by Amelia Autin
The electronic signal came to a complete halt ten minutes later and stayed that way. “Pull over.” When the van halted, Niall watched the signal, but it didn’t move. He clicked to throw an overlay on the screen, a satellite image of the earth in that location so crisp and clear it, too, was top secret, because the US didn’t want its enemies to know just how good their satellite cameras were.
But... “There’s nothing there,” Niall said blankly, staring in disbelief. No buildings. Nothing but mountain foothills, sparse trees and scrubland.
Then something happened he hadn’t been prepared for. Something that scared the living daylights out of him. The blue dot simply...vanished.
* * *
“Equipment malfunction?” one of the FBI special agents asked when Niall and the rest had assembled for a hastily called confab.
The driver of the van shook his head. “Not possible. That equipment has never failed before. Never.”
“There’s a first time for everything, and...”
All at once an idea occurred to Niall, and he tuned out the pissing match between the agents from the FBI and the agency. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and moved away, then hit speed dial for Keira. When she picked up, he said without preamble, “I need to know if Spencer Davies obtained a building permit in the last year. For anything. And if so, I need to know exactly what and exactly where.”
“Is that all? Piece of cake. Give me five minutes, ten max. I’ll call you right back.”
But his phone buzzed for an incoming email before five minutes had passed. He swiped a finger over the touch screen, and sure enough it was from Keira. When he clicked on it, he saw a series of numbers in a format he instantly recognized. Then his phone rang.
“Did you get my email?” she asked. “Those are—”
“GPS coordinates,” he finished for her.
“You got it. Davies applied for and received a permit at the end of August for construction of a bomb shelter on a remote area of his estate in the foothills east of Alamogordo. Three guesses how he got that approval in record time,” she added dryly, but not waiting for a response. “Work was completed mid-October—apparently he paid the construction company a huge bonus to get it finished early.”
“Thank you very much!” And though his brain was already assimilating this knowledge into the situation and what they could do about it, he took a moment to say, “Anyone ever tell you you’re a lifesaver?”
Keira laughed and said in an understatement, “Oh, once or twice.”
The FBI and the agency guys were still verbally duking it out, with assistance on both sides of the argument from the Defense Security Service men, so Niall ignored them and climbed into the van. He keyed in the coordinates from his sister’s email, and confirmed that, yes, they were an exact match for Savannah’s last known location before her beacon disappeared.
He jumped out and got everyone’s attention by putting two fingers in his mouth and letting out an ear-piercing whistle. “I know why the signal was lost,” he announced. “And it has nothing to do with equipment failure.”
* * *
“Keep walking,” Martin said, one hand on his gun, the other shoving Savannah forward. He’d removed the hood and the gag—thank God for small favors! she thought—but he’d left her hands tied. They moved deeper and deeper into the side of the mountain, and Savannah knew a moment of despair.
Niall had been right, this definitely wasn’t Spencer Davies’s mansion outside Alamogordo. But there was no way a signal would penetrate the inches-thick concrete walls, no matter how good the electronic equipment was.
The despair was banished when she reminded herself she wasn’t going to die until she solved the problem with Davies’s obsolete missile. He has to know it won’t happen overnight, regardless of how brilliant he thinks you are. And Niall will move heaven and earth to find you.
Maybe the agents working this case wouldn’t catch Martin and Tammy. If the Williamses escaped today, even if they were caught at some point in the future, it would only be her word against theirs that they’d brought her here at gunpoint. A good defense attorney could easily cast reasonable doubt on the voice recording’s authenticity. And their fingerprints weren’t on file, either, which meant they both had clean records. They could fool a jury the same way they’d fooled her.
There was little chance of putting pressure on them to testify against Spencer Davies if they weren’t caught in the act of kidnapping. Which meant his house of cards would stand...for now.
Even if she somehow escaped or Niall managed to eventually rescue her, again it would only be her word against Davies’s that he’d had her kidnapped. Would a jury believe her? Would it even go to trial, or would the prosecutors decide there just wasn’t enough evidence?
No way to know the answers to those questions, she admitted. But you’ll still be alive no matter what.
Unless she did something stupid, like make Martin and Tammy suspicious the Feds were on the case. Like refuse to work on Davies’s obsolete missile. Like let it slip she knew Davies intended to kill her, eventually.
* * *
“Savannah’s not in imminent danger,” Niall said, reminding himself at the same time as the other men, “unless the Williamses think they’re trapped. If that happens...” He didn’t finish the sentence because he refused to let himself dwell on that possibility. Failure was not an option. “So whatever we do, we can’t let them know we’re out here.
“If they’re waiting for Davies—and I think they are because they want to be paid—then they won’t leave until he arrives. That means we have to know where Davies is at every moment.” He bent his gaze on the FBI special agents, whose agency was tasked with the round-the-clock surveillance on Davies. “Where is he now?”
“Eyes in the sky from Holloman say his Range Rover just left the house, heading east toward these mountains,” the senior FBI special agent replied. “He’s on a private road, so there’s no way to put a tail on him. But aerial surveillance is better anyway, out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Agreed. But I want continuous updates. And I want to know the minute he arrives at the entrance to the bomb shelter.”
He glanced at the US Marshals who’d been guarding Savannah right up until she drove to meet the Williamses. “You’ve got broad latitude where Dr. Whitman is concerned. You do whatever you need to do to keep her safe. Understood?”
A trio of yes, sirs answered him, and he turned back to the men from the FBI, the agency and the Defense Security Service. “Nobody makes a move until I give the word, you got that?” It was highly unusual for a representative of Niall’s agency to be put in charge of a joint federal task force like this, especially when both the FBI and the agency were involved, but he had been placed in command. He wasn’t going to risk something going wrong because someone hadn’t got the message.
He nodded in response to the chorus of acknowledgements. “Okay then. Everyone knows the plan. Let’s do it.”
* * *
Savannah’s hands were going numb. She’d accurately assessed Martin as the leader, so she addressed her request to be untied to him. He considered her docile plea, then said, “Alive, you’re money in the bank to me. Dead, you’re worthless.” He raised his gun and added, “But I’ll kill you if I have to.”
Savannah nodded her head and said, “I understand. I won’t try anything, I swear. But I can’t feel my hands.”
Martin glanced at Tammy and ordered, “Do it.” And Tammy complied in untying her.
So at least she was free. Not that she intended to do anything with her dubious freedom. But Spencer Davies would arrive eventually. He’d pay the Williamses and they’d be gone. Then she’d reassess. For now, though, she intended to be the model prisoner.
* * *
Dramatic rescues made for good press, but the
y also put the victims in grave peril, and Niall had no intention of risking Savannah’s life. So while part of him was chomping at the bit to storm the bomb shelter and shoot it out with the Williamses like some kind of modern-day Wyatt Earp at the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the rational side of him knew better.
She’s not in imminent danger, he told himself when Davies arrived at the entrance to the bomb shelter, parked and got out of his Range Rover carrying a brown leather briefcase, which Niall figured was the payoff.
She’s not in imminent danger, he repeated when Davies went around to the back of the Range Rover and extracted a smaller case from where it was tucked inside one of the wheel wells. Opened it. Then took out a pistol and a clip, inserting the latter into the former.
Niall’s gun finger twitched on the Beretta’s trigger, and he so wanted to take Davies down, hard. Not because of the attempts on his own life, but because the scumbag thought he could get away with kidnapping Savannah by casting doubts on her loyalty, using her for his own nefarious purposes and then, when she’d accomplished what he wanted her to accomplish, killing her to get rid of the evidence.
But... She’s not in imminent danger, Niall reminded himself for the third time.
Once Davies entered the bomb shelter, Niall silently signaled his men to move in and take positions close to the entrance. There couldn’t be any gunshots that might be heard inside, so they had to take the Williamses down quietly when they exited and arrest them without gunplay.
Still, when the couple walked out into the sunlight with the briefcase Davies had carried inside, it gave Niall great pleasure to spring from his hiding place and press the barrel of his Beretta against the base of Martin Williams’s skull. “Move and you’re dead.”
The man froze. Niall had no intention of shooting, but Williams didn’t know that.
“Drop the briefcase.” Again, Williams obeyed.
“Now hand over the gun, nice and easy,” and Williams did exactly that.
Then one of the FBI special agents was there, clapping cuffs on Williams and intoning, “You’re under arrest for kidnapping and attempted murder. You have the right to remain silent...”
The other FBI agent was doing the same to Tammy Williams, and Niall heaved a sigh of relief that so far everything had gone according to plan. Now all they had to do was wait for Davies to exit, arrest him and free Savannah from her concrete tomb.
But the minutes crept by with no sign of Davies, and doubt crept into Niall’s mind. Had something gone wrong? Had Davies heard the arrests, quiet as they’d been? Had he barricaded himself inside with Savannah as his hostage? Was there another exit from the bomb shelter, one they knew nothing about? Yes, the Range Rover was here, but if Davies knew the Feds were here also, he could be trying to escape any way he could.
Then he heard a single gunshot.
Chapter 25
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Savannah told Spencer Davies, as the echoes of the gunshot still reverberated around the room. She’d been determined to remain cool and collected at all costs, but her heartbeat had rocketed when the gun went off. Then she reminded herself Davies was only trying to intimidate her by firing over her head, and she drew a calming breath. “I merely said—”
He backhanded her across the cheek. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, you bitch,” he spat. “You’ll do as you’re told, or the next time...”
She pitched her tone to be reasonable, despite the pain that made her want to lash out at him. “I merely said I’ll do my best, but I can’t give you a time frame.”
“You have one month. One month, you hear me? Our stock price is plummeting, and Wall Street won’t wait.” He clenched his teeth. “This is all your fault to begin with. If you’d accepted my job offer a year ago, I wouldn’t have been forced to these extremes. Do you know how much you’ve cost me? Do you?”
He waved wildly at the room around them. “This alone set me back millions. Not to mention what I had to pay for your kidnapping. But all that’s a drop in the bucket to what I’ll lose if DMFC has to declare bankruptcy.”
Savannah saw movement behind Davies out of the corner of her eye, but by sheer will forced herself not to look directly. “Okay,” she said, placating the furious man in front of her. “One month.” She stood slowly, keeping a watchful on Davies’s gun hand, and moved toward the classified computer setup, deliberately diverting his attention. “I think I have everything I nee—”
A guided missile in the form of her warrior lover hit Davies from behind. The gun flew across the room, and Davies was knocked sprawling, a hundred eighty pounds of solid muscle and bone atop him.
Savannah raced for the gun, then turned toward the two men wrestling on the ground. It was an uneven match. Niall had Davies pinned in seconds, one arm twisted behind his back. Niall wasn’t even breathing hard when he said, “I’ll break it if I have to,” in a voice that begged Davies to give him a reason.
Davies’s cries of excruciating pain were music to Savannah’s ears for a few seconds, payback for the blow he’d given her—her cheek was already swelling up and she knew there’d be a heck of a bruise. But then she came to her senses. “Don’t, Niall. He’s not worth it.”
He tightened his hold and looked up, running his worried gaze over her. “You’re okay? I heard a gunshot, and I—”
“I’m fine. He was just trying to intimidate me.” A soft smile spread over her face. “Niall to the rescue again. I knew I could count on you.”
* * *
Everything seemed to move swiftly after that. Davies was arrested and taken away in handcuffs. All three suspects were isolated from each other in the back seats of separate vehicles, per standard procedure, and the FBI special agents draped crime scene tape over the entrance, pending a search warrant. “Might not be necessary under the circumstances,” one of them said, “but no point taking a chance any evidence we collect will be tossed on a technicality.”
“Speaking of evidence,” Savannah said with a rueful grimace, “it’s too bad you weren’t able to record the conversations in the bomb shelter. Not only did Davies admit to everything, but Martin pretty much confessed, too.” She thought back. “He said something to the effect that alive I’m worth money to him, but he’d kill me if he had to.”
“Yeah,” Niall agreed. “That would have been explosive evidence, if we had it.”
One of the special agents from the agency spoke then. “Actually, we do.”
Savannah blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Belt and suspenders,” the special agent said obscurely. “That’s the agency’s unofficial motto, didn’t you know?” He reached for the electronic device Savannah was wearing, which was disguised as a necklace. “May I?” When she nodded, he unhooked the chain, then cradled the locket in his hand. “State-of-the-art,” he reminded them. “This serves three purposes. Electronic beacon. Audio transmitter. And audio recorder.”
“What?” Niall and Savannah both said almost simultaneously.
The agent climbed into the van and fit the locket into a piece of equipment, then hit a button that converted the electronic recording to a computer audio file. He opened the file, fast-forwarded to nearly the end, then hit Play.
“Belt and suspenders,” said the recorded voice. “That’s the agency’s unofficial motto, didn’t you know?” A pause was followed by, “May I?”
Every word clear as a bell.
“I’ll be damned,” Niall said. Then his brow darkened. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us this up front?”
A sheepish expression crossed the agent’s face. “Need to know. You know?”
Savannah couldn’t help it—she started laughing. Niall’s face was a thundercloud, the FBI agents were obviously miffed and the Defense Security Service agents looked intrigued.
“‘Need to know,’”
she chortled. She caught Niall’s eye, willing him to see the humor in this. “Oh yes, if there’s one thing I understand, it’s the concept of ‘need to know.’”
* * *
Two days later, Niall still hadn’t had a single moment alone with Savannah. Endless rounds of questioning by FBI and Defense Security Service agents who hadn’t been part of the task force, as well as federal prosecutors eager to hear everything that had transpired, had effectively kept him away from Savannah.
Then Niall was urgently recalled to Washington and dispatched on another assignment, to Russia this time, with no opportunity to get a message to Savannah. He’d considered turning the assignment down—how could he possibly be effective when his every thought was focused on Savannah and the case against Davies and the Williamses?
But the US needed someone who spoke fluent Russian who also had the skills to safely extract a long-time deeply embedded spy and his family, a spy whose cover the government feared was about to be blown due to leaked documents that were making their way piecemeal onto the internet. Time was of the essence, and lives were on the line. So Niall went.
* * *
It was very late when Niall walked into his minifortress apartment in DC eight days later, mission accomplished. He turned off the alarm automatically—keying in the code, submitting his thumbprint for identification and announcing his name for the computer.
Not his real one, of course. He’d deliberately used his brother Alec’s middle name when setting up the security alarm. So if someone tried to force him at gunpoint to disable the security system all he had to do was use his real middle name, Aspen, and the silent alarm would be triggered.
Aspen wasn’t too bad as middle names went, he’d always thought, especially compared to his brothers. Their mother had tried to make up for the ordinariness of Jones by giving all her children unusual first names. But she’d taken things a step further, giving them middle names of the places where she’d thought they’d been conceived. Which was why his brothers were named Shane Breckenridge, Alec Loveland and Liam Thermopolis Jones. Even his sister, Keira, wasn’t exempt from this convention, although she’d gotten lucky. Sedona was a pretty middle name for a girl, and a lovely place to be named after.
