He moved away from the back door and faced Kate. Before he had a chance to answer, his phone began to ring. “Must be Jake.” He grabbed his phone off the table by the couch. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” he answered with pained irritation.
“I’m sorry. We’re trying to get some stuff worked out. Can you head over here?”
“I don’t know if we should leave right now.”
“You shouldn’t stay there.” There was a pause on the line. “Michael, did you know David had a paternity test run at the hospital the day Kate was born? Something has been bothering me about him, and I looked into a few things last night.”
Michael looked over at Kate, wondering how she might react if she knew. And then there was a beep on his phone. “I’m getting a call, hang on.” He transferred to the other line. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mike. Or, is it, Michael, now?” The voice was low but smooth around the edges. It echoed loudly from the receiver—he must have bumped the speakerphone button, by accident. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Oh my God,” Kate whispered under her breath.
His eyes locked on hers just as the power went out. The last bit of sun hanging above the water filled the room with blue shadows.
He moved toward her, gripped with sudden alarm, needing to protect her. “What the hell do you want?” he growled.
“Judging by the swarm of feds at the nearby hotel, I assume you all have figured out who I am.” There was a deep and eerie snicker on the end of the line. “I guess the real game is about to begin.”
Before Michael could respond, the call was over.
“We need to leave.” Kate reached for Michael’s arm and drew her body close to his.
“That’s what he wants. I need to call Jake.” He made the call with his free arm. “Shit.” He blew out a heated breath. “Lost service. He’s probably jamming the signal.”
With quick steps, Michael kept Kate at his side as he moved from the semi-dark living room to the bedroom, where he retrieved his gun. “I don’t want to take you out of here, but we’re not safe.” Kate would be in danger no matter what he did—and it was all his fault. He should never have brought her to the cabin. He should never have fooled around with her last night when Dustin was out there, discovering his weaknesses.
“What do we do?”
“We have to leave.” He grabbed the flashlight he kept near the front door. “Stay close to me.”
They moved outside. He held his gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Kate pressed her hand against his shoulder, following his lead to the car.
He studied his Audi with the light, checking for any signs of tampering. “Stand back,” he cautioned as he unlocked the vehicle and turned it on. He pulled up the LCD screen and tapped a few buttons, performing a quick systems check for interference. He couldn’t risk the car blowing up with Kate inside.
“All clear,” an electronic voice from the car announced.
“It’s okay now. Get in.”
“Talk about hurry up and wait,” she mumbled while buckling her seatbelt.
“It pays to be cautious—he could have planted a bomb. But the car is clean.”
He drove the car down the long driveway, keeping his eyes trained on the thick wood surrounding them. They needed to get out of the dark, and fast.
“Are we going to be okay?”
He could hear the fear laced within every syllable she spoke. “Yes,” he said, hoping he sounded convincing. He tightened his grip on the wheel with one hand and repositioned the other to grasp hold of the gun in his lap.
Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch? His eyes shifted in each direction as they drove down the back road. There were still a few miles to go before they reached safe—or safer—ground.
When he caught sight of two bright headlights flashing on from an upcoming side road, he shifted his foot to the brake pedal.
But it was too late.
The sound of the two metal objects crashing into each other was deafening. The airbags were like a harsh punch in the face as they exploded inside the car.
His car slid off the road, only to be stopped by a tree, which caused a secondary jolt of his head forward and back.
Kate’s screams shot through him. He tried to move, to free himself from the seatbelt, but the airbag was in his way. He searched blindly for his gun with a blood streaked hand.
His hands slipped against the seatbelt buckle.
Get the fuck out. Get to Kate. His brain shouted desperate orders to his battered body.
When the buckle finally unlatched, he reached for the door handle and tried to fight his way free from the airbag. He tumbled out of the car and hit the ground with a large smack, the pain in his shoulder slicing through him.
He could no longer hear Kate, which made him more nervous. He started to get up when he saw boots closing in on him.
The same military-grade boots appeared in his mind. A memory of Afghanistan . . . of the Taliban insurgent who’d slit the medic’s throat.
He shook the image free. He had to stop Dustin before he got to Kate. Where was his gun?
“You can’t save her. Not today, anyway.”
Michael started to push off the ground, ready to lunge toward Dustin. But, the last thing he saw was a gun in his face; the last thing he felt was an all-too-familiar pain.
Chapter Twenty
“I gave you quite the dose of morphine. You might feel a little nauseous.”
Kate had surgery once. She’d had her wisdom teeth removed, and she had been nervous to be put under anesthesia, so the doctors had given her something. It had felt something like this.
She struggled to control her thoughts and fight through the blur of memories in her brain. Where was she? As if emerging from a dark tunnel, she started to see the light.
A car crash. Screaming—her own shrieks. Michael? Oh God, what about Michael?
“Where is he?” She hadn’t known that she spoke aloud until a voice answered from the darkness.
“In a hospital. I assume.”
“Where am I?” She shut her eyes, hoping to quell the sick feeling that was building in her stomach.
She tried to touch her face, but couldn’t lift her hands. She forced herself to reopen her eyes, fighting the grogginess that weighed her down. Cool metal chafed against her wrists as she twisted to find her hands.
They were shackled to a headboard.
She tried to move her feet, but they seemed likewise occupied.
“If you squirm, you’ll just hurt yourself,” Dustin warned as he stepped to the bedside and was dimly illuminated. He stared down at her and touched her face with the back of his hand.
She wanted to jerk her face free of his touch, but her head just drifted to the side. “Where am I?” she repeated, mumbling.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and clapped his hands. Dust choked the air as his hands smacked together. “A dirty place.” He shook his head. “It has been vacant for some time.”
She tried to sit up a little, to get a better view. But it was pointless—her head was too heavy. “Why am I alive? Why not just kill me?”
“It’s up to Michael if you live or die.”
His words echoed in her ears for a moment, bouncing around as she tried to make sense of them. She moved her head toward the source of light beside her. Sitting on top of a bedside table was a battery-operated lantern. Either there was no electricity, or Dustin didn’t want the lights on. Her body flexed against the restraints as anger stirred inside her. “What do you want from me?”
He shot her a smile, revealing semi-crooked teeth. “What every man wants.”
Her stomach flipped and burned as waves of acid and nausea tumbled inside of her. This can’t be happening. “No.” She shook her head and strained against the handcuffs again.
“Money.”
She stopped struggling and locked eyes with him. “My family has money if that’s what you want.” Kate allowed herself a thin gl
immer of hope.
“You don’t have the kind of money I’m looking for, but thanks for the offer.” He stood up and crossed his arms.
She could almost picture what he must have looked like in Afghanistan, with a sniper rifle strapped to his body and a shit-eating grin on his face. “I don’t understand.” The drugs were becoming less potent, and she was beginning to feel the pain of the accident. She bit back the desire to cry as a sharp, stabbing pain shot through her shoulder and right arm.
“Need more meds?” he asked while tilting his head.
“No.” The last thing she wanted was to be drugged by a psychopath. She’d prefer the pain.
“Well, if you change your mind . . . You’re no good to me unconscious.”
She flinched as he approached her. “Please, don’t touch me.” She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in her bottom lip, fear enveloping her. Her eyes opened when something wet touched her forehead. The sensation trailed to her shoulder.
He dabbed at the blood with a moist cloth and taped gauze over the small gash in her shoulder.
She stared at him with wide eyes, worried about his true intentions. “Please, just leave me alone.”
“You should be okay. Does it hurt anywhere else?” he asked, wiping his hands clean of her blood.
What in the hell is going on? “Are you crazy?” Yes, of course, he is. What a ridiculous question.
“Michael won’t help me if he sees you battered and broken—looking dead.”
“What are you talking about?” She stared at him, her body vibrating with fear. Please. She glanced over at the nightstand and saw a gun. She hadn’t noticed it before.
Dustin sat back down on the bed, close enough for Kate to really see his face. She could feel his eyes on her chest, and she remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“You’re going to do something for me. Well, you already have, without realizing it.” He sniggered a little before licking his lips and averting his eyes back to hers. “You’re going to get Michael to give me . . . everything.”
Confusion swirled inside her. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my mom?”
He scratched his short beard before clasping his hands on his lap. “Sweetie, you’re just a pawn in a much bigger game. Your life, your past, is meaningless to me. But I do need to give some credit to your father. If it weren’t for him, I’d never have stumbled on to such a golden opportunity.”
The way he leaned in just a little and narrowed his dark eyes showed her his excitement to view her response to his words. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction; she narrowed her eyes right back.
“If you haven’t figured it out by now—your father hired me.”
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
All that noise was making his head hurt. His eyelids felt heavy.
After a few attempts, his eyes opened, and he was greeted by a piercing white light.
“Kate.”
“She was taken, Michael.”
Connor’s words trickled through his mind, eating at him like a piranha on the attack. He couldn’t believe it. Refused to accept it. “No.” He struggled to sit up, but felt Connor’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him gently to lie back down.
“We’re on it, don’t worry.” Connor left the room for a brief moment and returned with Jake at his side.
“You okay, man?” Jake asked as Michael struggled to sit up again. “You were in an accident, and you’ve been shot. Relax.”
Michael shook his head. “I have to find her. I need to get to her.” He ignored the pain blitzing his system and removed the wires that were fixed to his chest. The monitors in the room began shrieking at obnoxious levels. “Get me out of this hospital,” he demanded.
“Buddy, you were shot in the chest—not too far from your other bullet wounds. You need to stay here.”
“The fuck I do.” Every nerve in Michael’s body powered to toxic levels.
Nurses rushed in. “Please, sir, if you don’t stop struggling we will need to inject you with something,” the nurse to his left insisted.
The thought of being drugged halted his struggle for the moment. “Fine,” he said, waving his hand at the nurse. He sat back and allowed the nurse to hook him back up to the machines.
“I should be dead. Why am I alive?” he asked, feeling a little breathless.
Jake exchanged a knowing look with Connor.
“What is it?” Michael all but shouted.
“A lot has happened in the five hours you’ve been asleep,” Jake said with a steady voice. He took a few steps closer to Michael’s bed.
“Five hours?” Michael started to struggle again.
“I won’t tell you anything unless you calm down,” Jake warned.
Anger seethed throughout his body, but Michael forced himself to relax. “Fine.”
“When I discovered Dustin Scott was the one tracking Kate, I had to call my superiors, as well as Homeland Security. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, but catching Dustin is a matter of national security. I have a team of agents nearby, working together to locate his whereabouts. I received direct orders to use Kate as bait.”
Michael clenched his hands at his sides but remained quiet.
“I asked Kate to take her date to the nightclub, hoping to draw Dustin out. I knew you would track Kate down and become furious with me, with Connor . . . I knew you would do something irrational—like take her to your cabin. I expected that, and I needed you to do that. Dustin needed to be able to access you and Kate to make his move.” He held his hands in the air and furrowed his brow. “I’m so sorry. I was under orders. I didn’t want to betray your trust, and I hated putting you and Kate in danger, but I had no choice. We’re talking about a man with connections to notorious terrorist cells throughout the world.”
Michael’s head pounded and the veins in his arms raised as fury coursed through his body. “Where’s Kate?”
“Yesterday we did a search of any recent hotel and home rentals nearby. Someone matching Dustin’s description rented a rather isolated property on the lake just a mile from your cabin.”
“Which is why you wanted me at my cabin.” He released a breath. “Is Kate there?”
“No. Surveillance shows no thermal body imaging. But we did discover something interesting—the place is being monitored and is rigged with explosives.”
“He set a trap for us,” Connor said from across the room.
Michael glanced at him and back at Jake. “What does he want with Kate? If he wants us to get blown to hell, why didn’t he just kill me?”
“I’m pretty sure he wants you alive, but the rest of my team—I doubt he cares about them.”
“Because?” Michael tried to roll his neck a bit, to free some of the stiffness, but the pain in his chest and shoulder shocked him to stillness.
“He sent you a video message an hour ago.”
“Show it to me.” His voice was cold and thick with resentment.
Jake pulled his cell phone from his pocket and queued up the video.
An image of Kate appeared on the screen. She was wearing torn, and blood stained clothing, with her hands and feet shackled to a bed. The pain in Michael’s chest slipped away as rage enveloped him.
With a strained voice, Kate spoke. “Michael, I’m so sorry. Dustin says he’ll kill me if you don’t do what he wants. But, don’t—” The video ended, her words hanging in the air.
“Following the video was a text message, which explained that you would be receiving an email soon. And he requested that you do not show anyone the message or else . . .” Jake moved the phone away from Michael’s view.
“But you haven’t received any emails. At least, not to your phone.”
“If I did, I would sure as hell not share them with you.” Distrust rang clear through his words. “I’ll handle this on my own. Dustin wants me, and if I have a chance to save Kate . . . I need to do this myself.”
“Michael, you know I can’t just drop this.
I have the upper echelon of the U.S. government on my ass. They’re demanding a win.”
Before Michael had a chance to respond, he looked over to see David Adams entering the room. “Connor called me. Are you okay? Where’s my daughter?” His words tumbled out in an almost incoherent jumble. He rushed to the side of Michael’s bed.
“What the hell are you keeping from us?” Michael asked, gritting his teeth. “Kate was taken. We have no idea where she is.”
David took a step back and pressed his hands to his face, his fingers trembling. “Oh God, I am so sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I didn’t know who he was. I tried to stop it. But he wouldn’t return my calls.” He sank into a nearby chair.
“What are you talking about?” Michael shot out.
David attempted to catch his breath. “Ever since Elizabeth died, I have been worried that Kate would discover the truth. I’ve been terrified. I tried to keep her away from this place, to keep her safe.” His breath hitched. “I lied to you all.” He swallowed his emotion. “Two weeks before her mother was murdered, Elizabeth told me that she could no longer live with the secret she had been carrying around with her. She told me that she had cheated on me around the time she became pregnant. She didn’t know if the baby was mine.”
The paternity test. That part made sense now. Michael tipped his head back a little, trying to keep calm.
“I was angry, and we fought. I didn’t want to know who she slept with—I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t even talk to her for those two weeks. I refused to take her calls. Even when I got a message on my answering machine from her the week before her death, I ignored it. She said in her message that she was scared, that the person she’d slept with was obsessed with her—following her around. I thought she was just trying to get me to speak to her.” He pressed his hands against the chair handles. “The day she was killed, she left me another message, asking me to meet her at her parents’ house. She begged for me to come, to at least talk.” He released a breath. “I decided to go, to talk to her—but I didn’t get there in time. I told the police about Elizabeth’s concerns about being stalked . . .”
Silenced Memories Page 21
