by Angela Foxxe
The large group of men mumbled their agreement, then Jake looked down at the notes he’d scribbled down and looked around the room.
“Caleb, Hank, Derrick, Gage and Tristan, you’re with me. Tom, John, Lincoln, and James, you’re on deck. I may call you from the field if I need reinforcements, so have your bag packed. Everyone else, you’re here at base until you’re needed.”
Jake turned and headed down the hall. He didn’t even wait to see if the five men he’d called on would follow him. They were right behind him, as expected, ready to move.
They filed down the hall as one, and each man slipped into his room as they walked past, grabbing a bag that was already packed and falling back into line so quickly that it was almost as if they’d never broken ranks. Gage jogged to catch up with Jake, falling into step beside his friend and walking close so he could talk without being overheard by the others.
“Do you think it’s wise to have Hank and Tristan on the same team?” Gage muttered under his breath.
Jake shrugged.
“Their issues are not my problem. If they can’t table their feud long enough to do their jobs, then they can both leave.”
“That’s great in theory,” Gage pressed. “But I’ve already broken up a fight today.”
Jake stopped, turning smartly and facing the men.
“We’re going into the wilderness of Virginia. The area we’re covering is mostly off-limits to the public and the terrain is challenging. I expect that any beefs between team members will stay buried and that you’ll exert your energy looking for our target. If you can’t get along, tell me now and I’ll take alternates.”
He looked sternly at the entire group, but he could tell right away that the two men in question knew he was talking about them. Good, he wasn’t here to babysit.
He nodded, and the men nodded back their understanding. Jake knew that didn’t always mean that there wouldn’t be any issues, but he wasn’t interested in worrying about it all right now.
Using his keycard to open the door to the underground garage, he took a key from the guard there and unlocked a harmless-looking Ford Escape with heavily-tinted windows. It was modified, and the engine had been swapped with a more powerful one. It looked like a typical soccer mom SUV from the outside, but it was bulletproof and featured bench seats set sideways to fit more personnel than the five it was intended to seat. The floors opened up, storing ammo and other supplies beneath the feet of the men without any noticeable latches or handles. A quick inspection of the vehicle would lead nowhere, which is exactly what they wanted. The less noticeable, the better.
“We have a few hours before we get there,” Jake said as he started the engine. “If you need to, get some sleep. We have thousands of acres to cover and very little to go on. She was alive four hours ago when she was released to her husband, but a lot has happened. It’s going to take us another five hours to get there, so that will put us arriving a couple hours before sunrise. That doesn’t give her much of a chance, but she’s in good shape, and she’s a fighter. Do not underestimate this woman. She’s escaped before and found her way home.”
“I thought she was weeks into being reprogrammed,” Caleb said.
“She was,” Jake said. “But we’ve dealt with this before. The maternal instinct is strong, and despite our best efforts, getting back to her child kept her going.”
“Can’t we just take the child and take her out of the equation?” Derrick asked.
Jake shook his head.
“That’s not how the law works. It would be easier, but we can’t circumvent laws like that. We have a method, and that’s the way that works. Changing the script now will put our mission at risk.”
The men nodded, but Jake could tell that they weren’t satisfied. They operated outside the law, so kidnapping one more person shouldn’t matter, but it did. They couldn’t risk the attention that grabbing the Baker child would bring. And Mr. Baker would be the first to expose their group, and they would be toast. No, one child wasn’t worth all that trouble, no matter how much extra work dealing with Mrs. Baker was.
The men fell silent, and a quick glance in the review mirror showed that most had chosen to sleep while sleep was to be had. He looked at Gage, whose eyes were locked on the dark road ahead of them.
“I can drive straight through,” he assured Gage. “If you want to sleep, I’ll wake you up if I need a break.”
Gage nodded and, without another word, leaned against the window and closed his eyes.
Jake embraced the silence, using the time alone to gather his thoughts. This newest issue with Jessica Baker had Jake wondering if he needed to consider a different line of work. Were they doing the right thing? If they were, why was it so hard? Targets like Jessica Baker should be grateful for the work that was being done, but most of the time, they attempted to escape. It made things harder than they needed to be, and he’d started thinking that there had to be a better way.
He sighed.
As much as he wanted to live in that ideal world, he knew that just because things didn’t always go as planned didn’t mean that the plan was the problem. They were dealing with humans, and humans complicated things. Matt Baker may have paid to remove his wife from his life, but he wasn’t the real client. The real clients expected results, and they expected Jessica Baker delivered to them in less than a month completely reprogrammed. They had twenty-seven days to find this woman and get her through the program and on her way. He doubted that they were going to meet that deadline, and their clients would be unhappy. They couldn’t risk the ding to their reputation, but the fallout wouldn’t be nearly as bad as it would be if Jessica was actually dead. Like J, Jake didn’t believe Matt Baker, but men like Baker sometimes surprised them. If he had injured her enough that she’d died, or if he’d been successful in killing her, then their timeline wouldn’t matter. They would have to explain to their clients why Jessica Baker had died weeks after being picked up when she should have been safely contained on The Campus with the other targets. Someone had screwed up big time, and Jake was glad that it wasn’t him.
He needed this job, and he cared about the cause. He wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize a system that he believed in no matter how much he questioned their tactics. Their tactics worked, and that’s all that mattered.
Faith in what he was doing renewed, he pressed down the gas and pushed the vehicle until he was hovering just above the speed limit. Even if the car could pass a quick check by law enforcement, he didn’t want to risk it. All it would take was one overzealous cop to ruin their plans, but he was eager to get across state lines and into Virginia. Once they had Jessica, Jake would take his concerns to the boss and perhaps they could come up with a backup plan for women like Jessica, but for now, he was focused on the end results. Those results demanded that he find Jessica and bring her to The Campus to be dealt with, and that’s what he was going to do.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Senora reached up, taking the hand that Ty offered and pulling herself up a steep portion of the trail. She was winded and secretly grateful that Ty had decided to carry her backpack. She hadn’t counted on the terrain being so challenging, especially now that they’d left the area designated as public land. After watching the video with Senora, Ty had pointed out that the direction Jessica had fled in was directly into the part of the vast wilderness that was for permitted hikers only. Beyond that, the maintained trails ended, and whatever narrow path Jessica would have stumbled upon would lead her directly to the restricted area. Battered, bleeding and weak, this was the worst possible area for her to end up in, but at the same time, the varied landscape would offer her more places to hide and to get out of the cold. If she was smart and didn’t panic, she could find some semblance of safety where she’d headed, and that meant that they had a chance of finding Jessica alive.
Senora held onto that fact as she pushed herself harder than she ever had. As tired as she was, and as sore as her muscles were after a few hours in
the woods, it was nothing compared to what Jessica had endured and was likely enduring in that very moment. She needed them, and Senora wasn’t going to let sore muscles stop her.
“Do you need to rest?” Ty asked when they stopped on a flat portion of the trail to take a few sips of water.
Senora shook her head.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“It’s been a few hours; we should sit down for a minute and eat something.”
She rolled her eyes. He wasn’t tired, and she doubted he needed to sit down and rest. He was doing it for her benefit, and that got under her skin. She didn’t need to be coddled, even if she was a bit out of shape after six months on desk duty.
She started walking, but he reached out and grabbed her hand, forcing her to stop. She turned to look at him, her breath catching at the sight of herself reflected in his dark brown eyes. It was like he was staring into the very depths of her soul, and as always, the feeling was a little unsettling. But she knew that he’d seen right through her, and lying to Ty was pointless.
“We’re no good to Jessica if we’re too exhausted to help her when we do find her,” he pressed, taking away the last of her resolve.
“You’re right,” she said, plopping down on a nearby boulder and making herself as comfortable as she could.
Ty’s crooked grin tugged at her heart, but she didn’t dwell on the feeling. She’d spent the last couple hours watching him walk in front of her, his muscles bunching beneath the fabric of his jeans. It was all she could do to keep her thoughts away from the night they’d spent together and stay focused. Her mind had wandered, and who could blame her? They’d walked for miles, yet everything looked exactly the same to her. If Ty left her right now where they stood, she would never find her way back to the cabin. She’d scanned the forest surrounding them for any sign of Jessica or wild animals hiding in the shadows, but only birds and the occasional rabbit had shared the trail with them.
Senora took the protein bar that Ty offered her, eating it quickly and washing it down with the still cool water from her backpack. It was still half full, but she decided to point it out to Ty so they could keep their eye out for water to refill the self-filtering bottles with.
“We’re almost to the falls, and there will be running water there.”
“We don’t have to go through the falls, I hope.”
“No,” he laughed. “There’s nothing behind the falls; at least, nothing that I’m aware of. We do have to make our way up to the top, but there’s a trail on the side that we can take.”
She let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“Good. I didn’t want to scale a sheer wall again.”
He laughed.
“Don’t get too cocky. The trail is almost vertical. It’s going to be a rough hike.”
“You sure know how to make a girl feel good,” she teased.
His face darkened, and she felt her body tighten in response.
Crap choice of words, Senora, she thought. But it was too late. She’d said what she’d said, and the double meaning hadn’t been lost on Ty. She hadn’t meant it that way, but once she’d said the words, she wondered if her slip of the tongue had been intentional on some level.
Ty held her gaze for a moment longer, then he gathered up their things and packed them in the bag.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and helping her up. “We have a lot more ground to cover, and I don’t want to run out of daylight.”
He’s going to ignore what I said, she thought with relief and a fair amount of disappointment. Now was not the time, but she was disappointed that he’d let the subject matter drop so easily. A little flirting would have helped the time pass more quickly, and she’d missed the easy banter they’d shared months ago. Now, it was almost as if there was some unspoken tension between them, and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Yes, she was irritated that he’d been on his way to join her on her vacation tomorrow without her asking, and she was sure that he was upset that she hadn’t told him. But it felt like more than that, and it was bothering her. It was going to have to wait until they found Jessica. Until then, whatever it was would hang between them, forcing the overly cordial banter and the awkward glances until it came to the surface.
Senora couldn’t wait.
She took a deep breath and set out again, right behind Ty on the narrow trail that was already starting to head upward again. Grumbling to herself, she pushed onward, carefully picking her way down the trail so she didn’t trip and find herself sliding back down. It wouldn’t do Ty any good to have two damsels in distress on his hands.
She laughed at the mental image, then shrugged her shoulders when Ty glanced over his shoulder to see what she was laughing about.
She heard the waterfall before she saw it, and when they made it to the top of the steep, winding trail they were on, the view did not disappoint.
“I wish we were here for another reason,” she said, taking in the sight of the water that spilled and tripped over stones on the way down rather than falling straight into the water below.
The effect was breathtaking and soothing all at once, and Senora knew that she could spend hours here just absorbing it all.
“Maybe when this is all over, we can come back,” he said. “You can take as much vacation time as you want, right? Maybe after the island-”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” she blurted out, then immediately wished she hadn’t.
His smile was soft as he nodded, and she knew that he understood more than she did herself.
“I get it. Things have been rough the past few months. And it was better, because hearing your voice would have made it harder. I just don’t know where we stand right now, and I’m not trying to come in like some white knight and insert myself into your life again. If you don’t want me to go with you tomorrow night, you can say no. I don’t have to get on that plane.”
“But you bought tickets and upgraded us to first class.”
He smiled.
“Senora, it’s a drop in the bucket, and it’s worth losing that money if it makes you happy. I just missed you, and when Betty called, I wasn’t thinking.”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess I thought that you’d asked her to call. She was on the phone for such a short amount of time, and it wasn’t until you were shocked that I was here that I put two and two together. I should have called you first, but with being followed and all that, I thought that you were using Betty to circumvent all that and make sure that neither of us were followed. It was the perfect plan.”
“Except Betty didn’t even tell me.”
“I figured that out, and I’m sorry.”
They started walking again, going down a little hill and making their way to the base of the waterfall as they talked.
“It’s not your fault. It’s not even Betty’s fault. It makes sense; I’ve been missing you, and she saw an opportunity to contact you without causing me problems. I would do the same for her if I was inclined to be that nosey.”
She was almost laughing now, the craziness of how it had all come about more amusing than her shock at having Ty so close when she needed him. It was almost like a force bigger than the three of them knew that she was going to need his help and made sure it happened. If she thought about it too long, she’d end up going in circles.
“You missed me?” he asked, his smile wide. “I thought I was the only one.”
She felt her face color, but she decided not to lie. What did it matter? Technically, they didn’t work together anymore, so telling him the truth wouldn’t hurt anything, right?
“I have missed you,” she admitted. “It’s been hard, and I know that my caseload at work is Agent Patterson trying to distract me. I don’t know why anyone cares about the two of us working together or more, but we’ve managed to land on someone’s radar, and they don’t like it. And now, J has disappeared, and I just don’t know what’s going on.”
“J disappeared?
”
“The story is that he got reassigned to another task force, but I don’t see how that’s possible. And why wouldn’t he tell me that himself? I know we never met, and I don’t really know him with all the software he uses, but he’s been my mentor and my direct supervisor for years, and everything is so different now. I’m not used to being trapped behind a desk and doing most of my work from the office. I don’t know how long I can continue to work this way.”
“Who’s in the field?”
“It varies. It’s not one agent taking my place. And now, instead of me traveling around and following leads in this area to take out the Gate Keeper, they’ve created a think-tank type task force with multiple agents. There’s a small group that travels together, and I provide support in the office. I still question suspects and work with victims to identify their attackers, but I’m doing a little bit of everything, and it’s almost like I’ve been demoted.”
“Wouldn’t they notify you? Or cut your pay?”
“That’s what makes all this so weird. I don’t know why they wouldn’t cut my pay, except then I’d have more questions to ask. Right now, I’m just working out of the office, which is within the scope of my duties. It just hasn’t been so big a part of my duties until now.”
“You know too much,” he said ominously.
“You sound paranoid.”
“It rings true. I can see it in your eyes. You were getting too close to something, and someone doesn’t want you to find the answer.”
She didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. Still defiant, she shook her head.
“I think there’s a logical explanation for it. They could just fire me if I was getting too close. Something is going on, but I’m not going to find that answer here. I’m taking a couple days or more on vacation in the islands, but I’m only doing that to make Patterson think that I’m following orders. I have plans when I get back, and I’m not just going to sit by and let this happen without figuring out what is happening.”
