by Angel Payne
“Josie,” he gritted again. His aunt had a damn good head on her shoulders. Maybe she remembered something vital. “You’ve questioned her, right? What’d she say?”
Wyatt braced himself to the other side of the counter. “Questioned her about what? What the hell is going on?”
“Hawk…she’s gone too.”
He turned from his uncle. “Shit.”
“Garrett, don’t you dare turn your back on me! What’s—”
He silenced his uncle with an upstretched fist. “What’s your twenty?” he demanded of Zeke. After committing the cross streets to memory, he barked, “On our way.”
After punching the line shut, he swung his attention to Wyatt. The man’s face had hard angles that could’ve formed the fifth profile on Mount Rushmore. He hadn’t seen the look since Wyatt got back from his last tour in Iraq, and he hated being the one to evoke it again.
Remorse wasn’t going to serve either of them right now.
“Are you carrying?” he asked his uncle.
“Does a pig blow mud for snot?”
Garrett nodded. “Grab your heat. I’ll fire up the truck. We’re on full-ready mode as of now.”
“Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“Yeah. On the way.” When you won’t be so tempted to choke me to death as you think of your wife on a barge headed for Thailand.
Chapter Fourteen
“Well, we could do worse for accommodations.”
Josie was giving the situation her best, including little quips like that. Sage tried to give the woman at least half a smile, especially because Josie had spoken the truth. She peered around again. The space was nearly as big as the backstage of King’s Thailand hut, but the floor swayed beneath them and she could hear the faint horns of the Bainbridge Island ferry boats. The single light they’d been given was attached to a polished teak hull, and they’d been thrown onto a plush bed with satin pillows. She guessed they were on one of the luxury yachts that were moored at the private marina north of the city.
But being surrounded by a music-video fantasy didn’t make her feel like dancing. That could have something to do with the dread. It returned like a creepy ex-boyfriend—wielding a knife and a shotgun. Though she fought to hit the off button on her memory, the damn thing returned to that wrenching moment in the Market, when she realized their fun girls’ field trip had suddenly taken a wrong turn. She’d seen their fate written on the face of the cop who stepped in between Josie and Zeke. Within a second, he’d gone from friendly to feral, a hunter with his prize meat in range. She’d barely been surprised by the hand slapping the duct tape on her mouth, the grip that nearly yanked her shoulders from their sockets, or the body slam that took her from the afternoon sunshine into the dank gloom of a van.
That was when the hard part had begun. Again. The wild wondering of what had just happened. The pounding terror of predicting what would happen next. The enraging silence of the two men who watched over them with aimed pistols and the third who sped the van through traffic with fluid expertise, no doubt experienced at the art of the getaway.
She bent her head back into the pillows, wishing the thoughts would tumble out the back of her head. The only thing that toppled was her equilibrium, thanks to the pitch of the boat and the aftereffects of the wine she’d “sampled.” But the moment also brought clarity. She winced from the blinding force of it. All of Garrett’s guard-dog behavior—the paranoia, the monitoring, the needing to know her every sneeze and step—made sense now. He’d felt, probably even known, that throwing King into a jail cell anywhere in Thailand was going to be a temporary fix. She’d been held by the monster long enough to see how far his money flowed and what kind of people it turned into dancing monkeys for him.
A hard snort escaped her. Shit. It all made sense now. She should have put the pieces together long ago. She should have realized all Garrett’s freak-outs weren’t normal. But their absence from each other had stripped her baseline for clear judgment. He hadn’t been such an ogre before Botswana. A growling grouch from time to time, but not a creature who snarled when she so much as hinted at taking a morning jog on her own. But she never questioned the ogre. She’d figured it was just part of how the last year had morphed him, the same way it had changed her. All the fear in his eyes… She’d yearned to douse it, not deal with it. For nearly fourteen months, she’d lived with more fear in her belly than food. Now that she was home, she’d only yearned to leave all the terror, desperation, uncertainty, and ugliness behind. She’d longed to return to reality and finally be free of the nightmare.
A serrated breath tore apart her throat. Return to reality? That was where she’d slipped on life’s banana peel, wasn’t it? And life was sitting nearby, sipping a mai tai, laughing at her.
The nightmare was the reality.
She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to hold off the attack of the words, worsened by their leaden truth. In the darkness that encased her vision, she embraced a place where she could be free again. She knew that place before it even formed fully in her imagination. She could feel the deep shag of the rug under her knees when she dipped there, offering herself to Garrett. She could feel the response of his body, all its hard striations above her and against her, a refuge that would let her be simply woman again. Simply his again.
A dream that was never to be.
She ripped her teeth into her lip until the pain prevented her from shedding a single tear. These shitheads weren’t getting a drop of her weakness or an ounce of her fear. She dug deep, lowering a mental bucket down her well of resolve and praying there was enough to get her through the trip to Thailand. She’d worry about getting more after that.
Especially because it seemed Rayna was going to need a loan.
Her friend’s ragged sob tore the air. Rayna was scrunched against the wall with her head between her knees. Sage’s heart wrenched as Ray choked. The two of them had shared enough tears over the last year to fill this bay thrice over, but this was the first time her friend’s grief sounded like this, coming in bursts of unfiltered pain. Even Josie winced from it. Every woman on the planet knew the discord of a breaking heart when she heard it.
“Sweetie.” Josie stretched her bound hands over, trying to stroke her hair. “It’s all right.”
Rayna jerked away. “The hell it is.”
Though her friend wasn’t looking, Sage jutted her chin. “Ray, you can’t give up now.”
She had no idea where the bravado came from. Maybe she was just fronting it for Josie’s sake. She remembered having that same Little Orphan Annie hope after the tribes had first taken them in Botswana. She’d managed to keep it as the bastards bargained them back and forth in exchange for fighters taken prisoner during the skirmishes. It had lasted until the day they overheard two of the rebels chuckling about how they could keep Rayna and her as bargaining chips for years, because no rescue team was coming for them. That was when Orphan Annie got replaced with Xena. Ray herself had given her the nickname, as she’d quietly started to plan their escape.
As if her friend had just traveled the same path of memory, Rayna lifted her tear-streaked face. “Save the pep rally, Sage. These guys aren’t a bunch of jungle-boonies rebels with no clue what they’re doing.”
“This also isn’t the boonies,” she countered.
Her friend rolled her eyes and let out a dark laugh.
“Damn it, I’m right and you know it. Look at me, Ray. You’ve seen it too, haven’t you, in Zeke? The protectiveness that seemed just a little gonzo? The watchfulness that bordered on weird? The looks that were on you but not on you, like his mind was somewhere else, and that place wasn’t too pretty?”
The dark green of Rayna’s gaze rustled in recognition. “I just thought he was being a super soldier boy suddenly without anything to do.”
Josie nodded. “Been there, done that. They get one of those episodes, you either go shopping or find something for them to blow up that’s not the house.”
<
br /> Sage shook her head. “This was more than episodes, Josie. This was pervading. Twenty-four-seven.” She fixed her stare on Rayna again. “It makes sense now, right?” she asked her friend. “Garrett and Zeke…maybe it was just premonition for them, or maybe they got more substantial intel about it. Maybe King bought off people in Thailand and got sprung or set the nets back out for us straight from his cell.”
Rayna grimaced. “Anything’s possible with that monster.”
“Unfortunately, he’s a monster with money. And he doesn’t like to lose.”
Rayna winced with understanding. On many nights during their confinement in his warehouse, King and his men would play card games. One night, when he’d lost the big winning pile, the asshole shot the winner’s kneecap off. Another losing night had ended with Rayna’s brutal piercing.
Josie emitted a fierce huff. “All right, for argument’s sake, let’s say they knew something. Why the hell didn’t they say anything to either of you?”
Rayna echoed the snort. “Because they’re stupid, he-man chest beaters.”
The older woman nodded. “That’s a good one. Can I borrow it?”
“I may have to do the same,” Sage added. She curled her knees beneath her, concentrating harder on Rayna. “But now you know why I’m not giving up the pom poms, Ray. We’re still in Elliott Bay. We’re not on a barge bound for Bangkok. And even though the guys have pulled a stupid Fred and Barney on us, I have to believe they’ve got a direction to go in. We’ve just got to keep it together until they hone the coordinates a little better.”
Chapter Fifteen
“We don’t know where to start, do we?”
Garrett hated how the words sounded more like an accusation than a question. Even more, he hated the pit of despair in his gut from which they’d formed. Worse than that, he hated what they did to the face of his best friend. Clearly, Z had already mentally executed himself a thousand times for this.
“They just disappeared.” His friend beat a figure eight into the sidewalk at the south end of the Market, as if performing a ritual that would open up the concrete and give him a vision about what had happened. Or maybe he was just judging the best spot for slamming his head into the walkway and cracking open his skull. “I turned for one second, and then—” Z whirled, making even his leather bomber jacket billow. “Goddamnit! Those filthy fuckers!”
Wyatt had dipped into silence during the drive here when Garrett gave him a flyover of the situation that was as fast and furious as his driving. He’d started by recounting their bizarre sighting of King at Sea-Tac, filled in with the CliffsNotes version of King’s criminal past, and ended with the harrowing update about his vengeful vendetta against the girls. The monster’s crusade had finally succeeded this afternoon, with one bonus prize included in the form of Aunt Josie.
After that, Garrett had sucked in a breath for the hardest apology of his life. Before he could get out a word, Wyatt had barked one word across the truck’s cab. Don’t. If the command weren’t enough, the anguish in his uncle’s eyes finished off the job. After that, the man’s face had barely changed. Until now. Wyatt’s gaze was now afire with alertness, scanning the entire area, including the burned tire marks the bastards had left them as a souvenir. He paced the sidewalk slowly, hands locked on his hips, head sweeping from side to side.
“Bottle it up, Sergeant Hayes,” he finally said to Z. “That anger isn’t going to do you any good until we find these pussies and teach them a lesson. When that happens, I’ll gladly hold them while you get in a little punching bag practice.”
Zeke straightened, and a little of his old fire sparked in his eyes. Despite this gut-muncher of a situation, Garrett nodded a thank-you at his uncle. Z didn’t wallow well. Hell, he barely sat still with any degree of grace. By spinning up a fantasy the guy could focus on, Wyatt restarted Z’s productivity. And damn it, they needed Zeke right now. To catch street thugs, it helped to have a guy on your side who used to be one.
“I would much appreciate that, sir.” Zeke cocked a dark grin at Wyatt. “And I’ll gladly return the favor, so you can fuck up an ass-licker of your own.”
Wyatt straddled the van’s skid marks. “Done deal.” He lifted his head as Z walked over. “What can you tell us about the van?”
The question was quiet, but its implication was huge. In any branch of Special Forces, a squad member’s life could depend on his brother’s ability to recall details under pressure. Colors, textures, smells, sounds, temperatures, words, distances, equipment… Any or all of it could become a game changer. All three of them knew this, but Garrett exchanged a heavy glance with his uncle as they waited for Z’s response, hoping for the best. Emotions were the memory’s chokehold. And whether he openly admitted it or not, emotions drove the chariot of Z’s brain right now.
“It was a custom job,” his friend began. “Nothing wacky or foreign. It was likely a Chevy or Dodge, though hard to tell because the body was modified and skimmed low to the ground. The rims were imports, though. Blingy Italian shit. But the paint job’s what I noticed the most. It was gorgeous. But it didn’t match. It was…”
“It was what?” Garrett urged it in response to his friend’s puzzled frown. “And what do you mean, it didn’t match?”
An anomaly of any kind could be their key to busting this open. They were moving on the search without police support in obedience to Franzen’s orders. Their CO had been part of the information loop since the second Z called him right after hanging up with Garrett. Since they now knew, with barely a shadow of a doubt, that King was still running his show from prison, they could deduce he’d likely had an audio tap into Rayna’s place coordinated and inserted two fake cops at Pike Place today. That took care of the Seattle PD for the trust grid right now. Even the Feds wouldn’t be brought on board until Franz deemed it appropriate. Their sole purpose right now? Gather the facts. Follow up on everything credible. Find out everything they could from whomever they could.
Right now, that meant getting a hell of a lot more information about the damn van.
Garrett clenched back his impatience in order to prompt Zeke as calmly as he could, “What did the paint look like, Z?”
Zeke turned and looked at him. Damn. His friend’s eyes were hollow, his lips tight. Maybe things with Z and Rayna had proceeded faster than he assumed. Garrett felt shitty for his friend, though on a selfish level, misery did love company. And goddamnit, he was sick with misery. He couldn’t lose Sage again. He wouldn’t. If he had to, he’d rip this fucking city apart to find her.
“The paint looked…feminine.” The last word left Z like it was the zinger in a whodunit plot. Garrett didn’t get the significance. But Zeke sure as hell seemed to. His gaze ignited like he’d become Fort Lewis’s answer to Sherlock Holmes.
“Feminine?” Wyatt echoed. He was clearly as nonplussed as Garrett.
“Yeah,” Z returned.
“What the fuck?” Garrett muttered.
“I’m serious. It looked like a tampon box.”
“What the fuck?”
“It looked airbrushed. Lavender and pink. There was a pair of hands touching along the side, and…” He stared across the street, again pulling the Sherlock Holmes act. “There was a white cat laying across the back wheel well.”
“A white what?”
“A white cat. That’s really weird.”
“Thanks for clearing that up, man.”
Wyatt stomped back onto the sidewalk. “This isn’t the time for jokes, son.”
“No, sir.” Zeke began to pace again. This time, his strides were wide and strong—and excited. “No joke at all. Just a lot of pieces sliding together.”
“Awesome,” Garrett inserted. “You want to enlighten us now?”
Z spun back toward them, arms folded, determination stamped across his face. “The paint job wasn’t real.”
“Huh?” Wyatt grunted.
Garrett narrowed his gaze as comprehension kicked in. “You mean it was a wrap?”
Zeke nodded. Wyatt threw a frown at both of them. “A what?” the man asked.
“An automotive body wrap, Uncle. They use them a lot around the city, mostly on buses, as advertising gimmicks. They have special machinery that can laser print an image onto plastic wrap that’s adhered to the bus, turning it into a rolling billboard.”
“After the campaign or event is over, the plastic is peeled off,” Z finished.
“We’ve been toying a little with the technology on our ops vehicles, but the wrap is still a little prissy. It doesn’t like dirt.”
“Small problem there,” Z confirmed.
Wyatt snorted. “So the pussies were only pretending to have pussies. And that van is sitting somewhere now, decked in a completely different design.”
Zeke snorted. “I’d bet my left nut on it.”
“Fuck,” Wyatt gritted.
“Seconding that,” Garrett added. He looked back to Zeke. “How does this get us anywhere, man?”
Zeke’s face resembled a kid about to go on his first roller coaster. Sheer excitement and blatant nausea warred for control of his features. “Because I wasn’t looking at the hundredth ad for the balloon festival on that van. The art was custom—hand-painted.”
“Still in the dark, dude. There are a lot of artists in this city.”
“And they’re all sitting in their studios with the extra flow to buy one of those big-ass machines that makes the wrap panels, right?”
A jolt of new energy made Garrett surge forward. “Hell. That sure thinned out the haystack.”
“I’ll give you one better.” Again, that weird mix of feelings rolled across his friend’s face. Zeke looked ready to do a touchdown dance and then puke about it. “I think I can find our needle.”
