She cleared her throat, glanced at Justin and took a breath when he nodded. “Quite a bit, actually. Trent’s been taken hostage in Cozumel, and I’ve kidnapped an eight-year-old girl. Do you think you can fit me into your schedule?”
Chapter 11
Cate must have felt as if she were back in medical school, an annoying little bug who couldn’t say a single word that didn’t draw scorn from the men seated around them at the table. Justin sat beside her, and Luisa stood fearfully at his shoulder, watching wide-eyed. He wasn’t sure how much the girl understood, but she was expert at matching tones to unpleasant memories.
“Let’s get this straight,” the FBI guy said. “Trent Calloway and his girlfriend have been missing for five days and you just now get around to telling us.”
“Not missing,” Cate said coolly. “Held hostage. We didn’t call because, gee, when men with guns shoot at you, then tell you ‘don’t call the police,’ it seems like a good idea to not call the police.”
“And now you want us to…what? Haul your butts out of this mess?”
The look she gave FBI guy was even frostier than her voice. “No, I trusted our butts to Rick and GBI. I didn’t call you.”
Rick Calloway, an older, tougher version of Trent, raised one hand. “I had to bring the FBI in, Cate. We’re talking interstate and international child trafficking. Like it or not, a good part of it’s their jurisdiction.”
FBI guy scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. “Just my luck I’m on call when the amateurs come out to play.”
“Shut up, Madden,” the third man at the table said. He was GBI, as well, and looked like he’d slept in a refrigerator box the last few months. His hair was dark and wild; so was his beard. But his eyes were as clear and sharp as ice. Rick had called him Evan; after his first scornful look, FBI guy hadn’t spoken to him at all.
“Hey, don’t tell me—”
Evan stopped FBI guy with a look. He might as well have had Doesn’t play well with others tattooed on his forehead. Justin would rather have just one of him on their side than two dozen FBI guys.
FBI guy scrubbed his hair again, then dropped his hand to his stomach. “I’m gonna get some coffee.”
When the conference room door closed behind him, Rick laughed. “Evan has a reputation for being right on the edge of crazy insane. People are leery of working with him.” But not him. He treated him like a buddy.
The man gave no hint he heard the words.
Rick settled his gaze on Cate. “I have to say, I would’ve expected Trent to get into trouble long before you. You’ve always been the responsible one.”
“You did notice I wouldn’t be in this trouble if not for Trent. Let’s talk before that idiot comes back. You know, for five days, virtually every man I’ve dealt with has been a jerk. It doesn’t speak highly of your gender.” Then she blinked. “Present company excluded, of course.”
“She means you guys,” Justin said. “I’ve been a jerk.”
She looked at him, and a small smile touched her lips. She even scooted her chair a little closer. Luisa ducked into the space between them, one hand on Cate’s arm, the other on his.
“What about Luisa?” Cate asked.
“We’ll leave her here with a couple of agents.”
Luisa began shaking her head. “No, no. I want to see Susanna.” Dark eyes pleading, she looked from Cate to Justin, then grasped his hand in both of hers. “Quiero ver a Susanna. Quiero ir a casa—La Casa. Por favor, Justin!”
He lifted her into his lap and smoothed her hair back, cupping his hands to her cheeks. “Luisa, we’ll be back, I promise, and we’ll bring Susanna with us. It’ll be just a few hours. They’ll get supper for you, whatever you want, and you can watch TV, and then Susanna will come.”
Her lip stopped quavering, and the fear lessened in her eyes. “A few hours?”
“Yes.”
“Two hours?”
“Maybe three. You might even fall asleep before we get back.”
“But you will bring Susanna and Trent?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him a long time, then sagged against him with a weary whisper. “Okay.”
His stomach knotted. Those were some awfully big promises. But he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. With the GBI’s assistance—and a lot from God—they were going to walk out of the meeting tonight, alive and well: Trent, Susanna, Cate and him. They would all be safe to go back to their normal lives, Susanna and Trent at La Casa, and he and Cate…
He and Cate didn’t have a normal life yet. But they would. Just because this crisis was nearly over didn’t mean they were. They wouldn’t be. Not ever.
“Okay,” Rick said. “Our teams are set up at the hangar. Justin, you’ll be wearing that under your shirt.”
The hangar was abandoned in a little-used area of the airport. The Wallaces could taxi their jet right inside and close the doors behind them, except that Rick’s guys had disabled the doors and brought in some junked equipment and crates to provide themselves with cover.
Wondering what kind of cover he’d have, Justin followed Rick’s gesture to the bulletproof vest at the other end of the table, and his stomach knotted again. Being shot at when he didn’t expect it was one thing; being prepared for getting shot at again was another entirely. He liked risk and excitement, yeah, but he wasn’t a hero. For the first time in five days, this was real. He felt it in every one of his cowardly bones.
“Where’s mine?” Cate asked.
He snorted and said the same thing at the same time as Rick. “You’re not going in.”
“Wait a minute. They brought me into this. I didn’t volunteer. They’ll expect me to be there.”
“You’ll be in the car,” Evan said. “If they want to see you, you can roll the window down. But you’re not getting out.”
“Why? Because I’m a woman?”
“Because it’s easier to protect one target than two.” Evan flashed what probably passed for a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in the car with you.”
Cate didn’t argue, but Justin knew not to assume she was accepting their decision. “You’d better handcuff her to the steering wheel. She’s very stubborn about not doing what she’s told.” Then he grinned, probably doing as poorly a job of it as Evan did. “Besides, we might need an E.R. doc by the time we’re done. If you need to apply pressure to me, you know the places I like it best.”
She tried to glare at him, but after a moment she just rolled her eyes and shook her head.
Rick’s phone beeped, and he pulled it out. “I don’t know which of you pissed off Madden most, but it looks like he’s going to text rather than come back in here. The Wallaces’ private jet took off from Cozumel an hour ago. Destination Atlanta. We’d better get out to the hangar. Traffic the way it is, they could beat us there.”
While Evan helped Justin with the vest, Rick called a female agent to take charge of Luisa. She hugged both him and Cate, made him promise again that he’d bring back Susanna, then left the room with the woman.
“The faith of a child,” Cate murmured.
He tugged his T-shirt back in place. “Do you have faith in me?”
“I do.” Simple. Solemn. More gratifying than any two words should ever be.
He bent close, brushing her ear with his mouth. “You’re gonna say that to me at least one more time, doc. You might as well start accepting it now.”
She gave him a sweet, womanly smile that damn near took his breath away, then matter-of-factly said, “We’ll talk about it.”
His groan was only half-fake. Look at all the talking it had taken her to make love with him, and that was for a very important, granted, but small commitment. How much more would it take to get a lifetime commitment out of her?
They had filed out of the conference room and down the hall to the elevator when his cell phone rang. He checked the screen, ready to automatically mute the call, but the number there stopped him. Everyone around him went silent
as he raised the phone to his ear, including the woman with Luisa, paused in the act of going through a doorway. “Hello, Joey.”
“We want the girl.”
Sweat popped out on Justin’s forehead. “What girl?”
“You don’t play stupid well, Seavers. We want the Suttons’ kid. If she’s not at the meeting, you’ve blown your last chance. You’ll be taking your buddy Trent and his girlfriend home in caskets.”
“You really think I’m dragging an eight-year-old kid around with me?”
“I really think you’d better have her at the hangar when I get there.”
“Our deal was for the files.”
“Now it’s for the files and the girl.”
“Why? Sutton was careless enough to lose her, so you’re gonna give her back?”
Wallace’s laugh was spook-house creepy. “Of course not. We have a number of prospective parents on our waiting list. We’ll place her in another happy home.”
“And collect another couple hundred grand in the process?” Justin’s jaw clenched. “Your mother should have drowned both you and your brother at birth.”
“Right back at you, Seavers. Bring the girl or lose your friends. Your choice.”
“Bastard,” Justin muttered. He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “I guess Sutton gets home early on Fridays.”
He turned to look at Luisa, and so did everyone else.
“What the hell do we do now?”
* * *
It surprised Cate that just a few miles away, all the hustle and activity of a major city airport was taking place while here, in this little corner, all was still. The only light shining on the hangar, besides their own headlights, came from too-distant flood lamps that cast a lot of shadows but offered little illumination. The structure was big, peeling paint and showing rust, and she couldn’t help but imagine it as the centerpiece of a slasher movie.
Justin slowed even more as he approached the entrance. “Wouldn’t this make a great haunted house? The Crash of the Damned, Flight 4377. That’s hell spelled upside down in numbers, you know. Fog and wind machines, an old fuselage, ripped metal and the ghosts of the passengers flitting about.”
She shuddered. “Please tell me you do haunted houses at the community center and that’s why your brain works along those lines.”
“We do haunted houses at the community center.” He spoke with utter seriousness until a grin broke it. “I’m not sure why my brain works the way it does.”
He drove through the door practically at a crawl, circled around, then parked the borrowed SUV near the rear of the building. His gaze flickered to the rearview mirror. “Okay, we’re inside. Now what?”
From the cargo area of the truck, Evan answered. “Leave the lights on, go over and flip the power switch on the west wall. Then come back, shut off the lights and the engine.”
Dark as he was and dressed all in black, Cate couldn’t identify any part of him when she glanced back as if checking on Luisa. She’d seen the guns he’d brought with him, though, high-tech, high-power, scary-looking weapons. Scarier, she hoped, than the Wallaces’.
Justin got out, the truck dinging, and followed Evan’s instructions. She expected a blaze of bright lights, but the naked bulbs did little to dispel the darkness. She supposed since there were people hiding in the hangar, darkness was good, since she couldn’t spot any of them, either.
From the backseat came a soft, frightened voice. “¿Dónde está Susanna?”
“Ella vendrá pronto,” Evan responded.
Seemed everyone spoke Spanish except Cate. She should take classes…or ask Justin to teach her. As long as the first word he taught her wasn’t adiós.
“Now what?” Justin rested his arms on the window frame, his hands loosely clasped. Tension radiated from him in waves…or was that her own tension bouncing off and reflecting back on her? He didn’t look nervous, while she was so anxious she thought she might empty her stomach any moment.
“We wait,” Evan replied with the patience of a man who’d done a lot of waiting in his life. “They’ll let us know when the jet lands.”
Justin came around to the passenger side and opened the door, tugging Cate out. The interior light, controlled by a switch on the dash, didn’t come on—another handy feature, along with the heavily tinted windows. At the back of the building, between the truck and the exterior aluminum wall, no one could see them besides Luisa and Evan, and she’d bet he wasn’t looking.
Turning so he leaned against the vehicle, Justin wrapped his arms around her from behind and pulled her snugly against him. The rigidity of the bulletproof vest discomforted her, but the rest of his body was achingly familiar. “We’re almost there, doc. It’s almost over.”
She gripped his wrists, his radial pulse pounding beneath one fingertip. He wasn’t as calm as he looked. “I’m scared.”
“So am I.” He rested his chin on her head. “God, it’s been one hell of a week. When this is done, we need a vacation. You, me, a yacht in the Caribbean…”
A week ago, she would have scoffed at the idea of going anywhere with Justin or splurging on the luxury of a yacht. Her only vacations included volunteer work, and even if she could have afforded a yacht, she couldn’t have stopped thinking how much good that money could do elsewhere. Now… “That sounds wonderful.”
He nuzzled her ear, bringing a shiver. “You realize, of course, that there are pirates all over the Caribbean.”
She did scoff then. “After the Wallaces, pirates don’t scare me.”
A sharp rap on the rear side window drew their attention out the hangar doors. In the distance, a plane was taxiing their way, its lights small and insignificant in the night.
Justin pivoted her around. “Do everything Evan tells you, okay? Don’t be stubborn. Don’t try to stand with me. Just stay where you are. Okay?”
She felt as if she’d bitten into a lemon, her teeth grinding, the masseter muscles aching with the dismay of giving the answer he wanted. “Okay.”
His gaze searched hers a moment, then he nodded, helped her back into the truck, and walked to the other side. He stopped about a dozen feet away, where he would be clearly visible to the passengers once the plane stopped, standing at an angle so she—and, more important, Evan—had a partial view of his face.
“Don’t put your seat belt on,” Evan said when she reached for it. “Get back out and stand on your side of the truck. Let them see you, but don’t step out from behind the truck unless you have no other choice. And if things go wrong, duck.”
She let the belt slide free and did as he said, unsure her legs were steady enough to hold her without Justin there for support. All she could have at the moment was a glance from him, along with a smile that flattened his mouth, but it would have to be enough.
Five days. This was only the fifth day since she’d left home, planning a pleasant, quiet trip, doing preventive care for the girls at the home and indulging in a little private envy of Trent and Susanna’s relationship. Only five days, and so much had changed—her outlook, her life, her self. She was a different woman.
In love with a very different man.
The growl of the plane’s engines grew louder as the pilot headed straight toward the hangar. At what seemed the last possible moment, the jet pivoted in a tight right turn, stopping so the exit was just outside the reach of the dim lights inside.
The door opened, the steps folded down, and two men, both armed, exited the plane and took up position on either side. The third man, Cate was sure, was the bastard she’d spoken to on the phone. He looked exactly the way he sounded: smarmy, phony, capable of horrible things. Evil in a thousand-dollar suit.
Followed by evil in a five-thousand-dollar suit. Cate recognized Joseph Wallace from fundraising brochures for La Casa—handsome, a little too polished. She’d always thought that veneer hid the superiority people like him—like Justin—wore to hide their contempt for those beneath them. Now she knew it hid the malevolence inside him.
>
And she whispered a silent apology to Justin for ever considering him equal to the snake.
Wallace stopped a dozen feet in front of Justin and gave him a sweeping look that dismissed him as harmless. “You have the files?”
Justin produced the flash drive from his pocket but didn’t offer it.
“And the girl?”
“She’s in the truck.” Not quite turning his head, he called in Spanish, and Luisa leaned forward to wave one hand out the driver’s window. “Where are Trent and Susanna?”
“In the plane. Get her out.”
Justin grinned. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
Wallace hesitated, then gestured, and the smarmy guy walked back to the plane, leaning inside to bark a command. Cate’s breath caught in her chest as she stared hard at the narrow door, waiting, willing, praying.
Susanna stepped out first, her hair curling wildly, her clothes rumpled, an air of utter exhaustion about her. She didn’t appear to have been harmed, just very frightened. Still very frightened.
A few steps behind her was Trent, in jeans and a
T-shirt, unshaven, also tired, but if he was afraid, like Justin, he hid it well.
From inside the truck, Cate heard Luisa squeal with delight at the sight of Susanna, and Evan whispered harshly to her, dissuading her, Cate guessed, from jumping out of the truck and running to her friend.
The guards stopped Susanna and Trent before they’d taken more than a few steps, and Wallace said, as politely bored as if he were ordering coffee and a pastry, “The flash drive and the girl.”
Justin didn’t move. “What if I made a copy of the files?”
Wallace shrugged. “We have instant access to the girls—all of them. If you create any further trouble, the results for them would be disastrous. Collateral damage. One of the costs of doing business.”
To say nothing of the fact that he intended to have his thugs kill them all where they stood, Cate thought.
“That’s a lot of valuable property to destroy,” Justin said mildly.
In the Enemy's Arms Page 18
