Forged in Fire

by Trish McCallan

  A blast of shock sucked the air from his lungs. Frustrated rage filled them back up again. He stalked to the corner of the room and back. “Don’t fucking tell me you believe her?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Cosky said in that same level tone as he watched Mac pace.

  Mac stopped in front of Rawlings and scanned his face. “You too?” He didn’t wait for Rawls’ silent nod. Grinding his teeth, he took another trip to the far corner. “What the fuck did that bitch do to you three?”

  “Beth.” Cosky’s voice chilled. “Her name’s Beth.”

  Mac spun around. “And you don’t find Beth’s sudden appearance a little too convenient?”

  “Because of her, we’re not lying in a pool of blood twenty thousand feet up. Because of her, we have three targets in custody.”

  “I‘m fucking aware of that—” Mac broke off, took a deep, calming breath and regrouped. “She’s lying. She has to be involved.”

  “You weren’t there, Mac,” Rawls said, his gaze watchful. “She was scared. Confused.”

  Mac snorted. “Which makes her a damn fine actress.”

  Cosky tilted his head and studied Mac’s face. “Why are you having such trouble with this? You accept that Zane knows things he shouldn’t. You trust those visions of his. What’s the difference?”

  “Fuck no. You’re comparing the two? I know Zane.” He squared off against his lieutenant, feeling like he bracing for nuclear sub charge. “I’ve experienced his flashes. We don’t know a goddamn thing about this woman.”

  With a lift of his eyebrows, Cosky shook his head dismissively. “You barely knew Zane the first time you trusted one of his visions. It was your first op together. Trusting him saved your ass. Why not give her the same benefit of the doubt?”

  If that didn’t beat the bull—the jackass was lecturing him. Had his whole team gone crazy?

  He ground his teeth and tried to shout some sense into them. “We don’t know this—” Christ, he sounded like a broken record.

  “Zane knows her,” Cosky cut in. “If we’re gonna trust his flashes to keep us alive, then we trust this too.”

  “Big difference, buddy. Zane’s hung up on her. He’s compromised.”

  Cosky straightened against the wall and pinned him with a sharp look. “I’m not. Neither is Rawls. Back off. She’s not involved.”

  Mac bared his teeth. “You don’t see what she’s up to? She’s convinced him to lie to his commanding officer. Next, she’ll separate him from the teams. A year from now, when he’s due to re-up, she’ll convince him to play nursemaid to some fucking security firm.”

  Whoa. He broke off. Where the hell had that come from?

  With a snort, Cosky stepped away from the wall. “The lie’s on Zane’s head. She’s been against it from the beginning. As for separating him from the team,” he paused, regarded Mac steadily. “She’s not the one pushing him out. You are.” When Mac stiffened, Cosky’s gaze hardened to slate. “He’s been waiting ten fucking years for her. You think he’s going to give her up? Even for the teams? You need to stand down. She’s one of ours now.”

  Clearly a warning. Son of a bitch. Mac scrubbed his hands down his face. “She isn’t one of ours yet. He’s still got time to grab hold of his senses.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Rawls drawled, sliding off the table. He stood, lifted his right arm above his head and worked his left shoulder. “Better him than me, though.”

  “No shit.” Cosky’s lips twisted.

  Mac took another turn around the room. Obviously, the woman had cast some kind of spell over Cosky and Rawls too. More accusations would just drive a wedge between them. Best to back off and wait. Eventually, she’d show her true colors, and they’d see the little bitch for what she was. He relaxed as a plan took shape. He’d feed her some rope and watch her dangle from it.

  “So what’s the word?” Rawls asked.

  “We’ve been asked to remain available—for questioning.” Mac shrugged. “But we’re hands-off. Keep your eyes open, though. Something hinky’s going on.”

  “Who leaked?”

  “Figured you’d pick that up.” Mac tossed Cosky a predatory grin. “First thought was Chastain. The bastard’s reaction to the initial call didn’t fit.” He delivered a concise replay of their conversation over the phone.

  “What kind of asshole blows off fresh intel?” Rawls asked.

  Very slowly, Cosky shook his head, his gaze dark and distant. “Doesn’t track. Anyone with an ounce of sense would realize such a reaction would raise flags.”

  “You’d think.” Mac eyed his lieutenants with satisfaction. Zane, Cosky and Rawls were as sharp as they came. “I pulled his file. The SOB’s a fucking Boy Scout. Twenty years on the job. Commendations up the ass. He’s taken hardware twice. And get this—before he went federal, he spent time on the teams.”

  With each word, Cosky’s brows lowered further, until they looked like a bushy black V, perched above the bridge of his nose. “Who’d he serve with?”

  “Semper Fi.”

  “No shit?” After a moment Cosky shrugged. “Even Marines go south.”

  “This guy doesn’t read like that. Reads stand-up. Lost his family to a drunk driver back in the eighties. Pulled into a gas station, filled up the tank, went inside to pay. While he’s waiting in line some asshole skids into the family wagon and pins it against the pumps. Whole thing bursts into flames. One minute he’s got a wife and three kids. The next, his family’s gone.”

  “Jesus,” Rawls said.

  All three men fell silent.

  After a moment Mac continued. “Poor bastard lived the job after that. Handled some ugly cases. Routed the Mafia out of the San Francisco garbage union. Took one of those bullets there. After 9/11, he transferred to Counterterrorism. Three years ago they appointed him Special Agent in Charge of the West Coast Unit.”

  “A guy like that….” Cosky shook his head and cursed softly. “Doesn’t have much to lose. Maybe that’s how they turned him.”

  Mac frowned. “That’s the thing. He remarried, started a new family—in his forties no less. He’s got two kids now. Boys. Can’t see him risking his second family by getting in bed with these motherfuckers.”

  Even as the words hit the air, Mac froze.

  He flashed back to his first sight of Chastain. The deep lines bracketing his mouth. The loose hang of his clothes. And then there was how accommodating the man had been. For Christ’s sake, he’d allowed him to talk to his men before the feds had even interviewed them. From his escort’s stunned reaction, that alone had to be unusual.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, watching the same realization creep across Cosky and Rawls’ faces.

  How hard would it be to compromise a man who’d lost his first family, lost his first run at happiness? How hard would it be to use his second family, his second chance against him? Suddenly, that strange reaction to Mac’s phone call made an ominous sort of a sense. It had been a deliberate flag, a warning.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said quietly. “The bastard was trying to warn us.”

  * * *

  Asking Beth Brown to tour the Clancy residence had been necessary to avoid drawing suspicion; such requests were standard operating procedure. A complete waste of time, in this case, since John Chastain already knew Todd Clancy’s family had been taken—kidnapped to use as a club.

  He’d recognized the raw, carved face. The ill-fitting clothes. The fresh streaks of gray in the sandy hair. Just as he’d recognized the flat sheen of terror in those brown eyes.

  The same face stared back every time he looked in a mirror.

  With controlled impatience, John closed the door to the office that Sea-Tac’s head of security had lent him. The briefcase he carried dragged at his left shoulder, a weight more mental than physical.

  He should have accompanied Beth Brown, Zane Winters and their host of FBI and police escorts as they toured the Clancy residence. But the thought of walking through that house and facing the desolatio
n and terror had been more than he could stand. Houses soaked up their residents’ emotions. A happy home could vibrate with joy. A stable home could ease with calm. An unhealthy home could sour with sickness. But a grieving home… grieving homes drowned in desolation and stillness. They numbed with emptiness.

  He’d been drowning in such a home for years before Amy had dragged him free.

  He’d been returning to such a house every night for the past six days. He didn’t need to tour Todd Clancy’s place to know that they shared the same zip code.

  Besides, there were the instructions on that damn note.

  He took a deep, raw breath.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled the scrap of paper free. Ice prickled, burned down to the bone. Someone in that bastard’s pay had gotten so close they’d been able to slip the instructions into his pocket.

  The note hadn’t been there when John had left the field office. He would have found it while rooting around for his keys. Nor had he taken his jacket off since his arrival, which left one conclusion. They’d slipped the note into his pocket while he’d been wearing the jacket.

  They could have slipped a knife through his ribs just as easily.

  The only people with that kind of access were on his team. He’d suspected someone from his unit had betrayed him. Now he knew for sure. Not that it made a difference, because he still didn’t know who.

  The office John found himself in was smaller than his own, with wood paneling on the walls, but the furniture was comfortable—leather and wood. Fishing and hunting scenes hung from the walls. Amy would have described it as lodge-aesthetic, and made some crack about men and their clubs.

  The fact she wasn’t there beside him to make the crack burned like acid. Christ, he needed to talk to her, hear the sound of her voice. Know she was alive.

  That they were all alive.

  He crossed to the mahogany desk and eased the briefcase down on the gleaming surface. Only a whisper touched the room when the case made contact, and he relaxed, as though anything sharper would have ricocheted up his arm and shattered him into a billion pieces.

  Pieces that nobody would ever find.

  That nobody could put back together again.

  Ah, God. Amy.

  The nausea swelled sudden and furious, a sour backwash in his throat. He stood there, completely still, waiting for it to subside and then bent over the briefcase. It took three tries before the locking mechanism retracted with a pop.

  Inside were a laptop and a disposable cell phone. He took both out and arranged them side by side on the desk. The leather of the chair creaked as he sat down. For one long moment he stared at the two items, his body tensing with each hard thump of his heart. Then he picked up the phone. The call log was empty.

  Nervous terror flooded him.

  What if they didn’t need him anymore? With their plans abandoned, and half their crew in custody, what if they’d simply cut their losses and walked? What if Amy and the boys were—He started shaking. Fists clenched, he rode the wave out. Tried not to think, tried not to guess, tried not to imagine—just existed in the here and now where they still lived.

  They had to be alive. Nothing else was acceptable.

  His breath caught in his throat as he powered up the laptop. Once Windows was running, he typed in the URL from the note.

  A flash of white and a dark, square box took center stage. Seven names appeared within the square. Chastain stared hard at the list of names, recognizing them from the flight manifest. All seven had been booked in first class. All seven were down in the makeshift holding pen, awaiting interviews.

  He shook his head. What the hell did these people have to do with the attempted hijacking? What the hell was he supposed to do with them?

  Another flash of white. Another square box. The kind used to share videos.

  Panic hit. His breath churned in and out, raw and boozy. He clenched his hands, and then stretched out his fingers—tried to convince them to click the play button, but terror caged him. It would be just like the bastard to hurt Amy or the boys and send him footage.

  To kill them. And make him watch.

  And he’d know John would watch. He’d have no choice. What if they weren’t dead? There might be something useful on the footage. A detail to help find them.

  A clue to bandage his world together.

  Closing his eyes, he reached past the shakes and clicked on the file, automatically checking the date stamp on the feed. It had been uploaded an hour earlier.

  “See how well we’re taking care of them,” a synthesized voice said.

  The video opened to blue skies. Cory walked on-screen, pink smears across his cheeks and chin. His rusty hair ruffled by an unseen breeze. A stick of cotton candy in one hand, the ears of a stuffed rabbit clenched in his other.

  “Daddy!” He grinned into the camera and dragged the rabbit higher. “Look what Brendan won!”

  John relaxed.

  With a flash of static the screen went fuzzy.

  Only to reopen in a bedroom. Focused on a bed. A woman.

  A soft huff stirred the air. Like someone had kicked the air from his lungs.

  Flash.

  Corey skipped alongside Brendan, his stuffed prize bumping across the shorn grass. “Can we ride on the Ferris wheel? I love the Ferris wheel.”

  Flash.

  A naked woman, red hair blindingly bright against an ivory pillow. Wrists tied to the headboard. Legs spread, pillows thrust beneath her hips until her pelvis tilted up. Ankles tied to the corner posts.

  No. Ah, God, no.

  Ginny Clancy had red hair too. He prayed, prayed it was another woman’s red hair spread across that pillow. A different woman strung there helpless and waiting.

  Flash.

  Brendan cradling a BB gun, his lips split by a grin, but darkness seething in his eyes. “I bet I can hit them all.” The ping of BBs hitting metal. Little yellow ducks falling over.

  Flash

  The camera panned in, straight to that bright head. An arm reached out, a fist caught a handful of that soft, shiny hair and forced her face toward the camera.

  Amy’s face. Amy’s dark, flat eyes.

  Flash.

  Brendan laughing into the camera, his teeth bared. The rifle thrust up toward the booth’s sign like a pointer. The booth operator smiling tightly behind him. “I shot just like you showed me, Dad. Just like you showed me. And I hit all eight of them.”

  Flash.

  A naked male body crawling between pale, spread legs.

  He sat there frozen. Silently screaming. While the film flashed from a perfect summer day with his two boys laughing and panning for the camera, to a shadowy bedroom where male bodies battered and rammed. Smearing bruises across soft, white skin. Leaving blood, semen, and the ashes of hope in their wake.

  He sat there long after the video had trailed into nothing, his mind replaying every moan, every grunt, every laugh. Not one of them had come from Amy. Not one scream either. Not even a whimper. She’d locked every sound inside her tight, arched throat.

  Years later, he clambered to his feet with the leaden weight of a five-hundred-pound, five-hundred-year-old man and lurched his way to the bathroom. His face was wet, he realized, as he stared in the mirror above the sink. Streaked with tears. They still leaked from his bloodshot eyes. He couldn’t feel them.

  Couldn’t feel anything at all.

  One of the men, by far the most brutal, had a tattoo—a harvest moon, pierced by a dagger. It dripped tears of blood. It was an unusual design, something he might be able to trace. If he had the manpower. If he had people he could trust. If Amy and the boys had the luxury of time.

  There had been six of them.

  Three with his boys at the fair. Three taking turns on his wife.

  Not one had worn a mask.

  Amy knew what that meant. She’d been with the agency before they’d married. She knew they weren’t getting out of there alive. The boys weren’t getting out of there a
live.

  Her grief and goodbye had been in her eyes.

  * * *

  Beth had withdrawn from him.

  By the time they returned to the airport from their walk-through of the Clancy residence, the distance between them was noticeable. At least to Zane. They might have been sitting side-by-side, arms brushing, thighs touching, but an emotional vacuum separated them.

  Her eyes were guarded. Her body stiff. She leaned away from him, rather than toward him. All subtle signs she’d pulled away. Yeah, she was worried about her friends, but he could pinpoint the exact moment the withdrawal had started—when Mac had launched the soul mate grenade.

  They needed to find someplace quiet and private, where he could stoke those guttering flames back to life.

  It was time for damage control.

  But where the hell was he going to find a private place, in the middle of a fucking airport, in the middle of a multi-agency investigation?

  If they took off, it would look suspicious, as if they were avoiding questions. At the moment, the FBI seemed more interested in tracking down Beth’s friends. But that could change in a heartbeat.

  Still, it was damn hard to just sit there, sensing the distance expanding between.

  By the time they reached the conference room, he was itchier than a cat with fleas and resisting the urge to drag Beth down the hall until he found an empty room with a sturdy lock.

  Rawls and Cosky had joined Mac in the conference room. Zane studied their faces as he escorted Beth inside. No doubt some major discussion had taken place concerning Beth and him, and that damn lie. But at least Mac had chilled some. He no longer resonated with the intensity of a bomb about to detonate. In fact, he didn’t even glance her direction as they entered the room, just fixed those fierce black eyes on the agents hovering in the doorway.

  “How much longer you jackasses planning on keeping my boys?” Mac demanded, bracing his hands on his hips. “They’ve got a damn wedding to attend.”

  Zane’s lips twitched. The disgust in his commander’s voice as he said “wedding” mirrored the tone he’d used when discussing the hijackers, but then Mac viewed the female half of the population—at least from puberty on—as an army of domestic terrorists.