everything into a new, stark reality. He did not want to die and he was going to move heaven and earth to make damn sure that nothing happened to her.
“Let’s go get some,” Trapp muttered.
Chapter Twelve
Isabella strapped into her seat and held tight. Her hands were shaking. There was every possibility that they were going to go tearing out of that garage and right into a firefight. It made her remember the incident before Marakesh. When she had been with a detachment of SEALs and army rangers.
The attack had come so suddenly, just like this. The scent of smoke had hung thick in the air as the buildings all around them burned to the ground. The heat had been so intense that she could have sworn her skin was peeling away from her face. Shrapnel sprayed her combat fatigues and only her helmet had saved her from being knocked senseless by debris. The scent of smoke soon gave way to that of burning hair and flesh. She had choked with the horrible taste coating her nose and throat, but there was no way to get away from it.
They had been pinned down. It felt like hours and yet seemed like minutes. It all happened so fast. Then a blast had shook the ground and the Humvee behind them had launched into the air. It crashed to the ground upside down, pinning two soldiers beneath it. She had turned to see the man next to her, but he was dead. Lying on his back, his sightless eyes staring up at her. The accusation. She knew it was there. She hadn’t saved him. She hadn’t even done anything to help. She was frozen…
“Isabella!” Trapp’s sharp voice cut through her terror. “It’s okay.”
She gripped the armrests and dug her nails into the leather. “I’m fine.”
“You’re having a flashback,” he said drily. “That’s not fine. Stay with me, all right? Just stay right here.”
She struggled to do just that as he hit the gas. The force of the vehicle’s torque shoved her back against the seat. The garage door rushed at them and then the front grille connected with a horrific crash of twisted metal and the shriek of doors being pulled off their tracks. The garage doors bounced once and then flew to the sides of their vehicle as they exited.
Smoke covered the clearing where the house had been. The smoldering mass of scorched wood and debris was all but burned to the ground. But there were no vehicles, no people, no enemies to see, and nothing to suggest they were under attack. It was almost more sinister.
She glanced over at Trapp. His jaw was set and he looked pissed. “I’m going to drive around to the other side to try and look for a vehicle. Scan the woods as best you can. With all that smoke it’s nearly impossible to see anything.”
He hit the gas and they roared around the edge of the fire, skirting the flames and falling ash. They emerged from a wall of thick black smoke and Isabella saw the driveway before them. There was something else too. A shape. It was moving fast and low.
She pointed. “There!”
“Got it.” He steered after the retreating form.
Just before they got near enough to see if it was actually a person, the running shape dodged left through the trees. In moments it had disappeared completely. Isabella threw off her seatbelt as Trapp slammed on the brakes and brought the vehicle to a halt.
“Stay here!” he commanded.
“What?”
He was already out of the vehicle, yelling over his shoulder. “Stay with the truck. We don’t want to lose it.”
TRAPP CRASHED THROUGH the underbrush and thick deciduous trees. The thick coating of leaves on the ground was so loud that he couldn’t hear anything else in the forest. Forcing himself to stop chasing nothing, he halted. He closed his eyes and focused.
The scent of smoke drifted through the trees. A light breeze carried cool fresh air into his face. The movement of the trees sent a branch rubbing against his arm. He felt the prickly needles and bare branches mixed with the scrubby twigs and sharp thorns of the surrounding brush. Then he heard it.
A rustling in the leaves about ten yards to his three o’clock. He honed in on what he heard. Not animal, it was too big for that. The scent of human sweat on the breeze with the tangy scent of fear mixed in. Fear. Why fear? What was this assailant afraid of? Then he thought of the female in the parking garage.
Lunging to his left, Trapp leaped and dove at what he would have guessed to be the correct height for a female. Tree branches scraped his face and brush tore at his clothes. Then his shoulder connected with something soft. He felt the give of human muscle and bone as he took his quarry to the ground.
“Who are you?” he demanded, straddling his prisoner and grappling with her to get her hands under control.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she snarled.
She braced her feet on the ground and bridged up with an incredible amount of strength and agility. But it was more than that. There was an animalistic quality to the movements. A certain desperation that came of being caged and then freed. What the hell was going on?
Trapp struggled to hang onto something that he just sprouted extra limbs and a sharp set of teeth. She bit his hand deeply, twisting her head at an impossible angle to do so. He ground his own teeth together to force himself not to react. Then she twisted sideways, slid her arms up through his, and very neatly executed a reversal that left her free to roll away.
Too stunned to chase after her, Trapp lay on the ground in the damp leaves and tried to process what had just happened. He’d los
t his quarry, yes. But that wasn’t the crazy part of it. He knew that move. He had taught it himself until it was mastered almost as second nature. But he had taught it to Rachel.
ISABELLA SAW A dark shape burst from the trees. It looked like a woman running full out, headed for the road. There was some tripping and stumbling as she hit the culvert at the edge of the road. Then she seemed to gather herself and started running down the road. She was outlined perfectly by the truck’s headlights. Isabella kept waiting for Trapp to appear in hot pursuit. He didn’t. Her gut knotted as she wondered where he was. Had he been hurt? Had he simply lost the trail? Was he even now headed in this direction and what should she do?
“I’m not letting someone get away when I’m sitting right here,” she muttered.
Reaching into the bag of weapons, she pulled out a .45. She chambered a round. Shoving open the passenger door, she jumped out and ran after the suspect. Isabella squeezed off a warning shot, hoping the person would stop. Nothing happened. The woman was quickly getting out of range. Isabella took careful aim and fired.
“No!” Trapp ran into Isabella and knocked her off her feet with the force of a cement truck.
It was like being mowed down by the aforementioned truck. Isabella lay stunned on the ground. The gun had flown out of her hand and was nowhere to be found. At the moment she couldn’t even process what had happened. Had Trapp attacked her? Why? And where was the assailant? Wasn’t that what they were supposed to be chasing?
She turned her head. To her surprise, Trapp was lying on the ground beside her. He was winded and what little she could see of his expression in the glare of the headlights, he looked stunned. She reached over and smacked him with the flat of her hand. Her blow landed somewhere on his gut. He grunted, but made no move to get away or to retaliate.
“Why?” she panted. “I mean, what the hell Trapp?”
“That was Rachel.”
It took a moment for his words to fully sink in. Then when they did she had to consider that his mind had finally snapped. He thought his dead sister was attacking them? Of course, that was because he didn’t know for sure that she was dead.
“Trapp,” Isabella said, struggling into a sitting position. “Rachel is dead. We got that intel about a week ago.”
“No.” He shook his head. “That was her. I know it was.”
Great. How was she supposed to tell him this without looking like a complete ass? “Look, the intel was good. Apparently they dumped a few bodies off the coast. The description of one of them matched Rachel.”
“Why didn’t you say anything until now?”
“I thought”—she paused because she really couldn’t think of any good answers—“I guess maybe I hoped we were wrong. But you can’t believe your sister—even if she were alive—would be running around out here trying to kill you. What kind of sense does that make?”
“Perfect sense,” he snarled. “Do you know what happens to prisoners when they’re reconditioned?”
Isabella sucked in a quick breath. The idea that someone could have used that sort of torture and mind games with Rachel or any of those other women was horrifying to contemplate. What if he was right? What if every single one they recovered was just a murder waiting to happen? What if they had been reconditioned to murder their own loved ones? The thought was too horrifying to imagine.
TRAPP TRIED TO wrap his mind around the possibility that Isabella had been lying to him about Rachel. Isabella. Lying? He didn’t want to believe it was possible. Still, as he picked himself up off the ground he had to admit that there was a lot that the now former Homeland Security agent hadn’t told him. She knew things. Maybe she knew things that he couldn’t find out. But the only way to find out was to go back to the base of operations and try to work it out.
He glanced at her. She was still picking herself up off the ground. It was tempting to wrap an arm around her and help her up. Maybe hold her against his chest and inhale the scent of her hair. But he kept remembering her face as she announced there had been bodies found off the coast and one of them was probably Rachel. Trapp didn’t believe it. He didn’t even believe that Isabella believed it. So what was she really hiding and why had all of this happened?
“Get in,” he snapped. “We’re sitting ducks out here. It’s time to go figure out what our next move is.” He did not add that his next move might be to put her in chains and shut her in a room for a few hours until he figured out where to go from here.
“Trapp, don’t be angry.” She reached out to touch his arm, but he pulled away. “I kept hoping that you were right and I was wrong. I wanted that intel to be wrong. But when you’re trying to see her as some arsonist bent on murdering you, I feel like you need to know the truth.”
Anger sent the blood coursing hotly through his veins. He felt the cold harsh reality of his battle reflexes settle in. He would not be affected by her words. He could function just fine without her. Pointing to the truck, he did not say another word. He just got in and waited for her to do the same. Quite frankly at this point she was lucky he wasn’t just leaving her there by herself.
He closed his door and wrapped his hands around the wheel. The rumble of the vehicle felt comforting beneath him. He could focus on that and on the tasks ahead. That’s what he had been doing ever since Rachel went missing. Now he just had to work a little harder to put those negative thoughts out of his mind. He missed his team. But they would be together soon enough and this whole thing would be over one way or another.
Chapter Thirteen
Isabella knew she was in trouble as soon as they walked into that tiny basement apartment in DC. Trapp hadn’t looked at her. He hadn’t spoken to her. And when they walked inside, the only thing he did was gesture to Marina Reyes.
“Lock her up.”
Marina raised her eyebrows, but didn’t argue. The woman shrugged almost apologetically and then took Isabella’s hands and put them behind her back. “Sorry. But he’s the boss.”
“That’s okay,” Isabella said faintly. It wasn’t. But what was she supposed to say? She couldn’t fight and try to flee the scene. That would have only made her appear more guilty.
Marina cuffed Isabella and then walked her down a hallway. “Yates’s place isn’t big,” the woman explained. “Just a bedroom and a tiny box back here that was supposed to be an office.”
“So that’s your holding cell?” Isabella tried to sound nonchalant, but she felt incredibly vulnerable.
Marina pushed the door open. “You’ll be safe in here.”
The space was barely bigger than a closet. It had a tiny casement window up high. One bare bulb lit the room with a dull yellow glow. The linoleum floor was cracked. There was a chair and it occurred to Isabella to wonder who they had kept in here before.
“Just sit tight and I’m sure Trapp will be in to explain soon,” Marina told her.
Isabella sank down onto the single chair. Then before she could even process what was happening, Marina adjusted the cuffs and linked them to a ring in the back of the chair. Now Isabella was well and truly trapped!
“Hey!” Isabella protested. “Is that really necessary?”
Marina shrugged. “Protocol. You’re a prisoner. This is how we hold them. Take it up with Trapp when he comes back. Sorry.”
Then Marina left and Isabella was all alone with her thoughts. Panic set in quickly and she had to take deep breaths to keep herself from having a full on panic attack. She was in a tiny room by herself, chained to a chair, and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it. That meant the only thing to keep her occupied was her thoughts, and she really didn’t want to dwell on those. They were too busy spinning around in circles trying to figure out why the man she had fallen in love with now thought she was a criminal.
He had said he loved her. She squeezed her eyes shut and remembered that glorious night at the house when it had seemed as if they were completely separate from the world outside. She had told him how she felt. He had given her th
e words back. So why—if he loved her—did he not believe her? If his need for his sister to be safe was stronger than anything he might have felt for her, she was in some very big trouble.
TRAPP SAT AT the war table and folded his arms.
“You smell like smoke,” Romero wrinkled his nose.
Trapp snorted. “That’s because someone burned the house down around us.”
“What?” Sparks jumped to his feet. “The house is gone? Just gone?”
“Burned to the ground.”
“Dammit,” Sparks muttered. “I was totally going to suggest that for our honeymoon.”
“Could we manage to talk about something other than relationships for the next few minutes,” Trapp groused. He was really getting sick and tired of everyone’s happy love bubbles. Seriously. He was going to get the bubble popper and go after these idiots with a poker if they didn’t shut up.
“Someone’s feeling sour.” This was from Bones. He sat in the back of the room with a broad smile on his dark face. “That’s all right, man. Women can do that to you.”
“Stop!” Trapp snarled at his men. “Do you even understand what I’m telling you? Isabella told me that they found bodies off the coast. She thinks that one of them is Rachel. That would mean Rachel is dead. But I know I’ve seen her. Twice now. Once in the parking garage outside the federal building and the other time in those woods. She’s the one who sat fire to the house.”
“Why?” Yates was poking at some maps. He looked up at Trapp and raised an eyebrow. “What purpose would that serve?”
“Humor me,” Trapp told them, holding up his hands. “Let’s say that every one of those women was re programmed, or even just that they carried some kind of disease. When our lovely state department spontaneously rescues them they’d go home to their families. Right?”
SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series Page 69
