Battle Tested

by Janie Crouch

  Steve personally had called the state and highway patrols for New Mexico, Kansas and Texas. He wanted them to understand the direness of the situation; he didn’t want it to be just be another report that came across their desks.

  It was all long shots, but Steve would keep taking long shots until one of them paid off. It was getting late now. Dark. The thought of her alone with the Watcher overnight...

  Derek put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

  Steve wiped a hand across his face. What could he say?

  That panic was crawling up his spine, threatening to take over not only his whole body but the whole world?

  How would anyone understand that?

  “She’s alive, Steve. When the panic starts to overwhelm you, you push it back down with the thought that until we know definitely otherwise, Rosalyn and the baby are both alive.”

  Maybe someone could understand that.

  Derek could. Hadn’t Steve seen the very agony in his own eyes in Derek’s eighteen months ago when a sadistic bastard had kidnapped Molly?

  Derek had moved heaven and earth to get her back. Steve had helped. He prayed he would get his own happily-ever-after with Rosalyn and their child.

  “I thought she was dead once, Derek. And that was before I knew what she meant to me. I’ll be damned if I’ll let her die again not knowing I love her.”

  Molly walked through the door. “You’re not going to have to.”

  Both men turned to her. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve found the frequency the Watcher was using to track Rosalyn from a transmitter Jon and Brandon brought back from other victims. The transmitters were still live.”

  “What?” Derek asked.

  “I don’t know if the Watcher was trying to keep tabs on the families or what. But I was able to use them to find other transmitters. Actually, I’ve found all the women—since he used the same frequency for all the transmitters.”

  “How do we know which one is Rosalyn?”

  She ran over to the computer and brought up a navigation system on the screen.

  “I’m going to assume she’s the one halfway between here and Mobile.” She pointed to a red dot near Oklahoma City.

  Oklahoma City was less than six hundred miles. They could’ve made it there if the Watcher drove at a rapid pace.

  He would’ve been moving at a rapid pace.

  Derek kissed Molly and ran for the door. “The team and I will meet you at the helicopter in ten minutes,” he called back to Steve.

  Molly touched Steve’s arm as he moved toward the door and handed him a small GPS screen. “You’re going to need this. Outside Oklahoma City is the best I can do from this far away. As you get closer, this monitor will provide more details.”

  Steve kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Molly.”

  She shrugged. “You once broke all the rules and gave Derek a plane to come after me. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here now.” She pushed him. “Go get your girl.”

  * * *

  TRUE TO MOLLY’S WORD, the GPS continued to become more detailed the closer they got to Oklahoma.

  The transmission wasn’t in Oklahoma City at all; it was in Guymon, a much smaller town northwest of the city.

  At some point the Watcher had gotten off the main interstates, which had been a smart move on his part.

  “Boss, there’s no actual helicopter landing site big enough for us in Guymon. But we’ve been given permission to land on the high school field.” Lillian was flying the helicopter. One of her many skills.

  “Good.” Steve spoke into the headset he and the five members of the SWAT team were wearing.

  As they got closer, Steve was able to pinpoint Rosalyn’s location. A hotel about two miles south of the high school. Steve provided the info to Lillian, who relayed it to the local police, who would also be providing them transportation to the hotel. They landed a few minutes later.

  The local deputies were there with a county van to take the SWAT team and Steve to the location. Steve could tell the team was ready.

  There wasn’t anybody he would want at his back more than these men—and this woman—right here.

  “You guys...” He looked at Derek, then at Lillian. He needed to express how important Rosalyn was to him.

  “No need to say it, boss,” Derek told him. “We’ll get her out, safely.”

  They were less than a minute out when the news came over the van’s CB unit.

  “We’ve got reports of shots fired at the Best Holiday hotel on Thirty-Second Street.”

  That was the hotel where Rosalyn’s tracker had stopped.

  Steve’s curse was foul. The van squealed into the hotel parking lot and Steve and the team poured out the back door before it even stopped moving.

  The place was surrounded by cop cars, officers using their vehicles for cover, weapons drawn.

  Steve rushed up to the officer in charge, a kid, probably in his mid-twenties. Doubtful he had any experience with this sort of situation. “I’m Steve Drackett, head of the Critical Response Division of Omega Sector. I need your name and a rundown of the situation.”

  “Keith Holloway, sir. Evidently a man was bringing in his exhausted pregnant wife, who’d been very sick. He was half carrying her, according to one witness. But then she started screaming that he was kidnapping her and he pulled out a gun. Shot the clerk.”

  “How long have you been out here?” he asked Holloway.

  “Less than two minutes, sir.”

  Steve looked over at Ashton. “Got any ideas for a distance shot?”

  Ashton was already putting his distance scope on his rifle. “It will be hard without knowing where Rosalyn is.”

  “I’m going in to draw him out. As soon as you can get a good shot, you take it.”

  “Steve—” Derek put an arm out as Steve stood up.

  “He’s trapped. He knows it. Getting out with Rosalyn will be nearly impossible. He’ll cut his losses and shoot her as a distraction. And he knows the longer he stays, the less chance he’ll have to get away.”

  “He’ll shoot you.”

  The other members of the team were taking out their rifles too. None of them were as good a shot as Ashton, but that didn’t matter now.

  Steve looked at them. “I’ll draw him out. You take him down.”

  Mind made up, he walked quickly to the front door and went through. A little bell chimed as he did.

  “Leave right now or I will kill her!” Steve couldn’t see anyone but could tell they were behind the counter.

  “I think it’s time we meet face-to-face, Watcher.”

  He heard Rosalyn’s sob but didn’t know if it was from pain or relief.

  “Who are you?”

  “You sent someone to kill me today. That didn’t work out.”

  “Steve Drackett? How did you find me?” His tone was incredulous.

  Steve took another step closer. He needed to draw the man out. “The same way you’ve been finding Rosalyn all these months. And the other women. We know about the transmitters in the teeth. It’s over.”

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” He stood up now but kept Rosalyn right in front of him, his gun to her head. No one would be able to get a clean shot.

  And Rosalyn was glassy-eyed, pale and covered in blood. The Watcher seemed to be half propping her up.

  Steve forced himself to stay focused.

  “You’ve ruined my research. My life’s work! You have no idea what good I was doing for the world.” He was frantic, voice high-pitched, hysterical.

  “All I want is Rosalyn.” Steve kept his arms out in front of him but shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. He was going to make a move that would draw the Watcher’s attention and gun
to him.

  “No. She’s already promised me her baby. She understands my research and knows how important it is.”

  Now. He had to do it now.

  But Rosalyn beat him to it. Her eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she slid to the floor.

  The Watcher couldn’t hold her up and turned his gun on Steve.

  Glass shattered all around him and the Watcher flew back and onto the ground, dead, shot six times. Every single member of the SWAT team had taken him out.

  Steve jumped over the desk counter and picked up Rosalyn’s still form. There was more blood on her now. Had she been shot? His hands were so shaky he couldn’t get a pulse.

  Derek and Lillian made their way to him first. He was rocking Rosalyn in his arms but couldn’t get her to wake up.

  “She’s bleeding,” he told Derek. “She’s hurt.”

  Lillian put two fingers at Rosalyn’s throat. “She’s alive, Steve. I think she’s been drugged.”

  All he could see was the blood. “But she’s bleeding.”

  He felt Derek’s hand on his shoulder, pressing hard.

  “You’re bleeding, boss. Bastard got a shot off at you before we took him down.”

  Steve didn’t care. As long as Rosalyn was alive, the baby was okay, Steve didn’t care about himself. He pulled her close to him, uncaring of the pain, certain he was never going to let her go ever again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You’re going to get fired if you keep taking all this time off work, you know,” Rosalyn told Steve as they walked through the sands of Pensacola beach a month later.

  He smiled at her and pulled her closer to his side. “I have ten years’ worth of vacation time saved up. I’m not going to get fired.”

  “So you brought me back here to the scene of the crime, literally and figuratively.”

  She was glad. The drugs Zenger had given her had slowed both her and the baby’s heart rates to dangerously low levels. She’d been unconscious for two days. But that had probably been for the best since Steve had been shot while rescuing her.

  He’d gone into surgery and they’d removed the bullet, but there had been some pretty significant damage done to his shoulder. It would require quite a bit of rehab to get it back to full motion again.

  While she was unconscious, since the drug Zenger gave her worked similarly to a general anesthetic, Steve had convinced the doctor of the medical necessity of having the crown with the transmitter removed and replaced with just a plain old regular crown.

  Rosalyn had been thrilled to hear it, even though the Watcher was dead and it didn’t matter anymore.

  The Watcher was truly gone. Rosalyn had explained who he was, and with the technology Molly had cracked, they had let the other women know what had happened to them so they could get the transmitters removed.

  Of course, it was too late for the four women they knew of who had committed suicide and a fifth one whose case they hadn’t discovered yet.

  But Rosalyn had made it. She was still so thankful she’d met Steve at this beach—now seven months ago—because otherwise she wasn’t sure that she would’ve.

  He was everything to her.

  Rosalyn had been alone most of her life, even when she’d been surrounded by her family. This past month she’d been shown what a family was really meant to be. People willing to stand with you, protect you, put their lives on the line for you.

  Family was something that had nothing to do with blood and DNA and everything to do with love. She knew no matter what happened between her and Steve, the baby she carried would have a family who loved him. The people in Omega already did.

  She knew Steve loved the baby. She just wished she knew how he felt about her. Even though she’d lived in his house the last month, they still hadn’t talked about the future.

  “I’m not really good at romance,” he murmured.

  She shook her head. “Says the man taking me on a stroll on the beach as the sun is setting. I think you’re doing okay.”

  “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you since the first night we met.”

  “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

  “Will you have dinner with me?”

  “What?” She laughed.

  “I want to take you out to dinner and on dates. I want to court you and show you how much you mean to me. I want to show you that you can trust me with your secrets. You can trust me with your heart.”

  “Steve, if this is about the baby...”

  “No.” He turned so they were face-to-face. “All of that has nothing to do with the baby. It’s what I’ve wanted to say to you since the first minute you walked into that tiki bar when I could tell you were capital-T trouble.”

  He smiled at her. “I’m excited and terrified about the baby, as all new fathers should be. But you’re the one I want, Rosalyn. Always. I will ask you to marry me tomorrow. But today, I just want to take you out. Will you have dinner with me?”

  She reached her arms around his waist and pulled him to her.

  “Yes. To both.”

  And right there in the sand where everything had almost ended, her new life began.

  * * * * *

  Look for more Omega stories

  from Janie Crouch in 2017.

  You’ll find them wherever

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  Stone Cold Texas Ranger

  by Nicole Helm

  Chapter One

  Vaughn Cooper was not an easy man to like. There was a time when he’d been quicker with a smile or a joke, but twelve years in law enforcement and three years in the Unsolved Crimes Investigation Unit of the Texas Rangers had worn off any charm he’d been born with.

  He was not a man who believed in the necessity of small talk, politeness or pretending a situation was anything other than what it was.

  He was most definitely not a man who believed in hypnotism, even if the woman currently putting their witness under acted both confident and capable.

  He didn’t trust it, her or what she did, and he was more than marginally irritated that the witness seemed to immediately react. No more fidgeting, no more yelling that he didn’t know anything. After Natalie Torres’
s ministrations, the man was still and pleasant.

  Vaughn didn’t believe it for a second.

  “I told you,” Bennet Stevens said, giving him a nudge. Bennet had been his partner for the past two years, and Vaughn liked him. Some days. This was not one of those days.

  “It’s not real. He’s acting.” Vaughn made no effort to lower his voice. It was purposeful, and he watched carefully for any sign of reaction from the supposedly hypnotized witness.

  He didn’t catch any, but he could all but feel Ms. Torres’s angry gaze on him. He didn’t care if she was angry. All he cared about was getting to the bottom of this case before another woman disappeared.

  He wasn’t sure his weary conscience could take another thing piled on top of the overflowing heap.

  “How are you today, Mr. Herman?” Ms. Torres asked in that light, airy voice she’d hypnotized the man with. Vaughn rolled his eyes. That anyone would fall for this was beyond him. They were police officers. They dealt in evidence and reality, not hypnotism.

  “Been better,” the witness grumbled.

  “I see,” she continued, that easy, calming tone to her voice never changing. “Can you tell us a little bit about your problems?”

  “Nah.”

  “You know, you’re safe here, Mr. Herman. You can speak freely. This is a safe place where you can unburden yourself.”

  Vaughn tried to tamp down his edgy impatience. He couldn’t get over them wasting their time doing this, but it hadn’t been his call. This had come from above him, and he had no choice but to follow through.

  “Yeah?”

  The hypnotist inclined her head toward Vaughn and Bennet. It was the agreed upon sign that they would now take over the questioning.

  “It’s not a bad gig,” Herman said, his hands linked together on the table in front of him. No questions needed.

  Yeah, Vaughn didn’t believe a second of this.

  “Don’t have to get my hands too dirty. Paid cash. My old lady’s got cancer. Goes a long way, you know?”