by E M Lindsey
“He wasn’t military, but he works with sensitive information. I think,” Cole added, because nothing was making sense anymore. Why wouldn’t Taber tell him they were working out of some dilapidated old building made up to fool him into thinking it was a working office? Where the fuck was everyone else? “I don’t…I’m not sure what the hell is going on.”
“I believe,” came a soft, vaguely familiar voice from behind Cole and Wes, “I can answer that question.”
Wes’ hand flew to Cole’s arm and squeezed. He could feel the line of tension through Wes’ body as they backed up slightly and into the office. “I know you,” Cole said, his voice soft and as easy as he could manage. He had been trained to deescalate conflict, but he’d never had to put it into practice. “How do I know you?” He desperately grasped for anything to connect him to a face or a name in his past, but nothing was coming up.
“We should talk a bit, don’t you think?”
Scottish. The man was Scottish. The man was…
“Wes,” Cole said in a faint whisper. There was sudden movement and then Wes gripped him harder and Cole knew. “He has a gun pointed at me, doesn’t he?”
“He does,” Wes confirmed in a low growl.
Cole licked his lips, then turned his face toward the man. McCaig, if he remembered right. “I want you to let Wes go. Whatever’s between us can stay that way. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Of course,” McCaig interrupted, a little too easily for Cole’s liking. “My business is with you, Major Price.”
Cole went stiff all over at hearing his name, and he heard Wes make a strangled noise behind him. “If you think I’m leaving you alone with this guy, you’re out of your damn mind.”
Cole turned toward him, profoundly aware he was turning his back on a gun, though he supposed it didn’t matter in this situation. “You have a daughter, and a wife, and a kid on the way,” he reminded Wes. “You have a family, and I cannot, I will not, let you put yourself at risk.”
“You have one too,” Wes told him, not letting his arm go. “God damn it, man, what is your daughter going to think if something happens to you?”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Cole told him, not voicing everything else swirling through his head that for a dark moment thought maybe Claire would be better off considering all the danger that came with him existing. “Please, I’m not going to ask you again, but I will let him take you out of here if I have to.”
“He’s a smart one,” McCaig said, addressing Wes. “You’d better go, Sergeant Baum.”
Cole was surprised at Wes’ ranking for a second, then realized he wasn’t shocked at all considering what he knew of him. “Please,” Cole said in a near whisper.
He didn’t want to be alone with this man. He couldn’t assess the situation, didn’t know who he was apart from a frigid parking lot conversation, and his life was in danger. But he also wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing he hadn’t taken the opportunity to send Wes back to his wife and child.
“I can’t leave you,” Wes said.
“I know it goes against every one of your instincts, but I want you to go home and kiss your wife and hold Maggie and…and I’ll call you when I’m out. I still have a tournament to fight in,” Cole added.
Wes let out a choked laugh, and then he assumed something visual was exchanged between the men, because Wes finally relinquished his grip on Cole and stepped away. “If he dies, I’m coming for you. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you won’t get away.”
McCaig said nothing, and Cole stood there holding Kevin close to his body as Wes’ footsteps and tapping of his cane faded into the distance. His ears strained, listening for the faint thump of the swinging door shut, and then he was alone with this man.
After a long silence, McCaig clapped his hands together, which meant he’d put away his gun, and he said in a surprisingly jovial tone, “Well, Major Price, it’s time we had a long chat.”
17.
“…Ryan? Please wake up. You’ve been asleep a really long time.”
Ryan groaned, reaching for his head which throbbed at the slightest movement. He attempted to open his eyes, but his left one wouldn’t cooperate, and the right allowed him nothing more than a hazy blur of a darkened room and a small figure crouched next to him.
A tiny hand touched his cheek and he swiveled his eye up, trying to focus. “What…”
“Are you alright?” The small, English accented voice clued him in, and Ryan sat up in spite of the vicious pain in his temple.
“Claire? Oh my god, Claire.”
At his recognition, she flung herself into his arms and buried against his chest. Ryan’s vision began to clear a little, and though his left eye remained stubbornly swollen shut, he was able to make out a dark, basement-like room with concrete floors, no windows, and a hazy, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“René said we were going to get ice cream,” Claire said, her tone trembling. “He said mummy would be there, but she wasn’t, and he took me here and told me to be quiet or he’d hurt her.” She sniffed and Ryan dug his fingers into her soft curls, trying to soothe her. He shuffled back until he was pressed against the wall and put both arms around her protectively. “Then he told me I had to phone you and tell you a lie about daddy.”
“Where’s your mom now?” he asked.
She sniffed again. “I don’t know. We’ve been here a long, long time and then he brought you, but you were asleep, and he said you would sleep a long time.”
“I did, didn’t I?” he asked. He felt more than knocked out. He’d been drugged, he was sure of it. He vaguely recalled the stinging sensation against his arm before he hit the ground. “I’m up now, sweetheart. We’ll get out of here as soon as I can get my bearings.”
“I want daddy. Where’s daddy?” she asked in a small voice.
He rubbed a soothing hand down her back. “I don’t know, sweetheart, but I’m sure he’s on his way.”
“Not yet,” came a gruff voice from Ryan’s left. He swiveled his head and saw a set of stairs, and the familiar form of René walking down. He had a gun openly displayed in one hand, and he looked exhausted with dark circles around his eyes and blood spatter on his shirt. His French accent was gone, replaced by something Ryan couldn’t put his finger on. “He will be, though. He’ll be trying to find you soon and that’s exactly what I need.”
Ryan rubbed at his temple and Claire leaned in to whisper, “He’s talking funny.”
“What the fuck do you want, man?” Ryan demanded. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’m trying to get back something I lost,” René said. He came to a stop in front of them, crouching down. When he reached for Claire, she flinched and buried herself deeper into Ryan’s arms and René laughed, pulling back. “You’re going to help me.”
Ryan grit his teeth, taking a breath and wondering if he could actually overpower this man. He’d been training a lot, but he wasn’t that good. Not yet. “You have to know I don’t know shit about Cole, right? He’s been lying to me.”
René laughed again as he rose and walked to the other side of the room. When he came back, he had a water bottle in his hand, and he held it out. “Go on. It’s sealed. You’ll want to get that shit out of your system as quick as you can.”
Ryan took it but didn’t open it. “Tell me you know I can’t help you.”
“You can,” René said lazily. “I know you don’t have any clue who Cole is, or what he can get me. That doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t see how—” Ryan’s words were brutally cut off when René back-handed him across the face. He immediately tasted blood and put his arms tighter around Claire who whimpered and started to cry into the front of his shirt. “She’s your step-daughter. What the hell?”
René snorted. “She’s leverage.”
Ryan realized right then, that although he might not know what Cole was involved in, everything had been a lie. Not a lie on Cole
’s part, but everything he’d known up to this point had been false, and Cole wouldn’t have known—couldn’t have known. It had all been deliberate.
“What do you want me to do?” Ryan asked.
At that, René looked pleased. “I want you to stay conscious, keep the little shit occupied, and be right here with me when he calls.” René reached into his pocket and waved Ryan’s phone in front of him.
Ryan sighed, letting his head fall back against the wall and kept Claire close to him. He wondered where Isabel was, if she was part of this, if she was still alive if she wasn’t. He figured in time, it would all become clear, but René wasn’t the kind of man who could be reasoned with. If they didn’t play this carefully, none of them would be getting out still breathing.
***
Cole sat there, his ears buzzing with the shock, trying to retain control over his beating heart. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he repeated for the fifth time. Because what this man had just told Cole was that the dead body lying on the floor of his office wasn’t Darren Taber, it was Major Brendan Williams—a man who had served with Cole in that tiny little office for three years. Three years, and Cole hadn’t recognized him because he’d adapted an American accent.
According to McCaig, a special agent sent over and likely sanctioned by the Queen Herself, Major Williams had deliberately led their convoy into the explosion. He’d turned traitor with the promise of money for the information being held in that truck. He’d staged the accident and had gotten away with the tiny piece of evidence The Veil needed. And now he was here, looking for it. He must have initially suspected Cole for holding the files, but it hadn’t taken him long to pinpoint Taber—or well, Williams—and now he lay dead.
“I don’t know if he’s coming after you still,” McCaig said quietly. “It seems like your ex-wife…”
“She wasn’t my wife,” Cole said, irritated and a little scared.
“She and your daughter are missing,” McCaig supplied, and Cole felt like he’d been hit with a sack of bricks.
“What?” he whispered.
“Missing. We lost track of them sometime last night and that’s when we decided to move in. We were too late to prevent Williams’ attack, and when we tapped into your security feed, we found the place already ransacked.”
Cole licked his lips, pushing down his fear. “Okay. What do we do?”
“Right now, we wait,” McCaig said, igniting Cole’s fury all over again. “If one of them has taken her, they’ll be in touch.”
“Why would they?” Cole asked. “If Tab—if Williams is dead, clearly they got what they needed.”
“We don’t know for sure he did,” McCaig said. “We’ve been watching him for a while and he never tried to move anything.”
Cole let out a tense, high-pitched laugh. “And what the bloody hell did he want with me? All of this…all of this was a fake?”
“He falsely recruited you. There are a few in his pocket we’re allowing to believe their actions and identities remain hidden because right now, they’re still useful.”
“So I was never active. Not after,” he gestured to his eyes.
“I’m afraid not. We believe he was training you to work on decrypting the information before he turned it over to his buyer since you were one of the few who was capable of it. Clearly it was proving to be more difficult than he anticipated,” McCaig said.
Cole’s face burned. “He must have figured out I was useless.”
McCaig laughed. “On the contrary, we’ve all been very impressed. You wouldn’t be the first injured solider to be offered a position within our ranks, Mr. Price. I understand your frustration with your condition, but you’ve proven yourself.”
“By what?” Cole spat angrily. “By not being able to see a man I should have recognized? By not understanding that I was in danger this entire time? Now my child and her mother are missing and I…”
His phone began to ring the distinct sound that told him it was Isabel.
“It’s her,” he said, fumbling to grab it from his pocket. His shaking fingers took a moment to right the device, then he answered it. “Isabel? Where are…”
“Cole?” She sounded groggy, her tone warbling a little, letters slurred together. “Cole. He to-took her. He took her.”
“You mean Claire?” He felt vicious, uncontrollable panic rising in him. “Who took her?”
“René,” Isabel gasped. “He…there was a gun. He had a gun, had her…said he’d…oh god.”
“Isabel,” Cole said very softly, using every scrap of control he had. “Tell me what happened.”
“I didn’t know,” she sobbed. “I didn’t…we met in a bloody market. He was so charming, so sweet. He liked me, he didn’t mind that I had Claire. He told me not to come here, then when I said no, he went against me, went over my head. Told them we had to be placed with you.”
Cole felt like he was being punched in the gut, his air leaving his lungs in bursts. “Where is he?”
“He says you have to call him, says only you can do this. He left me a number.”
Cole’s head shot up. “Get this down,” he said, then rattled off the number as she gave it, bit by bit.
“He’ll tell you what he wants, what he needs you to do. I…please. You have to get her back,” she said.
“Where are you?” Cole demanded. “Let me send someone.”
“No. He’ll let me go,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “When I do this, he’ll let me go. I have to…”
The line went dead, and Cole let out a stream of curses, fighting the urge to smash his phone. After a moment, he calmed and quickly opened his phone app to place the call. “Read me the numbers, please.”
McCaig wasted no time in complying.
Cole put them in, and when he started the call, he heard the distinct voice of his phone telling him, “Calling Ryan Anderson.” He hit the phone with two hard taps of two fingers to end the call, breathing heavily.
“Ah,” McCaig said as Cole’s head began to spin. Ryan was in on this. He was part of this? Had he been the entire time? Had he been… “I’m going to assume they’ve taken your boyfriend into custody.”
That hit him even harder. He allowed himself a moment to process that it wasn’t Ryan trying to hurt him, but somehow had become a victim in all of this. Fuck. Fuck.
“Go ahead and ring him. I’m assuming that’s what he wants,” McCaig urged.
Cole forced himself to go back to his training, to remember how to stay calm and stay focused in a situation threatening to drown him. His fingers shook, but he knew what he had to do. “Call Ryan Anderson,” he told the phone.
It began to ring, and his heart pounded so hard he could hear it in his ears, feel the beating pulse in his neck. It rang once. Twice. A third time. By the fourth he was afraid it had all been for nothing. And then a voice picked up.
“I wasn’t sure you were going to go through with it.” It was familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. The way he might have felt about Taber, though he couldn’t be certain. “I’m assuming you’ve found your friend by now?”
Cole pressed his fingers against one of his soft eyelids and took in a breath. “I have.”
“Then you know what I’m after,” the man pressed.
“I do. Some of it, at any rate. I’m not sure what you want with me. If it’s the files, I don’t have them.”
He laughed. “I’m well aware, or you’d long be dead by now. It took me some time to track them down, but I was fairly certain the person who took them would come after you. Blind or not, you were the one who could get them what they wanted.”
Cole dragged his hand down his face. “You have my daughter.”
“And your cute little boy-toy. Do you know what he looks like? How unbelievably gorgeous he is?” the man mocked.
Cole clenched his jaw, then felt unexpected comfort when McCaig’s warm hand touched his arm and squeezed down. “I want to know they’re alright.”
&n
bsp; The man laughed. “You like those movies, don’t you? The ones who let you believe you can negotiate here?” There was a pause, then his voice sounded far off as he said, “Tell your boyfriend here you’re alive.”
“It’s René!” Ryan’s voice shouted, and beyond that was Claire’s faint cry of, “Daddy?”
Cole felt his entire heart rise into his throat. “Where…”
“I know Isabel told you exactly who took your child.” René laughed. “I want you to know that I climbed into the bed of the woman you have a daughter with, put my cock where yours had been, and won the attentions of your sweet Claire while you were being manipulated by an upstart piece of shit soldier who was never clever enough to get anywhere with his lofty aspirations.”
Cole felt bile rising and he swallowed against it. “Isabel…”
“She’s on her merry way, but it’ll take her a while to get back here without money or a car. I don’t need her anymore, and trust me, anything she thinks she knows about me will lead authorities exactly nowhere.”
Cole bit the inside of his lip, then said, “The Veil.”
René laughed even louder. “God, that’s so embarrassing, that name they’ve given me. The Veil, like a bad political thriller. I mean, I’ll allow it, you have to let them stay entertained.”
“What do you want?” Cole demanded.
“I want you to decrypt this file. Do it fast enough and I won’t murder your daughter. Do it faster than I expect you will, and I won’t murder your boyfriend while she watches.” René chuckled and then said, “I think twenty minutes is fair.”
“I can’t,” Cole said, his voice trembling. “Everything in this office is smashed to pieces, and I can’t bloody see, which you know.”
“You have friends. They can help you,” René said, sounding a little bored.
Cole shook his head. “I’m not doing anything unless you guarantee they’re safe.”
