by Mallory Kane
He glanced back at the house, running a hand across the back of his neck. His expression reflected his struggle. He wanted to be with his son, but he also wanted to see for himself that his estate was still secure.
She remembered what she’d thought the first time she’d seen him. He was burning himself out. A wave of compassion caught her off guard.
Just then the mobile radio clipped to the waistband of his jeans crackled. He unclipped it and listened.
Natasha only caught a couple of words. Truck. Explosives.
“Alfred, open the side gate.”
“No.” The word cracked like lightning through the radio.
She agreed with Mintz. Dylan was the last person who should be on the other side of that gate right now.
Mintz said something else.
“Then you come in here and tell me what’s going on,” Dylan snapped. “Now!”
He clipped the radio back on his hip and muttered a curse. He paced, flexing his right hand, doubling it into a fist, then flexing it again.
“Dylan.”
A heated frown was his only response.
“Dylan.” She laid a hand on his tense forearm. “You shouldn’t pull Mintz away from the scene right now.”
He ran a hand over his face. “He’s not in charge anymore,” he said bitterly.
“He’s not? You mean my agents have taken over?”
“They aren’t in charge, either. The scene has been taken over by the police. Apparently, not only must I have the FBI crawling all over my private property, I can’t even keep the damn cops off.”
Natasha took a deep breath as she eyed the smoke billowing above the twenty-foot gate. The air was tainted with the odors of gasoline, oil and other less-pleasant odors. Smoke stung her nostrils.
“That’s how it’s done,” she commented. “The entrance to your estate is now a crime scene.”
He sent her a glare worthy of a laser scalpel.
She met his glare, shook her head and turned back to the rising smoke. “You really think you can control everything, don’t you?”
“No. Alfred says the same thing. You’re both wrong. I just want to know what’s going on.”
“The very definition of control freak,” she muttered.
“What did you say?”
A noise to their left caught her attention. She stepped around Dylan and raised her weapon just as Mintz appeared through a steel mesh door obscured by a tall hedge, accompanied by a dour-faced man in a rumpled suit.
The stern man eyed Natasha’s Glock and swept his suit coat back to reveal his weapon and shield. A police detective.
Natasha lowered her weapon. She dipped into her fanny pack and pulled out her own badge. “Special Agent Rudolph. FBI.”
The detective nodded. “Frank Buckram. Homicide.”
Dylan’s shoulder brushed hers as he stepped forward. “I’m Dylan Stryker. Did you say homicide?”
“Yes, sir,” Detective Buckram said.
“What the hell is going on?” Dylan looked at his trusted friend, whose face was creased with worry and smudged with soot. That Alfred was shaken alarmed him. “Are you all right?”
He nodded and squeezed Dylan’s shoulder with his big rough hand. The gesture both comforted and worried Dylan. It was Alfred’s version of a hug.
“The vehicle was an old delivery truck,” Buckram continued. “Apparently the driver was on a suicide mission. The truck was a rolling bomb.”
The words slammed into Dylan with the impact of .38 slugs. “Bomb? Suicide?” He looked from Alfred to the detective to Natasha.
Her jaw was set, her face fiercely controlled. She exchanged a glance with the detective. Had she been expecting something like this?
Had Alfred? Was that why the ex-POW who’d rather chew rifle slugs than have anyone tell him what to do had been so adamant about accepting the FBI’s help?
“I don’t get it. Are you saying somebody deliberately blew themselves up trying to get through the gates?”
“Yep. Could be one of those terrorist fringe groups. We’ll have to wait and see who claims responsibility.” Buckram pulled out a notepad. “You’re working on some secret government project, right?”
Dylan grimaced. “You could say that.”
Natasha moved closer. “What do you know so far, Detective?” she asked.
Buckram looked up from under his brows. “Not much. My men are still assessing the situation. The truck has no license plate, and we haven’t recovered a Vehicle Identification Number. Our CSU will be here in a few minutes.”
Alfred spoke. “They’ve got the surveillance disks from the two guardhouses the truck broke through. Only took him about eleven seconds the way he was driving.”
The detective bobbed his head up and down. “Chances are slim to none, but we’re hoping to get an ID on the driver or the vehicle.”
“Hold it.” Dylan wiped his face. “How many people are going to be involved in this? I can’t have investigators and police running around all over the place.”
“You don’t have a choice, son,” Alfred said. “It’s out of our hands. Until we know otherwise, they’re treating this as a homicide, a possible terrorist act.”
“Fine. As long as Ben and the lab are safe. Buy me enough time to finish.”
He turned to Natasha. “As soon as I can get the implant inserted into Ben’s back, attach all the fibers and make sure it’s compatible with his immune system and the computer, the FBI and the NSA and whatever other letters want it can have the whole stinking thing. I don’t care.”
How much more death was there going to be because of him? He’d give his life to make his son whole, but he’d never imagined that his dream of creating a computerized connection between the brain and the body would drive people to murder—or suicide.
“When I developed the capability of stimulating nerves artificially, I envisioned it giving paraplegics the ability to walk, providing nerve-damaged patients with a way to be free of wheelchairs and braces, maybe even some day replacing damaged ears and eyes.” He rubbed his face. “I never considered creating supermen who could wage superwars.”
He met Natasha’s gaze and saw understanding in her green eyes.
Alfred glanced back toward the house. “Ben with Charlene?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Natasha told her to get him into his braces, in case we needed to move him.”
Natasha’s expression changed to alarm. She turned to Buckram. “Detective, what purpose did the bomb at the gate serve?”
Dylan heard the controlled concern in her voice. What purpose? He looked at Alfred, who was rubbing his palm over his short-cropped hair. He was worried, too, and that scared Dylan.
“That’s what I was wondering,” Alfred said. “That truck’s not big enough to do any damage to speak of. We’ll probably have a couple of marks on the gate and some burned grass, but that’s it.”
“So what was the point? A demonstration? A publicity stunt for their warped cause?” Natasha’s tone sharpened. “Don’t these guys usually sacrifice their lives for something? Not just for show?”
Her knuckles whitened as she gripped her weapon. “There’s something else going on.”
A metallic voice from the two-way radios drowned out the end of her sentence. Mintz grabbed his. “Mintz, here.”
“This is Robby. You need to see this, sir.”
“What is it?”
“A breach, sir. A section of fence on the west side has been cut.”
“Did he say breach?” Dylan’s pulse hammered and a stinging sensation crawled across his skin.
Alfred stiffened. “Put guards on the fence,” he barked. “Get a search organized. Account for everyone.”
The gruff words ripped through him. “Oh, God! Ben.” His heart froze.
Natasha’s face drained of color.
“Ben!” He took off running back to the house. He pumped his arms, reaching for more speed. His damn loafers slipped on the pavement.
He heard the crunch of gravel over his shoulder. Someone was running behind him, catching up. Natasha.
By the time he reached the covered drive in front of the front doors, the two-way radio crackled with the sound of Alfred’s voice, barking more orders.
A guard spotted them and threw the doors wide. Dylan and Natasha entered shoulder to shoulder. They turned toward the living quarters and burst through the doors.
Dylan skidded to a halt in front of Ben’s door and put out a hand to stop Natasha. She bumped into him from behind.
He struggled to pull oxygen into his lungs. If Ben was in there, and unharmed—please God—he didn’t want to scare him.
Natasha hung back, instinctively understanding his brief pause. He wiped his face. She was waiting for him to make the first move.
He turned the knob and pushed open the door. Nothing. The room was empty.
“Ben!” he shouted as his heart shattered. “Ben!”
Natasha pushed past him and swept the room. She nudged open the closet door, then swung her weapon around.
She caught his gaze and nodded toward the door that connected Ben’s room with Charlene’s.
Dylan acknowledged her, then stepped over to the door. He opened it, standing aside so she had a clear shot if she needed it.
She moved like a cat as she stepped silently through the door, her weapon ready.
Dylan followed, flipping on the lights.
“Empty,” Natasha said. Her gaze went to Charlene’s closet. She nodded at Dylan, who eased along the wall toward the door.
The door to Ben’s room burst open.
Natasha jerked around, aiming her Glock.
Mintz entered, breathing hard.
“Alfred?”
“I’ve got men searching the house and the grounds,” Alfred said.
Dylan grabbed his arm, partly to draw strength from his friend, but Alfred seemed just as shaken as he was.
“Have you searched the whole wing?” Alfred asked.
Dylan shook his head. “Just in here—”
“Daddy?”
The small muffled voice sheared Dylan’s breath.
Natasha whirled instinctively and aimed at the closet door.
Dylan reached for the doorknob but Natasha grabbed his arm. “Wait. Get back.”
Alfred stalked past them and with a nod at Natasha, he twisted the knob and opened the closet door. Natasha’s arms straightened and her finger tightened on the trigger.
Underneath the hanging clothes were two pairs of feet, one pair locked into braces.
Dylan gasped. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath.
Ben’s head stuck out through hanging dresses. His face lit up and he shot out of Charlene’s arms. “Daddy!”
Dylan crouched down. As his child flung himself at him, he wrapped his arms around him and lifted him. “Hey, sport.” His voice broke and he buried his nose in Ben’s bubble-gum scented hair.
Natasha stepped closer to the closet door.
“Come out of there,” she said to Charlene crisply, her attention half on Dylan and Ben. Every time she saw them together, her insides twisted into knots, sending a mixture of longing and emptiness through her.
She couldn’t watch Dylan hugging his child and not be affected by the sight. Still, she did her best to ignore the imagined feel of those arms comforting and shielding her, or the fantasy of herself as a part of that loving embrace.
Charlene crawled out of the closet and stood, folding her arms around herself. Her face was pale and distorted in terror. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
Natasha nodded, watching her closely. “Why didn’t you answer? You must have heard Dr. Stryker calling.”
Charlene shook her head. “I couldn’t be sure about the voice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had trouble getting Ben’s braces on. The sirens terrified him. We sat on his bed, but then I heard something.”
“What did you hear?”
“The slamming of a door, or maybe wood cracking. The noise came from the direction of the stairs, so I didn’t want to take him through that hall. I brought him in here.”
“You’re going to need to talk with the detective,” Natasha said.
“Detective? Police?” Charlene’s eyes showed white all the way around the irises. “What happened? Is everyone all right?”
Natasha nodded, glancing at Dylan.
He shifted Ben to one arm. “Charlene, thank you for taking care of Ben. Tell Alfred everything you heard and saw. I’m going to stay with Ben for a while, until he falls asleep.”
As Alfred and Charlene left, Dylan aimed a warning look at Natasha. “Come and get me in an hour. Alfred will do his best to talk you into letting me sleep longer.”
AN HOUR LATER NATASHA shrugged tension from her shoulders as she stepped through the hidden gate beside the massive entrance. She was weak with relief that Ben was all right. She’d thought about going back to her room, but she knew there was no way she’d sleep. So she’d come out to see what, if anything, was going on at the scene of the bombing.
Storm looked around as she emerged from the shrubbery.
She had no idea how he always knew when someone was approaching him. He had some sort of sixth sense, a talent inherited from his Native American ancestors she was sure.
“Anything new?” she asked him.
He nodded toward a dark sedan. “Buckram’s leaving now. Like he said, there’s not much to go on. They’re loading what’s left of the delivery truck to take back to the lab.”
As he spoke, a monstrous dump truck hoisted the charred wet mess in a massive scoop and dropped it into the bed. White and black smoke belched out from the truck bed.
“Think they’ll find anything?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? They’ll sift through it. But that fire was superhot. Burned everything to a crisp. Whoever made the bombs did that on purpose.”
“Terrorists?”
“Buckram figures the driver was probably a foreign national, in the U.S. illegally. If that’s true, it’s going to take weeks to sort out who he was.”
“I guess it won’t do any good to try to match dental records or DNA.”
“If we’re lucky, the guy will be in our terrorist database. But it’s a long shot. Even if he is it’s going to be a slow process. If they were dumb enough not to file off the Vehicle ID number, or if any papers survived the fire, we might get lucky.”
As the truck pulled away, Natasha walked closer to the gates. “Like Mintz said, there’s hardly a mark.”
“Buckram took a list of Stryker’s staff and the surveillance disks from the two guardhouses and from the camera mounted beside the gates.”
“Why didn’t you take them?”
Storm sent her his million-dollar smile. “’Cause I’m undercover, sugar. I don’t have access to the labs and equipment here. It’s probably best that no one know that there’s more than one FBI agent on the scene.”
“Even Buckram?”
Storm nodded just as his gaze sharpened. A couple of seconds later she heard footsteps. She turned in time to see Mintz emerge from the hidden gate.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, glowering at her. “Get back to the house and catch a couple of hours sleep. Today’s going to be busy, and you still have a hacker to catch.”
She glanced at Storm, who chuckled.
“Where’s Dylan? With Ben?”
She nodded. “Ben was really scared. Dylan lay down with him. He wanted me to wake him in an hour. He said you’d try to keep me from bothering him.”
A crack appeared in Mintz’s weathered face. Must have been a smile. But then it was gone. “Come on, I’ll walk you back.”
Natasha raised her brows at the unexpected offer.
“See you later, sugar,” Storm said.
“Bye, Storm.”
She went through the gate behind Mintz and fell into step beside him.
“Dylan’s exhausted,”
he muttered. “It’s a wonder he can think. But he won’t stop. Acts like he has a personal vendetta against Ben’s disability.”
“Burning himself up from the inside.”
Mintz shot her a look. “Good way of putting it.”
At the front doors, Natasha paused, hands on her hips. “You look like hell yourself, Mr. Mintz. You’re covered with soot and mud. Have you had any sleep?”
As usual, Mintz didn’t answer her question directly. “It’s been a long night.”
“I vote we let Dylan and Ben sleep, what do you say?”
His sharp brown eyes studied her. “What about you? You didn’t get any sleep, either.”
Natasha stretched her arms and arched her neck. “I had a couple of hours before the excitement. I think I’ll take a shower and then get started tracing that hacker.”
DYLAN AWOKE IN A PANIC. Someone had tried to break in. His eyes flew open and he saw the small dark head of his son.
Ben was lying on his back with a small fist curled close to his chin. His beautiful little face was placid, his long dark eyelashes resting on his round cheeks, his little mouth moving with his soft breaths.
He was so innocent, so vulnerable. Dylan’s heart swelled until he felt his chest couldn’t hold it. He loved Ben so much his whole body ached with it. His eyes stung and his throat grew tight.
All he wanted was to make everything right for his child—give him a perfectly functioning body, let him run and play in a world where there were no fences, no confining braces, no people who could hurt him.
But he couldn’t rewrite the past or change the present. Someone had deliberately run his wife’s car off the road and killed her and maimed his son. The love inside him morphed into helpless fury as the awful memory of the twisted wreckage of the SUV rose in his mind.
And now, despite all his careful efforts, he was under attack again.
Ben stirred, some part of his sleeping brain noticing his father’s agitation.
