by Amy Gamet
She turned and left the room, Brady’s voice in the distance. “Where’s Noah?”
“He’s not coming, sweetie.”
“But I want to see Noah!”
“Not tonight, baby. Come on.”
Noah ripped his stare away from the empty conference room door, his vision unfocused.
“You’re a bigger man than I am,” said Cowboy. “Or a complete asshole, depending on how you want to look at it.”
“I need Booger to come with me to the island. Logan, too.”
“You can have Doc, but you’ll have to talk to Booger yourself. He’s still pissed about the last time.”
25
Noah found Booger doing push-ups on the floor of the command center, the intricate tattoos on his muscled arms shiny with sweat. Noah rolled his eyes. Booger had been with HERO Force a couple of months already, but Noah had yet to figure out why anybody liked the asshole.
He was opinionated as fuck and as likely to do jumping jacks in front of a tango as to shoot the poor bastard. “We have to talk,” said Noah.
Booger jumped to a stand, putting his hands on his hips. “What’s up?”
“Logan and I are taking the chopper back to Hilton Head tonight. We’ve got at least one major asshole who’s still breathing. Hannah and the kid are in danger.”
“You should take Hawk.”
“He’s going to Paris.”
“Then take Cowboy.”
“I want you.”
Booger narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Because you’re quick on your feet and the best shot on the force, aside from me.”
“We don’t work well together.”
“That’s because you don’t trust me.”
Booger scoffed. “I don’t trust you because you’ve demonstrated your inability to handle stress.”
Noah stepped forward. “Bullshit. My sister had just died and you didn’t trust me to do my damn job. You put our guys in jeopardy.”
“Cowboy agreed with me. You were a goddamn mess.”
Noah’s hand clenched in a fist. “I could make the shot.”
Booger shook his head. “Not a chance I was willing to take. There were kids involved.”
“Fuck you.” Noah punched him in the gut, Booger doubling over. “Come on, hit me,” said Noah.
Booger came up with a left hook, catching Noah in the jaw, pain exploding like fireworks, and it felt good to finally get it out. He got Booger with a kidney punch and a head butt to the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him with a whoosh.
“You’ve got a damn death wish,” said Booger, his fist sinking into Noah’s abs with great force. “You want me to stand up for you, fight next to you, you’ve got to deserve it.”
Noah got him with a two-punch combination. “I’m fucking here, aren’t I? Asking you for help? Telling you I need you on my six, damn it.”
Booger pushed him back against the wall, and Noah used it as a springboard to attack him, pummeling him with his fists. Booger came back hard with another hook, making Noah see stars. “Fuck,” said Noah, staggering away.
Booger was breathing hard. “Tell me what’s different this time.”
“I killed the bastard who shot my sister. That ghost isn’t hanging off me the same way anymore.”
“You’re sure you can handle it?”
“I’m sure.”
The sound of the men breathing was the only sound in the room for a long moment. “I’ll go with you,” said Booger.
“Logan’s getting the chopper ready now. We leave in ten.”
“Meet you there.” Booger walked out of the room as Noah straightened, his fingers touching his bruised and battered face, coming away bloody.
He didn’t see Brady hiding at the far side of the command center with Mr. Bojangles—determined to stay with his hero while his momma talked to Trevor. And when the boy retraced his steps to the helipad and stowed away on the chopper, neither of the men ever knew he was there.
26
Hannah wiped her eyes and took in her reflection in the mirror. Thank God there was a ladies’ room and no other women to use it, because she desperately needed to be alone, not wanting anyone to see her cry—least of all, Brady.
She told herself she’d just been through so much, the terrible stress of the last few days crashing down on her like a pile of boulders. But it was Noah’s words that were her undoing, the callous things he said about needing to get away from her that truly broke her heart.
She should get out of here, make her way to Trevor’s with Brady and settle in for the night, but her back had broken and there wasn’t anything she could do to fix it until she climbed out from beneath these emotions.
You barely even know him. What do you care if he wants to leave?
But no matter how much she tried to let reason shine into the darkness, she refused to see the light. Her feelings for him had grown quickly in the time they’d been together, from her initial fear to burgeoning trust to something far, far deeper and more meaningful.
Love.
You’re such a loser.
No one fell in love after two days! Jesus, it was probably Stockholm syndrome that had her so enamored with that bastard, not love.
Definitely not love.
She worked to get herself together, splashing water on her face and taking deep breaths until she only looked exhausted instead of emotionally devastated. The sound of a helicopter nearby made her shoulders shake. She’d never willingly go on one of those things again.
She looked at herself in the mirror one last time and exhaled with a great huff. She was ready. In her pocket she had the keys to Trevor’s house and his address, along with some cash Leo had given her to get her through the next few weeks. It wasn’t home, but it was close, and she just needed to hold herself together until she could get there.
You can do this.
She pushed out of the room and went in search of her son.
He wasn’t in the kitchenette, where she’d left him with an orange soda and a straw, and she suspected he’d gone in search of Noah despite her expressly telling him not to.
Great. Now I’m going to have to face him again.
She made her way out the other side of the kitchenette and nearly ran into Cowboy. “Have you seen Brady?”
“No.”
“He’s probably with Noah. Where’s his office?”
“Noah just left in the chopper.”
She frowned. “I’m sure he’s around here someplace.”
“I’ll help you look.”
They searched HERO Force headquarters room by room, calling for the boy. An hour and a half later she was frantic—Brady still nowhere to be found. Cowboy called the police to search the blocks around the building while he, Hannah, and the new HERO Force recruits moved to other floors in the building.
It was another forty minutes after that before one of the recruits called Cowboy’s cell phone. Hannah watched his eyes go wide with concern before slamming into hers.
“What? Is he okay?” she asked.
“Thank you.” He hung up the phone. “They found Brady’s stuffed bear on the helipad.”
“On the roof?” she screamed, covering her mouth with her hand. “What was he doing up there?” Understanding dawned, a terrible realization. “No. No! He didn’t. He wouldn’t!”
“I think he stowed away with Noah in the helicopter.” Cowboy checked his watch and cursed colorfully.
“Where were they going?”
“Hilton Head Island. They should be there by now.”
She was hyperventilating, her chest rising and falling too quickly. She clutched the wall as Cowboy made a phone call.
“Get Doc on the radio. Brady is with them. Repeat, the little boy is on the chopper. Do it now!”
It was her fault. She should have been watching him instead of crying in the ladies’ bathroom for twenty minutes and leaving him alone. “Why did they go there? We just left.”
“The men who tried to kill you went to
your apartment before Noah’s sister’s. They’re after you. Noah wanted to stop them.”
Her face crumpled. She knew what those men were like, had seen what they were capable of, and now Brady was there without her. He was in danger. “My baby!”
His phone rang. “Did you get him?” He turned and kicked the wall with such force the drywall dented and she knew—the men had already gotten off the chopper. This was worse than when Joe died, time distorted, colors overly bright.
Then Cowboy gave her a fierce stare as he belted out loud, “Stefan, get me a pilot. I need to get to Hilton Head Island, stat.”
27
“You need me,” said Hannah, grabbing Cowboy’s jumper. There was nowhere to land the plane and he was going to parachute down. It was already getting dark, her mind so confused by the passage of time she no longer knew what day it was. All she knew was she needed to get down on the ground and help find her son. “I know the building. I know where the condo is. I can get you to the hospital, to where I live. All of it.”
“It isn’t safe for you to come with me.”
“I don’t give a shit if it’s safe! My baby is down there. He’s got to be scared. He’s the one who isn’t safe. You have to let me come with you.”
The very idea of what she was suggesting was ludicrous and she knew it. She wanted him to let her jump out of an airplane when she could barely tolerate the idea of air travel. But she would have swum through a lake-sized vat of lava if Brady was on the other side.
“I can’t protect you, Hannah. You’re a liability. You’ll only slow me down.”
She had to do something, had to find some way to convince him. “The letter my husband wrote was addressed to three people. Joe knew one of them knew about the drug smuggling ring—was probably even in charge of it. Eric Manning was one of those three, but he insisted up until his death that he only allowed it to happen, he wasn’t in charge.”
“Which leaves two,” said Cowboy.
“I know them both. Their names, their addresses. I worked with them for years.”
“Tell me.”
“Not unless you take me with you.”
“Fuck.” He shook his head. “This is a very dangerous game you’re playing.”
She knew Cowboy had no way to reach Noah now that he was out of the chopper and away from its radio. Cell phone service hadn’t been restored. She had the information he needed to find Noah and Brady.
They were playing chicken, staring at each other as the plane shot through the sky toward her child.
He relented. “Get a jumpsuit on. Over there. You ever jump out of a plane before?”
“No.”
He cursed again. “Then you’ll come with me, tandem.” He moved to the skydiving equipment in a large crate, handing her a jumpsuit and goggles and changing out his harness. “You have to hurry. We don’t have a lot of time until we’re over the drop zone.”
Cowboy wasn’t kidding. No sooner did she get the suit on than he was rigging up her harness and barking orders on how to hold her body, which would be strapped directly to his. She didn’t let herself think about what she was about to do, focusing only on her son’s face as the green light lit and the side of the fuselage opened to the dark sky.
She stepped with Cowboy’s steps. He tapped her shoulder three times and pushed her forward, jumping out of the plane. She closed her throat against the scream that wanted to come up and closed her eyes. There was only Brady’s face.
Brady’s face—and Noah’s.
28
Noah grabbed the inflatable motorboat and hopped out of the chopper behind Booger. They’d landed on top of Hannah’s apartment complex just after the sun set, armed and ready to face whatever came their way.
“You sure you want me to leave the bird here?” asked Logan. He was there as a pilot only, since he’d broken his femur in a skydiving accident that had nearly killed him. The fact that he could work the chopper’s pedals at all was a testament to how far he’d come.
“We might need to get out in a hurry,” said Booger.
“Fine, but I’m getting out. No sense in sitting in a giant helicopter that screams, ‘We’re here. You can shoot us now.’”
“You can sit inside the stairwell,” said Noah. “Got your firearm?”
“No, I left it back at headquarters with my knitting needles. What the fuck, you think I broke my leg and I lost my balls, too?”
“Just checking up on you, Doc.”
Noah led the way into the stairwell, the smell of stank water and mold assaulting his nose. Logan might be better off in the chopper.
He held his weapon at the ready, not expecting to encounter trouble but prepared for it anyway. His high-powered long-range rifle was strapped to his back, just in case. The tangos had been here once already but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back, and God only knows how far away they’d be when they finally found them.
Logan stayed at the top of the stairs as the other men made their way to the third floor and Hannah’s apartment. The door was wide open, the carpeting soaked, with glass shards littered everywhere. Noah checked the bedrooms and bath. “All clear.”
Booger pulled out a map and opened it on the coffee table. “Where are we going first?”
Noah pointed. “The hospital. A quarter-mile to our west. I want to go through the offices of the two administrators in question and see if we can pinpoint our tango, then go from there.”
“Agreed.”
They went downstairs—the water clearly lower than it had been when Noah was last here—and inflated the boat with the CO2 cartridge. The moon provided ample light to navigate, and he remembered the route he’d taken with Hannah. They arrived at the hospital without incident and entered the building, a portrait of the chief administrator hanging in the lobby.
“That’s Patel,” Noah said. “The head honcho. Hannah said the other one is thinner and bald. A white guy.”
They headed directly for the offices on the second floor. Booger was the first to reach the chief administrator’s office, stopping in his tracks as he peered inside. “I found Patel.”
Noah caught up and looked inside. Sure enough, the man from the lobby portrait was dead on the floor with a bullet wound to his head. “He wasn’t here yesterday.”
“Which means someone’s been in here since you left.”
“And maybe they’re still inside.” Noah’s mind went into overdrive. “If Patel was in charge of the drug ring, he could have been killed by one of his men.” The sheer number of people involved was enough to make his head spin. “There were three or four guys at the medical supply truck the night of the hurricane, plus the cop. Six at Lizzie’s apartment yesterday. The numbers are staggering for this kind of operation.”
“Maybe they work for the medical supply company,” said Booger. “It could be a front. How big is the drug operation?”
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But that’s the hospital’s value. The street cost would be much higher.” He narrowed his eyes. “Lincare. The name on the truck was Lincare Medical Supply.” He stepped around Patel’s body and into the office. “Help me look through files. Anything you can find on Lincare.”
The men searched all of his office and his secretary’s file cabinet as well. “Over here,” said Booger, pulling a file from Patel’s desk drawer and opening it on the desk.
“It’s a ledger,” said Noah, his eyes scanning the numbers and abbreviated transaction descriptions. “All handwritten.” He flipped through the pages, names atop each one. On a hunch, he searched for the one that might secure his freedom. “Buchanan,” he said, finding it. “The cop who shot me. This proves he was involved in the drug operation.”
“Who does business like this today?” asked Booger. “Everything’s computerized.”
“Accounting is, for sure,” said Noah. “Patel was keeping these records by hand so no one else would see them. If you were stealing boatloads of money, you’d probably use paper and pen, too.”<
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“But if Patel was in charge of the drug scheme, who killed Patel?”
“Someone from the medical supply company. The men from the truck, who I’m willing to bet were the same men in black who attacked us at my sister’s condo.”
“How are we going to find them?”
“We don’t have to find them. They’re already looking for us. We just have to let them know we’re here.”
“The helicopter,” said Booger.
No sense in sitting in a giant helicopter that screams, ‘We’re here. You can shoot us now.’
Noah was already moving. “Fuck. Logan’s by himself.”
The men ran to the stairs and down as quickly as they could. They’d just exited the building when three gunshots echoed in the night. Booger hopped in the boat and reached to start the engine.
“Wait!” said Noah. “They’re trying to draw us out.”
“And it’s working. Get in the damn boat.”
“If they’re by the chopper, they’ll have a clear line of sight to the boat as we make our way back. We’re dead in the water, Booger. Literally.”
“What the fuck do you suggest? We just sit back and let them kill Logan?”
“The roof. Come on!” Noah turned and ran back into the hospital, his arms pumping as he raced to the stairwell and climbed to the top. This was where Eric Manning fell to his death, Lizzie’s condo visible in the distance. “Stay low.” He got to the knee wall and slipped his sniper’s rifle from his back, fitting it with a night vision scope and setting it on its tripod.
He peered through the scope, his entire world suddenly standing on end as the people on the rooftop came into focus. “Jesus Christ.” There was no denying what he was seeing, no way to make sense of the horror in front of him, and he felt physically sick with fear. “Two men with guns. Three hostages. Brady, Hannah, and Cowboy.”
“How the fuck did they get here? Where’s Doc?”
“I don’t see him.” Cowboy was off to the side, but Hannah and Brady were sandwiched between tangos. “Fucking Christ. How can I get a shot?”
