HIS BABY’S KEEPER: Desert Marauders MC

by Evelyn Glass

  “First,” she said, her hands shaking but her voice steady, “you could say that you’re sorry about what you just did. We don’t know why Jay has been contacting me through that phone, but we know he has. You might’ve just hurt your chances of getting your daughter back.”

  His eyes were thunder and lightning. He gave her a curt nod, then seemed to realize that what he was doing wasn’t going to help. He closed his eyes, took another one of those long, deep breaths, and said, “I know you’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s go get the girl. Okay?”

  He held out his hand, and she took it in hers, letting his fingers twist around hers. “All right,” she said. She turned her gaze towards Misty, who was watching them with a small smile on her face. “Did you get the address? Do you know where we need to go?”

  “Yes.” Misty rattled off an address back in the middle of the city. Emma wasn’t familiar with the street, but Dean was nodding.

  “Does what he said match up? About taking down the firewall so that you’d be able to track him?” she asked.

  Misty bit her lip, then nodded. “I hate to say it, but yeah, it does. My skills are great, but his encryption was going to keep me out for a lot longer, and then it just opened up. I could’ve believed I’d gotten lucky, but it did feel off. It makes sense that he let me through if his goal was to get you to Mia.”

  Emma turned towards Dean, waiting for him to meet her eyes. It only took a moment for him to do so, but it was a moment longer than she liked. “Are we ready to do this?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Are we really going alone?”

  It was nice that he asked. “I believe him when he says he’ll take her farther away, Dean. He truly believes he’s keeping her safe by doing this, and we know he went and got her inhaler to make sure she was okay. I don’t think he’ll hurt her, but I also think he’s unwell.”

  “True,” he said. “He worked for a wetwork agency, contracted to deal with troublesome people. We’ve never used them, of course, but they have a reputation. And when I asked them about Jay… it seems Jay has a reputation within the group. They are very concerned about his actions, was the way they phrased things, and it doesn’t sound like Jay is going to have much use to them after what he’s pulled here.”

  “Do you think they’ll intervene and try to take Mia for their own purposes?” Emma asked.

  “No,” Dean said. “But I do think they’ll be trying to take Jay out, and not too worried about who gets caught in the crossfire if it accomplishes their goals.”

  Something cold settled in the pit of Emma’s stomach. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m going to have Connell and the rest of the Titans follow us back into the city. Let the Scorpions decide what happens to those shitheads in the other room.” His mouth spread into an angry smile. “They’ve got plenty of vengeance to sort out for Fred Killian. Let’s let them take care of it. I want to go get our girl.”

  She took his hand and followed him through the warehouse, her head full of happy fuzz as he stopped to speak quietly with Connell, who nodded, and then had a brief, whispered conversation with Marv. She let that phrase, “our girl,” buoy her as Connell let out a shrill whistle, and the members of the Titans who were present looked up, left their tasks, and formed up behind them. She focused on the feeling of Dean’s hand in hers.

  This was finally going to be over. Mia was going to be safe. She didn’t know exactly what would happen after that, but she believed in her heart that it would involve this man, together with her. It was going to feel good, and it was going to be good. And that little girl, who she already loved, was going to be safe in her own bed tonight.

  And, if necessary, she would put her own life down in order to make it happen.

  ###

  She didn’t start getting nervous until she and Dean hit the point where Dean and Connell had agreed that the Titans would fall back and wait for some kind of signal that it was either clear to enter, or that the pair needed backup. After that, Emma found herself wondering exactly what she and Dean would be walking in to. In the face of everything she’d dealt with in the past few days, it was easy to look at Jay as the civilized criminal. But he’d kidnapped her, tricked her, turned her over to masterminds who had gotten another young woman killed, and hidden a child from her parents to “protect” her instead of going to the police. It was far too easy to believe that this was some kind of trap, which would end up with a “News At Eleven” headline and her face splashed across TV screens.

  They had tried so many things and wandered through down many paths. The truth was that this man had been leading them every step of the way. If he wanted to give Mia back to them, she believed they would get Mia back. But if he didn’t… shit. She couldn’t let herself think about it too hard because she didn’t believe that they would be able to outsmart or outthink Jay in any way. If he decided not to give Mia back, she didn’t think they’d be able to find him. And she didn’t have any clear idea of what would happen next. It didn’t seem logical that he would’ve spent all of this time and energy protecting the child just to — to hurt her.

  She had to trust him because she didn’t have another alternative. She just hoped Dean felt the same way.

  He parked the bike in the dust for what had to be the thousandth time in this horrible stretch of days. She slipped off the bike first, took off her helmet, and waited for him. He followed her, taking her hand and squeezing it tight for just a moment before releasing it and started towards yet another abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. She followed him, not close enough to trip him enough, but ready to act if necessary. She had to laugh at herself. As if she could do anything to help him get through this, other than be emotional support. This was his play, and she probably should’ve stayed out of it. All she was going to do was get him killed.

  The front door was hanging loose on its hinges in front of them. Dean turned toward her, his eyes flaring with heat and want. He took her hand again, but instead of a gentle, familiar squeeze, he tugged her close. She stumbled into his arms, and he wrapped her up tight against him.

  “We’re going to get through this,” he said, and she was quite sure that he was reassuring himself. “We can do this.”

  She nodded against his chest, trying to be strong and reassuring instead of fearful and nauseated. “Should we split up inside? You go left, and I go right, that kind of thing?”

  He shook his head. “We’re stronger together. If we stick together, we can take him down.” She felt the grin that spread across his face, and when it faded. “Besides. I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to focus at all if you’re not right there where I can see you.” His grip tightened for a moment. “Emma. I can’t lose you either. Do you understand me?”

  “I love you, too,” she said, pressing her lips against his shirt. She left a small lipstick print there, and it made her smile. She liked seeing her man marked for her. “Let’s get this done.”

  His lips pressed against the crown of her head for a moment, and then he was pressing the door open with a bit of a heave. It didn’t squeal of rusty metal or kick up as much dust as she thought it should, but that was all the time she had to notice what was happening before the crackle of gunfire shattered the air.

  Things started happening very quickly. Dean pulled her down, all but dragging her into the shelter of a fabric and pressboard cubicle which was still coated in dust and grime. He pushed her into the corner, his entire face gone stone cold and battle ready. She hated that look on him, wanted to reach out and soothe it away, but the shots were still firing, and her stomach had gone completely cold. She suddenly knew how people ended up peeing themselves in fear. Her bladder didn’t release, and she was glad of it, but the way the fear completely overwhelmed her, shut off the higher functions of her brain — it felt like a panic attack. She forced herself into the same strategies. Five things to hear, four things to see, three things to touch, two things to taste, one thing to… whatever the last one was, she never remember
ed. And half of the things she could sense had to do with gunfire.

  Panic attack strategies didn’t work when the panic was genuine. Okay. Fair.

  Dean was saying something to her, but her ears were aching from the sound of the gunfire, which was a lot larger than it was in the movies, more all-encompassing. She pushed herself to focus, to hear him, and saw him telling her to stay here, he was going to find the shooter. He pulled a gun out of—God, somewhere, she didn’t know where he’d kept it—and ducked out of the cubicle.

  The fear rolled over her again, and she had to fight hard not to just curl up in a ball and scream. It wouldn’t help, it would keep either her or Dean safe, and it wouldn’t help Mia. She had to stay strong and stay quiet. All the fear about the life she’d meant to choose versus the one she was currently in and the man who showed no signs of wanting to leave tried to bubble up again. But if she let that fear have space to breathe, if she gave way to it, then there’d be nothing left but the fear, and she believed with all of her heart that a little girl who trusted her would die here today.

  She forced herself to take enough deep breaths to make her head spin and then looked up.

  She’d lost track of Dean, but she could see the man with the gun. He was holding some kind of rifle, she didn’t know enough to identify the model, but it looked like something out of a war film, something that would spray death at a hero in a slow-motion collage of death. He had his back to her now, but he was moving slowly down the row that would lead to him finding her in just a few moments.

  Dean had told her to stay put, but that man was going to find her, and she doubted he would hesitate, monologue, or take her to see his leader once he did. She was quite sure he’d kill her, with no fanfare.

  Her legs were weak and afraid. She knew she was moving away from the spot Dean had left her, the place he’d told her she would be safe. She knew that she didn’t have her phone or any easy way for him to contact her once he realized she wasn’t where she’d been left. If something went wrong, it was possible he’d be trading one hostage for another.

  She crept out of the cubicle, as quiet as she could, and started sneaking towards a stairway she could see in the far corner. She had no idea where to find Jay and Mia, but she knew how to be methodical. She knew how to make her way through a building. And she was going to do everything in her power to help. To not be a burden. Even if it terrified her.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Dean

  Dean made his way through the creepy, dusty old warehouse, trying to see within the industrial litter and shattered mess where his daughter was hidden. The shooter had completely disappeared. He thought for a second about going back to get Emma but dismissed the thought. She would stay put and be safe back there. He could focus all of his energy on finding Mia.

  He was no expert tracker, but he’d spent a few odd moments of his life trying to find people who didn’t want to be found, and he saw no sign that this building was anything other than what it looked from the outside: an abandoned building. It had probably been used by junkies, transients, and frightened kids to get away from the parents who did nothing to live up to the name and responsibility they’d been given. He didn’t believe that anyone could’ve gotten into the building, not with a child in tow. That meant Jay had to have another entrance to the building.

  Which meant that Dean had no idea where to go to find Mia.

  He felt sick having left Emma behind. He had to trust that she would stay where he’d put her. Thinking about her roaming around this building on her own, trying to find Mia as well — or worse, in the hands of a maniac like Jay, the woman and the girl he loved both at the mercy of a trained assassin — it made him too frightened to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He told himself that Emma was a smart girl who would realize that she was entirely outmatched In this situation, and who would stay exactly where he’d left her. No matter what happened.

  Even if it was the most ridiculous lie he’d ever told. Sillier than the Tooth Fairy, and more ridiculous than Santa Claus.

  When his phone rang, he almost jumped out of his skin. He’d been skulking along for so long that the sharp hip-hop beat of the phone’s ringtone was louder than a gunshot to his ears. He crouched down low, looking for who was coming at him, before realizing that he was coming at himself, giving away his position, making himself a target. He fumbled the phone out of his pocket, rushing to silence the sound before it could get him killed, but the unfamiliar number gave him pause. And then he recognized it. It was the same number that had flashed on Emma’s screen when Jay had called her.

  He put the phone to his ear at the same time that he moved forward quickly, pressing his back against a convenient wall. At least here there were only two approaches, and he could reasonably see both of them.

  “Listen, you son of a bitch,” he snarled, trying for the classic action hero upper hand approach.

  Jay had probably heard it all before. He laughed, low and genuinely gleeful in Dean’s ear.

  “Don’t start, son,” Jay said. “I’ve got your girl right here, and I don’t think you understand all the ways someone like me has the capacity to hurt a child.”

  “I want her back, Jay. What is the point of this elaborate game? She doesn’t know anything.”

  “That’s the part that you don’t fucking understand,” Jay snapped. “She knows everything. She has the key that they’re afraid of. She doesn’t even know she has it, but the men who took Emma this afternoon, they would have no problem destroying your daughter. I don’t think you entirely understand that at all.”

  “What’s to understand?” Dean held the phone away from his ear for a moment, trying to hear Jay’s voice from somewhere other than the phone, get a read on where the man was so that he’d know which way to move in the building. No dice. The empty building was a strange mix of echoes and deadened air, but he wasn’t able to tell anything about where to go next. “You kidnapped a child to save her from some threat that wasn’t even a problem until you got involved.”

  It was odd, hearing a grown man scoff into a cell phone. “You haven’t been paying any kind of attention,” Jay snapped. “The girl knows what they’re afraid she knows. What her mother knew. She doesn’t know she knows it, and they’ve got the notebook now, so that’s not going to be as much of an issue as it was before. But I wasn’t completely rogue on this one, Patterson. I was hired to kill your kid. I chose not to do it, to do this instead. I’m going to be a dead man when I let her go.”

  Something twisted inside Dean’s guts. The man was terrifying, and he had held everyone that mattered to Dean in his control in the past seventy-two hours, but it was still disturbing to hear someone speaking calmly about their own death. Jay’s voice was entirely sure, completely convinced that this would come to pass. He was not debating it for a single moment. It was a surety. Dean had heard some of his siblings in the club speak that way — when they knew their lives were close to an endpoint. It was no less disturbing to hear from a trained assassin.

  “Jay,” he said, and he heard the shift in his tone when he started thinking of the man as a fellow soldier instead of an enemy combatant. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You’ve got the power in this moment, man. Let me get my little girl back, and I’ll do everything I can for you. The Titans has power in this town, and the Scorpions are with us right now. Between the two groups, there’s not much we won’t be able to get done. All I need to hear is what you want. What you need us to do.”

  “There’s nothing to be done. My time is just up. When I was first recruited to this organization, I was told that it was a good life, until you found the job you couldn’t do. That when that happened, you were done, because the organization does not forgive failures. There aren’t any reasons good enough for backing out of a job you’ve agreed to do. I didn’t realize that the name I was given belonged to a kid. That’s on me. Once I’d taken the job, it was her or me. No excuses. No exceptions.” Dean could almost hear the ot
her man shrug.

  “Sure,” Dean shot back. He had to get moving. He stayed crouched, but he chose a hallway almost at random, pushing forward, trying to both listen to his phone and keep his ears open to seek out sounds of other people creeping through the building. “But that’s not what I was told by the organization itself when they told me who you were.”

  That did seem to throw Jay off his game, but only for a moment. “Who did you speak to? That bitch Tracy? She’d say anything to get rid of me. She’s hated me for years. Says I don’t ask enough questions.”

  “Too many?”

  “I meant what I said.” A bitter laugh echoed through the phone, and — was there an answering echo, up above him? He turned toward the sound and pressed on. “Guess she was right this time.”

  “There’s always a way out,” Dean said. “A bigger fish to turn on, a bigger problem to solve. There’s no need to assume the game is over until all the cards are dealt.”

  “It’s easy to say that when—” Jay’s voice cut off, and Dean’s heart throbbed in his throat. “Your woman is almost here. Emma. She’s a good girl. She’s helped you out more than you know.”