There was a round of nods and then Trapp moved his hand in a rolling motion. He waited for all of his men to make the connection. Then he watched the horrified expressions on their faces and knew that they also realized how serious things were at this point.
Yates looked grim. With Tasha’s hand in his, he gestured at Trapp. “You’ve certainly got our attention. Anyone else think we need to come up with some weird kidnapping plan?”
Romero grunted and threw himself down in a chair. “That feels a little backwards. They’ve been kidnapping us and everyone else every five seconds. Now we’re going to try and snatch all of their product right from under their noses?”
“When is this going to happen?” Tasha wanted to know. “Do we have any idea?”
“Soon.” That was all Trapp had to go on. “Where would they be taking these women?”
Sparks snapped his fingers. “You mean, where would they be gathering them so that they could be”—he used air quotes—“found by authorities?”
“Exactly.” Trapp was feeling a bit of urgency. Then he remembered something. “Remember what Asif’s favorite hobby was? The one that drove his brothers insane because it never made any money?”
“Horse racing!” Cassidy shouted. “They’ve got a farm out in the middle of nowhere in Herndon.”
“I bet you anything that’s where they’ve got these women,” Trapp told them. “So we’ve got two tasks here.”
“Find the women,” Marina said quickly.
Tasha looked grim. “And find an antidote for whatever crud they’ve been infected with.”
Trapp didn’t even bother trying to paint the mission as easy or hard. Everyone already knew it was going to be tricky as hell.
WHEN ISABELLA GLANCED up and realized that Tasha Campbell had come in with what could only be described as her “interrogation face” on, Isabella was crushed. She couldn’t speak. It felt like her heart was breaking. Nothing else could have made it so apparent that Trapp had changed his mind about loving Isabella. How? What had she done so wrong?
Tasha pulled up another chair, turned it backwards, and sat down. The woman wore skinny jeans, boots, and a sweater. She was pretty in her own way, but it was the hard edge she carried that would attract a man like Yates. Isabella could see why this woman would fascinate the SEAL. For her part, Isabella would have preferred to deal with almost anyone else.
“Why would you tell Trapp that his sister was dead?” Tasha finally demanded. Her tone was low and deadly.
“Because that’s what the intel says and he was behaving erratically and I was trying to give him something real to hold onto.”
“What intel and why are you only sharing this now?” Tasha leaned forward, bracing her arms on the ladder back of the chair.
“It was something that came across my desk last week. Not long after Marina Reyes helped uncover those bodies in the Hansen Pharmaceuticals warehouse. There was an inquiry stating that they had found three more additional bodies off the coast of Virginia. The intel suggested these cases were linked. So we did some investigating and discovered that two of the bodies were women reported missing in the same way the others were.”
“The others meaning all of these other cases of women gone missing at clubs,” Tasha asked, wanting clarification.
“Yes.”
“So you just assumed the third one was Rachel?”
“It was badly beaten and difficult to identify. They think at this point that it is, but they’re waiting for dental records. They need Trapp to sign off on those, but he’s been—shall we say—unavailable?”
Tasha curled her lip in disdain. “But up until now you saw no need to mention this.”
“I hoped that it would be wrong,” Isabella said emphatically. “I did!”
“And then what?”
“Why would I tell him that his sister was dead when there was a remote possibility that she’s not?”
“Then why tell him now?”
Isabella was getting close to losing her temper. She could see why Tasha made a great investigator. She was stubborn and didn’t mind asking the same damn question over and over to see if she could get under your skin. “I told him because he was claiming that his sister was the person who tried to kill him in a parking garage at the federal building, and that she was the one who set the fire. That’s insane!”
“Not if you buy into the theory of conditioning,” Tasha pointed out. “And for now, we do.”
Isabella’s belly cramped as she realized that she wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.
TRAPP GOT HIS gear together and went to stow it in the tactical truck. Romero grabbed his arm on the way out the door. “So, what do we do with her while we’re gone?”
“I don’t care. Leave her tied up in there. It’s not like she’s going anywhere, right?”
“You do care so stop pretending that you don’t.” Romero’s tone was flat, and his expression was completely unbending. “I know you’ve been our CO for years, but this time you’re not. You’re our friend. And when I see my friend doing something stupid, I’m going to call him on it.”
“Stupid?” Trapp threw up his hands and nearly dropped his gear in the process. “How is it stupid to refuse to trust a woman who kept a secret like that from me? She kept a secret until it suddenly became more convenient to tell the truth. What else is she hiding?”
“Ask Tasha,” Romero suggested. “She’s the one in there interrogating her. You do realize that you sent the biggest hard ass in there to ask her questions, knowing that Tasha wouldn’t hesitate to rip her apart for info.”
“Maybe she deserves to be ripped apart,” Trapp retorted sullenly. He felt like crap. It was true. He’d sent Tasha in there knowing she was as tenacious as a junkyard dog when it came to getting answers.
“Just because she told you something you don’t like doesn’t make her a criminal,” Romero insisted.
Trapp glared at his friend. Why did the guy have to get involved anyway? He had a beautiful woman that had agreed to be his wife. He was getting out of the SEALs. Romero was leaving the military and settling down to a civilian life so that he could be with his Cassidy every single day without worrying that he would have to leave at the drop of the hat and give his life on some foreign battlefield and leave Cassidy a widow.
“Life is hard,” Romero murmured. “Isabella is an agent for Homeland Security. She’s been overseas with us. I remember. She’s not a weak link at all. She’s not a wimp. She’s not a desk jockey. The woman has some guts. If she told you that Rachel is dead, it’s possible that it’s true. We all knew that was a possibility, Trapp.”
“She’s not dead!” he burst out. “I chased her into those woods. I fought with her. I would know my sister in the dark or in full light. I know how she moves and I taught her to fight.”
Romero sighed. “Then let’s go after these bastards and find out what really happened to her.”
Chapter Fourteen
Isabella heard a lot of activity out in the main rooms of the apartment, and then total silence. It weighed heavily on her. She struggled with feelings of bitterness that she had been left behind and forgotten. It was almost as if the entire thing had been about getting information from her. From the very beginning Trapp had set out to make her tell him everything she knew about this investigation. She’d been open with him. She had told him things that she probably should have been fired for divulging to an outsider—if she even had a job anymore.
Now she was a fugitive, and Trapp thought she was some kind of traitor to him as well. Her shoulders were starting to ache from this horrible position. She was sitting with her butt on a hard chair. Her arms were cuffed behind her back and secured to a ring somewhere near the bottom of her seat. The position left her leaning a little bit forward while trying not to put too much pressure on her shoulder joints. Her hands had gone numb a while ago and she wondered if she was going to wind up with nerve damage. Did these SEALs even pay attention to that sort of thing?
/>
It occurred to her that this prison of sorts—holding cell they called it—had been created for someone. She remembered Trapp making allusions to the younger Armeen al Saud brother, Asif. What if the SEALs had kept Asif here for a time? If that was true then they had been concealing evidence too!
It boggled the mind that Asif was still alive. He’d been thought dead years ago, back when their sister had been murdered for being a fallen woman. Isabella would never forget that incident. It had infuriated her that she could not secure punishment for the man who had so defiled such an innocent. The guy had been a total douche about it too. He’d told his story about fucking an Arabian princess all over the desert to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately that meant word quickly got back to the girl’s family. They’d gotten involved and just like that things had gone to hell.
Isabella and Trapp had been at bitter odds over that incident too. Trapp had taken the soldier home and court martialed him according to military law. Isabella wanted to turn him over to the girl’s family for their own punishment. She had thought they would try him and then thrown his rapist ass into one of their hellish jails. Trapp only told her later that they would have killed him. She had accused him of making things up to justify his actions. Even then she’d known that wasn’t really true.
There was a noise somewhere out in the apartment. Isabella wrenched her mind back to the moment at hand and grew very still. She didn’t know what was happening. Maybe one of the others had forgotten something? Then she heard someone speaking in Arabic and knew that things were about to go from bad to a whole lot worse.
*
It took over an hour to get from Yates’s DC apartment to the Armeen al Saud horse farm on the outskirts of Herndon. The rural area was full of farms and large sprawling estates. The rich pasturelands were popular with hobby farmers and those who just wanted to live away from the tight crowded streets of the capitol city.
“Do you hear anything?” Sparks asked Romero.
Romero was the one with fantastic hearing in the field, but he shook his head. “I don’t even hear any horses. It’s a little odd don’t you think? The pastures are empty and there are no lights on in either of the barns.”
“The house is dark too,” Bones observed.
Trapp gazed around them. He knew from maps of the area that Asif’s horse farm was three hundred acres. That was a lot of space. Then he gestured to Yates. “You only saw the one cluster of buildings or structures or anything, right?”
“Right,” Yates confirmed. “The satellite image showed no other groupings that could be dwellings or storage.”
“What about storage containers?” Romero murmured. “They could have just stored everyone out here in containers.”
“That would make sense actually,” Yates agreed. “That’s what they’ve used in the past for transport and storage of their human cargo.”
Trapp took the matter in hand. He gestured to Romero and Bones. “You two head for the house. Take a look around and see if you can get inside. The rest of us will case the grounds looking for containers.”
Romero nodded. “Sounds like a good deal.”
Trapp watched Bones and Romero melt into the darkness. Neither man made a sound when they moved, and with Bones’s dark skin it was almost as if he were invisible. Trapp had sent them into worse situations so many times in their lives, but never for a personal reason. He knew these men were all in, helping him because they were not just friends—but family. Yet he still sometimes felt like he was asking too much.
“All right,” Trapp murmured to Sparks and Yates. “Let’s go quiet. Split up and fan out. If you find something, throw up a signal.”
Trapp knew he didn’t have to specify what that might be. His men knew that subtle was better. He felt them move away and kept tabs on their position on his mental radar. The grounds were almost impeccably clean. The barns were immaculate and there didn’t seem to be any horses, other farm animals, or even workers present. It was all very odd, but not criminally so thus far.
“Hey!” Yates gave a low whistle. “I found something.”
Sure enough, positioned behind the house near the second barn was a very large shipping container. It had the same initials stamped into it as every other container. Sparks was already examining the latch, preparing to open it.
“Wait,” Trapp said in a low voice. “Masks on, just in case.”
They both looked at him in momentary surprise before giving a nod. Then the three of them put their masks on just to be safe.
*
The door burst open and Isabella tried to sit straight and look completely composed. She felt ridiculous. Especially when she saw it was Hasim ibn Armeen al Saud. What would bring this asshole out of safety? Had he really come here expecting to find the SEALs waiting like sitting ducks for him to murder?
“Just like I had hoped,” Hasim purred. “Little Isabella Rockwood, the crusader of Homeland Security all trussed up like one of her own suspects.”
“What game are you playing, Hasim?” she asked quietly. It was a struggle to keep calm, but she knew that getting excited and showing fear would only give Hasim more of what he wanted. The sadistic son of a bitch got off on making people afraid. It was what he lived for.
Hasim grabbed the chair that Tasha had vacated earlier and sat down. “See, that is why you Americans are so easy to take advantage of. No imagination.”
“No imagination?” She tasted the words, wondering what he was babbling about. “We know exactly what you’re planning.”
“No,” he scoffed. “Those buffoons only believe they know what I’m planning.”
“You murdered your brother for this,” Isabella mused. That one still made no sense to her. “Why? He was the one who made money. Jabar was the brains. Everyone knew it.”
“And what does that make me?” Hasim leaned forward, looming angrily over Isabella. “Tell me why you think Jabar was so much better than I. He was weak. My brother was swayed only by money. Nothing else mattered to him. He had no causes and no desire for anything beyond making money for our family.”
“Sounds pretty honorable to me,” she shot back. “As opposed to you—whose only aspiration in life is to be the family sociopath?”
“I am not crazy!” Hasim shouted. His face twisted into a mask of anger and spittle flew from his lips. Apparently her words had touched a nerve. She wondered if she could do it again.
“I think you are crazy,” Isabella told him with a nod. She squirmed a little, but her hands were bound and there was no hope of freedom. “I think that’s what all of this is about. You were jealous of your brother’s success and now you think you can one up it by making the world fear you as an insane terrorist.”
Suddenly Hasim started laughing. He threw back his head and howled like a complete lunatic and she had to wonder if he had finally snapped. What would happen if he had? Would the world suddenly end? She had a bad feeling that whatever terrorist plot this madman had going on wasn’t going to stop even after he was dead and gone.
*
Trapp nodded to Sparks and held up three fingers. He counted down silently, feeling his gut twist with mingled apprehension and excitement. This was it. He could feel it. Finally they would get answers to what the hell was going on with kidnappings, human trafficking, and some vague terrorist threat.
Sparks swung the container wide open. Trapp and Yates shined their lights into the dark space, criss crossing the darkness and finding nothing. Nothing! Except there wasn’t nothing. There was something. It was just something that Trapp had most definitely not expected to see.
“Is that?” Sparks muttered.
Then Yates stepped into the container for a closer look. “Yeah. It is.”
“How?” Sparks was breathing harshly behind his Navy issued gas mask. “And can we take these damn things off? I can’t fucking breathe!”
Trapp forced himself to be rational. He pulled an electronic sensor from his pocket. He carried this in the field to
check for gasses before they infiltrated unknown areas in hot zones. The indicator was completely silent. There was no gas. He pulled his own mask off and gestured for the others to do the same.
“And if there’s a bio agent in here?” Yates groused. “I really don’t want super chlamydia or something equally icky.”
“What, like Anthrax?” Sparks shot back sarcastically.
“Shut up.” Trapp held up his hand. “When was the last time you guys saw Asif alive?”
Yates shrugged. “A few days. He’s been checking in with me via message board.”
“When was the last check in?”
“Just a few hours ago,” Yates said slowly. He approached Asif’s body in the center of the container and put his fingers to the man’s neck. “He’s still warm.”
“So he was probably fine then.” Trapp’s brain was spinning. “Who knew where he was?”
“Nobody,” Sparks said quickly. “Us. That’s it.”
“Then someone has hacked our network,” Trapp said grimly.
Asif sat in a chair, his hands cuffed behind his back almost exactly the same way that Trapp had bound Isabella. That fact was not lost on him. There were a lot of parallels. Except Asif had been strangled to death.
“Isn’t strangulation more of a female thing?” Yates pointed out. He was walking around the body, looking at it from all angles as he illuminated the scene with his flashlight.
“Can be.”
Trapp felt the bottom drop out of his belly. “Rachel.”
Yates and Sparks glanced at each other. He could practically feel them starting to go into their whole Trappis-going-nuts mode. He didn’t need that. Not now. Not when this whole thing is coming together.
“Did you use the same network that we always use to communicate with Asif?” Trapp demanded of Yates.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t my sister have access to that?”
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