Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “The men who are chasing me,” Neesha said. “They were here. Four hours ago. I saw them. They took Ben.”

  Danny snapped instantly into Navy SEAL mode, getting very decisive, very quickly, after Neesha told them, in pretty specific detail, what she’d seen and heard—and a condensed but no less horrific version of precisely why those men were chasing her.

  The man from the mall, whose name apparently was Jake, had been in the courtyard with two other men—one of them named Todd, whom Neesha knew not only because he’d worked as a guard at the brothel where she’d been a slave, but because he’d also been one of her “visitors,” or clients, for years.

  Jenn didn’t want to think about what that meant. And there really wasn’t all that much time to focus on that aspect of the nightmare—because Neesha had overheard Jake telling the other two men to shoot and kill Dan and Izzy on sight. He had somehow known they were in the military and therefore a threat.

  The girl had also overheard Jake telling his cohorts to wear masks—so their abductees would believe they would survive their kidnapping.

  Which meant that the men who had taken Ben had every intention of killing him—no doubt immediately after he divulged Neesha’s location.

  Except Ben had no idea where Neesha was hiding.

  And this time, Danny didn’t need his uniform to become larger and commanding.

  “Get your things,” he ordered both Jenn and Eden, “your handbags, whatever. Grab Ben’s insulin, too. We’re leaving. In about thirty seconds.”

  “I need to call Izzy,” Eden said, her phone already out in and in her hands.

  “You can call him from the road,” Danny told her, checking to make sure he’d put his own cell phone into his jeans pocket.

  “I’m calling him now,” Eden told him.

  “Kill the light in the hall,” he said as Jenn stayed over by Neesha, giving the girl what she hoped was a reassuring smile as the light went out so that Dan could go into the bedroom and look out the window and into the courtyard without being seen.

  “He’s not picking up,” Eden said. “Come on, Izzy … Answer your phone!”

  “Doesn’t it seem really unlikely,” Jenn said as Dan turned off the bedroom light, “that they’d come back here? They got what they wanted, right? When they took Ben? I mean, I know it’s not safe for us to stay here, but to have to rush away?”

  Dan stopped there in the bedroom doorway to grimly say, “If they’ve had Ben for four hours, they know by now that he’s got no information that’ll help them find Neesha. So yes. They’ll come back. To get Eden, who helped Neesha escape. They’ll think she knows something, and they’ll come while it’s still dark.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jenn said as he went into the bedroom.

  “Eden, shit, come here,” Dan called in a rough whisper, and Eden followed him.

  “Oh, crap,” Jenn heard Eden say. “That’s him. The man with the gun, from the Starbucks. Izzy, where are you?”

  “Oh, my God.” Jenn said again, her heart in her throat. “Are you serious?”

  “Keep watching them,” Dan commanded Eden, adding, “Jenni, put the chain on the door and throw the bolt.” He limped out of the bedroom and over to the window in the living room—the one that looked out over the street—as he dialed his cell phone. “Shit. There’s a van idling on the street. That’s not good. Neesha, were you followed? Did anyone see you come here?”

  The little girl was shaking her head, terrified. “I was careful. I waited and watched—even after I saw you come home.”

  This little chain on the door wasn’t going to keep anyone out for long. Not if they wanted to get inside. Jenn turned back to Dan.

  “There are two men in the courtyard,” he told her, even as he held his phone to his ear, “and one of them is the man Eden tried to run over earlier tonight. They look like they’re waiting for someone. Whether they’re here for surveillance or … something else, they’re sure as shit not even attempting to be covert—No, I can’t hold—God damn it.”

  “If we try to leave,” Jenn started.

  “They’ll see us,” Dan confirmed, holding out his phone and glaring at it. “There’s no way we’re sneaking out without that happening. And with my fucking leg, we can’t outrun them—”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Jenn said, looking around for something to push in front of the door, since leaving wasn’t an option. “But I’d bet big money you can still run faster than me, even with your ‘fucking’ leg. So we hunker down. Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  In the bedroom, Eden was finishing up leaving a detailed message for Izzy, with a Call me back, now—we need you!

  “Already doing that,” Dan said, “but the 9-1-1 operator just put me on hold. Neesha, get into the bedroom. In the closet. They may not know you’re here.”

  “They’ll find me,” the girl said. “In the closet.”

  “It’s better than just standing here,” Dan argued. “Except … Wait a minute …”

  While they were talking, Jenn had gone into the kitchen—the refrigerator was the only thing heavy enough to barricade the door. When Neesha saw what she was doing, she quickly came to help. She was stronger than she looked, and they moved the refrigerator across the linoleum floor with a screech. Although, to be honest? Even with it in front of the door, it was only going to slow down an assault by a minute or so, at the most.

  Out in the living room, Dan had started pulling the cushions off the sofa as Eden called from the bedroom, “Danny, where’s Greg’s gun?”

  “Zanella has it,” he said tersely as he pulled up the metal-and-canvas bed frame that was folded into the body of the sofa. Normally, when it was closed, the folded mattress would occupy all of the space inside the furniture’s outer shell. But with the mattress on the floor … He pulled his phone from his ear again, to look at it now in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, they cut me off.” He redialed. “Neesha, forget about the closet—I need you over here. Now.”

  Jenn took out her cell phone, and dialed 9-1-1, too. “Maybe I’ll get through.”

  “I should just go out there,” Neesha said. “Give myself up.”

  They all spoke at once. “Like hell,” Dan said as Eden called from the bedroom, “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” as Jenn said, “Honey, we’re not going to let you do that.”

  “But they’ll kill you,” she told Danny, fiercely, turning to look at Jenn, too. “Maybe they’ll kill all of you. And they’re going to find me anyway.”

  “I’m calling Izzy again,” Eden said, as if, like Superman, he could instantly swoop in and save them, despite being all the way on the other side of town.

  “Neesha,” Dan said to the little girl. “Look at me. If you really overheard them talking before they took Ben—”

  “I did!”

  “Then you have to climb in here and hide. Whatever happens, whatever you hear, you have to be silent. Because once they find you and kill you?” Dan looked from Neesha to Jenn, his face grim. “Ben’s dead, too.”

  On the way to Crossroads, just to add insult to injury, Eden’s wicked stepfather Greg did the glorious Technicolor yawn and vomited all over himself in the front seat of Izzy’s rental car.

  “Really?” Izzy said, pulling hard over into a deserted strip-mall parking lot as the malodorous smell assaulted him, full force. “Really?”

  His night had already been a suckfest, and he’d been driving with his full focus on the task at hand—going to Crossroads to free Ben—trying not to think about Eden.

  And yet he couldn’t stop himself from seeing her face and hearing her crying after the truth had come out about the hell she’d survived after Katrina.

  She cried, but not because of the injustice and abuse she’d endured at her brother-in-law Ron’s despicable hands. No, the outpouring of emotion had come when Danny’d put his arms around her and said, I’m sorry.

  And not just I’m sorry you had to go through this, but also I’m sorry that no one believed you.

&
nbsp; As Izzy jammed the car into park, his cell phone started doing its happy little vibrating dance in his cargo-shorts pocket. But there was no time to reach for it and answer as he unlocked the doors and burst out into the heat of the night as fast as his legs could carry him. He knew some guys—some of them SEALs or former SEALs—who reacted to someone’s barfing by immediately barfing, too, like the most disgusting call and response in the history of the planet. But his stomach was made of iron, so that wasn’t the reason for his speed. He executed the front-hood slide-over in a mad rush only in order to open the passenger-side door and pull out Greg the human volcano before he erupted again.

  Although, damn Skippy. The damage was done and the car was now a frakking stank-mobile of vomitous doom. And even with his cast-iron innards, it was hard for Izzy not to gag.

  He had Greg-puke on his hands from grabbing the man by his shirt, and there was no way he was reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone with those fingers, so he let the call go to voice mail as he strategized his next move. It was probably just Danny, anyway, calling for a sit-rep. Izzy’d call him back, after there was better news than Hey, the inside of my rental car—the second car I’ve rented because the first one was totaled—is now a new color, and it’s not a pretty one.

  Holy shit.

  The splatter factor was off the charts—the passenger-side dash was sprayed, as was the floor mat and part of the seat, which was fabric of course, here in the land of molten-lava heat. Vinyl, in Vegas, could deliver third-degree burns, but it sure as hell would’ve been easier to de-puke. As Izzy stood there in the oppressive heat, he wished he’d been given an option at the rental-car counter.

  Although, he could just imagine that conversation. I understand you’d prefer the ball-burning but easy-to-clean vinyl, sir, because you anticipate driving passengers who’ll regurgitate regularly. Please initial here, here, and here, acknowledging that you’ve been properly warned of the potential danger to your nether regions. A barf-scraper and absorbent towels come with the vehicle. Would you care to rent a cooler for an additional ten dollars a day so you can ice your scrotum after being scalded?

  He wished Eden were here, because she would think that was pretty funny, too, and …

  Yeah.

  Izzy pulled out the floor mat and deposited it next to Greg. The man was down on his knees, in the classic position of acquiescence and prayer, bowing to the gods of substance abuse and overindulgence, and making another loudly yukatatious offering right there on the pitted pavement.

  “Fuck,” Izzy said in disgust as he wiped his hands on the back of Greg’s shirt—which wasn’t all that clean, but at least was vomit-free. And hey, it could’ve been worse. Dude clearly had been on a liquid diet for days. He could’ve been blowing chunks.

  There was nothing for Izzy to do but take off his own T-shirt and use it to wipe clean the interior of the car—at least as much as he could. There was surely a convenience store open somewhere between here and Crossroads, where he could stop in and pick up a T-shirt. And? If he were really lucky? It would have Siegfried & Roy on it.

  Eden had left half of a bottle of water in the car door, and Izzy was using it, with his shirt, to clean up as best he could, when his phone jiggled again.

  He checked his hand—clean, okay, clean-ish—before he dug for it and … Shit, it was Eden, and she’d called before, left a message, too. Izzy hit talk. “Hey. I haven’t made it to Crossroads yet—”

  “Izzy!” Eden sounded almost out of breath, as if something was terribly wrong. “Thank God. Ben’s not at Crossroads, he’s been kidnapped. The men, from the Starbucks—that I hit with your car? They’re here!”

  What the fuck …? If he’d spoken aloud, Eden didn’t acknowledge it. She just kept going.

  “Neesha—she was hiding and she saw them take Ben, but now they’re back, and she said they were going to kill you and Danny because they know you’re military, but Danny won’t hide—Jenn wants him to hide, or to go out the window, but he won’t and—”

  “Whoa,” Izzy said. “Whoa, Eden, slow down. Where are you?”

  “At the apartment,” she told him. “Izzy, please, you have to get over here. Now.”

  Greg had collapsed in a puddle of puke, his cheek against the pavement and his eyes closed, and Izzy tucked his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he grabbed the man by the belt and hauled him up, moving him onto the sidewalk in front of a dark and shuttered nail salon, as Eden kept talking.

  “They’re down in the courtyard, but Danny’s sure they’re just waiting for backup before they come in,” she told him as he ran to the car and climbed in, then peeled out of the lot with a squeal of tires. “We can’t leave without them seeing us, and there’s no way to stop them. You have Greg’s gun.”

  Shit, he did—and it was locked in the trunk. He squealed to a stop, popped the trunk, and grabbed the case, bringing it up into the front seat with him, as he pulled back out into the street

  “I’m on my way,” Izzy told her, pushing the pedal to the metal on the deserted streets, as he keyed Eden’s address into the car’s GPS, then focused on unlocking the case. “But I’m—shit!—at least fifteen minutes from you.” If he didn’t get stopped for going ninety in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone … But maybe it would be a good idea to get a police escort over there. “Sweetheart, stay on the phone with me, okay, but tell Jenn or Dan to call the police.”

  “We’ve been trying,” Eden said. “We keep getting put on hold. Danny’s been disconnected, twice.”

  Shit-fuck. “Tell Danny to call Mark Jenkins,” Izzy said as he blew through a second red light, then slipped the weapon and several magazines of ammo into the pockets of his shorts. “His wife, Lindsey, has a contact in the FBI, but shit, whoever we call is going to take time to get to you, too, and … Listen, sweetheart, do you know any of your neighbors? Is there anyone you can call, maybe have everyone open their doors and go into the courtyard and just scream and yell and wake up as many people in the complex as you can? I’m thinking there’s safety in numbers.”

  “I don’t know anyone here,” she told him. “I don’t have anyone’s phone number.” And then she gasped words that made his heart damn near stop: “Izzy! Danny! Oh, my God, they’re coming!”

  Eden came out of the bedroom, still on the phone with Zanella. “Danny,” she said again.

  “I heard you the first time,” Dan told his sister as he put the cushions back on the sofa, with Neesha hidden safely inside.

  “Dan,” Jenni said. “Please. Just go out the living-room window. I know you can make it up onto the roof without them seeing you …”

  “I can’t do that.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her, briefly, on his way over to the door. His plan was to throw his weight against the refrigerator, try to keep them out as long as he possibly could, while hoping one of them would be foolish enough to stick a hand with a weapon inside, to fire it indiscriminately.

  At which point Danny would gain possession of said weapon and kill the bastards. Provided he was still alive …

  “Please,” Jenni said again. “If Neesha’s right, they’re just going to kill you. No questions, no warning.”

  “I can’t just desert you,” he told her, told Eden, too.

  “What do you think you’ll be doing when they kill you and you’re dead?” Jenn asked.

  He had no good answer for that. “Just get in the bathroom and lock the door,” he ordered them. “Now.”

  “Izzy says that if he was the bald guy from the mall, and he suspected that you were military—forget about SpecOps,” Eden said. “He’d kill you straight off, too.”

  “Thanks so much, Zanella,” Dan said loudly enough for Eden’s phone to pick up his voice.

  “Uh-huh,” Eden said, into her phone, still talking to Zanella as she went into the kitchen. “Okay, I got it, yeah …”

  “Danny, please,” Jenni begged him, moving away from Eden and not toward the bathroom, where they’d be safest should th
e attack come through the bedroom window. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he told her, right before—what the hell?—someone—Eden, damn it—hit him hard over the head with something heavy. The room spun and he fought it as he hit the floor with his knees, but she hit him again, almost gently this time, and he lost the battle and the world went black.

  Eden picked up the cell phone that she’d dropped, in order to drop her brother with the heaviest thing in the apartment—a metal statue of Buddha that had been sitting on the kitchen counter when she’d moved in.

  “Oh, my God,” Jenn said. “I can’t believe you did that. Is he okay?” She searched for his pulse, fingers at his very unconscious throat. “Okay. All right. His pulse is strong and steady. But now what? Do we hide him?”

  “I hit him where you told me to,” Eden told Izzy as she shook her head no at Jenn. “But I had to hit him twice.”

  Izzy exhaled hard on the other end of the phone. “Damn, he’s going to kill me,” he said, his voice rich and warm in her ear. “Okay, get his cell phone, Eden. Get it now, hang up, put your phone—this one that you’re talking on right now—in your pocket, and call me back on his phone.”

  “What?” she said as she found Danny’s phone. “Why?”

  “Do it,” he said. “He’s got a better phone, it’s got GPS—it’ll be easier to track you, but please, sweetheart, don’t question everything—we don’t have that much time.”

  “You better pick up,” she said as she cut the connection and quickly found Izzy’s number in Danny’s phone book, in the Zs.

  “Eden,” Jenn said, from her place on the floor next to Dan, his head in her lap, “please don’t make me regret trusting you …”

  “You’re not trusting me,” Eden said. “You’re trusting Izzy.”

  He answered almost before it rang. “Good,” he said. “Now run and find a shirt with long sleeves, something with cuffs that’ll be tight around your wrists.”

  Eden ran to her bedroom and grabbed a shirt from her closet and pulled it on as Izzy said, “Put this phone with the signal open and on, put it up your sleeve, close to your wrist. They’re going to search you, but they’ll probably start at your forearms and work down, so they’re more likely to miss it. Please, sweet Jesus …”