“Son-of-a-bitch! I don’t have time for this,” he gritted out as he screeched to a sideways stop, a dozen local yokels descending on him and his stolen car with their weapons drawn.
“You do now,” Isaiah mumbled, his hands already up in the air.
This can’t be happening.
Melissa kept her face to the window, fighting tears and trying to keep track of her surroundings while she did. She wiped her bloody nose on her sleeve. The guy beside her, the one from the bus, still had her purse. He was the youngest of the three. He and the other two spoke angrily and too fast for her limited grasp of the language.
The guy in the front passenger seat seemed to be the most agitated. He hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left the warehouse, and he kept looking over his shoulder. She’d never forget his bleached blond hair over black roots. Only after they’d crossed the train tracks and barely missed the train did he slap the driver’s shoulder and settle down. He’d grinned at her then, his eyes dark with menace.
Tempted, she glanced back, straining to see if anyone might be following, if anyone was coming to save her. Whoever that guy up front had worried about, police or airport security, the train had effectively cut them off. She was on her own.
Melissa shuddered, truly scared for the first time in her life. These men were soldiers and well-armed. They’d just stolen a couple of months’ worth of supplies, amongst them morphine and other drugs. If this was just about the drugs, they might kill her because she could identify them. If they connected her with the world-renowned McCormack Industries, they might want ransom. Either way, she was in big trouble.
She squeezed her eyes shut and sent a silent plea to Virginia and the man she loved. Tucker. Help.
Chapter Four
“You what?!”
Tucker held the phone away from his ear. He knew he’d get his butt chewed by Stewart, but some of the expletives exploding out of the guy’s mouth were anatomically impossible, and throwing gasoline on the already raging fire in Tucker’s gut didn’t help.
He hunkered low, his arm against the jail’s concrete wall and his forehead pressed to his wrist. A pansy-assed guard in a pea green military uniform tapped his baton on the same wall, reminding him to hurry it up. Isaiah had grown mute since they’d been apprehended—probably a good thing. Tucker didn’t need any more trouble.
“I just got here,” he ground out. “Damn it, Stewart. Shut up and listen.”
“You let them take her! You lost her!”
“I didn’t lose her, I just couldn’t catch up to her. It’s different. I wasn’t prepared to see her getting kidnapped in broad daylight. I didn’t even know she was here. Don’t worry. I’ll find her. I’ve got your brilliant psychic with me, remember? Wonder boy Isaiah?”
“How the hell are you going to do that from a Hồ Chí Minh City jail cell?”
Damn, the man was dense. Why the hell did he think Tucker had called? “You’re going to get me and your agent out of here, that’s how.”
“I am? Why didn’t you call Strong? He’s your boss.”
Tucker wanted to scream. The Hồ Chí Minh City police hadn’t been gentle when they’d taken him and Isaiah down. His head pounded from too many blows from multiple batons similar to the one tapping the wall and aggravating his blood pressure and his patience. Every wasted minute took Melissa farther away. He didn’t have time for Stewart’s bullheadedness when he knew the guy would help in the long run.
“Can you help or not?” he growled instead of answering. “Jesus Christ, Stewart, I hired you, remember? You work for me. Get me and pretty boy out of here.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Stewart snapped, and the line went dead before Tucker had the chance to ask Stewart if he’d already known Melissa was in Vietnam, and if he did, why the hell was she there? Was it that Doctors for Charity bullshit clinic? Better yet, why hadn’t he told Tucker? Stewart knew he and Melissa were seeing each other. How big of an ass was the guy? Had he kept that info-byte to himself intentionally? He was in tight with McCormack. Was he trying to drive Tucker off?
Tucker slapped the phone into the cradle, rolled the knot out of his neck, and rejoined Isaiah on the concrete bench in what he hoped was just a holding cell, a dirty, small cut of humanity. Steel bars. Windowless. The cell was surrounded on both sides by other cells, some filled with as many as five men, all dressed in the uniform of the day, a black pajama outfit with Vietnamese script on the back and front. No shoes. Flimsy sandals that barely fit his big, American feet.
The guard growled something as he slammed the cell door, words Tucker didn’t understand. Probably a good thing. It was best he didn’t speak the language. He’d only open his big mouth if he did. He didn’t need more abuse.
“He said you’re an ass,” Isaiah said softly when the guard walked down the row of cells then disappeared out the metal exit. The door clanged shut behind him.
“I don’t care what Stewart thinks.”
“I meant the guard. He said you’re a rich American ass who thinks you can break laws in his country just because you’ve got money. He’d like to hit you again, but he can’t do it while his supervisor is here. His boss won’t let him hit Americans.”
Tucker raked his fingers over the swollen knots and tender bruises on his scalp, one on his cheekbone. The day he cared what a guard thought of him was a long way off, but still. Those batons hurt.
“But Alex thinks you’re an ass, too, if that’s any consolation.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Tucker growled.
“I know the letters on your shirt spell ‘criminal,’ and that Agent Stark decked you with a chunk of ice in Canada when she thought you’d lost your mind.”
Tucker slanted an evil eye at his partner. “How’d you find that out?”
“Because I’m the guy who put those suggestions in your head that day. I’m the one who got you to believe Director Strong wanted you to bring my dad down or die trying.”
“No shit? You screwed with my head and got me to hear something he never said?” Tucker rubbed the side of his skull where Eden Stark had hit him so hard with a chunk of ice he’d thought she’d knocked his head off. “That wasn’t very nice. Stark gave me a concussion. The guys thought I was dead when they found me. I had a migraine for days.”
Isaiah shrugged. “I needed you to think your phone was dead, but when Eden took over and put a call through to Director Strong, I had to improvise. She’s good. I never could beat her.”
“I ought to whip your ass for messing me up.”
“Yeah, well, sorry about that, but a guy’ll do anything when someone’s peeling his skin off with a razor. It could’ve been worse for both of us.”
“Guess so,” Tucker muttered and let it go. The Canadian op had been one smoking mirror after another, and behind the scenes was Isaiah Zaroyin. Abducted by the psychotic Senator Bick and his insane wife, Cassandra, Isaiah had been strapped to an autopsy table and tortured to perform mind tricks for the sole intent of tormenting Eden, the only FBI psychic at the time. In a bizarre twist of fate, it ended up being Isaiah who ended Mrs. Bick with a taser, and Ky Winchester who ended the senator. A two-fer from the gods of karma if ever there was one. All was well that ended well. The Bicks were dead, and the FBI now owned two level-ten psychics, Eden and Isaiah. Go figure.
“I also know Mrs. McCormack’s nearly at the Cambodian border.”
Tucker slanted his gaze at Isaiah, for the first time really seeing him. The poor guy had a puffy, black eye and a scraped chin. His nose wasn’t broken, but his nose holes were caked with dried blood. “You can see her? Is she okay?”
“So far.” Isaiah put his head down, but kept his gaze on the exit. “I can’t see her, Tucker. I’m a mind reader, not a magician.”
It seemed like the same thing to Tucker. “Why’d they take her? Does she know? Do they want ransom?” He plunged his fingers through his hair, frustrated enough to tear it out. The McCormack name was money in the bank.
Who knew how low these people might go or what they might do with Melissa to get what they wanted.
“Not yet. She speaks Vietnamese as well as you do, which is zero, but she’s not as frightened as she was when they first grabbed her. I don’t get the feeling this is about ransom, at least not yet.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Tucker asked. “She must not believe she’s in danger if she’s not scared.”
“Or they’ve given her something to keep her quiet,” Isaiah shot Tucker down. “But I don’t think that’s the case. Her thoughts are faint but fairly clear. She’s not groggy. I won’t be able to keep contact if they keep taking her west, though. There’s a limit to my reach sometimes. It depends on the subject I’m following.”
“Can you read them?”
Isaiah shook his head. “They’re transmitting a mix of euphoria and rage. Nothing useful.”
Tucker felt like a yo-yo. One minute, hopeful. The next, edgy with frustrated despair. He punched one fist into his palm. He’d seen the inside of too many cells. They all made him crazy, but this was worse. Melissa was out there and she needed him, but he couldn’t get to her. She was in serious trouble while he cooled his heels and waited, not something he was good at.
“Are you okay?” he asked his cell partner.
“Believe me. I’ve been worse.” Isaiah chuckled, his sharp black eyes scanning the aisle between the cell rows. “This is nothing.”
“Did you cause Stark’s pilot’s heart attack? Did you make him crash in Canada?” Dragging up their last operation together calmed Tucker’s nerves. A little.
Isaiah shook his head. “Nah. I can’t do stuff like that. Neither can my dad. He’s brilliant, but not psychic. Bick’s the one who came up with those GPS locator implants—the spider implants, too. He wanted absolute control over his drones. That’s how he killed Eden’s pilot. He used the GPS locator to force a pinpoint crash landing near my dad’s medical center, then the spider implant released a toxin into the pilot’s brain. It triggered the heart attack. We were all lucky Charlie Sweets was able to crash land as safely as he did. Agent Stark, I mean Winchester, was a lucky woman.”
The spider implants Bick had stuck in his drones’ heads still creeped Tucker out. Usually inserted behind the ear, they’d dug themselves into the subject’s skull, and, via a scary and very illegal hallucinogenic drug, they either influenced the subject to do what Bick wanted or they ended the subject’s life. Eden had endured massive migraines until Ky Winchester dug it and the locator out of her. He’d gotten close to Eden during that op, something that still bugged Tucker. Eden Stark was that genius little girl who’d needed a big guy to protect her from creeps like Ky, only she hadn’t seen Ky as a creep. By the time those crazy kids were married, neither did Tucker.
He also had a couple of spare parts that rivaled Bick’s, but he’d volunteered for them. He’d known exactly what he was getting into. Zaroyin’s volunteers hadn’t. In the end, Zaroyin and Bick had run a scary black op that nearly killed hundreds of FBI volunteers with his brain implant idea. By then, Zaroyin had a change of heart. He’d redeemed himself when he’d tried to save Eden.
Not Bick. He’d meant to rule the world, but when the implants failed to perform as he’d wanted, all those FBI volunteers were expendable. He’d turned intelligent, hard-working agents, who diligently served their country, into mindless drones, some Tucker had been forced to kill in order to defend Agent Stark. Yeah. Not a nice guy at all. “How’s your old man holding out?”
“He’s good, but he’s still going to do hard time for working with Bick.” Isaiah arched his back, stretching it from side to side. “I visited him last week.”
“Where’s he serving?”
“FPC Montgomery.”
Tucker knew it well. The Federal Prison Camp in Alabama, a minimum-security facility. “I thought he’d end up at Leavenworth.”
“He still might,” Isaiah said thoughtfully. “The trial isn’t until next year. What he did is no small thing. I love him, but I can’t defend him. Not this time. He deserves what he gets.”
“I’m sorry,” Tucker admitted. Having to own up to a criminal father was a major downer for any kid. He knew. His old man had served time for armed robbery of a 7-Eleven when Tucker was seventeen. Overnight, he’d gone from being the much-lauded high school quarterback and school hero to the creep with the scumbag father. It had sucked defending his old man, but by hell, he’d done it. Over and over, he’d come home with black eyes and bloody noses until he’d graduated early and joined the Navy.
Screw high school. The Navy never cared who his old man was, and by the time he’d had a shot at BUD/S and becoming a SEAL, he knew damned well how to tough out the bad times. He’d never once thought of giving up and ringing that bell, not because the Pacific Ocean was too cold in January or the sand was too hard on his lily-white skin. Uh-uh. By then he was the badass most guys avoided. If they didn’t, he made sure they did. And he was a hero, damn it.
“She still loves you,” Isaiah whispered. “She’s thinking about you right now, wondering if you’re still mad at her.”
“I’m not mad at her,” Tucker growled. Frustrated was more like it. Perplexed. Women were so—complicated. Emotional. They needed to think more like men.
“That will never happen,” Isaiah muttered, just as quietly. “Women are better than men. They’re smarter in so many ways. Don’t you know that by now?”
“Damn it, will you stop reading my mind?” Tucker glared at this partner-in-crime. “Stay out of my head.”
Isaiah lifted his brows. “Believe me, I wish I could, but it doesn’t work that way. You’re an angry man, Agent Chase, and you radiate hostility most of the time. Your mind is wide open. Want to or not, I hear everything.”
Hell yeah, I radiate hostility. I want my kid and Melissa back, damn it! “Focus on Stewart.” Tucker brushed Isaiah off, sick and tired of the mental intrusion. “Influence him with all your psychic babble. Make him find a way to get us out of here before noon. Do your job.”
Isaiah pursed his lips and closed his eyes. “Alex is out of my range, Agent Chase. We’re here. You’re stuck with me.”
Tucker needed to hit something. A good sparring match and a sixty-second bell would come in handy, but there he was, jammed into a one-man cell with a guy who knew how to use his brain, not his fists. Stewart had better get off his ass and contact the American Embassy in Vietnam. He’d better do something!
“Move your feet.”
“Excuse me?” Isaiah’s brows slanted into a lop-sided V. “Oh. Okay.”
Tucker would’ve explained, but Isaiah had already lifted his feet to the concrete bench and out of Tucker’s way. If he could read minds, he didn’t need to be told everything. Tucker dropped to the floor and assumed a push-up position. Pounding out fifty took the edge off. By then he was sweating heavily, but still pissed and antsy. He pumped fifty more while Zaroyin sat cross-legged on the bench and watched, the wimp.
Tucker’s problem with Isaiah was simple. If he really could read minds, and it seemed that he already had, he knew how Tucker had lost his only kid. He knew what a loser Tucker was. Shit. He knew everything.
All those push-ups didn’t help. Tucker didn’t want to wait for Stewart. He was a man of action. He wanted out!
In between sets, Isaiah tapped his sweaty right shoulder. “The truck stopped moving.”
Tucker rolled to his butt, his wrists on his knees and breathing hard. He ran a quick hand over his face to wipe the sweat away, wishing he had a bottle of water and a towel. “Where?”
“She’s in the jungle. It’s dark. She can’t see. I think she’s blindfolded.”
That made sense. Whoever these guys were, they probably didn’t want her to see their hideout. “And?”
Isaiah pressed two fingers to his right temple and shook his head slightly. “That’s all I can see. She’s frightened again. Blood. I’m smelling blood and human waste.” He wrinkled his nose. “Wherever she is, it
’s not a good place. Lots of people. Wait.”
Tucker held his breath. He needed out of this cell!
Isaiah blew out a soft growl through pursed lips. “They’re making her kneel. No. Crawl.”
Tucker’s body clenched at the thought of Melissa on her knees in front of those bastards. That could only mean one thing. Humiliation. Maybe—God, no.
He jumped to his feet and rattled the bars, his heart exploding with rage. “Guards! Let me out! I need to make a call!” I’ll break out if I have to!
Isaiah kept going. “She’s crying, but she’s not hurt. She doesn’t understand what her abductors are saying or what they want. That’s why she’s crying.”
“Not Melissa!” Tucker roared out his frustration. He crouched one knee to the floor, his fists to his temples, willing the ugly scene of Melissa being assaulted out of his head. Of her being raped. Fuck me! This is my fault, gawddamn me! I did this to her!
“She’s in some place very dark and damp,” Isaiah whispered, “but she’s not hurt, Tucker. Listen to me, will you? She’s not hurt. They’re not doing—that—to her.”
Tucker could barely think straight, much less quell the rising angst in his body to listen. No guard had answered his demand yet, and maybe that was a good thing, but a few of the other prisoners yelled at him. That was a bad thing. The jail had turned into a noisy zoo full of whistling, grunts, and bellows.
“What’s going on, Isaiah? Tell me. Don’t spare any of it.”
Isaiah nodded. “I will, just don’t hit me if it’s bad news.”
That proved how well Isaiah could read Tucker. Rage lent him incredible energy, and an angry man sometimes forgot who he was and what he was capable of.
The suspense tore him up at what sweet Melissa was going through. His gut burned with his own impotence, that he wasn’t there to save her. “Just tell me. Is it bad now?”
King of Hearts (Deuces Wild Book 1) Page 5
