Hazardous Holiday (Men of Valor)

by Liz Johnson

  For what?

  There was no time to ask. And less time to prepare.

  Electricity raced straight to her heart, then exploded to every extremity at the slightest touch of his lips to hers.

  Please, let that be it. She couldn’t trust her legs to keep her upright if he tried that again.

  Her request went ignored, as he tilted his head, finding a better angle and pressing more firmly against her. His kiss was steady but gentle, filled with an assurance of exactly what he wanted to give—and to receive from her.

  And she wanted to give it to him. Whatever that was, she prayed she had it to offer.

  At some point she lost track of which heartbeat was his and which was hers as they fell into an equally wild sprint.

  Someone let out a low whistle, and the spell snapped.

  Kristi stumbled back, Zach’s hand on her arm helping her find her footing before she embarrassed herself further.

  Still, she couldn’t look away from his low-watt smile. He was trying to look confident, and she was sure the crowd around them was fooled—but she’d known him too long. She recognized the tentativeness in his expression. The uncertainty. Strange, to see the shy teenager Zach McCloud in the confident man he’d become.

  But another face flashed in her mind. So similar to Zach’s. Deep hazel eyes and a matching cleft in his chin that their grandfather had passed down to them both.

  Aaron. She’d never kissed another man. Had never had anything to compare him with.

  Until now.

  Neither was bad. Only…different.

  Veronica gave her a playful push on the arm. “Maybe you two ought to get out of here.”

  Yes. Please. She just wanted to leave. They hadn’t found the file they were looking for or any other information on Cole. And she’d thoroughly embarrassed herself because some idiot had thought it was a great idea to hang mistletoe at the office Christmas party.

  Zach laughed and leaned in to give Veronica a quick hug. “We should get home to Cody. Thanks for a lovely party.” He shook Walt’s hand and clapped a couple of guys on the back before picking up her wrap.

  “Enjoy your holidays,” Walt called, and Kristi managed an acknowledging wave over her shoulder.

  Those were the last words she heard before they settled in the car, pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the cross street. She didn’t know why Zach wasn’t speaking, but she wasn’t sure she could get anything coherent out of her mouth until she’d had more time to process.

  That’s normal after kissing your husband for the first time. Well, your second husband. In name only.

  Who was she kidding? There was nothing normal about her relationship with Zach.

  Or her reaction to his kiss.

  Her neck burned at the memory, and she stared hard out the window, praying the twenty-minute drive could somehow be cut in half.

  “Listen.” His voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat without actually looking at her. “I’m sorry about that.” He coughed again. “We never really talked about any of that. About—”

  She cut him off before he could say it out loud. “I know. It’s no big deal.”

  But the siren in her head and heart was blaring Big deal. Huge deal.

  “I shouldn’t have let it get so…”

  Heated?

  Knee-bucklingly intense?

  Mind-meltingly passionate?

  “…involved.”

  “Sure.” She couldn’t possibly sound any more inane if she tried.

  Chancing a glance in his direction, she immediately regretted it. His profile was tense, the glow of the streetlights making his skin orange and his frown a glower.

  “Obviously it was…” He trailed off, as if he wasn’t sure what to call it. Was he waiting for her to fill in the blanks?

  No. Nope. She was not prepared to have this conversation. Not now.

  Not ever.

  Suddenly her purse vibrated, and she clawed at it. For a second she let herself hope it might be the phone from the hospital, the one that meant there was a heart for Cody.

  But it was her personal phone flashing an unfamiliar number. She’d accept any chance to shut down this conversation. “Hello?”

  “Kristi? This is Mandy Dunham.”

  “Cody?”

  “Is fine.” Mandy’s words came out smooth and confident. “He’s fine. He’s sleeping. But there was a situation at the house.”

  “I’m putting you on the speaker.” She held her phone out so Zach could hear it.

  “Someone tried to break in to your house tonight.” Mandy rushed on. “He tried to come in through the back door, and Luke went around the house and got in a good hit before the guy took off.”

  “Can you identify him?” Zach asked.

  The low voice had to be Luke. “He was wearing a ski mask.”

  Questions bubbled in Kristi’s chest, and she battled between letting them free and catching her breath.

  Zach didn’t seem to be having the same trouble. “What was he after?”

  Kristi didn’t understand the question, but it seemed Luke did.

  “He wasn’t after your valuables. And he was surprised to see me. More surprised when I disarmed him. But he’s not a pushover. He fought back.”

  “We’re ten minutes away.” The car responded as Zach pressed the gas pedal. “Make it six.”

  “If he wasn’t trying to rob us, what did he want?” She hated the way her voice trembled. “Why was he there?”

  “I don’t think he was looking for you.”

  That made sense. He’d been a step ahead of them everywhere they went. The bridge. The hospital. The mall. Tonight wouldn’t have been any different. He should have known she wouldn’t be at home. Especially if he was getting information from one of her coworkers. She hadn’t hidden that she was at her office party.

  Which meant he wasn’t looking for her. And since Zach had been very blatantly invited to the party, too, it didn’t seem like the attacker was after him either. Which left…

  Her stomach swung wide, and she doubled over against the bile that burned at the back of her throat.

  “Kristi? Are you okay?”

  She choked on a sob and nodded, then shook her head.

  “It’s okay. We’re almost there. He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. No matter who’s targeting—”

  “Don’t say it!” She knew exactly where he was going, and the thought was horrifying. It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be. No one would be that cruel, that crazy.

  Lacing their fingers together over the car’s console, he gave her a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be all right.”

  But how could it be when someone was trying to kill her son?

  NINE

  Zach called Amy Delgado first thing the next morning. Before he called Detective Diaz at the SDPD. Before he combed his hair. Before he brushed his teeth. As soon as he rolled over from a mostly sleepless night, he punched in the number to call Delgado and prayed she was a morning person.

  After five rings, he was about to give up when a mumbled greeting made it across the connection.

  “McCloud, I’m tagging you in my phone with a severely unhappy emoji.” Apparently she’d just reached REM when the phone rang. And she wasn’t happy about it. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Oh, six thirty.”

  “Wrong. It is precisely six nineteen.”

  He blinked at his alarm clock. Which he’d set eleven minutes early. “Sorry.”

  She sighed, mumbled something about the military and their timing and grunted. “But since you woke me up anyway, I might as well save us another delightful call later in the day.”

  “You got some information?”

  “Just enough to know that Jackson Cole has skipped town.”

  Zach’s gut tightened, and he leaned his elbows on his knees, perched on the edge of his bed. Was this good news? Yes, the man wouldn’t be around to personally carry out any threats on Kristi…but now Zach was sta
rting to wonder if the threat against his family came from someone else entirely. Someone with a reason to target Cody rather than Kristi.

  “Since when?”

  “Our best guess? Two days ago. We found out when he didn’t show up for his court date yesterday—probably because every defense attorney in town turned him down. Your wife’s boss wasn’t the first to say no to him—or the last.”

  “So why would he only target Kristi?” Zach asked.

  “That’s the thing, Zach—I don’t think he did. We don’t have any indication that he’s put a hit out on a civilian.” She sighed like she knew it wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he gave her credit for pushing on. “I think he’s probably in Mexico and most likely going to stay there for a while.”

  Zach bit back a groan. This info was helpful only in that it meant they’d deduced correctly. Kristi wasn’t the target. And looking at the events of the past weeks in that light put a different frame on the whole situation.

  The shot at the hospital hadn’t been wildly off the mark. After all, he’d been carrying Cody on the same arm.

  But why would anyone target a six-year-old with a heart defect? He barely had any outside interaction. He wasn’t enrolled in a traditional school because he couldn’t keep his eyes open long enough to make it through assignments. They didn’t attend church for the same reason. His biggest outings were his regular checkups with his cardiologist.

  So why Cody?

  “Thank you, Amy.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. Do you think your wife is going to be okay?”

  Not if anything happened to Cody. “I’ll figure it out.” But he had no idea how.

  “Listen, Drew Fortaine was in town a couple weeks back. You should give him a call. He was investigating a case. Something bad news.”

  “Really?” The FBI agent was another of those interdepartmental friendships he’d gained over the years. When Drew was assigned to a counterterrorism team about three years before, Zach and Jordan had been voluntold to give the feds a hand on a raid. And they’d kept in touch.

  “I guess you were probably still deployed when he was here.”

  A half smile crept across Zach’s face. “Why, Agent Delgado, have you been keeping tabs on SEAL team fifteen?”

  She grumbled something low and bitter that made him laugh. Maybe she wasn’t as angry with Jordan as she wanted everyone to believe. At least she cared enough to keep up with his comings and goings. “Somerton’s sister told me he was gone. Anyway, it might be worth calling Drew. I think his case might be related to your situation.”

  “But you can’t tell me about it yourself?”

  “No, because I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

  Well, that sounded perfect. Just perfect.

  “Okay. I appreciate your help. I’ll give Drew a call.”

  And he did. It was after 6:45 a.m., which meant it was nearly ten on the East Coast. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about waking up the FBI agent.

  “Fortaine.”

  “Hey, Drew. It’s Zach McCloud.”

  “Ziggy.”

  In Drew’s South Carolina drawl, the nickname held little resemblance to the screams of his SEAL instructors during BUD/S—Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training—but Zach responded anyway. “I heard you were in my neck of the woods a few weeks back.”

  “Sure was. Sorry I missed you. I heard you were still abroad.”

  Zach gave a noncommittal grunt. He wasn’t in the habit of confirming or denying anywhere he’d been in the last seven years.

  Except, he’d told Kristi. Not a lot. Just enough to give her a peek into his life on the teams. Maybe it was because he’d wanted someone to share with. More likely he was trying to show her the truth of his reality. It wasn’t a safe job. And he wasn’t a safe man.

  That was neither here nor there, so he pushed it aside. “I was just talking with Amy Delgado. She said you were doing some digging while you were here.”

  “Always digging, man. You know, they should issue shovels at Quantico. Sometimes that’s about all we do.”

  Zach couldn’t find the question he wanted to ask, so he stood and paced the narrow confines of his room to shake the words loose. “I know you can’t comment on an active investigation—”

  “I don’t have an active investigation in California right now.”

  That stopped him midstride. “You don’t?”

  “No, I do not.” Smooth as melted butter. But there was a hint of a question in his tone.

  “Then can you tell me what you were looking into?”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  Zach took a step. Stopped. Then took another. “Someone’s been targeting my family.”

  “Your folks? They still in Texas?”

  “No. Not my parents. My wife and—” well, there was just no other word for it “—my son.”

  Drew sounded like he was choking. “Wait a minute. You got married? When did this happen?”

  This was not the conversation he wanted to have. No way was he going to explain the ins and outs of his rather unconventional marriage.

  “We grew up together. It’s not a big deal.”

  “I beg to differ. This is a very big deal.”

  “It’s really not.” Zach forced himself to keep his tone level, even as he laced it with steel. “What I need to know is what brought an FBI agent all the way from DC to San Diego to work a case.”

  Drew’s tone instantly shifted as he realized they weren’t talking in generalities or what-if scenarios. This was real life and a real threat against people Zach really cared about.

  “There was an attempted kidnapping of a ten-year-old girl in El Centro.”

  Zach had never been to the town, but he’d seen it on enough maps. It was only a couple of hours outside San Diego, straight east on I-8.

  “Attempted?”

  “Yeah. The girl was grocery shopping with her mom. As they exited the store, a van pulled up, and a man grabbed the girl’s arm and tried to pull her into the cargo bay.”

  He rubbed against a fire in his chest as he imagined the mom’s fear. As he thought about Kristi’s. “You said attempted.”

  “A police officer was there, making his usual rounds. He saw what was happening, rammed his patrol car into the front of the van hard enough to distract the kidnapper, I guess. The girl popped out and ran to her mother.”

  “Why call in a special agent?”

  “The van was spotted crossing into Arizona, so I was digging up any information I could find to make sure they hadn’t found another victim.”

  Zach tried to release the tension that had turned his shoulders into a knotted mess, but he had a feeling that Drew hadn’t told him the whole story. “What happened to the girl?”

  Silence.

  After a long moment, Drew cleared his throat. “There was an accident about three weeks ago. She was driving with her dad, and witnesses say that three black vans surrounded the car.”

  It took only an instant to be back on the Coronado Bridge, to feel the fear as the beasts rolled into place around him, blocked him in. He’d found an exit strategy.

  The girl’s dad had not.

  “The car was pushed through the guardrail, went over the edge and slammed into a tree.”

  “She didn’t make it.” It wasn’t really a question, but the words were hard to get past the clog in his throat.

  “No. Her dad survived. A few broken ribs and a concussion, but she was DOA when the paramedics got there.”

  That could have been him, Kristi and Cody. One wrong move and he would have lost Kristi and Cody both.

  That swift, sure knowledge stole his breath and froze his mind.

  “Zig? You okay?”

  “Sure. Yeah.” Maybe not really. But he would be. He had to be. And he had just one more question. “Drew, there must be at least four FBI field offices in California and hundreds of qualified agents. Why’d they call you?”

  “Special circumstances.�
�

  His heart slammed into his ribs as icy fingers wrapped around his neck. Somehow, deep inside, he knew the answer before he asked the question. “What special circumstances?”

  “She had a heart condition. She was at the top of the transplant list.”

  *

  “Kristi, I need to talk with you. Alone.”

  She jumped at the thread of iron running through Zach’s voice. In her lap, Cody groaned, his eyes remaining closed.

  “Sure. Hang on.” She tried to reposition Cody on the couch with minimal disruption, but her hands were already shaking, worrying over why Zach might be so upset so early in the morning.

  After the realization the night before that Cody might be the real target of these attacks, she’d slept on the floor of his room, always with a hand on his arm. And even now, she let her fingers trail to his elbow, not quite ready to let him out of her sight. Even if Zach was leading her only to the kitchen.

  Zach leaned a hip against the counter, looking big and intimidating with his arms crossed over his chest. She hovered in the open entry, always with a clear view of the couch and Cody’s blanket.

  Apparently Zach decided the distance between them was unacceptable, as he shuffled closer. When their eyes met, she saw pain there. For her? For Cody? She couldn’t tell.

  But she was certain she was going to hate whatever bomb he was about to drop.

  “According to the DEA, Jackson Cole isn’t after anyone in San Diego right now. He missed his court date, skipped bail and is hiding out—probably somewhere in Mexico.”

  That wasn’t bad news. In fact, it was enough to let her take a deep breath. A real breath. No one else had a reason to come after them. They were safe. They had to be.

  “That’s great…isn’t it?”

  “But that’s not all.”

  He cleared his throat, and it was just enough time for her stomach to plummet to her toes.

  Zach’s eyes narrowed as he reached for her arm, apparently thought better of it and dropped his hand to his side. “A few weeks ago a little girl from El Centro was almost kidnapped.”

  “Almost?” Her voice wavered, but she pushed on. “She escaped?”

  “A cop saw what was happening, and he was able to foil the abduction.”

  The pieces still weren’t fitting together. “Why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with us?”